Art Industry News: An Art World Satire Wins the Palme d’Or at Cannes + More Must-Read Stories

Plus, a reflection on Nicholas Serota's legacy at the Tate and a pissed-off sculptor adds a urinating pug sculpture to 'Fearless Girl.'

Ruben Östlund's film The Square won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year. Courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival.

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 this Tuesday, May 30.

NEED-TO-READ

Kara Walker Will Bring a Floating Riverboat Calliope to New Orleans – Part of the Prospect New Orleans Triennial, Walker’s site-specific installation will take the form of a steam-powered musical instrument associated with circuses and fairgrounds. (New York Times) (Read more about this year’s Prospect on artnet)

Tracey Emin Calls Out Money-Obsessed Male Artists – At the Hay Literary Festival in Wales, the YBA spoke out against “artists who make the same fucking work day in, day out” with the goal of making money; she doesn’t name names, but does say, “It tends to happen much more with male artists. I’m not talking about Picasso.” (The Guardian)

Film on Curator’s Life Wins Palme d’Or at Cannes – The Square, a satire by director Ruben Ostlund, follows a museum curator’s attempt to shock the art world, and find his missing smartphone, took the highest prize at the French film festival. (Reuters)

How Nicholas Serota Made the Tate the World’s Most Popular Museum – At the helm of the museum empire from 1988 until this month, Serota grew the Tate from two museums to four, and increased its income sixfold. (The Guardian)

NYC Students Will Paint a Mural Designed by Carmen Herrera – Thanks to the program Publicolor, students at tjhe Bronx’s M.S. 244, the New School for Leadership and the Arts, will paint a black-and-white mural designed by Herrera, the program’s first collaboration with a living artist. (New York Times)

How Jerry Saltz Became Jerry Saltz – In a revealing and rewarding interview with Jarrett Earnest, the award-winning celebrity New York magazine art critic and social-media phenom provides new insights into his affecting life story and, perhaps more to the point, his demanding way of thinking through art. “I’m always looking for gigantic systems,” Saltz says, citing as examples Homer, Dante, Whitman, and Proust, along with Matthew Barney, whose Cremaster 4 the critic watched over 75 times. (Brooklyn Rail)

ART MARKET

Phillips’s Hong Kong 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale Reaches $16.6 Million – The evening sale set a new auction record for Christine Ay Tjoe, whose painting Small Flies and Other Wings went for $1.5 million, and a new sculpture record for street artist KAWS, whose Seated Companion sold for $410,560. (Press Release)

Joel Mesler Explains Why Mid-Tier Galleries Are Disappearing – Just after the opening of his new East Hampton space Rental Gallery, Mesler elaborates on the move out of New York City, and ponders a new model for artists on the rise as the ubiquity of mid-tier galleries shrinks. (Artspace) (Watch a hilarious video ad for Mesler’s gallery on artnet)

Nazi-Looted Michele Marieschi Masterpiece Will Be Auctioned at Sotheby’s  – The heirs of the painting’s prewar owners had hoped to have the painting recognized as their rightful property, but the best deal they could make with its current owners, who bought it in good faith, was to send it to auction, where it is expected to fetch between $642,000 and $899,000. (The Guardian)

COMING & GOINGS

Hauser & Wirth Somerset Announces Inaugural Curatorial Residencies – Daniel Baumann of Kunsthalle Zurich, Gary Carrion-Murayari of the New Museum, Rose Cooper of the De La Warr Pavilion, and Anne Ellegood of the Hammer Museum will spend four days at the gallery’s Somerset HQ at Durslade Farm, culminating in a public symposium on July 10. (Press Release)

El Museo del Barrio Fires Executive in What Seems to Be a Real Mess Over There – After Colón, the deputy director of institutional advancement, and temporary head of the museum alongside deputy executive director Carlos Gálvez, was dismissed on May 19, she accused Gálvez of fostering a work environment “that promotes distrust, fear of retaliation and isolation,” adding to the controversies that have plagued the museum in the past few years. (New York Times)

FOR ART’S SAKE 

Guggenheim Gets a New Modigliani Painting – Amedeo Modigliani’s 1916 painting Woman in a Sailor Shirt was bequeathed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation by Venetian collector Luisa Toso; it will first be exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in June. (Artdaily)

The Cummer Museum Recieves $4 Million Donation – The largest gift in the Florida museum’s history, coming from New York’s Disosway Foundation, will endow the executive director position. (Artforum)

Tate Modern Installs Monumental Sculpture by Erik Bulatov – The steel sculpture, titled Forward, depicts the word in 10-foot-tall red Cyrillic letters, and was unveiled on the museum’s south terrace to mark the centenary of the 1917 October revolution. (Press Release)

Artist Adds Peeing Dog Statue Next to Fearless Girl – The fight over the Wall Street sculpture has not subsided: New York City sculptor Alex Gardega created the intentionally poorly made Pissing Pug to voice his opposition to Fearless Girl, which he thinks “downgrades” the nearby Charging Bull. (New York Post)


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