Cody Hartley named Georgia O’Keeffe Museum director

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Cody Hartley named Georgia O’Keeffe Museum director | The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico has named Cody Hartley as its new director. Hartley, who has been serving as interim director since the departure of Robert Kret in January, has worked for the museum for the past six years. His previous roles include director of curatorial affairs and senior director of collections and interpretation.

Controversy over migrant boat at Venice Biennale | Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel’s work in the Venice Biennale – a fishing boat that capsized in 2015, killing more than 700 migrants from Libya, salvaged and installed at the Arsenale – has attracted criticism, due in part to the absence of explanatory text near the vessel. (A spokesperson for Büchel stated that explanatory text would ‘disrupt the process by which questions are raised, assumptions are made, intentions are projected onto the project, and a meaningful debate ensues.’) In the Guardian, Italian correspondent Lorenzo Tondo expressed unease: ‘[T]urning the commemoration of such tragedies into a spectacle risks diminishing – if not exploiting – the suffering associated with the migrant crisis.’

National Gallery’s Artemisia Gentileschi goes on view at secondary school | Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait (c. 1615–17), will be displayed this week at Sacred Heart Catholic high school in Newcastle upon Tyne alongside student artwork. The secondary school visit is part of the painting’s ‘grand tour’ of non-traditional installation sites, including the Glasgow Women’s Library and a GP surgery. The painting was purchased by the National Gallery last year for £3.6m. 

Recommended reading | In the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight goes down the rabbit hole with a deceptively simple question: How does one hang paintings on concrete walls?