Art Industry News is a daily summary of the most important developments in the art world and the art market. Here’s what you need to know this Thursday, July 13.
NEED TO READ
Milan Kundera died at 94 – The Czech writer is best known for his 1984 book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an exploration of the life of a group of artists and intellectuals during the Prague Spring of 1968. Kundera’s criticism of the Soviet Union led to his books being banned in Czechoslovakia of the time and he moved to France in 1975, eventually becoming a naturalized citizen. (New York Times)
Dismissals in auction rooms – Sotheby’s has laid off several employees in recent months, including senior executives Jamie Durkin and Molly C. Berry. The auction house has also drastically reduced the team behind its Metaverse platform and NFT sales to just three people, including Michael Bouhanna and Davis Brown. Phillips has also focused his attention on the West Coast to Los Angeles, shedding two management positions in San Francisco and Seattle. (ART news)
Museum of the year – As Art Fund’s Museum of the Year, Glasgow’s Burrell Collection has won a whopping £120,000 ($155,000) prize in recognition of its major new renovation and redevelopment, which opened in public last year. Every year, the Art Fund Museum of the Year recognizes an excellent cultural institution in the UK (Press release)
The French Minister of Culture plans the Notre-Dame Museum – It has been widely speculated that the new museum could take over the Hôtel-Dieu, a former hospital building located on the forecourt of the cathedral. Planning and construction will be overseen by Charles Personnaz, director of France’s National Heritage Institute. (Le Figaro)
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
William Kentridge joins the Booker Prize jury – The South African artist has been chosen as one of the judges for this year’s International Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious annual awards for novels translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. The announcement highlighted how Kentridge’s work centers on the art of storytelling, which he translates into a wide variety of media including animation, drawing and sculpture. (Press release)
Pantheon Nets €200,000 since entry fee instituted – In the first week since the ancient Pantheon in Italy began charging tourists €5 ($5.57), the country’s culture minister announced that some 51,275 visitors had brought in a total of almost €200,000 ($22,281); the historic site remains free for residents of Rome. Despite the influx of money, some fear that the tickets will become a commodity traded by black market sellers, like what happened at the Colosseum. (The arts journal)
Käthe Kollwitz arrives at MoMA – Early next year, the first retrospective in New York and the largest exhibition in the United States of the famous German artist will be mounted at the Museum of Modern Art. The pioneering feminist artist depicted scenes of anguished working-class families in the early 20e century, drawing attention to the social justice issues of the time. (Press release)
The San Francisco-based Kehinde Wiley show will tour the United States – THE acclaimed exhibition “Kehinde Wiley: An Archeology of Silence”, which is currently on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, will embark on a national tour over the next two years. After its California tour in October 2023, the show will go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston from November 19, 2023 to June 19, 2024; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, from July 26, 2024 to January 12, 2025; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, from February 22 to June 22, 2025. (TANNING)
FOR THE ARTS
Chiharu Shiota Blood Facility – The main hall of the Kunstraum Dornbirn in Austria has been taken over by a vast suspended maze of pipes filled with flowing red liquid and suspended from red threads. With this strangely bloody but clinical work, the Japanese artist highlights the inner workings of the cardiovascular system which gives us life but remains out of sight. (Press release)
Chiharu Shiota, Who am I tomorrow? (2023) at Kunstraum Dornbirn in Dornbirn, Austria. Photo: Günter Richard Wett, © the artist, Bildrecht Vienna 2023.
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