Art Industry News: The Restoration of Notre Dame Is Delayed Due to Fears of Lead Poisoning + 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 Monday, August
12.

NEED-TO-READ

Glasgow Art School Students Want Refunds – Students at the accident-prone Glasgow School
of Art are demanding compensation for tuition fees that can run
more than $24,000 a year. In an open letter, they complain of
chaotic courses, absentee lecturers, and having to work in
dilapidated studios. Their protest comes in the aftermath of a fire
in 2018 that destroyed the school’s historic home in the
Scottish city. Around 70 members of the teaching staff have left:
some 40 have resigned, including the director, and 30 have been
laid off amid reports of bullying by senior management. A
spokeswoman for the art school said: “Our staff turnover is comparable with the
higher education sector.” (Sunday Post, Times)

How Do Artists Preserve Their Legacy? – For a long time,
artists would simply leave it to
their heirs to sort out their archives after they died—Donald Judd,
Louise Bourgeois, and Andy Warhol famously kept everything, leaving
a trove for researchers to comb through and decide what was or
wasn’t important. But today, artists are taking matters into their
own hands. As she turns 80, for example, Judy Chicago is ensuring
her legacy by building out a climate-controlled storage
space near her home in Belen, New Mexico, for works she never sold.
Her archive is already being preserved by three
institutions: the Schlesinger Library of the History of Women in
America at Harvard,
the National Museum of Women
in the Arts in Washington, DC, and Penn State University. She plans to
unveil a digital portal
to the trio’s holdings later this year. (New York Times)

Due to Fear Over Lead Poisoning, Notre Dame Cathedral’s
Restoration Is Delayed – Paris
authorities are rushing to decontaminate the area surrounding Notre
Dame so that work on the fire-ravaged cathedral can resume. The
restoration, which was halted in mid-July, was due to restart this
week, but has now been pushed back to August 19. After weeks of
denial, officials admitted that
high levels of lead particles had been found in the area. The
contamination could pose a risk to workers as well as children and
pregnant women. Now, authorities have stepped up a deep clean of
nearby schools and of the square in front of the cathedral. But
they have rejected calls to cover the entire cathedral with protective
cladding to contain the particles, arguing that the job would be
too costly and complex. (AFP)

The Met’s Ex-Head of Security Publishes a Memoir – What
was it like to be the head of security at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Now you can find
out thanks to Stealing the Show, a new memoir due to be
released August 22 by John Barelli. His colorful account of life at
the museum ranges from keeping watch on the night Princess Diana
attended the Met Gala to working out how to dispose of shrunken
heads sent to a curator in the mail. (They ended up in the city
morgue.) The ex-cop told the
Wall Street Journal he thought he and his colleagues
would be fired when a truck delivering a Roman statue on loan from
the Vatican raced out of control and hurtled down a loading
ramp. Luckily for everyone
involved, the statue survived the near-miss unscathed.
(Wall Street Journal)

ART MARKET

Inside Pace’s New $110 Million HQ
– Pace founder
Arne Glimcher and his son, gallery
president Marc Glimcher, give the Times sneak peek of
their new, $100 million headquarters in Chelsea, which is due to
open next month. The eight-story building will host talks, live
art, and offer open storage and fine dining, not to mention an
outdoor food truck. Marc Glimcher says galleries of the future will
serve as cultural spaces where people will want to
congregate, “like
church.” (NYT)

Artcurial to Sell Antique Dealer’s
Collection – A 400-work
collection amassed by the Paris-based dealer Joseph Altounian (1890–1954) is heading to the
French auction house in September. Top lots include six works on
paper by Modigliani, among them the drawing Tête (around 1911–12), which has an upper estimate
of €350,000 (£324,000). (Press release)

Pricey Monet Blocked From UK Export
– UK museums have three months
to raise more than $33 million to stop Monet’s 1908 painting of
the Doge’s Palace in Venice from heading abroad. An unknown
international buyer purchased the canvas at February’s
Impressionist and Modern evening sale at Sotheby’s London.
(BBC)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Nancy Reddin Kienholz
Dies at 75 – The artist known for her provocative
collaborations with her late partner Ed Kienholz has died after
complications related to an illness. Together, the two artists made
installations that investigated American society, race, and sex.
Their landmark work recreating a lynching, Five Car
Stud (1969–72), debuted at documenta V and has been shown
around the globe. (The Art Newspaper)

LAND Names New Director
– The Los Angeles-based public art non-profit
organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) has appointed
Laura Hyatt as its executive director. Hyatt, who was a founding
staff member in 2010, will leave the Hammer Museum, where she most
recently served as a senior fundraising manager. (Press release)

Don McFarlane Prize
Awarded – The multimedia artist Susan Norrie has won
the third annual $50,000 Don McFarlane Prize. The award goes to an
Australian artist in recognition of their “unwavering,
agenda-setting arts practice.” (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Hong Kong Becomes a New
Hub for Street Art – The sixth edition of HKwalls’s
street art and mural festival ended this March in Hong Kong, but
the legacy of its murals lives on. The fact that street art is
growing in acceptance and popularity in the currently protest-ridden city
illustrates how its inhabitants are, in the words of journalist
Lauren James, “becoming comfortable expressing [their] values
through visual public media.” (South China Morning
Post)

Escape Rembrandt: the Sequel Comes to the Rijksmuseum
– After a successful the first edition of its escape
game—a mix between an Escape Room and a museum scavenger hunt—last
year, which was played by almost 20,000 visitors, the Rijksmuseum
has launched a new challenge. For “Rijksmuseum Escape Game: In the
Shadow of Rembrandt,” participants must chase through the museum
and find clues in its collection to solve a mystery surrounding the
Netherlands’s most famous artist. (Press release)

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Delayed Due to Fears of Lead Poisoning + Other Stories appeared
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