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NUVO MAGAZINE By Dan Grossman 1,000 attended the 33rd annual Start with Art business luncheon in Indianapolis The Arts Council of Indianapolis kicked off the 2019-20 arts season on Aug. 30 at the JW Marriott. Highlights of the 33rd annual Start with Art luncheon included remarks by Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, and his enthusiastic dancing with the children of Kids Dance Outreach in the moments before said remarks. In his keynote address, Xavier Ramey , CEO and lead strategist for Chicago-based social impact consulting firm Justice Informed, passionately emphasized the importance of the arts in promoting diversity. The topic also was highlighted in several presentations. [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Aimee Dawson Detail: Safia Farhat's tapestry Amités, now part of the Barjeel Art Foundation Collection Image courtesy of Galerie El Marsa An exhibition of Modern Arab art opening at the Sharjah Art Museum in November will focus on achieving gender parity among the artists on show. Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, an Emirati collector and professor, is organising the exhibition, along with the curators Suheyla Takesh and Salwa Mikdadi, using works from his Barjeel Art Foundation collection of Middle Eastern art. Al Qassemi argues that female artists, and not just those from the Middle East, have been too-long forgotten in art history: “The issue has been gnawing at me since 2017, when I took a group of my students around the exhibition Modern Art from the Middle East," which was made up of works from Barjeel Art Foundation. He then learned that, overall, works by women only total around 13% in US museums. [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Elizabeth Fortescue Deborah Kelly's No Human Being Is Illegal (in all our glory) was acquired by the Wellcome Collection in London last year. She will be represented by Finkelstein Gallery Australia’s only commercial gallery dedicated to contemporary female artists is due to open in Melbourne next week. Finkelstein Gallery was founded by the art consultant Lisa Fehily, whose maiden name is Finkelstein. “After working with artists for many years, I have been witness to female artists being overlooked, not being put forward for important exhibitions, and institutions predominantly considering male artists for collections,” she says. Finkelstein Gallery will limit its representation to ten artists. ehily tells The Art Newspaper t hat low representation of women in the Australian art world (state museums show 34% female artists while commercial galleries show 40%, she says) had inspired her to open the gallery. [ More ]

MOMUS: Art Criticism By Joseph Henry Louis Fratino, "Metropolitan," 2019. © Louis Fratino. Image courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co. I work on 22nd Street in the Chelsea gallery district of Manhattan, so it was easy to notice the painting. Louis Fratino’s I keep my treasure in my ass (2019) faced the sidewalk through a small foyer of the Sikkema Jenkins & Co Gallery . With his exhibition Come Softly to Me , which ran earlier this spring, Fratino garnered an infusion of critical (and no doubt commercial) attention. Artforum and The Brooklyn Rail took note, building off earlier coverage from The New York Times . This showcasing of queer politics and queer imagery catalyzed a set of critical questions: what does figurative canvas painting do for queer artists? [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Felix Salmon When a big-name museum starts buying up the work of the artists that its board collects, those artists’ prices rise, along with the value of the collections they are in. On top of that, board members receive priority when it comes to buying new work. At the highest levels of art collecting, board memberships and other institutional affiliations are table stakes: it can be almost impossible to collect the most coveted art without them. In other words, increasingly we live not in a world where museums collect collectors, but rather in a world where collectors collect museums. Museums ostensibly serve high philanthropic ideals of education, curatorship, conservation and connoisseurship—but increasingly they are instead being used to serve the narrow agenda of their ultra-rich board members. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE Guan Yu (detail; c. 1700), China. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art Drawn primarily from the Met’s holdings in this area, this exhibition explores how premodern artists in China visualised divinity in remarkably fluid ways. Paintings, prints and sculptures bring together deities from Buddhist, Taoist and other pantheons in a manner that reflects the exchange of ideas across boundaries of faith, culture and politics in this era. Find out more from the Met’s website . [ More ]

HYPERALLERGIC By Lucas Justinien Perez Diego Rodrίguez de Silva y Velázquez, “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus” (1619–20), oil on canvas, 21 5/8 x 46 1/2 inches (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Presented, Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, 1987 (Beit Collection), NGI.4538) SAN DIEGO — Art and Empire: The Golden Age of Spain at the San Diego Museum of Art assembles a collection of over 100 works from the four corners of the Spanish Empire at its zenith under Habsburg rule from 1516 to 1700. It includes works by such canonical figures as Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, and El Greco. In a postcolonial society still deeply divided by race, gender, and class inequalities, how can we understand these works? The extensive exhibition attempts to retell the story of Spain’s golden age by highlighting the global exchange of cultures as seen in the empire’s art and its hugely diverse body of subjects. [ More ]

