Art Industry News: A Wave of Blue-Chip Treasures Is Entering the Market at Low Prices as Collectors Hunt for Liquidity + 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 Monday, March
23.

NEED-TO-READ

Benin Prince Asks UK Museum to
Return Bronze – An African prince from Benin has called on a
museum in the West of England to become a role model and return a looted bronze
sculpture. Prince Edun Akenzua of the Royal Court of Benin
wants the Bristol Museum to “blaze the trail” and restitute the
work. Jon Finch, the head of culture at Bristol City Council,
acknowledges the sculpture was stolen, notes the prince’s
“impassioned plea,” and says it is “willing to explore” the option
of returning the work, which would go a step further than most UK
institutions. (BBC)

Arts Workers Struggle With Mixed
Messages on Pay – Staffers and
freelancers who work for New York’s museums, commercial galleries, and arts
organizations are facing uncertain times. While staffers are being
paid for now, it’s unclear whether they will be in in a few weeks’
time. Many freelancers have been laid off, or, at best, offered
payment for existing bookings. The Guggenheim Museum has told
employees who cannot work remotely that the museum would stop
paying them at the end of March. The Met has pledged to pay its
staff through April 4, but warned of furloughs and layoffs in the
coming months. The Tate has
promised to pay all of its staff through May. (ARTnews)

Fire-Damaged Notre Dame Reveals Its Secrets –
Science magazine gets a front-row seat to witness the
ongoing restoration of Notre Dame. Although the recovery efforts
are currently on pause, the research is shedding new light on the
history of the cathedral, as well as other aspects of medieval
life. “We’ve got 40 years of research coming out of this event,”
says Thierry Zimmer, assistant director of the Historical Monuments
Research Laboratory. Scholars
believe they can gain a better understanding of how and in what
order elements of the cathedral were constructed and even discover
the remnants of earlier churches on the site as they use
ground-penetrating radar to check Notre Dame’s foundations.
(Science)

Kinkade Family
Foundation Offers Curator Grants – Sometimes, help
can come from the unlikeliest places. The Kinkade Family
Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the legacy of “painter of
light” Thomas Kinkade, is launching a new emergency grant program
for curators, offering them up to $5,000. Priority will be given to
those who have already secured venues for their projects, but who
have been impacted by recent closures and cancellations.
(Glasstire)

ART MARKET

“Panic Offers” for Art Start Coming
– As collectors search for liquidity, many are preparing to
sell artworks for a fraction of what they would have fetched just a
month ago. Billionaire art collector Jeffrey Gundlach says he has
received “panic offers” for pieces by Monet, Renoir, and Hopper on
the (comparatively) cheap. Meanwhile, financier Asher Edelman is
teaming up with a group of collectors, galleries, and others to buy major
works at a 35 percent discount. He said he has already received
$275 million in offers. (Bloomberg)

Sotheby’s Moves Spring Sales Online – Joining a wave
of auction houses that have rejigged their schedules, Sotheby’s
announced plans to move a selection of scheduled sales online only
this spring, including its design, photographs, Contemporary
Curated, and prints and multiples auctions. The house has yet to
disclose whether it plans to reschedule its marquee May
sale; Christie’s and Phillips
have already moved theirs to
June. (Art Market
Monitor)

COMINGS & GOINGS

The Pompidou Reopens in
Shanghai – It seems the Asian art world is slowly beginning to return
to normal after lockdown. The Chinese government has allowed
the reopening of certain public institutions including the Centre Pompidou x West Bund
Museum Project, which was inaugurated in November. Up to 500
visitors per day are allowed to see two of its exhibition halls.
(Le
Figaro)

Kahlil Joseph Wins Eye
Art & Film Prize – The filmmaker Kahlil
Joseph, whose video installation BLKNWS was a
centerpiece of Ralph Rugoff’s Venice Biennale, has won the
prestigious prize, which awards a filmmaker £25,000 ($29,030) to
fund the creation of new work. (Press release)

New Hong Kong Museum of
Reproductions Debuts – The Metropolis Museum is
unabashedly filled with fakes. The new space dedicated to replicas
of works by European masters like Claude Monet—whose bona fide
paintings are rarely seen in East Asia—will premiere its first show
today after a postponed opening. Groups of no more than 10 to 15
people will be able to tour the museum at one time. (South China
Morning Post)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Performing Artists Feel the Squeeze – When America’s
theaters shuttered, artists’ day jobs and night jobs disappeared at the same
time. As hundreds of thousands of performers, musicians, and
back-of-house staff struggle financially, the disparity between
workers with full-time employment (at least, for now) and
freelancers is starker than ever. A new website offering details
about emergency funds, online platforms, and remote job listings
received almost 160,000 page views in its first 48 hours last week.
In Seattle, meanwhile, an emergency fund quickly raised $100,000,
and soon had 200 applicants seeking urgent assistance.
(New
Yorker)

Prehistoric Horses Were
the Stars of Cave Art – The skill of Europe’s Paleolithic
artists has always enchanted the world. But new research has
offered a fresh interpretation of their work. It seems they were
obsessed with the image of the horse, which a newly compiled
database of cave drawings reveals as the most consistently depicted
creature. Researchers suspect that horses had a totemic or
cosmological importance to hunter-gatherers. (Times)

The Whitney Donates
Masks and Gloves to Hospitals – The Whitney’s chief
curator Scott Rothkopf Instagrammed a very important package
leaving the museum: boxes of gloves, masks, and Tyvek suits on
their way to healthcare workers. The trend of museums donating
these materials, which are commonly used by conservators, began
last week at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, which has inspired an
international response. (Instagram)

The post Art Industry News: A Wave of Blue-Chip Treasures Is
Entering the Market at Low Prices as Collectors Hunt for Liquidity
+ Other Stories appeared first on artnet News.