Art Industry News: A Landmark Italian Art Show in Washington, DC, Has Been Called Off by Italy’s Lockdown + Other Stories - artnet News | Canada News Media
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 Wednesday, March 11.
NEED-TO-READ
Philadelphia Museum Resets After Controversies – The esteemed museum has been beleaguered by controversy in recent months, with two former employees having been accused of abuse, and the museum accused of not doing enough to address the staff’s concern. Now, the institution is trying to move forward through a range of “thoughtful and deliberate actions” including holding staff meetings, hiring a consultant to conduct a “cultural assessment” of the workplace, and creating an anonymous hotline for HR concerns. Some employees, however, are distrustful of the museum’s motives given that it is in the midst of fundraising for a $228 million renovation. (New York Times)
Prominent Street Artist Is Charged With Rape – The Sydney-based street artist Anthony Lister, who was named by Complex magazine as one of the most influential street artists of all time, is behind bars for the next eight weeks after police raided his home. He has been charged with raping four women, including three of his art students, between 2015 and 2018. He also allegedly tattooed one of the students without her consent. Lister denies the charges. (Guardian)
Coronavirus in Italy Delays Transportation for National Gallery Artwork – A landmark exhibition on Italian art, “A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750,” is caught in the ripple effects of Italy’s coronavirus lockdown. The show will not open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as planned on May 3 because the museum cannot bring the artworks out of museums in Rome and Genoa. The show was expected to be the first major exploration of Genoese Baroque art in the United States. A new date has not yet been set, but the museum says it could be rescheduled as early as next year. (Washington Post)
Max Mara Prize Winner Revealed – The British artist Emma Talbot has won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, which comes with a six-month bespoke residency in Italy (presumably, after the lockdown is over) to create a new body of work that will be exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Talbot won the prestigious prize with a proposal that questions depictions of women, particularly elderly women, in art history, beginning with a close look at Gustav Klimt’s painting Three Ages of Woman (1905), which is in Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. (Press release)
ART MARKET
Berlin Gallery Weekend Downsizes – A smaller version of the annual citywide art festival will go forward as scheduled during the first weekend of May, but gatherings such as receptions and dinners will be pushed to a onetime event in September. The fall edition of the event will feature the same participating galleries as the May version and will include exhibitions by such artists as Andreas Gursky, Katharina Grosse, and Cathy Wilkes. (Press release)
Marian Goodman to Rep Tavares Strachan – Marian Goodman Gallery has added multimedia artist Tavares Strachan—who has long avoided formal gallery representation—to its roster. The Bahamian artist once hauled a several-ton block of arctic ice to his birthplace, where it was exhibited in a solar-powered freezer chamber. (Press release)
New York Galleries Could Get Coronavirus Funds – Small New York City galleries may be eligible to receive interest-free loans and cash grants amid the coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent stock-market decline. The city’s multimillion-dollar initiative to support small businesses is targeted at small enterprises, particularly those with fewer than 100 employees that have seen their sales decrease by 25 percent or more since the outbreak. (ARTnews)
COMINGS & GOINGS
Aspen Art Museum Names New Director – Nicola Lees has been named the new Nancy and Bob Magoon director at the Aspen Art Museum. She replaces Heidi Zuckerman, who stepped down abruptly last fall. Lees, who begins her new role on April 6, has been director and curator of NYU’s 80 Washington Square East Galleries since 2016, and previously held curatorial positions at Frieze Foundation and the Serpentine Gallery in London. (Press release)
Alfredo Jaar Wins Major Photo Prize – The Chilean artist has won the Hasselblad Foundation’s international award in photography, one of the largest awards in the field. Endowed with one million Swedish krona (approximately $106,000), the award will be granted at a ceremony in Gothenburg, Sweden, on October 19 ahead of an exhibition of Jaar’s work at the Hasselblad Center. (Press release)
Influential Brazilian Artist Nelson Leirner Has Died – The Brazilian painter, who was known for needling the art world through his ironic, pop culture-inflected work, has died at 88. Museu de Arte de São Paulo artistic director Adriano Pedrosa said he was among “the most influential names in contemporary art in Brazil.” (ARTnews)
FOR ART’S SAKE
The Prado Caps Visitor Numbers Due to Coronavirus – The Prado Museum in Madrid has placed a cap on the number of people allowed free entry to the museum (500 at a time) in an effort to avoid overcrowding during the coronavirus outbreak. The museum is also establishing a capacity-control system to monitor the number of people present in a single room at any given time.(El Confidential)
Woman Discovers a Salvador Dalí in a Thrift Shop – An original work by the Surrealist artist surfaced at a thrift shop in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A volunteer spotted the painted wood engraving, which is from his 100-image series “The Divine Comedy.” A couple purchased the appraised work for $1,200. (WRAL)
Andy Warhol’s Wigs Star in Tate Show – The Andy Warhol blockbuster at Tate Modern includes three of Warhol’s “fright wigs,” which are going on view in the UK for the first time. The artist was bald from his 20s onward, and became known for his wild, silvery wigs.(Guardian)
A Jacob Lawrence Series Gets Reunited – A multi-panel series by the famed artist Jacob Lawrence that examines early American history has been reunited after roughly 60 years. The 30-panel series created between 1954 and 1956, titled “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” was purchased by a private collector who resold the panels separately. Now, almost all of them are going on view all together in an exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, through April 26. (New York Times)
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
