Art Industry News: A Landmark Italian Art Show in Washington, DC, Has Been Called Off by Italy’s Lockdown + 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, March
11.

NEED-TO-READ

Philadelphia Museum Resets After Controversies –
The esteemed museum has been
beleaguered by controversy in recent months, with
two former employees having been accused of abuse, and the
museum accused of not doing enough to address the staff’s concern.
Now, the institution is trying to move forward through a range of
“thoughtful and deliberate actions” including holding staff
meetings, hiring a consultant to conduct a “cultural assessment” of
the workplace, and creating an anonymous hotline for HR concerns.
Some employees, however, are distrustful of the museum’s motives
given that it is in the midst of fundraising for a $228 million
renovation. (New York Times)

Prominent Street Artist Is Charged With Rape –
The Sydney-based street artist
Anthony Lister, who was named by Complex magazine as
one of the most influential street artists of all time, is behind
bars for the next eight weeks after police raided his home. He
has been charged with raping four women, including three of his art
students, between 2015 and 2018. He also allegedly tattooed one of
the students without her consent. Lister denies the charges.
(Guardian)

Coronavirus in Italy Delays Transportation for National
Gallery Artwork – A
landmark exhibition on Italian art, “A Superb Baroque: Art in
Genoa, 1600–1750,” is caught in the ripple effects of Italy’s
coronavirus lockdown. The show will not open at the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as planned on May 3 because the
museum cannot bring the artworks out of museums in Rome and Genoa.
The show was expected to be the first major exploration of Genoese
Baroque art in the United States. A new date has not yet been set,
but the museum says it could be rescheduled as early as next year.
(Washington
Post)

Max Mara Prize Winner Revealed – The British artist Emma Talbot has won the Max
Mara Art Prize for Women, which comes with a six-month bespoke
residency in Italy (presumably, after the
lockdown is over) to create a new body of work that will be
exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Collezione
Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Talbot won the prestigious prize
with a proposal that questions depictions of women, particularly
elderly women, in art history, beginning with a close look at
Gustav Klimt’s painting Three Ages of Woman (1905), which is in Rome’s Galleria Nazionale
d’Arte Moderna. (Press
release)

ART MARKET

Berlin Gallery Weekend Downsizes – A smaller version of
the annual citywide art
festival will go forward as scheduled during the first weekend of
May, but gatherings such as receptions and dinners will be pushed
to a onetime event in September. The fall edition of the
event will feature the
same participating galleries as the May version and will include
exhibitions by such artists as Andreas Gursky, Katharina Grosse,
and Cathy Wilkes. (Press
release)

Marian Goodman to Rep Tavares Strachan – Marian Goodman Gallery has added multimedia
artist Tavares Strachan—who has long avoided formal gallery
representation—to its roster. The Bahamian artist once hauled a
several-ton block of arctic ice to his birthplace, where it was
exhibited in a solar-powered freezer chamber.
(Press
release)

New York Galleries Could Get Coronavirus Funds –
Small New York City galleries may
be eligible to receive interest-free loans and cash grants amid the
coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent stock-market decline. The
city’s multimillion-dollar initiative to support small businesses
is targeted at small enterprises, particularly those with fewer
than 100 employees that have seen their sales decrease by 25
percent or more since the outbreak. (ARTnews)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Aspen Art Museum Names New
Director – Nicola Lees has been named the new Nancy and Bob
Magoon director at the Aspen Art Museum. She replaces Heidi
Zuckerman, who stepped down abruptly last fall. Lees, who begins
her new role on April 6, has been director and curator of NYU’s 80
Washington Square East Galleries since 2016, and previously held
curatorial positions at Frieze Foundation and the Serpentine
Gallery in London.
(Press release)

Alfredo Jaar Wins Major Photo Prize – The Chilean
artist has won the Hasselblad
Foundation’s international award in photography, one of the largest
awards in the field. Endowed with one million Swedish krona
(approximately $106,000), the award will be granted at a ceremony
in Gothenburg, Sweden, on October 19 ahead of an exhibition of
Jaar’s work at the Hasselblad Center. (Press release)

Influential Brazilian Artist Nelson Leirner Has Died –
The Brazilian painter, who was
known for needling the art world through his ironic, pop
culture-inflected work, has died at 88. Museu de Arte de São Paulo
artistic director Adriano Pedrosa said he was among “the most
influential names in contemporary art in Brazil.” (ARTnews)

FOR ART’S SAKE

The Prado Caps Visitor Numbers Due to Coronavirus –
The Prado Museum in Madrid has
placed a cap on the number of people allowed free entry to the
museum (500 at a time) in an effort to avoid overcrowding during
the coronavirus outbreak. The museum is also establishing a
capacity-control system to monitor the number of people present in
a single room at any given time. (El Confidential)

Woman Discovers a Salvador Dalí in a Thrift Shop –
An original work by the Surrealist
artist surfaced at a thrift shop in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A
volunteer spotted the painted wood engraving, which is from his
100-image series “The Divine Comedy.” A couple purchased the
appraised work for $1,200. (WRAL)

Andy Warhol’s Wigs Star in Tate Show – The Andy Warhol blockbuster at Tate Modern
includes three of Warhol’s “fright wigs,” which are going on view
in the UK for the first time. The artist was bald from his 20s
onward, and became known for his wild, silvery wigs.
(Guardian)

A Jacob Lawrence Series Gets Reunited – A multi-panel series by the famed artist Jacob
Lawrence that examines early American history has been reunited
after roughly 60 years. The 30-panel series created
between 1954 and 1956, titled “Struggle: From the History of
the American People,” was purchased by a private collector who
resold the panels separately. Now, almost all of them are going on
view all together in an exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in
Salem, Massachusetts, through April 26. (New York Times)

The post Art Industry News: A Landmark Italian Art Show in
Washington, DC, Has Been Called Off by Italy’s Lockdown + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.