Lindsay Adams, Ranti Bam, and Salim Green joined new galleries;
Studio Museum in Harlem opening updates; Shakeup at Afro Brazil Museum; new Art Basel Awards; Suzanne Jackson at SFMOMA, and more
 


Lindsay Adams. | Photo by Ray Abercrombie, Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles

 

REPRESENTATION | June 3: Sean Kelly Gallery announced its representation of Lindsay Adams (b. 1990) in New York and Los Angeles, in collaboration with PATRON Gallery, which she will continue to work with in Chicago. Sean Kelly hosted its inaugural solo exhibition with Adams in Los Angeles in January 2025. “I’m honored to join Sean Kelly Gallery, a program committed to vision, creativity, and artists who continually push the boundaries of their practice. This marks a pivotal moment for me—an opportunity to deepen the questions I’m asking, expand the scope of the work, and grow within a dynamic community that challenges and inspires,” Adams said in a statement. Born in Washington, D.C., Adams earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2025). She is among the artists commissioned to make new works for the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. | More

MAGAZINES | June 3: Different Leaf, a journal of cannabis culture, is relaunching with Chicago artists Nick Cave and Bob Faust serving as guest editors of the forthcoming fall 2025 edition. The announcement explained why the publication is starting a new chapter: “Because cannabis culture doesn’t live in a vacuum—it intersects with art, music, food, and all kinds of creative movements shaping the world around us. We want to make a magazine that feels like a conversation with the very artists and culture-makers defining what’s next.” Cave, who is best known for his Soundsuits, works across sculpture, installation, video, sound, and performance. Faust is a designer who runs an eponymous design branding studio. Together, the creative and life partners, operate an artist space called Facility. Founded by publisher Michael Kusek in 2019, Different Leaf also debuted a new website design with a new content strategy and artist commissions. Los Angeles artist Devin Troy Strother is the first contributor. | More

< MAGAZINES | June 6: A wallpaper pattern by British artist Sonia Boyce (b. 1962) covers the latest issue of Ursula, the magazine published by Hauser & Wirth Gallery. Boyce came to prominence during the British Black Arts Movement in the 1980s. She works across film, photography, print, sound, and installation. Early on, she focused on race and gender issues. More recent work explores “questions of artistic authorship and cultural difference.” Inside Issue 13, Boyce is interviewed by Francis Till about the “magic of wallpaper” and her use of patterns in her work. The article accompanies “Sonia Boyce: Wallpaper,” a brief film (just under 6 minutes) directed by Yvonne Zhang. Boyce joined Hauser & Wirth two years ago and her first solo exhibition with the gallery opens in September in New York. | More

REPRESENTATION | June 6: Salim Green (b. 1996) joined François Ghebaly, which has locations in New York and Los Angeles. The representation is in collaboration with Société, Berlin. Exploring themes of concealment, visibility, and opacity, Green works across painting, sculpture, installation, sound, video, performance, and writing. In September, François Ghebaly will present Green’s debut exhibition in Los Angeles. Green earned an MFA from UCLA (2024). He divides his time between Los Angeles and Middletown, Conn., where he was born and is currently the Sullivan Fellow in Art at Wesleyan University. | More

APPOINTMENTS > | June 16: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest supporter of the arts and humanities in the United States, elected a new member to its board of trustees. Margaret Anadu, right, senior partner at private investment firm The Vistria Group, brings more than 20 years of experience in the investment industry to the role. She joined the board immediately. Photo courtesy Mellon Foundation | More

AWARDS & HONORS – FOOD | June 16: Toni Tipton Martin received the James Beard Foundation‘s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing her career-long dedication to food writing, Black culinary history, and nutrition. A journalist and author, Martin is editor in chief Cook’s Country Magazine, which is published by America’s Test Kitchen. In 1991, she became the first African American food editor of a major daily newspaper (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Martin is a three-time James Beard Book Award winner. Her celebrated titles include “The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks,” “Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book: Cocktails from Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks,” and “Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking: A Cookbook.” | New York Times

ACQUISITIONS – MUSIC | June 16: The archive of musician Wayne Shorter (1933-2023) has been entrusted to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The collection of the composer, jazz saxophonist, and band leader dates back to the 1950s. Measuring 128 linear feet, the archives includes 250 manuscripts, hundreds more handwritten scores, tapes and cassettes of unheard recordings, personal correspondence, business and financial records, royalty statements and licensing records, and other memorabilia. “I knew in my heart that there could not be a better place for Wayne’s archive, and this was exactly what he had envisioned,” Carolina Shorter, the artist’s wife said in a statement. “I trust his legacy will be preserved for future artists, scholars, and frankly, for the future of humanity.” An evening of music celebrating the acquisition is planned in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The free event is July 27 at The Underground at Jaffe Drive at Lincoln Center. | More

