On Monday, having presumably identified a correspondence between people who holiday in luxury ski resorts and people who buy blue chip modern and contemporary art, Hauser and Wirth announced that it would be opening its ninth location in St Moritz, Switzerland. The new venue will be inaugurated by an exhibition of the work of Louise Bourgeois in December. The altogether more geographically rooted Liverpool Biennial on the same day confirmed the appointment of Manuel Cosmos as curator of its eleventh edition, which will take place in the summer of 2020. You can read Mark Rappolt’s review of the tenth and current Liverpool Biennial, which runs to 28 October, here.
On Tuesday, the cool alternative art fair Paris Internationale announced the list of exhibitors for its 2018 edition, taking place 17–21 October. 42 galleries and 8 non-profit spaces from 21 countries will take over a new venue right by the Parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement. Meanwhile, the Portland Biennial has announced its 2019 curatorial team – Yaelle S. Amir, Elisheba Johnson and Ashley Stull Meyers – and launched an open call for projects by artists living in Oregon, closing on 19 November 2018. Jumping on the bandwagon of contemporary art galleries taking in artist estates, White Cube has announced its representation of the Al Held Foundation. The harde-edge painter, who died in 2005 and is already represented by Cheim & Read in New York and Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, will be the subject of two exhibitions, one at White Cube’s Bermondsey space in London in 2019, and one at its Hong Kong outpost in 2020. Meanwhile the good people of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki have announced that all their exhibitions in 2019 will relate to theme of ‘goodness’, exploring ideas of ‘giving, sharing, hospitality and encounters’. Among the artists letting these good times roll are Ragnar Kjartansson and Torbjørn Rødland.
It’s Thursday already and today the Armory Show announced that Sally Tallant, (director, Liverpool Biennial), Lauren Haynes, (curator of contemporary art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art) and Dan Byers (director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University), will curate sections of its 2019 edition, running from 7–10 March. Looking ahead to the Venice Biennale, Danish-Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour, who creates sci-fi infused video works and installations, has been selected by the Danish Arts Foundation to represent the country at the international event, opening 11 May 2019. London’s Alison Jacques Gallery has announced worldwide representation of the late American artist Lenore Tawney. An influential figure in the development of fibre art in the United States, she created drawings, sculptures and largescale installation which are seen to have elevated textile work from a craft to an art.
On Friday, Brian Cass was announced as the new senior curator of Hayward Gallery Touring, the London institution’s programme of touring exhibitions across the UK. Cass is currently head of exhibitions at Towner Art Gallery and will take up his new role on 19 November. Also in London, the Wellcome Collection launched an open call for its inaugural £20,000 photography prize, inviting photographers to submit images that capture ‘stories of health, medicine and science’. Deadline: 17 December. RT, the Russian state broadcaster, has run a strange gloating story detailing the misfortunes of Russian artists who have previously protested against the Putin government, including Pyotr Pavlensky and Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol of Voina, all of whom now live in the west. They were, the newspaper claims, ‘once hailed by the Western media and beloved by Europe – but not so much now that they live there!’ The article comes after the poisoning last week of Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Pussy Riot.
