Artist Raymond Saunders has died, Next Ford Foundation President announced, Prospect New Orleans paused, Amy Sherald canceled Smithsonian exhibition
MAGAZINES | July/August: Works by self-taught Alabama artist Bill Traylor (circa 1853-1949) grace the latest cover of The Magazine Antiques. The image captures an installation of eight drawings by Traylor in the New York apartment of Jerry Lauren, who collects American folk art with a particular interest in weathervanes. Lauren is Ralph Lauren’s older brother and former executive vice president of men’s design at Polo Ralph Lauren. In the mid-1980s, Lauren began collecting with his late wife Susan Lauren. The museum-quality collection also includes face jugs, toy trucks, decoys, and the work of William Edmondson. Inside the July/August issue, Cara Zimmerman explores the collection in an article titled, “The Great Ones.” | More
APPOINTMENTS | July 1: The Ford Foundation in New York announced Heather Gerken would be its next president. She is currently dean of Yale Law School and starts at Ford in November. Last July, Darren Walker announced he was stepping down as president of the Ford Foundation “by the end of 2025.” Ford has an endowment of $16 billion. Since 2013, Walker’s leadership, at the foundation and in the sector at-large, has focused on transformational investments in the arts, social and economic equity, and criminal justice reform. | More
AWARDS & HONORS | July 4: Lauryn Lawrence, a Jamaican and Dominican-American curator and photographer based in Miami, Fla., landed an international travel opportunity thanks to the American Friends of Zeitz MOCAA. (The nonprofit AFOZM supports the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town, South Africa.) Lawrence was awarded the 2025 Curator Grant for a U.S.-based art curator and will join the 2025 Zeitz MOCAA Curated Art Tour to Rwanda and Uganda (Sept. 15-19). | More
APPOINTMENTS > | July 7: Former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (right) joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as a senior fellow. During the yearlong appointment, she will focus on scholarship, writing, and research and advise on “opportunities to support and advance libraries, archives, and other organizations in the public knowledge ecosystem.” Hayden became the first woman and first African American to lead the Library of Congress in September 2016. She was fired on May 8 via a two-sentence email from the Trump Administration’s Office of Presidential Personnel. Photo by Shawn Miller, Courtesy Mellon Foundation | More
DESIGN | July 8: Artist Lorna Simpson put her live/work studio in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, on the market for $6.5 million. Completed in 2006, the four-story, 3,293-square-foot property includes three bedrooms/offices and two-and-a-half bathrooms. Commissioned by Simpson and her then-husband artist James Casebere, the modern-minimalist building was designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye. | Culture Type
BIENNIALS | July 8: Prospect New Orleans is pausing its triennial exhibition and will not host the next edition in 2027. The organization decided to step back in order to focus on archiving and documenting the previous six editions with a major publication titled “20 Years of Prospect.” The possibility remains that the triennial exhibition will restart in coming years. The first Prospect New Orleans was mounted in 2007 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. | ARTnews
< APPOINTMENTS | July 10: The Arkansas Arts Council named Brazier Watts (left) interim director. Watts was elevated from within. She has been on staff at the council for more than 15 years, serving as a grants administrator and grants manager. | More
AWARDS & HONORS | July 12: Nari Ward received the 2025 Cummings Award for Artistic Excellence at the Colby Museum of Art Summer Luncheon in Waterville, Maine. The honor included a conversation with Ward and Douglas Ewart, an artist, composer, and maker of masks and instruments (who opened the event with a brief musical performance), moderated by Colby Museum of Art Director Jacqueline Terrassa. Last year, the museum installed “Oh Freedom,” a commissioned shoe-lace work by Harlem-based Ward. | More
AUCTIONS | July 16: Julien’s in Los Angeles, which describes itself as the auction house to the stars, is selling a selection of stage-worn outfits, accessories, and record sales awards that belonged to Whitney Houston (1963-2012). The 25-lot sale benefits The Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation. Bidding is currently underway online and concludes with a live auction on Aug. 11. | More
AWARDS & HONORS | July 18: The Smithsonian announced 14 artists who will participate in the 2025 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program. The awardees include Washington, D.C., artist Nekisha Durrett whose research at the National Museum of African American History and Culture will “explore historical moments in which African American communities transformed displacement and exclusion into spaces of reinvention and sanctuary.” | More
From left, RAYMOND SAUNDERS, “Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, American Painting,” 1988 (acrylic, spray paint, chalk, collage, and mixed media on canvas, 85 x 83 3/4 inches / 215.9 x 212.7 cm). | Courtesy Estate of Raymond Saunders, Andrew Kreps and David Zwirner Galleries; Portrait of Raymond Saunders, 1981. | Photo by Mimi Jacobs. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
