The Headlines
LOVE ACTUALLY. After eight years of legal disputes, a New York federal jury has awarded the Morgan Art Foundation $102.2 million in damages, contending that art publisher Michael McKenzie isolated artist Robert Indiana near the end of his life and created unauthorized versions of his work, the New York Times reports. Indiana is famous for his large sculpture depicting the word “love” in caps, with the L and O sitting atop the V and E. The dispute began after Indiana’s death in 2018 at 89 and centered around accusations of elder abuse, forgery, and copyright infringement. “The isolation and exploitation of Robert Indiana in the last years, months, and even days before he died was a tragedy, and Michael McKenzie was the mastermind,” said Luke Nikas, a lawyer for Morgan. McKenzie’s lawyer said he was considering an appeal.
IN MEMORIAM. The South Carolina artist Mary Aldwyth Dickman, who went by Aldwyth and was known for her intricate collages made in relative isolation, has died at 90, the Post and Courier reports. Her intricate artworks made of found objects and printed material fashioned in various containers were sometimes compared to Joseph Cornell’s creations and are credited with challenging traditional art history. She also was known for living and working in a kind of treehouse for grownups that was set on stilts in a forest on Dear Island. One of her acclaimed assemblages, titled We regret to inform, was made of all of her early rejection letters from exhibition spaces she had requested to show her work. “If I know what it’s going to look like, I don’t want to do it. That’s the whole purpose: to see what it’s going to look like,” Aldwyth once said in a 2022 PBS documentary.
The Digest
After 19 years, one of the most important galleries in Los Angeles, The Box, founded by Mara McCarthy as a collaboration with her father, artist Paul McCarthy, announced it will close. [ARTnews]
San Francisco officials said they will begin dismantling the Armand Vaillancourt fountain from the Embarcadero neighborhood today, despite heated controversy and the artist’s own protests over its removal. [KQED]
Preservationists are worried that Donald Trump’s project to resurface the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool’s basin would make the monument look like a “large lap pool.” [The Washington Post]
From May 5 to 9, JR will install a large-scale, temporary photographic fresco on the facade of the Palazzo Ca’ da Mosto in Venice that is inspired by Paolo Veronese’s 1563 painting The Wedding at Cana. It will feature workers and guests at a community kitchen in Paris. [Press Release]
The iconic Pont des Arts bridge in Paris is cracking and in need of repairs once again. [Le Figaro]
The Kicker
SOUND ON. Can sound reveal violence? Turner Prize–winning artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan thinks so. In a story for the Financial Times, the artist known as a “private ear” discusses his practice, which suggests that listening alone is a politically potent act, even a form of resistance. Hamdan also leads the human rights organization Earshot, which specializes in “audio forensics” and investigates government cover-ups using sonic evidence. “By listening to sound,” he said, “you expose a complacency of power that is not paying attention to the soundtrack.” His newest installation, titled 450XL: The Story of a Fugitive Sound, will be shown at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice, and he will also be taking over London’s Barbican Center from September 23 to 26 for a larger exhibition.
