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      Koyo Kouoh, Prominent Art World Figure, Is Dead at 57

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      She had recently been named to oversee next year’s Venice Biennale. She died just days before she was scheduled to announce its theme and title.Koyo Kouoh in 2023. As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, she had built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color.Tsele Nthane for The New York TimesKoyo Kouoh, one of the global art world’s most prominent figures, who had been slated to become the first African woman to curate the Venice Biennale, died on Saturday in Switzerland. She was 57.Her death was confirmed by the biennale’s organizers. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where in Switzerland she had died.The biennale said that Ms. Kouoh’s “sudden and untimely” death came just days before she was scheduled to announce the title and theme of next year’s event. The statement added that her death “leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art.”The Venice Biennale is arguably the art world’s most important event. Staged every two years since 1895, it always includes a large-scale group show, organized by the curator, alongside dozens of national pavilions, organized independently.A spokeswoman for the biennale did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Ms. Kouoh’s death would mean for next year’s exhibition, which is scheduled to run from May 9 through Nov. 22.As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, Ms. Kouoh built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color from Africa and elsewhere, although her interests were global in reach. “I’m an international curator,” she said last December in an interview with the The New York Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘It’s all very sad’: Trump’s attack on arts funding has a devastating effect

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      On the afternoon of 3 May, arts organizations around the US began receiving cryptic emails from a previously unknown government email account. The missives declared that these organizations’ missions were no longer in line with new governmental arts priorities, which included helping to “foster AI competency”, “empower houses of worship” and “make America healthy again”.Chad Post, a publisher at Open Letter Books, a program of the University of Rochester that specializes in publishing translated literature, got his email just before entering a screening of Thunderbolts*. He put a quick post on Instagram, and when he came out of the movie his phone was full of responses. “I seemed to be the first one to receive this,” he recounted. “But then, all of a sudden, everyone was getting these letters.”Post told me that he had been in touch with 45 publishers who had had their NEA grants terminated, and he suspected that all 51 publishers receiving grants for 2025 supporting the publication of books and magazines had now received the letter. Although Open Letter expects to still receive funding for 2025, Post is convinced that no further money will be forthcoming from the National Endowment for the Arts.“According to rules of the email, we should get the money, although if you come back in two months and they never sent it, I wouldn’t be shocked,” he said. “The chilling part of that email is that they’re eliminating the NEA entirely. It lists all these insane things that are the new priority, and says our venture is not in line with the new priority, so we can’t ever apply again.”The grant termination won’t deal a lethal blow to Open Letter Books, but it will alter the kinds of literature that they are able to publish. Post said that he would have to give preference to books from nations that can offer funding – which tends to favor books from European languages and from wealthier countries.This sentiment was echoed by other arts organizations, who see the loss of NEA money as a significant blow, but not a deadly one. Kristi Maiselman, the executive director and curator of CulturalDC, which platforms artists that often are not programed at larger institutions, shared that NEA grants account for $65,000 of a roughly $1.1m budget. Thanks to proactive work between her team and the NEA, Maiselman received her grant this year, but does not expect any further such money. “It’s a pretty significant chunk of the budget for us,” she told me. “What has been hard for us this year is that we really do provide a platform for artists to respond to what’s going on in the world.” Continuing to promulgate those kinds of artists would be more difficult in future.View image in fullscreenAllegra Madsen, the executive director of the LGBTQ+-focused Frameline film festival, said that her grant funding had been in limbo ever since the inauguration of Donald Trump, and was ultimately terminated last week. “I think we could all kind of sense that it was going to go away,” she told me. “I think these blows that came this week are going to be felt very intensely by a lot of different organizations.”Frameline is housed in the same building as a number of other arts organizations dedicated to film, including the Jewish Film Institute, the Center for Asian American Media and BAVC Media, and it also sits adjacent to SF Film and the Independent Television Service, all of which Madsen says were affected by the termination of NEA grants. “We’ve all been hit, and we’re all just sort of figuring out what our next steps are.”One fear that Madsen raised was that many private funders take cues from the Federal government, and now with NEA grants terminated – and possibly the NEA itself getting axed – she is unsure if other donors will get cold feet. “This year we have a cohort of sponsors that are very much sticking by us, and I am incredibly thankful for those organizations standing up. But it is a bigger ask now, it’s a bigger risk for them.”Despite the often seemingly indiscriminate cuts made to the federal government by the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, the organizations the Guardian spoke with all believed that they had been targeted in some way because of the programming that they offer. “Just because it’s being done in mass, I don’t think that takes away from the idea that this is pointed and intentional,” Madsen told me. “Governments like this try to attack the populations that seem to have the least power, and right now they are mistakenly thinking that’s going to be our trans and gender-nonconforming siblings.”Taking a similar perspective, Maiselman sees these cuts as perpetuating a broader cultural turn away from arts programs, in particular those that significantly represent people of color and the queer community. “Prior to losing the NEA, we had lost about $100,000 in sponsorships this year,” she said. “We’re hearing from our sponsors that there are a lot of eyes on them. They’re not exactly saying no, but they are saying saying, ‘not right now’.”View image in fullscreenPost sees private money as a possible way to make up some of the lost NEA funding but fears that there will be a stampede of indie presses all toward the same few donors. “Everyone is feeling a little more broke and a little more strapped right now,” he said. “Arts orgs writ large are going to be competing for funds from the same few individuals and that just scares me.”He also argued that, while a press like Open Letter will be able to continue functioning without NEA money, organizations that only publish literary magazines may fold without significant infusions of private cash. “Those literary magazines don’t have the opportunity to rely on a book breaking out,” he said. “They’re not suddenly going to have an issue of the magazine take off. This might be a massive blow to literary magazines.”Although some arts organizations appear poised to survive the loss of NEA money, they nonetheless feel existentially frightened by the general turn of the political culture away from diversity and toward authoritarianism. “It’s hard right now to see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said Maiselman. “With the rate at which things are changing, it’s going to take years to course correct – that is, if and when the administration changes.”Maiselman further argued that the cultural shift brought in by the aggressive moves of the Trump administration had the potential to profoundly transform the landscape of the arts world. “There’s going to be a reckoning,” she told me. “A lot of organizations won’t survive this.”For her own part, Madsen struck a defiant tone, placing the current repressive political atmosphere in the context of other such threats to the LGBTQ+ community. “We will survive, we have the privilege of being an almost 50-year-old org,” Madsen said. “The LGBTQ+ community has been down this road before. We got through McCarthyism, we got through the Aids crisis, we’ll survive this.”In hopes of surviving, arts organizations are again turning toward one another, finding a community sentiment that many of the people I spoke to called reminiscent of the Covid years. “There are a lot of conversations right now about how we can help one another,” Maiselman told me. Post echoed that, positioning this as a time of collective grieving. “It feels like the end of something,” he said. “It’s sad, it’s all very sad, but we have to keep going somehow. We are damaged but not defeated.” More

