Julie Mehretu Captures Our Contemporary Chaos in Shimmering Abstract Paintings https://ift.tt/ClNa81U

In Julie Mehretu’s restless canvases, history accumulates on the surface. The Ethiopian American artist is known for abstract paintings, drawings, and prints, and she fills her compositions with layers of marks. Each one draws on sources like maps, art history, spirituality, and global events. Gestural yet organized, Mehretu’s work uses abstraction to turn images—especially those circulating through mass media—into something both spectral and urgent.

Born in Addis Ababa in 1970, Mehretu relocated to the United States during the Ethiopian Revolution, a displacement that would later echo through her work. Her early breakthrough came with vast paintings that fused architecture, urban planning, and calligraphic marks into dizzying, multi-perspectival fields. Mehretu’s works quickly attracted institutional attention for the way they recast abstraction in a globalized age. By the mid-2000s, Mehretu had been included in major exhibitions like the Carnegie International, and in 2005 she received the MacArthur fellowship, cementing her status as one of the most significant painters of her generation.

Over time, Mehretu began to draw from additional sources, including news photography and scenes of protest, war, and catastrophe, all of which she obscures by erasing and layering marks on top. As her practice progressed, so too did Mehretu’s career, and her work has since been exhibited widely, including at the 2015 Sharjah Biennial, the 2019 Venice Biennale, and, more recently, her commission for the façade of the Obama Presidential Center.

Inside Totality (what the ground cannot hold), 2025
Julie Mehretu
Marian Goodman Gallery

In her latest solo show at Marian Goodman Gallery, “Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology),” on view through June 6th, Mehretu offers a reminder that abstraction is not an escape from the world but an intensification of it. The exhibition title draws from biblical and Buddhist notions of impermanence. It shows the artist grappling with the complexities of global conflict and polarizing politics. “Beginning in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, there’s been so much to negotiate and a different kind of dynamic to the world,” Mehretu said. “The language that emerged in the political arena was shocking and scary, but it was also haunting. It re-opened histories we’ve been through in this country that are complicated and uncomfortable. I’m not thinking of history as a positive or negative condition. Every day is a transient, fleeting, and precious experience.”

Exploring this human condition, the show features new bodies of work related to recent exhibitions at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2024 and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2024 to ’25. It includes new examples from Mehretu’s “TRANSpaintings/Upright Brackets” (2024–26) series: ink and acrylic paintings on monofilament polyester mesh, a material that allows the artist to build the composition in layers and for light to shine through. Based on abstracted photographs from media coverage of geopolitical events, the colors and marks form ethereal shadows of their source imagery.

Though the images are taken from reality, Mehretu doesn’t need the viewer to identify the subjects. Indeed, ambiguity is an important part of the work. “I might be depicting a photograph of somewhere recently bombed, but we live in a time where that could be a number of places,” the artist said. “It might be Ukraine last month or Gaza two years ago. Each photograph captures a specific moment, but I’m interested in the condition of that moment and the aftermath and what that conjures in the viewer.”

Removed from the wall, the freestanding compositions are set in aluminum scaffolding-like frames by Iranian German artist Nairy Baghramian. “I was trying to figure out a way to display the paintings and saw Nairy’s show at the Nasher [Sculpture Center] and was blown away,” Mehretu said. “She’s a good friend and was open to inventing something with me. She’s constantly supporting and bracing her work, and that’s what these brackets do.” The armature connects to the ceiling via a single extension as if the entire work might spontaneously pivot. “The moment that was added, the work gained agency, like it has legs and arms,” Mehretu said.

As light shines through the composition and the viewer moves around the piece, colors seem to materialize—the fleeting moments Mehretu hopes to convey. “None of the colors and marks are stable because we live in a vertiginous world where we’re catapulted between realities,” Mehretu said. “They change based on the conditions of light, whether someone is standing on the other side, and where you’re standing.”

Joining the “TRANSpaintings” in the show are a new series of “Black Paintings” (2025–26), stunning meditations on the color black. Mehretu had used dark grounds in previous works, but rather than working with black ink, she wanted to explore what would happen if she introduced white and silver. Then, she made a mistake. “I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I thought I was using silver, but it was violet interference ink,” she explained. The pearlescent, vibrant hue added a new dimension to the dark ground. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to become comfortable with the uncomfortable, be patient, and to trust the process,” she said. “Once I learned about interference colors, I started to explore and I realized something like ultramarine blue over black can create this wild, reflective effect that changes as you move.”

