Art Industry News: The Star of the Obamas’ First Netflix Movie Is an Art-Collecting Chinese Billionaire + Other Stories

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
23.

NEED-TO-READ

Historians Concerned Over Central Park Suffrage Sculpture
– Plans to build a
monument to women’s suffrage in New York’s Central Park have not
gone smoothly. After the initial proposal to create a monument to
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony drew criticism for
including only white women, organizers adapted the proposal to
add black suffrage activist
Sojourner Truth. But now, some 20 academics have signed a
letter expressing concern that the new design could obscure the
different struggles that white and black people experienced during
the suffrage movement. To stave off any misleading imagery, they
have asked to see sketches of the adapted sculpture in advance.
(Hyperallergic)

Di Rosa Center Director Defends Deaccession Plan –
Robert Sain, the director of the di
Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, California, has addressed
the mounting criticism of the institution’s decision to deaccession
hundreds of artworks. In response to the 120 arts professionals who
signed a petition decrying the
move, Sain says that “it is unfortunate that di Rosa has been
inadequately funded since it opened its doors, and that we finally
had to face the reckoning—grow the endowment to provide a
sustainable future for the organization, including the proper care
of the art that will remain in the collection, which has now, at
great expense, been safely housed in climate controlled storage—or
close our doors forever.” (Artforum)

The Obamas’ First Netflix Movie Spotlights an Art-Collecting
Chinese Billionaire – The first
movie that Barack and Michelle Obama’s company Higher Ground
Productions has released with Netflix looks at what happened when
Chinese art collector and billionaire Cao Dewang swooped into the
US to open an auto-glass manufacturing company in a former GM
factory in Ohio. The documentary American
Factory looks
at the cultural divide between Chinese and American laborers. In
Cao’s office, the camera lingers on a couple of Social Realist
paintings that depict him “against the sky like a sleekly updated
Mao.” (New York Times)

Ai Weiwei Is Moving to the UK – The
activist artist, who has lived in Berlin since 2015 following his
exile from China, says he no longer feels comfortable in Germany
because of its growing intolerance toward refugees. He will
maintain a studio in the capital, but plans to move to Cambridge
with his partner and 10-year-old son. Although he recognizes that
the UK has problems of its own—”they seem to have lost courage and
vision in this fast-changing world,” he says—he feels Germany is no
longer an option for him. For the record, Ai has previously said he
was moving to Connecticut and
Upstate New York. 
(Guardian)

ART MARKET

Collector Leonard Lauder Is Working on a Memoir –
Leonard A. Lauder, the billionaire
and renowned art collector, is working on a memoir. He will focus
on the epic rise of the cosmetics company that his mother founded
in 1946, which her son helped grow into an international empire.
(AP)

Berlin’s Inaugural Collection Night Opens Across the City
– The pilot edition of
Collection Night
Berlin will see
around a dozen private collections open their doors to the
public—some for the first time ever—in the German capital this
evening. The goal is to challenge the city’s reputation as a home
for artists, but not top collectors. (artnet
News)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Conservative Donor David Koch Has Died
– The right-wing billionaire political activist and
philanthropist has died at age 79. Koch stepped down from Koch
Industries, the energy and chemical company he co-owned with his
brother, due to declining health last year. In 2014, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s plaza was renamed the David H. Koch
Plaza following a $65 million donation. (NBC)

United States Artists Taps New Chair – The board of trustees at the organization,
which offers grants to artists, has named the president and CEO of
the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ed Henry, as its new chair. A
trustee since 2014, Henry succeeds Steven H. Oliver in the role.
(Press
release)

Four New Trustees for the Noguchi Museum
– The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum
in Queens has added four new board members: investment banker
Maximilian Coreth, art startup exec Sarah Wendell Sherrill,
architect Kulapat Yantrasast, and gallerist Sundaram
Tagore. (Press
release)

Istanbul Design Biennial Names Curator – Architect and curator Mariana Pestana,
who previously served as a curator at London’s V&A, will
organize the fifth Istanbul Design Biennial next year. The
exhibition runs from September 26 through November 8, 2020.
(Art Daily)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Court Rules to Constrain New York Art Vendors –
Nine years after litigation began,
an appeals court has overturned an injunction against rules
limiting the number of art and book vendors allowed in four
Manhattan parks (Central Park, Battery Park, High Line Park, and
Union Square Park). The court says the rule meant to limit
congestion is constitutional despite artists protesting that it was
illegal discrimination that violated their free speech and equal
protection rights. (Reuters)

Visit Thousands of Museums for Free on September 21 – Are
you an art lover on a budget? We’ve
got good news for you: September 21 marks the 15th annual
Smithsonian Museum Day, when you can get free admission to hundreds
of museums across the US. You can find participating museums on
the Smithsonian Museum Day
site, and download one
ticket per email address, which will get you free admission for two
people. (Living on the Cheap)

A Museum of Missy Elliott Is Coming to NYC—and It’s Sold Out
– The people have voted. Missy
Elliott’s pop-up museum is most definitely worth it. Tickets to the Museum of Missy Elliott sold
out within a minute of their drop, with fans eager to take selfies
inside installations from the rapper’s music videos and get their
hair and nails done at a Missy-themed beauty bar. (Page Six)

A Conceptual Cookbook Makes Food Into Sculptures –
Are you ever hungry—but,
like, conceptually? The artist and writer Esther Choi’s
brilliantly titled Le
Corbuffet has got you
covered. The conceptual cookbook coming out on October 1 gives us
art-inspired recipes—think Frida Kale-o salad, or Rhubarbara Kruger
Compote—presented as sculptures. Why didn’t we think of that?
(Colossal)  

The post Art Industry News: The Star of the Obamas’ First
Netflix Movie Is an Art-Collecting Chinese Billionaire + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.