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      With a Pace Gallery Show, Robert Mangold Demonstrates His Consistency

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      At 87, the abstract artist Robert Mangold will exhibit 19 recent paintings and works, including one of his largest in decades.The abstract artist Robert Mangold has been so remarkably consistent and disciplined with his approach to painting and drawing that he makes pretty much everyone else look capricious and changeable.Mangold has been exploring geometry, form and color for more than 60 years, with a half-century of that time on a charming property here in the Hudson Valley with an old farmhouse and a barn.Now 87, Mangold has definitely slowed down. But he is still working, and he has a show of recent paintings and works on paper at Pace Gallery in Chelsea that opens on Friday.“Robert Mangold: Pentagons and Folded Space” is timed to coincide with the busy spring art season in New York and remains on view until Aug. 15.The exhibition has 19 works, and some have multiple components — including “Four Pentagons” (2022), a four-panel work that is one of his largest in decades — so it may seem even bigger, and it spreads over two floors. (“Four Pentagons” and a few other works are on loan from museums or private collections, in this case from the Art Institute of Chicago.)Mangold can spend years iterating on a shape. Circles and semicircles are forms that he has returned to again and again, sometimes embedded with or embedded in rectilinear forms, as in “Circle Painting #4” (1973), which sold for $365,000 at Christie’s in 2014.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Works of Christo and Jean-Claude Are Experiencing a Revival

