Weekly News Roundup: March 22, 2024

Pace Appoints Kyoko Hattori as Vice President

New York’s Pace Gallery announced that its newest venue in Tokyo’s Azabudai Hills development will be helmed by vice president Kyoko Hattori. Previously the regional director of Phillips auction house in Japan, Hattori has experience managing client relationships and securing significant consignments. She is also a member on the board of FWD Group, a leading pan-Asian insurance business. Hattori will work closely with Pace’s international leadership in her new role, introducing the gallery’s artists and clients to the art scene in Japan. A month prior to Pace Tokyo’s July 2024 opening, the gallery will collaborate with Azabudai Hills Gallery on a solo exhibition of sculptures by the American artist Alexander Calder. “Calder: Un effet du japonais” is organized as part of a new curatorial partnership between the galleries and comprises approximately 100 works spanning the 1930s to the ‘70s from the Calder Foundation’s collection.

Beth Citron to be Curator at Asia Society Museum

On March 21, the Asia Society Museum in New York appointed curator and art historian Beth Citron as its curator of modern and contemporary Asian and Asian diaspora art. She will work alongside Asia Society’s director and vice president of arts and culture, Yasufumi Nakamori, to plan and implement the museum’s contemporary art exhibitions, as well as continue to build its art collection. Citron’s specialization in modern and contemporary South Asian art will help “further develop Asia Society’s longstanding scholarship on and engagement with Asian and Asian diaspora artists,” stated Nakamori. Citron was a 2019 recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship for research on the curatorial history of Indian modernist art, and was founding curator of modern and contemporary art at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York until October 2019. She is also a member of the Association of Art Museum Curators’ board of trustees. 

Rhana Devenport Departs Adelaide 

The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) director Rhana Devenport announced on March 22 that she will end her six-year tenure on July 7. She will return to Sydney to pursue a series of new international and national projects. Since Devenport’s appointment in 2018, four million people have visited AGSA, and the institution’s programming engaged 1.8 million people in 2023 alone. The AGSA director has expanded the gallery’s collection through philanthropic support, fundraising, and the acquisitions of works by renowned artists such as British painter Chris Ofili, Sydney-based artist Daniel Boyd, Indian multidisciplinary artist Nalini Malani, among others. Devenport also spearheaded “Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution” (2023), AGSA’s highest selling exhibition in decades, generating USD 980,000 at the box office. A national and international recruitment search will soon commence to appoint a new director.

Taipei Dangdai Announces Gallery List

Taiwan’s Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas has unveiled its exhibitor list of 78 galleries from 19 countries and territories. The fifth edition will once again welcome prominent international galleries such as New York’s David Zwirner, Paris’s Perrotin, Tuscany’s Galleria Continua, and Taiwan’s Tina Keng Gallery, among others. The fair will also feature 33 newcomers, including London’s Bowman Sculpture, Foundry Seoul, Munich’s Jahn und Jahn, Massachusetts’s Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Barcelona’s Polígrafa Obra Gráfica, and Singapore’s Cuturi Gallery. The fair is presented by Art Basel’s leading partner, the Swiss investment bank UBS, and organized by The Art Assembly, a joint initiative between ART SG in Singapore, Taipei Dangdai in Taiwan, and Tokyo Gendai in Japan. Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas will be held at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center from May 10 to 12, 2024. 

De Ying Curatorial Fellows 2024

The De Ying Foundation, a Shanghai-based nonprofit, announced that its second Curatorial Fellowship program will welcome researcher Nie Xiaoyi, Shanghai-based writer Sam Shiyi Qian, and Beijing-based critic Wang Huan. Initiated to help realize proposed curatorial projects, the 18-month program will be held in Shanghai and commence in May 2024. Nie specializes in curatorial studies and her project centers around the compound phrase “cedong,” correlating to “planning, mobilization, and instigation.” Through research, she will reflect on the curatorial practices of the West and China to probe questions concerning the field’s status quo. Sam will expand an ongoing interdisciplinary project on the Yangtze River Delta water system that includes field research, writing, editing, and independent research. Lastly, Wang proposed a cross-cultural research project which seeks to highlight “artistic phenomena among Indigenous cultures.” Imploring contemporary folk art images and practices, his project explores the origin of humankind’s creative impulse and spirituality.

Qatar Museums’ Venice Exhibition 

Qatar Museums revealed its plans for a major exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale in April, co-organized by the Doha Film Institute, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the Future Art Mill Museum (all Doha-based), and Venice’s Art Capital Partners (ACP). Titled “Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices,” the exhibition will feature films and video works by more than 40 artists and filmmakers, exploring themes such as deserts, ruins, women’s voices, and exile, blending invented narrative with fact; modernity with tradition; and spirituality with postcolonial sensibilities. The exhibition is curated by Matthieu Orléan of Cinémathèque Française, a nonprofit film organization, and two collaborators, Qatari filmmakers Majid Al-Remaihi and Virgile Alexandre. The exhibition will be on view at the ACP’s Palazzo Franchetti from April 19 until November 24, 2024. 

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