Art Industry News: Addressing Protests, the Director of the Smithsonian Calls on America to ‘Confront Its Tortured Racial Past’ + 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, June
1.

NEED-TO-READ

Three Guggenheim Directors on the Future – The three directors of the international museum
network—Richard Armstrong of the Guggenheim in New York, Juan
Ignacio Vidarte of the Guggenheim Bilbao, and Karole Vail of the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice—sat down to discuss the
challenges of reopening as Italy and Spain prepare to emerge from
lockdown. One big takeaway, Armstrong says, is a shift away from
seeing attendance as the main arbiter of success. “I think we might
all have been in a bit of a competitive fantasy about ever-growing
visitor numbers,” he noted. “And the momentum from that fantasy
will certainly die off and we’ll see what kinds of alternatives
there might be.” (The Art
Newspaper)

Life Lessons From Artist Robert Gober – Deborah Solomon rang up the eminent sculptor,
who is isolating in his house and garage-turned-studio on the North
Fork of Long Island. Asked if he sees any parallels between the
current pandemic and the AIDS era, when he first began exhibiting
his now-famous sink sculptures, he said, “Nobody was banging on
pots and pans at 7 o’clock during the AIDS crisis.” The differences
between the two moments, he noted, “are more numerous than the
similarities.” (New York
Times)

The Smithsonian’s Director Makes a Rare Statement on Police
Brutality – The federally
funded Smithsonian Institution often remains quiet on matters of
politics. (Part of the reason is because any statement must make
its way through the institution’s labyrinthine bureaucracy before
it sees the light of day.) That’s why it’s notable that—amid
silence from many other museums, as some observers have
noted—Lonnie Bunch, who took over as the
Smithsonian’s secretary last year after serving as director of
the National Museum of African American History and Culture,
released a statement over the weekend following the protests
sparked by the murder of George Floyd. He said he hopes the pain
and sorrow of the families of those lost to police violence “compel
America to confront its tortured racial past, and that this moment
becomes the impetus for our nation to address racism and social
inequities in earnest.” He added: “History is a guide to a better
future and demonstrates that we can become a better society—but
only if we collectively demand it from each other and from the
institutions responsible for administering justice.”
(Smithsonian)

The American Art World’s Racism Problem
– Margaret Carrigan points out that the much-shared
footage of protesters looting KAWS works from 5Art Gallery in Los
Angeles during Sunday’s demonstrations supports a misunderstanding
shared by many in the art world that their own work and actions are
distinct from a white supremacist system. After the gallery put out
a call for security footage, noting that its employees and artists
“had nothing to do with this,” Carrigan responded that such a
statement “explicitly claims that the dealers, their staff and the
artists whose work they sell are exempt from the perpetuation of
systemic inequality. It also suggests that their sympathies for the
theft of a black life at the hands of police could be causally
curtailed by the looting of their property by a protester, meaning
their support of anti-racism is changeable at best and self-serving
at worst.” (The Art
Newspaper)

ART MARKET

Christie’s Offers a Pricey Sanyu in Hong Kong –
The Chinese-French painter had a
strong year at auction in 2019; now, the artist’s continued
momentum will be tested this summer at Christie’s. The auction
house is offering Sanyu’s White Chrysanthemum in a Blue and White
Jardinière, completed
between the 1940s and ‘50s, at its Hong Kong contemporary evening
sale on July 10. The floral still-life carries an estimate of $7.8
million to $10 million. (Art Market
Monitor)

Altice CEO and Sotheby’s Owner Patrick Drahi Speaks –
The owner of Sotheby’s joined a
press call on Friday, which would be unremarkable except for the
fact that he acknowledged he had not spoken to the press for five
years. After an ill-advised pun that likened his buying Sotheby’s
to “Altice’s adventures in wonderland,” Drahi noted that the house
had pivoted successfully to online sales and reinforced his
commitment to the business. (Art Market
Monitor)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Texas Philanthropist Alice Negley Dorn Dies –
The arts patron, who was a longtime
supporter of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Denver Art
Museum, and others, has died at 69. The news was announced by
Ballroom Marfa, the non-profit Texas institution co-founded by her
daughter, Fairfax Dorn. The Dorn family also founded the
Texas-based Brown Foundation, which has awarded more than $1.5
billion in grants for the arts, education, and community service.
(The Art
Newspaper) 

Portraitist Elsa Dorfman Dies at 83 – The American photographer died at age 83 from
kidney failure on May 30 at her home in Cambridge. Dorfman’s
large-format portraits, created with a hefty 200-plus-pound
Polaroid camera, matched her outsize personality, which helped
capture her subjects in unguarded, joyful moments. Her behemoth
camera produced prints measuring almost two feet across; Dorfman’s
style involved keeping the black roller lines and maintaining a
white frame around each image, where she would caption the
photograph herself. (Boston
Globe)

FOR ART’S SAKE

An Underwater Art Museum Comes to the Great Barrier Reef
– The world’s largest coral
reef is now the site of an underwater museum, featuring works by
the artist Jason Decaires Taylor. Situated off the coast of
Townsville, the Museum of Underwater Art hopes to draw attention to
the plight of the Great Barrier Reef, which is in danger of
changing water temperatures and mass coral bleaching.
(designboom)

Carmen Herrera Was “Annoyed” at Her 105th Birthday
– El Museo del Barrio held a
Zoom birthday party for the 105-year-old painter—and she was
“somewhat annoyed” by the celebration, according to the museum’s
chair Tony Bechara. Still, she offered guests some good advice:
“For the first 100 years, eat red meat and drink Scotch,” Bechara
relayed on her behalf. “Then switch to Champagne and a vegetarian
diet.” (Page
Six)

Leaning Tower of Pisa Reopens – Some three months after closing to the public,
cultural sites in Italy are beginning to
reopen. The Leaning Tower of Pisa began welcoming visitors on
Saturday, marking the occasion with a socially distanced flash mob.
The site capped the number of people allowed in at 15, requiring
them to wear face masks and electronic devices that track social
distance while inside. The Colosseum and Vatican Museums are
opening on June 1, and at Le Scuderie del Quirinale, the exhibition
to mark 500 years since Raphael’s death, will
resume. (Guardian)

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Director of the Smithsonian Calls on America to ‘Confront Its
Tortured Racial Past’ + Other Stories appeared first on artnet
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