DENVER (CBS4) – The Denver Art Museum announced on Wednesday that it will open its newly unified campus featuring a Welcome Center and renovations to the Martin Building next week after completing the $150 million expansion project. CBS4 got a preview of the reimagined galleries and new experience waiting for visitors when it reopens. (credit: CBS) “We have looked at our collection with fresh eyes,” said Angelica Daneo, the chief curator and curator of European art before 1900 at the Denver Art Museum. “This is what is exciting as the objects are alive.” The Martin Building, previously known as the North or Ponti Building is 210,000 square feet with galleries on seven stories. Pieces from the museum’s collections of Indigenous, European, Asian, and Latin American art will get a new layout and design each on different floors. Along with the new Sie Welcome Center, visitors will get views of the city and the mountains from a perspective in the new building they may have … [Read more...]

Alison Saar likes to make sculptures of strong Black women standing their ground: broad shoulders, wide stance, unmovable in their convictions. She made a bronze monument of Harriet Tubman that presides over a traffic island at 122nd Street in Harlem. She created a small army of enslaved girls turned warriors, inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s character Topsy, for a major gallery show in Los Angeles. And now Ms. Saar, 64, has a new public sculpture on the Pomona College campus, commissioned by the Benton Museum of Art there: “Imbue,” a 12-foot-tall bronze evoking the Yoruba goddess Yemoja. “Imbue” accompanies her biggest museum survey yet, “Of Aether and Earthe,” which will be held in two venues: the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, which plans to open its section in January; and the Benton , in Claremont, Calif., where her show is installed and ready to open when the state’s coronavirus guidelines allow. Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with the artist … [Read more...]

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – It is decision day for City of Miami commissioners who are scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon to decide whether to move forward with the termination of suspended Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez came forward Tuesday to announce his agreement with the suspension of Chief Art Acevedo. READ MORE: Miami Proud: Miami Bayside Foundation Helps Minority-Owned Businesses Attain 'The American Dream' Not even six months ago, the mayor was praising Acevedo as an asset to the city. “There’s been all this controversy, and I think, for the good of the city, this had to happen,” said Miami Commissioner Manolo Reyes, speaking on City Manager Art Noriega’s decision to suspend Acevedo with the intent to terminate his employment. “There’s no doubt he was hired with tremendous qualifications – president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, chief of three large departments – so he was hired with a high level of expectation, and, unfortunately, … [Read more...]

LONDON — It was “business as usual,” said the Russian art adviser and collector Alex Lachmann on Wednesday, as he made his way through the crowd of V.I.P.s at the opening of the first in-person Frieze London art fair since October 2019. Then, he raised a finger and added, “Almost.” This week, the long-postponed live editions of the Frieze London and Frieze Masters fairs, featuring 279 dealers inside huge tents in Regent’s Park, followed last month’s Art Basel as the international art trade attempts a return to prepandemic normalcy. Frieze New York returned to a live format in May, albeit on a reduced scale. In London, Frieze visitors were required to wear wristbands proving Covid vaccination. They were also required to wear masks, but many didn’t, and enforcement was lax. Dating to 1993, “Frieze Week” is traditionally the moment when London hosts the international art world’s most compelling, must-get-on-a-plane mix of fairs, museum shows, auctions and … [Read more...]

LONDON — The British-Indian artist Sutapa Biswas has always found herself playing a confrontational role in the British art world, forcing conversations about empire and its legacies that the establishment preferred to evade. But it seems that may be changing. This year Biswas, 59, is the subject of two major British shows, running concurrently: at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art , in Gateshead, England, and at Kettle’s Yard , in Cambridge. The BALTIC show, which runs through March 20, 2022, focuses mainly on Biswas’s work with the moving image; the Kettle’s Yard exhibition, which opens Oct. 16 and runs through Jan. 30, will take in the whole arc of her career. Emma Dean, the curator of the BALTIC exhibition, said that both shows suggest that if Biswas’s work has not gained the kind of visibility it deserves, it may be because “she asks some very difficult questions.” “The legacy of the British Empire hangs very heavily,” Dean added. “Her work forces us to confront the … [Read more...]

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – One by one, the City of Miami commissioners voted in favor of firing Police Chief Art Acevedo . All of this happened Friday night during a commission meeting. READ MORE: Attorney: Parkland School Gunman Nikolas Cruz To Plead Guilty To Massacre The former chief of just six months didn’t challenge the decision and responded with a brief and emotional goodbye. Now, the City of Miami is under scrutiny for the reasons behind its decision to fire the chief of police. “The commission did not like the fact that Acevedo didn’t come from within,” says Juan-Carlos “J.C.” Planas. City leaders and community members questioned Former Police Chief Art Acevedo’s decisions; like taking pictures with a known Proud Boys member, joking that the police force is run by the Cuban Mafia and firing several high-ranking officers. “When you hire an outside person it’s like hiring a head coach of a football team. They’re going to come in and look to see who they want on their … [Read more...]