Artforum named Tina Rivers Ryan as its next top editor on Thursday, selecting the curator to lead the prestigious magazine after a tumultuous year.

“For decades, Artforum’s editors have ensured that this landmark magazine remains a trusted and indispensable source for conversations about contemporary art and its role in the broader culture,” said Ryan, who specialized in digital art as a curator at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, said in a statement.

Five months ago, the magazine fired David Velasco, editor-in-chief, after he signed and published a letter calling for Palestinian liberation shortly after the war between Israel and Hamas began. Some staff members were angry about his dismissal; Old editors resigned in protest and artists declared a boycott. Some writers withdrew their essays and some advertisers withdrew their spots in the publication, resulting in a noticeably smaller issue after events unfolded.

Penske Media Corporation, which owns the publication, has been trying to rebuild it in recent months.

Ryan, who has contributed to Artforum over the years, received attention for a popular essay criticizing the NFT boom. She later softened her stance and helped the Buffalo museum raise money for the craze by creating a online exhibition and fundraising.

“We couldn’t be more excited about this next chapter of Artforum, with Tina leading the editorial team,” the magazine’s publishers, Danielle McConnell and Kate Koza, said in a statement. “Tina is a brilliant writer and uniquely positioned to uphold the magazine’s reputation for publishing long-form criticism of the highest quality, while also contributing to a dynamic vision of audience expansion through continued digital growth and live events.”

The Biden administration will announce Monday that BAE Systems, a defense contractor, will receive the first federal grant from a new program aimed at supporting U.S. manufacturing of critical semiconductors.

The company is expected to receive a $35 million grant to quadruple domestic production of a type of chip used in F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, government officials said. The grant is intended to help ensure safer delivery of a component critical to the United States and its allies.

The award is the first of several expected in the coming months as the Commerce Department begins distributing the $39 billion in federal funding that Congress authorized under the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The money is intended to to stimulate the construction of chip factories in the United States and lure back an important form of manufacturing that has disappeared abroad in recent decades.

Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Secretary, said Sunday that the decision to select a defense contractor for the first prize, rather than a commercial semiconductor facility, was intended to emphasize the administration’s emphasis on national security.

“We cannot gamble with our national security by relying solely on one part of the world or even one country for critical advanced technologies,” she said.

Semiconductors originated in the United States, but the country now produces only about a tenth of the chips made worldwide. While American chip companies still design the world’s most advanced products, much of the world’s manufacturing has migrated to Asia in recent decades as companies sought lower costs.

Chips power not only computers and cars but also missiles, satellites and fighter jets, prompting officials in Washington to view the lack of domestic manufacturing capacity as a serious national security vulnerability.

A global chip shortage during the pandemic shuttered auto factories and dented the U.S. economy, highlighting the risks of supply chains beyond America’s control. The chip industry’s incredible dependence on Taiwan, a geopolitical flashpoint, is also seen as an intolerable security threat as China considers the island a breakaway part of its territory and has discussed reclaiming it.

The BAE chips that would be funded by the program are produced in the United States, but government officials said the money could allow the company to upgrade outdated machines, posing a risk to the plant’s continued operations.

Like other grants under the program, the funding would be disbursed to the company over time, after the Commerce Department conducts due diligence on the project and as the company reaches certain milestones.

“When we talk about supply chain resilience, this investment is about strengthening that resilience and ensuring the chips are delivered when our military needs them,” said Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser.

BAE, partly through operations acquired from Lockheed Martin, specializes in chips called monolithic microwave integrated circuits, which generate high-frequency radio signals and are used in electronic warfare and aircraft-to-aircraft communications.

The award will be formally announced Monday at the company’s plant in Nashua, NH. The facility is part of the Pentagon’s “trusted Foundry” program, which produces chips for defense-related needs under strict security restrictions.

In the coming months, the Biden administration is expected to announce much larger subsidies for large semiconductor manufacturing facilities from companies such as Intel, Samsung or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC.

Ms. Raimondo told reporters on Sunday that the grant was “the first of many announcements” and that the pace of those awards would accelerate in the first half of next year.

The Biden administration hopes to create a booming chip industry in the United States, which would include the industry’s most advanced manufacturing and research operations, as well as factories pumping out older types of chips and different types of suppliers to make the chemicals and others. raw materials that require chip facilities.

Part of the program’s focus is on creating a secure source of chips that can be used in products needed by the U.S. military. The supply chains that power weapons systems, fighter jets and other technology are opaque and complex. Chip industry executives say some military contractors have surprisingly little insight into where some semiconductors in their products come from. At least part of the chip supply chains that supply U.S. military goods pass through China, where companies produce and test semiconductors.

Since Mr. Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law, companies have announced plans to invest more than $160 billion in new U.S. manufacturing facilities in hopes of capturing some of the federal money. The law also provides a 25 percent tax credit for money chip companies spend on new U.S. factories.

