Wet Paint: LA Gallery’s Artists Flee Over Dealer’s Racist Comments, Marfa Waffles on Reopening, & More Juicy Art-World Gossip

Every Thursday afternoon, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a
gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate
Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate
at nfreeman@artnet.com.

ARTISTS DITCH DEALER AFTER RACIST REMARKS

Last week, the Instagram page for ltd. los
angeles—the La La Land gallery with a global fair
footprint founded by the estimably sociable
collector-turned-gallerist Shirley Morales in
January 2010—posted an image that proclaimed “BLACK LIVES MATTER”
in all caps. Such an unequivocal show of support from Morales was
understandable, especially given that her online exhibition up at
the time was “Quiver of Voices,” a group show of work by Black
artists Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, Elliott
Jerome Brown Jr., and Nonzuzo Gxekwa.
Morales even arranged for curators from the California
African American Museum and the Studio Museum in
Harlem to contribute texts, and in addition to the online
show, each artist provided a flag to be flown on a pole at the
gallery’s ancillary space in the Hollywood
Hills. The gallery’s ownership certainly seemed
committed to supporting the cause that has led to protests, vigils,
and demonstrations across the country since the murder of
George Floyd by four police officers last
month.

And so a comment left days later by the Los Angeles-based artist
Rebecka Jackson came as quite a shock. “Well
Shirley Morales personally told me Black people deserve to be shot
by police,” Jackson wrote in the comments. “So…. when do they
matter to her?”

A few other comments followed, all pretty scathing. “One black
lives matter post is not enough to make up for her clearly
problematic views,” said Mallika Dhaliwal, an
employee at Netflix. “Her thinking that black
artists will work (take meetings for her, give contacts) with/for
her free as she poaches them for information on how to build
proximity to OTHER black people is unacceptable,” said
Justin LeRoy, the founder of LA art space
SON. Studio.

But what exactly did Morales say to Rebecka Jackson? A
source sent Wet Paint a transcription of a talk
that Jackson gave at the Harriet Tubman Center for Social
Justice in Los Angeles last November; in it, she refers to
a disturbing episode that occurred in the summer of 2019. “I want
to dismiss it, I want to not give this malefactor any more time or
space in my life, and yet her tale so perfectly encapsulates the
sentiment of the white ruling class against Black bodies,” Jackson
told the crowd at the Pico Avenue space. “I feel it necessary to
call out this woman by name to hopefully help other Black artists
avoid her exploitation.”

The woman was Shirley Morales, whom Jackson refers to as a
“white gallery owner,” and the incidents went down during a trip
the two were on to Senegal. At first, Morales said that the cabbies
there “didn’t deserve the money they were making” and complained
about how Muslim residents celebrating Ramadan “inconvenienced”
her, according to Jackson’s account. Then one day during a break,
Jackson was having what she called “a personal conversation with a
brother from Ghana about police brutality in the United States”
when Morales joined their table. As Jackson moved on to discussing
the “systematized way in which police officers hunt down Black
people,” Morales interjected and said, according to the artist,
“Well, everyone has a choice.” Jackson, thinking that Morales
misunderstood the conversation, replied, “So are you saying Black
people choose to get shot by the police?”

“Well, ya,” Morales responded, according to the transcript of
the talk. “If they are in those situations, they made a
choice.”

In an email to Wet Paint, Jackson noted that during that
conversation she also informed Morales that she herself had been
the victim of police brutality, which resulted in cuts requiring 20
stitches, a concussion, and trauma. “So, in fact,” Jackson wrote in
an email, “she was also insinuating that I personally deserved
what happened to me.”

The harrowing transcript made its way to the three artists in
the current show, who all immediately co-signed a letter to Morales
proactively rejecting any apology or explanation and demanding
their work be removed from the site and its archives, and their
flags be taken down from the flagpoles. By early this week, the
entire exhibition history of ltd had been scraped from the
internet, apart from a brief acknowledgement on the homepage that the show would close
earlier than scheduled.

