Art Industry News: The Armory Show Is Leaving the Piers Next Year and Changing Its Dates + Other Stories

by admin

Mar 6, 2020

artnet

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, March
6.

NEED-TO-READ

Grenfell Tower Families Criticize Steve McQueen’s Film –
The Oscar- and Turner-prize winning
artist has upset some relatives of victims of the Grenfell Tower
fire with his new film. The
Grenfell Next of Kin support group complain of feeling “totally
disenfranchised” about who gets to tell their story. A spokeswoman
for McQueens says he is now talking to the group and wishes to meet
them. The artist used a helicopter to film the charred ruins of the
high-rise building in West London in December 2017 before it was
covered up with a billboard. An inquiry into the causes of the
fire, in which 72 people died, is ongoing. There is no release
date for the film, which
the artist says will be free to see, probably in a London
museum. (The Art
Newspaper)

Musée d’Orsay Gets a $22.3 Million Gift to Expand –
The Paris museum of 19th-century
art is expanding its exhibition and education spaces thanks to an
anonymous gift from the US. The $22.3 million windfall will help
turn most of the former railway station into public space by 2026.
The gift from the American Friends of the Musée d’Orsay follows a
donation of 600 works of art by Marlene and Spencer Hays. That donation in 2016 galvanized the museum
into moving offices out the building to create 13,000 square feet
of extra exhibition space. (NYT)

Armory Show Switches Venues and Dates – The Armory
Show is saying farewell
to the Hudson piers and to its March calendar date. Organizers
announced that the 2021 edition will take place instead at the
Javits Center in the fall, from September 9–12. “Having piers that aren’t next
to each other has been challenging,” said Nicole Berry, the art
fair’s director. She hopes
that the fall date will attract more out-of-town visitors and that
the convention center near Chelsea’s galleries will be more
convenient. (ARTNews)

What Happens When Everyone Becomes a Curator? –
The overuse of the verb “curate” to
suggest anything buzzy or aspirational both amuses and rankles
professional curators. Andrew Renton, a professor of curating at
Goldsmiths College in London, used to keep a note of every time he
saw a bizarre or banal use of the term. Favorites include a curated
cheese board and a story about “curated curls” in British
Vogue. Ubiquitous curator Hans Ulrich Obrist agrees
the title has become debased, so recently the artistic director of
London’s Serpentine Galleries has been toying with a new title. He
likes “junction maker,” crediting the writer JG Ballard, who
curated the notorious show “Crash!” (NYT)

ART MARKET

Bust of Alexander Found in Getty’s Old Garden Sells for
$500,000 – A marble head of
Alexander the Great uncovered by a gardener at John Paul Getty’s
former home in England has sold for nearly £400,000 ($500,000). It
was unearthed after Sutton Place was bought by another art
collector, Stanley Seeger, who told the gardener he could keep what
was thought to be a 19th-century copy. Adam Partridge Auctioneers
in the North of England quickly revised its low estimate of around
$1,000 when experts spotted the bust might be a Greek or Roman
original. (Times)

Hermès Bags May Be Better Investments Than
Art – Hermès handbags—specifically the
Birkin—appreciated in value more than any other “alternative
investment assets,” such as art, stamps, watches, cars, and other
categories, according to a study from the consultancy firm Knight
Frank. In a one-year period, the Hermès bag index increased 13
percent, compared to just five percent for art. (Quartz)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Hilma af Klint Show Wins
Award – The Guggenheim’s “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for
the Future” has been named best exhibition for Leading Culture
Destinations and visitBerlin’s LDC Berlin Award that recognizes 18
winners from 13 countries. Ateliers Lumières won best digital
experience and the National Museum in Qatar was named the top
cultural destination in the Middle East, Africa, and the UAE—it
also won “best shop.” (Press release)

La Guardia Is Getting
Artsy – A partnership with the Public Art Fund
will bring permanent installations by Jeppe Hein, Laura Owens,
Sabine Hornig, and Sarah Sze to the new Terminal B. Each artist has
been commissioned to make large-scale installations that are
expected to be unveiled later this year. The total budget for the
art project is $10 million. (Press release)

The Biennale de Lyon
Curators Announced – Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath,
founders of the curatorial platform Art Reoriented and
affiliate curators at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, will curate the
16th edition of the Biennale de Lyon. The next edition takes place
from September 2021 to January 2022. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Jason Farago Has Reservations About Richter’s “Swan Song”
– The New York Times
art critic generally approves of the Met’s choice of Gerhard
Richter for its “sublime” final show in the Breuer building. Farago
also thinks it is likely to be
the artist’s final major show (although Richter might have other ideas
about that), and that the German artist’s work suits the “exquisite
melancholy” of the occasion either way. But Farago has serious
reservations about the hang of Richter’s four “Birkenau” abstract
works, named for the concentration camp during the Holocaust,
alongside documentary photographs. They “tacitly encourage a
repulsive search in each painting for the obliterated violence
beneath,” he writes. “The death camps should never be a game of ‘I
Spy,’” Farago writes of the alleged curatorial (and artistic)
misstep. (New York
Times)

Griselda Pollock Wins
Holberg Prize – The Canadian-British art
historian has won the Holberg Prize, one of the largest
international awards given to scholars in the humanities, social
sciences, law, or theology that comes with a prize of 6 million
Norwegian kroner, or about $650,000. Pollock is known for bringing
feminist theory into art history. She’s the first art historian to
win the prize. (NYT)

David Shrigley Pops
Champagne in Ruinart Collaboration – Maison Ruinart
will host Shrigley in Reims to show an ensemble of 36 drawings and
gouaches, three neons, two ceramics, and one door for the champagne
company’s 2020 commission. Last year, the French alcohol maker
invited Vik Muniz. The work was unveiled in Paris this morning and
it will go on show at 37 international contemporary art fairs
around the world this year. (Press release)