The Fabelmans is 'one of the year's most genuinely heartfelt films'

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The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has let go of four senior staff members, including its chief curator and its longtime Indigenous art curator, in an unexpected move Friday evening that shocked Canada’s art community.

The news comes less than six months after the departure of Sasha Suda, who left her role as the institution’s chief operating officer and director in July to become the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in September.

A memo from interim director and CEO Angela Cassie said a restructuring was the reason for the departures of NGC deputy director and chief curator Kitty Scott; director of conservation and technical research Stephen Gritt; senior manager of communications Denise Siele; as well as Greg A. Hill, Audain senior curator of Indigenous Art.

“The workforce changes are the result of numerous factors and were made to better align the Gallery’s leadership team with the organization’s new strategic plan,” Cassie wrote. “For privacy reasons, the Gallery is not at liberty to discuss details regarding these departures.”

Hill, who worked at the NGC for 22 years and was the museum’s first Indigenous curator, said he was immediately let go for much clearer reasons. “I want to put this out there before it is spun into meaningless platitudes,” he wrote on Instagram on Thursday. “The truth is, I’m being fired because I don’t agree with and am deeply disturbed by the colonial and anti-Indigenous ways the Department of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization is being run.”

October 20 – November 23, 2022

September 17 – November 19, 2022

For “Tectonic Tender,” Nina Canell’s recent exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie, the Swedish artist spread seven tons of seashells across the gallery floor. Then, she invited visitors to walk across them, crushing and crunching shells beneath their feet as they meandered. After their walk, they encountered Energy Budget (2017–18), a 16-minute video Canell made with her Swedish collabtakorator Robin Watkins. It showed shell-less mollusks—leopard slugs—dragging themselves across electrical switchboards intercut with striking scenes of colossal concrete towers. Taken together, these elements gesture toward calcite. The construction industry often sources the mineral, which is essential to making modern concrete, from limestone deposits that comprise the shells of marine mollusks. To discuss this surprising supply chain, Canell met with anthropologist Sophia Roosth on Zoom. An expert in the life sciences, Roosth is at work on a book about geobiology, a discipline that looks at how biotic and geologic systems affect one another. Roosth is an associate professor at New York University and the author of Synthetic: How Life Got Made (2017). Her research often asks the question: what is life? Below, the two discuss the process behind and implications of biomineralization—the ways living organisms form and accumulate minerals.

NINA CANELL I titled the show “Tectonic Tender” after coming across the intriguing etymology of the word “tectonic.” I found “carpenter” and “builder” in its Latin and Greek origins [tectonicus and tektonikós, respectively]. I housed the shells in a kind of sound chamber, so you could really hear them breaking under your feet. I was quite surprised by the crunchiness of the material; it’s not a comfortable experience.

SOPHIA ROOSTH Where do you think the discomfort comes from?

CANELL From the feeling of breaking something. You can sense that it’s a form that’s been compromised.

ROOSTH Interesting; I find it to be a very satisfying crunch.

Earlier this week, a partnership between Stolpe Publishing, Acute Art, and GODA announced that Hilma af Klint’s artworks from her series “Paintings for the Temple” (1906-1915) had been made into NFTs currently for sale at auction. But, amid the buzzy launch, a relative of af Klint spoke out about the project to Hyperallergic on Tuesday.

“Even if you don’t believe in spirits, everyone carries spiritual beliefs and aspirations for something higher in life,” Hedvig Ersman, the granddaughter of af Klint’s nephew, Erik af Klint, told Hyperallergic. “Hilma af Klint’s paintings speak to us about that … That they’re being monetized, and itemized, and sold as NFTs — this completely goes against the will of Hilma af Klint.”

Ersman argued that af Klint saw her series as a profound spiritual project and had insisted that the works be kept together and not seen by the public until two decades after her death.

“She saw these paintings as all part of one project. They were meant to be kept together,” Ersman said. “They’re not meant for a person to have hanging on their wall in the living room.” 

Accordingly, af Klint’s paintings from the series were never intended to be sold, and the physical versions of the works never will be. They are held, instead, in the care of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, a nonprofit based in Sweden.

Banksy appeared to encourage his fans on Instagram to steal items from a Guess clothing store, alleging the company used his images without permission.

“They’ve helped myself to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?” the famous graffiti artist wrote to his 11.5 million followers in a post Friday on the social media platform.

The photo Banksy posted was of the window display of a Guess store on Regent Street in London showcasing several items from a capsule collection with the word “Brandalised” and featuring several Banksy graffiti images.

The artworks referenced include “Flower Thrower”, “Queen Ziggy”, the “Living the Dream” Mickey billboard in Los Angeles, the “Thug for Life Bunny”, and “Flying Balloon Girl”.

Employees at the Storm King Art Center, a sculpture park in upstate New York, announced plans to unionize late last month, the Art Newspaper reported Tuesday. The move follows the non-profit’s announcement in August of a $45 million revamp of its campus.

Staff organizers, who come across numerous departments of the outdoor destination, detailed their plans to join the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), an affiliate branch with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

A charity auction at Christie’s on Friday featuring works donated by Richard Serra, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Maya Lin, and others will raise funds in for the sculpture park’s pending project.

“We hope Storm King Art Center will adhere to its values and promptly agree to a neutral election,” an online petition issued by CSEA organizers that is targeted at the art center’s board of trustees reads. “Storm King’s vision of nurturing “a vibrant bond between art, nature, and people” cannot be meaningfully achieved without respect and inclusion of the people who bring this bond to life day-to-day.”

The unionization is just the latest in a widespread movement by art staffers to unionize at institutions across the art world. This week, union staffers at the Brooklyn Museum protested outside of the museum during an opening of a fashion exhibition by Thierry Mugler in response to stalled negotiations for wage increases and benefits. In March, union workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art staged a protest related to wage issues during this year’s edition of the museum’s hallmark biennial exhibition.