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, July 13.
NEED-TO-READ
How the Dallas Cowboys Built an A-List Collection – Felix Salmon examines how the owners of the Dallas Cowboys, Gene and Jerry Jones—a duo who had little interest in art beyond the football-themed Norman Rockwell paintings that decorate their home—built one of the most fascinating collections of contemporary art for the $1.2 billion AT&T stadium. When the Joneses first approached top art advisor Mary Zlot about helping to commission cutting-edge work at any cost, she replied that she “didn’t do stadiums.” Then, she realized they were serious. (Departures)
What Happened to the LA Times’s Picassos? – For decades, the Los Angeles Times owned a striking collection of art, ranging from Picasso lithographs to paintings by Rufino Tamayo. The works were often provided to top editors to decorate their offices or used to impress visitors. But between 2010 and 2014, during a period of financial tumult at the paper, many of the works went missing. A reporter traces the art’s journey alongside the newspaper’s waxing and waning fortunes and manages to track them down. As it turns out, they are now being sold by the paper’s former owner. (Los Angeles Times)
Trump’s UK Visit Sparks Art-World Backlash – As protests against Donald Trump’s visit (not to mention that Trump Baby balloon) descend on London, the British art world is joining the fray. The curator Norman Rosenthal criticized the country house and exhibition venue Blenheim Palace’s decision to host a dinner for the US President last night. He believes that the move has “severely compromised” the venue’s previous shows by political artists such as Jenny Holzer and Ai Weiwei. “If you want to show artists such as these, you have to accept the moral consequences,” he says. (The Art Newspaper)
Gauguin Gets the Movie Star Treatment – The French actor Vincent Cassel stars in a new biopic Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti, which traces the artist’s three-year journey to the South Pacific. Directed by Edouard Deluc, the film spends quite a bit of time on the painter’s love life, and his jealousy when his underage mistress takes up with his student. “Despite a wrenching performance from Cassel, whose face is a landscape unto itself, the slow somber film is heavy on anguish, but does not give us much paradise or much painting,” David D’Arcy writes. (TAN)
ART MARKET
New Rich in the Philippines Get a Taste for Art – The number of high net-worth individuals in the Philippines is expected to increase more than 80 percent by 2022, thanks to an outsourcing boom and low interest rates. Now, many are expecting the local art market to flourish in turn. “There are a lot of new affluent who have a shopping list of artists,” says Richie Lerma, the co-founder of the Manila-based Salcedo Auctions. (Bloomberg)
The Artist Pop Stars Love But Critics Ignore – Noel Gallagher, the Arctic Monkeys, and the designer Paul Smith are fans of Pete McKee’s Pop-art paintings—but London critics aren’t having it. “My work doesn’t require dissection or over-interpretation,” McKee says. “So it gets pooh-poohed.” The self-taught former mailman and supermarket shelf-stacker’s upcoming exhibition “This Class Works” is inspired by Brexit and will run for 16 days in a converted spring factory in Sheffield. (Guardian)
Mitchell-Innes & Nash to Represent Jacolby Satterwhite – The artist known for his haunting, high-tech videos and installations has joined the New York gallery. It will present his latest video, Avenue B, as part of its summer film series in Chelsea from July 20 to July 24. He will have a full solo show there in fall 2019. (ARTnews)
London Is an Open-Air Selling Show – Galleries including Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth have works in two outdoor exhibitions, Frieze Sculpture and Sculpture in the City, this summer. A three-month, open-air exhibition can pay dividends: At last summer’s Frieze Sculpture exhibition in Regent’s Park, Grosvenor Gallery sold all five editions of Rasheed Araeen’s Summertime (2017). The first edition was priced at £50,000 ($65,000). (Financial Times)
COMINGS & GOINGS
Shu Lea Cheang Will Represent Taiwan in Venice – Shu, whose work uses technology to explore humanity and sexuality, is the first woman to exhibit in the pavilion since it began holding single-artist presentations. The Spanish philosopher Paul B. Preciado will curate the pavilion. (Artforum)
Premium Imperiale Art Prize Winners Announced – The artist Pierre Alechinsky, a founding member of the Cobra group in the 1940s, and the sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, considered the first artist to work with fog as a sculptural medium, have won the Premium Imperiale awards. The award, known as the Nobel prize for the arts and backed by Japan’s imperial family, gives around £100,000 to leaders in five artistic fields. (TAN)
John Moores Painting Prize Names Winner – Jacqui Hallum is the 30th winner of the biannual £25,000 ($33,000) award. She won for her tarot card-inspired painting King and Queen of Wands, which she spread across three cotton sheets. (Guardian)
Clark Names Contemporary Curator – Robert Wiesenberger is the new associate curator of contemporary projects at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Wiesenberger joins the Clark from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, where he is currently a critic in graphic design. (Press release)
FOR ART’S SAKE
You Can Take a VR Tour of Nefertari’s Tomb – A new virtual reality experience called “Nefertari: Journey to Eternity” is opening up the tomb of the 3,000-year-old mummy, who was the principal wife of Ramses II. Although it is closed to the public, the tomb has been captured in detail by 3D-scanning technology. (Smithsonian)
Last Hopes for Portland Art Institute – Citing declining enrollment, the Los Angeles-based company Dream Center Education Holdings is shutting down 16 art institutes across the US. But staff at the Portland campus are hoping to raise $2 million to purchase the institute and keep it open. It is currently scheduled to close for good on December 31. (Portland Business Journal)
This Organization Offers Hurricane Maria Relief Through Art – Two Chicago-based women with family in Puerto Rico, Erica Sanchez and Janice Aponte, have raised more than $18,000 for Hurricane Maria relief efforts through their art-focused nonprofit Arte al Rescate (“Art to the Rescue” in Spanish). In recent months, they have held art exhibitions, raffles, and other events to raise funds to repair decimated schools and homes in Puerto Rico. (Chicago Tribune)
Dulwich Picture Gallery Goes Lagos – Next summer, the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London is getting a vibrant pavilion inspired by the city of Lagos, Nigeria. The emerging design practice Pricegore released their plans for the biennial Dulwich Pavilion project, which has been nicknamed the Color Palace. (Guardian)