Art Industry News: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib Calls Out MoMA Board Member Larry Fink, Joining Chorus of Protest + Other Stories

by admin

Dec 19, 2019

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 Thursday, December
19.

NEED-TO-READ

Can Museums Survive Without Oil
Money? – Oil giants like Shell,
ExxonMobil, and BP are hefty sponsors of the world’s most prominent
art museums. But in recent years, artists and activists have urged
museums to cut their ties to fossil fuel companies, arguing that
the businesses are using museums to “greenwash” their connection to
climate change, emphasizing their sustainability initiatives while
still working to expand their production. Museums, meanwhile, might
even give oil bosses input into exhibitions or self-censor to keep
sponsors happy. Some argue that museums are not in a position to
turn down money with public funding of the arts on the decline. But
the artist Imani Jacqueline Brown asks, “What does it matter if the
doors to a museum are open one more year if it’s also underwater?”
(Grist)

Curator of Controversial Mexican Show Gets Death Threats
– The curator of
a controversial
show about the revolutionary hero Emiliano
Zapata is now receiving death threats, he
says. Despite violent
protests, curator Luis Vargas
Santiago stands by
his decision to include a provocative portrait of Zapata, a vaunted
symbol of machismo, in the style of a gay pin-up. Although the
portrait by Fabián Cháirez remains on view at Mexico City’s Palacio
de Bellas Artes, a new label has been addd at the request of
Zapata’s descendants that communicates their disapproval of the
work. Santiago says the move has “created a dangerous precedent for
freedom of expression in this country.” (ARTnews)

Congresswoman Calls Out MoMA Board Member – The Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has
called out the longtime Democratic donor and BlackRock CEO Larry
Fink for supporting companies that are destroying the Amazon and
threatening the environment. Tlaib says billionaires like Fink are
hypocritical because they pay lip service to fixing climate change
while profiting from investments that exacerbate it. Tlaib and
another member of Congress, Chuy García, wrote a letter cosigned by
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others urging Fink, who invests in
firms with ties to the Brazilian government, to call for Brazil’s
president to take action against deforestation. Fink has also been
the subject of protests at MoMA,
where he serves on the board. (Vice)

This Museum Wants to Put Its Entire Collection on View
– Most museums keep only a small portion of their
collections on view at one time—around six or seven percent. But
that is changing in Rotterdam, where the Boijmans van Beuningen has
built a public-facing art-storage facility due to be complete in
2021 that will make the museum’s entire 151,000 artwork collection
visible and accessible. The museum’s directors hope the $95 million
“art depot” will attract 150,000 to 200,000 visitors a year, even
while the main building is closed for renovations until 2025.
Museum professionals from countries including Finland, Norway, and
South Korea have come to see the radical new model as they grapple
with how to manage their own vast collections. (New York
Times)

ART MARKET

What Happens When the Great Wealth
Transfer Comes for Art? – Younger generations are expected to inherit
more than $15 trillion in assets within the next decade, including
$1.9 trillion worth of art, in what is known as the “Great Wealth
Transfer.” Experts are worried that heirs will not share their
elders’ passion for art collecting, however, and that swathes of
works may soon hit the auction block, possibly flooding the market
for artists like Andy Warhol. (New York Times)

Closing Art School Sells Its
Collection – The Memphis
College of Art, which announced two years ago it would close
because it was no longer financially sustainable, is now selling
its art collection. The school will auction off 500 works by
artists including Burton Callicott, Dolph Smith, and Dorothy
Strum in a series of sales in late January. (WMC)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Veteran Muralist Rina Lazo Dies
– The Mexican muralist died on
November 1 at age 96. Born in Guatemala, she moved to Mexico as a
young artist and became one of Diego Rivera’s assistants in the
1940s. Her mural celebrating Indigenous cultures can be seen in
Mexico City’s National
Museum of Anthropology. (New
York Times)

Brooklyn Library Names Artist in
Residence – Mary
Mattingly will become
the Brooklyn Public
Library’s latest artist in
residence in 2020. The artist, whose work focuses on ecological
spaces and shared resources, is working on a spherical sculpture
embedded with plant fossils as well as a display of photographs on
the industrial supply chain. (NYT)

Frieze Taps New
Editor-in-Chief – Andrew Durbin
will succeed Jennifer Higgie as the editor-in-chief of
Frieze magazine. He joined the publication in 2017 as
a senior editor; before that, he was a director and co-founder of
Company Gallery in New York. (Artforum)

Nam June Paik Art Center Has a New Director –
Seong-Eun Kim is the new director
of the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, South Korea, where she
once served as a curator. Most recently, she oversaw exhibitions at
the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

William Kentridge Comes to Times
Square – The South African
artist is taking over a dozen video screens in Times Square every
night this month for the latest Midnight Moment commission, which
runs from 11:57 p.m. to midnight. The screens feature text and
imagery from Waiting for Sibyl, his opera that
debuted in Rome earlier this year. (The Art Newspaper)

Is This the Most Important African
Art Show Ever? – Dakar’s
new Museum of Black
Civilization is hosting
a major survey of contemporary African art, a traveling survey
currently on a seven-city tour of Africa. Called
“Prête-moi Ton Rêve (Lend Me
Your Dream),” the show has been organized by Yacouba Konaté and
includes work by 30 of the continent’s biggest art stars. The
curator notes that “all too often the careers of African artists
are built on exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, London and New York …
but go by without anybody in Africa actually noticing
them.” (Guardian)

Sylvester Stallone Surprises
Students at the Rocky Statue – High schools students’ field trip to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art was upstaged by a very famous visitor:
Sylvester Stallone. They were thrilled to meet the Hollywood star
next to the sculpture immortalizing his character Robert
“Rocky” Balboa
on the museum’s
steps. The actor,
artist, and art collector was
revisiting the bronze, called the Statue of
ROCKY, that he
commissioned in
1980. (ABC)

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