Art Industry News: Does the ‘Museum Model’ Even Work Anymore? Some Insiders Say No + 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 Friday, January
3.

NEED-TO-READ

Meet the Art World’s 20 Least
Powerful People – At the top of
Hyperallergic’s annual list of the least powerful people
in the art world are adjunct professors, who suffer from low pay
and job insecurity, often earning just a few thousand dollars for
teaching a whole course. People who call out sexual harassment come
in at number two, who have seen little concrete consequences for
those they have accused more than two years after the
start of the MeToo movement. Also highly placed on the list are the
feminist artists fighting Instagram
censorship and workers laid off by the
now-shuttered Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles.
(Hyperallergic)

Can a Perspex Flood Barrier Save St. Mark’s? –
St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice wants
to build a transparent flood barrier to protect its medieval
facade. The church’s governing body is working on a plan to
erect a two-meter-high
Perspex wall, with sink sheet piles planted four meters deep into
St. Mark’s Square. The project’s budget has not been revealed,
though the the cost to repair the damage to the church following catastrophic
flooding in November is estimated to be around $3.4
million. (TAN)

Does the Museum Model Work? –
Jezebel asks a variety of curators, art workers, and activists a
provocative question: who does the existing museum model serve?
Chaédria LaBouvier, who organized
the exhibition “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story” at New
York’s Guggenheim Museum last year, says she was shocked by how the
institution struggled to engage with “an empowered person of
color.” Izzy Johnson, a
former docent and organizer at the Marciano Art
Foundation, thinks that
you still need to independently wealthy or have some other source
of income to afford to work in an art museum. New Museum union
organizer Dana Kopel puts it
more bluntly: the whole museum model in the US is “unethical and
unsustainable,” she writes. (Jezebel)

Remai Modern’s Former Director
Removed From Harassment Complaint – Gregory Burke, the former director of
Remai Modern
in Saskatoon, tweeted his relief that a Canadian judge had
suspended a harassment complaint made by a former staffer in 2015.
Judge Brenda Hildebrandt
ordered Burke’s name be removed from the complaint to the
Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, writing that a 31-month-long
investigation had resulted in “significant prejudice” against the
director. Burke resigned from the Canadian museum last year and was
due to take the helm of the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand,
but withdrew from the post when the harassment allegation surfaced.
“I look forward to resuming my career in 2020,” he
tweeted. (ARTnews)

ART MARKET

Demand for US Freeports on the Rise – As the US imposes new tariffs on art
and antiques, demand is spiking for New York’s first freeport
art storage facility. Arcis in Harlem has found particular success
with its viewing rooms, which allow international sellers to show
work to prospective buyers without ever having to pay import taxes
(though they will need to pony up once the work leaves the
facility—unless the buyer has space at Arcis,
too). (The Art Newspaper)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Hong Kong Artist Cheung Yee Has
Died – The Chinese artist has died in Los Angeles at the
age of 83. Cheung Yee, who came to prominence in Hong Kong in the
1960s, is best known for his sculptural bronzes, which combine
Western and traditional Chinese
aesthetics. (Artforum)

Brooklyn Museum Curator Heads to
Cleveland – Kristen
Windmuller-Luna is the
Cleveland Museum of Art’s new curator of African arts. She
previously served as African art curator at the Brooklyn Museum,
where her hire sparked controversy in 2018 over whether the
institution should have hired a white
academic for the job. (ARTnews)

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye Will Become a Museum –
The influential Modernist
architect’s masterwork, Villa Savoye, will become a museum and
library dedicated to Le Corbusier. Work to turn the house in
Poissy, on the edge of Paris, into a museum could begin in 2024,
with a public opening scheduled for 2027. (Le Parisien)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Damien Hirst Sculptures Get a Facelift Ahead of
Retrospective – The British artist is preparing for a
retrospective by sprucing up some of his older works. Several
large-scale bronzes surfaced outside his Gloucestershire
studio complex last week,
including Charity (2002–3), The Virgin
Mother (2005–6), and Temple (2008). A
spokeswoman confirmed they “are currently being worked on for a
retrospective exhibition.” (The Art
Newspaper)

Princeton’s Newest Portraits Honor Blue-Collar Workers –
The Ivy League university typically
hangs portraits that honor (almost entirely white) founders,
presidents, and donors. But Princeton’s latest display is
different: a new series of 10 portraits by Mario Moore honors
workers from across campus, including those in the facilities,
dining, and security departments. Moore said he wanted to put the
predominantly African American workers “in positions of
power.” Some of the works will now enter the Princeton
University Art Museum’s collection. (CNN)

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Work Anymore? Some Insiders Say No + Other Stories appeared
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