Art Industry News: The Locked-Down Super Rich Are Impulse-Buying Jewelry Through Online Auctions Like There’s No Tomorrow + 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, April
23.

NEED-TO-READ

Gerhard Richter’s Donation Raises More Than Half a Million
– At a charity auction to raise
money homeless aid, some 30 signed “Candle” prints by Gerhard
Richter sold out almost immediately, raising €650,000 ($700,000)
for the homeless in his home city of Cologne. Other famous artists
also donated works to the “Art Helps” auction, including Rosemarie
Trockel, Jeff Koons, and Markus Lüpertz. (Monopol)

Mike Kelley Foundation Revises 2020 Grants – In light of the current crisis, the Mike
Kelley Foundation is lifting restrictions on how its grants, which
are usually reserved for project-related expenses, can be used this
year. The foundation’s executive director Mary Clare Stevens said,
“In the midst of a global crisis that is putting an unprecedented
strain on our cultural community, grant-making in the arts has a
heightened sense of urgency.” Recipients include California
Institute of the Arts/REDCAT; Human Resources LA; Los Angeles
Filmforum; and the Vincent Price Art Museum. (Los Angeles Times)

Here’s Why a New Deal-Style Public Art Program Is a Pipe
Dream – In this moment of
upheaval, many have called for a revival of the Federal Art
Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sweeping New
Deal plan, which put thousands of artists to work. But politics and
society were different then, and partisan divides did not run as
deep. President Trump and other politicians, such as Nikki Haley,
have targeted arts funding in particular as an
extravagance. “I’m not sure you can get Congress to
agree on anything,” said Barbara Bernstein, founder of
the New Deal Art
Registry. “Especially not something as easy to make fun of as
an art program.” (New York Times)

Art-World Figures Protest Plan to Demolish Public Sculpture
– The non-profit Cultural
Landscape Foundation, with support from prominent art-world
figures, is appealing to the National Geographic Society to cancel
plans to remove the 1984 installation Marabar from its Washington, DC, campus as part of
renovations. The 6 foot-by-60 foot reflecting pool by New
York-based artist Elyn Zimmerman is lined by cut boulders, and was
described by Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg as an art
historical “masterpiece” in an open letter. (The Art Newspaper)

ART MARKET

Will Art Fairs Return in 2020? – Sure, presumably you’ll be able to hold an art
fair at some point this year—but will anyone come? It is uncertain
whether, even if lockdowns are lifted, international collectors (or
dealers, for that matter) will jump on planes to pack into Art
Basel this fall. Dealers have until May 1 to reconfirm their
participation. (TAN)

Bored Rich People Are Spending a Lot on Jewelry Online –
Collectible jewelry sales are doing
well amid the current crisis. As Catherine Becket, a Sotheby’s
jewelry specialist, put it, wealthy clients “leading relatively
dreary lives” are “wearing big diamonds inside their homes because
it brings joy.” Since the beginning of March, Sotheby’s has
launched four online jewelry sales, with 92 percent of lots sold
and 61 percent exceeding their high estimates. Next up: a 1930s-era
Cartier bracelet offered in a dedicated online sale, starting
tomorrow, with an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000.
(Bloomberg)

Artnet’s Prints and Multiples Sale Exceeds $1 Million –
Artnet Auctions’s Premier Prints &
Multiples sale brought in a total of $1.1 million, up 10 percent
from the equivalent sale in 2019. The auction—which was led by
Keith Haring’s Retrospect, which sold for $180,000—also saw a boost in
the average lot price, up 38 percent from the same sale last year.
(Press
release)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Renaissance Society Nabs Rising Star as Director –
The curator and writer Myriam Ben
Salah has been named the new executive director of the Renaissance
Society at the University of Chicago. Ben Salah co-curated the
now-delayed fifth edition of the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A.
biennial. She will take up her new post on September 15.
(Artforum)

Taipei Biennial Releases Artist List – The Taipei Biennial has released the artist
list for its 2020 edition, “You and I Don’t Live on the Same
Planet,” which is slated to run November 21 through March 14 at the
Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Artists on the list include Mika
Rottenberg, Hai-Hsin Huang, and the artist duo Cooking Sections.
(Artforum)

Artist Lois Weinberger Dies at 72 – The Austrian artist as died at age 72 in
Vienna. Weinberger was interested in nature’s influence on
migration and his most famous work, What is beyond plants is at One with
Them, produced for
Documenta X in 1997, saw him plant foreign weeds along 330 feet of
an abandoned railway track. (ARTnews)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Vandals Target Berlin’s Gay Museum – Anonymous vandals threw stones at the
window of the Gay Museum in Berlin last weekend, damaging but not
breaking the glass. Officials spotted the damage on Monday, but it
remains unclear whether it was a targeted attack. (Monopol)

Gilbert & George Create a Free Coronavirus Work
– Gilbert & George are the
latest artists to offer up free downloadable posters for people to
post in their living-room windows—but they are taking a slightly
different tack from the colorful rainbow images put forth by
others. The duo’s slogans include “Gilbert & George say: Don’t
catch it!” and “Gilbert & George say: Don’t get it!”
(Guardian)

See Olafur Eliasson’s Back to Earth Initiative
– Yesterday, Olafur
Eliasson unveiled his new artwork for Earth Day, which comprised
nine animations of views over the Earth, released on the hour for
nine hours. Now, you can see a sampling of the final
product—produced as part of the Serpentine Galleries ‘Back to
Earth” initiative—below. “On Earth Day, I want to advocate—as on
any other day—that we recognize these various perspectives and,
together, celebrate their co-existence,” Eliasson said of the work.
(Press
release)

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Impulse-Buying Jewelry Through Online Auctions Like There’s No
Tomorrow + Other Stories appeared first on artnet
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