Art Movements
This week in art news: George Baselitz threatened to withdraw all loans of his work from German museums, an artist was left dangling naked from a tree when a video piece went awry, and the Rutgers Geology Museum restored its specimen of an 11-foot giant spider crab.
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
The “Truth Booth,” a collaborative project between Ryan Alexiev, Jim Ricks, and Hank Willis Thomas, will tour the streets of Brooklyn beginning August 4. The work consists of a video booth inside a giant inflated speech bubble where visitors are asked to respond to the phrase “the truth is…”
George Baselitz announced that he will withdraw all loans of his artwork from German museums in protest over the government’s proposal to require export permits for all artworks more than 50 years old and valued at over €150,000 (~$163,000). Culture Minister Monika Grütters has described the bill as a necessary measure to protect national treasures. Others, including Baselitz’s dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, have argued that the bill’s export restrictions would damage the country’s art market.
The British Board of Film Classification revealed that Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner was the most complained-about film of 2014. A total of 19 people objected to the film’s 12A rating, with complaints focusing on a brief shot of Timothy Spall’s “clenched” buttocks during a sex scene.
With the use of a decibel reader iPhone app, Bloomberg concluded that MoMA is the loudest major museum in New York City.
Richard Rose, the president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called for the relief sculpture of Confederate leaders on Stone Mountain to be removed. Completed in 1972, Georgia’s Confederate Memorial Carving is the largest bas relief sculpture in the world.
A group of Oxford University students called for a sculpture of mining magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes to be removed from the facade of Oriel College. Students at the University of Cape Town successfully campaigned to have a sculpture of Rhodes removed from their campus in April.
The United States returned hundreds of Iraqi artifacts that were recovered during a raid on Abu Sayyaf, a senior ISIS figure.
Someone added a puking emoji to a MacDonald’s billboard in Bristol.
The American Alliance of Museums reaccredited 11 museums at the June 15–16 meeting of its Accreditation Commission.
Florida’s Spring House Institute is looking for a major donor to help convert Frank Lloyd Wright’s Spring House into a museum.
The Royal Academy of Arts is asking for $155,025 on Kickstarter in order to fund a sculpture project by Ai Weiwei in its courtyard.
The first crowd-funded infrastructure project was unveiled in Rotterdam.
Zaha Hadid’s controversial design for Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic stadium was scrapped by prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture of Asymptote Architecture will design the State Hermitage Museum’s Moscow outpost, the Hermitage Modern Contemporary.
Nicholas Penny, the outgoing director of London’s National Gallery, railed against teenagers who hog the museum’s seating. “We have a lot of elderly people who need somewhere to rest their backs,” Penny told the Sunday Times Magazine. “But [the benches] do seem to be excessively occupied by young people, who are reading their bloody devices.”
The Rutgers Geology Museum restored its specimen of an 11-foot giant spider crab, a gift given to the institution by Japan during the late 1800s.
Arts patron and collector Agnes Gund lambasted art market speculators and art hoarders in a Wall Street Journal profile. “I think [that] parking art” — without the primary intent of displaying it — “is just ridiculous.” As Art Market Monitor’s Marion Maneker observed, the same profile fails to account for how Gund displays all of the “2,000 works” of art she owns.
Five paintings that were stolen from a depot of the Amsterdam Museum and Stedelijk Museum in 1972 were recovered from an auction house in Lewes, England.
The New York Public Library’s water fountains, named “Beauty” and “Truth,” began flowing again after being out of use for some thirty years.
The Dia Art Foundation announced that it will devote a major exhibition to painter Robert Ryman at its building in Chelsea. Spanning 1958 to 2007, the show will open December 9.
F.W. Murnau’s skull was stolen from a cemetery outside of Berlin. A pioneer of German Expressionist cinema, Murnau is best known as the director of Nosferatu (1922).
An artist who suspended herself naked from a tree with rope became stuck for three and a half hours. Hilde Krohn Huse was filming her performance piece in a forest when she became ensnared by her rope. Huse told Norway’s VG newspaper that she “felt sick” when she watched the video for the first time. “I experienced everything anew,” she said. “But I slept on it and realized that the video is quite decent.”
Transactions
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery acquired two portraits of AIDS researcher Mathilde Krim. The works are by Annie Liebovitz and Joyce Tenneson.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum received a trove of correspondence between O’Keeffe and portrait artist Frances O’Brien.
The Museum of Modern Art acquired Tania Bruguera’s performance and video installation piece “Untitled (Havana 2000).”
The government of Taiwan will donate $1 million toward the Eisenhower Memorial designed for the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Transitions
Alison Weaver was appointed executive director of Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts.
Heather Corcoran will step down as the executive director of Rhizome at the end of September.
Tianlong Jiao was appointed curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum.
Yesomi Umolu was appointed exhibitions curator of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago.
Art Basel hired Noah Horowitz to be its director for the Americas.
Lisa Gold was appointed the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s director of public engagement.
The Rodin Museum in Paris will reopen on November 12 following a three-year restoration.
Accolades
The National Academy Museum and School in New York appointed 19 new national academicians.
Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax, better known by their collaborative name Wickerham and Lomax, received the 2015 Sondheim Prize.
Nigel Milsom, an artist and convicted armed robber, was awarded the Archibald Prize for his portrait of criminal barrister Charles Waterstreet.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will present Annie Liebovitz with the inaugural SFMOMA Contemporary Vision Award on November 3.
Chris Green, Stephanie Hornig, Hefin Jones, and Alexa Pollmann were selected for the London Design Museum’s Designers in Residence Program.
The Royal Institute of British Architects announced its shortlist for the 2015 RIBA Stirling Prize.
Obituaries
Christian Audigier (1958-2915), fashion designer.
D’Army Bailey (1941–2015), civil rights campaigner. Successfully campaigned to convert the Lorraine Motel – the site of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination – into the National Civil Rights Museum.
Blaine Gibson (1918–2015), sculptor. Produced sculptures for Disneyland theme parks.
John Dougill (1934–2015), painter.
Elon F. Joseph (1936–2015), security guard at the New Museum.
Gary Mack (1946–2015), curator and expert on the J.F.K. assassination.