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      Known for their outsized and revolutionary art projects, the couple’s work is seen again in Florida, New York and Germany.It was 42 years ago. Miami awoke to a strange, crooked line of hot pink images floating in the waters of panoramic Biscayne Bay.Eleven small islands had been wrapped in wide, rippling swaths of pink plastic. They were almost glowing as the morning sun swept over the beaches and skyscrapers of the city. Crowds came out in helicopters and speedboats and the family car. Some people perched on condo balconies.It was the work of Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, the European artists who had wrapped the Reichstag building in Berlin, the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and run a billowing, tall white nylon fence 24.5 miles over the cattle ranges just north of San Francisco and into the Pacific Ocean.People flew in from Europe and around the world to see the show, and collectors and museum directors and many others say it lifted the curtain on Miami as a city of natural beauty that would eventually become a dazzling global art center.“It was a world happening,” said Norman Braman, a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, a collector and a Miami car dealer with about a dozen brands, from Hyundai to Rolls-Royce.But it was a tough time for Miami. Cocaine seemed to be everywhere. Gunmen were in the streets. Time magazine had put the city on its cover as “Paradise Lost.” In 1984 — a year after the extravaganza on the bay — the “Miami Vice” TV show took the city’s crime and fashion into American living rooms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      TEFAF New York Keeps Its Focus on the Classics In a Turbulent Time

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      With the art market outlook uncertain, the New York fair aims to keep collectors coming, with a wide array of art and (relatively) less expensive prices.When the European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) held its very first New York fair at the historic Park Avenue Armory in 2016, the global art market was in robust health: Art sales had marked a near-record of $64 billion worldwide in the preceding year, and were at a peak in the United States, according to an art market report by the cultural economist Clare McAndrew.As TEFAF New York prepares to welcome visitors again — running from May 9 through 13, and coinciding with the closely watched May auctions — the outlook is downright cloudy. Global art sales tumbled for the second year in a row in 2024, totaling an estimated $57.5 billion, and the U.S. market was down 9 percent from the previous year, according to the recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. More recently, stock markets have been jittery since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on countries around the world on April 2, then said he would back down on tariffs on goods from most countries, except China, for 90 days. Economic turbulence has an immediate impact on the net worth — and the collecting appetite — of those who buy art.“The volatility that you see in the markets writ large is reflected in the art market,” said Alex Logsdail, chief executive of the Lisson Gallery, an international art dealership. He said business had “slowed significantly,” though it was “still happening” and “has not fallen off a cliff” as it did at the time of the 2008 global financial crisis.“This is a funny thing for me to say out loud, but it’s true: Nobody needs any of the things we are selling,” he said. Collecting art is “a question of want and desire and passion and confidence. It is up to us to create those conditions,” regardless of the economic context, he added.Lisson has exhibited at TEFAF New York’s spring fair from its first iteration in 2017, and Logsdail served for a time on its selection committee (which decides which galleries will get booths). He said TEFAF New York was well positioned for the current circumstances, because in unstable economic conditions, the focus turns to quality and value, and to “well-tested” and affordably priced objects. And right now, he said, “people are taking a very active interest in artists whose prices are quite low.”Among the works showing at Lisson’s TEFAF booth this spring are works by Sean Scully, including “Wall Tappan Deep Red” (2025).Sean Scully / Courtesy Lisson GalleryWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Art to See on Day Trips From New York City This Spring

