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The Headlines




A DISPATCH FROM DOWN UNDER.  On December 3, the  Art Gallery of New South Wales  will open to the public a vast new wing, dubbed  Sydney Modern , which doubles its exhibition space. One notable feature of the opening at the  SANAA –designed venue, which was built for some AU$344 million (US$231 million), is that  just over half  of the art it is displaying (53 percent) was made by women, the  Sydney Morning Herald  reports. The museum will host  nine days of free programs , including performances and panel discussions,  ArtAsiaPacific  reports. And  Designboom  has  a photo-rich feature  on the building, which is the first public Australian art museum to be given a six-star Green Star design rating for its environmental sustainability.




A HOMECOMING.  In a profile that doubles as  a survey of the current Berlin art landscape ,  WSJ Magazine  chatted with  Klaus Biesenbach , who started as  director  of the  Neue Nationalgalerie  earlier this year. Some intriguing tidbits: Biesenbach was offered the job 14 years ago but turned it down (“my biggest professional mistake”), and he’s “working very diligently” with architect  Jacques Herzog  on making tweaks to the design of the  controversial , under-construction  Museum of the 20th Century , which is under his purview. A few years ago, the former  MoMA PS1  leader  wrote about cutting his teeth in art world  of the German capital in the 1990s in  ARTnews . Now that he is back there, he told  WSJ , “For me it’s like two movies: I see this world now and I also see how it was 33 years ago, and it’s an incredible change.”




The Digest




The  Hammer Museum  in Los Angeles said that it will unveil the final component of its ongoing expansion and renovation on March 26, which includes a new lobby. The project adds 40,000 square feet of space to the museum; about a quarter of that is for exhibitions. The museum also announced that it has raised $156 million for a $180-million capital campaign.  [Los Angeles Times]




Staffers at the  Royal Society of the Arts  in London voted to unionize, with 86 percent in favor of joining the  Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain  (IWGB). The RSA’s leadership had opposed the move, though the organization gave an award to the IWGB a few years back for its efforts to unionize gig-economy workers.  [The Guardian]




Artist  Graeme Drendel  won Australia’s AU$150,000 ($100,500)  Doug Moran National Portrait Prize —the art award with the biggest purse in the country—for a portrait he made of fellow artist  Lewis Miller , who had entered with a painting of Drendel. “I expected his painting of me to win, it is a ripper,” Drendel said.  [The Guardian]




Art critic  Ben Davis  visited the immersive digital experience “ Gustav Klimt : Gold in Motion” at New York’s  Hall des Lumières  with Klimt expert  Jane Kallir , who offered a mixed review of the proceedings.  [Artnet News]




The 2023 edition of  Architectural Digest ’s AD100—a grouping of top design talents—includes art-world favorites  SO-IL  (who did the  Amant  art space in Brooklyn),  WHY  (the  Cheech Marin Center ), and  Green River Project  (whose founders previously worked for artists  Nate Lowman  and  Robert Gober .  [AD]




There’s never a dull moment down in Miami Beach. Singer  Pink  reportedly snapped up a $5,000 painting from a show of art by chimpanzees that was curated by (human) artist  Karen Bystedt  at the  New World Symphony Center . Proceeds from the exhibition are benefiting the  Save the Chimps  sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida.  [Page Six]




The Kicker




BAD PAINTING.  In the new film  Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery , actor  Edward Norton  plays an ultra-wealthy, ultra-ostentatious entrepreneur with a formidable art collection. The  Wall Street Journal  took a look at how the movie’s creators went about  selecting his art holdings . Some spoilers: There’s a  Mark Rothko  (hung upside-down), a juicy late  Cy Twombly , and—why not?— a boat dock said to be designed by  Banksy  . “For all of us, it had to be just the wrong side of gauche and bad taste,” set decorator  Elli Griff  told the paper.  [WSJ]