Art Industry News: Cindy Sherman Says That Posting Selfies on Instagram Is a ‘Cry for Help’ + 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
Thursday, November 1.

NEED-TO-READ

Another London Arts Venue Turns
Down Sackler Money – The Roundhouse, an arts venue in London
where the Doors once played, is the latest UK institution to turn
down Sackler money. It decided against accepting a $1.3
million grant from the Sackler Trust, with a Roadhouse spokeswoman
explaining that the growing OxyContin scandal surrounding the
Purdue Pharma family “risks distracting from our work with young
people.” The Victoria & Albert Museum, however, is standing by its
Sackler funding, though trustee Theresa Sackler is due to step down
after a decade on the V&A board. (The Art
Newspaper)

Moscow Biennial Opening Marred by
Controversy – A group of artists have signed an open letter
calling for a boycott of the Moscow Biennale, alleging that its
president behaved abusively towards artists and violated her
financial obligations by refusing to correctly pay technicians in
the aftermath of the 2017 edition of the exhibition. (TAN)

Why Cindy Sherman Hates Selfies
– The artist, whose Sherman’s parody selfies on social media
are now followed by 300,000 people, has opened up about her
love/hate relationship with Instagram, where she thinks many real
selfies are “a call for help,” she says. “I have friends I follow
[on Instagram] who I can sort of tell when they’re feeling
vulnerable or insecure because that’s when suddenly they’re posting
all of these pretty photos of themselves.” Sherman uses the app
Facetune, which is popular with self-obsessed influencers, to show
that “it’s OK to say ugly.” But she does love how Instagram
offers a window on subcultures that explore transgender society,
plus she has a soft spot for all those  extreme makeup
tutorials on offer. (WSJ)

MoMA’s Rehang Includes Less Than
25 Percent Women – When the art historian Maura Reilly
worked at MoMA in New York three decades ago, there were only eight
works by female artists on view. Now, while the museum’s expansion and
rehang have made the gallery walls more diverse than ever
before, she says there is still room to grow—since works by
women still only account for a non-representative 23 percent of the
art on show. She notes that while it purports to be a
non-chronological hang, “the traditional narrative of modernism is
left intact.” Reilly argues that a detailed critique and more radical approach, rather
than tokenistic and confusing juxtapositions, would have
really marked a new beginning for the museum. (ARTnews)

ART MARKET

Christie’s Seeks Relief From
Trump Tariffs – Christie’s is filing for exclusion from Donald
Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, a 15 percent duty on seven
types of art works and antiques. The auction house argues that the
duties will hurt its business and the art market in the US.
(Bloomberg)

Arrest Warrant Contested for
Dealer Involved in Forgery Case – An Italian painter who has
been linked to the high-profile forgery of an El Greco painting in
2016 is appealing a warrant for his arrest and transfer to Paris
from a French judge. An Italian court has postponed its ruling for
four months, deciding that the artist, Lino Frongia, was not a
flight risk. (TAN)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Philanthropist Donates $10
Million to Jefferson Memorial Museum – The philanthropist and
Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents member David Rubenstein is
giving $10 million to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. The
gift will pay for upgrades and improvements, and also fund the
creation of a state-of-the-art underground museum that should be
completed by 2023, the memorial’s 80th anniversary. (Smithsonian)

Albright-Knox Prepares to Close
– On Monday, November 4, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery will
close its doors to the public for two years while it undergoes
construction on a new expansion adding 30,000 square feet of museum
space. In the meantime, the museum will open a satellite branch in
January, on Buffalo’s East Side. (The Spectrum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Pokémon Trading Card Fetched
$224,250 at Auction – A rare Pokémon card, a Nintendo
collectible featuring fan-favorite Pikachu as an illustrator,
fetched a whopping $224,250 at Upstate New York’s Weiss Auctions on
October 23. No more that 39 copies of the card were ever issued, as
the rare edition was never available commercially but was instead
awarded as a prize for a 1998 comic-illustration contest in Japan.
(Press release)

See the Winning Design Chosen for
Controversial Pulse Memorial – A design has been chosen for the
controversial memorial to the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub
shooting in Orlando. The National Pulse Memorial & Museum will be
built by team comprised of Coldefy & Associés with RDAI,
Orlando-based HHCP Architects, Xavier Veilhan, Ducks Scéno, Agence
TER, and professor Laila Farah of DePaul University, after their
design won a competition. The proposal is for a vast complex with a
spiral ramp where 49 trees, one for each of the victims, will be
planted, but the OnePulse Foundation, aware that some find the idea for the memorial
inappropriate, will involve the community in the development
of the project, which they hope to break ground on in 2021.
(Architectural
Digest)

The post Art Industry News: Cindy Sherman Says That Posting
Selfies on Instagram Is a ‘Cry for Help’ + Other Stories
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