Art Movements
This week in art news: London's Science Museum decided not to renew its sponsorship deal with Shell, Russian artist and activist Pyotr Pavlensky was detained for setting fire to the entrance of Moscow's FSB headquarters, and Laurie Anderson and Sophie Calle got hitched.
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
A freedom of information request filed by the campaign group BP or not BP? revealed that London’s Science Museum will not renew its sponsorship deal with Shell once their current contract expires in December. The museum came under intense scrutiny after a number of internal emails suggested that the oil giant had attempted to influence the institution’s programming on climate change.
An email obtained by Bloomberg News revealed that Sotheby’s is offering employee buyouts despite having just sold $1.1 billion in art.
Art F City’s Paddy Johnson and artist William Powhida extended an open invitation to “Double Crossing Brooklyn,” a response to the Brooklyn Museum’s controversial decision to host the the sixth annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit.
The Jerwood Gallery will stage an exhibition of new works by Marcus Harvey next summer. One of the artist’s recent sculptures, “Maggie Island” (2015), depicts a nude Margaret Thatcher with a pig’s head and some snouts.
Pyotr Pavlensky, the artist and activist who famously nailed his scrotum to the ground in Moscow’s Red Square, was detained after setting fire to the entrance of the FSB’s (Russian Federal Security Service) Moscow headquarters.
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art announced an exhibition of Western works acquired by Iran’s former Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi. Most of the collection has been in storage since the 1979 Revolution.
Staff working for National Museums Liverpool, the body that runs the majority of the city’s museums and galleries, are considering strike action unless the organization implements the living wage for its employees.
A privately commissioned analysis found that 12 paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock include a yellow pigment that wasn’t commercially available until after the artist’s death.
Laurie Anderson and Sophie Calle decided to get “married” while visiting San Francisco’s Swedenborgian Church for a reception celebrating Anderson’s latest film, Heart of a Dog (2015). It’s unclear whether the ceremony, which was officiated by Anderson’s brother Thor, is legally binding.
Zurab Tsereteli, the president of the Russian Academy of Art, stated that he accepted a request from Russia’s Union of Youth to create a monument dedicated to the victims of the Sinai plane crash.
The Delaware Art Museum opened a retrospective dedicated to Pre-Raphaelite painter Marie Spartali Stillman. Margaretta Frederick, the exhibition’s co-curator, told the BBC that the show will demonstrate “that Marie was an active player on the same field with all the [male Pre-Raphaelites] — who are much better known today.”
French street artist Invader arrived in New York to begin work on a number of large-scale installations.
Philadelphia became the first US city to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage City.
Southwark Council rejected the Bold Home project‘s proposal to transform a multistory parking lot in South London into 800 affordable artists’ studios.
The Obama Foundation plans to release a shortlist of the 10 architects who will compete to design the Barack Obama Presidential Center. The list is due to be published by the end of the year.
Danish architecture firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen collaborated with James Turrell to design an extension for the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum.
Christie’s is looking to sell Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch for $100 million.
The Barnes Foundation announced that it will offer free weekly admission for undergraduate and graduate students.
Fram Kitagawa was denied a visa to speak at a conference on public art and activism at the University of Washington. The artist cited his involvement in protests against an expansion of a US military base in Sunagawa as the reason for his rejection.
A wire sculpture by Alexander Calder that was vandalized in 1929 by a woman who “needed some wire for a repair,” was reconstructed for the Tate Modern’s Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture exhibition.
London’s National Gallery rejected a claim for Matisse’s portrait of artist Greta Moll. Moll’s heirs claim that the painting was misappropriated after a family friend took it out of Berlin’s Soviet zone to Switzerland in 1947.
Transactions
Modigliani’s “Nu couché” (“Reclining Nude”) (1917–18) sold at Christie’s for $170.4 million, a record for the artist. Bizarrely, a number of press outlets, including the Financial Times and Bloomberg, decided to censor their reproductions of the painting. After the sale Filippo Nogarin, the mayor of Modigliani’s hometown of Livorno, opined that the Italian government should have purchased the painting instead of leasing an airbus A330 for prime minister Matteo Renzi.
Oxford University acquired the only known copy of Percy Shelley’s Poetical Essay On The Existing State Of Things (1811).
The Brontë Society plans to acquire a book containing a previously unknown poem by Charlotte Brontë for around $300,000. The book was one of a few traveling goods to survive a shipwreck in the early 1800s.
Transitions
The Bruce High Quality Foundation University will move its operations to Sunset Park in January.
Vito Schnabel will open his first gallery next month in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The inaugural show will be an exhibition of work of Urs Fischer.
Accolades
David Stewart was awarded the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize for a photograph of his daughter and her friends taken shortly after they graduated from university.
“Satellite archaeologist” Sarah H. Parcak was awarded $1 million by TED to develop a project of her choice.
United States Artists announced its 2015 Fellows.
Maya Lin was awarded the Smithsonian’s inaugural Portrait of a Nation Prize.
Valérie Belin was awarded the sixth Prix Pictet photography prize.
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation announced the winners of its annual Awards for Artists.
Obituaries
Ronald Brunskill (1929–2015), architectural historian.
Cengiz Çekil (1945–2015), artist.
Ernst Fuchs (1930–2015), artist. Co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
René Girard (1923–2015), philosopher.
Hank Penza (1933–2015), owner of the Mars Bar in the East Village.
Brookie Maxwell (1956–2015), artist and curator.
Thomas S. Marvel (1935–2015), architect.
Peter McLeavey (1936–2015), art dealer.
Donald Stidsen (1952–2015), exhibitions manager at the MIT Museum.
John Norris Wood (1930–2015), illustrator.
