Artelligence for April 12, 2018

LA MoCA’s Philippe Vergne Is Moving … But Where?: The LA Times noticed earlier this week that LA MoCA’s director, whose contract is due to expire soon without an announcement of either his renewal or a search for a replacement, seems to be moving:

• Vergne has placed his $4-million Hollywood Hills mansion on the market, and on Tuesday, real estate websites showed a sale pending. Neither Vergne nor a museum spokeswoman would comment on the house, however, nor on whether the director would be staying in L.A. …

George Lucas’s Museum Cops to Having Bought Norman Rockwell from Berkshire Museum: Credit goes to William Poundstone who was the first to publicly speculate that the buyer of the Norman Rockwell’s Shuffleton’s Barbershop was George Lucas for his new museum of narrative art to be built in Los Angeles. The museum has now confirmed this fact. …

Why Can’t Women Artists Get Lionized While Still Alive?: Prompted by the lack of a major retrospective of Marisol’s art while she was still alive, Sebastian Smee asks why women artists can’t get the focus of major institutions. He asks whether Sheila Hicks, Joan Jonas, Mary Heilemann and Lynda Bengalis might not be more than worthy:

• This year, the female artists, age 65 and older, who are getting retrospectives or career surveys include Carolee Schneemann (78), Howardena Pindell (75), Judy Dater (76), Adrian Piper (69), Sally Mann (66) and Laurie Simmons (68). Dorothea Rockburne (85) and Mary Corse (72) also will get significant solo shows. Historical figures Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) and Hilma af Klint(1862-1944) will be the subjects of major traveling retrospectives. Several of these exhibitions are at major museums of international renown.
• “It’s not that these women aren’t having important shows,” Andrea Schwan, a publicist who has worked on shows devoted to many of these figures, wrote in an email. “It’s that the titan institutions remain more or less inaccessible to them while they are still alive.”