Art Industry News: A Show in Miami Asks If Black Artists Really Benefit From the Rising Sales of Their Work + Other Stories

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 Wednesday, December
4.

NEED-TO-READ

Who Is the Real Inigo Philbrick?
– The beleaguered art dealer has reportedly stopped communicating with
his lawyers and unhappy clients. As pending lawsuits pile up
against Inigo Philbrick, ARTnews does a deep dive, asking
people who got to know the young dealer when he cut a swashbuckling
figure at the top end of the art market. His former boss turned
backer, White Cube’s Jay Jopling, is disappointed by his former
protege, revealing that he applied for an injunction against
Philbrick. Artnet
News’s Kenny Schachter says
that he is working on a screenplay about the young dealer.
(ARTnews)

Are We Finally Catching Up With
Andrea Fraser? – The artist and
academic has been a fierce and funny critic of art museums since
the late 1980s and now her fusion of archival
research, performance, and humor exposing the art world’s power
structures is more topical than ever. New works include an
updated spoof docent’s tour at the Art Institute of Chicago. In an
in-depth profile, the UCLA art professor shares her warning to
students aiming to subvert the system. In art it is best to avoid,
she says, “Cute animals, babies and young children, popular music,
sex and certain kinds of violence,” because they tend to overwhelm
viewers’ ability to think about art in nuanced or complex
ways. (New York
Times)

A Miami Exhibition Asks: “Who Owns Black Art?” –
Work by black artists is in demand
but are they getting a bad deal? Like black musicians in the
past, visual artists are
often not the main beneficiaries of the work they produce. A
three-day satellite exhibition in Miami of work by emerging artists
puts the question more bluntly: “Who Owns Black Art?” Its
organizers aim to highlight the under representation of black
dealers and curators in the industry—”black-owned or operated
galleries are virtually absent among the exhibitors” at Art Basel,
the New York Times notes—and how that affects the ways
black artists are shown. (NYT)

Robert Indiana’s Estate Could Be
Worth $100 Million – The value
of the late artist’s estate continues to soar, and could top $100
million. James Brannan, the
attorney representing the estate, said that since Indiana’s death,
he has recovered more than $5 million worth of art. Indiana left
nearly his entire estate to the nonprofit Star of Hope, which will
turn his home and studio into a museum. The artist’s former
caretaker, who is due to run the museum, has been embroiled in a
legal battle with the estate and others since Indiana’s death.
The estate’s legal fees have so far totaled $4 million, court
papers reveal. (Village
Soup)

ART MARKET

Gauguin’s Te Bouaro
II Sells for $10.5 Million – A late Tahitian landscape by Paul Gauguin sold
for $10.5 million at Artcurial in Paris. The buyer said he they
plan to keep the 1897 canvas in France. (Press release)

Mickalene Thomas Will Customize a
Rolls-Royce for Charity – The
artist will customize a Rolls-Royce Red Phantom for whoever wins an
online auction organized by Sotheby’s. Proceeds will support the
AIDS-eradication charity RED. The auction is being launched in
Miami today. (Observer)

Galleries Gamble on Big Art Fairs
– Smaller galleries pay a
fortune to take part in a big fair, which may be great for kudos
and contacts but not necessarily for the bottom line. Art Basel
supremo Marc Spiegler
says the fair recognizes the problem and as responded
by cutting booth fees to help
smaller galleries. Spiegler explains they give dealers two
years to “find out how to do the sort of booth we would hope for
and make the finances add up.” (NYT)

COMINGS & GOINGS

The First Getty Museum Director Has Died – The veteran museum director Stephen Garrett has
died, aged 96. Garrett was the first director of the Getty Museum
in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu after the death of its
billionaire founder J. Paul Getty, and also served as director of
the Hammer Museum and the Long Beach Museum of Art. (ARTnews)

Byron Kim Wins Robert De Niro Sr. Prize – The abstract painter Byron Kim has won
the $25,000 Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize for mid-career US painters.
“Byron Kim’s dedication to his art and his deep commitment to
teaching resonates with my father’s own commitment,” the actor
Robert De Niro, son of the prize’s founder, said in a statement. “I
am therefore especially pleased with the selection committee’s
choice this year as it truly honors my father’s memory.” 
(ARTnews)

Jewyo Rhii Wins Korea Artist Prize 2019 – The multimedia artist Jewyo Rhii has won the
2019 Korea Artist Prize. The prize was awarded for her
installation Love Your
Depot, a prototype art
storage system and collaborative studio meant to help in “delaying
the death of work by artists,” which was funded by a $35,400 grant
from the prize. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

LOEWE Foundation Launches Exhibition in Miami –
Fashion designer Jonathan Anderson
of the Spanish brand LOEWE debuted the fifth edition of his
Chance Encounters
exhibition series, which brings
together an unlikely pair of artists working in different
disciplines to spark meaningful conversation between their
seemingly dissimilar work. This year, British artist Hilary Lloyd
will present a site-specific textile, sound, and video installation
alongside work by the late ceramics-artist James Ewen Henderson.
“The Chance Encounters exhibitions are an opportunity to create
conversations across time, between artists whose work resonates
strongly with my own creative approach,” Anderson says. “Hilary
Lloyd’s work is perfectly attuned to the contemporary moment and
the way in which we engage with the visual world around us. It will
stage a striking dialogue with Ewen Henderson’s bold
materially-rich work.” (Architectural
Digest)

Controversial Monument Containing Ashes from the Holocaust
Installed in Berlin – Holocaust
survivors are upset by a temporary monument in Berlin by the art
collective the Centre for Political Beauty, which contains the
ashes of Jewish Holocaust victims. The provocative art group says
the work, installed near the Reichstag, is meant to target
conservative politicians who have been seduced by the idea of a
coalition with the far right party AfD. (The Art
Newspaper)

Revelations About the Life of Marco Polo Come to Light –
Researchers have uncovered a
previously unseen document relating to the Venetian explorer Marco
Polo. The explorer was witness to a 1323 bequest left by Giovanni
dalle Boccole to the Dominican friars of a Venetian convent,
supporting the theory that Marco Polo was involved in religious
life once he returned to Venice after his travels. (Archaeology
Newsroom)

How One Artist Is Embroidering the Past – See the artist Diane Meyer’s new series
“Berlin,” in which she has embroidered 43 photographs of public
spaces. Her embroidery pixelates with stitches the places where the
former Berlin Wall would have bisected or blocked what is visible
in the photograph. (Colassal) 

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Artists Really Benefit From the Rising Sales of Their Work + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.