Pride Provocations and a Vatican Revival
Today's Stories
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It is Sunday, June twenty-eighth, two thousand twenty-six. Let’s dive in.
Pride month is a reminder, Artnet writes, that queer artists have always been here—shaping culture and refusing easy categories. Their Artnet Gallery Network roundup spotlights five artists as “five to start with,” and the point is range: for some, identity is central; for others, it’s one thread in a bigger weave; and some simply make work that defies any single label. The list includes American documentary and street photographer William Gedney (1932–1989), contemporary painter Julie Mehretu (b. 1970), American artist Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989), artist and activist Michela Griffo (b. 1949), and photographer Nan Goldin (b. 1953), best known for her 1985 work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
Staying with Artnet, an ornate corridor in the Vatican City’s Apostolic Palace known as the Raphael Loggia is getting its first facelift in the 500 years since students of Raphael painted it. The Vatican Museums organization has partnered with the World Monuments Fund on a five-year project powered by funds from Blackstone co-founder Steven A. Schwarzman’s philanthropic foundation. The 213 foot-long loggia sits on the second story, part of the palace where popes—including the current Pope Leo XIV—have historically lived, and it was once open air before Antonio Canova added stained glass windows in 1813, which trapped heat and humidity. Chief restorer Paolo Violini described a “dry” cleaning method, with over 20 Vatican Museums professionals using lasers.
Over at Hyperallergic, the focus is on Pace Gallery’s downsizing and the narratives that followed. The newsletter introduces reporting by Valentina Di Liscia and Rebecca Schiffman, plus an opinion piece by Barbara Pollack, pushing back on the idea that cuts are just an “inevitable” consequence of a broken gallery model. In “Pace Gallery’s Hall of Mirrors,” they report that on June 4, Pace announced it would cut 50 artists from its roster and lay off 50 employees, with CEO Marc Glimcher calling the model “unfixable.” Staff members say the cuts unfolded quickly and without clarity, hitting the most unprotected workers, while some artists who expected the news questioned how the announcement was handled. Pollack also critiques Marc Spiegler’s New York Times take, arguing he writes like an observer, not an architect.
That’s all for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for your next download from the art world’s front lines. Chinga la migra