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 Thursday, July 13.
NEED-TO-READ
Milan Kundera Has Died at 94 – The Czech writer is best known for his 1984 book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an exploration into the lives of a group of artists and intellectuals during the 1968 Prague Spring. Kundera’s criticism of the Soviet Union led to his books being banned in then-Czechoslovakia and he moved to France in 1975, eventually becoming a naturalized citizen. (New York Times)
Layoffs at the Auction Houses – Sotheby’s has laid off several employees over the past few months, including senior staffers Jamie Durkin and Molly C. Berry. The auction house also significantly reduced the team behind its Metaverse platform and NFT sales to just three people, including Michael Bouhanna and Davis Brown. Phillips has also sharped its focus on the West Coast to Los Angeles, getting rid of two senior-level positions in San Francisco and Seattle. (ARTnews)
Museum of the Year – As Art Fund’s Museum of the Year, the Burrell Collection in Glasgow has scooped a whopping £120,000 ($155,000) prize in recognition of its major new renovation and rehang, which opened to the public last year. Each year, the Art Fund Museum of the Year champions a excellent cultural institution in the U.K. (Press Release)
France’s Culture Minister Plans Museum of Notre Dame – It has been widely speculated that the new museum might take over the Hôtel-Dieu, a former hospital building located on the cathedral’s forecourt. The planning and construction will be overseen by Charles Personnaz, director of France’s National Heritage Institute. (Le Figaro)
MOVERS & SHAKERS
William Kentridge Joins Booker Prize Jury – The South African artist has been chosen as one of the judges for this year’s International Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious annual awards recognizing novels translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland. The announcement highlighted how Kentridge’s work is centered around the art of storytelling, which he translates into a wide variety of media including animation, drawing and sculpture. (Press release)
Pantheon Nets €200,000 Since Instituting Entrance Fee – In the first week since the ancient Pantheon in Italy began charging tourists €5 ($5.57), the country’s culture minister announced that some 51,275 visitors brought in a total of nearly €200,000 ($22,281); the historic site remains free for Rome residents. Despite the influx of cash, some fear that the tickets may become a commodity traded by black market sellers, as what happened at the Colosseum. (The Art Newspaper)
Käthe Kollwitz Is Coming to MoMA – Early next year, the first New York City-based retrospective and the largest United States-based exhibition of the celebrated German artist will be mounted at the Museum of Modern Art. The trailblazing feminist artist depicted scenes of anguished working class families in the early 20th century, drawing attention to social justice issues of the time. (Press release)
San Francisco-Based Kehinde Wiley Show to Tour US – The acclaimed exhibition “Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence,” which is currently on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, will set off on a nationwide tour over the next two years. After its California run in October 2023, the show will go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston from November 19, 2023–June 19, 2024; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, July 26, 2024-January 12, 2025; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, February 22-June 22, 2025. (TAN)
FOR ARTS SAKE
Chiharu Shiota Blood Installation – The main hall of the Kunstraum Dornbirn in Austria has been taken over by a vast, suspended labyrinthine of hoses filled with a flowing red liquid and hung on red threads. With this strangely gory yet clinical work, the Japanese artist foregrounds the inner workings of the cardiovascular system that gives us life but remains out of sight. (Press release)
Chiharu Shiota, Who am I tomorrow? (2023) at Kunstraum Dornbirn in Dornbirn, Austria. Photo: Günter Richard Wett, © the artist, Bildrecht Vienna 2023.
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