The funding will be a test of the Biden administration’s industrial policy and its ability to select the most viable projects while ensuring taxpayer dollars are not wasted. The Commerce Department has put together a special team of about 200 people who are now reviewing company applications for the funds.

Technology experts expect the law will help reverse a three-decade decline in the U.S. share of global chip production, but it remains uncertain how much of the industry the program can regain.

While the amount of money available under the new law is historically large, it could happen quickly. Chip factories are equipped with some of the most advanced machinery in the world and are thus incredibly expensive, with the most advanced facilities costing tens of billions of dollars each.

Industry executives say the cost of running a chip factory and paying workers in the United States is higher than in many other parts of the world. East Asian countries continue to offer lucrative subsidies for new chip facilities, as well as a large supply of skilled engineers and technicians.

Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts University and author of “Chip War,” a history of the industry, said there was “clear evidence” of a major increase in investment in the semiconductor supply chain in the United States as a result of the law.

“I think the big question that remains is how sustainable these investments will be over time,” he said. “Are they one-off or will they be followed by a second and third round for the companies involved?”

Don Clark reporting contributed.

At a time when cultural institutions across the country are struggling to assert themselves in a digital world, and job descriptions for arts leaders have become increasingly complex, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation announced Monday that it Mariët Westermann director and general manager of his museum group. Westermann, the vice chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, will be the first woman to lead the museum group, overseeing the Foundation and its flagship institution in New York, as well as its global outposts in Venice, Bilbao and the future. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

“She ran a major operation abroad,” said the museum’s chairman, J. Tomilson Hill. “She has great credibility in the art world and she will be able to attract and retain exceptional curators and other talented professionals.”

(The other female leader in the museum’s history was Hilla Rebay, one of the founders. She was co-director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, a predecessor to the Guggenheim, and left in 1952. The Guggenheim was built in 1959. .)

The choice of Westermann, 61, to replace Richard Armstrong, who retired as director last summer, is somewhat of a surprise, as she is not a professional museum director and her name does not typically appear on the list of candidates.

But she is known to many in the art world, having previously served as executive vice president at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which supports cultural institutions; as a former director of NYU Institute of Fine Arts, where art historians, curators and future museum directors have been trained; and as associate director of research at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 2019, she became vice chancellor at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she is also CEO and professor of arts and humanities.

“I know the clarity of her thinking, the care she has for art and artists, and her dedication to the field,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art. “I think she will be an excellent colleague.”

In choosing a university leader as museum chief, the Guggenheim follows the choice of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Daniel H Weiss, president and chief executive officer, who resigned earlier this year; the American Museum of Natural History, which named Sean M. Decatur as its new president last year; and the J. Paul Getty Trust, which last year appointed Katherine E. Fleming as the next president and CEO.

Westermann graduated from Williams College – where she was magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa – and went on to earn a Ph.D. and master’s degree from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. Westermann is an art historian of the Netherlands and publishes books such as ‘A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718’ and ‘Rembrandt – Art and Ideas’.

From June 1, Westermann will fill the position of 14 years at Armstrong. She will move to Manhattan to run the Guggenheim, which now has three satellites in addition to New York: Bilbao, Venice and Abu Dhabi, on Saadiyat Island.

In the meantime, the museum will be led by three of its deputy directors: Naomi Beckwith, the chief curator; Sarah Austrian, the general counsel and secretary; and Marcy Withington, the Chief Financial Officer and acting Chief Operating Officer.

Westermann will take over an institution that is still healing from a period of turmoil, including a 2020 letter from “The Curatorial Department” decrying an “unfair work environment that enables racism”; the departure of a top executive, Nancy Spector, who was later acquitted of discrimination charges; removal of Sackler’s name from an educational center in 2022 after protesters drew attention to that family’s ties to the opioid crisis; and more than two years of negotiating a union contract that was finally ratified last August. The Guggenheim recently temporarily closed its Fifth Avenue entrance a protest in the museum denouncing Israel’s military airstrikes in Gaza.

In addition, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi – designed by Frank Gehry, who also designed the museum’s Bilbao satellite in Spain – has been postponed, partly due to protests over the plight of migrant workers on the project, but is now scheduled to open in 2026.

Westermann said it was too early for her to say anything about Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, “other than to say I was excited to see the building rise so close to me in a truly remarkable neighborhood with institutions of art, natural history, science and culture .”

She added that she was acutely aware of the hurdles of running “four very distinctive museums in four premier buildings in four very dynamic cities.”

“The demands placed on museum directors today are very complex,” she says. “The skills you need for a constellation like the Guggenheim are a challenge and an opportunity that fit well with the kinds of experiences I’ve had.”

Westermann will have the difficult task of getting Guggenheim Abu Dhabi across the finish line and turning that new location into a destination at a time of unrest in the Middle East.

