Museum Power Plays and Cultural Flashpoints

A major leadership change is coming to one of New York’s most influential contemporary spaces. The New Museum has selected Massimiliano Gioni, its artistic director, to be its next director, ending months of speculation. Gioni joined the institution in 2006 and has served as artistic director since 2014; he’ll take the helm in August, with his first day in the director’s chair set for August 1. He succeeds Lisa Phillips, who announced her retirement last September. The museum noted that Gioni will be only its third director since it opened in 1977, following founder Marcia Tucker, who led it until 1999, and Phillips. His current exhibition, “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” opened in March.

ARTnews adds more detail on what Gioni’s appointment represents for the New Museum’s program and history. In a statement, board president James-Keith Brown said the appointment followed “an extensive international search” and praised Gioni’s role over two decades in building exhibitions, partnerships, mentorship, and global relationships. Gioni first joined as a curator in 2006 and became artistic director in 2014. His credits include launching the New Museum Triennial in 2009 as “The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus,” co-curated with Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman. Other thematic exhibitions cited include “After Nature” (2008), “Ostalgia” (2011), “Here and Elsewhere” (2014), “The Keeper” (2016), and “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” which inaugurates the museum’s expansion.

Over in London, Frieze is getting a dose of eight-legged spectacle and a very specific kind of digital weirdness. Theo Triantafyllidis, this year’s Frieze Artist Award winner, is bringing a monumental, climbable spider titled Feral Metaverse (Spider). Fairgoers will be invited to clamber over the sculpture, searching its bristly body for game controls and screens that let them enter his ongoing “Feral Metaverse” project—one that rejects Silicon Valley’s frictionless metaverse fantasy in favor of something tactile, awkward, and fun. Triantafyllidis says video games are ideal for “playtesting” social dynamics and seeing what behavioral patterns emerge, especially when verbal communication is removed from the virtual realm.

Triantafyllidis’s build is also a window into how he’s been working with A.I. Born in Athens in 1988, he trained as an architect before earning his MFA from UCLA’s Design Media Arts program in 2016, and he consulted with technologists from Google Arts and Culture, which is sponsoring the Frieze Artist Award for the first time. He described using A.I.-generated content as a material he wants to “sculpt and transform,” building on earlier experiments like “Ork Haus,” first shown in his 2022 solo exhibition “Pheromone Spa” at Breeder Gallery in Athens. For the spider, he fed sketches into Google’s Gemini, then looped renderings and photos of a physical model back into the system to refine details.

In sanctions news that hits the art-shipping world directly, British national Jonathan Hornby has become the first from his country to be convicted of violating the UK’s sanctions on exports of luxury goods to Russia. According to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Hornby—managing director of a logistics company—attempted to send four artworks to Russia in February 2024. Officials seized the shipment at Heathrow Airport; it was linked to his businesses, Global Customs Systems UK Limited and In Time Worldwide Express Limited. He pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates Court on July 1 and was fined £thirty thousand eighty five (forty thousand two hundred forty two dollars). HMRC deputy director Edwige Hill said the conviction shows the consequences of breaching Russia sanctions that “we can and do investigate.”

Those restrictions date to March 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. The UK put in place sanctions that included a ban on exports to Russia of luxury goods such as luxury vehicles, high-end fashion, and artworks, along with steep import tariffs on items like vodka, art, and antiques. The government said the luxury export ban was meant to “make sure oligarchs and other members of the elite… are deprived of access to luxury goods,” as NPR reported at the time. The initiative came shortly after the UK announced sanctions on seven of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs, including figures known for significant art collections, such as Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska.

ARTnews’s Morning Links also spotlights turmoil around the London branch of the Artist Pension Trust. The Financial Times reports that more than 40 artists allege APT London Inc has likely been operating as an unregulated investment scheme, and they’re demanding their artworks be returned, plus compensation for financial losses. The trust—founded in New York—was presented as a “mutual assurance program,” pooling and selling participants’ art. After APT’s London branch announced plans to close in May, it sent a termination agreement asking artists to retrieve works worth 70 percent of their contributions, while APT would keep the remaining 30 percent to pay outstanding expenses—an offer artist Céline Condorelli called “a betrayal on an epic scale.”

The same roundup notes the death of Richard H. Glanton, a former head of the Barnes Foundation, at 79, as reported by the New York Times. Glanton is remembered for taking the Foundation’s 80 French artworks on an exhibition tour to raise money for a museum renovation and for a “combative” approach that increased the institution’s visibility. He didn’t have an art background and joined the board through a relationship to Lincoln University, a historically Black college with close ties to founder Albert C. Barnes. The report also notes Glanton was later embroiled in lawsuits, including one involving allegations of sexually harassing a female associate at a previous job that ended in a settlement.

In Texas, a prominent piece of street art in Austin has been covered up. Officials destroyed a mural reading “Black Artists Matter” following an order from Republican Governor Greg Abbott. The mural spanned East Austin’s 11th Street and was painted by dozens of community members in June 2020, led by the Austin Justice Coalition alongside Capitol View Arts, amid protests following the murder of George Floyd. Abbott had directed Texas cities last fall to “remove any and all political ideologies” from streets, threatening to withhold roadway funding. Austin Transportation and Public Works confirmed the mural was covered on Thursday, July 2. The mural sat in the Sixth Square District, now known as the city’s Black Cultural District.

