Art Industry News: The National Comedy Museum Has Acquired Joan Rivers’s Archive of Jokes + Other Stories

NEED-TO-READ

Hurvin Anderson’s Dispatches From the Barbershop – The familiar scene of Anderson’s local establishment recurs in the artist’s current exhibition, “Hurvin Anderson: Salon Paintings,” at the Hepworth Wakefield in the U.K. “Apart from the home, it is one of the places Black men and women can speak freely,” Anderson said of the place that has inspired a range of canvases that delve into the “sociopolitical context of the shops.” (

Artist Chinyee Dies at 94 – The first-generation Chinese-American artist, whose native home of Nanjing, China, and travels around the world with the United Nations influenced her colorful abstract canvases, has died. In 2007, her gallery Alisan Fine Arts organized a 50-year retrospective at the Shanghai Art Museum and two of her works are currently on view at the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh in Arles, France, as part of the traveling group exhibition, “Action, Gesture, Paint: Women in Abstraction, A Global History (1940–70).” (

Joan Rivers’s Comedy Trove Heads to Museum – A collection of more than 65,000 typewritten jokes penned by the late comedian will soon be in the collection of the Jamestown, New York-based National Comedy Museum. The cache is in good company, joining collections of works by George Carlin and Carl Reiner. () 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Curator of British Pavilion Named – Tarini Malik will serve as the curator of John Akomfrah’s work at the next edition of the Venice Biennale, slated to open in April 2024. Malik has been a curator at London’s Hayward Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery, and said that the exhibition will “draw on the legacies of the work John has made over the past 40 years,” and will both “feel connected to the city of Venice, but also look at the institution of the British Pavilion.” ()  

Sukanya Rajaratnam Joins White Cube – The New York-based gallerist will join White Cube in the role of global director of strategic market initiatives this September. Rajaratnam left her position at Mnuchin Gallery after 15 years in January. (ARTnews)

A.I.-Powered Collecting Platform Launches – Docent, billed as the “Spotify for art collecting” is set to launch during Basel art week in Switzerland before going live in Paris, London, and Miami later this Fall. (Press release) 

FOR ARTS SAKE

Tate and Museum of the Home Acquire Rebecca Solomon Work – The two institutions now jointly own the Pre-Raphaelite artist’s canvas, which reflects the gender, race, and religious mores of its time. The central figure was modeled by Jamaican-born Fanny Eaton, who inspired many artists of the period. (Press release)