Art Industry News: #MeToo Protest Performance Comes to the Met Breuer + More Must-Read Stories

Plus, a new development in the Berkshire Museum saga and the hottest artists to watch in 2018.

The Met Breuer. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

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, December 5.

NEED-TO-READ

Rising Artists to Watch in 2018 W magazine singled out six rising stars who you’ll be seeing everywhere next year: painter Eliza Douglas (who is also Anne Imhof’s fiancée); portraitist Nathaniel Mary Quinn, who has a Salon 94 show next fall; LA-based, Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat; painter Walter Price; installation artist Diamond Stingily; and painter Christina Quarles. (W magazine)

Protests Against Sexual Violence Come to the Met Breuer – This past Saturday, under the leadership of artist Jaishri Abichandani, a group gathered outside the Met Breuer to protest its display of late photographer Raghubir Singh, who Abichandani alleges sexually abused her, and whose work is on view until January 2. The Met reached out to Abichandani in advance to express its support for her demonstration. (Hyperallergic)

Berkshire Museum Seeks to End Legal Delays – The museum took legal action yesterday to end the delays currently blocking a trial over the planned sale of the museum’s artwork. The deaccessioning of the Berkshire’s holdings, particularly two valuable Rockwells, has been the source of heated controversy in recent months. (Press release)

Bruce Weber Accused of Sexual Harassment – The 71-year-old fashion photographer is the latest powerful member of a creative industry to be accused of sexual harassment. Model Jason Boyce filed a lawsuit on Friday alleging that Weber abused him during a photo shoot in 2014, when he was 28. In light of the news, Vanity Fair has canceled a dinner for Weber planned during Art Basel in Miami Beach. (AFP, Page Six)

ART MARKET

Will Art Overtake Wine as the Best-Performing Luxury Asset? – Millionaires discouraged by the drop in art prices post-recession are returning to the art market, according to the Knight Frank luxury investment index. The index’s author predicts that “art will comfortably overtake wine as the best-performing asset class this year.” (Guardian)

Tragedy Doesn’t Sell, New Study Says – Researchers who studied prices of 10,000 paintings by 33 French Impressionist artists and 2,000 paintings by 15 American artists found that those created in the year following the death of a friend or relative were around 35 percent less valuable, and significantly less likely to be included in a major museum’s collection. (Daily Mail)

Émile Zola’s Collection Hits the Auction Block – Thousands of photographs and equipment that belonged to the Naturalist writer’s grandson went under the hammer at Artcurial last night. Zola was a talented and experimental photographer who had 10 cameras and took photos of his wife, Paris in the 1890s, and the children he had with his mistress. (Guardian)

Bay Area Galleries Woefully Unequal – A local dealer launched a crowdsourced Google spreadsheet called the SF Gallery Tally 2017 to track the gender parity of representation and exhibitions in Bay Area galleries. Of the 1,109 artists represented, 68 percent are men. Gagosian San Francisco has yet to include a single non-male artist in any of its local shows. (KQED)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Getty Taps New CFO – Steven A. Olsen will be the next vice president, chief financial officer, and chief operating officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The longtime chief financial officer of UCLA will take over the post from Patricia Woodworth in summer 2018. (ARTnews)

David Hockney Gets an Opera Award – The 80-year-old British artist, who recently designed a production of Puccini’s Turandot at the San Francisco Opera, was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s most prestigious award, on Sunday. (SF Gate)

Lucy Raven Wins Bauhaus Competition – New York-based Lucy Raven has won the “art in architecture” competition organized by the Bauhaus Museum Dessau. Raven’s dynamic lighting installation Light/Play/House (2017) was chosen from a shortlist of 13 that included Veronika Kellndorfer, Michael Riedel, and Tomás Saraceno. (Artforum)

Ivan Chermayeff, the Designer of Great Logos, Has Died The man who created logos for Pan Am, Showtime, and the Smithsonian Institution has died at age 85. Chermayeff also created the big red “9” sculpture that marks the entrance to 9 West 57th Street in Manhattan. (New York Times)

FOR ART’S SAKE 

Miami’s Newest Museum Gets an Architect – Miami-based Rene Gonzalez Architects will design Fairholme Unlimited, a new private space in Miami for the Fairholme Foundation. The collection, which is run by Chloe Berkowitz, the daughter of equity fund manager Bruce Berkowitz, includes large-scale works by James Turrell and Richard Serra. (ARTnews)

Saint Louis Gets Major Gift of Work by Black Artists – New Jersey-based collectors Ronald Maurice Ollie and his wife Monique McRipley Ollie have donated to the Saint Louis Art Museum an 81-strong collection of works by black artists, including Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Jack Whitten, and Frank Bowling. Highlights are due to go on show in 2019. (Artfix Daily)

Khadija Saye’s Art Shown at Cambridge – Photographs by the young artist Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June, will go on show in Kettle’s Yard when the University of Cambridge gallery reopens in February 2018. Its director Andrew Nairne first saw Saye’s work at the opening of this year’s Venice Biennale. (Guardian)

FROM OUR PARTNERS

Capsule Gallery Auction hosted its inaugural auction on November 16th, with a white-glove sale of Modern and contemporary art that included property from the collection of late Condé Nast owner S.I. Newhouse. Boasting a 100 percent sell-through rate, the sale was an auspicious debut for the new auction house, which was founded in New York’s Alphabet City by Simon Baranoff and Nicholas Thorn, the president of Litchfield County Auctions. Here, below, are highlights from the sale.

Conrad Marca-Relli’s Untitled (1966), a sculpture of painted aluminum with a travertine base, sold for $11,250. All images are courtesy of Capsule Gallery Auction.

Helen Frankenthaler’s New York VI sold for $40,000.

Joan Snyder’s Thru the Flat Big sold for $65,625.

Stanislav Kolibal’s untitled work of mixed media on board from 1979 sold for $41,250.

Tony Rosenthal’s Minotaur I (1964), a bronze sculpture with gold patina, sold for $7,812.

An interior view of the auction house, featuring painting by Joan Snyder and sculpture by Tony Rosenthal.

Nick Thorn officiated the debut of Capsule Gallery Auction.

 


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