Using these scintillating hues, Mehretu departed from the source material of her “TRANSpaintings” and instead filled the surfaces with intuitive, improvisational marks. Painted on canvas as opposed to the mesh of the “TRANSpainting” surfaces, the “Black Paintings” rely on Mehretu’s keen ability to layer marks and colors.

While fundamentally exploring the color black, the works vary greatly. Some contain countless layers of bold marks while others are pared down. In some pieces, glistening paint shifts from green to violet to silver like the hues of oil pooling on a blacktop. Iridescent blue might shift to silver like wind blowing across the sand. In others, marks jet over the surface of the work like surveillance drones and ethereal white fades into hazy smoke (is it fireworks or bombs?) across a night sky. One mark can change the whole composition, catching the eye or introducing a different visual plane. “It’s a phenomenon of the materials,” Mehretu said. “I might not even notice something until it emerges.”

The way these marks and colors appear and shift, however, can truly only be experienced in person. Therein lies another important factor in Mehretu’s work: the viewers themselves. Thinking of bodies in space, Mehretu invited choreographer John Jasperse to create a series of performances in dialogue with the show. “After my exhibition in London where I showed “TRANSpaintings” for the first time, I thought how beautiful it would be to see performers move around the works,” Mehretu said. With music by composers Hahn Rowe and Will Johnson, a new work Wandering (2026) will see seven dancers respond to shadows, movement, and energy of Mehretu’s work, performing live in the gallery from May 20th to 23rd.

Walking through the gallery with the artist, it’s clear how much the paintings change through movement. Viewing Mehretu’s work in photographs is one thing, but being there in person as the surface transforms is a completely different experience. Colors shift and layers emerge but, just like the fleeting nature of life Mehretu draws inspiration from, they dissolve just as quickly as they materialize.

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Jenny Holzer and Arthur Jafa among nominees for Art Basel Awards 2026. https://ift.tt/JOz5V9C

Art Basel has unveiled its list of 33 nominees for the second cycle of the Art Basel Awards. These 33 medalists include artists, curators, institutions, and other luminaries who are shaping contemporary art and culture, including Barbara Kruger, Arthur Jafa, and Jenny Holzer; architect Kulapat Yantrasast, and New Yorker writer and theatre critic Hilton Als.

In its second cycle, the Art Basel awards, which are presented in partnership with German fashion brand BOSS, honor a diverse range of creatives. The 33 medalists will be honored at Art Basel this June, and a further selection of gold awardees will be announced at Art Basel Miami Beach this December.

The nominees are spread across nine categories and represent artists, collectors, curators, institutions, media figures, and other champions of artists. “This year’s cohort spans geographies, disciplines, and generations, reflecting a truly interconnected art world,” said Vincenzo de Bellis, the chair of the award’s jury as well as the chief artistic office and global director of Art Basel, in a press statement. “The Awards are designed to capture a broad cross-section of the ecosystem, grounded in the belief that meaningful progress depends on exchange across disciplines and perspectives. From emerging voices to established figures, the 2026 cohort represents those advancing some of the most compelling and forward-looking ideas in the industry today, setting the foundation for future generations and expanding what the art world can become.”

At this year’s Art Basel in Switzerland, a selection of the medalists including Arthur Jafa, María Magdalena Campos Pons, Mercedes Vilardell, and Precious Okoyomon will take place in the artist-led Conversations series.

The full list of nominees is below:

Icon Artists

• Barbara Kruger
• Howardena Pindell
• Jenny Holzer

Established Artists

• Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• Arthur Jafa
• Julie Mehretu
• María Magdalena Campos-Pons
• Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Theaster Gates

Emerging Artists

• Aziza Kadyri
• Carla Gueye
• Diego Marcon
• Precious Okoyomon
• Tiffany Sia
• Farah Al Qasimi

Cross-Disciplinary creators

• Laurie Anderson
• Sumayya Vally
• Kulapat Yantrasast

Patrons

• Mercedes Vilardell
• Pamela J. Joyner
• Teiger Foundation

Museums & Institutions

• Diriyah Biennale Foundation
• SAVVY Contemporary
• The Brick, Los Angeles

Curators

• Azu Nwagbogu
• Diana Campbell
• Stuart Comer

Allies

• Independent Curators International (ICI)
• New Curators
• Studio Museum in Harlem – AIR

Media and storytellers

• Anton Vidokle
• Hilton Als
• Siddhartha Mitter

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Bob Ross paintings will go on view at Bonhams New York. https://ift.tt/Vws7lNj

Four artworks by American painter Bob Ross will appear at auction in New York later this month. They will be on view at Bonhams’ newly unveiled U.S. flagship on April 22nd, ahead of their American Art auction the following day. This is the third in a series of sales that cumulatively offer 30 paintings by Ross on behalf of American Public Television, who will receive 100% of the net proceeds in support of stations nationwide.

