Art Industry News: Brooke Shields Duct-Tapes a Banana to Her Face in Solidarity With Maurizio Cattelan + 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 Wednesday, December
11.

NEED-TO-READ

These Leonardo Works Are Not at the Louvre – Italian institutions were left a bit sore when
the Louvre captured the world’s attention with its blockbuster
Leonardo da Vinci exhibition. The Paris show is not the only one
dedicated to the Italian Renaissance master this year: Several
other exhibitions are taking place in Italian cities including
Vinci, where the artist was born in 1452. The city also boasts a
3-D sculptural replica of Leonardo’s drawing Vitruvian Man in its central piazza. Meanwhile, in Milan, the
cloister of the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo
da Vinci is opening new galleries dedicated to Leonardo this
week. (New York Times)

How Can Museums Become More Accessible to Disabled People?
– Six museums in Europe,
including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza in
Madrid, have participated in Arches, a three-year European Union
research project that has surveyed museum accessibility. Some 200
disabled people assisted in the design of digital tools to guide
visitors with different access needs around the collections and to
develop tactile reliefs for the vision-impaired, along with other
initiatives. (The Art Newspaper)

Brooke Shields Goes Bananas for Cattelan
– Brooke Shields is no stranger to appropriation art—after
all, as a 10-year-old girl, she was the subject of one of the most
famous and controversial appropriation artworks of all time,
Richard Prince’s 1983 Spiritual America. (Long story… look
it up.) In any case, now the actress, collector, and sometime
curator has turned her own hand—or, actually, face—to
appropriation, posting a photo on Instagram of herself down in
Miami with a questionably executed version of Maurizio
Cattelan’s Comedian (2019) on her forehead. Was this
“expensive selfie,” as she put it, an ingenious plug for the New
York Academy of Art, which she supports and plugged in same post?
Or simply a convenient disguise to allow a celebrity to go
incognito a brunch? As always, art is in the eye of the beholder.
(Instagram)

Bonami Calls Out Corrupt Museum Curators – Former Venice
Biennale curator Francesco
Bonami has highlighted a troubling development: museum curators
seeking kickbacks at art fairs. “Collectors are often trustees of
museums, so it’s mandatory for a director or museum curator to walk
around with them,” he says. “The only conflict is when as a museum
curator you ask the galleries to give you a percentage cut if your
collector/trustee buys a work. I know people who do that and
it’s not fun.” As for his take on the notorious Cattelan
banana? “A few
idiots allegedly bought it. The point? The work doesn’t exist. The
talking around it is the work,” he
writes. (ARTnews)

ART MARKET

Charles Saumarez Smith Steps Down
From Blain Southern – The
high-profile senior director of Blain Southern has left his post
after just one year. Saumarez Smith, the former chief executive of
the Royal Academy of Arts, is the latest in a line of departures,
following Graham
Southern, who co-founded
the gallery with Harry Blain in 2010, as well as Craig Burnett, the
gallery’s former director of exhibitions. Smith says he will
continue to work with the business, which has locations in London,
New York, and Berlin, on special projects. (TAN)

Princess Diana’s Blue Dress Fails
to Sell at Auction – The
off-the-shoulder gown worn by Princess Diana during her famous
dance with John Travolta at a 1985 White House dinner went up for
sale at Kerry Taylor Auctions, but failed to meet its reserve price
of around $265,000. (It was estimated to go for between $330,000
and $450,000.) The dress sold post-auction to a British institution
for about $290,000. (People)

COMINGS & GOINGS

KAWS Is Now a Museum Trustee –
The artist Brian Donnelly, who is
better known as KAWS, has joined the board of New York’s American
Museum of Folk Art. His personal collection of works by self-taught
artists includes pieces by Henry Darger, Martín Ramírez, Joe Coleman, and
William Edmondson. Other newly elected trustees are writer Sabiha
Al Khemir, philanthropist Jane Shallat, and lawyer Joanne
Siegmund. (Press release)

Italy Is Opening a Resistance
Museum – Italy’s minister of
culture has announced that a National Museum of the Resistance will
be built in Milan. The museum, which has a budget of nearly $20
million, will be designed by architects Herzog and de Meuron. The
new museum will commemorate those who fought against Mussolini’s
fascist dictatorship and the Nazi German occupation of Italy during
World War II. (The Local)

The Museum of Ice Cream Reopens in
New Permanent Space – Selfie-takers, get
ready: New York’s supersize
Museum of Ice Cream is preparing to
open a new permanent home in a massive storefront in SoHo.
It is due to debut on Saturday. Admission will be timed and cost
$39 (more than every major art museum in the city, it’s worth
noting). (NYT)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Banksy’s Homeless Mural Will Be
Preserved – The street artist’s
new mural, which highlights
homelessness, will be preserved for posterity. The wall’s
owner, the rail company Network Rail, has installed
a plastic barrier to protect the
work. On Monday, someone added red noses to the two reindeer in the
Christmas-themed work in Birmingham—but the rest of the work
remains intact, as Banksy created it. (BBC)

Germany’s Lost Goddess Goes on Show in the
Hermitage – In 1946, a
gilded bronze Roman sculpture known as Victoria of Calvatone went
missing among 2.5 million German artworks and objects seized by the
Red Army after World War II. The sculpture did not resurface until
2015, when it emerged in the stores of the Hermitage Museum. The
sculpture, which dates to the year 160 CE, has now been restored
and is on view for the first time in 80 years at the St. Petersburg
museum. But it won’t be going back to Germany anytime soon, as
Russia has turned down restitution requests. (TAN)

Pierre Soulages’s Show Opens at the
Louvre – The French artist, who
celebrates his 100th birthday on December 24, has received the rare honor of a solo
show at the Louvre. He is only the third artist to have a solo
show in the Paris museum during their lifetime, joining Picasso and
Chagall. Proud gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin was quick to post this
sneak peek on social media of the
show. (Instagram)

The post Art Industry News: Brooke Shields Duct-Tapes a
Banana to Her Face in Solidarity With Maurizio Cattelan + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.