The Art Angle

This week, the Art Angle is returning with this month's edition of the Round Up, featuring Artnet News Europe Editor Kate Brown, National Art Critic Ben Davis, and Global News Editor Naomi Rea.After a whirlwind two weeks of back-to-back art fairs at Frieze London and Paris+, the writers discuss if Art Basel's newest fair can usurp the flagship event in Basel as the most important art fair on the cultural calendar, and if Paris really has what it takes to be a "new" art market hub.Next, Ben Davis delves into the recent articles he wrote addressing why a critical analysis of "parasocial aesthetics" is so necessary, after artist Devon Rodriguez's followers attacked him on social media. Finally, the trio address the news that rare chemical compounds were discovered in analysis of paint from Leonardo's Mona Lisa, part of a broader interest in the process of restoring major artworks.

In December 2020, Congress approved funding for a new Smithsonian Museum dedicated to women's history to be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. But our nation's capital has actually been home to a dedicated women's museum, the vaunted National Museum of Women in the Arts, since 1987.The institution, founded by Wilhelmina Cole Holliday and her husband Wallace, was the first of its kind in the world. Its mission was simple, to educate viewers about women's long overlooked contributions to art history.In its 36 years of existence, the museum has amassed an impressive collection of over 6, 000 works by more than 1,500 international artists including Frida Kahlo, Berthe Morisot, and Louise Bourgeois, as well as contemporary figures such as Judy Chicago, Nan Goldin, Mariah Robertson, and Amy Sherald.Less than six months after Wilhelmina's death in March 2021, the museum closed for its first major renovation, a planned $67.5 million project slated to take two years. The work has included a revamp of the performance hall, adding a new learning commons with a research library and education studios where there were once offices, as well as 15 percent more exhibition galleries. Plus, behind the scenes space for collection storage and conservation.On the eve of its reopening, Artnet News spoke with NMWA director Susan Fisher Sterling about the institution's past, present, and future, and the work that still needs to be done to ensure proper recognition for women artists.

For more than 30 years, the acclaimed British sculptor Conrad Shawcross has been preoccupied with the concept of time. Throughout a career defined by blurring the boundaries between art and science and devising ambitious constructs that ask audiences to contemplate the world around them, Shawcross has experimented with different perceptions of time, from its measure in relation to human lives and cosmic events to how it operates as a force of change.Shawcross’s latest exploration on the subject began with an unlikely source: the luxury Scotch whisky maker Royal Salute. Drawing inspiration from the incredible expanse of time contained within an opulent 53-year-old Royal Salute whisky blend, Shawcross created a spectacular kinetic sculpture that merges a massive, sapphire blue glass disc with an oak spindle and oblong crystal decanter to represent how time functions on multiple levels.The new artwork, titled Royal Salute Time Chamber by Conrad Shawcross and the second collaboration in Royal Salute’s Art of Wonder series, debuted at the 2023 edition of Frieze London last week with a discussion about the project between Shawcross and veteran auctioneer and Artnet News contributor Simon de Pury. On this episode of the Art Angle podcast, we present a special live recording of their fascinating conversation.

How can art institutions adapt to meet the changing cultural landscape in the coming decades, and what are the new models that will evolve to fill these needs? Fotografiska, a private, for-profit photography museum, is offering a novel possibility.Fotografiska's self proclaimed mission is to offer a unique cultural destination where people can discover world class photography alongside one of a kind programming with top tier restaurants and bars on site. With expanded late night hours open until 11 p. m. on Fridays and Saturdays, Fotografiska believes it gives the public a more flexible platform for encountering culture than the traditional, often sterile museum setting. But it's a model that's not without skeptics, who worry that prioritizing experienced culture risks undermining curatorial rigor.Founded in Stockholm in 2011, today Fotografiska is a global enterprise with locations in Tallinn, Estonia and New York City, and the international expansion continues with a Berlin outpost that opened just last month with exhibitions by celebrated artists including Juliana Huxtable and Candice Breitz at the Kunsthaus Tascheles—a destination with a unique cultural history for the city. The museum's first location in Asia is also set to be unveiled this month in Shanghai.Behind Fotografiska's ascent is Yoram Roth, the institution's chairman, and a Berlin based entrepreneur focused on arts and culture. With a career background that ranges from entertainment and music production to publishing, Roth brings a dynamic energy, unique vision, and infectious attitude to the art sphere. This week, Artnet editor Katie White spoke to Roth about Fotografiska, and a new era of cultural experiences.

Hal Foster is one of the most well-known thinkers about art today. In a career that spans several decades, he is known for important much-cited books including The Return of the Real from 1996, Design and Crime from 2002 and most recently, Brutal Aesthetics from 2020. He teaches at Princeton and writes for a broader audience at Artforum and the London Review of Books, among many other places. And anyone who has studied art theory or contemporary art is probably familiar with a masterful book he edited called The Anti Aesthetic. Put out by the Bay Press in 1983, the slim, purple, 150 page collection brought together nine essays by figures including Jürgen Habermas, Rosalind Krauss, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said, plus an introduction by Foster himself, theorizing in exciting, contradictory, and new ways what it meant to write about, make, and see art.It set the tone for a lot of the criticism and reception of art theory in the 1980s and beyond, and helped make theory cool in art. Indeed, this small book has cast such a long shadow that Foster has just published a text for Artforum called The Anti Aesthetic at 40, where he assesses its legacy four decades on from its publication.The work reminds one of the sense of intellectual excitement and seriousness of purpose that drew many into writing about art in the first place. A sense that feels very embattled now. This week on the podcast, Hal Foster joins Artnet's chief art critic Ben Davis to discuss the recent past and present of art criticism. 