Ross painted the four canvases either on-air during the artist’s The Joy of Painting television show, which ran from 1983 to 1994, or for his instructional books bearing the same name. The works on offer include Autumn Images (1990), Purple Mountain Range (1993), Mountain Seclusion (1990), and River’s Peace (1991), all estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $60,000. Ross executed each in his signature wet-on-wet technique, and they all depict the peaceful natural landscapes for which he was known. These paintings are all appearing on the market for the first time; they have been stored in a secured storage since they were made. Ross passed away in 1995.

The April 23rd event arrives at a promising moment for the artist’s legacy. His market continues to climb steadily, and in November of this past year, three of his works sold for a collective $662,000 at Bonhams in Los Angeles. A Bonhams sale in Boston this past January raised $1.27 million.

In an interview with local station WBUR Boston following the sales earlier this year, Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross, Inc., said “The thing about these auctions is you start sort of realizing how people feel about Bob and his paintings and they're getting it, you know what I mean?... They're understanding the work that goes into his painting."

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How to Feel the Benefits of Art, According to Psychologists https://ift.tt/MSt4KZN

It’s true: Art is good for you.

A flurry of recent research has shown that viewing art can be beneficial for your physical and mental health, and several projects have been launched to delve deeper into how art improves wellbeing.

Psychologically speaking, engaging with art has been shown to alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress as well as boost cognitive functioning and social skills. If this is the case, then how can we get the most out of these benefits?

“There is no optimal or ‘correct’ way to view art or to feel or respond to a particular artwork. How you respond is unique to you and your feelings, thoughts, and actions,” said Dr. Matthew Pelowski, an associate professor in Psychology of Cognitive and Neuroaesthetics at the University of Vienna. “But, rest assured that, at rather basic psychological and physiological levels, the broad strokes of your reaction are probably shared by many others.”

Dr. Pelowski founded the ART*IS Lab in 2020 to explore “art’s potential as a transformative agent in impacting our beliefs, our behaviors, health, and our bodies”.

Encounter at the museum, 2025
Danny Leyland
CHOI&CHOI

Viewing art has also been shown to alleviate symptoms of progressive neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s. This is the particular focus of the Art Inquiry Lab at the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “We are co-designing a receptive arts engagement program together with people living with Parkinson’s disease, artistic coaches, and museum partners, including the Rijksmuseum,” said Dr. Blanca T.M. Spee, head of the lab.

Dr. Ralf Cox, a professor of Psychology and Development of Aesthetics and Art Experiences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is part of the Interface for Measuring the Experience and Meaning of Art (iMEMA) research group. iMEMA has an interesting approach that includes digital tools and techniques to measure artistic experiences as well as the viewing of new media and digital art in its research. “Experiencing art is a fundamentally embodied and affective (and also social) sense-making process. Artworks are invitations for ‘engaging with’ and for ‘attuning to,’” he said. “They allow you to experience with the head, the heart, and the whole body.”

Here, the three psychologists offer up their tips on how best to approach art to help heal your mind and engage deeply.

1. Start by exploring what you see and feel

Looking at Looking #2, 2007
Max Hirshfeld
Hemphill Artworks

Before you try to interpret an artwork, you should begin with close observation, advises Dr. Spee. “Notice its visual elements: lines, colors, shapes, textures, and composition,” she said. “Then turn inward: what emotional or bodily response does the work evoke?”

In the field, this practice is known as perceptual and affective processing, which allows your experience to emerge from the direct encounter with an artwork rather than from prior knowledge.

“This makes the experience more grounded, personal, and open-ended,” Dr. Spee added. In this light, it’s worth reading the press release or exhibition text after engaging with the art rather than before.

