{"id":63164,"date":"2025-08-06T18:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T18:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/63164\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T18:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T18:07:08","slug":"whitneys-sacked-associate-director-of-isp-speaks-out-and-more-art-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/63164\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitney’s Sacked Associate Director of ISP Speaks Out\u2014and More Art News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\tThe Headlines\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWHITNEY \u2018VICTIM\u2019 SPEAKS OUT.\u00a0Sara Nadal-Melsi\u00f3\u2019s role as associate director of the\u00a0Whitney\u2019s Independent Study Program (ISP)\u00a0was terminated in June. She received the news right after the museum\u2019s director,\u00a0Scott Rothkopf, sent an email announcing his \u201csuspension\u201d of the 50-year-old ISP to a select number of its alumni. \u201cI lost my job at the Whitney, but the art community lost a lot more,\u201d\u00a0Nadal-Melsi\u00f3\u00a0writes in\u00a0Hyperallgergic<\/a>. Her axing came two weeks after she released a public statement in protest of the Whitney\u2019s cancellation of the performance\u00a0No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance, \u201can expression of transnational solidarity with the Palestinian people that was part of the ISP curatorial show\u00a0a grammar of attention.\u201d She adds that both her dismissal and the ISP\u2019s \u201cpause\u201d were \u201cthe culmination of months of the museum\u2019s combined disregard and scrutiny of the program.\u201d Nadal-Melsi\u00f3 explains,\u00a0\u201cThese actions were yet another blunt refusal to engage in dialogue, and further evidence of a consistent lack of clarity, to the point of obfuscation, regarding the future of the ISP, including the circumstances surrounding former ISP Director\u00a0Gregg Bordowitz\u2019s \u2018demotion\u2019 on February 2. If this sounds messy and confusing, you are not alone. It is by design.\u201d Talking about her experience is \u201cpainful in personal and utterly impersonal ways,\u201d she says, \u201cI can\u2019t help but recognize that it follows a well-worn institutional playbook\u2026 Being witness to and victim of the Whitney\u2019s actions taught me in a new way about decimated\u00a0workers\u2019 rights\u00a0and increased precarity; about a pervasive corporate culture of Non-Disclosure Agreements(NDAs) that keep most of us in the dark about how often power protects itself through concealment; about recalcitrant misogyny and scapegoating; about the systemic racisms that continue to find cover in tokenism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Whitney<\/p>\n

\n\tBONE COLLECTOR.\u00a0\u201cDinosaurs are dominating this summer\u2019s headlines,\u201d\u00a0Artnet News<\/a>\u00a0writes. \u201cThe Hollywood blockbuster\u00a0Jurassic World Rebirth\u00a0is powering through the global box office with $718.4 million earned worldwide as of Sunday, while July\u2019s sale of a juvenile\u00a0Ceratosaurus\u00a0fossil at\u00a0Sotheby\u2019s\u00a0New York\u00a0has also been in the news.\u201d A 154\u201359 million-year-old megafauna fossil recently sold for $30.5 million\u2014five times its $6 million estimate\u2014highlighting the booming market for dinosaur remains. Though it didn\u2019t beat the $44.6 million record set by the\u00a0Stegosaurus \u201cApex,\u201d\u00a0interest in prehistoric fossils is rising sharply, drawing in collectors but also sparking ethical debates around ownership, scientific access, and provenance. Buyers now range from private collectors and celebrities to museums and governments.\u00a0Abu Dhabi, for example, purchased the T. rex \u201cStan\u201d for $31.8 million in 2020 and will display it at its upcoming\u00a0Natural History Museum. Hollywood stars like\u00a0Leonardo DiCaprio,\u00a0Nicolas Cage, and\u00a0Russell Crowe\u00a0have also entered the fossil scene, fueling a global fascination. \u201cWe all grew up with dinosaurs,\u201d said art advisor\u00a0Nicolai Frahm, who helped broker several major fossil sales.