Art Industry News: Anti-Oil Activists Sneak a Trojan Horse Into the British Museum + 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, February
7.

NEED TO READ

Yale Art History Professor on Its Controversial New
Curriculum – Yale’s head of art
history, Tim Barringer, wrote an op-ed defending the university’s
changes to its introduction to art history course, which sparked
outrage after the department decided to abandon its two
traditional, Eurocentric art history “surveys” in favor of offering
four different introductory courses instead. Barringer argues that
this was to offer a greater diversity of learning, wherein students
might choose focus on the Arts of Asia and of Africa and its
diaspora, pointing out that no course could ever be totally
comprehensive anyway. Barringer says that the changes, while
“initially shocking,” are actually gradual. (The Art
Newspaper)

Photo of Banana Leads to Copyright Fight – An Art Basel attendee who photographed Maurizio Cattelan’s
$120,000 banana is suing a website for Orlando’s CBS affiliate,
ClickOrlando.com, for using his photo without permission. John
Taggart took out a copyright on his image of the viral artwork in
December. His lawsuit has been filed by Long Island attorney
Richard Liebowitz, who is known for taking on copyright cases (and
sometimes being sanctioned by judges for trolling courts).
(Law
360)

Activists Sneak a Trojan Horse Into the British Museum –
Anti-oil activists snuck a Trojan
Horse into the courtyard of the British Museum this morning in
protest of BP’s sponsorship of the museum’s Troy exhibition. The
13-foot-tall wooden horse, which can fit 10 people inside, was
crowdfunded by the theatrical activist group BP or not BP? The
activists hope to remain in the courtyard until tomorrow morning
when they have organized a mass protest action against the museum
with more than 1,000 people. (Press release)

ART MARKET

Show of Miners’ Busts Sparks Controversy – A miner’s daughter whose portrait in bronze was
cast by the sculptor Laurence Edwards for a public monument has
objected to her bust being shown at a gallery show at Messums
London. The member of a south Yorkshire mining community, Rachel
Horne, has said she never gave permission for an edition of her
bronze bust, which is priced at £2,895 ($3,740), to be exhibited or
sold in a commercial gallery. (TAN)

Art Central Canceled – On the heels of
news that Art Basel Hong Kong would be canceled due to the outbreak
of coronavirus, Art Central, another large art fair that runs
alongside ABHK, followed suit. “The uncertainty has made it
increasingly untenable to guarantee the safety and well-being of
the public,” the fair said. It was due to take place in a tent in
Hong Kong’s harbor from March 18 to 22. (Press
release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Art Institute of Chicago Hosts a Barbara Kruger Survey –
After signing on with David Zwirner
in November, the Art Institute of Chicago is now opening the
largest survey of Barbara Kruger’s work in 20 years. Titled
“Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.,” the show will include
rarely exhibited works from the early 1980s through to today.
(ARTnews)

Library Offers $10,000 Reward for a Sculpture Stolen Decades
Ago – The Los Angeles Public
Library is offering a $10,000 reward for the return of pieces of a
bronze fountain that went missing from its gardens in 1969. One
section of the sculpture, Well of the Scribes, recently resurfaced after it was sold in
Arizona, and the library is hoping the reward will incentivize
others who might have pieces to come forward. (Hyperallergic)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Ancient Australian Rock Art May Depict Rising Seas –
Rock paintings from 12,000 years
ago depicting clan dynamics and ceremonies in Australia’s Kimberley
region might have been painted as a result of climate change. The
rock art coincides with the ending of an ice age, and rising seas
flooded northern Australia, shrinking the lands by half and
displacing populations. (Science)

Inside the Odd LACMA Battle Playing Out in the New
York Times – An
activist group objecting to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s
redevelopment plan, known as The Citizens Brigade to Save LACMA,
bought two full-page ads in the New York Times and Los
Angeles Times on Sunday to ask readers to “saveLACMA FROM
TANKING.” The ads, which look like they were put out by the
nonprofit activist group saveLACMA, depict a rendering of architect
Peter Zumthor’s proposed plans for the new building sinking
Titanic-like into the ocean. The saveLACMA group, which wants to
dissociate from the Citizens Brigade ringleader, who has a vendetta
against museum director Michael Govan, has asked the newspapers to
issue a retraction. (Hyperallergic)

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Trojan Horse Into the British Museum + Other Stories appeared
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