2. Think about the meaning of the artwork

Thinking 2, 2021
Anna Navasardian
Ethan Cohen Gallery

Thinking it Over, 1981
William Stanisich
Andra Norris Gallery

After exploring your own response, it’s time to think about what the artist might be trying to express in the work, Dr. Spee told Artsy. Some of the questions she recommends asking are:

• How do the visual elements contribute to the expressiveness of the work?
• What themes, ideas, or contexts might be present in the artwork?
• What visual perspectives does the artist highlight by using different light variations or colors?

“A rich aesthetic experience often emerges from this back-and-forth: between personal meaning-making and interpretation,” Dr. Spee said. “Your associations—whether rooted in memory, emotion, or lived experience—remain central, while also opening space to engage with the artist’s intention.”

3. Consider how you move with the artwork

Untitled, 2025 Oil on canvas 9 x 12 in.
Elizabeth Tremante
Spinello Projects

You’ve likely never thought about how you move in front of an artwork while you’re viewing it, but Dr. Cox said this is an important part of our experience. “I’m not just talking about the large movements you make while walking through a museum or exhibition hall, or while circling around a sculpture, but also about the head movements and eye movements you make while scanning the work,” he said.

According to theoretical arguments and exploratory empirical research, the movements you make while you stand in front of a work—no matter how tiny—say a lot about how attuned you are to it and reflect your deepest emotions. “Likewise, allow yourself to be moved by movement,” Dr. Cox said. “Movement depicted in, or suggested by, the artwork—expressive, like in an abstract work, and representational, like in a figurative work—elicits movement in the viewer.”

In this sense, viewing visual art is not “fundamentally different from art forms like music and dance,” he said. Don’t feel compelled to stand still while you’re looking at art, and be mindful about what your movements may tell you about your response to a work.

4. Experience art with others—if you can

The Gatekeeper, 2025
Elizabeth Tremante
Spinello Projects

Dr. Cox says that viewing art with other people can add to our personal experience. “This kind of sharing emphasizes the experiential part of viewing art rather than the meaning of a work or the artist’s message,” he said. “I think people should embrace the unconscious, uncontrolled, and nonverbal layers of the shared experience.”

Much of this, he says, is expressed through “mechanisms of synchronization at various levels,” meaning that people viewing art together often share similar bodily movements, heart rate, brain activity, and more.

While it’s impossible to track your brain activity without scientific equipment, you can take notice of whether your movements mirror those of the person you’re experiencing art with. Try to discern what emotions those around you are expressing through nonverbal cues like gestures, movement, and stance. Are their visible reactions affecting your own?

5. Talk about your experiences with an artwork

Wyoming Conversation, 2025
Frank Hyder
Ethan Cohen Gallery

If you can’t share the viewing experience with someone else in the moment, then another way to deepen your engagement with art is to discuss it later. “If you had a particular response to an artwork that you think was important, meaningful, or even weird and disconcerting, talk about it with others,” Dr. Pelowski said.

You can talk about all of the things we’ve mentioned above: the environment the work was in (whether the space itself it was busy or quiet, or the exhibition it may have been a part of); your overall impression of the work; particular details in the piece that caught your attention; and what you gleaned about the artist or artwork from the labels or catalogue; the other people who were around you at the time.

The person you’re discussing the work with may have seen it before, but in an entirely different setting, or have learned different facts about it since, which can add further perspective to your own experience.

6. Try to view artworks multiple times

Vermeer: Young Woman Seated at a Virginal/Rijksmuseum, 2025
Joe Fig
Cristin Tierney

Dr. Pelowski also notes that our responses to a particular work are bound to a specific moment: they are unique to us as individuals but also to our ever-changing situations.

As a result, multiple visits might elicit different feelings. “If you come back tomorrow, get more or less sleep, see some other things before your visit, or change as a person, you might have a different reaction,” he said.

Be aware of your own feelings outside of the art experience: Are you tired, upset, relaxed, stressed, or ill? Has recent local or world news thrown a new perspective on an artwork or your experience of going to a museum (think about COVID, for example)?

Consider whether any of these may have affected your reaction to the artworks that you liked or didn’t like. Make a (mental or physical) note of your experience of a work on different occasions—have external factors changed your perception of a work, or have you changed as a person since your last visit (grown older, changed jobs, moved to a new place, become a parent, etc.)?

Or are the overall feelings you experienced persistent over time? “Seeking out the different ways that different artworks and different moments make us feel is one of the great joys of lifelong art engagements,” said Dr. Pelowski.

