Art Industry News: The Pope Gifted Donald Trump Some Art + More Must-Read Stories

Plus, the restitution of a Pissarro painting from the Gurlitt Collection and a new home for the Turner Prize in Margate.

Melania Trump, Donald Trump and Pope Francis on May 24, 2017 in Vatican City. Photo by Vatican Pool/Getty Images.

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 Wednesday, May 24.

NEED-TO-READ

Bloomberg Puts $75 Million in the Shed – The billionaire former mayor of New York recently gave $60 million to the multidisciplinary arts institution in the city’s Hudson Yards area, adding to a previously undisclosed $15 million donation in 2012. The shiny new center is due to open in 2019. (New York Times)

Margate’s Turner Contemporary Will Host the 2019 Turner Prize Exhibition – Every other year, the hotly-anticipated Turner Prize exhibition leaves London for a different British city. In 2019, it will arrive in Margate, a rapidly developing city on the Kent coast that inspired JMW Turner himself. (Press release)​

Deutsche Bank Plans New Berlin Arts Forum – Following the closure in 2013 of the Deutsche Guggenheim, the bank is planning a new art hub in the city center that will showcase work from its corporate collection as well as other private collections. (The Art Newspaper)

The Pope Gave Trump His Favorite Thing: Art – In their choreographed meeting of the minds in Vatican City, Pope Francis gave Donald Trump “a medallion by a Roman artist in the shape of an olive tree, the symbol of peace,” to which the president—who had just issued a budget defunding the principle national arts organizations—responded, “We can use peace.” (Washington Post)

Pissarro Painting From Gurlitt Collection Restituted – One of around 150 works from the 1,200-work Gurlitt trove believed to have been looted by the Nazis, Camille Pissarro’s La Seine vue du Pont-Neuf, au fond le Louvre (1902) has been returned to the heir of Parisian collector Max Heilbronn. (TAN)

ART MARKET

CRG Gallery in New York Will Close After 25 Years – The gallery, founded by Carla Chammas, Richard Desroche, and Glenn McMillan and currently located in the Lower East Side, will shut down this summer. (ARTnews)

Galerie Urs Meile Opens New Space in Beijing – Located in a renovated historic factory building in the city’s 798 Art District, the gallery’s inaugural show is by artist Qiu Shihua. (Artdaily)​

COMING & GOINGS

Brian Sholis Named Director of Gallery TPW Sholis—who was editor of Artforum‘s website before joining the Cincinnati Art Museum as curator of photography—succeeds founding director Gary Hall, who stepped down after nearly four decades at the helm of the Toronto artist-run nonprofit. (Artforum)

Reem Fadda Wins Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement – The Palestinian curator based in Ramallah, Palestine and Amman, Jordan, has been chosen as the eighth recipient of the biennial $20,000 award, established in honor of Menil’s founding director Walter Hopps. (Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE 

Universities Launch Database of Endangered Archaeology – The online EAMEN catalogue, organized by the Universities of Oxford, Leicester and Durham, lists more than 20,000 archaeological sites in the Middle East and North Africa at risk from conflict, looting, or natural causes. (Hyperallergic)

Noisy Artwork Removed From the Socle du Monde Biennale – Keisuke Matsuura’s outdoor installation Resonance is made up of long fabric strings that flap in the wind, creating an “intense sound” that began to bother the workers at a nearby office in Herning, Denmark, who called for the work to be removed. (Press release)​

Foundation for Contemporary Arts Creates New Lichtenstein Award –Thanks to a $1 million gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, the New York-based Foundation for Contemporary Arts has created a new $40,000 artist grant. (ARTnews)

After Multiple Delays, the Bass Museum Will Reopen in October  Miami Beach’s contemporary art museum will open its renovated space on October 8, with solo shows by Ugo Rondinone and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Below, some nice images of Rondinone’s work to amuse (or terrify) you. (Press release)

Ugo Rondinone, Vocabulary of solitude, (2014). Image courtesy of the artist.

Ugo Rondinone, Vocabulary of solitude, (2014). Image courtesy of the artist.