In place of any other information on the site is the following
statement from the gallery: “I admit there is much I have to
learn about black struggles and how to effectively work with and
support black artists. I commit to learning and understanding more,
to reading, and to further supporting black causes (such as
Al Maa’uun, Black Lives Matter,
Cities and Care Collective), through my time and
resources. I hope for this moment to create inroads to
conversation. Moving forward, I will definitely be more aware that
my own comforts can be other people’s discomforts, and endeavor to
ameliorate environments hostile to people of color.”

In a statement to Wet Paint, Morales said: “I now
understand that my words do not accurately reflect the varying
levels of socio-political agency experienced by people of color in
the US and around the world. I continue to categorically reject any
and all state violence against any person of color.”

FRIEZE VIP GOES FULL CONSPIRACY THEORY OVER PRO-BLM
EMAIL

Last week,
frieze
editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin wrote a note to the
magazine’s online newsletter subscribers with the subject line
“Support Black, Activist-Led Groups.” The editor’s letter reads,
“We condemn police brutality, racism, and the violence that affects
everyday life for Black people and people of color in the US and
around the world.” That sounds like a pretty unassailable response
to the mass killings propagated by an abusive, corrupt police
force. If someone says police brutality and racism is bad, it’s
kinda hard to not agree.

But Connecticut-based collector Carlos de
Villa-Amil made it perfectly clear in an email that he
does not agree. How do we know that he takes umbrage at
Andrew Durbin’s email? Well, he sent a response with the subject
line, “ANDREW DUBIN’S EMAIL IS BULLSHIT.” [sic]

Villa-Amil, who is a donor to the Aldrich Contemporary
Art Museum, proceeded to rattle off a laundry list of
ludicrous far-right talking points and laughable conspiracy
theories while warning frieze that it should—and brace
yourself, as this is referring to the Black Lives
Matter movement—”be careful of the beast you are
feeding.”

“Sooner or later it will make a meal out of the ELITIST ART WORD
(their name for us) who pretends to care out of PR wokeness,”
Villa-Amil wrote.

Villa-Amil also accused the magazine of “supporting radical
left-wing organizations,” claiming that “Black Lives Matter and
Antifa (a terrorist org) are not fighting for social justice, they
are destroying a system under the pretext of caring for Mr. Floyd.”
He went on to claim that “the reality is that most black deaths in
America are black on black violence” and insisted “a tiny
percentage are at the hands of law enforcement.” He propagated a
widely debunked narratives about Floyd’s murder, claiming
incorrectly that drugs in his system were the cause of death and
not the eight minutes with a knee crushing his neck.

When reached for comment, Durbin said, “I emphatically support
Black Lives Matter and I disagree with every assertion and lie in
his racist email.”

Durbin also said he hoped this column would not “further
perpetuate the revolting views of this insignificant mind by
reproducing them,” but alas we have to risk perpetuation by
reproducing one more revolting view. When asked for comment, de
Villa-Amil threatened a frieze spokesperson who he
incorrectly believed leaked the letter to Wet Paint (it did not
come from a Frieze employee) and then issued a vaguely
incomprehensible comment about Black Lives Matter: “How can an
organization which receives $30 million for George Soros be
considered black led.”

De VIlla-Amil signed off his initial email as a “Frieze VIP
collector” and a “Deutsche Bank guest.” Deutsche Bank did not
comment on whether Villa-Amil would be welcomed back in those
capacities.

EILEEN MYLES TO MARFA: CHINATI’S NOT
OPENING

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is ramming
through to stage three of reopening, despite the fact that the
state saw its largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases to
date on Wednesday. And so while some of Texas’s many world-class
museums are opening—such as the MFA Houston,
which began welcoming
adventurous visitors in late May—others, such as the
Blanton Museum in Austin and El Paso
Museum of Art, are keeping their doors closed out of “an
abundance of caution,” or whatever the popular phrasing is this
deep into quar. Another option is a compromise, where visitors can
socially distance in outdoor areas while leaving the more perilous
indoor portion of institutions dormant until… next summer? 2022?
Who knows at this point.

