Art Movements
This week in art news: One of the world's smallest artworks smashed, a $40 million lawsuit against the Keith Haring Foundation dismissed, and another major museum bans selfie sticks.
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
A lab technician accidentally destroyed Jonty Hurwitz’s “Trust,” one of the world’s smallest sculptures.
A federal judge dismissed a $40 million lawsuit against the Keith Haring Foundation. A group of collectors alleged that the Foundation rejected the authenticity of around 80 works after refusing to examine additional evidence regarding their provenance.
The Sacramento City Council unanimously approved an $8 million contract for a new public sculpture by Jeff Koons. The proposal was fiercely opposed by a number of local artists.
On Friday afternoon a fire broke out inside South London’s Battersea Arts Centre.
Opponents of George Lucas’s planned museum in Chicago achieved an early court victory Thursday, when a federal judge ruled that their lawsuit against the Lucas Museum project could proceed.
An archaeological survey determined that around 90 oil paintings and 8,000 books were destroyed during last May’s fire at the Glasgow School of Art.
The roof of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum sprang several leaks, jeopardizing works in its galleries.
An authenticated landscape painting by Vincent van Gogh will be exhibited for the first time in over 100 years.
A Paris court ruled that it has the jurisdiction to judge a lawsuit filed by a French school teacher against Facebook. The teacher’s account was blocked after he posted an image of Gustave Courbet’s “L’Origine du monde” (“The Origin of the World”) (1866).
Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy, a new exhibition at the British Library, reveals that Winston Churchill considered donating a copy of the Magna Carta to the US in return for its support in World War II.
Pilar Abel, a 58-year-old Spanish woman, has filed a court complaint against the heirs of Salvador Dalí, the artist’s foundation, and Spain’s tax office and public administration, alleging that she is the late Surrealist’s daughter.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art selected David Chipperfield to design its new modern and contemporary art wing.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a plan to build the Smithsonian-affiliated Mexican Museum in the city’s Yerba Buena neighborhood. The project is expected to break ground in July and open its doors in the spring of 2018.
London’s National Gallery banned selfie sticks.
Tony Shafrazi filed a $20 million lawsuit against Manhattes Group, the owners of his former gallery space.
The State Hermitage Museum plans to open a satellite branch on the grounds of a former Soviet automobile plant in Moscow.
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center scrapped its plan to move the Little Fox Point cottage, the home of the late sculptor Mary L. Nohl.
Years worth of graffiti, wheatpastes, and street art, were cleaned off New York’s 190 Bowery, the 72-room mansion purchased for $55 million by developer Aby Rosen.
Transactions
Felda and Dena Hardymon donated $15 million to the Clark Art Institute.
The Knight Foundation will give $25 million in new grants to a selection of cultural institutions based in South Florida.
David Rockefeller donated $2.5 million to the RISD Museum.
The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation donated $200,000 in support of Joan Jonas’s They Come to Us Without a Word, the artist’s presentation for the US pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale.
The Gemeentemuseum acquired a pair of Royal Delft figures depicting King William III and Queen Mary II.
Canadian painter Gordon Smith will donate his art collection to the West Vancouver Museum. “I’m 96 for God’s sake,” Smith told The Globe and Mail. “I want to get rid of the bloody things.”
ArtPrize will award $220,000 in support grants for its seventh annual exhibition.
George Lucas and Mellody Hobson purchased a $10,000 wire dress sculpture by Kristine Mays at the Scope art fair.
Linda Lichtenberg Kaplan promised 18 drawings to the Phillips Collection. The gift includes work by Jay DeFeo, David Smith, and Louise Nevelson.
Transitions
Daniel H. Weiss will succeed Emily Kernan as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Anne-Marie Russell was hired as the executive director of the Sarasota Museum of Art.
Dan Leers was appointed curator of photography at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
New York galleries Zach Feuer and Untitled are to merge and open two new spaces named Feuer/Mesler and Mesler/Feuer.
Accolades
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation announced the recipients of its 2015 Artist as Activist fellowship.
Simon Fujiwara and Samara Golden are the inaugural recipients of the the Mistake Room’s International Artist Prize and LA Artist Prize, respectively.
Obituaries
Raymond Charles Exworth (1930–2015), sculptor.
Michael Graves (1934–2015), architect and designer.
Sir Terry Pratchett (1948–2015), author and creator of the Discworld series.
Yoshihiro Tatsumi (1935–2015), cartoonist.
