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The Headlines




FASHION MODA.  The work of the late designer  Karl Lagerfeld  will be  the theme  of the next  Met Gala  in New York, the  Associated Press  reports. On the calendar for May 1, the festivities will be tied to the opening of the exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Met’s  Costume Institute , which will include some 150 pieces made by the designer, who died in 2019 at 85. Up in Toronto,  Fashion  magazine  proposed  that the  Art Gallery of Ontario ‘s  Art Bash!  fundraiser could be Canada’s answer to the vaunted Met Gala. And in Paris,  Page Six  reports,  Balenciaga   staged its spring/summer 2023 runway show at the  Parc des Expositions  on a  mud-covered runway  by the  controversy-generating  artist  Santiago Sierra .  Kanye West  was among the models.




SOME PEOPLE JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN.  Artist  Damien Hirst  is getting ready to  start burning  some of his art as part of his  The Currency  project next week in London, the  Guardian  reports. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom:  BBC News  reports that, on Saturday, a show called “Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man” closed at  Chatsworth House  in Derbyshire, England, with the  planned burning of a sculpture  by  Rebekah Waites . (Here are  photos  of the conflagration.) Meanwhile,  ARTnews  reported on Friday that Mexican officials said that they  will investigate  a collector who claims to have burned a  Frida Kahlo  artwork for an NFT project.




The Digest




Journalist  Michael Shnayerson , the author of  Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers and the Rise of Contemporary Art , is at work on an unauthorized biography of mega-dealer  Larry Gagosian . It will be published by  Gallery Books , a division of  Simon & Schuster . No release date has been set.  [ARTnews]




President Biden  reestablished the  President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities , an advisory group that  President Trump  disbanded in 2017 after its members resigned to criticize his response to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.  [CNN]




The  Victoria and Albert Museum  in London has removed the  Sackler  name from its arts education center and a courtyard. It is the latest in a string of museums to cut ties with the Sackler family, some of whose members own  Purdue Pharma , the now-bankrupt maker of the OxyContin painkiller.  [ARTnews]




CAFE CULTURE.  Billionaire  Hasso Plattner  has restored the  Minsk  cafe in Potsdam, Germany, which was built in the 1970s, and will use it to  show his collection of East German art , the  Guardian  reports. Also, the  St. Fagans National Museum of History  in Cardiff, Wales, has acquired a beloved pub in the city that was once slated to be destroyed and is  rebuilding it on its grounds , per the  Art Newspaper .




ARTIST UPDATES.   Tschabalala Self  is in the  Financial Times ,  Barbara Chase-Riboud  is in  Frieze ,  Marilyn Nance  is in the  New York Times , and  Mary Mattingly  is in  T: The New York Times Style Magazine.




AUDIO GUIDES.  The podcast  This Day in Esoteric Political History  took a look at New York mayor  Rudy Giuliani ’s  1999 showdown  with the  Brooklyn Museum  over its “Sensation” exhibition, and curator  Helen Molesworth ’s  Death of an Artist  podcast, about the 1985 death of artist  Ana Mendieta , released  its third episode .




The Kicker




NICK HOLONYAK JR., AN INVENTOR OF ASTONISHING ACHIEVEMENT, has died at 93 , the  New York Times  reports. Over his long career, Holonyak’s breakthroughs included early LED lighting (integral to flatscreen TVs) and the lasers that allow DVD players to function—both essential elements for the display of so much video art. In college, Holonyak rebuffed a teacher’s suggestion that he pursue chemistry instead of his eventual expertise, electrical engineering. The  Times  quotes him in a 2012 interview with  General Electric  saying, “It’s a good thing I was an engineer and not a chemist. When I went to show them my LED, all the chemists at G.E. said, ‘You can’t do that. If you were a chemist, you’d know that wouldn’t work.’ I said, ‘Well, I just did it, and see, it works!’ ”  [NYT]