Meet the Curators of the Next “Made in LA”
Michael Wellen and José Luis Blondet get the nod, Tate names a new director, and the Immigrant Artist Biennial is back for another edition.
Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world.
Who's Making "Made in L.A."?
According to the Hammer Museum, that'll be Michael Wellen and José Luis Blondet. The Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum — now in its eighth edition, though modeled after the now-defunct biennial Hammer Invitational — exhibits new and recent work by artists living or working in Los Angeles, as well as commissions new ones. It's slated to open in fall 2027.
Each edition pairs two curators, usually one from the Hammer and the other from outside. Wellen joined the museum this past April as its chief curator; he was previously senior curator of International Art at Tate Modern. Blondet, meanwhile, is senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; before that, he spent 13 years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Made in LA, indeed.
Tate Gets a New Director
Meanwhile, a stateside curator goes back to Tate. Jessica Morgan will direct Tate and its four gallery sites starting in 2027. She joins the British institution after more than 10 years directing the Dia Art Foundation, overseeing a major renovation of its Chelsea location and expanding its collection of work by women and Black artists during her tenure. Morgan succeeds Maria Balshaw, who directed Tate for nine years and stepped down this past spring.
What Else Happened?
- Ainsley M. Cameron was appointed associate director of curatorial affairs at the Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois.
- Yuko Kikuchi, the former head of academic programs at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, claims she resigned this past January due to a "culture of systemic racism."
- Ferran Barenblit was named chief curator of the 16th Shanghai Biennale in November 2027.
- The Immigrant Artist Biennial announced its next edition this fall, titled Identity Card after a poem by Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish. The exhibition’s 18 artists include Bahar Behbahani and Anh Vo, with scholar Judith Butler and poet Natalie Diaz among the catalog contributors. See the full list of participating artists, venues, and more.
- Casey Monroe was named associate curator at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York.
- Milwaukee's Central City Plaza, Houston's the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center at Texas Southern University, Nashville's Park-Johnson Hall at Fisk University, Boston's Southwest Corridor, and St. Mark AME Zion Church in East Chicago, Indiana, are the recipients of the Getty Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's final Conserving Black Modernism grantees.
- New York Foundation for the Arts awarded a total of $903,000 to the 132 recipients of the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship program. See the full list.
- The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture in Chicago is now accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, making it the fourth Latine institution to receive recognition.
Talking to Saints
If you've ever wanted to ask Mary Magdalene or Saint Augustine some questions— like "hey Augustine, who hurt you?" — today's your lucky day. In collaboration with the tech company Ask Mona, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched an initiative in which visitors can scan QR codes and converse with statues of saints through an AI model trained on conversations with curators, conservators, and more. You can ask them who they are, what they're made of, why they're talking in that accent, and where the bathrooms are. But you can't ask them to wake you up from the surreal technological nightmare that is life in the 21st century.
.jpg?ref=hyperallergic.com){kind=link}