Koyo Kouoh’s Final Show

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Daily Newsletter

Koyo Kouoh’s Final Show

The Louvre gets a new director, the world’s largest sock monkey, and remembering artists we lost this week.

Nine months after the passing of Koyo Kouoh, the Venice Biennale has named the 111 artists and collectives in the prestigious international exhibition she curated and titled: In Minor Keys. Each artist functions almost as a musical key signature of their own, which together “refuse the orchestral bombast and goose-step military marches and come alive in the quiet tones, the lower frequencies.”

That description comes from Rasha Salti, one of the exhibition advisors who spoke at yesterday’s announcement of the roster. It’s an apt invitation to think of curation as an act of composition, with Kouoh’s vision singing at every turn.

—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor


The main pavilion at the Giardini during the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 (photo by Simone Padovani via Getty Images)

Venice Biennale Names 111 Artists for International Exhibition

The selected artists include Wangechi Mutu, Cauleen Smith, Carolina Caycedo, and Khaled Sabsabi, who made headlines last year when Australia rescinded and then reinstated his selection for its national pavilion. Notably, Kouoh’s team announced that the coveted Golden Lion awards will not be given this year, as the curator was unable to make her selections before her death last May at age 57.


SPONSORED
CTA Image

Matthew Bogdanos Awarded Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History for Repatriation of Stolen Artifacts

The leader of the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is acknowledged for his lifelong dedication to recovering and safeguarding looted antiquities.

Learn more


News

New Louvre leader Christophe Leribault in 2024 (photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
  • The Louvre has appointed Christophe Leribault as its new director, just one day after Laurence des Cars’s resignation in the wake of jewel-heist backlash and renovation issues at the museum (which she warned of last year).
  • Punch isn’t the only monkey in the news this week — a 22-year-old artist just set a world record for the longest sock monkey ever made.

From Our Critics

Still from By Design (2026), dir. Andrea Kramer (image courtesy Music Box Films)

“By Design” Treats Women Like Objects

Juliette Lewis turns into a chair in a film that critiques mass culture’s conflation of femininity with consumerism and envy. | Eileen G’Sell


SPONSORED
CTA Image

The Rubin’s Annual Grant Program Funds Himalayan Art and Research

The 2026 grant cycle opens February 16. Submit a letter of intent by March 6.

Learn more


In Memoriam

Self-portrait of Évi Fábián artist (2011) (photo by Évi Fábián via Wikimedia Commons)

Remembering Dóra Maurer, Isaiah Zagar, and Peter Stämpfli

This week, we honor a Hungarian avant-garde artist, a Philadelphia mosaicist, a Swiss pop artist, and others.


Member Comment

Vicki Meek on Ed Simon’s “The Marquis de Sade of the Upper East Side”:

This article is both illuminating and disturbing, given that most Americans likely have never heard of the Marquis de Sade and therefore can’t appreciate the history repeats itself aspect of the Epstein Files horror. I particularly appreciate Simon’s explanation of the class dynamic in addition to the victimization of women and girls because that hasn’t been emphasized during this entire conversation about the victims.

Commenting privileges are reserved for paid members. Join us today!


ICYMI

Queen Marie-Amélie’s diadem (© RMN – Grand Palais, Musée du Louvre; photo by Mathieu Rabeau)

The Louvre Heist Was a Colonial Wake-Up Call

The stunning theft reveals more than a failure of security: It lays bare how austerity, neglect, and unresolved colonial legacies continue to haunt the museum. | Emiline Smith

Daily Newsletter

Koyo Kouoh’s Final Show

The Louvre gets a new director, the world’s largest sock monkey, and remembering artists we lost this week.

Nine months after the passing of Koyo Kouoh, the Venice Biennale has named the 111 artists and collectives in the prestigious international exhibition she curated and titled: In Minor Keys. Each artist functions almost as a musical key signature of their own, which together “refuse the orchestral bombast and goose-step military marches and come alive in the quiet tones, the lower frequencies.”

That description comes from Rasha Salti, one of the exhibition advisors who spoke at yesterday’s announcement of the roster. It’s an apt invitation to think of curation as an act of composition, with Kouoh’s vision singing at every turn.

—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor


The main pavilion at the Giardini during the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 (photo by Simone Padovani via Getty Images)

Venice Biennale Names 111 Artists for International Exhibition

The selected artists include Wangechi Mutu, Cauleen Smith, Carolina Caycedo, and Khaled Sabsabi, who made headlines last year when Australia rescinded and then reinstated his selection for its national pavilion. Notably, Kouoh’s team announced that the coveted Golden Lion awards will not be given this year, as the curator was unable to make her selections before her death last May at age 57.


SPONSORED
CTA Image

Matthew Bogdanos Awarded Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History for Repatriation of Stolen Artifacts

The leader of the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is acknowledged for his lifelong dedication to recovering and safeguarding looted antiquities.

Learn more


News

New Louvre leader Christophe Leribault in 2024 (photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
  • The Louvre has appointed Christophe Leribault as its new director, just one day after Laurence des Cars’s resignation in the wake of jewel-heist backlash and renovation issues at the museum (which she warned of last year).
  • Punch isn’t the only monkey in the news this week — a 22-year-old artist just set a world record for the longest sock monkey ever made.

From Our Critics

Still from By Design (2026), dir. Andrea Kramer (image courtesy Music Box Films)

“By Design” Treats Women Like Objects

Juliette Lewis turns into a chair in a film that critiques mass culture’s conflation of femininity with consumerism and envy. | Eileen G’Sell


SPONSORED
CTA Image

The Rubin’s Annual Grant Program Funds Himalayan Art and Research

The 2026 grant cycle opens February 16. Submit a letter of intent by March 6.