Some in the art world will inevitably lament Guggenheim’s appointment as yet another missed opportunity to appoint a person of color at a time when the world has become more sensitive to the scarcity of black and Latino museum chiefs.

But the Guggenheim has made some progress on diversity, appointing Ashley James as full-time curator in 2019 and Beckwith as deputy director and chief curator in 2021.

And Hill said many of the people considered during the Guggenheim’s search for a new director “were people of color,” adding that the museum had simply decided “the best person for our needs.”

Mellon was one of four funding groups – including the Ford Foundation, the Alice L. Walton Foundation and Pilot House Philanthropy – that launched last May established the Leadership in Art Museums initiative, which has committed more than $11 million to museums to increase racial equity in leadership development.

“Diversity, inclusion and equality are a core responsibility of every organization today,” said Westermann. “It doesn’t matter whether you are a museum, a university, a company or a government agency.”

In conducting its search, the museum has thoroughly examined “what the Guggenheim is, what the Guggenheim could be, what our shortcomings are, what our successes are,” Hill said, likening that process to “getting therapy.”

Hill said he had personally consulted eight people in the field whose opinions he values, including Nicholas Serota, the former director of the Tate in Britain; Laurence des Cars, current director of the Louvre in Paris; Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian; and the art dealer Larry Gagosian.

The Guggenheim decided that the next director needed international experience, but also had to be “someone who was sophisticated in dealing with government agencies,” Hill added, “and who could not only be a spokesperson for our museum, but also handle complex negotiations could handle.

“You need leadership in your work,” he added, “but you also need deep management skills.”

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation who has worked closely with Westermann, brought up another qualification that he said was essential for the job.

“It takes someone who has global management,” he continued, “and she does that.”

Westermann said her university experience had prepared her well to oversee a complex of four museums in which “the global is already local and the local influences the global.

“I look forward to bringing these locations together,” she added, “so you get a real sense of one Guggenheim.”

On the second attempt, Jeff Bezos and his rocket company won a contract to take NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon.

NASA announced Friday that it had awarded a contract to Mr. Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, to provide a lunar lander for a lunar mission currently scheduled to launch in 2029.

The mission, Artemis V, is another key part of NASA’s Artemis program, which is to send astronauts back to the moon as part of an effort to explore the Antarctic.

Winning the contract could herald a promising recovery year for Blue Origin after a number of delays and setbacks. That includes the failure of one of its New Shepard vehicles, which travel to space but not to orbit, during a launch last September that had experiments on board but no passengers. Blue Origin has found the cause and hopes to resume New Shepard flights with both space tourists and science cargo later this year.

And some hardware manufactured by Blue Origin could finally be used for an orbital mission in the coming months. The company built engines for the booster stage of the Vulcan rocket being developed by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Blue Origin could also glimpse New Glenn, a much larger rocket that will launch payloads into orbit.

For the lunar lander contract, Blue Origin, working with other aerospace companies including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, beat a second team led by Dynetics, a defense company based in Huntsville, Ala. Dynetics, a subsidiary of Leidos of Reston, Va., had enlisted the help of aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman for its bid.

Blue Origin and Dynetics were disappointed losers in 2021 when NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a variant of its giant Starship vehicle that would put astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than half a century to land.

The two companies protested the decision, especially since NASA officials originally wanted to award two contracts.

That would have been similar to NASA’s successful effort turning over the transportation of cargo and crew to the International Space Station to private companies. Competition helps reduce costs and provides redundancy if things go wrong, agency officials have said.

But by giving only one award to SpaceX, NASA officials said there wasn’t enough money in their budget for a second lander. SpaceX’s $2.9 billion bid was by far the lowest bid. Blue Origin’s proposed design had a $6 billion price tag, and Dynetics’ design was even more expensive.

The federal Government Accountability Office dismissed the two companies’ protests. Blue Origin then sued in federal court and lost again.

Last year, after winning a bigger budget from Congress, NASA announced a competition for a second lunar lander. Dynetics and Blue Origin decided to compete again, although there was some shuffling between the companies participating in the effort. Northrop Grumman, who was part of Blue Origin’s original proposal, moved to the Dynetics team.

Added Blue Origin to its Boeing team; Astrobotic, a small Pittsburgh company developing robotic lunar landers; and Honeybee Robotics, a space technology company bought by Blue Origin last year.

The Blue Origin lander, which is designed to take two astronauts to the south polar region of the moon, will not reach the moon for a while.

SpaceX’s initial $2.9 billion contract was to deliver the lander for the first lunar landing during Artemis III, currently scheduled for late 2025 but likely to be pushed back to 2026 or later. In November, NASA exercised a $1.15 billion option in that contract for SpaceX to also provide a lander for Artemis IV, a mission scheduled for 2028.