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      Exhibitions and discoveries await in New Jersey, the Hudson Valley and the Catskills, and on the East End of Long Island.The busy calendar of fairs and auctions in May makes New York City an attractive hub of activity for the art crowd. But if a breather is needed or desired, a day trip may be in order. Here are a few art destinations worth considering.The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, about an hour from Penn Station by train, has drawn record attendance since “Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always” opened in February. The show is a broad survey of 97 Indigenous artists.McKay Imaging PhotographyZimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, N.J.Located at Rutgers University, about an hour from Penn Station by train, the Zimmerli — with a substantial collection strong in American, European and Soviet nonconformist art — has long been overshadowed by New York City institutions. But the museum has drawn record attendance since “Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always” opened in February. The show is a broad survey of 97 well-established and emerging Indigenous artists including Jeffrey Gibson, Terran Last Gun, Wendy Red Star and Marie Watt. It was curated by the artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who was honored with a Whitney Museum retrospective in 2023 and died at 85, a week before the Zimmerli show opened.On view through Dec. 21, it is the largest of more than 30 exhibitions that Smith organized throughout her career in the United States. “Jaune helped define Native art history based on the artists she gave a platform to over the years,” said the Zimmerli director, Maura Reilly. Rather than apply an authoritative curatorial style, Smith asked each artist “how they wanted to be represented,” Reilly said, “very different from how I’ve worked typically.” Smith called the show “a celebration of life,” Reilly recalled: “She said it was about ‘kinship, community, survivance, solidarity and resilience.’”A piece from “Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses,” at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.Thomas Cole National Historic Site Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, N.Y.Two centuries ago, the artist Thomas Cole took a momentous boat ride up the Hudson River to Catskill, where the scenery inspired him to found the Hudson River School of landscape painting. He also fell in love with Maria Bartow and moved in 1836 to her family home in Catskill, painting the view from their porch of the Catskill Mountains more than any other.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Painting From Memory, Salman Toor Conjures Passion and Freedom

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      Salman Toor needed a better perspective.Backing slowly away from his easel, the 42-year-old artist closed one eye and raised a thumb. He arched his back to gain a few more centimeters of distance and then snapped upright. Exasperation led to acceptance. He buried any doubts and raised a paintbrush, once again, to the emerald-green portrait of his mystery man in heart-shaped sunglasses.There is only one rule in the airy Brooklyn loft where Toor paints: Everything must come from memory.Fleeting impressions of a friend’s face, the arch of a lover’s eyebrows, and a smirk maybe sourced from a Velázquez drawing merge into the composite creatures that occupy his paintings.But there are no photographs, wooden models or reclining muses allowed in the studio, which is mostly empty except for a couch, some plants and a table used to hold brushes, pigments and oils.On a morning in March, the walls were covered with dozens of new drawings, paintings and etchings that Toor has created over the last few years in anticipation of his largest exhibition to date, “Wish Maker,” which opens May 2 across Luhring Augustine’s two galleries in Manhattan. The show aims to reintroduce the artist — who was born in Lahore, Pakistan — as one of the most fascinating painters of his generation, capable of remixing old European techniques into contemporary scenes of queer desire and the immigrant experience.This was Toor’s first chance at seeing everything in one room to decide which pictures he is comfortable exhibiting at a time when his work has become more politically conflicted and emotionally raw.“There is a lingering question,” the artist said. “What am I doing here in America?”Toor is one of the most fascinating painters of his generation, capable of remixing old European techniques into contemporary scenes of queer desire and the immigrant experience.Receiving his United States citizenship in 2019 and committing to life in New York felt like he was leaving his family behind to some degree. His parents remained supportive but distant; they have never seen one of his major shows in person because, he suggested, of the frank depictions of queer sexuality that run counter to their conservative community in Pakistan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Art Stars Are Made

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      We explain how a few big players wield enormous influence in the art world.Museums provide the first draft of art history. They decide which artists get to share wall space with masters like Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Picasso.Choosing which artists to exhibit requires museums to consider ultrasubjective questions about, say, the artistic merit of a painting or the historical relevance of a sculpture. The task has traditionally fallen to curators, who maintain their scholarly independence and grapple with the complexities of mounting shows.But in recent years, museums have increasingly turned to another source for logistical and, at times, financial support for their shows: major commercial art galleries.The scale of these partnerships was largely unexamined until now. This morning, The Times published an analysis by my colleague Julia Halperin and me of more than 350 solo exhibitions by contemporary artists in New York’s biggest art museums over the last six years.We found that nearly a quarter of those exhibitions featured artists who were represented by just 11 major galleries. These were no ordinary mom-and-pop dealerships but “mega-galleries,” as professionals call them — an elite slice of the art world that accounts for a sizable chunk of the $57.5 billion art market.In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the increasingly close relationship between museums and commercial galleries is shaping whose work is shown to the public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More