Solange to Debut New Performance at the Venice Biennale’s Closing Weekend

Solange Knowles is to debut a new performance piece at the close of the 58th Venice Biennale, on 24 November 2019. As part of the exhibition’s inaugural performance programme, Solange’s piece explores her interest in sound and movement as an ‘architectural language’. The piece will feature new compositions and performances directed by the musician and artist. The work will also feature choreography from Bridge-s by artists Gerard & Kelly, co-directed by Solange and created this year for The Getty Museum. ‘Over the last few years so much of my work has become about world making, creating landscapes and universes that I wanted to see growing up and leaving them behind for girls and women who look like me to discover,’ Solange said in a statement. Don’t miss our film of the 58th Venice Biennale’s new performance programme: watch it here. And read more of our Venice coverage here.

• From Black Cowboys to Queer Dreamscapes: the Afrofuturist Vision of Solange’s Film ‘When I Get Home’

Earlier this year, Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art announced that it would soon offer free admission, scrapping its USD$15 general entry ticket thanks to a USD$10 million donation by museum board president Carolyn Clark Powers: ‘Charging admission is counterintuitive to art’s ability and purpose to connect, inspire and heal people,’ she told the New York Times in May. Now the museum has revealed that free general admission will begin on 11 January 2020 – the launch day will be accompanied by a set of performances, workshop activities and food at both LA locations. ‘It completely changed how the museum sees itself’, director Klaus Biesenbach told the Los Angeles Times, speaking about the gift. ‘We see ourselves as a civic institution, as a public institution, as a resident among residents, as part of the communities we live in.’

Manchester Museum has returned Aboriginal artefacts after they were stolen away more than a century ago. Indigenous leaders visited the museum to receive the 12 items, which include body decorations, slippers, ceremonial and spiritual materials, and a headdress fashioned from emu feathers. Museum director Esme Ward told The Guardian: ‘I think some museums, or even the museum sector, is in a bit of an existential crisis – particularly museums that are born of empire. The conversation about where collections belong is getting louder and louder and museums are out of kilter with the public sentiment’. Mangubadijarri Yanner, a representative from the Indigenous Gangalidda Garawa group, said: ‘They were taken from us, stolen from us, but it’s important now that we’re here to take them home’.

In further news: Lisson Gallery now represents the estate of Hélio Oiticica worldwide; Blum & Poe gallery represents painter Paul Mogensen; David Zwirner now represents Barbara Kruger; and Eva Presenhuber is opening a second location in Zürich with a solo show by Swiss artist Valentin Carron.