MUSEUMS > | June 17: The Studio Museum in Harlem announced new exhibitions, installations, and commissions in anticipation of the institution’s long-awaited opening this fall. A major survey of Tom Lloyd (1929-1996), the light artist who was the focus of the Studio Museum’s inaugural exhibition in 1968, will lead the exhibition lineup. (The Lloyd exhibition was first announced in October 2024.) A rotating selection of the museum’s unrivaled permanent collection will be showcased throughout the opening year—works dating from the 1800s to present, including new acquisitions, works that have undergone conservation, and many others on view for the first time in decades. In addition, the museum will highlight more than half a century of Studio Museum history with an archival exhibition, including photography and other ephemera; present a multigenerational exhibition of new works on paper by alumni of the museum’s much-heralded artist-in-residence program; and feature new site-specific commissions by Camille Norment, Christopher Myers, and Kapwani Kiwanga. Designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson as executive architect, the 82,000-square-foot museum building will also incorporate original furniture by Black artists and designers, including Ini Archibong, Stephen Burks, Mac Collins, Charles O. Job, Peter Mabeo, Michael Puryear, Marcus Samuelsson, and Sefako Tolu. | More

IMAGE: Above right, Exterior View of Studio Museum in Harlem’s New Building. | Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem. Photo: © Dror Baldinger FAIA

 
AWARDS & HONORS | June 17: The Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, announced Ayana Ross is the 2026 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence. Ross is an Atlanta, Ga.-based painter whose figurative scenes capture poignant familial moments and reflect an array of social issues, including race, identity, and value systems. She will have a solo exhibition at the Taft and lead public programming, teach workshops, and visit local schools next spring. Established in 1986, the residency program is marking its 40th year. | More

AWARDS & HONORS | June 17: The Baloise Art Prize was awarded to London-based artist Rhea Dillon and Lebanese Canadian artist Joyce Joumaa at Art Basel in Switzerland. Baloise is a Swiss insurance and banking company. The 30,000 CHF prize (more than US $37,000) recognizes emerging artists exhibiting in the Statements section of the art fair and includes the acquisition of two works by Baloise that are donated to major European institutions. This year, the recipients were MMK Frankfurt and the MUDAM, Luxembourg. Soft Opening Gallery of London showed the work of Dillon, a second generation British Jamaican artist. Her acquired work, “Leaning Figures,” is a group of more than 30 small wall-mounted sculptures that “grapples with ethnographic forms of presentation and the question of the origin of Sapele-Mahagony of the African continent and its use in building ships for slavery.” | More

 


Suzanne Jackson in her studio in Savannah, 2023. | © Peter Frank Edwards, Courtesy Peter Frank Edwards/Redux; Photo: Peter Frank Edwards

 

EXHIBITIONS | June 17: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced its fall exhibition schedule, including “Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love,” a major retrospective and the first exhibition dedicated to the full arc of the artist’s 60-year career. Based in Savannah, Ga., Suzanne Jackson (b. 1944) founded Gallery 32 in Los Angeles (1968-70). The SFMOMA exhibition will focus on her evolving artistic practice. “Driven by a search for creative freedom and a bohemian spirit indebted to the San Francisco ethos of the 1950s and 1960s in which she was raised,” the release said, “Jackson has led an expansive artistic life, first and foremost as a painter, and as a dancer, poet, theater designer and an ardent supporter of other artists.” The show was first officially announced in March and will feature 80 paintings and drawings and a new large-scale commission. | More

AWARDS & HONORS | June 19: Art Basel launched new Art Basel Awards, global awards recognizing the “full spectrum of artistic and cultural impact” across the industry in 12 categories. The 120 nominees were announced in May and a ceremony, reception, and summit were held at Art Basel for 36 medalists, including Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, David Hammons, and Lubaina Himid (Icon Artist); Ibrahim Mahama and Tony Cokes (Established Artist); Sofía Salazar Rosales (Emerging Artist); Grace Wales Bonner and Saidiya Hartman (Cross Disciplinary Creator); Art + Practice and RAW Material Company (Museum and Institutions). Additional categories included curator, patron, media and storyteller, and allies. In December, 12 gold medalists will be recognized at Art Basel Miami Beach. These select winners will receive “immediate, flexible support through artist honorariums, alongside global networking, philanthropic initiatives, tailored partnerships, and high-profile commissions designed to propel Gold Medalists’ work onto new global platforms.” One of the summit panels was dedicated to late arts leader Koyo Kouoh (1967-2025), a member of the jury whose RAW Material Company, the art space she founded in Dakar, Senegal, was among the medalists. | More

