Art Industry News: A CIA Agent’s Memoir Details Her Life Undercover as a Shanghai Art Dealer + 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 on this Tuesday, October
15.

NEED-TO-READ

Hundreds of Protesters Hit New York Museums for Anti-Columbus
Day Tour – The activist group
Decolonize This Place took to the streets to protest Columbus Day
during the US national holiday yesterday. After being blocked from
entering the American Museum of Natural History, nearly 500
demonstrators, including many artists, marched to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, where they gathered on the institution’s steps. The
group called for the abolition of prisons, the liberation of
Palestine, the removal of Teddy Roosevelt’s statue at the American
Museum of Natural History, and the end of capitalism.
(The Art Newspaper)

Polish Art Institutions Fear ‘Destruction’ After Nationalist
Election Win – Members of
the art community are reeling after Poland’s
conservative-nationalist party, Law and Justice (PiS), scored
another victory in the country’s elections on October 13, winning
45.2 percent of the vote. Michał Grzegorzek, curator at the CCA
Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, worries that the party’s victory could
censor minority voices. (TAN)

A CIA Agent’s Memoir Details Life Undercover as a Shanghai
Art Dealer – In her
soon-to-published memoir Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the
C.I.A.,
Amaryllis Fox says that she posed
as an art dealer while conducting an intelligence operation in
Shanghai. Fox describes how her she and her then-husband, who was
also a CIA officer, pretended to be members of the art industry in
the early 2000s. She has said that life in the CIA takes you to
“the most dangerous places the planet has to offer,” and recalls
how the Chinese government gave them a live-in housekeeper to
monitor the art world husband and wife. (ARTnews)

Gavin Turk Talks Extinction Rebellion – As London bans Extinction Rebellion from
protesting in the city, the artist Gavin Turk, who has ben dubbed
the “the laureate of waste,” is putting UK plastic garbage on view
in Amsterdam. In his new exhibition “Letting Go” at Reflex gallery
in Amsterdam, Turk is displaying 500 water bottles he gathered from
the streets of London inside plywood cases. Should you be buying
this garbage? “The thing about these bottles is that they’ve become
so socially unacceptable they’re going to disappear,” Turk
says. “At which point, my collection will become valuable.”
(Guardian)

ART MARKET

Galerie Eva Presenhuber Announces a New Partner –
Former director of sales Markus
Rischgasser has been made a partner at the Swiss gallery. “Markus’s
professionalism, dedication, and loyalty towards our artists,
clients, and the gallery are legendary,” Presenhuber says in a
statement. (Press
release)

Russian Investment Fund Hosts Kandinsky Show in Saudi Arabia
– Russia has sent 19 early
works by Wassily Kandinsky from St. Petersburg’s State Russian
Museum to Riyadh to go on view during Vladimir Putin’s first visit
to Saudi Arabia in 12 years, which begins today. The show
“Kandinsky in Russia” will run through November 14, and is
organized by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which opened its
first satellite in Saudi Arabia last week. (TAN)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Melissa Chiu Will Curate the 2021 Honolulu Biennial –
The Hirshhorn director will be the
curator for the third edition of the Honolulu Biennial, which is
slated to take place from February to April of 2021. The
multi-venue exhibition is one of the largest in the world to focus
on the contemporary art practices of the Pacific.
(Press
release)

Éric Baudelaire Wins France’s Prix Marcel Duchamp –
The French filmmaker has won
France’s biggest art prize, the €35,000 (about $38,600) Prix Marcel
Duchamp. He beat out fellow nominees Katinka Bock, Marguerite
Humeau, as well as the duo Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille, and is
the second filmmaker ever to win the prize, which historically has
gone to painters and sculptors. (ARTnews)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Richard Prince’s Pot Brand Has Secured an LA Distributor
– Richard Prince’s cannabis
strain, Katz + Dogg, will be distributed at the luxury dispensary
MedMen, which has outposts outside its Los Angeles flagship in
Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, and
New York. Galleries Blum & Poe and Gagosian have both presented the
product alongside exhibitions of the artist’s work. His “Hippie”
drawings are featured on the packaging, and he will release a
capsule collection of furniture with the streetwear designer Darren
Romanelli for select distributors. (ARTnews)

See Photos of MoMA’s New Expansion – Ahead of MoMA’s planned opening of its expanded
campus on October 21, architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro,
in collaboration with Gensler, has released new images of the
building. See how more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space has
been added, including a space called the Studio (known to staffers
as “the Stack”) in the museum’s heart, a new Creativity Lab on the
second floor, and free-admission street-level galleries.
(Press
release)

The post Art Industry News: A CIA Agent’s Memoir Details Her
Life Undercover as a Shanghai Art Dealer + Other Stories
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