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Inside LACMA’s 2026 Reopening: What to Know About the New David Geffen Galleries https://ift.tt/qmVYeur

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will reopen its new David Geffen Galleries on April 19, 2026, marking a major turning point for the largest museum in the Western United States. The opening will cap nearly 20 years of collaboration between Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and LACMA’s director, Michael Govan.

For visitors, the reopening promises a radically different museum experience: a new building elevated above the street, 26 galleries arranged on a single level, and a reinstallation of its extensive permanent collection designed to encourage movement across cultures and time periods rather than along a fixed chronological route.

What is the new LACMA building?

The new building, titled the David Geffen Galleries, is a 100,000-square-foot glass-and-concrete exhibition space that stretches around 900 feet across Wilshire Boulevard on Los Angeles’s Miracle Mile.

Elevated above ground on concrete supports, it reshapes LACMA’s physical footprint and how visitors move through the campus.

Rather than organizing galleries across multiple levels or wings, the new museum places its 26 galleries on a single floor. That layout is meant to flatten traditional hierarchies in museum display and allow visitors to make their own path through the collection. Works are grouped in relation to major bodies of water—the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea—rather than according to a strictly Western timeline.

The building also reorganizes the campus at ground level. LACMA’s education spaces, bookshop, dining areas, and a 300-seat auditorium sit below the elevated galleries, while nearly four acres of outdoor public space open around the structure.

When does LACMA reopen?

LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries officially open on April 19, 2026. That date marks the public reopening of the new building after a series of preview events, including an opening gala on April 16th.

The museum’s rollout extends beyond opening day. Members and donors will be able to see the inaugural installation from April 19th through May 3rd. After that, access expands to NexGenLA, the museum’s youth membership program for Los Angeles County residents. On April 22nd, Michael Govan and Peter Zumthor are scheduled to discuss the new building in a public conversation at LACMA’s East West Bank Commons. The museum brings its public program into high gear on June 20th, when Los Angeles gallerist Jeffrey Deitch runs his legendary Art Parade featuring artists, performers, and musicians on Wilshire Boulevard.

Perhaps most exciting to visitors and 10 million locals, though, is the opening of the Metro’s Wilshire/Fairfax station. One of three new subway stations on Wilshire Boulevard on the city’s Metro D (Purple) line, it opens on May 8th.

Who designed the new museum?

The David Geffen Galleries were designed by Peter Zumthor, the Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss architect known for stark, spare buildings that emphasize light, material, and contemplation. Though Zumthor lived in Los Angeles and briefly taught at Southern California’s SCI-Arc in the 1980s, this is his first completed building in the United States.

Zumthor is best known for projects including the Kolumba Kunstmuseum in Cologne, the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel in Germany, the Therme Vals baths in Switzerland, Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, and the 2011 Serpentine Pavilion in London. Across those projects, his designs often create a distinctly worshipful architecture for reflection and contemplation in filtered light and shadows that frame the world just outside them.

At LACMA, that approach manifests in a building defined by glass, concrete, and a strong horizontal form. The final design uses sand-colored concrete, a choice made in part to reduce cooling costs, and its shape responds partly to the neighboring La Brea Tar Pits landscape. Solar panels cover the roof, while the gallery level hovers above the street, creating a distinctive structure that is both monumental and unusually open.

What are the new LACMA commissions?

The reopening will include several new commissions and installations made for or highlighted by the new galleries. Among the artists with newly commissioned works are Todd Gray, Lauren Halsey, Do Ho Suh, and Diana Thater, each bringing a distinct approach to scale, space, and site.

The inaugural presentation will also feature major works from LACMA’s permanent collection and recent acquisitions, including Georges de la Tour’s The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (1640), Henri Matisse’s La Gerbe (1953), Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach (1888), and Diego Rivera’s Flower Day (Día de flores) (1925).

Outside, the reconfigured campus introduces a sculpture display across nearly four acres of public space. That includes Alexander Calder’s Three Quintains (Hello Girls) (1964), originally commissioned for LACMA’s Wilshire Boulevard expansion in 1965, alongside works by Tony Smith, Auguste Rodin, Liz Glynn, Shio Kusaka, and Jeff Koons’s Split-Rocker (2000).

Together, these installations connect the museum’s architecture to the outdoor public realm, making the reopening as much about the campus as about the galleries themselves.

