Surrealism Turns 100, Felix and Frieze Take Los Angeles, and More: Morning Links for February 29, 2024

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

THE HEADLINES

LA ART WEEK. Los Angeles’s art fair week, which includes Frieze and Felix, is fully underway, and reports are coming in on the can’t-miss gallery presentations and openings—and, of course, the parties, too. ARTnews’s Francesca Aton has picked the best booths that Felix L.A., a fair mounted at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, has to offer. Her list includes Sahana Ramakrishnan at Fridman Gallery and Talia Levitt at Rachel Uffner Gallery. Meanwhile,  Frieze, a more conventional commercial bazaar, has been praised in the New York Times for including dozens of Asian artists, dealers, curators who, despite being fixtures of the SoCal scene, are finally getting their due. Stay tuned for more Frieze coverage today in ARTnews.

STRANGE TIMES. Surrealism, the 20th-century art movement that married dream to reality, turns 100 this year. Where other creative manifestos have peaked and passed, Surrealism’s has stayed relevant, stubbornly strange in a world that grows beyond recognition. Museums around the world, from Paris to Munich to Shanghai, are have mounted exhibitions that meditate on the milestone, whether by elevating female Surrealists or by establishing links between other, more sensical, styles. What does Surrealism mean in the context of today’s art? Don’t expect a straight answer.

THE DIGEST

A rare Ethiopian shield from the 19th century has been withdrawn from an auction in Newcastle upon Tyne after the government of Ethiopia formally requested its restitution. The artifact was among the trophies taken by British force’s at the battle of Maqdala in 1868. [The Art Newspaper]

Lewis Tanner, a prolific architecture and landscape photographer who roamed California for subjects with a cowboy spirit, has died at 72. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Thousands of Native American historic and archaeological sites in the low-lying plains of Georgia are threatened by an approaching tropical storm surge, and experts warn that due to climate change, such severe weather will only grown more frequent. [Phys]

Three different museum projects in Fort Worth, Texas, are striving to make the city a destination for Black history. Among the planned institutions is a National Juneteenth Museum. [NBCFW]

Take a dive inside a sunken Spanish galleon described as the“holy grail” of shipwrecks being pulled from the seabed. According to legend, the ship sank with more than $20 billion worth of treasure aboard, fueling a frenzied race to reach it first. [Independent UK]

THE KICKER

A QUICK BITE. At least one review is in on the Whitney’s Frenchette Bakery outpost, and it is a rave. Matthew Schneier, chief restaurant critic of New York Magazine , hailed its “ambitious” pastas and unfussy atmosphere—not to mention the titular bakery, which purportedly boasts the longest eclair he’d ever seen (“éclair suprême, says the menu”). Read the piece on an empty stomach, I dare you: The “Paris-Brest is piped with pistachio cream, not the pallid, princessy pastel of the usual pastry palette, but a deep, boggy, almost khaki green that only a true glut of nuts can provide,” per Schneier. New York museum eateries with menus and ambience missing such panache (here’s looking at the Met cafeteria) must be quaking.