< APPOINTMENTS | June 24: The Sharjah Art Foundation announced the curators for the next Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. Angela Harutyunyan, left, and Paula Nascimento, right, will organize Sharjah Biennial 17, which opens in January 2027. The duo brings an array of experience across geographies and disciplines. In Germany, Harutyunyan is professor of contemporary art and theory at Berlin University of the Arts and Nascimento is an independent curator and architect based in Luanda, Angola. “I am interested in thinking with artists and in the articulations between artmaking and infrastructure in an expanded way, as well as exploring art’s capacity to imagine and propose spaces and other worlds and forms of relations,” Nascimento said in a statement. Photo: Courtesy Sharjah Biennial | More

AWARDS & HONORS | June 25: Painter and printmaker Alexandria Couch was named 2025 Aminah Robinson Artist Resident. The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA), announced the news in partnership with the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Couch divides her time between Ohio, New York, and New Haven, Conn., where she was a 2023 NXTHVN Studio Fellow. Her latest opportunity includes a $15,000 cash award and a three-month residency. Beginning Sept. 1, Couch will live and work in Columbus, in the renovated home studio of late artist Aminah Robinson (1940-2015). Couch plans to spend the residency continuing to “explore her ancestral history through themes that Aminah Robinson shared–quilt making, found objects, photographs, and family documents–creating a new body of work that explores Black resilience, memory, and communal knowledge.” Robinson bequeathed her estate to CMA and the museum established the Aminah Robinson Legacy Project, including the residency progam. | More

 


Hélio Menezes said he was dismissed as artistic director of Afro Brazil Museum Emanoel Araujo under “structures predominantly composed of individuals disconnected from the diversity of Black leadership that the Museum represents (or should represent),”… | Instagram @helio.menezes

 

APPOINTMENTS | June 25: Ousted from his role as artistic director of Afro Brazil Museum Emanoel Araujo, Hélio Menezes posted a lengthy statement on Instagram about the circumstances of his departure. Appointed in March 2024, Menezes said the announcement of his dismissal occurred during a period when he was experiencing “serious health issues” that required hospitalization and convalescence. Introducing the post, Menezes wrote: “The situation is serious, unfortunate, and requires attention.” Several art publications including ArtReview, ARTnews, and Artforum reported the news. The museum told a local outlet the firing stemmed from “a lack of consensus regarding the terms of the director’s performance.” Afro Brazil Museum Emanoel Araujo in São Paulo, Brazil, bears the name of its founder, the late artist and curator Emanoel Araujo (1940-2022) whose estate is now represented by Jack Shainman Gallery. The museum is dedicated to African and Afro-diasporic art, history, and culture and has a collection of 6,000 works by Black artists dating from the 15th century to the present. A curator and anthropologist, Hélio previously served as a curator at Centro Cultural São Paulo, co-curated the Brazil version of the landmark exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories (2018), and co-curated 35th São Paulo Biennial in 2023. | More

“[C]onfronting decision-making structures shaped by informality, personalism, and a lack of transparency—structures predominantly composed of individuals disconnected from the diversity of Black leadership that the Museum represents (or should represent), and lacking engagement with the world of visual arts—proved to be an impossible choreography to inhabit.” — Hélio Menezes

 


From left, Banti Ram in her studio. | Photo by Laura Stevens, Courtesy the artist and James Cohan; RANTI BAM, Alternative views of “Ifa 1,” 2024 (stoneware, 40 1/2 x 15 x 16 inches / 102.9 x 38.1 x 40.6 cm). | © Ranti Bam. Photos by Matthew Hermann, Courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery

 

REPRESENTATION | June 25: British-Nigerian artist Ranti Bam (b. 1982) is now represented by James Cohan Gallery in New York. Bam makes clay vessels. The abstract sculptures channel “semiotic aspects of the feminine; confronting notions of intimacy, care and fragility.” Her debut solo exhibition with James Cohan opened in May 2024 and her work is currently on view in the 2025 Annual Exhibition, a group show at The Campus, which is located in Hudson, N.Y., and owned by a consortium of six galleries, including James Cohan. | More

< APPOINTMENTS | June 30: In Texas, Lisa Brown Ross, left, is joining the African America Museum, Dallas as president and CEO. The appointment is effective July 21. She is succeeding Harry Robinson Jr., the president and CEO emeritus, who founded the museum in 1974 and led the institution for more than 50 years. Ross brings a longstanding career in nonprofit leadership and public affairs. In her most recent roles, she served as director of marketing and development at Anthem Strong Families in Dallas and president of LJR Group, a strategic communications and public relations firm. “As someone who has spent a lifetime building this institution, I see in Lisa the same dedication to education, a steadfast resolve to preserving our heritage, and a passion for building community,” Robinson said in a statement. “It brings me great joy to pass the torch to someone as accomplished, creative and committed as Lisa.” Photo courtesy AAMD | More
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