ARTSY By Alina Cohen Chitra Ganesh, Power Girl, 2015. Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco Chitra Ganesh.  As an art material, glitter offers easy seduction. Basic biology mandates that sparkling surfaces lure even the most sophisticated viewer’s eye. As a child, Chitra Ganesh began using glitter for costumes and celebrations. As a young artist, she said the material took on “a queer sensibility, as a way to perform, mark, or alter gender expressions.” Ganesh’s figurative compositions still evidence a youthful approach. Power Girl (2015), for example, plays on superhero tropes to transform a young, non-white woman with a sparkling nose ring into a potent and formidable character—a Powerpuff Girl, but edgier. Ganesh’s oeuvre, as a whole, maintains this cartoonish, feminist edge. [ More ]

The reality: The remains of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, are brought to East Jerusalem in July 2014. JERUSALEM — It was the extraordinary coldbloodedness of the murder that made it true-crime movie material in the first place: a Palestinian teenager snatched off a Jerusalem street by Orthodox Jews, choked, bludgeoned and burned to death in a forest at dawn. But “Our Boys,” a 10-part series that started this month on HBO, is under attack in Israel largely because of that singularity, amid an ideologically and emotionally charged battle over the politics of bereavement and victimhood. Some critics have accused the creators of skewing reality and ignoring what they say is the more common scourge of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, creating a false equivalency between the two and tarnishing Israel’s image. [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS Takashi Murkamai at "Murakami versus Murakami" at Tai Kwun. Photograph: Alex Maeland. Takashi Murakami‘s tripped-out universe has touched down in Hong Kong. The 57-year-old artist’s mix of fashion, graphic art, cosplay, and graffiti is spread across every crevice of the three floors of the new Tai Kwun Contemporary. The show, titled “Murakami versus Murakami,” leaves no small part of his career unexplored and no surface of the exhibition space untouched as it examines the different aspects of the Murakami brand. The show is on view through September 1 in the swank new institution, housed in a former Central Police Station complex, that was redesigned by Herzog & de Meuron at the cost of HK$3.8 billion. The center officially opened last May as non-collecting, non-profit organization modeled on Europe’s kunsthalles. [ More ]

OUT MAGAZINE By Trevel Anderson “I really don't care about the white gaze at all,” Jarvis Boyland said. There’s something different about Jarvis Boyland’s work. Walking the exhibition rooms of Los Angeles’ Kohn Gallery — where Boyland’s “ On Hold: ” exhibit is on view through Thursday, May 23 — I was arrested by his portraits of Black queer men. Though simple and straightforward, there’s a complexity in the color story, particularly in his subject’s skin tones. They were rich and nuanced and complex, both imagined and realistic, and unlike any paintings I’ve come into contact with. Three days later, I shared these observations with the artist-in-residence at University of Chicago over the phone. “I think Black flesh is so complex,” he said, “and it's so beautiful.” “Jarvis Boyland: On Hold:” is the Memphis native’s first solo exhibition and includes a suite of new paintings.[ More ]

IN GEVEB By Henryk Berlewi Marc Chagall, “To My Wife” The issues that have emerged in the world of art over the last several decades have perhaps nowhere reached such a level of tension as in Russia. The new artistic ideas, which since the downfall of the so-called “Peredvizhniki” 1 1 have begun to migrate here from Western Europe, particularly France (with a considerable delay), have not only acclimated rapidly but continue to develop and expand. So it was with Cézannism, Cubism, Futurism and so on; with the entire breadth and depth of the Russian soul, these new artistic ideas, or artistic philosophies, were adopted and led to their final, logical consequences. That, which in the West was a product of harmless experimentalism, by virtue of its entirely free, non-obligatory, creative objective, has here in Russia effectively developed into a theory—a canon. [ More ]