The Chinati Foundation in
Marfa considered that kind of partial opening,
seeing that Presidio County had nearly no
cases and its residents were rocking full-on PPE even when shooting
pool at the very open (and very awesome) Lost Horse
Saloon. But the plan may have been derailed by one of
Marfa’s most famous residents. A source said that none other than
the poet and writer Eileen Myles pressured—the
source used the word “shamed”—Chinati into staying completely
closed, even if other institutions in cities much more densely
populated than the desert town were gamely opening their doors. And
Myles seems to have serious sway in the artiest little arthouse in
Texas. According to the museum’s website, Chinati is “planning to
offer outdoor self-guided walking tours,” but right now “Chinati is
currently closed.”

Myles did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement,
a spokesperson for Chinati said: “Chinati has been developing our
reopening plans in consultation with local officials and local
health officials for some time, and we continue to proceed in a
cautious manner informed by epidemiological metrics, following all
safety precautions. We do not have a date for reopening. Safety and
community will continue to come first as we take these steps.” The
spokesperson added: “Eileen Myles has not been involved in
Chinati’s process to reopen.”

POP QUIZ

Yes, last week’s quiz was a little difficult, given the fact
that the sculpture you loyal readers were asked to identify was a
bit in the distance, and a tiny bit blurry. So, to reveal, it was a
large sculpture by Rebecca Warren from 2015, and
it’s installed beside the tennis court at Per
Skarstedt’s home in Sagaponack—a quick 13
minute drive to his soon-to-open Newtown Lane
gallery in East Hampton. Two readers successfully
chimed in with the correct answer. First was art advisor
Christopher Wolf, who is the founder of
Amor Fati Art. The second was freakishly
consistent guesser Meredith Darrow, who is correct
for a fourth time. Congrats to both!

Here’s a clue that might be more familiar. Name the
artist who made this drawing, the object it was drawn on, and its
location.

Winners will receive either a €40 martini at the
Three Kings during Art Basel
2021, or a KAWS print—whichever is worth less by
then. That, and eternal glory via a mention in these pages next
week!

WE HEAR…

… Independent fair executive director
Ashley Harris, who made a splash when she jumped
from the Sotheby’s to head up the
Tribeca fair in late 2019, was let go at the start
of quarantine—a few months after coming on board … While museums
may be closed indefinitely, all the commercial spaces in New York
are allowed to open in phase one, as long as collectors agree to
curbside pickup and masks—or at least have their handlers
show up with masks … Chinatown gallery
Helena Anrather is selling raffle tickets to raise
money for a variety of charities supporting the Black Lives Matter
movement, and the winner gets a new work by artist Douglas
Rieger … Sculptor Karon Davis, who
co-founded the Underground Museum with her
husband, the late Noah Davis, called on
Sotheby’s to host a full sale to support the
social justice movement, asking, “When people look back at this
historic time, how will people remember you and what you did or did
not do?” … ArtTactic ripped off yours truly by
calling its latest boring trove of data analysis “The Wet
Paint Market Report 2015–2019″—good luck ever moving above us in a
Google search, suckers! … With the cancellation of the rescheduled Art
Basel fair this September comes the sad news that the
annual Art Basel Fondue Dinner at the
Elsbethenstubli restaurant, which was to have its
8th edition this year, will now take place in 2021 as well …

SPOTTED

*** Felix Gonzalez-Torres editions installed in
all kinds of fun places, including the home of the artist
Tom Burr *** Johann
König hoisting a very large Erwin
Wurm sculpture onto the roof of his gallery ahead of the
inaugural edition of his fair,
Messe, which is a bit surreal to see when
stateside collectors still can’t do anything but send their minions
to pick up small paintings curbside in masks *** A fabulous new
Stanley Whitney drawing, Always Running From
the Police (2020), used as the artwork for a Jonathan
Chait column in New York
magazine *** A sculpture by the collective
FriendsWithYou inside the
Philadelphia pizza mecca Pizzeria
Beddia, owned by revered pizzaiolo and collector
Joe Beddia *** Keri Russell, the
star of The Americans, sitting at one of the very
socially distanced tables outside at the Deer Mountain
Inn in the Catskills town of East
Jewett—informing an art-world gossip journalist that while
patrons were not allowed inside the main building yet, the
surrounding woods is nothing but a big bathroom ***

PARTING SHOT

The post Wet Paint: LA Gallery’s Artists Flee Over Dealer’s
Racist Comments, Marfa Waffles on Reopening, & More Juicy Art-World
Gossip appeared first on artnet News.