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 Monday, August 28.

NEED-TO-READ

Ai Weiwei Discusses His Latest New York Project – The Chinese artist opens up about Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, a sprawling project opening across New York City in October with the help of the Public Art Fund. Of returning to the city where he once lived, Ai says, “It is like presenting yourself to an old lover; to give to the city what I never had a chance to achieve when I was there.” (Vulture)

Will Future Presidents Bow Out of the Kennedy Honors? – Although President Trump’s decision to opt out of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors was greeted by relief on both sides, some now wonder whether it sets a dangerous precedent, “stripping the event of the halo of power and bipartisanship that distinguishes it from many other tributes and galas.” (New York Times)

Solange Makes New Work for Tate Modern Show – The musician and art-world darling has created a multimedia online project, Seventy States, to coincide with Tate Modern’s current survey, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.” The project, conceived in collaboration with the artist Carlota Guerrero, focuses on black womanhood and black identity. (ARTnews)

Conservators Restore the Gurlitt Collection – Conservators at the Kunstmuseum Bern are removing cobwebs, fungus, and wear-and-tear from the long-neglected hoard of works pilfered by the Nazis during WWII. The entire restoration process is open to the public. (The Art Newspaper)

ART MARKET

Luciana Brito to Open a Space in Manhattan – The São Paulo gallerist follows in the footsteps of two other Brazilian dealers who have made the move in the past two years (Nara Roesler and Mendes Wood DM). The new project space, designed by the firm Espaço, will open on September 6 with a show of lesser-known Brazilian Modern artists. (TAN)

Doyle Announces Asia Week Sale – Doyle’s Asian art auction on September 11, held during Asia Week in New York, will include 23 objects from a Minneapolis collection that is particularly rich in Chinese jades and Khmer and Sino-Tibetan bronzes. (Press release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Singapore Art Museum Won’t Fill Leadership Positions – The museum is abandoning the search for a director and CEO after looking for over a year. According to a spokesperson, the museum is functioning well under the board’s interim management. (Today)

Bronx Arts Council Names New Director – Viviana Bianchi will begin her new role as executive director of the Bronx Council on the Arts on September 5. She previously held leadership positions at City Year New York, the Inter American Press Association, and the People for the American Way Foundation in Miami. (Artforum)

Para Site Appoints New Deputy Director – Claire Shea is joining the contemporary art institution Para Site in Hong Kong, where she will develop exhibitions, publications, and educational programs. Shea was previously an associate curator for the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial. (ArtAsiaPacific​)

FOR ART’S SAKE 

NEA Target Ron Athey Is Back – Carolina Miranda speaks to the blood-shedding body artist, whose work “Solar Anus” drew the ire of conservatives in 1994, ahead of his new performance at the Broad. Back in California after a long self-exile in Europe, Athey says his work takes on new meaning in this political moment: “I was made for the apocalypse.” (Los Angeles Times)

Beijing Council Announces for First Annual NY Festival – The publicly funded Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation is launching the Creative China Festival in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles this September, with a program that ranges from Chinese noir cinema to art and design exhibitions and live music. (Press release)

Capturing the Colors of Disappearing Spiral Jetty – Artist Spencer Finch created a site-specific work for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts that archives the hues of the natural elements in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. The land art piece in the Great Salt Lake has been increasingly threatened by drought over the years. (TAN)

​FROM OUR PARTNERS

Weng Contemporary, the online brand of Germany’s leading art dealership Weng Fine Art, would like to announce that it has begun to offer three new sculptural editions by Jeff Koons: Balloon Rabbit (Red), Balloon Monkey (Blue), and Balloon Swan (Yellow).

Koons partnered with Bernardaud, the famous French porcelain manufacturer in Limoges, to realize these complex sculptures. Incorporating the vocabulary of his iconic “Celebration” series, these three works are distinguished by their seductive reflective surface and intricate knots, creases, or twists—no detail of which was compromised in rendering these balloon animals in their new format.

See the editions, which are available for purchase here, below:

Jeff Koons’s Balloon Rabbit (Red) – $14,000

Balloon Swan (Yellow) – $11,500

Balloon Monkey (Blue) – $11,500