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 Friday, January 19.
NEED-TO-READ
Zanele Muholi Makes an Impact in New York – The queer South African photographer says she is a “visual activist” for the country’s black LGBTQI+ community. The in-demand, award-winning artist, who is showing her radical portrait photographs at Yancey Richardson Gallery, has brought a 22-strong entourage to New York—and covered all her fellow artists’ travel costs. (ARTnews)
Tate Britain Director to Rehang the Collection (Again) – Alex Farquharson reveals that he is planning a complete makeover of Tate Britian just five years after the displays were overhauled by his predecessor, Penelope Curtis. As the London museum looks to boost its visitor numbers, he also hints at a “mega exhibition” of British art in collaboration with another national museum. (The Art Newspaper)
Bayeux Tapestry Loan Backlash Begins – French experts, including a former director of the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, have declared their opposition to the loan of the historic embroider to England because of its fragility. (It hasn’t left France for 950 years.) The museum’s curator, Pierre Bouet, said he thought “it was a hoax” when he first heard President Macron’s promise. (AFP)
U2 Teams Up With Haifa Collective – The Haifa-based collective Broken Fingaz has animated a video for U2’s song “Get Out of Your Own Way,” off the group’s new album. The street artists, who have never revealed their identities, animated the video with paper cutouts of Donald Trump with a rainbow flag and members of the Ku Klux Klan. (TAN)
ART MARKET
Frieze New York Releases Exhibitor List – The fair’s exhibitor list includes newcomers like New York’s Essex Street and JTT, as well as LA-based Château Shatto and Regards from Chicago. Under the new directorship of Loring Randolph, the fair will also add a second day of VIP previews on May 2, as well as a new section, “Live,” dedicated to performance. (ARTnews)
Sturtevant Gets First Posthumous Show in London – Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s Julia Peyton-Jones is working with Sturtevant’s daughter Loren Muzzey to give the pioneering appropriation artist her first solo show in the UK since her death in 2014. Set to open on February 22, the exhibition will feature a range of works, including her controversial copies of Andy Warhol’s silkscreened Flowers. (The Art Newspaper)
Palm Beach Fair Wraps with Seven-Figure Sales – Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary returned for its second edition last weekend, hosted by the City of West Palm Beach and presented by Art Miami. The fair enjoyed several six-figure sales of contemporary and postwar works. The gallery ARCHEUS/POST-MODERN reportedly sold Pierre Soulages’s Peinture (2003) for approximately $1 million. (ArtfixDaily)
COMINGS & GOINGS
MOCA North Miami Appoints New Director – The Florida museum has appointed Chana Budgazad Sheldon as executive director. She replaces Babacar M’Bow, who was fired two years ago amid allegations of sexual harassment. Sheldon comes to the museum from Locust Projects, a local alternative art space, which she directed for eight years. (WLRN)
LA Art-World Legend Ed Moses Dies – The “Cool School” artist, known both for his contemporary abstract works and for his raucous partying with the likes of Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, and Larry Bell, died in his home in Venice Beach on Wednesday. He was 91. (LA Times)
Keorapetse Kgositsile Dies at 79 – The South African activist and poet, lauded for fusing his country’s struggle to defeat apartheid with the American black arts movement, has died at 79. Kgositsile is survived by another wordsmith, his son Thebe, who performs as rapper Earl Sweatshirt. (NYT)
Southbank Centre Director Steps Down – After more than a decade at the helm of the arts center, Jude Kelly will step down in May, to take charge of WOW, the growing Women of the World festival she founded in 2010. Her successor at Southbank has yet to be announced. (The Evening Standard)
FOR ART’S SAKE
V&A Dundee Gets Opening Date – The Victoria & Albert Museum’s £80 million ($111 million) Scottish design museum in Dundee—its first UK outpost outside of London—is set to open on September 15. The impressive building designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma will host an inaugural exhibition on ocean liners. (Guardian)
Frank Lloyd Wright Medical Center Demolished – Despite a Chicago-based nonprofit’s effort to buy out the historic Montana building’s owner, the center designed by Wright in 1958 was bulldozed on January 10. It is the first of the architect’s buildings to be torn down in more than 40 years. (Artforum)
Inaugural Johnson Fellowship Awarded – Americans for the Arts has announced a new annual fellowship, a $75,000 award named after Robert Leroy “Yankee” Johnson, for artists who transform communities. The inaugural fellowship will go to artist and designer Tanya Aguiñiga, who was selected from 18 nominees. (Press release)
Women’s March Signs Have Found a New Home – Last year, curators for the National Museum of American History collected signs that had been discarded on the National Mall after the epic Women’s March. Ahead of the 2018 march this Saturday, check out some of the funny and poignant slogans and imagery from the inaugural event. (The Cut)