Art Industry News: Tennessee Lawmakers Vote to Keep a Bust of a Notorious KKK Leader in the State Capitol + 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, June
12.

NEED-TO-READ

Museums Are Suddenly Woke. But Is it Too Little Too Late?
– Museums across the US have
been issuing statements expressing support for the Black Lives
Matter movement, but the critic Holland Cotter says the gestures
from these “suddenly woke institutions” have felt “both
self-aggrandizing and too little too late.” Suggesting that museums
can do more, Cotter points to the example set by the National Museum of African American
History and Culture, which launched last week a new web portal
offering resources on how to talk about race. “Focus instead on
restructuring from within, and actually do it,” Cotter advises
museums. “Recruit nonwhite trustees, artists included. Hire
nonwhite curators (and pay all your curators well). Strengthen ties
with the communities of color around you, and listen to what they
tell you they need.” (New York
Times)

Philadelphia Museum Apologizes for Saying “Every Life
Matters” – Timothy Rub,
the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Gail
Harrity, its president, have apologized for sending an email to
museum employees on May 31 stating that the protests that erupted in the days
after the police killing of George Floyd were “compromised” by looting and property
damage, and that “every
individual life matters.” “You were right to say that our letter
did not make an obvious and essential point,” the pair wrote in
their apology, “one that frames this incident in both specific and
historical terms: This victim of this murder was an innocent Black
man.” (ARTnews, Philadelphia
Inquirer)

Tennessee Lawmakers Vote to Keep KKK Statue –
Lawmakers in Tennessee have voted
against a proposition to remove a bust of a former leader of the Ku
Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, from its state capitol building.
A House committee voted down the idea of removing the statue of the
Confederate Army general by 11 to five on Tuesday, but another
bill, aiming to end special observation of Nathan Bedford Forrest
Day on July 13, passed by one vote to be considered by the full
legislature. (WMC
5)

Former Palm Springs
Museum Staffers Pen an Open Letter Opposing the Museum’s BLM
Response – Former staff from the Californian museum signed
an open letter condemning the institution’s “neutral” response to
the Black Lives Matter movement. The staffers say that the museum
waited too long before publishing a response to the widespread
protests that have rocked the world, and that the reply lacked
concrete plans for action. “To stay silent and to stay neutral
during the global movement against racism is to actively enable and
perpetuate the white supremacist world order that continues to
poison and erase Black and Brown lives,” the authors write.
(Open
Letter)

ART MARKET

Berlin Dealers Are Bringing Art Basel to Berlin
– Thirty-one Berlin galleries that were supposed to be at
Art Basel next week have decided to open their doors to critics,
curators, and collectors and to show works they originally planned
for their booth presentations. Running in parallel with the online
Art Basel viewing rooms that launch next week, Basel by Berlin, as
the event is called, takes place on Wednesday, June 17, and
Thursday, June 18, and is an official VIP event of the art fair.
(Press release)

VOLTA Cancels September Edition in Basel – Following the cancellation of Art Basel’s flagship Swiss fair in
September, a satellite art
fair, VOLTA, has also decided to cancel its September edition as
well. In a statement, the fair said “the safety of our galleries
and visitors is paramount and, at this point, in light of the
current global pandemic and the associated restrictions on
gatherings and travel, we feel we cannot stage a strong and safe
fair in Basel this year.” (Press release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Collector of African
American Art Ronald Allie Dies at 69 – Ronald Ollie, a major collector
of African American abstract art, has died at age 69. The esteemed
collector had gifted 81 artworks to the Saint Louis Art
Museum, and owned works by James Little, Ed Clark, and Herbert
Gentry, among others. (CultureType)

Palm Beach Museum Director Resigns – Elliot Boswick Davis has resigned from her
position as director and chief executive of the Norton Museum of
Art in West Palm Beach after less than a year and a half. In a
statement, Bostwick Davis said that “the events of the past months
have impressed upon me the importance of being closer to my family,
and I’m looking forward to returning to Boston and beginning the
next chapter of my life.” A team of staff will lead the museum
while it seeks out a replacement. (Palm Beach
Posts)

Cuomo Says Columbus Sculpture Should Stay – New York governor Andrew Cuomo says he doesn’t
think a statue of Christopher Columbus in Manhattan’s Columbus
Circle should be removed. “I understand the feelings about
Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would
support,” Cuomo said at a press conference on Thursday. “But the
statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the
Italian American contribution to New York. For that reason, I
support it.” Detractors, who point to Columbus’s mistreatment and
exploitation of Native Americans, want the statue removed.
(NPR)

FOR ART’S SAKE

YBAs on the
Statue-Topplers – YBA artists Tracey Emin and Anish
Kapoor are among the artists weighing in on the movement to remove
monuments around the world. “I suspect that most of us pass by
public monuments with a blind indifference that’s only equal to the
violence they mask,” artist Jake Chapman tells the
Gurdian. “They go
unnoticed in the same way that power goes unnoticed. Implicit in
the image of civilization is the myth of bloodless progress.”
(Guardian)

Hank Willis Thomas Projects Work onto the Department of
Justice – Last night, the artist, together with the
think tank Incarcerations Nations Network, projected an
iteration of Thomas’s ongoing project, The Writing on the
Wall, onto the US Department of Justice building in
Washington, DC. The work loops an 11-minute slide show of
declarations by incarnated people. (Observer)

The post Art Industry News: Tennessee Lawmakers Vote to Keep
a Bust of a Notorious KKK Leader in the State Capitol + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.