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 on this Wednesday, January 27.

NEED-TO-READ

Far-Right Party Wants to Erase Feminist Mural – A mural that celebrates historic female figures including Nina Simone, Rosa Parks, Frida Kahlo, and Angela Davis, has come under threat in Madrid. The far-right Vox party is leading efforts to take it down due to its “political message.” The 197-foot mural, which was installed in 2018, reads: “Your ability doesn’t depend on your gender.” (Guardian)

How a Prisoner’s Painting Made It to the Hammer – Fulton Leroy Washington served time in prison for a non-violent drug offense he says he did not commit. While incarcerated, he started to make paintings, including one of a fellow inmate John L. Mondaine. He lost the work for many years, but made an even larger replica that the Hammer Museum included in its 2020 “Made in LA” exhibition. Washington went on to locate Mondaine and the original, which the man, now free, had hanging above his couch. The artist will soon be showing a memorial portrait of Kobe Bryant and additional paintings at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, starting on March 20. (LA Times)

FKA Twigs’s New Video Features a Kara Walker Work – Kara Walker’s epic sculpture Fons Americanus, a poignant monument to the tragic legacy of the British slave trade, is on view at the Tate Turbine Hall until February 7, and now it is also appearing in a music video by FKA Twigs, where dancers move around the 42-foot work. Scroll to the bottom of the article to see the video. (ARTnews)

Proposed Brooklyn Monument Hits Obstacles – A commission has decided to put artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s proposal to commemorate the abolitionist movement on ice after some complained the planned public sculpture is too abstract. Rasheed planned to install engravings and plaques in the sidewalk of a Brooklyn plaza as part of the citywide “She Built NYC” public monuments project. But one resident says the non-figurative work doesn’t fit the bill because “these days we need to see people who look like us in the city’s monuments,” and now it has stalled. (New York Times)

ART MARKET

Photo London Postpones Its 2021 Dates –  Due to ongoing travel restrictions and the vaccine rollout, the fair, originally set to take place in May, will now occur this fall, from September 9 through 12, at Somerset House in London. (Press release)

Esther Schipper Represents Author Cemile Sahin – Author and artist Cemile Sahin is now represented by Esther Schipper in Berlin. The 31-year-old German artist works primarily in film, photography, and sculpture—but she is also a novelist. Her two books, TAXI  and All Dogs Die, were published in 2019 and 2020, respectively. (Press release)

Megan Rooney Joins Thaddaeus Ropac – Canadian artist Megan Rooney, known for her multidisciplinary practice that spans sculpture and painting, is now represented by the gallery. She is set to have her first solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac in London this fall. (Press release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

The Laundromat Project Announces 2021 Artists – The New York arts organization has announced its 2021 artists-in-residence, including the DreamSeed Collective and Ogemdi Ude. Each will bring “wellness and healing” to POC communities across New York City through postpartum care, tarot, and substance use harm reduction. Piper Anderson has been named its inaugural Radical Imagination Fellow. (Press release)

Mary Leigh Cherry Goes to Arternal – The art database Arternal has named Cherry, a former Los Angeles director of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and a co-founder of Cherry and Martin Gallery, as its director of enterprise. (Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Nick Cave Installation Sparks Debate in New York – Nick Cave’s controversial outdoor text-art installation Truth Be Told was removed last Sunday from the facade of Jack Shainman’s upstate New York outpost in Kinderhook, a week earlier than planned. The day after, 190 local residents debated the work and the efforts by some in the town to censor it, and a majority sided with the artist. Cave commented that those opposed to the work were “censoring the words of a Black man in a moment when our country, more so than ever, is divided on the basic principles of fact and fiction.” (The Art Newspaper)

Chinese Heiress to Open a Museum – The 28-year-old Chinese furniture heiress Che Xuanqiao will soon open an art space in Beijing focused on her growing collection of experimental Chinese art. The space, called the Macalline Art Centre, is set to open this summer and will be curated by Yuan Fuca. (South China Morning Post)

AAAAND HERE’S THAT VIDEO:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKhW7f6rm-T/?igshid=1v4q0h5a6cusq