Art Movements
This week in art news: Protesting art students prohibited from "unlawful trespass" in London, resale royalties act reintroduced in US Congress, and Brooklyn Museum gala guests make off with artworks mistaken for party favors.
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
Art students ended a four-week sit in at Central Saint Martin’s after a High Court issued an injunction against them. OccupyUAL, a group comprised of students from the University of the Arts London, have been protesting prospective cuts to foundation courses. The injunction prohibits “unlawful trespass” by specific students on any of the university’s sites.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler and senators Tammy Baldwin and Ed Markey reintroduced the American Royalties Too (ART) Act to Congress. If enacted, the act would require a 5% royalty payment on all works of art worth over $5,000 sold at auction — to be paid directly to the artist, or to their estate. You can read Hyperallergic’s Illustrated Guide to artist resale royalties here.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office asked a judge to grant it custody of 2,622 artifacts valued at $107.6 million. The works were recovered from storage rooms associated with imprisoned art dealer Subhash Kapoor. US officials plan to extradite Kapoor, who is currently awaiting trial in India on charges related to archaeological plundering and illicit trading.
A cache of artifacts worth over £1.2 million (~$1.8 million), were withdrawn from an auction at Christie’s after Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis — a research assistant at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research — linked the works to organized crime networks.
An unnamed Rhode Island woman filed a lawsuit against the New England Institute of Art. The suit alleges that lax security at the for-profit school enabled an intruder to sexually assault the plaintiff.
Table installations created by artist Hyon Gyon for the Brooklyn Museum’s Brooklyn Artists Ball gala were mistaken for party favors by guests. According to the Wall Street Journal, two dozen textile pieces were taken away by guests.
The Barnes Foundation will merge with the Violette de Mazia Foundation. The latter was established by the estate of Violette de Mazia, a colleague of Albert C. Barnes and a director of education at the Barnes Foundation from 1950 to 1988.
The Santa Monica Museum of Art will suspend operations at its longtime home in the Bergamot Station art complex.
Turkish mayor Melih Gökçek was sued by the Turkish Chamber of Architects and Engineers over his decision to use public money to erect a “Transformers-esque” robot statue. Gökçek has requested that the public “respect the robot.”
Herman Steyn and Dabing Chen launched the Scheryn Art Collectors Fund, an investment fund centered on African art. The minimum cost to buy into the fund is $40,500. “We do intend to generate returns for people,” Steyn told The Art Newspaper. “The price appreciation [for African art] still hasn’t happened, so we believe the opportunities are there.”
Three Soviet-era statues were destroyed overnight in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.
An exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s “black pourings” (from 1953–55) will open at Tate Liverpool on June 30.
The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) formally announced a conservation collaboration with the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). The GCI will assist with the conservation of works from CSULB’s collection. One such work, Robert Murray’s “Duet (Homage to David Smith)” (1965) has already been restored to its original color.
An investigation concluded that a trove of recently discovered Roman artifacts date back to 174 AD. The artifacts were discovered by a metal detectorist in Hertfordshire.
Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight opined that a sculpture sighted within the Daimler Collection might be Norbert Kricke’s “Space Sculpture,” which once stood outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The museum sold the sculpture to an unidentified German buyer in the 1980s.
Sixty international studios will take part in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Kristin Wright, a staff member at the Albuquerque Botanic Garden, taught a four-year-old goat to paint. Bodie’s paintings currently sell for around $40.
Transactions
As part of a Super Bowl bet between the Clark Art Institute and the Seattle Art Museum, the latter will temporarily loan Albert Bierstadt’s “Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast” (1870) to the New England institution.
The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina acquired Marcel Duchamp’s “From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy,” one of the artist’s boxes containing small-scale reproductions of his artworks.
The Dallas Museum of Art acquired Jean Antoine Théodore Giroust’s “La leçon de harp (The Harp Lesson)” (1791).
Transitions
Colin Bailey was named the director of The Morgan Library and Museum.
Susan Henshaw Jones will step down as the director of the Museum of the City of New York in December.
Bartholomew Ryan was appointed Milton Fine curator of art at the Andy Warhol Museum.
Lucian H. Shockey Jr. was appointed head of conservation at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco hired Dr. Karin G. Oen as assistant curator of contemporary art.
The Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the Arts in Santa Fe shut down having operated for just under four years.
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation will now be represented by Pace, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Luisa Strina. The Gagosian gallery had represented the artist’s work since 2008.
Tobias Berger was appointed head of art at the Central Police Station in Hong Kong.
Art in General is currently looking for a new space. The non-profit organization decided not to renew the lease for its longtime Tribeca location.
Accolades
The restored church of St. Giragos was among the winners of the 2015 European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra Awards.
Obituaries
Paul Almond (1931–2015), director, writer, and producer. Best known for the Up Series.
Ric Emmett (1940s–2015), Art Deco historian.
Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015), writer and journalist.
Günter Grass (1927–2015), writer, critic, and Nobel Prize winner. Author of The Tin Drum (1959)
Judith Malina (1926–2015), co-founder of the Living Theater in New York City.
Juliane Noack (1984–2015), artist.
Rafael Soriano (1920–2015), painter.
Lars Tunbjörk (1956–2015), photographer.
