Art Industry News: Ai Weiwei’s Childhood in the Cultural Revolution Is the Subject of a Film Premiering in London + 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, September
19.

NEED-TO-READ

An Ancient Mosaic of Jesus Has Been
Discovered Near Galilee  – A 1,500-year-old mosaic that experts believe
depicts the miracle when Jesus fed the five thousand has been
discovered during an excavation of an ancient Greco-Roman city near
the Sea of Galilee. The mosaic floor of a church, which burned down
around 700 AD, miraculously survived and has been well preserved by
a layer of ash. A team
from the University of Haifa found the church at the site of Hippos
in 2005, but only began the dig this summer. Experts believe it depicts that New
Testament story because the floor includes fishes and loaves in a
basket. (Daily
Mail)

Berlin Museum Works With Namibia to
Identify Looted Art – The
Ethnological Museum Berlin has joined forces with the Museum
Association Namibia. Together, Namibian and German experts are now
researching the colonial
collection of Berlin’s state museum with a view to eventual
repatriation of looted art. To launch the collaboration, Germany
has announced that it will loan 23 objects to Namibia for further
research on their provenance. The loan is a first step towards what
could see Germany eventually agreeing to the permanent return of
looted art and artifacts from what was German South West Africa in
the colonial era. (Monopol)

Ai Weiwei Documentary Traces His
Early Life – A new documentary
made by the curator of Ai Weiwei’s installation at
Alcatraz gets its premiere in London. Directed by Cheryl
Haines, Ai Weiwei: Yours
Truly, will be screened
at the Raindance Film Festival on September 28. The documentary,
first shown in San Francisco, includes the Chinese artist and
activist’s memories of internal exile as a child with with his poet
father during the Cultural Revolution. It also includes interviews
with Ai’s mother and brother, as well as a behind-the-scenes look
at the process of making his monumental 2014 exhibition out of Lego
bricks at Alcatraz. (Press release)

The Vagina Museum Will Open in London – The world’s first museum about the myths and
misconceptions surrounding the vagina and the vulva is set to open
in London on November 16, after a successful crowd-funding campaign
that raised £50,000 ($62,430). The first exhibition at a temporary
space in Camden Market is called “Muff Busters: Vagina Myths and
How To Fight Them,” will be on view until February. The museum’s
feminist mission includes giving women the confidence to talk about
issues surrounding the gynecological anatomy and erasing stigmas.
It also aims to champion women’s rights and the LGBTQ and intersex
community. (Evening
Standard)

ART MARKET

Expo Chicago Devotes a Special
Program to Climate Change – The
art fair, which opens today, September 19, through September 22, is
hosting special projects dedicated to the climate crisis. For the
first time, the Garage Museum in Moscow will present a selection
from its current exhibition, “The Coming World: Ecology as the New
Politics 2030–2100,” as part of a partnership with the fair.
(Observer)

How a Cancer Diagnosis Inspired a
Collector – New York
dermatologist Ellen Marmur says that cancer made her focus on
finding daily joy in life, which includes having art in her
everyday life. “Part of that life means collecting beautiful art
because art gives me such joy,” says the collector, who owns works
by Chuck Close, James Turrell, and Tara Donovan. (New York
Times)

COMINGS &
GOINGS

New Director of Paris’s Musée de
Cluny Announced – Séverine
Lepape has been tapped as the new head of the museum of Medieval
history in Paris. She leaves the Louvre, where she is responsible
for the Edmond de Rothschild collection. (Connaissance des
Arts)

Betelhem Makonnen Wins Tito’s Prize
– The Texas-based artist,
curator, and co-founder of
the Black Mountain Project has been awarded the $15,000 prize for artists working in and around
Austin. (Glasstire)

Glasgow International 2020
Announces News Commissions – The Glasgow International in spring 2020 will
include new commissions by Martine Syms, Ana
Mazzei, France-Lise McGurn, Yuko Mohri, Nep Sidhu, Duncan Campbell,
and Jenkin van Zyl. There will also be film commissions by
Georgina Starr and Sarah
Forrest. (Press release) 

Biennial de Palermo Focuses on
Borders – The second edition of
the Biennale in Palermo
(November 6 – December 8) is inspired by the fall of the Berlin
Wall. It will feature works by artists by Shilpa Gupta, Alfredo
Jaar, and Damian Ortega among others on the theme of boundaries and
borders. The exhibition in Sicily is curated by Beatrice Merz, the
president of Merz Foundation in Turin. (Press release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

The Chicago Architecture Biennial
Takes on Urban Displacement – The city’s third architecture biennial focuses
on gentrification, segregation, and colonization. Called
“…and other such stories,”  it includes an installation at the main
venue, the Chicago Cultural Center, that reveals how the grandiose
building stands on land appropriated from Native Americans. The
artist Theaster Gates’s urban regeneration of dilapidated
properties on the South Side of Chicago features as a positive
story of gentrification. (The Art
Newspaper)

Charles Ray Curates a Show of Tom
Hill’s Bronzes – The artist
Charles Ray will show his sculptures alongside Renaissance and
Baroque bronzes in the Hill Collection. The exhibition opens on
September 28 through February 15, 2020, at the billionaire J.
Tomlinson Hill’s foundation on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea, New
York. (Press
release)

See The Twist, Norway’s Spectacular New Private Museum –
The Norwegian collector Christen
Sveaas has opened a
spectacular art museum that spans a
river at his sculpture park north of Oslo. Designed by the architects Bjarke Ingels
Group (BIG) and called The Twist, the museum/bridge frames
panoramic views of Kistefos, the open-air art museum in a forest
founded by the Sveaas in 1996. Ingels says his novel structure is
“another sculpture among the
sculptures of the park.” (DesignBoom) (Instagram) 

The post Art Industry News: Ai Weiwei’s Childhood in the
Cultural Revolution Is the Subject of a Film Premiering in London +
Other Stories appeared first on artnet News.