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 Monday, May 15th.
NEED-TO-READ
Samdani Art Foundation Will Launch Permanent Space by Late 2018 – The foundation established by Bangladeshi collectors Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani unveiled plans for the Srihatta–Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, which will be located in rural Northern Bangladesh. (ARTnews)
China Goes Wild for Fake Rain Room Installations – Remember the wildly popular installation Rain Room that Random International installed at the Yuz Museum in 2015? Well, Shanghai clearly couldn’t get enough, so a theme park in the city has installed a permanent ersatz version called the Magic Rain Zone. Meanwhile, several online companies in China are now offering rentals of bogus Rain Rooms after cracking the technology. (The Art Newspaper)
The Netherlands’ Restitution Efforts Are Under Scrutiny, Again – Several of the country’s policies regarding the restitution of Nazi loot, including one that requires a government panel to balance the interests of national museums against the claims by Jewish survivors or their heirs, have caused some to question the Netherlands’s hard-won reputation for pioneering restitution efforts. (New York Times)
Glenn Ligon to Curate Exhibition for Pulitzer Arts Foundation – Titled “Blue Black,” the show will include more than 50 works of painting, video, textiles, and more works in the colors blue and black, from June 9 to October 7 in Saint Louis. (Press Release)
NYC’s Health Commissioner Is Also Annoyed at Met Gala’s Smoking Celebrities – After pictures of celebrities (including Bella Hadid, Dakota Johnson, and Courtney Love) lighting up in the bathrooms during the Met Gala emerged on social media, Dr. Mary Bassett felt compelled to send a letter to the museum’s honchos to remind them of the city’s ban on smoking. (New York Daily News)
ART MARKET
Elizabeth Taylor’s Trust Sues Christie’s Over Botched Necklace Sale – In a suit filed on May 11, the trust accuses the auction house of falsely advertising the diamond, which sold for $8.8 million in 2011, as once belonging to the Indian emperor who created the Taj Mahal. When the anonymous buyer realized the jewel may not have belonged to royalty months later, he demanded Christie’s cancel the sale and return his money, which it did. (DNAinfo)
Highest-Ever Price for a Rolex Watch Achieved at Phillips – The Rolex Reference 6062, the “Bao Dai” watch, sold for just over $5 million at auction in Geneva on Saturday, breaking the world record for a Rolex, previously set at a 2016 Phillips auction. (Press Release)
Who Is Actually Buying From Damien Hirst’s Venice Show? – Nate Freeman reports that between 60 to 70 percent of the works in “Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable” have already sold to collectors, who range from longtime Hirst supporters (the Nahmad family, the Mugrabi family, François Pinault) to newer ones (the Chinese collector Qiao Zhibing and the Montreal-based collector Francois Odermatt). (ARTnews)
COMINGS & GOINGS
Luis A. Croquer Named Director of the Rose Art Museum – He will come to the Brandeis-affiliated museum from the Henry Art Gallery at Seattle’s University of Washington, and wants to make the Rose a “flagship” model for university museums leading “the next wave of artistic expression in the United States.” (Artdaily)
Pictures Generation Artist Michael Zwack Dies at 67 – The painter, associated throughout his life with artists like Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, and known for his later interest in Haitian Vodou, passed away from lung cancer on May 5. (Artforum)
FOR ART’S SAKE
Museum of Fine Arts Houston Exhibits Two Newly-Acquired Works by Piplotti Rist – Pixel Forest, the Instagram-bait installation created for Rist’s 2016 New Museum show, and Worry Will Vanish, a two-channel video from 2014, will go on view starting June 11. (Glasstire)
Harvard Art Museums Acquire Massive Collection From Prolific Photo Printers – The museum is now in possession of 443 printer’s proofs, and an archive of photography, test prints, negatives, and more from Gary Schneider and John Erdman, who also gifted the museum 30 European Modernist photographs. (Artdaily)
Kara Walker’s Daughter Pens a Mother’s Day Essay – The 19-year-old artist and Oberlin student Octavia Bürgel describes growing up in the art world, and how being a mother is not incompatible with being an artist. (Vice)
Giant Hand Sculpture Emerges in Sinking Venice – A new work by Lorenzo Quinn called Support popped up in Venice ahead of the Biennale; the two monumentally-sized hands rising from the water aim to call attention to the threat of climate change. (Colossal)