Savannah Behrmann USA TODAY Published 4:37 PM EDT Sep 21, 2019 WASHINGON– House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement Saturday chastising President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy troops to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, saying Trump is turning a ”blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s continued violence.” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Friday the U.S. will send troops to the Middle East in response to an attack last weekend on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, but officials offered few specifics about the scope of that response. He reiterated statements that…

More than 370 artists and cultural workers have signed a statement protesting gender discrimination in Japan. In the days since the Aichi Triennale exhibition “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” was shuttered by the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Nagoya following threats of violence over one of its works, artists, curators, and other creatives have demanded that the show be reopened, pulled works from the triennial, and penned statements decrying the alleged censorship.A new statement circulating online claims that the controversy has mostly gained traction as a freedom of speech issue, but that…

The monumental Swiss-born photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, whose artistic vision served as a seven-decade-long journey through the American vernacular landscape, has died. He was ninety-four years old. Peter MacGill of Pace-MacGill, which has represented Frank’s work since 1983, confirmed his death.After studying photography and graphic design in Switzerland, Frank moved to New York City in 1947. “Never have I experienced so much in one week as here,” he wrote to his Swiss Jewish parents shortly after his arrival. He soon earned commercial assignments for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and befriended artists and…

Savannah Behrmann USA TODAY Published 2:48 PM EDT Sep 21, 2019 WASHINGTON – The New York Post published an “obituary” for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s now-concluded presidential campaign.  De Blasio, who is currently serving his second term as mayor, was blasted by the newspaper, which wrote that his campaign had “died” from “ego-induced psychosis.” “Neighbors said the body had been in rigor mortis for some time,” the mock obituary says. “It died doing what it loved best: being as far away from New York City as possible.” The Post…

Art Basel has announced that it is launching a new initiative that will bring together around three hundred thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and creatives from various industries, including technology, science, and finance, for a three-day summit in Abu Dhabi that will address global issues. Dubbed Art Basel Inside, the event will be led by curator and art historian Marc-Olivier Wahler and will take place from February 14 to February 16, 2020.“Moving away from more traditional settings, I am very much looking forward to creating an immersive environment, a unique ecosystem in…

Aamer Madhani USA TODAY Published 1:40 PM EDT Sep 21, 2019 DES MOINES, Ia. — Former Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday he hasn’t spoken to his son Hunter Biden about his overseas businesses while forcefully calling again for an investigation into President Donald Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president. “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said. “Here’s what I know. Trump should be investigated.” “You should be looking at Trump,” Biden told reporters in Des Moines shortly after arriving at the Polk…

Interdisciplinary Philadelphia-based artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden has won the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Bucksbaum Award, which was founded in 2000 by the Bucksbaum Family Foundation to recognize an artist featured in the current edition of the Whitney Biennial. Its previous awardees include Pope.L, in 2017, and Zoe Leonard, in 2014. “McClodden’s work is bold and original and her contribution to the Biennial is extraordinarily rich with cultural, historical, and spiritual resonances,” said Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg. McClodden is one of seventy-four artists in the biennial, which closes on…

Savannah Behrmann USA TODAY Published 11:57 AM EDT Sep 21, 2019 WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called for a law to allow sitting presidents to be indicted for crimes, but Rep. Justin Amash says there is already a remedy provided by the Constitution: impeachment. During an interview with NPR, Pelosi said, “I do think that we will have to pass some laws that will have clarity for future presidents. [A] president should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing – any president. There is nothing any place that says the president should…

Curator, writer, and educator Vasıf Kortun has been named the director of the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum (IHRM), ArtAsiaPacific reports. While the institution is currently undergoing a renovation—it is set to officially open in 2020—participating artists and visitors to the sixteenth Istanbul Biennial will get an unexpected preview of the venue this week. (Organizers of the exhibition were forced to find a new main location for the biennial after toxic asbestos was discovered at its original site, the Istanbul Shipyards.)The Emre Arolat–designed building is being constructed along the Bosphorus, a natural strait,…

Savannah Behrmann USA TODAY Published 10:39 AM EDT Sep 20, 2019 WASHINGTON– Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg took a jab at fellow candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for being “evasive” in not saying whether her health care plan would raise middle-class taxes. Warren had appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday where she sidestepped clearly answering a question about whether middle-class taxes would increase under her health care plan. Warren repeatedly refers to overall “costs” and Colbert interrupts to say, “But here’s the thing, I’ve listened to these…