THE COMMUNITY WORD By Paul Krainak Thomas Skomski, “Uproot – Locura” (PHOTO BY DANNYL DOLDER) Co-curators Robert Sill, Douglas Stapleton and Edward Maldanado note that Thomas Skomski’s solo show “Urgent Care: Stuck in that Awkward Stage between Birth and Death” at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield “examines the processes of change and the inevitable outcome of decay and aging.”n fact, Skomski’s newest work was produced during a recent health and environmental emergency with which the artist and his wife continue to struggle. The Community Word editor Clare Howard published a cover story on their circumstances in January 2018. Skomski was also a subject of a Swedish documentary, “The New Gold,” which covered environmental degradation caused by silica mines near his home in LaSalle County, Ill. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination (Plate 2), 2019 Archival inkjet, screenprint, silver leaf, and collage 44 × 34 in 111.8 × 86.4 cm Edition of 14 INDIANAPOLIS---New York-based Saya Woolfalk's " Emphatic Cloud Divination" exhibition explores our understanding of the human condition -- a state of affairs governed by seemingly unavoidable conflicts such as birth, growth, and death. This show explores how technology has allowed us to ease our suffering by making change less difficult and transformation more enjoyable. Woolfalk's exhibit at Tube Factor includes her signature installations, sculpture, prints, video artworks, and the work of artists who influence her practice.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Nick Cave’s Augment (2019) at Boston Art Center through September 13. Most people turn 60, and they don't feel different. Ernest turned 60 this week , and feels like he's begun a new chapter titled "silver sexty." His trademark blue shirts are no longer enough, and he's coveting pink and white. After a ten year fixation with Kehinde Wiley , his new artist crush is " Soundsuits " fabric sculptor Nick Cave , who also turned sixty this year. For decades, Cave's colorful work responded to racial violence , but at 60, he is turning to pure joy  in a new show in Boston . Beginning God's next chapter, that makes Nick Cave our artist of the week. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Melena Ryzik John Waters in his New York apartment with “Candles, Chandelier, and Burning Chairs” (1993), by Karen Kilimnik Mr. Waters, the filmmaker, author, performer, and bon vivant of bad taste. He has an expansive, and very seriously considered, art collection — even if a lot of it is funny, and some of it is, in his words, “ugly.” (He likes brown art, he said, for that very reason.) He began collecting as a teenager in suburban Baltimore, where his first pieces included an Andy Warhol print of Jackie Kennedy, purchased in 1964, for $100 — “which was a lot then,” he said. “A hundred dollars was like $1,000.” Since then, Mr. Waters, 73, has acquired several other (pricier) Warhols, and an insider’s knowledge of contemporary art; his own visual work has been exhibited in galleries and in a 2018 retrospective, “Indecent Exposure,” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. [ More ]

THE JERUSALEM POST By Rossella Tercatin THE COLORS of Judaism in Italy’ – in its splendor in Florence, in the Galleria degli Uffizi’s Aula Magliabechiana wing – is due to run until October 27. During the spring of 1749 in Rome, a young Roman Jew, Anna Del Monte, was kidnapped by papal soldiers and locked up in the House of Catechumens, a Catholic institution aimed at converting Jews to Christianity. Anna, however, resisted the attempts to persuade her and after 13 days she was allowed to return to her family in the ghetto. A few years later, in celebration of Anna’s miraculous return, her father, Baruch Del Monte, donated to their synagogue a finely embroidered mappa, a rectangular piece of fabric designed to protect a Torah scroll. The showcase marks the first time in the four centuries of history of the iconic Uffizi that an exhibition is devoted to a Jewish topic, as Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi, explained in a phone conversation with the Magazine. [ More ]

BROADWAY WORLD Deborah Kass, OY/YO, 2016, produced in 2017. Painted aluminum mounted on a polished stainless steel base. Purchase: Gift in honor of Norman Kleeblatt, Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator of the Jewish Museum from 2005-2017.  The Jewish Museum will present Masterpieces and Curiosities: The Benguiat Collection from September 6, 2019, through July 2020, featuring over 30 works from the Museum's H. Ephraim and Mordecai Benguiat Family Collection. This collection of 300 examples of decorative and ceremonial art related to Jewish culture is one of the formative groups of the Jewish Museum's collection. The exhibition includes objects ranging from a newly restored Torah ark curtain from Istanbul (ca. 1735) to an ornately embroidered silk eighteenth-century pillowcase for the Passover Seder from Bulgaria.[ More ]

