Art Industry News: The Brooklyn Museum Has Opened Up Its Lobby to Protesters as a Place for Rest and Relief + 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, June
5.

NEED-TO-READ

The UK Art World Sues Insurers – UK art
organizations are preparing to file a class-action lawsuit against
insurers for failure to pay out as the lockdown era continues to
decimate their bottom lines. The group of more than 50
claimants—all of whom remain unnamed for now—includes art
galleries, museums, and individual proprietors who claim losses
ranging from £50,000 ($63,498) to £35 million ($45 million).
The dispute may come down to whether the public-health situation
and the resulting shutdown are covered by the wording of specific
policies for business interruption insurance. (The Art
Newspaper)

Steve McQueen Dedicates Films to George Floyd –
The artist and Oscar-winning
filmmaker has dedicated his two films selected for the Cannes Film
Festival to George Floyd “and all the other black people that have
been murdered, seen or unseen, because of who they are, in the US,
UK, and elsewhere.” The films, Mangrove and Lovers Rock, were scheduled to be shown at the prestigious
festival before its cancellation due to the public-health
situation. The films are both part of McQueen’s “Small Axe”
anthology, named after a quote from the protest singer and reggae
artist Bob Marley: “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.”
(BBC)

Brooklyn Museum Opens Its Bathrooms to Protesters –
The Brooklyn Museum is the first
major art museum to join a group of New York
institutions and theaters in opening up their lobbies and
bathrooms to protesters. The museum—which is located near a
frequent gathering site for protests in the borough—will make
itself available between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. A representative for the
Brooklyn Museum told Artnet News that staff will be on hand to
direct protesters to the bathrooms and help maintain social
distancing. Over the past week, demonstrators have been
bottlenecked by police and trapped without access to water or
bathrooms; public rest points also give people the important chance
to charge their phones. The Twitter account Open Your Lobby
is recording theaters around the
country that are opening up their spaces to demonstrators.
(Instagram) 

V&A Curator on the Role Enlightenment Thinkers Played in
Creating Racism – In a
must-read post on the V&A’s blog, Gus Casely-Hayford, the
British curator and director of V&A East, ruminates on a work
by Yinka Shonibare illustrating a black Victorian dandy in the
context of the protests sweeping the United States and beyond.
“These men who defined the Enlightenment, constructed its
hierarchies and categories, these intellectuals who laid out the
framework of modern law, morality, and its identified
metaphysics—looked upon Africa, a well-populated and
varied-cultured continent, and saw in its peoples nothing—a void, a
cultural tabula rasa—silence,” Casely-Hayford writes. “It made
colonialism, and the imposition of Western cultural norms, seem
like a kindness.” Shonibare’s image challenges the hierarchy, and,
Casely-Hayford writes, “we must do the same.” (V&A)

ART MARKET

Dealer Daniel Katz Makes $2.9 Million at Sotheby’s –
The London art dealer’s collection
brought in £2.3 million ($2.9 million) in an online auction at
Sotheby’s, easily surpassing the £1.2 million low estimate. The 144
lots ranged from Egyptian bronze antiquities to Modern British art.
But despite the encouraging result, reporter Colin Gleadell writes
that, with many objects priced under £40,000 and some offered
without reserve, the sale “felt more like a backroom clearance.”
(Art Market Monitor)

Swiss Museum Deaccessions Impressionist Works to Finance
Itself – The Langmatt Museum in
Baden is selling up to three French Impressionist works from its
collection in order to raise funds for operations, an extremely
controversial move in the museum world. The president of the
museum’s foundation, Lukas Breunig-Hollinger, says that the
decision “pains” the institution but that it is ultimately the only
way to save it. (NZZ)

Tunisia Controversy Halts Paris Auction – The Paris auction house Coutau-Bégarie has
withdrawn 114 19th-century lots belonging to Tunisian royalty from
a planned sale after critics said they had been smuggled illegally
out of their country of origin. Following an official denouncement
from the National Heritage Institute, the auction house has
“temporarily suspended” the sale in order to investigate whether
the heirs to the artifacts illegally exported the goods in order to
sell them on the international market. (Le Monde)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Brain Dead Collective
Calls on Corporations to Support Black and LGBT Organizations
– The Los Angeles-based creative collective has called on
its previous collaborators, including North Face, Converse, and
Carhartt, to show their support for black and LGBTQ organizations.
“Match our donation or work on a project with or without us to
raise money or awareness for this cause,” they said in a call to
action. (Complex)

First New Media Art
Museum Will Open in the Netherlands – The Nxt Museum—the
Netherlands’ first museum dedicated to media art—is opening on
August 29 in Amsterdam. The first exhibition will feature
large-scale, multi-sensory installations by acclaimed artists and
academics including Marshmallow Laser Feast, Lucy McRae, and United
Visual Artists. (Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Adam Pendleton on America’s Protests – The New York-based artist has penned an essay
about how he is processing the trauma brought up by the protests
sweeping the US. “I realized that I am not safe, and this country
is not kind,” he writes. The article is illustrated with a new
sketch by Pendleton, SEE THE SIN, and his closing
statements illuminate that message: “I took a breath and then
realized that I needed to have a conversation with you—that I
needed to reach out but that there is no ‘moving on’ or ‘next page’
until we SEE THE SIN. I realized the impossibility—and thus the
poetics—of my plea.” (ARTnews)

The High Museum Will
Open for Summer Art Camp – Children from first through
eighth grades in Atlanta will be the first visitors to the city’s
High Museum when it reopens on June 8. The museum is organizing a
summer art camp that lets children explore the galleries and create
their own art at a time when the fate of such camps for many
children across the country is unclear. (TAN)

The Twin Cities’ Black Arts Organizations Need Your Help
– The contribution of artists and creatives will be
essential to the future of the Twin Cities, whose inhabitants must
figure out how to move forward after the police murder of George
Floyd on Memorial Day. Here is a list of
underfunded and grassroots local arts organizations, including
Arts-US, which cultivates young cultural leaders from the African
Diaspora, and Juxtaposition Arts, a teen-run art and design center.
Beyond the Twin Cities, there is no shortage of arts
organizations to support dedicated to building the careers
of aspiring black creatives. (MPRnews, Artnet
News)

The post Art Industry News: The Brooklyn Museum Has Opened
Up Its Lobby to Protesters as a Place for Rest and Relief + Other
Stories appeared first on artnet News.