Maurizio Cattelan and Myriam Ben Salah. Matthew Reeves/BFA.com

Maurizio Cattelan Turned This Years RenBen Gala into a Silent Party

What a blessing to have silence not just available but imposed at an art event—to finally be able to focus on the experience of the art without the distraction of social interaction. For a writer like myself, who hopes for exactly that condition every time I visit a show, this year’s Renaissance Society gala in Chicago was simply perfect. “A lot of events mistake noise for energy, and I wanted to undo that confusion,” artist Maurizio Cattelan, who designed the event, tells me, adding that silence changes how people receive things. “It is not that communication stops altogether; it just becomes less efficient and more exposed. People write, they wait, they look longer.” To him, it felt like a good premise for an art event, though he acknowledged that many artists have engaged with silence far better than he ever could, from John Cage to Joseph Grigely. “I was not trying to make a statement so much as interrupt an automatic behavior. A gala usually runs on social reflex, and silence makes that reflex visible.”

Via Observer

Dealers Are Doing Brisk Business at a Smaller and ‘More Intentional’ Expo Chicago 

Tears of joy are not the first thing you expect to hear about at art fairs, but that was the order of the day for Tennessee artist Annie Brito Hodgin at Thursday’s VIP preview at the thirteenth edition of Expo Chicago (April 9–12), where she is showing her paintings with Red Arrow Gallery.

Via ARTnews

Daring and Dazzling, a New LACMA Floats Above Los Angeles

Forecasts were dire about what’s officially called the David Geffen Galleries, after the donor who gave $150 million.

“The blob that ate Wilshire Boulevard,” announced Architectural Record in 2014. “Suicide by architecture,” lamented The L.A. Review of Books five years later.

The building opens to museum members in the coming weeks and to the general public on May 4. I expect it will be wildly popular.

Via NYT

At Expo Chicago, a crew of collectors bond over Black art

For one group of collectors, Expo Chicago is not just an art fair but a family reunion.

On Thursday afternoon, they trickled into Navy Pier’s Festival Hall, offering enthusiastic hugs and handshakes. The cohort included everyone from health care professionals to military veterans, who traveled from Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Kansas City, Mo., and other major cities. Before touring the galleries, they gathered in the center of the venue for a champagne toast to “building together.”

Via WBEZ