A bunch of exhibitions and occasions this month and subsequent have fun the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, one of many godfathers of kinetic and auto-destructive artwork. Ben Luke speaks to Roland Wetzel, the director of the Tinguely Museum in Basel concerning the artist’s life and work, and the occasions marking the centenary.
The Fenix museum’s atrium, that includes a “twister” staircase
© Iwan Baan
In Rotterdam within the Netherlands, Fenix, a museum about migration, has simply opened, that includes a dramatic chrome steel twister kind on its roof. We focus on the museum with its director, Anne Kremers.
Ben Shahn, Harvesting Wheat, a research for The That means of Social Securitymural, Washington, DC, 1941
D. Wigmore Tremendous Artwork, Inc., New York
And this episode’s Work of the Week is by an immigrant artist, Ben Shahn, who was born in modern-day Lithuania however travelled as a toddler to the US, the place he grew to become a number one painter related to Social Realism. Amongst his best achievements was the mural The That means of Social Safety, painted between 1940 and 1942 in Washington D.C. to replicate the advantages of the then-recent Social Safety Act. Shahn is the topic of a serious present that opened this week on the Jewish Museum in New York. We converse to Laura Katzman, the co-curator of the exhibition with the Jewish Museum’s Stephen Brown, about Harvesting Wheat (1941), Shahn’s research for one of many figures within the mural.
The Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland, has a everlasting show of his work; Scream Machines–Artwork Ghost Prepare, by Rebecca Moss and Augustin Rebetez, Tinguely Museum, till 30 August; Mechanics and Humanity: Eva Aeppli and Jean Tinguely, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, till 24 August; Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths & Machines, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Bruton, UK, till 1 February 2026; Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén, Grand Palais, Paris, 20 June-4 January 2026.The Fenix museum is open now.Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity, Jewish Museum, New York, 23 Could-12 October. The e-book accompanying it printed on 3 June by Princeton College Press, priced $45.00/£38.00. The That means of Social Safety murals:https://artwork.gsa.gov/artworks/637/the-meaning-of-social-security?ctx=3bc918796c456cc8fb8e3d3f033918d4249d0ce6&idx=6https://livingnewdeal.org/websites/wilbur-j-cohen-building-shahn-frescoes-washington-dc/#lg=1&slide=1
