Milwaukee Art Museum Returns Dave the Potter Jars as Whitney Staff Prepare to Strike

Restitution and Return

The Milwaukee Art Museum returned two jars to the descendants of Dave the Potter, a Black American artist who was enslaved for most of his life in the 19th century. The return serves as a reminder of the slow, contested work of institutional reckoning with the material legacy of enslaved makers.

Labor and Institutional Pressure

Unionized staff at the Whitney Museum of American Art are preparing to strike starting Monday, October 5, ahead of the preview week for a retrospective of late Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. The timing places labor negotiation directly at the threshold of a major institutional opening.

The Whitney strike is timed to the preview week of the Lichtenstein retrospective, placing labor action at the center of a major museum moment.

Market and Ownership Shifts

Kehinde Wiley has asked to buy back his painting "Young Artists After Siamesas 1960" (2015) after the State Department removed it from the United States Embassy in the Dominican Republic last month. The request underscores questions about the circulation and custody of works placed in diplomatic settings.

Scholarship and Recognition

Visual artists Christine Sun Kim, Rodney McMillian, Vincent Valdez, and Chip Thomas are among the 20 recipients of this year's MacArthur Fellowship. The acknowledgment arrives as institutions and critics continue to reassess which practices and histories receive sustained attention.

Two of Alice Neel's satirical courtroom drawings, depicting one of the highly publicized trials of the McCarthy era, are going to auction. The sale places mid-century political observation back into the secondary market.

Institutional Transitions

In personnel news, Cyra Levenson will lead the Yaddo Artist Residency and Ann Temkins steps down at MoMA. Rose B. Simpson has won the Santa Fe Mayor's award, while Roy Lichtenstein is the subject of a project with Alex Da Corte.

Exhibitions and Critical Perspective

Arthur Jafa is at the New Museum, where his eclectic references and intuitive grasp of memes and virality are noted as setting him apart, taking assemblage and collage to new heights. Teresa Margolles is at MoMA PS1, where her exhibition raises the question of what formal restraint accomplishes in an age of violent excess.

At the New York Studio School, an exhibition of painters Brenda Goodman, Steve DiBenedetto, and Bendix Harms pushed one critic out of a comfort zone. In Emily Mae Smith's surreal paintings, a symbol of women's work becomes a weapon. A two-part show at Bozeman's Tinworks Art explores Edmonia Lewis's Montana connection as part of a citywide homage to the late Black and Indigenous sculptor and her ties to the area.

Research and Discovery

Beneath the ruins of the Baths of Trajan, a giant mosaic and unusual fresco continue to remind viewers of Rome's ongoing lesson in continual discovery. Meanwhile, artists and culture workers weighed in on the rising cost of caring for their closest companions, from $1,600 dental bills to $16,000 emergency procedures.