Art Industry News: One of America’s Youngest Museum Directors Is Accused of Sexual Misconduct + 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 Friday, January
10.

NEED-TO-READ

Maine Attorney General Investigates
Robert Indiana’s Estate – The office of Maine’s Attorney General is concerned about the
$4 million in legal bills charged to the estate of the late Pop
artist. In a motion filed this week, the Attorney General
states: “Fees of this order
of magnitude should not be simply paid from estate assets… without
appropriate review.” Robert
Indiana’s estate has been embroiled
in multiple legal battles since the artist’s death in
2018. The estate, which is
valued at around $100 million, is the largest ever handled by the
Knox County Probate Court. In addition to legal fees, the Pinkerton
security firm has been paid around $211,000 to keep Indiana’s art
and properties safe. (Knox Village
Soup)

Governor Cuomo Visualizes New York
in 2020 – New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo loves 19th-century political cartoons so much, he
designed one to boost his own profile. The state governor
art-directed a poster, which a graphic artist created,
depicting New York
State as a sailing ship in a stormy sea. While the sails of the
ship include the words “tolerance,” “leadership,” and
“accomplishment,” it is battling waves of “intolerance” and
avoiding “the reefs of greed” as well as the “squalls of hate.”
Cuomo’s portrait appears under a rainbow symbolizing “progressive
government with results.” It is the politician’s latest piece of
retro political art: he commissioned a poster for his 2010 election
campaign and an even more elaborate one in 2012.
(NY State of
Politics)

America’s Youngest Museum Director Accused of Misconduct
– Nine women say Joshua Helmer, the 31-year-old
who was appointed director of the Erie Art Museum in 2018,
made advances toward them in the workplace. Before his arrival at
the Erie Art Museum, he worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
where he dated two women he managed, an apparent violation of
museum policy. “He made clear to me from the beginning he
thought it was his job to break me and then train me,” one PMA
employee, Rachel Nicholson, said. “He would say, ‘I should fire
you, but I love you.’” After he left the PMA for reasons that
remain undisclosed (and the museum issued an internal notice
denying him access to the building), he was hired at Erie, where he
was the subject of a complaint from a college student who claimed
he retaliated against her after she declined his advances. The
museum says it investigated the complaint and found no reason to
discipline Helmer, who remains in his role and declines having
behaved inappropriately. (New York
Times)

French Museum Director Slammed for
His Resistance to Restitution – Stéphane Martin doubled down on his
resistance to the restitution
of looted African art as
he stepped down as president of the Musée du Quai Branly in
Paris. Martin prefers the idea of lending art and artifacts to
African countries, he recently told Le Monde. But lending works was rejected as a
colonialist compromise in the high-profile
Savoy-Starr report commissioned by the French government. Kwame
Opoku, a longstanding critic of Western museums, also takes issue
with Martin’s admission that the Paris museum’s staff is “too
white.” “Even if the museum employed many Africans and persons of
African descent, we would still put in claims for restitution,”
Opuku writes. (Modern
Ghana)

ART MARKET

A Collector Explains His Quest for
Rare Chinese Art – The
Taiwanese art collector Leo Shih
has dedicated himself to reconstructing what he considers to be a
“missing link” in China’s art history: the work of early
20th-century Chinese artists, many of whom studied in Paris and
were influenced by modern Western art. “At the beginning there were
no books, and I had to find paintings piece by piece, mainly
through families or at auction,” he says. (Financial
Times)

A Stolen Chagall Heads to Auction
– Marc Chagall’s
Jacob’s Ladder
(around 1973) heads to auction at
Tiroche in Tel Aviv on January 25. The painting comes with a
colorful provenance: It was stolen in 1996 from Gordon Auction
House in Tel Aviv, only resurfacing two decades later.
“After a legal process,” it
became the property of the insurance company that had secured it,
Tiroche auction house says in a statement. (Press release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

France Will Build a Center for Satirical Cartoons
– Five years after the murder of a group of staff members
of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France
has revealed plans to create a center for press cartoons. The
project realizes a dream originally conceived by Georges Wolinski,
one of the five artists who died in the 2015 terrorist attack that
killed 12 people. Proposals for the venue will be presented at the
end of May. (The Art Newspaper)

Indian Modernist Akbar Padamsee Dies – The
celebrated artist, a pioneer of modern Indian painting, has died at
the age of 91. He was associated with the Progressive Artists’
Group, formed in 1947 by Francis Newton Souza, S. H. Raza, and
M. F. Husain. As a young artist, his painting Lovers,
which showed a man’s hand touching a breast, led to his arrest by
the Mumbai Police. (Times of
India)

Smithsonian American Art Museum Appoints a New Curator of
Craft – The institution has named Mary Savig as its new curator
of craft. Since 2013, Savig has worked at the Smithsonian’s
Archives of American Art as its curator of
manuscripts. (Artforum)

Art Gallery of Ontario Names Winner of the Gershon Iskowitz
Prize – Conceptual artist Ken Lum has won the 2019 edition
of the art prize, awarded annually to an artist for his or her
outstanding contribution to art in Canada. The award comes with a
cash prize of $38,000 and a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of
Ontario in Toronto. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Chandelier Sculpture Stirs Debate in Vancouver
– People are divided over Rodney Graham’s new public
sculpture, Spinning Chandelier, which is installed
under a bridge in Vancouver that used to be a space for the
Canadian coastal city’s homeless. Called Let Them Eat
Cake, the massive hanging work drops down twice a day and
spins and flashes its lights before going still again. Some think
it is wry commentary on the city’s rapid gentrification; others
maintain that it is simply embellishing the nearby luxury real
estate developments. (TAN)

Treasures Abound Inside a Vienna Cathedral – The
500-year-old remains of one of the most important Holy Roman
Emperors can finally be seen. Photographs have been taken inside of
the adorned resting place of Frederick (Friedrich) III, who
presided over the empire from 1452 until he died in 1493. A tiny
hole was drilled into the tomb at St. Stephen’s Cathedral,
allowing visitors to see inside. The eight-ton lid cannot safely be
opened. (TAN)

Thousands of Images of France’s Art Collections Go Online
– Digital downloads of famous works by Victor Hugo,
Rembrandt, Courbet, and Delacroix are now available after the Paris
Musées uploaded 100,000 images of its vast collection of art online
for scholars and art enthusiasts. Happy browsing! (Hyperallergic)

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Directors Is Accused of Sexual Misconduct + Other Stories
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