RSVP: info@berrycampbell.com

Wednesday, July 17, 6:00pm till 8:00pm

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA PETROW.

Have you dreamed of sipping rosé with Matisse or dining with Duchamp? It’s all possible at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s Cafe Sebastienne. The cafe itself is a piece of art, and the dining hall and its patrons are an integral part of the art installation. 

The Cafe Sebastienne dining room is lined from floor to ceiling with paintings by the late American artist Frederick J. Brown, who died in 2012. The installation, called The History of Art, features 110 oil paintings, each representing an important movement or figure in art throughout the ages. The works cover the cafe’s seven irregular walls, and they can cleverly be identified via a “map” found on the back of the menu. Dining in the cafe is an immersive experience.

“The series reflects the words of my mentor Willem de Kooning, who once told me, ‘Remember that art is a very old profession—it began with a shaman in a cave,’” Brown said at the time of the permanent installation in 1999.

The organizers of Art Basel have announced the 283 galleries set to participate in this year’s Miami Beach fair, slated to take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center December 6–8, with preview days December 4 and 5. Hailing from thirty-four countries and territories, the exhibiting galleries include thirty-two first-time participants, the most since 2008. The Americas are strongly represented, with nearly two thirds of participants coming from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Uruguay; countries appearing for the first time include Indonesia and Romania.

The show will be divided into several sections: Galleries, the main section; Nova, which features young galleries showing work created in the past three years by up to three artists; Positions, devoted to solo showcases of emerging galleries or artists; and Survey, which focuses on work created before 2000. This year’s Meridians sector, which centers atypical projects, is being curated by Yasmil Raymond, until recently the director of Portikus and the rector of the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art, both in Frankfurt. The Kabinett section, focused on curated displays presented by galleries in a portion of their main booths, will return, as will the fair’s Conversations program, organized this year for the first time by arts writer and educator Kimberly Bradley. 

Dorothy Dehner 

June 21, 2024 by Kay Whitney
New York
Berry Campbell Gallery 

My introduction to Dorothy Dehner’s sculpture came via a tiny photograph in a catalogue of David Smith’s work. Indeed, it has been Dehner’s fate until recently to exist as a footnote to Smith’s career. In a Smithsonian oral history from the 1960s, she described their 23-year marriage as both violent and loving; she also stated that it was impossible for two sculptors to exist in the same household. Her career didn’t begin until she was 56, after her divorce from Smith. And it is only now that her work—under-appreciated and rarely displayed despite its presence in major museum collections—is receiving the treatment it deserves in a sprawling and inclusive retrospective (on view through June 22, 2024) that reveals the scope of her talents.

By Jessica Lack
July 4, 2024

Christian Levett on creating Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins (FAMM): ‘I needed the collection to tell a story, and that story is the birth of modern art’

The British collector explains how and why he decided to move on from antiquities to establish a museum for 19th- to 21st-century female artists — and why it made the mayor of Mougins cry.

There may come a time when a museum devoted entirely to female artists will be redundant — as strange as a museum for right-handed artists. However, in a world where modern art by women still makes up only about 11 per cent of major museum acquisitions, and where their paintings still cost a fraction of what their male contemporaries can command, the newly opened Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins (FAMM) is a vital addition to the canon.

Situated in the picturesque hilltop village of Mougins in the south of France, once home to Picasso and Francis Picabia, the privately owned FAMM is housed in a former museum of classical antiquity. More than 100 paintings and sculptures by more than 80 artists, spanning the period from 1870 to the present day, are closely spaced on four floors, creating an intimate atmosphere in which to see works by the likes of Berthe Morisot, Leonora Carrington, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Shirin Neshat and Carrie Mae Weems.