The fall art season is now officially in full swing. We've had a big round of fairs already around the world with the Armory Show, Independent 20th Century, Photofairs and more opening simultaneously in New York, and the second edition of Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul taking place in Asia, plus all of the galleries and museums that have begun to roll out some of their biggest offerings of the year.This week Artnet News's national art critic Ben Davis speaks with with Europe editor Kate Brown and Art Detective columnist Katya Kazakina on another episode of the Art Angle Round Up to take on some of the topics that have been animating the art discussion for the past month. On the docket this week are three topics: why painting is suddenly achieving a state of total dominance in the art galleries, the latest developments around the spectacular $86 million criminal scheme associated with the former art dealer Inigo Philbrick and the spate of lawsuits swirling around the art market, and about the case of the artist who tried to take $84,000 from a Danish museum and call it art.

Harry Everett Smith is an odd figure to come across in an art museum. That's because he's not known primarily as a visual artist at all. For most, Harry Smith is probably best known as the compiler of the legendary Anthology of American Folk Music, a landmark collection of early recordings published in 1952, which became a huge influence on the folk music revival and through that, on rock in the 1960s. Smith was born in 1923 and died in 1991, and his biography reads like a who’s who of cultural icons. He was a big figure in the Beat Generation and a close friend of Allen Ginsberg, appeared in one of Andy Warhol's screen test films, and he was also a tireless collector of all kinds of cultural objects, from out-of-print records to Ukrainian Easter eggs. Smith was also an experimental filmmaker and artist, an early student of anthropology, and an acolyte of a variety of mystical belief systems. Now, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is hosting “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith," an unusual, but thrilling new show, with an unusual curator, the artist Carol Bove, herself one of the most celebrated sculptors working today.  Bove has had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art and installed work on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many other accomplishments. Working with Elisabeth Sussman, a curator at the Whitney, Dan Byers, director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Art, and Rani Singh, director of the Harry Smith Archives, Bove has dedicated herself to helping organize this show, to tell the story of Harry Smith. In advance of “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten,” which opens October 4 at the Whitney, Carol Bove spoke to Artnet News’s chief art critic Ben Davis about Harry Smith's life in art and what it is about this hard-to-categorize figure that fired her imagination and will do the same for visitors to this show. “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 4, 2023–January 28, 2024. 

What does the future of the art market look like? It's a big and thorny question that cannot possibly be answered with a few simple words.From the big picture issues like how artificial intelligence will factor into business decisions and the global economic situation, to the smaller and more particular aspects, like which multi-million dollar collections will hit the block, and what the expansion of mega-galleries means for the art ecosystem... there are a lot of factors at play.At the Armory Show's Live event last week, Artnet News's senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella hosted a panel of experts including collector Alain Servais, art advisor Megan Fox Kelly, and gallerist Suzanne Vielmetter to discuss what the future may hold.Megan Fox Kelley is the founder and director of Megan Fox Kelley Art Advisory, as well as a member and former president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors. Her practice includes advising clients on acquisitions and sales of works of art for their collections, estate planning and execution, strategic planning, and feasibility studies for museums, exhibition planning and administration, collection management, and fine art appraisal services.Suzanne Vielmetter is the founder and director of Vielmetter Los Angeles. Since founding the gallery in 2000, she has been committed to presenting artists from a wide range of diverse backgrounds with a focus on idea-based and political work.Alain Servais is a globally-recognized collector and founder of the Servais Family Collection. For more than 20 years, Servais has focused on underrepresented and museum quality art, which he believes is significant and worthy of preservation.This week on the podcast, we present the live-recording from the Armory Show event.

There are endless ways to write about art, but if you tell someone that's your job, the first thing they're likely going to think is that you write art reviews, though the fact of the matter is that very few people actually do. In other words, the art critic is a key character in the mythology of the art world, as a champion who spots talent and interprets art for the public, and simultaneously as a villain who serves as a gatekeeper and a killjoy.Yet the central function of the art writing ecosystem has also been facing real difficulties.Recently, there's also been a fresh round of debate about the state of criticism today. Is art writing now too positive, too promotional, or not critical enough? What should the goal of writing about art even be? And if there actually is a problem with art criticism, what's the cause and what's to be done about it?Artnet News's national art critic, Ben Davis, wrote a two-part essay for the site that delves into many of the thorny and often contradictory issues facing the field. Ahead of the kickoff of the fall art season, Europe editor Kate Brown speaks to Ben about the state of art criticism. \\Is Art Criticism Today Too Affirmative? That's the Wrong Question to Be Asking | Artnet NewsSean Tatol's Manhattan Art Review is a bracing new voice in New York art criticism. Ben Davis assesses his manifesto, "Negative Criticism."

We're back this week with The Roundup, where we dissect some of the biggest headlines that have been causing a stir over the last weeks in the art world and beyond. This week, Europe editor Kate Brown is joined by International art critic Ben Davis and Wet Paint gossip columnist Annie Armstrong to discuss three headline-making stories.At the top of the list is the very dramatic goings on at the British Museum in London, where a curator is under investigation for stealing what might be somewhere around 2,000 objects from the collection and the ripple effect its had on the international art community stretching from China to Africa, and ultimately resulted in the stunning resignation of director Hartwig Fischer.Next up is a conversation about an intriguing development in the United States court system, where a computer scientist made a bid to secure a copyright registration for an artwork that was made by A.I. that has been summarily been shot down. Finally, on a lighter note, the trio heads over to the tony enclave of the Hamptons to Montauk, a typically quiet town that's in the midst of an art world dust up. A turf war involving Andy Warhol's former estate and a physical altercation between two art dealers, Max Levai and Adam Lindemann, that has proved to be one of the juiciest stories of the season.