Why has LACMA’s redevelopment been controversial?

LACMA’s redevelopment has been debated almost since the project was announced. Critics objected to the demolition of older museum buildings and raised questions about whether the new design would reduce exhibition space rather than expand it. Others focused on the project’s cost, debt, and the move of replacing a more traditional museum campus with a single elevated structure.

Those concerns coalesced in Save LACMA™, a nonprofit formed in 2020 to oppose the plan. Full-page advertisements appeared in major newspapers, including the New York Times and L.A. Times. Some critics took issue with the design, and others have argued that the project sacrificed institutional memory and architectural range for a building they saw as too idiosyncratic.

At the same time, supporters argued that the plan offered a more flexible, contemporary way to display art and a more public-facing museum campus. Over time, revisions to the design and the promise of a more open, accessible site helped soften some of the backlash, even if the project remains divisive.

What LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries mean for LA’s cultural scene

The reopening of LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries will reshape not just one museum but a key stretch of Los Angeles’s cultural geography. Positioned on Museum Row alongside the La Brea Tar Pits, the Academy Museum, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and Craft Contemporary, LACMA’s new building reinforces the area as one of the city’s most important cultural corridors.

It also arrives at a moment when Los Angeles is rethinking how people move through the city. With the opening of the Wilshire/Fairfax Metro station, LACMA becomes more accessible by public transportation in a city long defined by car travel. That matters for a museum that receives close to 1 million visitors annually and serves a large local public as well as international tourists.

More broadly, the project signals both the ambition and the risk of major museum redevelopments today. LACMA’s new building is an attempt to rethink what an encyclopedic museum can look like, how its collection can be organized, and how its campus can function as civic space. Whether visitors see it as a bold correction or a controversial compromise, its reopening will shape conversations about museums in Los Angeles and beyond.

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Marcel Duchamp readymades show to inaugurate new Gagosian Upper East Side gallery. https://ift.tt/EKnxqQj

Mega gallery Gagosian has announced that the first exhibition in its new Upper East Side space will be dedicated to the storied French artist Marcel Duchamp.

The show brings together all of the Dada pioneers’ most celebrated readymades, and will run from April 25 through June 27 at their new gallery on 980 Madison Avenue. It runs concurrent to the Museum of Modern Art’s survey of the artist, which opened last week, marking Duchamp’s first retrospective in the United States in more than 50 years.

The move to inaugurate the space with a survey of Duchamp’s readymades holds significant historic value, as it is the very same building where the editions were first shown in New York in 1965. At the time, Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery showed in the space. The pieces in Gagosian’s show were produced in 1964 by Duchamp in collaboration with Italian gallerist Arturo Schwarz.

Many of the originals were produced in the 1910s but had been lost or destroyed in years past, including Fountain (1964, after 1917 lost original), L.H.O.O.Q. (1964, after 1919 original), Porte-bouteilles (Bottle Dryer) (1964, after 1914 lost original), and Boîte-en-valise (1935–49; contents 1935–41). Also included in the show is Roue de bicyclette (Bicycle Wheel) (1964, after 1913 lost original), which is the only surviving example of these works that does not belong to a major international institution.

“It all started with Duchamp, I couldn’t imagine a better artist or a more critical body of work to be the first exhibited in our new gallery at 980 Madison, a building he showed in just over sixty years ago,” shared gallery founder Larry Gagosian in a press statement.

Gagosian’s new ground-floor space at 980 Madison Avenue is a stone’s throw from the gallery’s former Upper East Side exhibition space and headquarters upstairs, which they vacated last April, after Bloomberg Philanthropies bought out the building in 2024.

With the new gallery, however, Gagosian was able to stay in the building by securing a ground-floor lease, thus keeping the same address that has been their flagship for the last 35 years.

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How Entertainment Exec Hassan Smith Built an Art Collection Championing Black Artists https://ift.tt/EiPW16U

The first thing visitors to Hassan Smith’s home notice is the Jean-Michel Basquiat–style crown beneath their feet.

The doormat of Smith’s North Atlanta home signals what awaits inside: a house where art is not just displayed, but lived with. Works from Gordon Parks’s iconic “Harlem” series line the hall outside his children’s bedrooms; in the kitchen, a small Rembrandt drawing, Canal with a Large Boat and a Bridge (1650), presides over the breakfast table. Smith, an entertainment executive best known as the senior advisor for John Legend and the founder of private equity firm Ellaby Holdings LLC, has built a collection steeped in cultural history that balances the canonical with the personal.

