Art Industry News: Who Are New York City’s Most ‘Toxic’ Museum Trustees? + Other Stories

Art Industry News is normally a daily digest of the most
consequential developments coming out of the art world and art
market. Here’s what you need to know this Thursday, August
8.

NEED-TO-READ

More Than 18,000 Looted Artifacts Recovered in Europol
Sting – Thousands of cultural artifacts and
antiquities have been seized in an international operation against
illicit trade in Europe. Fifty-nine people have been arrested in
operation Pandora III, which has recovered a Mesopotamian crystal
cylinder seal and a 15th-century bible stolen in Germany over 25
years ago, among many other objects. Dutch police led a “cyber
patrol” of 169 suspicious websites, resulting in the seizure of 682
pieces. Officers from 29 countries took part in Europol’s latest
operation, searching auction houses, art galleries, airports,
archaeological sites, and private residences. (The Art
Newspaper)

Toni Morrison Taught Us Why Artists
Matter – The late Nobel
Laureate Toni Morrison championed art as a bridge between people
and communities, but we are failing to encourage and support the
artists that we need as a society, writes musician and California
Institute of the Arts president Ravi S. Rajan. He says
that arts schools like the
one he leads are in part responsible because they
“routinely rank among the
most expensive places at which to get an education.” In an op-ed,
he says he regrets that “opportunity in our current system falls
terribly short.” Morrison taught us that “artists are the pillars
and guideposts of our advancement…. At a time when racism,
terrorism and electoral battles push us apart, art promises a space
to create models of civility.” (The Hill)

Who Are New York’s Most Toxic
Museum Trustees? – After Warren B. Kanders stepped down as
vice chair of the Whitney Museum’s board following months
of protest, many wondered: Who will be advocates’ next
target? Vulture
has assembled a list
of leading New York
museums’ other potentially toxic trustees who could be in for a
rude awakening. They include Whitney board member Nancy Carrington
Crown, whose family is
a majority shareholder in one of America’s largest defense
contractors, General Dynamics, and Roberto A. Mignone, the vice
chairman of the American Museum of Natural History, who is on the
board of Teva Pharmaceutical, a company that has been linked to the
opioid crisis. Another cultural figure who has begun to attract
opposition is real estate kingpin Stephen Ross, a board member of
the Shed whose pricey fundraiser for Donald Trump in the Hamptons
on Friday has led to calls to boycott his businesses. Meanwhile,
the artist Andrea
Fraser, whose tome 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics
provides a comprehensive list of trustees’ political
donations, sounds a note of auction. “Targeting particularly toxic
individuals risks missing the forest by focusing on a few rotting
trees,” she says. (Vulture, ARTnews)

A Swedish Museum Returns Exhumed
Skulls to Sami People – Advocates for Sweden’s indigenous Sami people have
succeeded in a long fight to reclaim the human
remains of their ancestors from a Stockholm museum.
The skulls of 25 Sami will be
reburied this week in the graveyard from which they were taken by
researchers in the 1950s. Katherine Hauptman, the Swedish history
museum’s director, said the institution had “clearly failed,” and
has apologized for keeping the skulls in storage for decades.
Despite a request made in 2007, 11 Swedish state museums,
universities, and institutes retain Sami bones in their
collections, according to Mikael Jakobsson, the chair of the Sami
parliament’s ethics council. (Guardian)

ART MARKET

Iran’s Online Galleries Grow –
Although US sanctions have on Iran have left artists and dealers
struggling, some in the country are turning to a bourgeoning
online art market where companies such as Artibition are connecting artists, buyers, and
collectors. Just know your local laws: Organizing payment and
shipping might be tricky to some
countries. (Tehran Times)

Phillips Releases Highlights of Editions Sales
– Linocuts by Picasso of his second
wife Jacqueline Roque and iPad drawings and etchings by David
Hockney are among the works on offer at Phillips’s evening and day
editions sales in London on September 12. The works will be on view
at the auction house beginning September 5. (Press
release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Cincinnati Names New Senior Curator
– Cincinnati’s Contemporary
Arts Center has named Amara Antilla its new senior curator.
Antilla, who worked at the Guggenheim for eight years, most
recently as assistant curator, will join the Ohio institution on
September 1. (Artforum)

Louisiana Contemporary Award
Recipients Announced – As part
of its annual juried exhibition titled Louisiana Contemporary, the
Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans is awarding up to
$5,000 to four participating artists. The winners are Jessica
Strahan, Sarrah Danzinger, Rachel David, and Thomas Deaton.
(Artforum)

Pacific Standard Magazine
Shuts Down – Pacific
Standard’s editor-in-chief, Nicholas Jackson, announced in an
emotional message on Twitter that the online magazine would be
shutting down next Friday. In a series of angry and frustrated
tweets, Jackson explained that their primary funder—the nonprofit
Social Justice Foundation—had ceased all charitable giving without
warning. Over the past decade, the magazine has covered social and
environmental justice issues, as well as arts and
culture. “I hope some
of what we’ve done has touched you, and influenced others who
continue where we can’t,” Jackson wrote. (Twitter)

Angela Davis Exhibition Gets NEA
Funding – The NEA is giving the
Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University $45,000 in grant money to
support its exhibition “Angela Is Happening! Angela Davis: Image
and Text.” The exhibition, slated for September 2020, was among the
beneficiaries of $80 million in grants by the organization as part
of its second major funding round for the fiscal year.
(New
Jersey Stage)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Hito Steyerl Questions the
Principle of Museum Funding – The German artist is growing increasingly
outspoken about
problematic arts
patronage. “I’m not
interested in individual patrons,” she says in a new interview.
“It’s about pointing out that in the long run, the interdependence
of private patrons in the art world can lead to completely
unpredictable complications and can also privatize and undermine a
public sphere of discussion. That is my main concern…. Why are
names sold via portals to the highest bidders? That is not really
understandable to me.” (DPA)

Man Arrested for Threat to the Aichi Triennale –
Police in Japan have arrested a
59-year-old man who threatened to
commit arson at the
Aichi Prefecture Museum of Art because it had displayed a sculpture
that referenced “comfort women,” the mainly Asian women the
Japanese military forced into sexual slavery during World War II.
More than 70 artists protested after the work was censored from the
Aichi Triennale. The man, named as Shuji Hotta, has confessed to
faxing a threat to the festival’s organizers earlier this month.
(Japan Times)

New Museum Nominated as America’s
Best Bathroom – The New Museum
in New York has been nominated for a surprising (and very
honorable) accolade: “America’s Best Restroom.” The national
contest organized by facility supplies company Cintas celebrates
publicly accessible bathrooms for their design and cleanliness. You
can vote for the New Museum’s facilities, which feature colorful
pixelated cherry blossom tiles, through September 13. If it wins,
the museum will earn $2,500 in facility services to keep it
sparkling clean. (Hyperallergic)

See the Apollo Theater’s Tribute to
Toni Morrison – Harlem’s
storied Apollo Theater has paid tribute to the literary hero Toni
Morrison, who died this week at age 88. The marquee of the theater
has been emblazoned with a message to the Nobel Laureate author
of Beloved: “Rest in Power Beloved Toni Morrison,
February 18, 1931–August 5, 2019.” (Atlantic Broadband)

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