Ishia Adams, executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, recalled watching the artwork’s completion in 2020 and said it brought joy to participating artists and made the Black Austin community feel seen. She said the removal signaled that “erasure of Black folks in Austin is consistent.” Adams also described the mural’s location as significant: it stood in front of the historic Victory Grill, where Black soldiers returning from World War II had gathered, and near the arts nonprofit Kenny Dorham’s Backyard, “a place where all mediums of Black art are represented to this day.” The “Black Artists Matter” display is one of at least 15 street artworks Austin plans to remove through August, including LGBTQ+ Pride rainbow crosswalks.

In Washington, the White House has escalated its attacks on the Smithsonian Institution. A 162-page report published on July 4 accuses the organization of “extreme political activism” and “anti-White activism.” Titled “Saving America’s Story,” the document was authored by the Trump-appointed Domestic Policy Council and scrutinizes how the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History portrays topics including race, immigration, and gender. The report follows a prior order from President Trump directing his administration to investigate so-called “race-centered ideology” at the Smithsonian. The new document even targets specific exhibits, including a butterfly-shaped protest prop described as symbolizing resilience among undocumented immigrants.

That same Hyperallergic package also points listeners toward Natalie Haddad’s interview with Carmelita Tropicana, the performance alter ego of artist Alina Troyano. Hyperallergic describes Troyano as a lesbian performance artist and doyenne of New York’s downtown theater scene who satirizes stereotypes, including the “Latin spitfire.” The episode framing pairs the federal report with cultural work that challenges authority from the margins, and it positions Troyano’s practice as part of a longer story about who gets to narrate public life—and how artists respond when institutions and narratives come under political pressure.

In Venice, ARTnews reports that the Art Not Genocide Alliance is calling for a mass mobilization on July 17, when the US Ambassador to Italy, Tilman Fertitta, is scheduled to arrive. ANGA invited supporters to gather at 4 p.m. at Campo San Zaccaria, near the Church of San Zaccaria, where Fertitta’s yacht is expected to dock. The group reiterated opposition to US involvement in Palestine, writing that the US “continues to arm, finance and politically shield Israel’s genocide in Palestine.” The report notes an independent United Nations commission has characterized Israel’s actions in Palestine as genocide. ANGA formed in early 2024 opposing Israel’s participation in that year’s Venice Biennale.

ANGA also pointed to its past actions at the Biennale. It carried its campaign into the following edition, culminating in a 24-hour strike on May 8, the eve of the public opening, when thousands of cultural workers marched through Venice. ANGA said more than 20 national pavilions in the Giardini partially closed in response, while others stayed closed all day, including the Austrian and Japanese pavilions. The strike followed a May 5 demonstration during the professional pre-opening titled “Solidarity Drone Chorus,” in which about 60 artists hummed “Drone Song,” a viral composition by Gazan composer and music teacher Ahmed “Muin” Abu Amsha, aiming to “sonically occupy space.”

In Portugal, conceptual artist Luísa Cunha has died at 77. She died on Monday of cancer at Lisbon’s Hospital de São José. Cunha, known for whispering sound installations and language-based works, built a career beginning in the early 1990s that transformed ordinary words into immersive art. Though she worked across photography, drawing, video, objects, and performance, she became best known for minimalist “sound sculptures” where recorded voices fill galleries with intimate phrases whose meanings shift through repetition. Born in Lisbon in 1949, she earned a degree in Germanic Philology from the University of Lisbon, completed the Advanced Sculpture Course at AR.CO in 1994, and taught sculpture there until 1997.

Cunha’s recognition grew in recent years. The EDP Foundation awarded her its Art Grand Prize in 2021, praising the originality and multidisciplinary, pioneering nature of her work. She received the AICA Portugal Visual Arts Prize in 2022 for her exhibition Partitura #4 at Galeria Miguel Nabinho and her installation Não at MAAT. In 2013, Artforum critic Miguel Amado wrote about her 1994 work Do What You Have to Do, describing her as “one of the best investigators of the intersection between personal narratives and collective consciousness in the Portuguese art scene.” In 2023, MAAT presented Hello! Are You There?, the first retrospective of her work, spanning three decades.

And finally, a museum announcement looking ahead to fall 2026. Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art—on the coast just north of Copenhagen—will present “Painting Magic,” an exhibition of some 70 artworks by Spanish artist Remedios Varo. The show runs from September 18, 2026, through January 10, 2027, and includes paintings, drawings, and photographs; it will later travel to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Varo was born in Spain in 1908, left for Paris at 19, and later settled in Mexico City in the early 1940s, where her career blossomed. She had successful exhibitions in 1955 and 1958 and died of a heart attack in 1963.

Louisiana’s exhibition also underscores how Varo’s reputation has shifted over time. The article notes that when she died, she wasn’t particularly well-known outside Mexico compared to peers like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington. The three are often grouped as preeminent female Mexican Surrealist painters, though Varo consistently resisted that label. “Painting Magic” includes loans from prominent private collections and museums worldwide, and the museum highlights works such as Exploración de las fuentes del río Orinoco, The Magician or the Juggler, The Flight, Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst’s Office, Caravan, Still Life Coming to Life Again, Star Porridge, and Encounter.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art-world news you can actually use, and until then: Chinga la migra

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