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 Tuesday, July 25.
NEED-TO-READ
Plans Approved for Samsung Collection Museum – The South Korean government has green-lit plans to build a new art museum in the heart of Seoul to present the vast collection of the late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee. Lee’s family donated the collection of some 23,000 artworks including Korean and western masterpieces by the likes of Kim Whan-ki, Claude Monet, and Salvador Dali following Lee’s death in October 2020. The museum to be built in Songhyeong-dong is expected to open in 2027 and the project has a budget of $93.5 million through 2028. (Yonhap)
Court Rejects Collector’s Bid to De-List WWII Painting – A collector’s demand to remove German artist Andreas Achenbach’s painting Calabrian Coast from the Lost Art Database, which documents artworks that were dispossessed because of Nazi persecution, has been rejected by a German federal court. The collector who acquired the work at a London auction in 1999. (AP)
Russian Missiles Strike Odesa Cathedral – One person died and 14 people were hospitalized in the aftermath of a series of Russian airstrikes on the southern port city in Ukraine on Sunday. Odesa has become a target since Moscow exited from a Ukraine grain deal. The Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa’s Unesco-listed historic center was hit in a missile strike, and its altar and several walls also collapsed. In a statement, Unesco said it “strongly condemns” Russia’s repeated attacks against cultural heritage sites. (Guardian) (Press release)
House Panel Urges Government to Leverage G20 to Return Antiquities to India – A panel of India’s House of Parliament has urged the authorities to leverage the country’s G20 membership to retrieve India’s stolen antiquities including the Kohinoor diamond, which is currently in the hands of the British royal family. (Business Standard)
MOVERS & SHAKERS
Picasso Makes Cameo in Oppenheimer – Against the backdrop of Christopher Nolan’s new biopic, Picasso’s 1937 painting Woman Sitting with Crossed Arms makes a lasting impression. The titular character, whose parents had a collection boasting works by Rembrandt, Édouard Vuillard, Van Gogh, and Renoir, was seemingly affected by Picasso’s canvas, and it functions in the film as an allegory for the abstracted way in which the scientist conceived of his masterful and monstrous creation. (ARTnews)
Ali Cherri’s First Solo Exhibition in the United States – The Lebanese artist will have his first solo show in the United States this September at the Swiss Institute in New York City. “Humble and quiet and soothing as mud” homes in on the theme of “mud as the primordial material in civilization” according to the institution. (Press release)
FOR ART’S SAKE
See Eva Fabregas’s Gutsy Outing in Berlin – The eerie and organ-like sculptures by the Barcelona-born, London-based artist have taken over the historic hall of Hamburger Bahnhof in site-specific exhibition “Devouring Lovers.” Curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, curator at Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, the show is the artist’s largest solo exhibition to date and it runs until January 14. (designboom)
Eva Fabregas, ‘Devouring Lovers.’ Hamburger Bahnhof in Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany on June 25, 2023 @Jacopo La Forgia
Eva Fabregas, ‘Devouring Lovers.’ Hamburger Bahnhof in Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany on June 28, 2023 @Jacopo La Forgia
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