Art Industry News: Artist Ken Monkman Apologizes for His Outrageously Indecent Justin Trudeau Painting + Other News

by admin

May 27, 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 Wednesday, May
27.

NEED-TO-READ

Activists Protest NYPD Charges Against a Journalist’s
Graffiti – Protesters gathered
in front of a New York Police Department precinct on Sunday
demanding that charges be dropped against an African American
journalist who was arrested for writing “Trump=Plague” in pink
chalk on the sidewalk. The 67-year-old woman, Jill Nelson, was
arrested and now faces a court appearance in August. Nelson is also
asking for a formal apology after she was aggressively searched and
held for five hours. (Hyperallergic)

Kara Walker on Life Post-Lockdown – Kara Walker pens an essay for Frieze
about how the current health situation has exposed
inequalities within our society that existed long before lockdown.
She notes that many frontline workers who are most vulnerable are
people of color: farm workers, nurses, janitors, and delivery
people. “For every day and every week in our ‘quarantine,’
‘self-isolation,’ ‘lockdown,’ or ‘shelter in place,’ some wise fool
asks us to consider the effects of social distancing, as if
segregation weren’t already a reality,” she writes. Moments of
trauma in history like this one, she says, have a way of both
revealing historical inequities and prompting a kind of mass
forgetting. “To demand exactitude in the pursuit of a historical
truth is to go where no mind can venture and return whole,” she
writes. (Frieze)

Kent Monkman Apologizes for Justin Trudeau Painting –
The Cree artist has apologized for
painting a sexually suggestive image of the Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau being dominated by a group of Indigenous women.
Monkman saw widespread backlash to the image on social media, with
many reading it as a glorification of sexual assault. The artist
says that it was meant to draw attention to the violence and
assault faced by Indigenous women in Canada and the US. “I wish for
my work to resist the colonial traumas inflicted upon my own family
and so many others for generations, not to perpetuate harm,” the
artist said in an apology posted to his website. “I see that with
this work, I have failed.” (The Art Newspaper)

Comic-Book Pioneer Suffers Racist Incident in Central Park
– Christian Cooper, the bird
watcher who was subject to a racist incident in Central Park over
the weekend that was captured on video and has since swept the
internet, is a comic-book pioneer. Cooper is a former editor at
Marvel comics and created the first openly gay Star Trek character,
Yoshi Mishima. He has been in the news after a white woman called
the police and told them an African American man was threatening
her after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. (them)

ART MARKET

Art Basel Releases Lineup for Online Viewing Room –
From June 19 through 26, some 279
international galleries from 35 countries will participate in Art
Basel’s second online viewing room, timed to coincide with the
original dates of Art Basel. Newcomers include the London-based
gallery Emalin and New York’s Queer Thoughts. (Artfix
Daily)

Auction Sales in France Dropped 80 Percent During Lockdown
– Total auction sales
dropped by 80 percent in France during the lockdown, according to a
report by France’s Voluntary Sales Council on the 175 auctions
that were held during the period. This contraction was mainly due
to the fact that far fewer sales went ahead, and those that did
happened under strict conditions with no public exhibition, no
audience, withdrawn lots, and remote payments. Except for charity
sales, no auction breached the €1 million mark. (Le Journal des
Arts)

COMINGS & GOINGS

The Biennale of Sydney
Plans Reopening – After being forced to close just
over a week after it opened, the 22nd edition of the Biennale of
Sydney says it is ready to finally welcome visitors again on June
16. The show, titled “NIRIN” (a word meaning “edge” in Wiradjuri,
an Aboriginal Australian dialect in central New South Wales),
includes 700 artworks by 101 artists and collectives.
(Artforum)

The Musée du Quai Branly
Gets a New Director – Emmanuel Kasarhérou will take over
the Parisian museum known for its ethnographic collections. The
incoming director will be the first of Kanake origin to lead the
institution. Kasarhérou, who replaces longtime
director Stéphane Martin, has worked at the museum since 2014.
(Le
Monde)

The Markaz Is Closing
– The Los Angeles arts center devoted to
showcasing Middle Eastern culture through lectures, film
screenings, performances, and exhibitions is shutting down
permanently due to losses suffered as a result of the lockdown. It
will now operate strictly online as a digital
journal. (LA
Times)

FOR ART’S SAKE

How the Met Grew Its
Follower Count by Almost 200,000 – Since the
lockdown began in March, the Met’s social media director
Claire Lanier says the museum’s already-popular social media
accounts exploded with another 165,000 new
followers. Impressions on Twitter have increased by 71.2
percent and on Instagram by almost 50 percent in the past two
months. Lanier says her
strategy focuses on “not only providing people with art that they
love,” but also giving them “creative projects to do” at home.
(TAN)

The Institute of
American Indian Arts Discounts Tuition – The Santa Fe
school will reduce tuition by 10 percent for the 2020 to 2021
academic year due to the global health situation. The move comes in
stark contrast to other schools across the US that are raising
tuition to make up for lost revenue. (Hyperallergic)

Anne Imhof and Tobias
Rehberger Are Making Art to Save a Nightclub – Golden
Lion winners Anne Imhof and Tobias Rehberger are among the artists
donating multiples to help keep a famous German nightclub afloat
during the social-distancing era. The club, Robert Johnson, is
located just on the outskirts of Frankfurt, where the two went to
art school at Städelschule. The sale begins today with a work by DJ
Ata; Rehberger will offer a lamp and an ashtray in mid-June and
Anne Imhof is offering a bomber jacket edition in
September. (Press release)