Artist Stephanie Dinkins Wins $100,000 LG Guggenheim Award, Collector Sam Zell Dies at 91, and More: Morning Links for May 19, 2023

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The Headlines

AWARDS SEASON. Brooklyn artist Stephanie Dinkins has won the inaugural LG Guggenheim Award, a prize for tech-focused art that comes with a $100,000 purse, the Art Newspaper reports. Dinkins’s “artistic range, engagement with socio-cultural values, and leading AI explorations are crucial reflections of the evolving future of technology-based art,” the Guggenheim Museums‘s deputy director, Naomi Beckwith, said in a statement. Meanwhile, the €50,000 (£53,800) Loewe Foundation Craft Prize has gone to Japanese ceramicist Eriko Inazaki, the Guardian reports. Inazaki’s piece—on view at the Noguchi Museum in Queens alongside work by the 29 other Loewe finalists—is “a captivating orb covered in fine, plant and flower-like extrusions, each intricately made by pinching the clay by hand,” Wallpaper writes.

JOB POSTINGS. Edgar Miramontes has been hired as executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance (CAP) at UCLA, the Los Angeles Times reports. He’s joining from REDCAT, where he has been executive director since 2019; he was also a co-curator of “Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA.” Miramontes is the first person of color to hold the top job at CAP. ● The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced a trio of new hires, per Flaunt: Danielle Bias, a Whitney Museum vet, as chief communications officer; Colleen Russell, returning to the job of chief advancement officer from the Cleveland Museum of Art; and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, a MOCA alum, as its first chief of public engagement, learning, and impact ● The Philadelphia Museum of Art has tapped Valarie McDuffie to be its CFO and Maggie Fairs to be its vice president for communications.

The Digest

The Chicago-based billionaire real-estate giant Sam Zell—who collected modern and contemporary art with his wife, Helen Zell—died on Thursday, at 81. His many passions included motorcycles, and he established a riding group with friends called Zell’s Angels. [The Associated Press]

The five-member jury for this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens to the public this weekend, includes Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and architect and curator Tau Tavengwa, who is serving as the panel’s president. [Press Release/La Biennale]

The 2024 edition of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto’s “Greater Toronto Art” triennial will be led by MOCA’s curator, Kate Wong, and two guest curators: Ebony L. Haynes, who runs David Zwirner’s 52 Walker space, and Toleen Touq, co-founding director of the Spring Sessions residency in Amman, Jordan. [MOCA Toronto]

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador cannot decree certain development projects national security matters, as he has done for a Yucatan train project slammed by archaeologists for endangering artifacts. The full effects of the ruling were not immediately clear. [The Associated Press/ABC News]

Dealer, writer, and curator Kenny Schachter has developed an NFT game called Pop Principle that involves “a battle that pits key names in the traditional arts scene against pioneers in the digital realm,” Ravail Khan writes. Among the people features as avatars in the project are Larry Gagosian, Yayoi Kusama, and Beeple. [Designboom]

WEEKEND DELIGHTS. Two Washington Post critics—Philip Kennicott, who covers art and architecture, and Tom Sietsema, who does food and dining—talked about key artworks depicting food. On a related subject, the 1911 tea room at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, has reopened after a renovation, the Los Angeles Times reports, and it is offering caviar service, delectable-sounding desserts, and a great deal more.

The Kicker

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. For decades now, actor Pierce Brosnan has been painting, and at the moment, he’s presenting his first solo exhibition, in Los Angeles. (It is titled “So Many Dreams”—you can take a look at the work here.) The former James Bond has been making the media rounds, and told the Associated Press that part of his reason for finally deciding to show is that he’s just turned 70. “It’s my own birthday gift to myself to have the courage to say, Come and see my artwork,” he said. Artists: It’s never too late to bet on yourself. [AP]