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Art Tattler covers art, collecting, medals and coins

Contemporary

Louise Bourgeois and the Workshop of Memory

From a tapestry repair workshop near Paris to the giant spider Maman, Louise Bourgeois turned family memory into sculpture across seven decades of work.

Artists

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Medals and Coins

Coins and medals are sculpture at the scale of a hand. A section most art magazines skip, from Lydian electrum to Saint-Gaudens.

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Movements

Collecting and Coins

Collectors and Collections

Reading the Paper Trail: How Provenance Is Researched

Ownership histories, sale catalogues, the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the Washington Principles: how museums research where art and antiquities have been.

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Contemporary Art

Kara Walker: Silhouettes, Sugar and a Fountain for the Atlantic

Kara Walker made the cut paper silhouette into history painting, then took it to monumental scale with a sugar sphinx in Brooklyn and a fountain at Tate.

Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Performance

Lawrence Weiner and the Sculpture That Need Not Be Built

After students cut his twine in 1968, Lawrence Weiner decided a sculpture could exist as words. His Statement of Intent made language a material for 50 years.

Global Contemporary Art

Pouran Jinchi and the Marks Left When the Words Are Gone

Trained as a calligrapher in Mashhad and based in New York, Pouran Jinchi takes Persian script apart, painting the marks of Quranic recitation minus the text.

Contemporary Art

Widow: Peregrine Honig, Landfall Press and a Print Disguised as a Magazine

How Landfall Press, the print workshop Jack Lemon founded in Chicago in 1970, came to publish Widow, Peregrine Honig's 2010 print bound as a fashion magazine.

Global Contemporary Art

Moataz Nasr: Reflections in a Cairo Puddle, a Village on Film

Moataz Nasr trained in economics, won the Cairo Biennial in 2001, founded Darb 1718 in Old Cairo and filled Egypt's Venice pavilion in 2017 with The Mountain.

Collectors and Collections

Museum Vrolik: A Father and Son's Anatomy Cabinet in Amsterdam

Gerard and Willem Vrolik built a private anatomy collection in their Amsterdam canal house. It now fills Museum Vrolik at Amsterdam UMC, hard history and all.

Modern Masters, 1870 to 1945

Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia: Three Friends and the Making of Dada

Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia made Dada in wartime New York and stayed friends for life, from Fountain to Rrose Sélavy and the Société Anonyme.

Film, Video and Music

Marijke van Warmerdam and the Endless Film Loop

A girl does a handstand, a man takes a shower, a feather rides the wind. Marijke van Warmerdam splices end to beginning and lets small actions repeat.

Global Contemporary Art

Rio de Janeiro, 1956 to 1964: When Geometry Learned to Move

How Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Pape turned Concrete geometry into objects to handle, wear and dance in, from Grupo Frente to the 1959 manifesto.

Modern Masters, 1870 to 1945

Winston Churchill, Painter: Charles Morin, David Winter and the Studio at Chartwell

Churchill took up painting in 1915 after the Dardanelles disaster, showed in Paris as Charles Morin and sent work to the Royal Academy as David Winter.

Film, Video and Music

From Plotter to Blockchain: How Digital Art Entered the Museum

From the plotter drawings of Frieder Nake, Vera Molnar and Manfred Mohr to NFTs bought by the Centre Pompidou and LACMA: how museums learned to collect.

Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Performance

The Pictures Generation: Five Artists, One Word, and a Decade of Borrowed Images

Douglas Crimp's 1977 Pictures show at Artists Space named a generation: Sherman, Levine, Longo, Prince, Kruger and Simmons, surveyed by the Met in 2009.

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