Learn more


In Memoriam

Self-portrait of Évi Fábián artist (2011) (photo by Évi Fábián via Wikimedia Commons)

Remembering Dóra Maurer, Isaiah Zagar, and Peter Stämpfli

This week, we honor a Hungarian avant-garde artist, a Philadelphia mosaicist, a Swiss pop artist, and others.


Member Comment

Vicki Meek on Ed Simon’s “The Marquis de Sade of the Upper East Side”:

This article is both illuminating and disturbing, given that most Americans likely have never heard of the Marquis de Sade and therefore can’t appreciate the history repeats itself aspect of the Epstein Files horror. I particularly appreciate Simon’s explanation of the class dynamic in addition to the victimization of women and girls because that hasn’t been emphasized during this entire conversation about the victims.

Commenting privileges are reserved for paid members. Join us today!


ICYMI

Queen Marie-Amélie’s diadem (© RMN – Grand Palais, Musée du Louvre; photo by Mathieu Rabeau)

The Louvre Heist Was a Colonial Wake-Up Call

The stunning theft reveals more than a failure of security: It lays bare how austerity, neglect, and unresolved colonial legacies continue to haunt the museum. | Emiline Smith

Nine months after the passing of Koyo Kouoh, the Venice Biennale has named the 111 artists and collectives in the prestigious international exhibition she curated and titled: In Minor Keys. Each artist functions almost as a musical key signature of their own, which together “refuse the orchestral bombast and goose-step military marches and come alive in the quiet tones, the lower frequencies.”

That description comes from Rasha Salti, one of the exhibition advisors who spoke at yesterday’s announcement of the roster. It’s an apt invitation to think of curation as an act of composition, with Kouoh’s vision singing at every turn.

—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor


The main pavilion at the Giardini during the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 (photo by Simone Padovani via Getty Images)

Venice Biennale Names 111 Artists for International Exhibition

The selected artists include Wangechi Mutu, Cauleen Smith, Carolina Caycedo, and Khaled Sabsabi, who made headlines last year when Australia rescinded and then reinstated his selection for its national pavilion. Notably, Kouoh’s team announced that the coveted Golden Lion awards will not be given this year, as the curator was unable to make her selections before her death last May at age 57.


SPONSORED
CTA Image

Matthew Bogdanos Awarded Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History for Repatriation of Stolen Artifacts

The leader of the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is acknowledged for his lifelong dedication to recovering and safeguarding looted antiquities.

Learn more


News

New Louvre leader Christophe Leribault in 2024 (photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
  • The Louvre has appointed Christophe Leribault as its new director, just one day after Laurence des Cars’s resignation in the wake of jewel-heist backlash and renovation issues at the museum (which she warned of last year).
  • Punch isn’t the only monkey in the news this week — a 22-year-old artist just set a world record for the longest sock monkey ever made.

From Our Critics

Still from By Design (2026), dir. Andrea Kramer (image courtesy Music Box Films)

“By Design” Treats Women Like Objects

Juliette Lewis turns into a chair in a film that critiques mass culture’s conflation of femininity with consumerism and envy. | Eileen G’Sell


SPONSORED
CTA Image

The Rubin’s Annual Grant Program Funds Himalayan Art and Research

The 2026 grant cycle opens February 16. Submit a letter of intent by March 6.

Learn more


In Memoriam

Self-portrait of Évi Fábián artist (2011) (photo by Évi Fábián via Wikimedia Commons)

Remembering Dóra Maurer, Isaiah Zagar, and Peter Stämpfli

This week, we honor a Hungarian avant-garde artist, a Philadelphia mosaicist, a Swiss pop artist, and others.


Member Comment

Vicki Meek on Ed Simon’s “The Marquis de Sade of the Upper East Side”:

This article is both illuminating and disturbing, given that most Americans likely have never heard of the Marquis de Sade and therefore can’t appreciate the history repeats itself aspect of the Epstein Files horror. I particularly appreciate Simon’s explanation of the class dynamic in addition to the victimization of women and girls because that hasn’t been emphasized during this entire conversation about the victims.

Commenting privileges are reserved for paid members. Join us today!


ICYMI

Queen Marie-Amélie’s diadem (© RMN – Grand Palais, Musée du Louvre; photo by Mathieu Rabeau)

The Louvre Heist Was a Colonial Wake-Up Call

The stunning theft reveals more than a failure of security: It lays bare how austerity, neglect, and unresolved colonial legacies continue to haunt the museum. | Emiline Smith

Raw Material: The Art and Life of Susan Kleckner

Raw Material: The Art and Life of Susan Kleckner

This exhibition at Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is the first comprehensive retrospective of the pioneering feminist, filmmaker, photographer, and performance artist.

Haverford College
Artists Thinking Out Loud: The IFPDA Returns to the Park Avenue Armory this April

Artists Thinking Out Loud: The IFPDA Returns to the Park Avenue Armory this April

The fair will bring together 80 exhibitors and an expanded focus on drawings in a nod to the medium’s long-standing relationship with printmaking.

IFPDA
Detroit Institute of Arts Reinstalls African American Galleries at the Heart of the Museum

Detroit Institute of Arts Reinstalls African American Galleries at the Heart of the Museum

African American art history has often been underrepresented. “Reimagine African American Art” invites visitors to discover transformative works across two centuries.

Detroit Institute of Arts
Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom

Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom

The only US presentation of this exhibition by renowned artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme is on view at The Bell Gallery, Brown University.

The Bell

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2026-06-24 19:36:59

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