ART & SOUL Saya Woolfalk, American (born 1979). ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space, 2015-2016. Multi-media installation, 15 x 25 x 5 feet. Projection: 3:59 minutes. Seattle Art Museum. Purchased with funds from Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman, Alida and Christopher Latham, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Art Acquisition Fund, 2017.16. Visitors to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City will be transported to a fantastical world created by artist Saya Woolfalk when they experience Saya Woolfalk: Expedition to the ChimaCloud , an immersive, multimedia exhibition created for the Nelson-Atkins that opens March 1-Sept. 1, 2019. Expedition to the ChimaCloud incorporates cultural hybridization, technology, identity, spiritual rituals, and science fiction to continue the extensive narrative of a fictional race of half-plant, half female beings created by Woolfalk called the Empathics. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS BIKASH BHATTACHARJEEUntitled, 1984Pastel on paper pasted on boardStarting bid: Rs 1 lakh ($1,429)Est: Rs 10 - 15 lakhs ($14,290 - 21,430) StoryLTD Auctions announces No Reserve Action of Modern and Contemporary Hindu Art available online, August 20-21. The auction features 120 works by modern and contemporary Indian artists, including F N Souza, Krishen Khanna, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Thota Vaikuntham, B Vithal, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Sudarshan Shetty, Rekha Rodwittiya, C Bhagyanath and many more. Auction begins: August 20 2019, 08:00 PM IST [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS Kyle Breitenbach: When the Leaves Come Down" at SHRINE, August 8 – September 15, 2019 For Kyle Breitenbach’s third solo show at SHRINE, the artist uses alchemical processes to not only visualize, but actualize, the perpetually unsettled state of our world. After being completely hidden by overpainting, compositions drawn from folklore, science fiction, and metaphysics gradually eat their way back to visibility over time, then continue to shift even after their re-emergence as “ghostly likeness[es].” The paintings’ shimmering, iridescent surfaces—another effect of the underlying chemical reaction—ensure that, even in the moment, the works are perceived to be in flux and independent of Breitenbach’s influence, mirroring the reality of both nature and our eternally impoverished attempts to represent it. [ More ]

SEDITION Don't miss an incredible opportunity available to Sedition collectors; the chance to own a collection of digital artworks by Paul Benney with a soundtrack composed by Nitin Sawhney. Collect either individual artworks or the full collection of six at a 20% discount. The evolution of Reliquary began with Paul Benney's exploration of the properties of fire. This exploration led to a collection of six video works by Benney. Renowned composer and multi-instrumentalist Sawhney was in turn inspired to create a musical response to Benney's visuals. We are delighted to present this to Sedition collectors as the soundtrack to each of the Reliquary editions. [ View & Collect ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Artist Liu Xiaodong in 2017 in front of his painting “Refugees 4” (2015) As A&O readers know, we have a special affection for artists of color, and Chinese contemporary artist Liu Xiaodong is our newest discovery. Born in 1963, he is best known for social realism focused on the daily realities of ordinary people: friends, family, migrants, workers, farmers, and transgender/gay. In 2015, Lui used his virtuosic brush to paint " Refugees 4 " which conveys his sympathy for downtrodden lives filled with physical struggle but also spiritual pleasure. "Refugees 4" at the  Phillips Collection , makes Liu Xiaodong , our artist of the week.

DANCE MAGAZINE By Jen Peters Revelations premiered in New York City at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday, January 31, 1960, with nine dancers including Ailey, and live musicians. In 1960, America was in the midst of a social transformation. The Supreme Court had ruled "separate but equal" unconstitutional six years prior, but the country's response was slow and turbulent as desegregation incited violent responses. Surrounded by powerful civil rights momentum, a 29-year-old Alvin Ailey created an ode to the resilience of the human spirit: Revelations . As Revelations approaches 60 years of nearly uninterrupted performances, Ailey's hopeful message continues to spread. "Alvin Ailey was able to create a work about faith in God, yet it transcends religion," says Battle. "Revelations has a way of breaking through spiritual and language barriers." [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Warren Strugatch Brian Phillips in his living room with, from left, “Black Goo, White Lace” (2015) by Torbjorn Rodland and “Loon” (2011) by Wyatt Kahn.  When Brian Phillips came to New York in 1998, he quickly gravitated toward the downtown art and fashion scenes and, through internships at Paper, Elle and Visionaire , connected with other aspiring, boundary-smudging tastemakers, and haunted contemporary art hot spots. He also found mentors who guided him. As a collector, Mr. Phillips favors contemporary art and photography, often created by artists he has met, including Paul Lee and Matt Saunders. His taste in art is strikingly personal and he has acquired several homoerotic pieces. "Yes. Gay and lesbian artists have been marginalized in the canon. I feel compelled to do my small part to support their work and influence." [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Lanre Bakare Restoration work on Leonardo da Vinci’s the Virgin of the Rocks began in 2008.  An “abandoned composition” by Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered underneath one of his most discussed paintings, which will take centre stage at a ground-breaking exhibition dedicated to the Renaissance master. The National Gallery , which is hosting an “immersive exploration” of the artist’s work, found the unfinished earlier version after conducting scientific research into the Virgin of the Rocks . The London gallery’s researchers found the Leonardo’s initial designs for the angel and the infant Christ, with “significant differences to how they look in the finished painting”. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Jason Farago Liu Xiaodong, in his painting “Refugees 4” (2015), depicts Syrian refugees at the port of Lesbos gathered together in a moment of rest. A show at the Phillips Collection features 75 artists on migration and displacement. WASHINGTON — “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees,’” Hannah Arendt wrote in 1943. She was in New York by then. "Hell is no longer a religious belief or a fantasy, but something as real as houses and stones and trees,” Arendt wrote. Today the United Nations estimates that there are 25.9 million refugees worldwide, the highest number recorded since Arendt and countless others fled their homes during World War II. These are the lives that populate “The Warmth of Other Suns,” a poignant, solemn and utterly shaming exhibition through Sept. 22 at the Phillips Collection here. The show fills the Washington museum with the work of 75 artists, some staring down current crises of migration, others with more po...

