Art Industry News: A Second Man Is Arrested in Connection With the Heist of Maurizio Cattelan’s Golden Toilet + Other Stories

by admin

Sep 18, 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 on this Wednesday, September
18.

NEED-TO-READ

New York City Won’t Penalize Museums for Diversifying Slowly
(Yet) – New York museums can breathe a sigh of
relief. New York’s
Cultural Affairs
Commissioner Tom
Finkelpearl has
confirmed that the city has not cut funding to arts institutions
that have yet to fundamentally change the makeup of their staffs,
despite the mayor’s earlier threat to the contrary. A report
published in July found that the boards and executive leadership at
65 cultural and arts institutions in the city remain 66 percent
white. Museums have made improvements in some areas, however,
including better representation of people with disabilities and
members of the LGBTQ community as well as a higher proportion of
women in leadership roles. “Our goal is not to cut these groups,”
Finkelpearl says. Museums will not be penalized if they can
demonstrate a “good-faith effort” of outreach and expanding their
hiring pool. (Wall Street
Journal)

A Munich Museum Recovers Antiquity Lost in WWII –
An English widow has returned a
long-lost marble relief, received as a wedding present from an
English diplomat in Munich in the 1950s, to Munich’s Royal
Antiquarium museum. The relief was originally discovered between
1852 and 1857, and was acquired by the museum in 1866 before it
went missing. It was gifted to the couple after it turned up in a
house formerly occupied by a Nazi officer during the war.
(Antiques Trade
Gazette)

Police Arrest a Second Man for the Gold Toilet Heist –
Police in England have arrested a
second man in connection with the theft of Maurizio Cattelan’s
solid-gold toilet from Blenheim Palace. The $6 million work of art, however, remains
missing. David Hare, the chief executive of the stately home near
Oxford, fears the worst: “It is not out of the question that
[America] would be melted down.” Both men arrested in
connection with the crime on suspicion of burglary or conspiracy to
burgle—a 36-year-old
and a 66-year-old—have since been released, but remain under
investigation. Cattelan has said he hopes the gang was inspired by
Robin Hood, and that the toilet is happily being used
somewhere. (BBC)

A Filmmaker Tracks Down a $50 Million Art Swindler –
An art dealer wanted by Interpol
has been tracked down by a filmmaker—who also managed to get an
exclusive interview with him on camera. Born in France, Michael
Cohen made his fortune in New York but fled to Brazil in 2001 when
it emerged that he had embezzled millions of dollars. He is still
on the run for the $50 million theft, which involved works
by Picasso, Monet, and
Chagall. The British documentarian Vanessa Engle’s 17-year search
for Cohen paid off when his wife got in contact. Engle and Cohen
met in an undisclosed country that does not have an extradition
agreement with the United States. She tells his story, with his
cooperation, in The $50 Million Art Swindle, which will be
broadcast on BBC 2 on September 23. (Guardian)

ART MARKET

Mexico Tries to Halt Sale of Pre-Columbian Art –
The Mexican government has joined
Guatemala in protesting the Paris auction house Drouot’s planned
sale of pre-Colombian art, which will be held in Paris
today. Ambassador Juan
Manuel Gómez-Robledo questioned the provenance of some 95 pieces,
warning they “could turn out to be imitations.” Last week, the
house agreed to withdraw an artifact from Guatemala from the
sale. (Art
Daily)

Elizabeth Taylor’s Family Holds Charity Auction – The
late star’s family is backing an online auction on Paddle8 that will benefit the
Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. The sale offers works by Robert
Mapplethorpe, Shepard Fairey, Kiki Smith, Herb Ritts, as well as
pieces by Taylor’s artistic children, the sculptors Michael Wilding
and Liz Todd-Tivey. (People)

Hostler Burrows Gallery Expands to LA –
The New York design gallery, which
works with artists and designers including Pamela Sunday, John
Shea, and Heini Riitahuhta, will open a space near Paramount
Studios in Los Angeles next month. The gallery will be located
at 6819 Melrose Avenue.
(Press
release)

Marianne Boesky Adds Ghada Amer to Roster – The Egyptian painter and sculptor Ghada Amer
has joined Marianne Boesky Gallery, which will organize a solo show
of her work in New York in 2021. Amer is the latest artist from
Cheim & Read to find a new home after the gallery
transitioned into private practice. Boesky will also present
Amer’s ceramics at the Independent art fair in 2020.
(Instagram)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Art Fund Head Will Step Down – Stephen Deuchar, the director of Art Fund, the
UK’s fundraising charity for art, will step down from his post in
March 2020. During his nine-year tenure, he doubled membership and
introduced the National Art Pass. His successor has not yet been
named. (Apollo)

Praemium Imperiale Laureates Announced
– The Japan Art
Association has announced the five winners of the Praemium
Imperiale, one of the world’s largest art prizes. The winners are:
artists William Kentridge and Mona Hatoum; architects Tod Williams
& Billie Tsien; violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; and Kabuki actor
Bando Tamasaburo. The six figures will be awarded $139,000 each and
honored for their lifetime achievement at a ceremony in Tokyo on
October 16. (Artforum)

Walker Names New Sculpture Commission
Post-Scaffold – The Walker Art Center has selected Angela Two
Stars to create a new work for its sculpture garden. The artist
from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe will make a site-specific
public and interactive sculpture out of medical plants and text
exploring the Dakota language, culture, and traditional teachings.
The commission follows the controversy surrounding
Scaffold, a sculpture by Sam Durant that angered local
Native groups in 2017. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Tribeca Is Hot Again – A
new batch of galleries have opened in New York’s Tribeca
neighborhood, many seeking to escape the high rent of the
overdeveloped Chelsea district. The shift offers new hope for a
walkable gallery haunt in New York. “While it’s true that artists
were priced out of this area years ago, there’s still a funkiness
to the neighborhood,” Jerry Saltz writes. (Vulture)

Harper’s Bazaar Will Get a Big Paris Show – The
magazine Harper’s
Bazaar will be the subject of a major exhibition to mark the
reopening of the fashion galleries at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
in 2020. The show dedicated to the magazine, which is celebrated
for its artistic photography, is scheduled to open February 28 to
coincide with Paris Fashion Week. (WWD)

A Sneak Peek at Frieze London’s First AR Work –
Acute Art is making an exciting
addition to the Frieze Sculpture Park, which is open in Regent’s
Park in London through the end of the Frieze art fair next month.
Visitors are now invited to track down an augmented reality work by
Koo Jeong A, which comprises a series of ethereal floating ice
cubes only visible through your mobile phone. (Guardian)

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