May 20, 2015: Brooklyn Museum Hires First Female Director & a Leadership Shuffle at the Whitney

Opening

In New York ...

“Dan Bainbridge: Bestiary” opens at Art 3; “Impressionist & Modern Art Exhibition” opens at Waterhouse & Dodd; “Deborah Kass: America’s Most Wanted, 1998 – 1999” opens at Sargent’s Daughters; “Mira Schor + Bradley Rubenstein: Imaginary Anatomies” opens at CREON.

In Los Angeles ...

“Erica Mahinay + Kathryn O’Halloran: Saline Communion” opens at Harmony Murphy Gallery; “Kahlil Joseph: M.A.A.D.” and “Sturtevant: Double Trouble” open at MOCA, Los Angeles.

In London ...

“John Keane – Speaking Power To Truth” and “John Keane – The Wisdom of Hindsight” open at Flowers; “Karen Kilimnik” opens at Sprüth Magers; “Corin Sworn: Max Mara Art Prize for Women” opens at Whitechapel Gallery; “Lucía Pizzani: A Garden for Beatrix” opens at Cecilia Brunson Projects.

TODAY’S NOTABLE NEWS

After two decades as Creative Time’s artistic director and president, Anne Pasternak has been named as the next director of the Brooklyn Museum and will join the institution on September 1st. With this appointment—her first museum position—Pasternak becomes the first woman to head one of NYC’s two major “encyclopedic art museums,” the other being the Met. (via the New York Times)

The Whitney has announced that its new chief curator will be Scott Rothkopf, who curated the final show in the museum’s old building, a retrospective of Jeff Koons’s work. The institution’s current chief curator, Donna De Salvo, will become its inaugural deputy director, in charge of building international relationships. (via the New York Times)

Two days before the public opening of the Havana Biennial, Tania Bruguera has begun her first performance project since her arrest at the end of last year. For the project, titled “The Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism,” Bruguera will give a 100-hour-straight public reading (which she began this morning) of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) as well as provide a forum for discussion. (via The Art Newspaper)

A Dürer engraving and a Rembrandt etching are both missing from the Boston Public Library. The Dürer work, Adam and Eve (1504) is valued at $600,000, while Rembrandt’s Self Portrait with Plumed Cap and Lowered Sabre (1634) is worth $20,000–30,000. Police believe that the works may have been stolen in an inside job, and staff are undertaking an investigative search of the library’s 200,000-works-strong print collection. (via the Boston Herald)

L.A.’s Hammer Museum will honor installation artist Paul McCarthy, along with actor Diane Keaton—a longtime photographer who has published books on the medium—at its annual gala and fundraiser on October 10th. (via the L.A. Times)

On June 10th in London, Sotheby’s will host its first auction dedicated to Aboriginal Art, the first of its kind from a major auction house not located in Australia. 64 lots will come from the Thomas Vroom Collection, and 11 from other international collections, with works ranging from stone shield artifacts to 20th-century paintings by Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Rover Thomas. (via BLOUIN artinfo)

Best of Instagram

Via @thebroadmuseum: “#ChrisBurden’s recently completed monumental performance sculpture #OdeToSantosDumont is now on temporary view at @LACMA. Catch a performance of the work before it’s gone.”

Via @crystalbridgesmuseum: “Like the wind stirring awake the grounds on this rainy morning, artist Alice Aycock sought ‘to visualize the movement of wind energy’ when creating her monumental sculpture, Maelstrom. Aycock will take part in a FREE onstage conversation with Curator Chad Alligood tomorrow, May 21, featuring highlights from her impressive artistic journey.”

Via @danielarsham: “I travel a lot for work. For the last 10 years I have made drawings on the back of the art in my hotel rooms. I made this one this morning in Cannes. #festivaldecannes”

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