Art Industry News: Owner of a Detroit Erotica Shop Becomes Latest to Accuse Richard Prince of Theft + 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 Monday, November
4.

NEED-TO-READ

What We Know About Drahi’s Plans for Sotheby’s –
The new owner of Sotheby’s has told
staff that significant budget cuts are on the way, but maintains
that there will be no downsizing of staff. The French billionaire
Patrick Drahi, who last week
appointed a new CEO at
Sotheby’s, plans to cut $66 million from the auction house’s
budget, half of which will come from the end of share-based
compensation at the newly private company. But Bloomberg notes that
when Drahi bought a French telecommunications company, he also
pledged to preserve jobs—and then cut a third of the workforce.
Comparing Sotheby’s to a circus, art advisor Todd Levin says: “I
don’t know what act will appear next under the big tent.”
(Bloomberg)

A New Opera Tells the Dramatic Story of King Tut –
Egypt’s former minister of
antiquities, Zahi Hawass, has written an opera based on the life of
King Tutankhamun. The production, which is co-written by Francesco
Santocono with music by the Italian composer Lino Zimbone, will be
performed at the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo in
late 2020. The opera focuses on Queen Nefertiti’s attempt to murder
Tutankhamun after she was denied the throne. (The Art
Newspaper)

A New Dispute Over Richard Prince’s Instagram Portraits –
Richard Prince’s latest exhibition
of Intsagram portraits is ruffling feathers in Detroit. Zöe Ligon,
a Detroit-based sex-toy store owner and sex educator, was dismayed
to see her selfie among those appropriated and displayed at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit without her consent. She called
the show “a reckless, embarrassing, and uninformed critique of
social media and public domain.” The museum’s director, Elysia
Borowy-Reeder, met with Ligon before the show opened and offered to
remove her likeness from the exhibition, but demurred when Ligon
countered that she wanted them to take down the entire show
instead. (ARTnews)

Steve McQueen on His Epic School-Photo Project –
London’s Tate Britain is about to
be transformed into a giant gallery of class photos. The Turner
Prize- and Oscar-winning artist Steve McQueen has organized a giant
photo shoot featuring 76,000 primary school children from across
the city. Called Year 3, the 3,000 group portraits celebrate the
cultural diversity of the British capital. He says he chose to
focus on seven- and eight-year-olds because they are learning about
race, class, and gender for the first time. McQueen hopes that “the
people and the powers that be” see the children’s potential,
although with knife attacks in the capital rising, some might not
live to reach 21. (Guardian)

ART MARKET

Richard Telles Gallery to Close – Los Angeles’s Richard Telles Fine Art, which
has worked with artists including B. Wurtz and John McAllister, has
become the latest midsize gallery to close its doors. Telles, who
has been in business for 26 years, blamed increasing operating
costs and diminished sales for the decision. Moving forward, he
will continue to represent a small group of artists and organize
pop-up exhibitions. (Artforum)

Phillips Taps Architect for New HQ – The practice StudioMDA will design the auction
house’s new headquarters on Park Avenue in Manhattan, which will
feature a giant “shopfront” space for exhibitions. StudioMDA has
also designed galleries for Paul Kasmin, Anton Kern Gallery, and
Nahmad Contemporary. (Artforum)

Grease Outfit Sells for $407,700 at Auction
– The iconic black leather
outfit worn by Olivia Newton-John in the final scene of
Grease sold for $405,700 at Julien’s Auctions in
Beverly Hills, double its presale estimate. Some of the proceeds
will go toward Newton-John’s cancer treatment center in Australia.
(BBC)

COMINGS & GOINGS 

Marciano Foundation Employees Seek to Form a Union
– Docents and visitor
services associates at the Los Angeles art museum established by
Guess Jeans founders Maurice and Paul Marciano want to create a
union to address pay conditions. Their starting wage is currently
set at the Los Angeles minimum of $14.25 an hour. Many of the
employees looking to join the union also do freelance work or have
second jobs to make ends meet. (New York
Times)

Rex Tillerson Honored by Art Organization – The inaugural founder’s dinner for Ucross, an
arts residency in Wyoming, raised over $1 million. The honoree of
the event, former US Secretary of State and former chairman and CEO
of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, received the first-ever Raymond Plank
Award for Visionary Leadership. Tillerson is currently helping
defend his former company against charges in New York that Exxon
intentionally misled investors about the financial risk of climate
change. (Press
release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Isabella Stewart Gardner Borrows the Pope’s
Raphael – To
mark the 500th anniversary of the 15th-century painter Raphael’s
death, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is bringing
together Raphael’s portrait of papal librarian Tommaso Inghirami
from its collection with a painting featuring Inghirami from the
Musei Vaticani in Vatican City. The show will be on view through
January 26, 2020. (Art
Daily)

Iran Unveils Murals Critical of US – To mark the 40th anniversary of the US hostage
crisis in Tehran, which began on November 4, 1979, when Iranian
students stormed the US embassy, several anti-US murals have
appeared on the former embassy. One depicts a crumbling Statue of
Liberty; another part of the mural shows the Iran Air passenger
plane that was shot down by an American warship over the Gulf on
July 3, 1988, killing 290 people. (AFP)

LACMA Gala Raises $4.6 Million – The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s
star-studded and Gucci-sponsored gala this weekend welcomed the
likes of Billie Eillish, Sienna Miller, and Childish Gambino. The
event, which raised $4.6 million for the museum, fêted 93-year-old
artist Betye Saar and Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón.
(Los Angeles
Times)

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Becomes Latest to Accuse Richard Prince of Theft + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.