March 25 – July 24, 2022

May 14 – July 26, 2022

When it first emerged, plastic embodied progress and glamour – but at what cost?

June 10 – July 23, 2022

May 22 – July 29, 2022

From The Parent Trap to The Shining, what is it that draws writers to them?

What to do when artworks warp, melt, crack and crumble away

How 2002 movie Secretary pushed boundaries in depicting a BDSM relationship

She was an unapologetic character - and also a genius composer

Jordan Peele's UFO sci-fi horror doesn't land

Works depicting struggle, the US Civil War and the aftermath of slavery

Why Richard III remains such a fascinating figure

The head of Documenta, the famed recurring art show in Kassel, Germany, has left her post amid widespread scrutiny over how the exhibition has handled allegations of anti-Semitism.

On Saturday, Documenta announced that Sabine Schormann would depart as the show’s managing director. The board and Schormann had “mutually agreed” on her departure, Documenta said, adding that it would no longer be making public statements about how it was dealing with the various controversies surrounding this year’s edition.

The board said that the decision regarding Schormann’s departure came at “short notice” and that an interim replacement was being sought.

“A lot of trust has unfortunately been lost,” the board, which manages both Documenta and the Fridericianum museum, said in its statement. “The Supervisory Board considers it essential that everything is done to regain this trust.”

Two separate anti-Semitism controversies have roiled this year’s Documenta, which was curated by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa. One revolved around an artwork that contained anti-Semitic imagery, the other centered on the inclusion of a Palestinian collective.

May 26 – July 17, 2022

May 22 – July 30, 2022

Leslie H. Wexner, the Ohio billionaire who was once one of the world’s important art collectors, made his fortune at the mall by turning around faltering brands into massively successful behemoths like Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret and founding others like the Limited and Bath & Body Works. But since 2019, when Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who was charged with sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York and who had previously been Wexner’s money manager, the mall mogul’s reputation and fortune have been on the decline.

Wexner’s relationship to Epstein is now explored in a new three-episode documentary series on Hulu, called Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons, that became available to stream on Thursday. Directed by Matt Tyrnauer, who was previously explored fashion and sex scandals in series like Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) and Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2017), the tantalizing new documentary charts Wexner’s rise and fall, and is the latest documentary to do so, with Netflix having released White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch earlier this year.

According to Angels and Demons, Epstein was known to attach himself to older, wealthier men as a way to secure funds and power. Wexner ended up being one of those men, entangling himself deeply with Epstein and going so far as to make Epstein his financial manager and later giving him power of attorney.

That struck many in his circle, such as former Victoria’s Secret CEO Cindy Fedus-Fields, as out of character considering that Wexner was a known micro-manager and that Epstein was a college dropout who had mysteriously leveraged a job at Bear Stearns after a brief stint as a math teacher at Dalton, the prestigious New York private school. Serving as Wexner’s financial manager from the ’80s until 2007, Epstein use his connection to Wexner’s companies, most notably Victoria’s Secret, in order to proposition women.

The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, one of the leading art schools in the U.S., announced employee layoffs just a few weeks after its staff unionized.

The news comes roughly two months after employees working across various departments voted 86–17 on to join SEIU Local 500 on May 24. Staff learned of the cuts just two days after the representatives for the newly-formed union petitioned the school’s administration to enter into negotiations before issuing changes to employee working conditions, Artforum reported Thursday.

The restructuring move is poised to cut around 10 percent of the union’s bargaining unit, the group of workers who conduct labor negotiations, ahead of contract talks. 24 positions total will be affected by the layoffs. The announcement was disseminated in an email sent to employees and reviewed by Artforum. In the internal message, the administration said they expected “about half” of the 24 positions set to be cut would affect union employees.

SEIU Local represents staff spanning public schools universities and nonprofits in Maryland and Washington, DC. Employees including those at Goucher College, Howard University, and Planned Parenthood.

“We have agreed to bargain with Local 500 about how the restructuring process will affect those positions and about the details of the severance package that will be offered to the represented staff members in those positions,” the email said.

Over the course of my time posted on the sidewalk outside last night’s opening of “The Patriot,” a 200+ artist, 100 percent bonkers open-submission group show at the Lower East Side gallery O’Flaherty’s, I heard a couple variations on the same refrain: If the police showed up this fast, it must be a pretty good party.

It wasn’t just one or two cops either. At peak, there were multiple squad cars and at least five policemen lined up outside the space, which drew a line before opening and reached capacity almost instantly. Lower East Side gallery openings don’t typically come with a line snaking around the block and a band of cops. But O’Flaherty’s, which is less than a year old and helmed by the rising artist Jamian Juliano-Villani along with her friends, painter Billy Grant and musician Ruby Zarsky, is not typical.

It’s something else, something somewhat rare: It’s fun. And completely insane.

When I arrived at 8, the line was already in full force, with an almost comical number of people fighting to get through the doors. Outside the gallery, a contortionist, flanked by neon-pink alien sculptures, wrapped her leg behind her head as progressive house music blared over a nearby boombox. I spotted Grant close to the entrance, and he ushered me through the throng.

Upon entering the darkened gallery, lit like a haunted house by attendees’ flashlights, I was bombarded with the first of at least seven rooms of art, five of which were hung salon-style with a dizzying array of work ranging from what looked like known contemporary art entities to the kind of artist who might, say, submit a fairly straightforward-looking portrait of Tom Petty. I couldn’t get a hold of a checklist, so who really knows.

Chella Man wears many hats. At only 23, the Deaf trans phenom has enjoyed impressive careers as a YouTuber, artist, activist, actor (he’s best known for his role as Jericho, a mute superhero in the DC Universe series Titans), and now, curator.

This summer, 1969 Gallery in TriBeCa is hosting Man’s curatorial debut, a show titled “PURE JOY: 14 Disabled Visual and Performance Artists,” on view through August 13. It marks one of the first New York group shows bringing together work by a growing coalition of disabled artists.

The recent opening for Man’s show was packed. ARTnews sat down with the multi-hyphenate to catch up about the show and his own artwork.

ARTnews: Tell me why you chose to focus on disabled joy.

CHELLA MAN: The main reason is simply that disabled people are often not asked about joy. We are asked about how we deal with our trauma and how we deal with discrimination. But I find I’m rarely asked about joy, or about what makes me happy. Isn’t that sad?