Art Industry News: Actor Kevin Spacey Read a Self-Glorifying Poem at a Roman Museum in a Bizarre Comeback Effort + Other Stories

Art Industry News is normally 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, August
5.

NEED-TO-READ

The Louvre Will Make Ticket Reservations Compulsory –
Starting in October, it will
become “obligatory” for
Louvre visitors to make advance reservations online. In the face of
overcrowding, Vincent
Pomarede, the deputy general administrator of the Louvre, told
AFP: “We have accelerated what we wanted to put in place
at the start of the 2020.” In the meantime, visitors are urged to
book online rather than turn up and risk disappointment if the
museum is at capacity. (AFP)

Hong Kong Culture Workers Take to the Streets
– Among the throngs of
Hong Kong civil servants demonstrating
against a controversial extradition bill last week were numerous staff from government-funded arts
organizations. Around 2,000
civil servants recently defied government pressure to take to the
streets. Others have expressed solidarity anonymously with the
ongoing campaign, which has seen escalating violence against
protesters in recent weeks. The Hong Kong Artists Union called for
state-funded arts spaces and museums to close today so staff could
join a general strike. (The Art Newspaper)

Kevin Spacey Reads a Poem at a Museum in Rome –
The embattled actor
surfaced in Rome to read a poem next to an ancient Greek sculpture of a
wounded boxer at the National Roman Museum’s Palazzo Massimo alle
Terme. Poet Gabriele
Tinti said he wrote the poem—part of a series inspired by ancient
statues—with Spacey in mind. He asked the actor to recite an
English translation of “the Boxer,” which included the
phrase, “The more you
are wounded the greater you are.” Spacey, who has faced allegations
of sexual misconduct in the US and Britain, invited members of the
press to attend the performance. A member of the audience described
Spacey’s reading as “masterful,” though we might have suggested a
few other adjectives instead. (Vulture, CNN)

Disgraced Dealer Shows No Remorse, Says Fraud Victim
– London dealer Timothy Sammons,
who was imprisoned last
week for fraud after he
stole millions of dollars of art from his wealthy clients, has
shown no remorse for his actions, according to one of his victims.
Vivian Cavalieri, who was scammed out of a million-dollar Giorgio
Morandi painting given to her by her father as well as three other
works, is now suing the dealer in civil court over the loss of the
painting, which she claimed had sentimental as well as monetary
value. (Times)

ART MARKET

Gagosian Takes Over Mary Boone’s Chelsea Space –
Larry Gagosian is expanding his
footprint even further in Chelsea. The mega-dealer is renting a
7,900-square-foot space next door to his existing,
26,000-square-foot West 24th Street hub. The space was previously
occupied by two different galleries: Pace, which is now
consolidating on 25th Street, and Mary Boone, which had to close
after its founder was sentenced to 30
months in federal prison for tax evasion. (Bloomberg)

Christie’s Offers Jeremy Lancaster Collection –
Christie’s is selling the art
collection of the late British businessman Jeremy Lancaster on
October 1, to coincide with London’s Frieze Week. Aside from works
by Josef Albers and Pablo Picasso, the collection is particularly
strong on Howard Hodgkin works, with an auction house
representative likening his holdings to “a near complete
retrospective survey” of the artist. (Art Market Monitor)

Galleries Pay Tribute to Legendary San Francisco Space –
The storied San Francisco gallery
Dilexi is getting a retrospective of its own retrospective at Los
Angeles’s the Landing gallery this summer as part of a wider,
six-venue program dedicated to the gallery, which operated from
1958 to 1969. “Dilexi Gallery: Disparate Ontologies,” on view
through August 10, celebrates the gallery’s dedication to radical
political artists. (Los Angeles Times)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Turner Painting Given
Temporary Export Ban – The UK has placed a temporary
export ban on The Dark Rigi, the Lake of Lucerne, an 1842
painting by J. M. W. Turner. Arts minister Rebecca Pow warns
its international sale would be a “terrible loss to the whole
country.” The UK has until December 1 to raise the £10 million ($11 million) needed to
keep the watercolor painting, which depicts dawn in the Swiss
mountains. (Independent)

LA Artist Don Suggs Has
Died – The renowned Los Angeles artist has died at 74,
after being involved in a pedestrian traffic accident. The artist
and instructor at the University of California was well-loved in
the LA art scene for his vibrantly colored concentric circle
paintings that defied easy categorization. (Art
Daily)

Restoration of King
Tut’s Coffin Begins – An eight-month restoration of
King Tut’s wooden coffin has begun in Cairo after the precious
artifact was removed earlier this year from Luxor’s Valley of
the Kings in a very fragile state due to humidity and high
temperatures. The restored coffin will go on display in the new
Egyptian Museum in central Cairo alongside the two smaller
concentric coffins that held the boy king. (LA
Times)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Emilio Prini Gets First
Major Retrospective Since His Death – A key figure of the
Arte Povera movement, Prini will have a large retrospective at
Turin’s Merz Foundation from October 28 to February 9, 2020.
Organized by Beatrice Merz in collaboration with Emilio’s daughter
Timotea, it marks the first retrospective on Prini since his death
in 2016. (Press
release)

Elmgreen & Dragset’s
Memorial to Gay People Is Vandalized Again – The
duo’s permanent film and sculpture installation in Berlin,
titled Memorial for Homosexuals Persecuted Under National
Socialism, has been damaged again. Vandals sprayed the screen
of the monument white so that the film, which shows footage of gay
couples embracing on loop, is impossible to see. The work, which is across from the
Holocaust memorial, has been vandalized several times since it was
installed in 2008. (Monopol)

Jeremy Deller’s New Documentary Receives Critical
Acclaim While Offending a Few – The artist’s new
documentary, Everybody in the Place, which aired on
BBC 4 on August 2, looks at British rave culture from the mid-1980s
through the early ’90s, placing acid house and club culture in the
context of the major social and political change sweeping Britain
at the time. But not everyone thinks it does the era justice: “I
was looking forward to reliving the best days of my life and all I
got was was a far left propaganda advert,” wrote one Twitter user.
Deller seems unbothered; he reposted the tweet, replying, “thanks for
all the kind words about the film , also nice to know that I ruined
a few peoples evenings.” (Instagram)

The post Art Industry News: Actor Kevin Spacey Read a
Self-Glorifying Poem at a Roman Museum in a Bizarre Comeback Effort
+ Other Stories appeared first on artnet News.