Art Industry News: Marina Abramovic Speaks Out About the Emotional Toll of the Bizarre Far-Right Conspiracy Theory Targeting Her + 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, April
22.

NEED-TO-READ

Drew Barrymore’s Daughter Took the Photos for Her Cover Shoot
– Because of the lockdown,
fashion shoots, which require many people on set, have become
essentially impossible to organize. That is why actor and
entrepreneur Drew Barrymore asked her seven-year-old daughter to
take pictures of her for the cover of The Sunday Times Style. The assignment resulted in a successful multi-look,
intimate photo shoot on the beach. Barrymore called Olive “the
world’s smallest and moodiest photographer.” (Entertainment
Tonight)

Olafur Eliasson Releases Earth Day Animations on
Instagram – To mark the 50th anniversary of Earth
Day, the Danish-Icelandic artist is releasing nine animations
depicting different views of the planet. The images, which are
being posted on Instagram every hour beginning this morning, offer
views of Earth that center the Great Barrier Reef, the Ganges River
in India, the South Pole, and other important
sites. “Essentially the imaginary future, the well-being of
our planet and how you’re going to live for the planet in the
future is obviously something that is incredibly important,” the
artist said. The project is part of the Serpentine Galleries’
50th anniversary Back to Earth initiative. (The Art
Newspaper)

Marina Abramović Responds to the Conspiracy Theorists –
After Microsoft took down a video it
made in collaboration with the artist last week (“We recognize that
our association with this project served as a catalyst for online
attacks,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said), Abramović has broken
her silence about becoming the target of
right-wing conspiracy theorists. “I am an artist, not a Satanist!” she tells
the New York Times. She says she fears for her personal
safety as she regularly receives death threats by email, as have
the organizers of some of her exhibitions. Fed up, she recently
consulted lawyers about suing Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars,
over articles about her on the site, but ultimately decided against
it. Still, she says, she would be willing to sit down face-to-face
with the conspiracy theorists to help them better understand her
work. (New York Times)

Inigo Philbrick Insists He’s Not DM-ing Kenny Schachter on
Instagram – The disgraced art dealer Inigo
Philbrick has contacted a journalist from British GQ
to stress that he is not in contact with his former friend, the
Artnet News columnist Kenny Schachter, despite their exchanges
being mentioned
frequently in his column. Philbrick says he has been “alternately
amused and distressed” by Schachter’s alleged correspondence with
him and has spoken out because he has received “threats of
violence” for some of the things he supposedly said. Schachter has
laughed off the claim, saying that the person he has been in
contact with has knowledge of personal information that only the
real Philbrick would know. (ARTnews)

ART MARKET

Lesley Heller Gallery Is the First to Fall to the Pandemic
– The Lower East Side’s Lesley Heller Gallery is permanently closing
after 10 years of operation in New York. “I am extremely proud of
the exhibitions the gallery has put on throughout its many
iterations, and I am honored to have worked with so many incredible
artists and dedicated collectors,” Heller wrote in an email
announcement. (Hyperallergic)

Roberts Projects Adds Wangari Mathenge to Roster – The
Los Angeles gallery is now
representing the Chicago-based artist Wangari Mathenge. Mathenge,
who is originally from Kenya, reinterprets traditional African
patriarchal society in historically-focused
paintings. Her next show at the gallery will be in
2021. (Press release)

David Bowie Wallpaper Comes to Sotheby’s – Two rolls of wallpaper created by David Bowie
with the designer Laura Ashley will be sold as part of Sotheby’s
online print sale, which runs through April 28. The first design,
which carries an estimate of $25,000 to $40,000, was conceived
for Bowie’s debut exhibition in London in 1995. (Art Market Monitor)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Trevor Schoonmaker to
Lead Nasher Museum – The former deputy
director of curatorial affairs and Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher
curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum will take over as
the museum’s new director. During his time as
curator, Schoonmaker has worked to build the collection, with
a particular focus on artists of color, and also served as artistic
director of the fourth Prospect New Orleans. (Press release)

Beijing’s X Museum Gets
Opening Date – After delays due to China’s lockdown, the X
Museum—founded by millennial art collectors Michael Xufu Huang and
Theresa Tse—has a new opening date. It will be unveiled in Beijing
on May 30th with an ambitious triennial featuring 33 artists
under the age of 40. (Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Artist Exhibits
Paintings of Diners… in a Shuttered Diner – Katherine
McMahon is showing paintings of diners at the currently
closed Silver Lining Diner in Southampton. “Given the
devastating state of the restaurant industry, my hope is to set
forth a solution for activating restaurant spaces in a hopeful and
optimistic way,” she says. Half the profits of any sales will go to
the host diner. (East Hampton
Star, KD
Hamptons)

Artist Organizes
Portraits of Healthcare Workers – In another creative
effort to use art to offer aid, portrait painter Tom Croft has
painted healthcare workers of the UK for free in an effort to
enhance the visibility of frontline workers. Since he began,
artists around the world have adopted his idea, and Croft has
connected far-flung healthcare workers with other portraitists.
(BBC)

JR Creates a New Work
for the Cover of TIME – The famous street artist
created a new large-scale work for TIME that captures
the feeling of this period of isolation. JR installed the
15-foot-by-21-foot artwork called FINDING HOPE on a
quiet street in Paris in the wee hours of the morning by glueing
down strips on the pavement. “When I was asked to figure out an
image to illustrate this confinement and also this fear and hope, I
thought that doing something on the street itself would be pretty
special,” the artist said. “We couldn’t do it with any permits
because everything is shut down, so we decided to just do it the
old way, old school.” (TIME)

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About the Emotional Toll of the Bizarre Far-Right Conspiracy Theory
Targeting Her + Other Stories appeared first on artnet
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