ARTDAILY The Circumcision of Christ is a distinctive work painted partly on shells connects the Americas to Asia and Europe. MANCHESTER, NH.- The Currier Museum of Art opens an exciting new chapter in its collection with the acquisition of a Mexican painting from around 1700. Not only is it a powerful example of Spanish colonial painting, it is made in a mixture of techniques that blends the arts of Mexico, Europe, and Asia. The Circumcision of Christ is delicately painted in oils on a combination of wood and thin pieces of seashell (called mother-of-pearl). The artist used the shimmering iridescence of the shell to enhance the costumes and setting. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Bruce Nauman's 'One Hundred Live and Die', 1984, presents a striking commentary on life – lighting up the room with phrases written in neon pink, yellow, white and blue. Bruce Nauman has spent half a century inventing forms to convey both the moral hazards and the thrill of being alive. Employing a tremendous range of materials and working methods, he reveals how mutable experiences of time, space, movement, and language provide an unstable foundation for understanding our place in the world. Disappearing Acts traces what Nauman has called “withdrawal as an art form”—both literal and figurative incidents of removal, deflection, and concealment. The exhibition is on view at The Museum of Modern Art through February 18, 2019, and at MoMA PS1 through February 25, 2019. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Gabe Cohn “Meeting” in 2016. The James Turrell installation, which closed in January, has just reopened. After about six months of indefinite closure, MoMA PS1 has reopened an installation by the artist James Turrell, known for engaging viewers’ perceptions with real and artificial light. The work, “Meeting,” was closed in January when construction from a pair of luxury apartment buildings near the museum, an outpost of MoMA in Long Island City, Queens, became visible through a rectangular opening in the ceiling. A minimal environment, it alludes to Quaker meeting houses and frames the waning light and weather. It was intended to give an unobstructed view of the sky. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Antonio Tempesta's "The Egyptians Drowning in the Red Sea"; Sotheby's Asking Price: $850,000 Born in Florence in 1555 and died in Rome in August 0f 1630, Antonio Tempesta was a painter and engraver best known for his battle scenes including "T he Egyptians Drowning in the Red Sea ." The Red Sea painting is an exceptional and characteristic example of his ingenious works on stone. In it, he illustrates, the Bible passage from Exodus in which God clears the path of freedom for the Israelites by dividing the Red Sea. This painting will be offered at Sotheby's NYC in September, and that makes Antonio Tempesta our artist of the week.

WBUR.ORG By Amelia Mason Artist Nick Cave's inflatable sculpture for his "Augment" project in Boston is on display at the Boston Center for The Arts (Robin Lubbock/WBUR) “How’s it going?” Ayako Maruyama asked one passerby. “Do you want to write down what brings you joy?” The group was asking residents to contribute to a project organized by the visual and performance artist Nick Cave, (not to be confused with the musician), who would incorporate some of their creations into a public art piece. “Augment,” which opened Aug. 8, was commissioned by the Boston public art presenter Now + There. It involves two main components: a trippy-looking vinyl building wrap (functionally, a mural) stuck to the side of an empty bank building in Upham’s Corner, and a collection of huge inflatable sculptures, which currently reside in the Cyclorama in the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End. [ More ]

