2024 Lyon Biennale Curator Named, Demas Nwoko Gets Golden Lion, and More: Morning Links for March 28, 2023

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The Headlines

FESTIVAL FEVER. In December, the third edition of the roving Thailand Biennale is set to open in the northern city of Chiang Rai with Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gridthiya Gaweewong serving as artistic directors, per e-flux. Confirmed artists include Ernesto Neto, Tobias Rehberger, and Haegue Yang, with more to be announced. The next Biennale de Lyon—on tap for that French metropolis in September 2024—will be curated by Alexia Fabre, the director of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. And Tom Engels, the artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein in Austria, has been picked to organize the Baltic Triennial, which will open in mid-2024 at the freshly renovated Contemporary Arts Centre Vilnius in Lithuania, ArtReview reports.

ARTISTS ON THE RECORD. The wily conceptualist Minerva Cuevas, who’s famed for tweaking corporate iconography, has a show up now at Kurimanzutto in New York and was profiled by the Guardian. “I think moral statements are the worst things to connect socially with people,” she said. ● Sharon Stone has joined the ranks of actor-artists with a solo show at Allouche Gallery in Los Angeles. Stone studied painting in college, and returned to it during the pandemic, she told the Art Newspaper. “I painted and painted and painted, and I refound myself. I refound my heart. I refound my center.” ● And the filmmaker Steve McQueen talked to the Guardian about his film on the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy, which will be screened at the Serpentine Gallery in London next month. “You must understand that the violence that was inflicted on that community was no joke,” he said. “I didn’t want to let people off the hook. There are going to be people who are going to be a little bit disturbed.”

The Digest

Artist, designer, and architect Demas Nwoko has been selected to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture. Nwoko was a founding member of the Zaria Art Society, a key modern art group in his native Nigeria in the mid-20th century. [Press Release/La Biennale]

Italian officials have confiscated a ship—purchased with the aid of funds raised by the sale of Banksy works—that has been rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean.  “We know of dozens of boats in distress right in front of the island at this very moment yet we are being prevented from assisting,” its crew said in a statement. [Financial Times]

The Art Newspaper published its annual museum-attendance list, and the Louvre grabbed its usual top slot, with about 7.73 million passing through its doors in 2022—a formidable figure but still 20 percent off of 2019’s (pre-pandemic) total. [The Art Newspaper]

The next director of the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens will be David Odo, who currently runs the academic and public engagement programs at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Odo will start in the Peach State in June. [Press Release/UGA Today]

The Guggenheim Museum in New York has hired Noam Segal as an associate curator focused on technology-based art, a position funded by LG Electronics. Segal is currently director of research in the M.A. program for curatorial practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she is also a faculty member. [The Art Newspaper]

In 2021, the Uovo art-storage firm acquired Garde Robe, which specializes in storing luxury clothes. The company’s Brooklyn warehouse for clothing currently holds 40,000 units, and fashion brands make up about half of its clients. [The New York Times]

The Kicker

SEATING ARRANGEMENTS.Los Angeles Times columnist Carolina A. Miranda had the genius idea of paying a visit to area museums and grading the benches, chairs, and other seats that they have in their galleries. She was a candid—some may say tough!—grader. Stools on offer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art? F. Benches at the Orange County Museum of Art? C. One setup received a rare A++ rating, but let’s not spoil that winner here. Miranda writes of it: “10/10 would read the Sunday paper and drink my dirty horchata on this hospitable bench.” [LAT]