From Kanye West’s $10 Million Gift to Jeff Koons’s Latest Round of Layoffs: The Best and Worst of the Art World This Week

Catch up on this weeks news—fast.

Kanye West performs onstage in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for iHeartMedia.

BEST

Kanye West Loves James Turrell – The outspoken rapper (and political commentator) donated $10 million to James Turrell’s ongoing Roden Crater project after visiting the site in the Arizona desert and spending time with the light artist at his MASS MoCA exhibition.

New Awards to Entice Artists – Billionaire Miami art collector Jorge M. Pérez has created two new unrestricted annual art prizes for artists, offering awards of $25,000 and $50,000.

Polsky Takes on Pollock – Art dealer Richard Polsky is expanding his authentication services to include works by Jackson Pollock, hoping to pick up the slack left after the artist’s foundation stopped authenticating works by the Ab Ex titan.

The Walker Gets Woke – The Walker Art Center announced an open call to Native America artists for a public art commission, two years after a scandal surrounding a Sam Durant installation enraged Native Americans around Minneapolis.

Biennials and Beyond – The coming year is filled with art biennials around the globe, and we’ve got the rundown of the most important, newest, and longest-running exhibitions taking place.

A Supreme Event – Attention hypebeasts! Sotheby’s is selling, as a single lot, the full archive of every Supreme skateboard deck every created, which could go for a cool $1.2 million.

Taipei Takeover – artnet News’s Andrew Goldstein spoke to Magnus Renfrew, director of the inaugural Taipei Dangdai art fair, about how he hopes to transform the Asian metropolis into the next big art mecca.

WORST

An Art History Mystery – The day before an expert was to authenticate a possible Michelangelo painting, thieves stole the picture from a Belgian church.

Violent Protests Over ‘McJesus’ – A sculpture depicting a crucified Ronald McDonald led to a firebombing at the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel.

Koons Makes More Cuts – Jeff Koons laid off scores of employees from his New York studio, and it looks like he’s done with handmade art for now.

Singapore’s Art Fair Cancelled – Art Stage Singapore, one of the fairs anchoring the country’s Art Week, was cancelled just days before it was set to open, leaving exhibitors and artists confused and angry.

Sorry, Not Sorry – The Russian artists who set fire to the Bank of France in October 2017 have no regrets about their violent action, even though they were sentenced to jail time and a hefty fine.

Stories from the Shutdown – The longest government shutdown in US history is hitting employees of federal museums—hard. artnet News spoke to a handful of Washington, DC-based workers whose livelihoods are hanging in the balance.


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