\u00a0Ken Griffin, owner of Apex, echoed the sentiment, citing a lifelong passion and a desire to inspire future scientists. Collectors today are often professionals in their 30s and 40s, especially in tech and science fields. Prices vary widely\u2014from fragments to full skeletons costing tens of millions. Skull fossils and meat-eaters remain especially sought-after, with demand growing for verified, well-preserved specimens. The allure of dinosaurs\u2014ancient yet timeless\u2014remains stronger than ever.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Digest\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe next edition of\u00a0Manifesta\u00a0will take place in\u00a0Coimbra, Portugal, in 2028. As Europe\u2019s\u00a0nomadic biennial, the festival moves to a different host city every two years, with the aim of \u201cengaging with local cultural, urban and environmental contexts while working collaboratively with citizens and communities to reimagine how we live, work and envision our shared future in\u00a0Europe.\u201d [ArtReview<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\n\tTwelve art collectors have revealed their \u201cbiggest rookie mistakes\u201d so that aspiring collectors can avoid the same pitfalls. [Cultured<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\n\tThe National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina\u00a0has accused Israel of \u201cgenocide\u201d and said profits from its sale of a publication about a historic\u00a0Haggadah,\u00a0a foundational Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder, will be donated to help\u00a0Palestinian\u00a0causes. [The Times of Israel<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\n\tThe UK government is giving people the chance to peruse the art collection of Labour prime minister\u00a0Kier Starmer\u00a0during special tours of\u00a0No.10 Downing Street. Anyone can enter a public ballot for the visits slated for September 13, as part of the popular\u00a0Open House\u00a0festival. [The Art Newspaper<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Kicker\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTHE ART OF RADIOHEAD.\u00a0Radiohead\u2019s frontman\u00a0Thom Yorke<\/a>\u00a0has made a comeback as a visual artist, and he told\u00a0The Art Newspaper<\/a>\u00a0that it\u2019s \u201cabsolutely terrifying.\u201d Yorke and his long-time collaborator\u00a0Stanley Donwood\u00a0are opening their first institutional show this week at Oxford\u2019s\u00a0Ashmolean Museum. The exhibition, titled \u201cThis is What You Get,\u201d\u00a0charts 30 years of\u00a0Radiohead\u00a0record covers, starting with\u00a0The Bends, plus previously unpublished sketchbooks and recent paintings made by the duo. Yorke said his unease around claiming to be an artist was \u201cperhaps a response to the climate of the UK music industry at the time.\u201d Citing an unspoken strict \u201cnotion that\u00a0\u2018a musician could not possibly be an artist and vice versa\u2019\u2014something he now admits is \u2018total nonsense,\u2019 particularly given how intertwined Radiohead\u2019s sonic and visual art forms are. As Donwood puts it: \u2018Both of [the art forms] evolve at the same time and neither of them are fixed, it\u2019s like chasing smoke.\u2019\u201d Donwood told the paper last year, \u201cIt feels like just last year we were standing in [the music store] HMV in\u00a0Oxford\u00a0[where the pair are from] thinking about how we were going to do a record sleeve and now we\u2019re doing a museum show in pretty much the same spot.\u201d It has been an \u201cunorthodox route into the art establishment,\u201d\u00a0TAN\u00a0writes, \u201cbut one that has worked for them, Donwood thinks: \u2018It\u2019s like the title of the Ashmolean show says\u2014this is what you get when you have two ex-art students making record sleeves for 30 years. And just letting them get on with it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Headlines WHITNEY \u2018VICTIM\u2019 SPEAKS OUT.\u00a0Sara Nadal-Melsi\u00f3\u2019s role as associate director of the\u00a0Whitney\u2019s Independent Study Program (ISP)\u00a0was terminated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,46767,46768],"class_list":["post-63164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-thom-yorke","tag-whitney-museum-of-american-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}