Art Industry News: Jailed ISIS Fighters Are Now Receiving Art Therapy in Kurdish-Held Syria + Other Stories

by admin

Aug 16, 2019

artnet

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 this Friday, August
16.

NEED-TO-READ

Inside the Crisis in American Museums – On the heels
of Warren Kanders’s departure
from the Whitney Museum’s board, James Tarmy surveys the
rapidly shifting American museum landscape as trustees continue to
come under unprecedented scrutiny for the source of their wealth.
One big problem: young people aren’t as interested in giving to
museums, opting instead to put their money into environmental or
political causes. That leaves an aging donor base, many of whom
have—simply by the very nature of capitalism—accrued their wealth
in unsavory ways. The Met’s
president Daniel Weiss insists that if the donor made his or her
money legally, “we’re satisfied.” But he sounds braced for
increased scrutiny. “It may well be that in the coming years there
will be pressure to do things differently, and we’ll be open to
that discussion,” he added. (Bloomberg)

Richter Wants to Send Works of Art to Berlin – The
German artist Gerhard Richter, who appears to be ensconced in legacy
planning, says he is willing to give some of his artworks to a
planned art museum in Berlin. The German minister of culture Monika
Grütters says she his honored by the famous German artist’s
generous offering. Though Richter and Grütters are currently in
conversation, it is not yet clear how many works will be sent to
the new museum, which is set to open sometime after 2020. Recently,
Richter made headlines for confirming that he would not be condoning a
museum dedicated to his legacy in his hometown of
Cologne. (Monopol)

Syrian Kurds Offer Art Therapy to ISIS Fighters –
In Syrian Kurdish jails, Islamist
fighters are offered the chance to make a new start through art and
education instead of being abused or sentenced to death as they are
in Iraq. A room in a prison
in Qamishli in a Kurdish-held region of northern Syria is full of
papier-mâché models made by the mainly foreign fighters serving out their
sentences. Khaled Barjas
Ali, a senior judge in local terrorism court, hopes that
this enlightened approach to rehabilitation will help break
the cycle of revenge that has trapped the region in conflict for
decades. (Washington Post)

Paris Honors the Resistance Hero Who Posed as an Art Dealer
– Paris’s new Musée de la
Libération has opened on the 75th anniversary of the capital’s
liberation during World War II. The $22 million project honors
members of the Resistance, in particular Jean Moulin, who posed as
an art dealer in Vichy France during the German occupation. On show
are paintings from the art gallery he ran in Nice as a cover. He
showed Modern masters, including Bonnard, Degas, and Matisse—all the while
organizing the fight against the Nazis and their
collaborators. Precious
relics include a box of pastels he used as an amateur artist and
the suitcase he carried when he returned to France from London for
the last time in 1943, before his betrayal, torture, and eventual
death. (Guardian)

ART MARKET

What We Can Learn From the Last Recession –
A feared global economic
slowdown could mean fewer flashy lots at the auctions, more private
sales, and art dealers focusing on works that don’t have
exorbitant shipping and
installation costs. That’s okay news for painters, but bad news for
sculptors who make large work (unless, maybe, you’re Jeff Koons—but
let’s see). (Observer)

Meet Rising Star Maria Qamar – Richard Taittinger Gallery hopes that Maria
Qamar’s first solo show in New York will attract a younger
demographic to the gallery. It snapped up the 29-year-old
Canadian-Pakistani artist after her Pop art paintings attracted
more than 170,000 Instagram followers. Qamar, who became a
full-time artist after getting laid off, started by posting doodles
on social media. (New York Times)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Istanbul Biennial Finds a New
Location – The Istanbul Biennial has
relocated from Istanbul’s historic shipyard to the former warehouse
Antrepo 5 on the city’s waterfront. The show had to scramble to
find an alternative venue after toxic asbestos was discovered in
the shipyard area. The show opens in less than a month, on
September 14. The two other planned venues, the Pera Museum and
Büyükada Island, will proceed as planned. (The Art
Newspaper)

Exiled Palestinian Artist Is Buried in
Jerusalem – The renowned artist and
thinker Kamal Boullata, who died last week, will be buried in
Jerusalem some 50 years after he was exiled from Israel. He did not
return to his home city after June 1967, when he was visiting
Beirut, Lebanon for an exhibition as the Six-Day War erupted.
After he died last week in Berlin, his family struggled to get a
burial certificate from the Israeli authorities, but eventually
succeeded. (Middle East
Eye)

Blanton Museum Gets a Major Gift of Charles
White Works – The University of Texas at
Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art has received a major gift from Susan
G. and Edmund W. Gordon of 23 drawings and prints by Charles White,
as well as a rare large-scale painting by the American artist. The
gift will be the subject of an exhibition this fall. (Press
release)

The Met’s Rock-and-Roll Show Is a
Blockbuster – Since opening this
April, the exhibition “Play It Loud: Instruments
of Rock & Roll” has drawn half a million visitors. Of that
number, nearly 12 percent (or 60,000) were newcomers to the Met.
The show runs until October 1. (Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Jeremy Deller’s Peterloo Memorial Upsets
Wheelchair Users – The Turner Prize
winner has designed a public monument for the 200th anniversary of
the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, where forces stormed a crowd
of demonstrators peacefully advocating for parliamentary reforms in
1819. Deller’s memorial
consists of 11 concentric steps featuring the names of the 18
people who died that day. But the artist and the City of Manchester
have received criticism—including from descendants of the victims
themselves—because the memorial is not wheelchair accessible.
(Guardian)

A Virtual Exhibition About documenta and the
Bauhaus Goes Online – For the 100
year Jubilee of the German design school, a new online exhibition
is exploring the connection between the quinquennial exhibition
documenta and the Bauhaus. “How much Bauhaus is
in the documenta? A search for traces” looks at how Bauhaus
concepts are inscribed in documenta’s foundational ideas.
(Monopol)

Blake Lively Gives Ryan Reynolds a Commissioned Painting
– What do you get the celebrity who has everything? A
commissioned painting of him as a child, of course! Blake Lively
gifted her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, a portrait of himself
delivering newspapers, his first job. The canvas is the handiwork
of Danny Galieote, who describes himself on his website as a “Pop
American Realist” and whose work looks a lot like Norman Rockwell.
Sharing the work on Instagram, Reynolds writes: “This piece of art
is the greatest present my wife has ever given me…. If there’s
ever a fire, I’m grabbing this first. I’ll come back for Blake.”
(Architectural
Digest)

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