Art Industry News: Vegetarians at Cambridge University Unite in Protest of a 17th-Century Flemish Painting of Meat + Other Stories

Plus, Tate gets a major Helen Frankenthaler gift and is the social network TikTok a hotbed for feminist performance art?

Frans Snyders's The Fowl Market has come under fire from vegetarians at Cambridge. Courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

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 Friday, November 22.

NEED-TO-READ

Visual Artists Miss Out on Trump’s Arts Medals – None of America’s visual artists have been invited to the White House to receive an arts medal from Donald Trump. This year’s honorees, the first since Trump became president, include the folk singer Alison Krauss, the actor Jon Voight, and the philanthropist Sharon Percy Rockefeller. According to the Atlantic, Trump seems to have made his own choices about who to honor, rejecting the names recommended by the National Council of the Arts for the National Medal of Arts. (Atlantic)

Carl Craig Plans a Sound Project at Dia:Beacon – The Detroit techno music producer Carl Craig is taking over the basement of Dia:Beacon with a sound installation. Craig’s Party/Afterparty will fill the space with electronic music composed especially for the industrial subterranean gallery from March 6 through September 7. The work is five years in the making, according to Craig. (ARTnews)

Cambridge Vegetarians Are Upset by a “Repulsive” Old Master – A Flemish painting of a market stall laden with dead animals has been removed from a Cambridge college after complaints. The 17th-century painting, The Fowl Marketby the studio of Frans Snyders, has been returned to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge because vegetarians at Hughes Hall were put off their food. A spokesperson for the Fitzwilliam admitted: “People who don’t eat meat found [the Snyders] slightly repulsive.” The university’s art museum is now putting the picture on show in “Feast and Fast,” an exhibition about food in European art from 1500 to 1800. (Times)

David Hammons’s Project at the Whitney Gets a $1 Million Grant – The Keith Haring Foundation has given the Whitney $1 million to help realize the installation of David Hammons’s massive outdoor sculpture, Day’s End. The armature-like installation, which pays homage to a Gordon Matta-Clark work on the former Pier 52, is due to be unveiled in September 2020. (ARTnews)

ART MARKET

New York’s American Sales Post Patchy Results – Sotheby’s and Christie’s American art sales illustrated “a worrying dearth of supply and idiosyncratic demand,” according to Brian Allen. Sotheby’s top lot, Emily Carr’s Skedans (1912), was withdrawn and sold privately for a price reportedly within its $3 million to $5 million estimate. All told, the combined sales totaled $42 million. (TAN)

Marvel Comic Book Sells for a Record $1.26 Million –  A 1939 comic book sold for a record $1.26 million at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. Marvel Comics No. 1 features the first appearances of heroes including Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. The item was originally purchased at a newsstand by a Pennsylvania mailman. (Reuters)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Lyon Biennale Names Executive Director – The former director of Paris’s Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Yves Robert, will be the next executive director of the Lyon Biennale. Robert succeeds Sylvie Burgat, who is stepping down at the end of December after 20 years at the helm. (Artforum)

Dallas Contemporary Taps New Deputy Director – Carolina Alvarez-Mathies has been named the new deputy director of Dallas Contemporary. Alvarez-Mathies, who previously directed external affairs for the New York public art nonprofit Creative Time, joins the Texas museum on December 15. (Artforum)

Cecilia Vicuña Wins Spain’s Top Art Prize – The 71-year-old Santiago-born artist has won Spain’s biggest art award, the ministry of culture’s Premio Velázquez de Artes Plásticas. Vicuña will receive €100,000 (around $110,700) in recognition of her “outstanding work as a poet, visual artist, and activist.” (ARTnews)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Is TikTok a Hotbed of Feminist Video Art? – Are young women who use comedy and performance to call out abusive exes on TikTok following in the footsteps of early feminist artists? Hyperallergic thinks so. Sharing DIY performances on TikTok is “like consciousness-raising discussions from the early days of the feminist movement,” Monica Castillo writes. (Hyperallergic)

Tate Gets a Major Helen Frankenthaler Gift – Helen Frankenthaler’s New York-based foundation has gifted London’s Tate with a major painting: Vessel (1961), an early work created with the artist’s distinct soak-stain technique. It is the first piece by Frankenthaler to enter the UK museum’s collection, and is on view now in a gallery dedicated to the American artist. (Artforum)

Leo Villareal Lights Up Pace – Pace is mounting the first solo exhibition of work by the American artist Leo Villareal in London from November 22 through January 18. The show, which includes a monumental new LED work, follows the launch of the artist’s spectacular Illuminated River project, which transforms several bridges across the Thames every night. (Fad Magazine)


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