Art Industry News: Why Were So Many Lost Masterpieces Rediscovered This Year? + Other Stories

by admin

Dec 20, 2019

artnet

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, December 20.
This is the last digest of 2019—see you in the new year!

NEED-TO-READ

Inside the Making of an Art Scandal – Ben Luke explains how Maurizio
Cattelan’s Comedian became a textbook
art scandal by following a five-stage process. First, the
artwork needs to garner attention, which Cattelan’s gallery
Perrotin helped along by creating an Instagram account for the work
in anticipation of the public’s reaction. It then needs notoriety
beyond the art-world bubble. A key next step is outrage—people need
to be angry—which prompts the fourth step, action. In the case of
the banana, the action was having it removed from the fair
floor (after drawing too many crowds and being eaten). Finally,
art critics play a role in the final chapter, canonization. And the
rest, as they say, is art history. (The Art Newspaper)

Tate Modern Victim Starts Speaking – The six-year-old boy who was thrown off the
10th floor of the Tate
Modern by 18-year-old Jonty Bravery on August 4 has began to speak
again, but is suffering more pain as his body regains sensation,
his family revealed over social media. He suffered spinal fractures
and severe bleeding trauma to his brain due to the fall.
(BBC)

A Year of Masterpieces Hiding in Plain Sight –
Museums in the UK have witnessed a
whirlwind of rediscovered
masterpieces this year, partly spearheaded by the BBC’s
own art detective, Bendor Grosvenor, who most recently
helped uncover a
Botticelli in a Welsh museum. Outside the UK, a long-lost Cimabue
was discovered in France, and a Klimt was found
hidden inside a wall in Italy. Such new attributions, if publicized smartly,
can offer a windfall for museums struggling with attendance.
(FT)

Smaller Art Institutions Pay More Than Big Ones
– A new
report by the New York-based organization Working Artists and the
Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) has revealed that small and midsize
institutions across the US spend more on artists’ fees and
programming than larger ones: art institutions with budgets of over
$5 million spent one percent on artists’ fees, while those with
budgets of less than $500,000 spent around 7 percent. “People tend
to think that changing the big institutions is what matters,” said
Lise Soskolne, W.A.G.E.’s core organizer, “but at the level of
actual cash money being paid out, and at the level of causing a
real shift in the art system, small appears to be (or do) better.”
(ARTnews)

ART MARKET

Frieze Announces New Award for Aspiring Filmmakers –
Frieze Los
Angeles has announced
the Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award, which will provide
one emerging filmmaker between the ages of 20 and 34 a $10,000
prize. The inaugural award will be announced on February 13, 2020,
the VIP day of the second edition of the fair. (TAN)

Sotheby’s Announces 2019 Sales – The auction house, which went private this
year, has announced $4.8
billion in sales for 2019. Sotheby’s Asian clientele accounted for
30 percent of the company’s live auction sales globally. This year
also represented a record high for Sotheby’s France, which brought
in $395 million, up 41 percent from 2018. (Press release)

Insurance for Hong Kong Skyrockets
– Dealers sending art to Art Basel Hong Kong are
struggling to insure the art they plan to send. The fair is working
with a local insurance broker to offer coverage—but it costs 20
times what it otherwise would. Art Basel is also offering a refund
of 75 percent of the booth cost if the event is canceled and has
reduced the fee to withdraw late. The standard rate to insure works
at an art fair is 0.1 percent of the cost; the fair’s broker is
offering to insure works at 2.1 percent. (TAN)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Ludlow 38 Is Closing – Ludlow 38, the New York curatorial residency
and gallery space founded by Stefan Kalmár and Stephan Wackwitz in
2008, had its closing party last Thursday. Former resident Hiji Nam
writes a heartfelt goodbye to the space, which was backed by the
German government and BMW/MINI. He quotes Robert Snowden to sum up the place’s
appeal: “They were always very friendly. They always let me charge
my phone, use the bathroom. Once someone let me borrow their phone
and I called my dad and he loaned me money…. And I made a lot of
friends there.” (Artforum)

Gordon Parks Fellowships Awarded – The Gordon Parks Foundation has named the
artist Nina Chanel Abney and photographer Tyler Mitchell (best known for
shooting Beyoncé on the cover of Vogue) as its
2020 fellows. Each artist will get $20,000 to support a new or
ongoing project centered around issues of social justice, which
will be presented at the foundation’s gallery within the next two
years. (Artforum)

FOR ART’S SAKE

The Sacklers Challenge Tufts University – Members of the Sackler family are pushing back
on a decision taken by Tufts University in Massachusetts to remove
the opioid-maker’s name from its buildings and programs, becoming
the latest institution to
do so following a wave of protest led by artist Nan Goldin. In
a letter to the school, a lawyer argued that the removal was
unjustified and a violation of the agreement made when Sacklers
agreed to financially support the institution. A university
spokesman said the school stands by its decision: “We know that it
is the right thing to do, and we are prepared to vigorously defend
our position.” (New York Times)

The Incredible Shrinking David by Michelangelo –
Researchers at a university in
Switzerland have 3D printed a nearly perfect replica of
Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece, David, in copper,
to show off the precision technology of their Exaddon printers. The
only difference is that this one is so small you can barely see it.
Tiny David measures just a fraction of an inch, or one millimeter,
tall. (CNet)

The Prado Enjoys a Birthday Attendance Boom –
In its landmark bicentennial year,
the Prado Museum in Madrid has broken its attendance record,
attracting more than three million visitors in 2019. In total, the
museum, which has had special programming all year to celebrate the
anniversary including its second-ever exhibition of
female Old Masters, drew 3,388,102 people, with ticket sales
bringing in more than €21 million ($23.3 million). (El Pais)

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