Smith sees his collection as a long-term investment, but not in purely market terms. He invests in people and perspectives. “I collect for legacy,” he told me in his home office, where photos of Smith with the likes of President Barack Obama sit on the bookshelf, and a monumental Tony Lewis painting anchors the wall. “I always had my children in mind…that I wanted to create something for them to grow up around.”

That long view runs through everything that Smith does. He met Legend in 2004, just before the Grammy Award–winning singer released his debut album, Get Lifted, and has remained his trusted right hand ever since. He approaches collecting with the same instinct for what will last, building personal relationships with artists, including Patrick Eugène and Rashid Johnson, along the way.

How Hassan Smith made the leap from art lover to collector

Smith traces his love of art back to his parents’ record collection and childhood museum visits. But he points to a Yoruba mask he bought in Lagos in 2000—now sitting on his desk—as his first “collecting” purchase. When friends who collected art praised the mask, he said, “it gave me my confidence that I was selecting great, great works.”

Even so, Smith said he did not feel truly exposed to contemporary Black artists until he entered the music industry. Until then, his knowledge of the art world had been shaped largely by Old Masters. That changed when he began visiting friends’ homes, including those of cultural figures like Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz, both known for championing Black artists. “I got to see that there are artists who create at this level that look like me,” he said.

A decade after purchasing the Yoruba mask, Smith stepped more fully into the art world. He attended an auction at the Gordon Parks Foundation, where he bid on works from Parks’s “Harlem” series of portraits taken in the New York district. Some 16 photographs by Parks—including a portrait of Malcolm X and scenes of the Civil Rights Movement—line the upstairs hallway near the children’s bedrooms. “I put it upstairs purposefully, where their rooms are, so they can see it every day, and they can understand some of the things that are going on in this world today are subjects and works that were going on in the ’50s and ’60s,” Smith said.

Because living with the art is central to Smith’s philosophy, it feels especially fitting that South African artist Esther Mahlangu’s massive, four-panel geometric painting Untitled (2024) hangs in the living room. Smith is among the artist’s most vocal advocates and owns 30 of her works. What drew him in, beyond the work’s “vibrancy,” was its connection to Mahlangu’s ancestry. “The history of where that practice comes from was astounding to me,” he said.

A collection that champions Black artists across generations

Curiosity, more than anything, drives Smith’s collecting. It is also what compels him to meet as many artists as he can. “I like to live with my works, and most artists that are in this home, if they’re living, I have a robust relationship with,” Smith said. Eugene, for instance, came onto Smith’s radar when a friend urged the collector to meet the artist, his cousin.

Before he considered acquiring a work, he wanted to make a personal connection. They clicked immediately. Today, two of Eugene’s works live in Smith’s house: a portrait in the living room and a giant commission, Untitled (2024), in the collector’s sunroom, an airy, gallery-like space where Smith hosts parties and fundraisers.

That sunroom, in many ways, captures the intergenerational dialogue and community-building that define his collection. Lined with windows and hovering above the driveway, the room brings together works that span from Betye Saar’s Lovers with Twilight Birds (1964) to Hank Willis Thomas’s The Only Bond Worth Anything Between Human Beings is Their Humanness (2024). “I love having the contemporaries of today with the legacy artists of tomorrow,” he said. Just as important are his children, who are growing up surrounded by art. “I’m proud that they’re growing up with…and really engaging with art throughout their entire life.”

The home gallery also doubles as a meeting place. As an active board member at museums, including the High Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum, Smith regularly hosts parties and fundraising events there.

Community is central to his work, which is why he co-founded Collector X, a convening platform with private equity businessman Dale Burnett that creates space for Black collectors at art fairs. “We were trying to connect with our great friend group…and we just found it super hard to connect and convene…in the VIP lounge, just trying to pull chairs together,” he explained.

Ultimately, Smith hopes to pass on not just his love for art, but a way of looking: one rooted in education, personal connection, and care. He leads by example. For Smith, collecting is less about acquisition than legacy and preserving lived experience through art.

“The energy is carried within the work,” Smith said. “That’s what people feel when they love something, or they don’t like something. It’s the energy out of the work—where and how it was created.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/hmpv8Nr