Art Industry News: George W. Bush Is Getting a Solo Show of His Portraits of Veterans Injured in His ‘War on Terror’ + Other Stories

Art Industry News is normally a daily digest of the most
consequential developments coming out of the art world and art
market. Here’s what you need to know this Thursday, August
1.

NEED-TO-READ

Museum of Ice Cream Founder Says He’s Over iPhones and Ice
Cream – Manish Vora,
the co-founder of the
Instagram-friendly “experience” phenomenon now wants visitors to
put away their smartphones. In a talk the Yale alumn gave students at
his alma mater, he said the MoIC has rolled out phone-free days and
has begun encouraging visitors to work together on answering group
questions before they can have ice cream samples. “Digital
technology is impacting our ability to communicate and develop
strong friendships,” he said. “We provide an outlet to physically
connect and get off the phone.” Vora said he has been hugely
influenced by Laurie Santos, a Yale professor of psychology
and cognitive science who teaches the science of “the good life.”
(Santos is an unofficial advisor to the Museum of Ice
Cream.) The big news?
Vora revealed that in 2020 the museum will launch a second
“experience” in multiple cities, and it will not be
ice-cream-related at all. (Yale News)

Why Artist Alfredo Jaar Thinks He Is a Failure
– While intellectually
pessimistic, Jaar is an optimist at heart. In fact, he
tells the Guardian, he’s is a utopian who wants to change the
world—he just fails “all the time.” This struggle is summed up in
his latest work, I
Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On,
a Samuel Beckett-inspired light piece that is now view at the
Edinburgh Art Festival, accompanied by people wearing the work’s
title on sandwich boards. Lately, Jaar has been encouraged by the
young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, as well as the
millions of young people “who, against the wishes of their families
and the pressures of society, have decided to become artists, and
are trying to make sense of the world.” (Guardian)

George W. Bush Gets a Solo Show at the Kennedy Center –
The former US
President-turned-artist is getting his first solo show in
Washington, D.C. His 66 portraits of veterans who have served
in the US armed forces since the attacks of September 11,
2001, will go on show
at the Kennedy Center in the fall. Called “Portraits of Courage,”
the exhibition will travel from the Presidential Library and Museum
in Dallas, and features portraits Bush made of veterans who were
injured in the so-called War on Terror—the grinding global conflict
that encompassed the Iraq War, which his administration based on
false assertions about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Bush
began painting after he left the White House, taking weekly lessons
to improve his technique. He joked with his art teacher:
“There’s a Rembrandt trapped in
this body—your job is to find it.” (The Hill)

Three Myths About Pollock’s Mural
Debunked – There are tall
tales surrounding Jackson Pollock’s 1943 canvas
Mural, which Iowa University has sent on an epic
tour while it rebuilds its flood-damaged art museum. The
large-scale painting is now on show at the Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston alongside an even bigger work by Katharina Grosse. In
the New York Times, Louis Menand debunks
the myths that Marcel Duchamp trimmed Pollock’s canvas so that it
could fit on the wall of Peggy Guggenheim’s New York townhouse, and
he also blames Guggenheim and the artist Lee Krasner, Pollock’s
wife, for the unlikely story that Jack the Dripper painted the
20-foot-wide canvas overnight. Menand also pours cold water on the
story that, while drunk, Pollock stripped nude at one of
Guggenheim’s party—although he thinks it’s possible that the artist
did urinate in his patron’s fireplace when installing his
breakthrough work, so at least one gem of art-historical bad
behavior can live on. (New York Times)

ART MARKET

NADA Adds 17 New Members – The New Art Dealers Alliance announced that 17
galleries from 10 cities across the world have joined the fair’s
roster, including UV Estudios of Buenos Aires, Berthold Pott of
Cologne, Baxter Street at Camera Club of New York, and Soft Opening
in London. (Artforum)

Michael Findlay on His Career in the Market –
The new president of the ADAA, who
is also Acquavella Gallery’s longstanding director and the author
of several books on the art market, says that art fairs are sucking
much of the oxygen from the gallery business. He also thinks that
soaring rents will mean New York won’t be the place where artistic innovation
happens in the future. (The Art Newspaper)

COMINGS & GOINGS

The Whitney Promotes Two
Curators – David Breslin, who joined the museum in
2016 as director of collection, will become the institution’s first
director of curatorial initiatives. Associate curator Jane
Panetta, co-curated this year’s Whitney Biennial with
Rujeko Hockley, will succeed him as director of the collection.
Panetta’s biennial, which featured a notably diverse group of
artists, has been
largely defined by
controversy over ex-board member Warren B.
Kanders. (Artforum)

Princeton Museum
Acquires a Rembrandt – A moody and detailed etching by the
Dutch Master, Landscape With Three Trees from
1643, is the newest addition to Princeton Museum of Art’s
collection. The institution now holds 70 of the 300 Rembrandt
prints in existence. (Art
Daily)

The Sharjah Architecture
Triennial Announces Participants – The participant list is
out for the first edition of the exhibition, titled “Rights of
Future Generations,” which will include collaborations between
architects, artists, engineers, activists, and other cultural
producers. While some names are still to come, artist duo Cooking
Sections, award-winning Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, and
Samaneh Moafi of Forensic Architecture have been selected as among
the first round of contributors. The exhibition is set to run from
November 9 through February 8. (Press release)

Artist Gary Simmons
Joins the Mike Kelley Foundation Board – New York
artist Gary Simmons has been appointed to the Mike Kelly
Foundation’s board of directors, joining chair John C.
Welchman and such members as author Stephanie Barron, artist
Catherine Opie, and Joan Weinstein, the board’s director.
(Art
Daily)

FOR ART’S SAKE

How Museums Fund Their
Expansions – Credit ratings are an important tool for
museums to fund their expansions—just take the Los Angeles County
Museum, which has worked out a $300 million bond issued by the
county, to be repaid by private donations the museum is set to
receive. How do they get such a loan? Credit-rating agencies like
Moody’s, which has rated Los Angeles county at AA1, are vital to a
museum’s ability to lure investors and borrow money.
(The Art Newspaper)

Haiti’s Museum Is Still
Recovering From the 2010 Earthquake – Nine
years after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti killed an
estimated 200,000 people and destroyed countless buildings,
including the Museum of Haitian Art of St. Pierre College, that
institution is still trying to restore and put 600 watercolors and
paintings by prominent artists back on display. The works are
in storage and in danger of decaying, and a small group of artists
is rushing to restore them with scant resources. (Final Call)

El Anatsui Biggest Show Ever at Munich’s Haus der Kunst
Sets a Record – The last show to be curated by the
recently deceased
curator and former director of the museum Okwui Enzewor has set a
10-year record for the Munich institution. Ghanian sculptor El
Anatsui’s “Triumphant Scale” saw 118,000 visitors pass through
since the largest-ever exhibition of his work opened in March. It
travels next to Doha’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, opening
on October 1. (Press release)

The post Art Industry News: George W. Bush Is Getting a Solo
Show of His Portraits of Veterans Injured in His ‘War on Terror’ +
Other Stories appeared first on artnet News.