Art Industry News: The Museum of Ice Cream Just Got Sprinkled With a $200 Million Valuation + Other Stories

Art Industry News is normally a daily digest of the most
consequential developments coming out of the art world and art
market. Here’s what you need to know this Thursday, August
15.

NEED-TO-READ

Is El Museo Del Barrio Abandoning Its Core Mission? –
The New Yorker takes a deep dive into the tensions between
the embattled Museo Del
Barrio and critics who
feel that the museum has forgotten its roots in a New York
neighborhood that used to be mainly Puerto Rican.
Campaigners claim elite
Latin-American interests are eclipsing the East Harlem museum’s
original mission to focus on Puerto Rican and Latino
artists. Its Mexican-born
director, Patrick Charpenel, has been under fire since taking over,
including for hiring a curator from Brazil. The New York-based,
Puerto Rican-born artist Tony Bechara, who is the emeritus chair of
El Museo’s board, says: “Every museum in the world is being accused
of élitism. So why should we be different?” (New Yorker)

Arthur Jafa Gets the T Treatment –
T has profiled the 58-year-old artist on the
heels of his Golden Lion win at the
Venice Biennale. The artist remains unsettled about the legacy
of his breakout video Love Is the Message, the Message Is
Death, which rocketed him to art-world prominence two years
ago. “A thousand people have told me that they cried when they saw
it,” Jafa said. “I’m very happy that people are moved, but I do
think it’s complicated when you say, ‘I cried.’ OK, is that what
art is supposed to do? Does that make you any less whatever the
hell it is you are? Is that transformative crying or is it just
crying? I don’t know.” (T
Magazine)

The Museum of Ice Cream Is Valued at $200 Million –
Investors can’t get enough
of the company behind
the Museum of Ice Cream.
It is now valued at $200 million and has raised $40 million in
venture capital. The plan, according to its founders, is to
continue to expand beyond Instagram-friendly “experiums”—short for
experience museums—into branded food, clothing, and potentially
even a theme park. The company also plans to open additional ice
cream museums in other US cities as well as in Asia. The end goal
is lofty: “We’re excited to create the next generation of Walt
Disney,” says CEO Maryellis Bunn. (Wall Street Journal)

Activists Stage a Pro-Democracy Exhibition in Hong
Kong – A group of
anonymous activists are staging pop-up exhibitions of pro-democracy
protest art and ephemera in protest-riddled Hong
Kong, defying local authorities. The group, known as Imagine Hong Kong, is
presenting pieces drawn from their rapidly growing collection of
material produced by demonstrators and working to assemble a
permanent archive. “Given the current situation in Hong Kong, we do
have safety concerns, which is why we have specifically arranged
security for the exhibition,” a spokesman for the group
said. (The
Art Newspaper)

ART MARKET

These Collectors Want to Make Private Art Accessible –
Collectors Jessica and Evrim Oralkan have created a
website and social media platform to make art in private
collections publicly accessible. Called Collecteurs, they describe it as a jointly run museum of
private collections for those who might not have the resources to
open a brick-and-mortar private institution. Art historian Claire
Bishop is on hand, however, to pour cold water on that idea: “This
is really not a museum by any stretch of the definition,” she
said. (New York Times)

Trump Still Plans to Tax Chinese Art – Although the
Trump Administration has delayed a planned tariff on
Chinese consumer goods to spare holiday shoppers, the 10
percent tariff on Chinese art
and antiquities—regardless of the country they are being shipped or
purchased from—is still due to go ahead on September
1. (artnet
News, TAN)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Survivors Protest Museum for Pulse Nightclub Massacre –
A group of survivors of the Pulse
nightclub shooting, as well as family members of the victims, are
protesting the establishment of a private museum to honor those
lost. The Community Coalition Against a Pulse Museum says the
site of the massacre should be torn down, that any memorial should
be built on public property, and that money raised for the museum
should be given to survivors. (AP)

Daniela Rivera Wins Rappaport Prize – The Chilean-born, Massachusetts-based artist
Daniela Rivera has won the deCordova museum’s $35,000 Rappaport
Prize. The annual prize celebrates contemporary artists with ties
to New England. (Boston Globe)

Guggenheim Names New Deputy Director – The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has named Leah
E. Heister as its new deputy director and chief advancement
officer. Heister, who was previously a consultant for the
institution, will take up the post September 3. She formerly served
as vice president of strategic consulting firm CCS Fundraising.
(Artforum)

NEH Awards Next Round of Funding – The National Endowment for the Humanities will
give $29 million in grants to 215 projects in the US as part of its
latest funding round. The money will support, among other projects,
the publication of papers belonging to George Washington, Abraham
Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as a revamp of the
storage areas at Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home, Taliesin West.
(Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Jeffrey Epstein Owned Bizarre Bill Clinton Painting
– The tale of the disgraced and now deceased
financier gets more sordid by the day. The latest news comes out of
his Upper East Side mansion, where Epstein apparently prominently
hung a portrait of Bill Clinton in a blue dress and heels. (The
dress resembles the one famously worn by Monica Lewinsky.) The
painting, Parsing Bill, was painted and
sold by a New York-based artist named Petrina Ryan-Kleid.
(Page Six)

Philadelphia Museum Eliminates Free Admission for College Art
Students – As of July 1, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art is no longer offering free admission to
college art students. The institution says it scrapped the
40-year-old policy because an increasing number of degree programs
meant that the program was no longer financially viable.
(BillyPenn)

Mural of a Cuffed Statue of Liberty Goes Viral –
The British artist Izaac Zevalking
(who goes by the pseudonym Recycled Propaganda) painted a
mural in downtown Las Vegas depicting the Statue of Liberty being
handcuffed by immigration authorities. The artwork—which is meant
to draw attention to America’s founding by immigrants—has garnered
new attention following immigration official Ken
Cuccinelli’s suggestion earlier this
week that the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the statue be
amended to specify that only those who “will not become a public
charge” should be welcomed to America. (Guardian)

The post Art Industry News: The Museum of Ice Cream Just Got
Sprinkled With a $200 Million Valuation + Other Stories
appeared first on artnet News.