Art Industry News: Art Basel’s Parent Company Postpones More Major Events as Switzerland Bans Mass Public Gatherings + 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 Friday, February
28.

NEED-TO-READ

Museums Celebrate Joseph Beuys’s
100th Birthday – To celebrate
the centenary of Joseph Beuys’s birth next year, 20 German
institutions in 12 cities are planning exhibitions, theater
productions, and events related to the pioneering artist’s legacy.
The K20 in Düsseldorf, the city where he taught for many years,
will look at Beuys’s various personae; the Museum Kurhaus in Kleve,
where Beuys spent his childhood, will focus on his early work. In
his birth city of Krefeld, the local art museum will examine how
Marcel Duchamp influenced him. Beuys, who died in 1986, is one of
the most influential artists to come out of Germany.
(The Art
Newspaper)

Documenta’s Troubling Nazi Roots
– Last year, it came to light
that a close advisor to Arnold Bode, who founded the art show
documenta in 1955 in the ashes of World War II, was a member of the
Nazi Party from 1937 to 1945. The prestigious quinquennial
exhibition—which was conceived in part to show artists excluded or
persecuted during the Nazi era—is currently trying to reckon with
this past as it opens a new dedicated building for its archive. At
the same time, the German History Museum is planning a major show
called “Political History of the documenta” focused the
exhibition’s reappraisal of its Nazi past. The next edition of the
exhibition is scheduled to take place in Kassel in 2022.
(Deutsche
Welle)

Switzerland Pauses Large-Scale Events Due to Coronavirus
– The Swiss government has announced that it is banning
large-scale events where more than 1,000 people gather until at
least March 15 to limit the spread of the novel 2019 strain of
coronavirus. To date, more than 15 cases of the disease have been
reported in the country, which borders northern Italy, the site of
the largest outbreak in Europe. As a result of the ordinance, MCH
Group, Art Basel’s parent company, announced it would reschedule
the Baselworld watch fair to January 2021—one of a number of cultural events
to be cancelled or delayed in Europe. The group will also
postpone “until further notice” the garden exhibition Giardina in
Zurich and the lifestyle trade show Habitat-Jardin in Lausanne,
originally scheduled for March 2020. (Press release)

You Will Never Experience Jan Van
Eyck Like This – Critic Jason
Farago swoons over the new exhibition
dedicated to Renaissance master Jan van Eyck
in Ghent, Belgium. “Van Eyck: An
Optical Revolution,” on view until April 30 at the Museum of Fine
Arts, is the largest exhibition ever of his work, and Farago says
it lives up to the hype, calling it a “perpetual stupefaction
machine.” Besides the famous altarpiece with
that viral humanoid
sheep, only 22 paintings
attributed to van Eyck’s hand survive, and 12 of them are on view
in Ghent alongside nine attributed to the artist and his workshop.
(New York
Times)

ART MARKET

One of the Oldest Galleries in the
World Gets a New Owner – The
historic London gallery Colnaghi will be participating at this
year’s TEFAF, which opens on March 7, under new ownership. Victoria
Golembiovskaya, the founder of the art consultancy House of the
Nobleman, has taken a stake in the gallery. She joins Jorge Coll as
joint chief executive. (FT)

Rebecca Horn Gets a Gallery in Her
Home Country – Berlin gallery
Thomas Schulte has announced the representation of postwar German
artist Rebecca Horn, who is known for her surreal body sculptures.
The gallery will present a solo exhibition of her work during
Berlin Gallery Weekend 2020, which is coming up in May.
(Press
release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Grayson Perry Wins the Erasmus
Prize – The King of the
Netherlands will award the British artist Grayson
Perry the 2020 Erasmus
prize. The prestigious award—considered the Dutch equivalent of the
Nobel Prize—comes with €150,000 ($165,000) and a large
titanium-plated medal. The artist says he will probably design an
outfit to match his new bling. (Guardian)

Former Berkeley Museum Director Has
Died – Kevin
Consey, who oversaw the
expansion of the University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and
Pacific Film Archive, has died at age 68 following an illness. In
the 1990s, he led the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
(ARTnews)

The Getty Acquires the Simone Forti
Archive – The Getty Research
Institute in Los Angeles has acquired the archive of the
avant-garde dancer, performer, and writer Simone Forti. Born in
1935, she became a pioneer of experimental dance in the US, coming
to the fore in the 1970s in Los Angeles and New York.
(Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in
Coronavirus Lockdown – A Van
Gogh Sunflowers painting is one of 60 masterpieces on loan from
London’s National Gallery now on lockdown in Japan. The opening of
the extraordinary exhibition at the Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art has been
postponed after Japan shuttered major museums due to the
coronavirus. (The Art
Newspaper)

Mexico Returns a Looted Bronze to
Nigeria – An ancient African
sculpture recently seized in Mexico City has been returned to
Nigeria. Customs officers at the city’s main airport thwarted an
attempt to smuggle the bronze Yoruba figure into the country.
(BBC)

After a Blockbuster, the Louvre
Rehangs Its Leonardos – Five of
the key paintings in the Louvre’s record-setting
Leonardo show do not have far to travel home. While other works
returned to London, Munich, and Florence, these canvases were
rehung in the Paris museum’s Grande Galerie, where they usually
reside. (The Mona Lisa remained in her usual spot for
the duration of the exhibition for crowd-control purposes.) On
Instagram, the museum shared behind-the-scenes images of the return
operation. (Instagram)

The post Art Industry News: Art Basel’s Parent Company
Postpones More Major Events as Switzerland Bans Mass Public
Gatherings + Other Stories appeared first on artnet
News.