Art Industry News: Bette Midler Got Shamed by the Internet for Posting This Judgmental Museum Tweet + 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 Monday, December
9.

NEED-TO-READ

Zahi Hawass Wants to Retrieve
Egyptian Treasures – The
high-profile archaeologist has stepped up his
long-running campaign to
recover Egyptian antiquities in Western museums. Hawass, Egypt’s former antiquities minister,
has launched a private attempt to restitute famous artifacts such
as the bust of
Nefertiti, the Rosetta Stone, and the Dendera zodiac ceiling.
Speaking in London at the opening of the King Tut
show, he said he is leading a private team of Egyptians and
foreign experts “to encourage restitution” from museums including
the Louvre, the British Museum, the Hermitage, and Berlin State
Museums. (The Art Newspaper)

Pussy Riot Announces a North
American Tour – The Russian
feminist art collective and punk band will tour North America in
2020. The group, which released a
song No More Wire
Hangers in July in
Alabama to protest the state’s new anti-abortion
law, will donate a
share of the tour’s proceeds to Planned Parenthood. The 19-date
tour starts in Los Angeles in March and ends in Toronto. Tickets,
as well as a promotional video, are available on the group’s
website. (Newsweek)

Bette Midler Shamed for Museum Tweet
– Broadway star Bette Midler has not made herself any
friends in the museum world after her December 8 tweet of a picture
of three young women sitting on a bench in a museum looking at
their phones. Her accompanying comment—”What’s wrong with this
picture?”—has been rejected by many who argue that anyone,
particularly teenagers, should feel welcome in a museum, even if
they look at their phones from time to time. What if they were
simply googling the painting? Scroll to the bottom to see the
offending tweet and its reaction. (Twitter)

A Grudging Defense of Cattelan’s
Banana – Maurizio
Cattelan’s Comedian is more than a
banana-flavored stunt,
Jason Farago argues in a reluctant defense of the artist’s
sculpture, which went viral at Art Basel Miami Beach last week. The
key, he writes, is to look past the banana and focus on the duct
tape. In a sweeping survey of the satirical artist’s career so far,
Farago stresses Cattelan’s
“decades-long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to
deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art.” Unlike the
“tedious” one-liners created by Banksy, Cattelan is, like all the
best clowns, “a tragedian who makes our certainties as slippery as
a banana peel.” (NYT)

ART MARKET

Where in the Art World Is Inigo
Philbrick? – The beleaguered
art dealer, and the
multimillion-dollar lawsuits he is facing. were the talk of the art
fair. To date, six
lawsuits have been filed against the dealer in London, New York,
and Miami. He failed to appear at court hearings last month. One of
his early boosters, White Cube’s Jay Jopling, says he is now in the
midst of legal proceedings against his former protege.
(Bloomberg)

Businessman’s Fakes Were Fully
Insured by Prince Charles’s Charity – When the bankrupt businessman James Stunt lent
four fake paintings to the British royal’s charity, it insured them
as if they were worth millions of dollars. Last
month, it emerged that
paintings purported to be by artists including Picasso
were in fact pastiches by forger
Tony Tetro.
(Daily Mail)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Marciano Foundation Will Close for Good – The embattled Marciano Art Foundation
issued a statement on Friday announcing that its closure—once
merely indefinite—is now officially permanent. The Los
Angeles museum in a former Masonic temple opened in 2017 and
housed the collection of Guess founders Maurice and Paul Marciano.
It closed temporarily after its employees shared their
intention to form a union (though the organization said it
was closing due to low attendance). The foundation’s website has
already been discontinued. (Los Angeles Times)

Collector Donald B. Marron Has Died – The prominent
Wall Street financier, collector, and former president of the
Museum of Modern Art’s board has died at 85. Marron founded the UBS
Art Collection and was himself an avid collector of postwar art
with holdings by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns,
among others. He recently opened a private gallery in Manhattan
where he would share his works with friends. (New York Times)

PAMM Makes an Acquisition at NADA – The Pérez Art Museum Miami made its
annual acquisition from the New Art Dealers Alliance fair in Miami
Beach. The painting New Hat by Dominican-American
artist Kenny Rivero, on view at Charles Moffett’s booth, is the
third work to join the museum’s collection through the
partnership. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

New York Times Critics on the Best Art of
2019 – Critics
Holland Cotter, Roberta Smith, and Jason Farago have made their
picks of the year’s top moments in art. Farago tips his hat
to Sea & Sun (Marina), the award-winning
Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Cotter shares his
admiration for the takedown of “bad money” lurking in museums
thanks to Sackler P.A.I.N. and Decolonize This Place; and Smith loved the
“visual feast” that was the MoMA reopening. (New
York Times)

Protesters Remember Sackler Victims at Harvard’s Museum
– A group of Harvard
students, academics, and mothers of opioid victims assembled at the
university’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum on Friday to mark the
unveiling of an installation called Remember Their Names, which lists victims of the opioid
epidemic. The work was
designed by three students in the department of art and
architecture who are pushing for a permanent marble memorial to be
placed at the art museum’s entrance. The organizers collaborated
with a student group from Tufts University, which successfully
lobbied their own institution to remove the Sackler name from
buildings and programs. (Harvard Crimson) 

And… Here Are the Bette Midler Museum
Tweets:

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Internet for Posting This Judgmental Museum Tweet + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.