Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know this Tuesday, August 14.
NEED-TO-READ
Sculptor Parviz Tanavoli Is Banned From Leaving Iran – The acclaimed artist who has a home in Vancouver has been prevented from leaving Tehran again due to a longstanding dispute with a former Tehran-based gallerist. Maryam Goudarzi claims Tanavoli left her out of pocket when he swapped an early sculpture for five later works in a deal that went sour, and she has been seeking to reclaim $6 million worth of art from him. When the artist tried to fly out of Tehran, he alerted that he was banned from leaving the country on charges of “the spreading of disinformation.” (The Art Newspaper)
How Should Museums Deal With Historical Sexual Predators? – The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston tweaked the title of a Casanova-themed exhibition of 18th-century art when it travelled from the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, swapped the word “seduction” for “power”—from “Casanova: The Seduction of Europe” to “Casanova’s Europe: Art, Pleasure and Power in the 18th Century”—and added more female voices to its accompanying talks program. “I’m not saying let’s take down every piece of art by every known sexual harasser,” the Berkeley-based art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson said. “But why not? Let’s just experiment with an idea about what that would look like and how much room there would be.” (ARTnews)
“Come On Tate. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” – The Tate is taken to task by Helen Gørrill, the author of a forthcoming book Women Can’t Paint about gender inequality in contemporary art, which argues that “we’ve reversed back into the Victorian age.” The museum “perpetuates the dominance of male artists in the collections and suppresses the value of women’s work,” she claims, pointing out that that the great majority of its acquisition budget is still spent on work by male artists: “The young people who visit the museum this summer will learn that art’s future is mainly masculine.” (Guardian)
Artists Propose Alternatives to Confederate Monuments – A year on from the deadly “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, the New York Times asked six artists to propose how they would transform racist statues or their columns and plinths after they have already been toppled. The ideas range from Dread Scott’s fantasy of leaving General Robert E. Lee column toppled across the road as an “anti-monument” to Kenya (Robinson)’s suggestion that his equestrian statue remain in place as “a visual reminder of our stubborn tendency to elevate mediocrity”—only surrounded by a “cacophonous” sanctuary for African gray parrots. (New York Times)
ART MARKET
Contemporary Istanbul Releases Exhibitor List – The organizers of the 13th edition of the fair have announced that 30 new dealers are due to take part next month (September 20-23). As the Turkish Lira plummets against the US dollar, participants include Almine Rech, Galleria Continua, and Marlborough Gallery. (ARTnews)
Luxembourg & Dayan Plans Tiny Giacometti Show – The New York gallery’s “Intimate Intimacy” show in the fall will feature some of Alberto Giacometti’s smallest sculptures. As organized by curator Giacometti scholar Casimiro Di Crescenzo, none of the works made between 1935 to 1945 will be more than three inches tall. (ARTnews)
Saatchi Art Enters the Secondary Market – The online gallery for emerging artists is launching a resale service. Collectors will be able to make offers on works that have previously sold through Saatchi Art. (Nasdaq)
Great Expectations for a Pair of Chinese Vases – Two porcelain vases that are a pair to the Bainbridge vase head to auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. The Bainbridge vase caused a media storm when its hammered for $55 million at a small London auction in 2010 but its Chinese bidders failed to pay up. It was later sold by Bonhams privately for a reported £20 million-£25 million. (Antiques Trade Gazette)
COMINGS & GOINGS
Tadao Ando Designs New Chicago Museum – The exhibition space Wrightwood 659 is set to open this October, and will focus on socially engaged art and architecture. Ando designed the 35,000-square-foot apartment building, preserving the four-story structure’s 1920s brick façade. The space will be inaugurated with the exhibition “Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture.” (TAN)
MacDowell Colony Director to Retire – Cheryl A. Young will step down as director of the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, after 22 years at the helm, and 30 years working with the foundation. A search for a successor is currently underway. (Artforum)
Chile’s Culture Minister Resigns in Museum Row – Mauricio Rojas has resigned from his position after information came out about his skepticism of the Museum of History and Human Rights back in 2015. He called it a “a shameless and inaccurate use of a national tragedy.” The institution was opened in 2010 to preserve awareness of the human rights violations of the Chilean military government of Augusto Pinochet between 1973 to 1990. (BBC)
PEN America to Honor Ai Weiwei – The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has some good news after his Beijing studio was demolished. He will receive an artistic expression award from PEN America this fall. The literary and human rights organization will award the artist with the prize on November 2. (SF Gate)
FOR ART’S SAKE
Artists Condemn Argentina’s Abortion Vote – A bill to legalize abortion was voted down on August 9 in the South American country. A feminist collective of women in arts professions in Argentina, called Nosotras Proponemos (We Propose), had been among the 1 million supporters of the bill who protested the day before it was voted down. “The negative vote is demonstrative of the influence of the Catholic Church and patriarchal nature in and of our country,” the group wrote in a statement. (TAN)
Chelsea Manning to be Honored at ICA London – In her first public appearance in the UK, activist Chelsea Manning will be honored in the annual Friends of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Dinner. Manning will participate in a public Q&A hosted by the ICA at the Royal Institution, in which the US army soldier-turned-whistleblower will address many issues spanning Cambridge Analytica to her advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. (Press release)
Julia Halperin and Catherine Wagley on the Momus Podcast – artnet News’s executive editor spoke with ARTnews contributing writer Catherine Wagley untangle the differences and similarities in the overlapping fields of art criticism and art journalism in a new podcast for Momus. The two discuss where reporting is, in some ways, also the domain of criticism. (Momus)
Meet Swizz Beatz’s New Favorite Artist – Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) have had their collector eye on Dallas painter Riley Holloway. The couple recently purchased work We Got Next by the artist after spotting it on Instagram. Dean and Keys support artists through a grant project, which awards 20 with $5,000 to put on a solo exhibition. “Riley Holloway: Spectrum” is currently on view at Fort Works Art through Aug. 25. (Dallas Observer)