Art Industry News: Turner Prize Winner Grayson Perry Is Now Giving Free Art Lessons to Aspiring Artists Under 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 Thursday, March
26.

NEED-TO-READ

Cleveland Museum Announces Pay Cuts and Furloughs
– The Cleveland Museum of Art is the latest art
institution to enact sweeping new measures
in an effort to counteract losses, which it estimates will
reach around $5 million, during the current shutdown period. The
museum said it would immediately furlough all part-time staff,
temporarily lay off a portion of its unionized staff (including
security guards), and reduce pay for salaried employees by around
11 percent to 15 percent. The museum’s director William Griswold
says the belt-tightening efforts aim to “preserve jobs the best we
can.” (Cleveland Plain
Dealer)

British Museum Experts Use Software to Spot 4,500 Looted
Antiquities Online – The Times spotlights
how Egyptologists are using high-tech methods to identify
looted antiquities for sale online. Experts from
the British
Museum are working with law
enforcement to crack down on smugglers and unscrupulous
dealers by using sophisticated new software to spot Ancient
Egyptian objects with fake provenances that pop up on ephemeral
websites. Successfully salvaged artifacts include sculptural
reliefs from Karnak and Luxor that have now been returned to
Egypt. (Times)

Grayson Perry Will Teach Art on TV – The telegenic British artist is making a special
TV series for a nation
under lockdown. He will
teach Britain how to make art through Grayson’s Art Club, a Channel
4 program encouraging people to use their time in isolation to hone
their creative skills. Perry plans to speak to fellow artists about
how best to sculpt, draw, and paint. He wants viewers to produce
visual representations of their time in isolation, and plans to
display the work in an exhibition that will chronicle the UK’s
changing mood during the social-distancing era. (Evening Standard)

What Will Art Look Like After Lockdown? – What can artists do besides survive
2020? New York Times critic Jason Farago surveys how
art might change after months in lockdown. The grounding of flights has put a temporary
halt to much of the contemporary art world, which, over the past
few decades, “has morphed into a round-the-globe, round-the-clock
industry,” with star artists serving as traveling entertainers.
Now, Farago writes, “The task of artists in this new plague year
will be to reestablish painting, photography, performance and the
rest as something that can still be charged with meaning, and still
have global impact, even when we’re not in motion.”
(New York Times)

ART MARKET

Sotheby’s Hong Kong Sales Move Back to
Asia – In a testament to how quickly the global health
situation is changing, the auction
house has reversed its decision, announced earlier this year, to
move its spring Hong Kong Modern and contemporary art sales to New
York. Sotheby’s now plans to hold them in Hong Kong, but reschedule
the sales from April to the beginning of July. (Art Market Monitor)

COMINGS & GOINGS

São Paulo Biennial Postpones Opening – The art-world postponements are beginning to
make their way into the fall. Bienal de São Paulo is pushing the
opening of its main group show, “Though it’s dark, still I sing,”
from September 5 to October 3. Meanwhile, much of the robust
programming it has throughout the city to supplement the central
show is indefinitely on hold. (ARTnews)

Artistic Director Named for Yerevan Biennial –
Lorenzo Fusi has been appointed the new artistic director
for the Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation. The former Liverpool
Biennial curator will oversee operations for Armenia’s first
biennial, which has been postponed to new dates: April 15 through
June 18, 2021. (Press
release)

Art Technicians Launch Emergency Fund – An emergency fund for art technicians who are
out of work during the current lockdown period is looking for
artists to donate work to a charity auction. The money collected by
the Art Technician Emergency Fund through donations and auction
sales will be distributed to those workers who have responded to
its survey about the impact of the crisis on their livelihoods.
(Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

The Rijksmuseum Puts Its Old Masters (and Curators)
Online – The Amsterdam museum has launched an
interactive platform to bring Rembrandt’s The Night Watch
and Vermeer’s The Milkmaid to every living room in the
world. Along with 700,000 high-resolution photographs of the works
that are free to download, the Rijksmuseum’s curators will also
offer free art history lessons from their homes via YouTube.
(Press release)

How Designers Are Fighting to Protect Public
Health – The
current worldwide health emergency has triggered a wave of
ingenuity among designers and engineers. The Guardian has found identified 10 inventive designs
ranging from sanitizing
robots and repurposed agricultural drones to a 3D-printed hospital
ward. Chinese company Winsun made 15 isolation wards in a single
day by mobilizing its 3D-printing technology. A Belgian 3D-printing
company, meanwhile, has
designed a simple, hands-free door handle attachment, which you can
download for free. Materialise’s slogan is: “Do less harm, use your
arm!” (Guardian)

Guggenheim Workers Protest the Museum’s Payment Plan –
Freelance employees who were
scheduled to work at the Guggenheim before the museum was forced to
close on March 13 are petitioning to be paid for their bookings.
The Guggenheim’s union is asking the museum to reconsider its
decision to not pay workers who were on call after March 29.
(Hyperallergic)

Peter Blake Makes a London Stands Together Poster –
The legendary British pop artist
Peter Blake has made a moving tribute to London as a symbol of hope
for the city. Blake—who was the artist behind the album cover for
The Beatles’s Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—designed a rainbow print with the words
“London Stands Together,” which he is encouraging people to post in
the windows of their homes. The rainbow was inspired by the many
rainbow drawings made every day by children being kept home from
school. (Evening Standard)

The post Art Industry News: Turner Prize Winner Grayson
Perry Is Now Giving Free Art Lessons to Aspiring Artists Under
Lockdown + Other Stories appeared first on artnet
News.