Art Industry News: Gagosian Invites Gary Garrels, Who Left SFMOMA Amid a Staff Revolt, to Curate a Major Show of Abstract Art + Other Stories - artnet News | Canada News Media
Art Industry News: Gagosian Invites Gary Garrels, Who Left SFMOMA Amid a Staff Revolt, to Curate a Major Show of Abstract Art + Other Stories – artnet News
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 8.
NEED-TO-READ
Is This Picasso Painting Looted Art? –Madame Soler, the painting from Picasso’s Blue Period housed in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, is at the center of an ownership dispute as the heirs of Jewish banker and art collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy claim that they are the rightful owners. The case remains unresolved as it could not be determined whether the painting was sold under duress amid Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jewish people. (DW)
Otobong Nkanga Joins Lisson – The Nigerian-born Antwerp-based artist has left Mendes Wood DM to join the roster at Lisson Gallery, attributing the move as a “question of growing with another team” and with “a gallery that I’ve always had great admiration for.” The artist’s multidisciplinary works, spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, and film, reference the history and legacy of colonialism, will go on view in a show at the gallery’s London outpost in May. Nkanga will continue to be represented by Lumen Travo in Amsterdam and Galerie In Situ-Fabienne Leclerc in Paris. (The Art Newspaper)
Gagosian to Mount Major Abstraction Show – The gallery will be staging “To Bend the Ear from the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting,” an expansive show featuring more than 40 artists curated by Gary Garrels, the former senior curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art who resigned in 2020 amid a row with staff about systemic inequality. It will be mounted across two of its London locations, at Grosvenor Hill and Davies Street. (Press release)
Police Seize Banksy Works in Criminal Investigation – Three works by the elusive artist—his sculpture Grappling Hook, a work titled White Tower, and Monkey Queen, a satirical portrait of the late monarch—have been in the custody of Gwent police in Wales since March 2021 as part of an investigation into a 35-year-old man, court documents revealed. The works are suspected proceeds from a crime. (Evening Standard)
MOVERS & SHAKERS
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to Curate National Gallery Show – The Native American painter is the first artist to curate a show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. The show will feature around 50 living Indigenous artists. (The Art Newspaper)
Andy Warhol’s Watch Sells for $101,600 – A Rare Patek Philippe Ref. 2526 pink gold wristwatch with a first-series enamel dial exceeded its presale estimate of $80,000 at Sotheby’s Fine Watches sale, fetching more than $100,000 on Tuesday. The timepiece was first auctioned at Sotheby’s in 1988 after a secret compartment in the late artist’s bedroom cabinet was discovered holding a veritable treasure trove of watches, gemstones, and designer jewels. (Sotheby’s)
LACMA Building Campaign Nears Completion – The fundraising campaign for the controversial new building designed by starchitect Peter Zumthor is 98 percent complete with more than $735 million raised for the project. (LA Times)
Robert Indiana’s Foundation Adds Bold Names to Board – The Star of Hope Foundation, created by the late artist to support the visual arts in his home state of Maine, has finalized its Board of Directors. Appointees include art-world heavyweights Mark Bessire, director of the Portland Museum of Art; Sharon Corwin, President & CEO of Chicago’s Terra Foundation for American Art; and Adam Weinberg, director of Manhattan’s Whitney Museum of American Art. (Press release)
FOR ARTS SAKE
Madame Tussauds Creates Wax Figure of Emmeline Pankhurst – More than a century after co-founding the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Pankhurst has been immortalized as a new wax statue in London’s Madame Tussauds to mark International Women’s Day. Pankhurst was a leading member of the suffragettes who fought for women’s right to vote in the early 20th century in the U.K. A panel discussion about Pankhurst’s impact was held at London wax museum. (Evening Standard)
Madame Tussauds London’s artist, Luisa Compobassi, puts the finishing touches to Suffragette and feminist trailblazer Emmeline Pankhurst’s new figure ahead of its arrival at the attraction to mark International Women’s Day. Courtesy Madame Tussauds.
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.
