Puryear to Venice Edition -ARTnews

Martin Puryear’s Big Bling (2016) as in installed in Philadelphia.

©2017 THE ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC ART AND MARTIN PURYEAR/JAMES EWING PHOTOGRAPHY

Venice Watch

Martin Puryear has been confirmed as the artist representing the United States at the 2019 Venice Biennale, which opens this coming May. Brooke Kamin Rapaport, of the Madison Square Conservancy in New York, will curate the pavilion. [ARTnews]

Removals

Following an op-ed by Ajay Kurian and Vijay Masharani published by this magazine, artist Jamie Isenstein has withdrawn her work from the exhibition “The Party” at Anton Kern Gallery in New York. The artist said she removed her piece because the exhibition had not adequately dealt with the racism of its subject, the film The Party, in which Peter Sellers appears in brownface, playing an Indian man. “I realized that if I expect the show to address racism, I also have to address it,” Isenstein said, in part. “I should have thought longer about my assumption that other artists would do it for me.” [The Art Newspaper]

Here’s Kurian and Masharani’s op-ed. [ARTnews]

The collective Space 1026 has been forced out of its building in Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood, where it held some of the first exhibitions in the city of work by Cory Arcangel and Shepard Fairey. [Philly.com]

Surprises

You might know Peter Weller best for playing Robocop, but guess what? He’s an art historian now, and he’s studying Renaissance art. [Artnet News]

Chelsea Manning’s first public appearance in the United Kingdom will be at a donor event in October at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. [Artforum]

Rethinking Your Walls

In an open letter, critics, architects, and educators called the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s expansion a “mistake,” alleging that the California institution is “irreparably damaging a cultural landmark.” [Los Angeles Times]

Have a look around the Brooklyn home of Stephanie Baptist, a “cultural producer” and editor whose walls are adorned with photographs by African artists, including Kwesi Abbensetts, Zina Saro-Wiwa, and Hamidou Maïga. [The New York Times]

Money

Fundraisers in the city of Münster, Germany, have so far raised €300,000 (about $340,000) to install a Nicole Eisenman fountain sculpture that appeared there as part of the 2017 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster. But to permanently keep the work, they’ll need to raise €500,000 ($566,000) more. [The Art Newspaper]