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 Friday, September 21.
NEED-TO-READ
Jerry Saltz Wants More and Bigger Delacroix – More than 150 prints, drawings, watercolors, paintings, and manuscripts fill the Met’s version of the Delacroix show, which was a hit in Paris. But as much of the work is small, New Yorkers “don’t get the wide-open retinal fireworks of his big pictures, which is a shame,” writes Saltz, who is a fan of the 19th-century French “freak of painterly nature”—but prefers “his extraordinary comrade” Théodore Géricault, “as this artist might have made French Romanticism less flamboyant and easier to take had he not died before the age of 32.” (New York Magazine)
Jewish Groups Row Over Hungary’s Holocaust Museum – A state-funded Holocaust museum in Budapest will be run by Chabad of Hungary, which has upset the head of the European Jewish Congress. Moshe Kantor fears the House of Fates will “whitewash” the memory of the Holocaust. Rabbi Slomo Koves retaliated by calling Kantor a “post-Soviet oligarch included in the ‘Putin List.’” Israel’s Yad Vashem has boycotted the controversial institution, which is backed by Hungary’s right-wing government. (Jewish News)
Jeffrey Deitch on LA’s New Jeffrey Deitch – Yes, “Jeffrey Deitch,” and not Deitch Projects, is the name of the impresario’s new 15,000-square-foot LA space, opening in Hollywood next week with a show of Ai Weiwei’s art. (“He will bring in a much broader audience,” the dealer explains. “That’s part of the mission.”) Does Deitch have any lingering resentment toward the city after being ousted from MOCA? He tells the Los Angeles Times that it was “a very narrow group” that opposed his directorship, “[a]nd they succeeded in driving me out. But that was not enough to topple my mission. This is like a museum-type space; I don’t need the board and all that trouble. I can do whatever I want here. I have zero bitterness. I love L.A.” (LAT)
Russian Authorities Close Gulag Museum – A Gulag museum run by volunteers in a regional city in Russia has been been forced to leave its home in a former secret police headquarters. Its founder has accused authorities of trying to cover up the crimes of the OGPU, a forerunner of the KGB, but Artem Gotlib of Moscow’s Gulag History State Museum claims that the Yoshkar-Ola museum simply “[did] not conduct museum work.” (The Art Newspaper)
ART MARKET
Frieze Hires a Nosy Opera Singer – Buyers beware: Laure Prouvost is working with an opera singer who will burst into song after “overhearing intimate conversations” at the fair. Another Frieze Projects work by Liz Glynn will see dancers move in response to sales, or rumors of them. (Guardian)
Dealer Gives $5 Million to the Vera List Center – Jane Lombard has donated $5 million to the center, which will fund its $25,000 biennial prize for a social justice–minded artist or group. The New York-based dealer praised the Vera List Center’s work to support artists who speak out about “the many social and political problems that exist today.” Its 2018–’20 fellows are the artist Dean Erdmann and curator-artist Helene Kazan. (ARTnews)
COMINGS & GOINGS
Danish-Palestinian Artist to Represent Denmark in Venice – Larissa Sansour will represent Denmark at the 2019 Venice Biennial with a pavilion organized by Netherlands-based critic and curator Nat Muller. Sansour’s work, which encompasses film, photography, installation, and sculpture, will focus on the displacement and conflicts surrounding Palestine. (ARTnews)
The Walker Names New Board President – John Christakos is the new president of the Walker Art Center, having taken up the post on September 18. A former strategy and brand consultant, Christakos also founded the award-winning design firm Blu Dot. He will hold the position for the next two years. (Press release)
Nasher Announces New Gifts – The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, has announced donations that include more than 120 posters, books, and video works by the 1980s collective Guerrilla Girls, as well as a 1988 bronze by Louise Bourgeois. (Glasstire)
FOR ART’S SAKE
Boston Names Finalists for MLK Memorial – Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, will receive a monument in their honor on the Boston Common. Five finalists have been selected for their designs which will be unveiled on Tuesday for public viewing and discussion, before a winner is chosen in November. (Boston Globe)
Albertina Borrows 100 Monets for a Blockbuster – The Albertina Museum in Vienna is organizing a show of around 100 paintings by Claude Monet. The exhibition is set to be Austria’s first dedicated to the Impressionist painter of this scale in over 20 years. The show will feature significant loans from over 40 international museums and private collections, including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the National Gallery in London as well as from Russian institutions. (Art Daily)
Four Artists Respond to “Soul of a Nation” – Ming Smith, Betye Saar, William T. Williams, and Senga Nengudi respond to the exhibition currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, which includes their work. Called “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” the survey of work by African American artists from 1963 through 1983 was a critical success at Tate Modern in London. (ARTnews)
Nan Goldin, Luxury Bag Designer? – The artist and activist Nan Goldin is collaborating with a new luxury bag brand from Italy, called Medea. The line has gained a cult following since launching this year, and Goldin has offered two of her iconic photographs from the 1990s and ’70s to be printed on a selection Medea’s leather totes. (Vogue)