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The Headlines
LIGHTS, ART, ACTION. After a three-year absence, a popular light art installation has returned brighter and revamped to the San Francisco Bay Bridge, in a sign of “commitment” to the arts, reports ABC 7. During a Friday lighting ceremony, artist Leo Villareal, who designed the work first installed in 2013, said its much-awaited, upgraded comeback, thanks to $11 million in fundraising, was due to a “communal effort.” Meanwhile, Mayor Daniel Lurie said Villareal’s swirling light piece was symbolic of the city’s pledge to boost its historic art scene, which has seen recent art school and museum closures. “Our arts, our culture has always led the way and we are doing so again and this illustration tonight … we are going to lean into our arts,” said Lurie.
IN MEMORIAM. Agosto Machado, the artist and activist known for his involvement in the Downtown New York art scene and whose “altar sculptures” are on view in the current Whitney Biennial, died on Saturday, reports Alex Greenberger for ARTnews. Machado had asked that his age be kept out of his obituary sent by his gallery, Gordon Robichaux, and on that note, once said, “A lad never tells.” The artist who has been described as an archivist and an activist, also opted for yet another descriptor: “pre-Stonewall street queen.” Machado participated in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s that followed, associating with a circle of artists, including Peter Hujar and Andy Warhol, to name a few. Commenting in 2022 on his ephemera sculpture shrines related to his community, he said: “Well, it’s really ancestor worship, my gratitude for all these people who came through my life.”
The Digest
France’s former culture minister, Rachida Dati, running on a conservative ticket, lost her bid to become the next mayor of Paris by a wide margin, with victory handed to left-leaning Emmanuel Grégoire. [Le Monde]
On Sunday, a replica of a Christopher Columbus statue that protesters tore down in Baltimore six years ago was erected on the White House grounds. [The New York Times]
The Rietberg Museum in Zurich will transfer the ownership of 11 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, but will only send two key looted artifacts to the African nation, while the remaining nine will stay in Switzerland. [The Art Newspaper]
The artist Qualeasha Wood claims a viral performance work called BedRot by an artist known as Aphex Redditor is a copy of her performance artwork. [ARTnews]
A new Egon Schiele exhibit at the Neue Galerie in New York suggests that one source of the artist’s expressive, sinewy style came from a formative period spent observing hospital patients in 1910. [The New Yorker]
New York Attorney General Letitia James is pushing for a bill to forbid “surveillance pricing,” when prices are tailored to individual consumers, in a move that is good news for artists, arts workers, and low-income earners. [The Gray Market]
The Kicker
VIVA GEHRY’S VISION. Frank Gehry passed away in December, but his inspiring vision for an unparalleled, yet still incomplete, Los Angeles cultural district has not, reports Mark Swed for the Los Angeles Times. Gehry’s plans for the city’s Grand Avenue are still in place, with blueprints he bequeathed. But Swed says that too little has been done to follow through with them, mostly due to budget constraints. The critic maintains the city could still realize many of those plans before 2028 and in time for the Olympics. They range from projections onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall, to a jazz club for Herbie Hancock, a more pedestrian-friendly street design, transforming a parking lot across the Colburn Center into a public plaza with a giant video wall and outdoor sound system for night concerts, and low-cost artist housing, to name but a few. After all, “arts make a city,” writes Swed, and “we have the goods,” he later adds.
