Art Industry News: This Artist Wants You to Crawl Through the Filthy Streets of New York With Him + Other Stories

Plus, Kehinde Wiley announces the first artists for his Dakar residency and artist Cecilia Condit is, bizarrely, going viral on TikTok.

William Pope.L viewing his artwork at the 2015 MOCA Gala. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/WireImage for The Museum Of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA))

Art Industry News is normally 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, July 23.

NEED-TO-READ

Kehinde Wiley Announces First Artists in Residence – Sixteen artists are heading to Kehinde Wiley’s recently completed Black Rock compound in Senegal. The first group of artists in residence were chosen from 700 applicants by a panel of experts that included artists Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and Swizz Beatz, as well as Studio Museum director Thelma Golden. Nine of the participants hail from the US, three from Africa, one from Brazil, and the others are based in Europe. The residencies start in August and run through April 2020, with stays in Dakar ranging from one to three months. Local staff will help the artists navigate the city, and they will have a language tutor to assist with English, French, and Wolof, the three primary languages of the program. (Press release)

Pressure Grows on Museums to Pay Workers Better – As low-paid and often part-time museum staff join forces to demand better wages, US museum directors are having to negotiate for the first time with a unionized workforce. After a vote in June, the International Union of Operating Engineers now has 140 members at the Guggenheim in New York. The New Museum is also negotiating its first contract with a union. Meanwhile, awareness continues to grow about a Google doc being passed around by museum staff—ranging from art handlers to senior curators—to share details of their pay,  revealing big disparities. “Working in a museum can sometimes seem like a service industry for the wealthy,” Tom Eccles, the director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, told the Times. (New York Times)

A Museum Gets a $10 Million Gift From an Extraordinary Docent – New England’s Worcester Art Museum, founded in 1896, is celebrating the largest donation in its history with the announcement of a $10 million gift from Jean McDonough’s family foundation. The museum’s director, Matthias Waschek, described McDonough as not only a forward-thinking trustee but also a “docent extraordinaire.” Her daughter-in-law, Lisa McDonough, who is a trustee of the museum, said the family hopes that other members of the community will also step forward to ensure it continues to thrive. The donation follows another $4 million gift from the foundation in 2015. (Press release)

Pope.L Wants You to Crawl With Him – The storied performance artist Pope.L is looking for 100 volunteers to crawl a 1.5 mile course with him across New York, from the West Village through the triumphal arch in Washington Square Park to Union Square, on September 21. The artist says the performance, titled Conquest and organized with the Public Art Fund, is “an absurd journey to an uncertain goal.” Pope.L has been doing his physically demanding crawls since the 1970s as a way to evoke the extreme exposure that homeless people experience on the streets of the city. (TAN)

ART MARKET

Hauser & Wirth Now Represents Ed Clark – The veteran US abstract artist, famous for making his paintings by pushing colorful paint around canvas with a broom, will be represented by Hauser & Wirth worldwide. The gallery will present a solo show of Clark’s recent paintings in New York in the fall. (Press release)

Mary Mary Gallery Closes – The Glasgow-based gallery has closed after 13 years. Starting out in an apartment, Mary Mary grew to take part in major fairs including Art Basel, Frieze London, and Frieze New York. Its roster of artists included 2019 Whitney Biennial participant Milano Chow. Founding director Hannah Robinson announced the gallery was shuttering via Instagram. (Instagram)

Artforum Teams Up With Sotheby’s – The magazine has joined forces up with the auction house, starting with an exhibition of all of Artforum’s front covers over the past six decades. Sotheby’s will use the publication’s archive in sales catalogues, and it is launching a series of talks called Artforum Presents. (Art Daily)

COMINGS & GOINGS

M Woods Set to Open Its Second Space in Beijing Next Month – M Woods, the private museum in Beijing’s 798 Art District founded by young collectors Lin, Wanwan Lei, and Michael Xufu Huang, is opening a second space in the city’s central Longfusi neighborhood. The new space, nicknamed Qianmu, is slated to open in mid-August with a David Hockney survey and a solo show of Austin Lee. (The Art Newspaper)

Zeitz MOCAA Names New Curators – The Cape Town museum has appointed Storm Janse van Rensburg as senior curator, and Tandazani Dhlakama as assistant curator. Van Rensburg was previously head curator at Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design, and Dhlakama was promoted from education manager at Zeitz. (ARTnews)

Rabkin Foundation Grants Arts Journalists $50,000 – The Portland, Maine-based Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Foundation has awarded $50,000 apiece in grants to “essential” visual arts journalists in its 2019 grants cycle. Recipients include artnet News contributor Catherine WagleyARTnews executive editor Andrew Russeth, Jenn Nkiru, Mariela Fullana Acosta, Sarah Hotchkiss, Cara Ober, Kristina Kay Robinson, and Jennifer Shapland. (ARTnews)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Eerily Preserved Shipwreck Found in the Baltic – Marine archaeologists have discovered the strangely intact remains of a Renaissance ship at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The unnamed wreck’s mast and rigging are still in place, as are its 500-year-old swivel guns and anchor. (Courthouse News)

Microsoft Co-Founder’s Art Goes on Show in Seattle – The Seattle Art Museum is exhibiting works from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection, including works by Lucian Freud, Botticelli, and Georgia O’Keeffe. “A Cultural Legacy: A Series of Paintings” is slated to run from July 24 through July 20, 2020. (Art Daily)

Video Artist Cecilia Condit Is Going Viral on TikTok – A short sequence from the US artist Cecilia Condit’s 1983 video work Possibly in Michigan is going viral on TikTok, a social media platform favored by Gen Z. Watch scores of teens lip-synching to Condit’s absurdist horror about two women killing and eating their stalker. “Some people have thousands of hits on those 20-second videos,” Condit tells GARAGE. “It’s like having the show at MoMA.” (GARAGE)


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