All posts tagged: MoMA

S.I. Newhouse Left the MoMA Board Over a Picasso. Now It’s At Auction

S.I. Newhouse Left the MoMA Board Over a Picasso. Now It’s At Auction

Published by Jenni Sidey

Christie’s New York is offering 16 top-notch works by titans of the 20th and 21st centuries next month, all from the holdings of the late publishing magnate S. I. (aka Si) Newhouse, head of Conde Nast, who died in 2017. At a packed Rockefeller Center salesroom on May 18, masterpieces by artists including Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol will come to the block. The group is expected to ring up collectively for about $450 million, an enormous sum in any market, but a truly titanic one in a shaky moment in the art market and the global economy. Related Articles Among this stratospheric group, with individual estimates topping out at $100 million, Picasso’s Cubist canvas Homme à la guitare (1913), estimated at $35 million to $55 million, stands out because Newhouse surrendered far more than cash to own it. Twenty-six years ago, Newhouse actually chose it over the powerful seat he had long held on the board of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, when he controversially …

Larry Gagosian Talks Duchamp, Sushi—and Gives a First Look at the Top Secret New Gagosian Gallery in New York

Larry Gagosian Talks Duchamp, Sushi—and Gives a First Look at the Top Secret New Gagosian Gallery in New York

Published by Sam Flores

Gagosian could have gone with a splashy primary market show, featuring wet paint from one of his hottest living artists. Instead for the inaugural outing, the gallery is showcasing the big bang of conceptual art—to honor his spiritual 980 neighbor, he’s doing a Duchamp show. The timing could not be better, as earlier this month a mind-bending survey of Duchamp’s masterworks opened at the Museum of Modern Art, a short walk away in Midtown. (“When I was planning the show, I didn’t realize MoMA was gonna do this big retrospective, this massive show, but that seemed fortuitous,” Gagosian told me.) The MoMA show has been reaping praise—it’s a revelation—but the most striking thing for me is how fresh it looks, how shocking Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 remains in person, how poetically Cagean it is to see a glass bottle full of Paris air or a snow shovel hanging from the ceiling, and how maddening it is to see the Mona Lisa with a mustache. “That’s a strange sensation, that you’re seeing these works—works …

Former MoMA Director Glenn Lowry Says Leon Black Is a ‘Solid Trustee’

Former MoMA Director Glenn Lowry Says Leon Black Is a ‘Solid Trustee’

Published by Jenni Sidey

While collector Leon Black continues to face controversy over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he has found a defender in Glenn Lowry, a former director of the Museum of Modern Art, the New York institution where Black is currently a board member. Black was previously chair of MoMA’s board, but he left that position in 2021 following the publication of reports on his friendship and business relationship with Epstein. Prior to his departure from that position, activists and high-profile artists had called for Black’s ejection. Related Articles That year, Black also departed his role as CEO of the investment firm Apollo Global Management. In 2023, Black paid $62.5 million to the US Virgin Islands to settle all Epstein-related claims against him. Black’s lawyer said at the time that he had “engaged and made payments to Jeffrey Epstein for legitimate financial advisory services, which based on everything now known, he very much regrets.” Black made yet more headlines in 2026, with the release of new Epstein-related files, one of which featured a lengthy …

Refik Anadol, MoMA, and AI Art on ’60 Minutes’

Refik Anadol, MoMA, and AI Art on ’60 Minutes’

Published by José Betancourt

According to one 2017 study, museum visitors on average spend about 27 seconds looking at a work of art, which is barely enough time to squint, nod thoughtfully, and move on. But if you ask AI artist Refik Anadol about how long people spent with Unsupervised, the controversial artwork he showed at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022, he’d say he got people’s attention for much longer—about 38 minutes per person, to be precise. To make the work, Anadol fed AI metadata related to more than 138,000 works owned by MoMA and let the system reinterpret the museum’s art history as a continuous flow of morphing abstractions. Think van Gogh dissolving into Monet dissolving into de Kooning dissolving into… What’s that saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth, again? Related Articles On 60 Minutes, Anadol described his approach in poetic terms. “When I think about data as a pigment,” he said, “it doesn’t need to dry. It can move in any shape, any form, any color, and texture.” He added that the effect is “trippy,” …

MoMA PS1 Names Artists for 2026 Greater New York

MoMA PS1 Names Artists for 2026 Greater New York

Published by José Betancourt

MoMA PS1 has revealed the 53 artists who will participate in Greater New York, the Queens museum’s quinquennial devoted to New York City’s art scene. Opening on April 16, this edition of Greater New York will mark PS1’s 50th anniversary, and rather than bringing on any outside curators, the museum has this time leaned on its staff to organize the show. The exhibition’s curatorial team includes director Connie Butler, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs Ruba Katrib, associate curators Jody Graf and Elena Ketelsen, assistant curator Kari Rittenbach, curatorial assistant Sheldon Gooch, and curatorial coordinator Andrea Sánchez. Related Articles Unlike the Whitney Biennial, which has historically revolved around a theme chosen by its curators, Greater New York is defined by the location where its artists are based. This time around, the show is heavy on artists in the early and middle stages of their career. Largely bucking a trend seen at biennials around the world, it features just one dead artist: the painter Jay Carrier, who died not long before the exhibition was first …

Vaginal Davis on growing up in L.A. and her MoMA PS1 exhibition

Vaginal Davis on growing up in L.A. and her MoMA PS1 exhibition

Published by Sam Flores

This story is part of Image’s December Revelry issue, honoring what music does so well: giving people a sense of permission to unapologetically be themselves. Vaginal Creme Davis has long been a star. “I’ve always thought of myself as a success,” she said during a recent Zoom call, “a messy success.” A statuesque femme, way over 6 feet tall, Davis was, for decades, a ubiquitous, commanding figure across much of Los Angeles’ artistic landscape. From the early 1980s until the mid 2000s, one could find her performing at underground venues from Alcohol Salad to the Lhasa to Largo (or as internet legend has it, perhaps opening for the Smiths at the Hollywood Palladium) in an eclectic variety of bands and personas. There was her Blaxploitation a cappella group, the Afro Sisters, for which she donned a bleached blond wig, flanked by a revolving host of backup singers with names like Clitoris Turner, Urethra Franklin and Pussi Washington. There was the time she was Graciela in the band ¡Cholita! The Female Menudo, where she sang alongside …