LIVES | July 19: Raymond Saunders (1934-2025), who was known for his collage and assemblage-style paintings, died in Oakland, Calif. He was 90 and passed less than a week after the conclusion of his largest-ever museum exhibition. “Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden” (March 22-July 13, 2025) was on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pa., the city where he was born and raised. In 1967, Saunders drew attention with the publication of Black Is a Color, his response to an article by Ishmael Reed about the Black Arts Movement. Sanders challenged Reed’s limited view of Black expression. “I’m an American. I’m Black. I’m a painter. So all those things enter into what it is that becomes what I present,” Saunders told SFMOMA in 1994. An artist and educator, he began teaching at what is now the California College of the Arts (his alma mater where he earned an MFA) in 1968 and retired as a professor emeritus. Over the past five years, Saunders received renewed attention with prominent gallery and museum exhibitions and co-representation by David Zwirner, Casemore, and Andrew Kreps galleries. “Raymond Saunders: Post No Bills,” the first monograph of the artist, is forthcoming in September. | ARTnews and New York Times
DESIGN | July 22: The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced $3 million in grants to preserve 24 sites across the country. The 2025 grants include five historic buildings designed by Black architects: Founder’s Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles, Calif. (Paul R. Williams); Interdenominational Theological Center, Administration Building in Atlanta, Ga. (Edward C. Miller); First Church of Deliverance in Chicago, Ill. (Walter T. Bailey); McKenzie Hall at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore. (DeNorval Unthank Jr.); and the 2500 New Hackensack building at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (Jeh Vincent Johnson). Each site is receiving $750,000. | Culture Type
Installation view of “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. (April 9-August 10, 2025). Shown, from left, “Ecclesia (The Meaning of Inheritance and Horizions),” 2024 (three panels); “Trans Forming Liberty,” 2024. | Photo by Tiffany Sage/BFA.com. © BFA 2025
NEWS | July 23: Amy Sherald canceled the presentation of “American Sublime” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C. The artist said she pulled the exhibition the grounds of censorship. The museum expressed concerns over a painting featured in the show, “Trans Forming Liberty” (2024), a portrait of a trans woman posed in the fashion of the Statue of Liberty. | Culture Type
APPOINTMENTS | July 28: The Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation announced Jon Ott would become its inaugural executive director. Chicago sculptor Richard Hunt (1935-2023) was celebrated for his abstract, organic forms, works that often suggest the figure and speak to African American history and culture. Over seven decades, his expansive output included about 160 public artworks, including an installation at the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center. Hunt joined White Cube, a major international gallery, one month before he died. Ott is a tech executive who engaged with Hunt and his work for decades. He previously served as a founding member and vice chair of the Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation. He is also the artist’s biographer. | More
NEWS | July 29: Betye Saar formed a scholarly committee charged with “preserving, interpreting, and advancing” her artistic legacy, stewarding her vast body of work, and supporting access to her extensive archive for future generations. The Betye Saar Legacy Group includes nine international curators whose longstanding engagement with the artist has yielded exhibitions, publications, and expert insight into her practice and process. The legacy group was established in collaboration with Roberts Projects, Saar’s longtime gallery in Los Angeles. | Culture Type
THOMAS J PRICE, “Moments Contained,” 2022 (bronze, height: 9 feet / 274.4 cm). | Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase 2024/116. © Thomas J Price.
ACQUISITIONS | July 30: Art Gallery Ontario (AGO) celebrated the unveiling of “Moments Contained” by British artist Thomas J Price. The monumental sculpture of a casually dressed young woman with her hands in her pants pockets is installed on Dundas St. West, welcoming visitors at the main entrance to the museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (see top of page). Standing nine-feet-tall, the sculpture is the first public artwork acquired by AGO’s Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, which is led by curator Julie Crooks. | More
< DESIGN | July 30: The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens announced a new brand identity in collaboration with Pentagram. The project was led by Eddie Opara, a partner at New York-based based in Pentagram. Opara is giving a public talk at the museum about the identity refresh on Sept. 18. A redesign of the museum’s website is also in progress with Kansas City, Kan.-based Lifted Logic. Shown, at left, New logo by Pentagram. | More
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IMAGE: Above, Full caption, THOMAS J PRICE, “Moments Contained,” 2022 (bronze, height: 9 feet / 274.4 cm). | Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase, with funds from Anonymous, the David Yuile & Mary Elizabeth Hodgson Fund, David W. Binet, the Haynes-Connell Foundation, an Anonymous Family, the Gordon and Lorraine Gibson Family Foundation, Chandaria Family, Steven & Lynda Latner, Charles Lesaux, Aaron Nugent & Becky LeBlanc, Ella Nugent, Mascoll Family, Dr. Liza & Dr. Frederick Murrell, Sekyi-Otu Family, Kevin Jerome Crouch in honour of Kaliyana John, Tyrone & Life Edwards, Kevin, Nevaeh, Keenan & Cali Johnson in honour of Monica Johnson, Karen Arcuri, Tracy McFerrin & Michael Dickstein, and Jill Homenuk, 2023. © Thomas J Price. 2024/116
