Venice Defiance, Monuments Return, A.I. Retreat

A Venice Biennale dispute is getting an unexpected second life. Artnet News reports that Gabrielle Goliath is bringing her canceled South Africa Pavilion show to Venice anyway. The article frames it as Goliath pressing ahead even after the official pavilion presentation fell apart, with her project reappearing outside the usual national-pavilion structure. The move puts attention back on what it means for an artist to be “nationally” presented when the official route is no longer available. Instead of disappearing with the cancellation, the work is set to exist in Venice on its own terms, emphasizing the artist’s determination to be seen during the Biennale period, even without the South Africa Pavilion’s institutional scaffolding.

Staying with Biennale politics, ARTnews reports that artist Yto Barrada says France had “full awareness” of her views on Israel when it chose her for the Venice Biennale. Barrada, who was born in Paris and is of Moroccan descent, signed an open letter organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance calling for Israel’s ejection from the Biennale. After the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, known as CRIF, criticized her and urged pressure over that signature, Le Figaro reported that the French ministry of foreign affairs had no plans to make her remove her name. The Institut français confirmed the pavilion will proceed, saying it respects artistic freedom and that Barrada’s personal positions don’t represent the French government.

From cultural diplomacy to cultural damage: The Art Newspaper reports that a Unesco-protected monastery in Lviv was damaged by a Russian drone strike on March 24. Unesco said on X on March 25 that it is “deeply alarmed” by strikes that hit a building in the area of the Bernardine Monastery within the World Heritage property “L’viv—the Ensemble of the Historic Centre.” Officials’ and residents’ social media posts showed drones flying into the city and flames around the monastery’s St. Andrew’s Church. The site is part of a World Heritage inscription from 1998 and was added to Unesco’s List of World Heritage in Danger in 2023. The mayor said at least 27 people were injured in the attack.

Across the U.S., Artnet News reports that toppled monuments are reappearing under Trump, reigniting the debate over whether removing contested statues confronts oppression or “erases” history. The flashiest example: a statue of Christopher Columbus installed March 22 near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House compound. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called Columbus a hero and said President Trump would ensure he’s honored. Artnet notes the statue is a replica of one toppled in Baltimore nearly six years ago and thrown into the Inner Harbor; Tilghman Hemsley organized divers to recover it, and Will Helmsley scanned it to create the replica. It’s on loan from Italian American Organizations United, led by John Pica.

On the technology front, Artnet News reports that OpenAI has scrapped Sora, its controversial A.I. video app. The headline centers on OpenAI shutting the tool down, underscoring how quickly high-profile creative tech can be introduced—and then withdrawn—amid ongoing concerns around generative media. The story positions Sora as contentious, with debate tied to how A.I. video intersects with artistic labor and the wider creative economy. In the art world, the significance isn’t just the product decision; it’s the abruptness. When a major A.I. platform pulls a tool like this, it reshuffles what artists, filmmakers, and institutions thought they could rely on, and it signals another phase in the volatile rollout of generative video.

Now to museum infrastructure. ARTnews reports the Brooklyn Museum is planning a new thirteen dollars million home for its African art collection, which dates back to the early 1900s and is described as one of America’s oldest institutional collections of art from Africa and the diaspora it informs. The museum plans a dedicated six thousand four hundred-square-foot destination on the third floor, opening in fall 2027 with more than 300 artworks from antiquity to the present. Director Anne Pasternak called it “a bold reframing” of how African art is understood in American museums. The project, designed with Peterson Rich Office, will connect with the Egyptian galleries to unite North Africa with the rest of the continent, a separation Pasternak told the New York Times can read as racist.

In obituary news, ARTnews reports that Pat Steir, famed for her abstract “Waterfall” paintings, died Wednesday in Manhattan of natural causes. She was 87. Her death was confirmed by her husband Joost Elffers, her niece Lily Sukoneck-Cohen, and Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth, which represented Steir beginning in 2022. ARTnews recounts how, in the late 1980s, Steir devised her signature process: pouring oil paint of varying viscosity down upright canvases from a ladder, later a cherry picker, letting gravity collaborate. Born Iris Patricia Sukoneck in 1938 in Newark, she went by Pat. Her “Waterfalls” began with white paint, but she emphasized optical color mixing, saying in 2017, “White over pink over green makes orange.”

Shifting to artist rights and state power, Hyperallergic reports that Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama was allegedly assaulted by members of Ghana’s Special Operations Team, known as the “Black Maria,” on March 21 after Eid al-Fitr prayers in Tamale. Local coverage said officers were clearing traffic and allegedly assaulted several motorists; Mahama reportedly lost two teeth and was treated in a local hospital. The Ghana Police Service called reports blaming the Black Maria “false” in a March 21 press release, saying officers weren’t in the region and had been removed from the area on March 5, while also claiming an investigation would be launched. In a March 24 joint statement, White Cube, the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, and Red Clay Studio called for an independent investigation and the officers’ identities.

Back to criticism and celebrity: Hyperallergic’s essay “Tracey Emin’s Cult of the Self” reviews Emin’s retrospective A Second Life at Tate Modern, describing the experience as reading a personal diary. The piece argues Emin’s work centers almost entirely on her own inner life, with recurring words like “I,” “You,” and “Me,” and says there’s scant curatorial context beyond an introductory panel listing themes of “love, desire, loss, and grief.” It points to works including “Tracey Emin C.V.” (1995), “Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made” (1996), and a painting titled “Rape” (2018), where the title supplies crucial context. The essay also notes helplines at the exit for cancer, mental health, and sexual abuse, and says the show runs through August 31, curated by Maria Balshaw, Alvin Li, and Jess Baxter.

Finally, “Social Malpractice in the Age of Cultural Compliance” tracks how socially engaged art can be absorbed by the systems it once tried to challenge. The author describes a career spanning performance, public art, installation, and social practice, and says they founded Art in Odd Places in 2005 along New York City’s 14th Street corridor as public space and civil liberties eroded. Over time, they argue, the language of “community engagement” and “place-making” became useful to developers, corporations, and institutions. A key example is a 2016 residency in Macon, Georgia, with Samantha Hill at The Mill Hill Visiting Social Practice Artist Residency, organized through Macon Arts Alliance with the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority. The author says “activation” functioned as a soft introduction to displacement, prompting the workshop Social Malpractice Art at the School of Visual Arts.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for another quick, opinionated scan of the art world’s biggest moves. Chinga la migra

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