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 Tuesday, June 19.
NEED-TO-READ
Glasgow Artists Speak Out After Fire – After a second fire in four years ravaged the Scottish art school this past weekend, notable alumni including Nathan Coley and Douglas Gordon have taken to social media and the press to share their sadness at the destruction of the historic building. “Is there a demon that wants to destroy the art school?” asked alumna and poet Liz Lochhead. (New York Times)
Museums Snap Up Protest Art – At a time when major protests are sweeping the globe, museums have taken up a form of guerrilla collecting, amassing posters and other quotidian objects culled from the streets. Dubbed “rapid-response collecting,” the process was pioneered by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2014 and has more recently led curators in Ireland to gather to gather posters from the recent abortion referendum. (NYT)
Tens of Thousands Protest the Museum of Ice Cream’s Sprinkles – The dessert-themed museum that launched last fall has seen waves of Instagram-ready tourists, but not everything about it is so sweet. Its pools of tiny plastic sprinkles, for one thing, are a serious environmental threat. After an online petition demanding the museum replace the sprinkles with a biodegradable alternative garnered 20,000 signatures, its leadership pledged to make the switch. (Curbed)
Ronaldo’s Virally Mocked Bust Gets Swapped – Officials at the Madeira Airport in Spain replaced a widely mocked bronze bust of the famous football star—which went viral due to its lack of resemblance—with a more conservative and agreeable one 16 months after the original was installed. The new bust arrived on the same day that Ronaldo scored a hat-trick against Spain in Portugal’s World Cup game against Russia. (BBC)
ART MARKET
Did Pace Sell Liza Minnelli’s Warhol in Basel? – The global gallery reportedly sold an Andy Warhol silkscreen of Judy Garland at Art Basel for a price in the millions. Page Six reports the work had a very prominent owner: the actress and singer Liza Minnelli (who also happens to be Judy Garland’s daughter). (ARTnews)
Condo Shanghai and New York Participants Announced – Matthew Higgs’s nonprofit gallery White Columns has joined the popular gallery share program in New York this July, while the inaugural Condo Shanghai—running from July 7 through the end of August—includes 13 international guest galleries, from Sadie Coles to Peres Projects. (ARTnews)
Napoleon Fever Hits Auction Houses – A military hat believed to have belonged to the warmongering emperor has sold at an auction house in Lyon for €350,000 ($406,000), far above its high estimate of €40,000. It is the latest in a stream of Napoleon-related artifacts to exceed expectations. (Press release)
Sun King’s Versailles Sculpture Head to Auction – An army of masterpieces from Louis XIV of France’s court are heading to Christie’s on July 5. The so-called Sun King was an avid art collector, and had many self-portraits commissioned throughout his 72-year reign. The collection includes a monumental bronze of Louis on horseback, made by the age’s esteemed sculptor François Girardon. (Christie’s)
COMINGS & GOINGS
Lyon Biennial Curators Announced – The 15th edition of the exhibition, which opens in September 2019, will be organized by curators from Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, including its president, Jean de Loisy. The guest curators will organize the biennial around the theme of “modernity,” the same theme used in the past two editions. (Artforum)
Artist Milan Mrkusich Dies at 93 – New Zealand’s most famous postwar abstract artist, who was influenced by Piet Mondrian and the Bauhaus movement, has died at 93 years old. He is best known for creating the façade of the Te Papa national museum building in Wellington. (Artforum)
Cultured Magazine Taps a New Editor – Sara Roffino, a former editor of Art + Auction and contributor to artnet News, has been named the new executive editor of Cultured magazine. She will take over from Tali Jaffe, who has held the position since the magazine’s launch eight years ago. (ARTnews)
Bucharest Museum Loses Its Brancusi – After staff couldn’t raise adequate funds to insure Wisdom of the Earth, a valuable sculpture by the artist Constantin Brancusi, its owners decided to remove it from view at the country’s National Art Museum. (Calvert Journal)
FOR ART’S SAKE
Three Graffiti Artists Killed on Train Tracks – Three men in their twenties were struck by a freight train at Loughborough Junction in London early Monday morning. They were found with cans of spray paint nearby, making the incident the first time multiple graffiti artists have been killed painting illegally since the deaths by train of Bradley “Ozone” Chapman and Daniel “Wants” Elgar in 2007. (Guardian)
Parents Foot the Bill as Child Breaks Artwork – A five-year-old boy attending a wedding reception at the Tomahawk Ridge Community Center in Kansas was pictured on CCTV accidentally knocking over a sculpture by artist William Lyons. Now, his parents are being charged $132,000 by the community center’s insurance company, which claims the Aphrodite di Kansas City has been irredeemably damaged. (Newsweek)
A “Crypto-Sculpture” Lands in London – The cryptocurrency company Eidoo has commissioned a sculpture by contemporary artist Federico Clapis called Crypto Connection. The 10-foot-tall bronze statue of a pregnant torso, which is meant to ask questions about the future of global financing, will be erected on London’s Southbank for 10 days until June 23. (Press release)
Cleveland Gets Empowered by an Art Sausage – The artist John Riepenhoff is developing a “Cleveland CurryKoji Wurst” for the FRONT International triennial. Working with experimental chef and forager Jeremy Umansky and Ohio City Farm / Refugee Response, Riepenhoff hopes to connect different social groups in Cleveland through the magical “common unifier” that is curry. See the trailer for the project below. (FRONT)
