Art Photos mixed

Organisers of the forthcoming show From Selfie to Self-Expression at the Saatchi Gallery in London this spring (31 March-30 May) stress*that this will be “the world’s first exhibition exploring the history of the selfie from the old masters to the present day”.

The show, held in partnership with the mobile phone brand Huawei, will include works by masters of self-portraiture such as Cindy Sherman, Van Gogh, Tracey Emin and Gavin Turk.

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This Sunday, the Spanish interior ministry released the results of Operation Pandora, an international police investigation related to an illegal trafficking ring in cultural property, coming mainly from conflict zones. The operation, launched by Spain and Cyprus last autumn, went into action from 17-23 November 2016 and involved authorities from 18 European countries. It led to the arrest of 75 individuals and the seizure of 3,561 cultural objects, half of which were antiquities.The operation—supported by Unesco, Interpol, Europol and the World Customs Organization—involved checks of nearly 50,000 individuals, 30,000 vehicles and 50 ships. By the end of the operation, 92 new investigations related to the fight against illegal trafficking in cultural property were opened in Europe, the Spanish ministry indicated.

Among the objects confiscated in Spain are 500 archaeology artefacts, including 19 stolen in 2014 from the Murcia Archaeological Museum. The analysis of online sales also led to the seizure of 400 coins, from different eras, with questionable provenance. In Greece, a marble tombstone from the Ottoman Empire and an 18th-century icon in the post-Byzantine style representing Saint George were found. In Cyprus, 40 objects were discovered at the post office in Larnaca, where the country’s main airport is located. From the 44 searches carried out in homes and other buildings in Cyprus, 1,383 objects and 13 metal detectors were also seized. France did not participate in the operation.

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The most romantic day of the year is almost here (yes, we're already thinking about 14 February)*and, as ever, the art world has the big night covered. Adventure-seekers in London and Liverpool can reach new heights of pleasure at Grope Mountain—a climbable wall made with custom holds shaped like human orifices and appendages.

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Since it was founded in Wales in 2002, the biennial Artes Mundi Prize has produced winners that live up to its title: “arts of the world”. Xu Bing, the first winner, hails from China, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, the second, from Finland, N.S. Harsha from India, Yael Bartana from Israel, Teresa Margolles from Mexico, while last edition’s recipient was the Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates.

For the first time in its history, this year’s winner is the British artist John Akomfrah, though the themes of his work—which include migration, colonialisation and the environment—could hardly be more international.Akomfrah was announced as the winner of the £40,000 prize at a celebration Thursday evening at the National Museum Cardiff, the host of the Artes Mundi exhibition, alongside another Cardiff-based arts institution, Chapter (until 26 February). He is showing a powerful, 40-minute, two-screen video, Auto Da Fé (2016), which muses on the theme of mass migration over a 400-year period. “I wanted to focus on the fact that many people have to leave because something terrible is happening, it’s not just about leaving for a better life, many people feel they have to leave to have a life at all,” Akomfrah says.

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beginning by Tiger Seo

The Uffizi Galleries in Florence will show more work by female artists starting this spring, as one of the world’s oldest art museums seeks to redress a historic gender imbalance in a long-term initiative. An exhibition aiming to revive the reputation of Suor Plautilla Nelli (1523-87), a nun who is Florence’s first-known female Renaissance painter, is due to open at the Uffizi on 8 March (until 30 April) to coincide with International Women’s Day. Two weeks later, the Uffizi’s sister museum across the River Arno, the Pitti Palace, will open a show of self-portraits by the late Austrian artist and feminist Maria Lassnig (24 March-28 June).



Uffizi’s new initiative starts with works by the artist-nun, Suor Plautilla Nelli. Photo ©*Rabatti & Domingie

The Plautilla Nelli display will be the first in an “open-ended” annual series of exhibitions dedicated to female artists from history, says Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. The German-born art historian, who was formerly a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is one of seven foreign directors appointed in a dramatic shake-up of Italy’s top state museums in 2014.

Around a dozen paintings by Nelli, several of them only recently identified in churches and museums across central Italy, will be shown alongside works from her Dominican convent, Schmidt says. The Florence-based Advancing Women Artists Foundation, which has restored a number of Nelli’s works, is funding the publication of a catalogue.

Meanwhile, the decision to show Lassnig’s paintings was inspired by the Uffizi’s famous collection of self-portraits, which dates back to the 17th century. The selection of around 30 works—drawn from the Albertina in Vienna, which is staging an exhibition of Lassnig’s drawings in May—is also a statement of feminist intent. “Lassnig was always concerned about her body as a female body, and the relationship between male and female bodies,” Schmidt says. The exhibition could herald a parallel programme of annual contemporary shows by female artists at the Pitti Palace.

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Change is coming to New York’s oldest fair for new art. Since Ben Genocchio took over as director of the Armory Show (2-5 March) in late 2015 (from Noah Horowitz, who left to become director of the Americas for Art Basel), he has been on a mission to revitalise the format with the hope, he says, of putting the focus back on the art.Genocchio, a former art critic and editorial director of Artnet News, decided to take the Armory Show’s 200,000 sq. ft industrial venue, Piers 92 and 94 on the city’s far west side, as his starting point. “I think trying to understand what distinguishes the fair, good or bad, and making that a key component is a smart way of making it a more distinctive and memorable experience,” he says.



Benjamin Genocchio has been appointed executive director of the Armory Show

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The New York-based artist Nari Ward had not intended to make a third version of his monumental work, We the People, an installation of shoelaces spelling out the first line of the preamble to the United States Constitution, which he first made in 2011. But he and his assistants will set up a workshop in the lobby of the New-York Historical Society from 20-24 February to create We the People (N-YHS Version) in front of museum visitors.



Nari Ward, We the People (2011) (Image: Will Brown, Speed Art Museum)

This is “not meant to be entertainment”, the artist explains, but a participatory experience; visitors can trade in their own shoelaces to be used in the piece—which requires around 1,000 pairs—for new ones. And after the live installation, the work will be permanently displayed at the museum lobby, to be officially unveiled on 25 February.The presentation is part of the New-York Historical Society’s Presidency Project, a programme of events and exhibitions held in January and February 2017 to mark the presidential inauguration and explore the notion of citizenship.

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In the breaks between the slalom and the downhill, those traveling to St Moritz for this year’s FIS Alpine World Ski Championships (until 19 February) can also make time for some quiet reflection, courtesy of the German artist Heinz Mack. On a footpath by the city’s lake, framed by evergreen trees, the nearby mountains and with a clear view to the town, stand nine monumental golden columns, each more than seven metres tall and covered in hundreds of thousands of mosaic tiles.The installation, titled The Sky Over Nine Columns, has already been shown in Venice, Istanbul and Valencia. These projects—public and on a grand scale—are among Mack’s favourite because they largely skirt the institutional space, which he long ago identified as too stifling.




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The New York-based non-profit public art producer Creative Time announced today that Elvira Dyangani Ose has joined as senior curator. Ose previously lectured on visual arts at Goldsmiths, University of London and was a member the curatorial group Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. Ose will collaborate with Nato Thompson—who joined Creative Time in 2007 and has now been promoted to artistic director—to further shape how the institution engages with the public to develop works of art. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Ose gives us an idea of what she plans to achieve in New York.

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