In Minor Keys, Khaled Sabsabi, Louvre Heist Film

You might first associate Khaled Sabsabi’s name with controversy; he was removed as the Venice Biennale’s Australian pavilion artist last year, then reinstated after public backlash and an independent review. But as with so many participants and works at the so-called Olympics of the art world, that is only part of the story.

This week, critic Aruna D’Souza sat down with Sabsabi for a conversation about the trauma of migration, the 132-foot-long piece that came to him in a dream, and the Sufi teachings that influenced his two works in Venice. One is on display in the late curator Koyo Kouoh’s In Minor Keys, a “triumph” of an exhibition that Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara calls “a solid hymn to the billions who carry melancholy and riotous joy in the same heart” in his review.

In other art that moved us, Jasmine Weber pays a visit to Betye Saar’s family of Black dolls at the New York Historical, while John Yau steps through the portals of Larissa Borteh’s canvases into worlds that are wholly her own. And the news cycle, as always, delivered headlines straight out of the Onion. Here’s a taste: The infamous Louvre heist is getting a film adaptation (which I will be in line to watch on opening night) and a New York gallerist thought it would be fun to use AI to colorize Ansel Adams’s iconic black-and-white photographs. What could go right? 

If that isn’t enough to make you want to throw your phone off a cliff and go see some shows, a new study posits that interacting with art and cultural heritage — from taking a photo to wandering through a gallery — can literally add years to your life. May that spirit of creativity suffuse your weekend ahead. Happy reading, and, and if you haven’t already, please consider joining us as a Hyperallergic Member to support our fearless, critical art journalism. 

—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor

News

• Photographer Wolfgang Tillmans wins the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, Cheryl Finley gets the Driskell Prize — and more in this week’s Art Movements.
• The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust has lambasted New York City gallerist James Danziger for selling AI-colorized editions of one of the late artist’s most recognized photos.
• The Louvre heist is set for a film adaptation amid an ongoing investigation and with the stolen jewels still at large.
• Figurative expressionist painter Jay Milder died at 92.
• Prolific urban tagger and Miami graffiti legend Eric Alan Hirt “Eson” has died at 47 after being struck by a train.
• Unionized workers at the Wexner Center for the Arts called for the institution to be renamed over benefactor Les Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
• The estranged husband of murdered New York art dealer Brent Sikkema was found guilty for his role in hiring the hitman who stabbed the gallerist.
• Trump has re-erected a monument to Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who enslaved at least 200 people, after the city of Wilmington, Delaware, removed it in 2020 amid historic Black Lives Matter protests.
• According to a new study published in the journal Innovation in Aging, visiting art museums could slow aging. 

From Our Critics

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Community

• In Memoriam — This week we honor Paula Kamps, a painter of rare sensitivity, Tess Jaray, luminary of abstraction, and Ben Morea, counterculture icon.
• A View From the Easel — Kevin Callahan marks three years in his studio after losing his partner of 39 years and moving to a new home. He still finds reasons to smile as he paints and draws under the California sun.
• Required Reading — a record-breaking World Cup mural in Mexico City, the Gen Z of 19th-century France, van Gogh and AI, and more.

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