THE BOSTON GLOBE By Murray Whyte Some of the inflatables in Nick Cave’s “Augment” The suits’ spectacular sheen was leavened with dark purpose: Nick Cave made his first in the aftermath of the Rodney King race riots in LA, when he felt under threat simply for being black. The suits, which conceal every inch of their wearers, were designed as armor against prejudice, meeting terror with beauty. It was always an uneasy balance, a tension that made his work transcend simple wonder. Here, that much remains. “Augment,” Cave calls it, is a departure from the work that made his name, though the parallels aren’t hard to find. A new commission for Now + There, a Boston-based public art nonprofit, “Augment” seduces — bright colors! Cute bunnies! — then repels. [ More ]

SEDITION ART Add caption A new installation by Mat Collishaw challenges ingrained concepts and practices linked to faith and examines religion as part of the human condition. The Nerve Rack is on display at Ushaw, a Catholic seminary near Durham, England, until 3 November. The work references the treasures held at Ushaw while ruminating over themes central to Catholicism and religion more broadly; martyrdom and treason, worship and heresy. Installed in the ante-chapel of the Chapel of St Cuthbert, the piece confronts a bronze eagle designed by Pugin with an animatronic eagle which in turn torments a mechanical mouse. The relationship between the two eagles communicates historic tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as the often oppositional relationship between religion and technology. [ More ]

SOTHEBY'S "The Egyptians Drowning in the Red Sea" by Antonio Tempesta (1555 - 1630); oil on red marble; 16 5/8 by 23 3/8 in. In this episode of Anatomy of an Artwork , discover Antonio Tempesta’s The Egyptians Drowning in the Red Sea , a visceral rendering of the biblical passage in which Moses and the Israelites pass through the Red Sea while the Egyptian army is destroyed. Masterfully executed in oil on Italian red marble, the work’s magnificence lies in the way the artist incorporates vivid patterns of the stone into the image. The Egyptians Drowning in the Red Sea is offered as a highlight of Sotheby’s Inspired by Chatsworth: A Selling Exhibition. On view alongside Treasures From Chatsworth: The Exhibition , Inspired by Chatsworth presents a carefully curated group of exceptional artworks and objects that draw inspiration from the legendary Devonshire collection. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "MILK" (2019) by Patrick McGrath Muñíz. Oil and gold leaf on panel 32 x 18 inches. Available at Evoke Contemporary priced at $5,000 As an artist with a Roman Catholic background,  Patrick McGrath Muñíz resides in Houston, Texas. His highly collectible work consists primarily of oil painting on canvas and retablo panels inspired by Spanish Colonial Iconography and Pop Culture. His painting "Milk" is an allegory to our current global economy through the eyes of a well-known healer (and our favorite saint) from Colonial Peru, San Martin de Porres . This painting is currently available at Evoke Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM, and that makes  Patrick McGrath Muñíz our artist of the week .

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Trey and Jenny Laird in their home in front of Sam Samore’s “Scenarios #53” (2007). “Old lady house,” is the way Trey and Jenny Laird describe their four-story Upper East Side townhome, but the contemporary art inside — by the likes of Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, Michaël Borremans, Jenny Holzer and Tracey Emin — does not seem outdated in the least. "We saw the Ai Weiwei show at the Tate [Modern], in the Turbine Hall, and I love his work so much, every single thing." The Lairds, married for 22 years, divide their collection of about 300 works evenly among their three homes; the others are in the Hamptons and in Marfa, Tex. Both the Lairds are natives of the Lone Star State, and have occasionally bought art by Texans, including the sculptor Tony Feher. [ More ]

SOTHEBY'S A cross three mighty panels, Hieronymus Bosch’s raucous and confounding scene of heaven and hell continues to provoke debate, influence popular culture and attract millions of visitors to the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, A cross three mighty panels, Hieronymus Bosch’s raucous and confounding scene of heaven and hell continues to provoke debate, influence popular culture and attract millions of visitors to the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, its home since 1933. The oak-panel triptych features a large center scene flanked by two smaller hinged-panels that, when closed, display the formation of the earth on the third day as according to the biblical creation story. When opened, the left-wing depicts God's presentation of Eve to Adam in a utopic Garden of Eden, amidst a menagerie of animals. [ More ]

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST By Elizabeth Stamp Mosques: The 100 Most Iconic Islamic Houses of Worship (Assouline, $895), author Bernard O’Kane, a Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo To find some of the most spectacular architecture in the world, you don’t need to look farther than houses of worship. These spiritual structures represent the greatest achievements in art, design, and architecture throughout history. In the forthcoming volume Mosques: The 100 Most Iconic Islamic Houses of Worship (Assouline, $895), author Bernard O’Kane, a Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo, looks at the some of the most important sites in the Islamic faith and the innovations that developed through centuries of mosque design. [ More ]