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The Headlines
ANTI-DEI ART BACKLASH. As the US government leads a shift away from recognizing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), the art world is debating the impact this may have on the global art market, as well as institutional programming. “As the wealthiest lurch to the right, will the commercial art world follow?” asks Scott Reyburn for The Art Newspaper. Increasingly, art writers are also defending and/or questioning whether and how an exhibition focuses on “identity art,” with the underlying understanding that public opinion is more divided over the issue. In his latest review of Christine Sun Kim’s show at the Whitney, “All Day All Night,” Jerry Saltz writes in Vulture Magazine that the artist has to wrangle with “critics who center her deafness,” and whom she calls “reductive and othering.” In her defense, Saltz asks, “Is this identity art? Only in the sense that all art, in stitching the contours and distortions of experience, is identity art.” Elsewhere, The Guardian discusses a “post-Venice backlash” over the idea that “now Indigenous American art has taken over.” Yet some, like Pippy Houldsworth, whose gallery is showing works by Indigenous American artist Mario Martinez, said art by Indigenous artists “is not a bubble … Look at the huge excitement about Black artists over the last few years. That hasn’t come and gone by any means, it’s just brought greater recognition to a greater number of people who have been sidelined in the past.”
MUSEUM SURRENDERS ROMAN BRONZE. The Cleveland Museum of Art has changed its position and agreed to return a prized Roman bronze believed to be looted from Turkey. But this, only after the Manhattan district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit presented the institution with new evidence it was stolen from the archaeological site known as Bubon, to justify its earlier, contested seizure of the statue, reports the New York Times. The museum had tried to legally block the seizure of the headless statue thought to be of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which it acquired in 1986, claiming the Manhattan investigators wrongly assumed it was stolen. But on Friday, the museum conceded that extensive forensic testing, including comparing soil samples from within the statue, helped convince them of the Manhattan investigators’ claim. “Without this new research, the museum would not have been able to determine with confidence that the statue was once present at the site,” said the Cleveland Museum in a statement. The statue will be returned to Turkey once logistics are sorted.
The Digest
The Australian art scene continues to reel in the wake of the sudden decision to drop artist Khaled Sabsabi from the country’s Venice Biennale pavilion, which many now suspect may remain empty at the 61st edition of the exhibition. Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the former director of Sidney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), said “No artist worth their soul will touch that pavilion now. They can’t. It’s totally tainted And it’s so tragic.” [The Guardian]
A French prosecutor has requested suspended prison sentences and fines of up to €150,000 ($157,000) against contracted businesses and their executives for failing to protect the artisans who worked on restoring the Château de Versailles royal opera, causing them to be seriously poisoned by lead dust as a result. A ruling will be handed down in a Versailles court in May. [Le Parisien]
Two years after dropping artist Tom Sachs due to allegations of toxic abuse, revealed by former studio staff, Nike is once again collaborating with the artist. Sachs announced a September release date for his Mars Yard 3.0 sneakers with the brand. [Artnet News]
The Iranian-French architect and designer India Mahdavi has completed her first museum project in Norway, with her signature “maximalist spin.” She collaborated with Norwegian architect Erik Langdalen to renovate the new, contemporary art museum in Trondheim, PoMo [for Post Office Modern]boasts a “mandarin-hued staircase,” and a “salmon-pink gift shop,” along with fuchsia doors, not to mention its collection that addresses gender inequality. [Dezeen]
A long-lost Camille Claudel sculpture found in a Paris flat was sold for over $3 million at auction on Sunday. [France 24]
The Kicker
FIRE AS KIN. Frieze LA is fast-approaching, and the devastating impact of the region’s latest wildfires are on everyone’s mind. There are artists who lost everything, and have already made work about it, as with Alec Egan’s paintings at Anat Ebgi, where he used the gallery as a makeshift studio, per Artnet News. Or there is the incredibly timely show at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, titled “Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art,” discussed by Maximilíano Durón for ARTnews. One of the last shows featured in the Getty Foundation’s PST ART initiative, the exhibition was planned long before the last wildfires, but the impact, and role of fires in the region have been on the mind for the show’s collective of curators for a long time. The exhibit examines “fire-based land stewardship practices” by different, local Indigenous tribes, and recent efforts to revitalize those practices. “All of this with the aim to rethink our relationship with fire, seeing it not as a destructive force, but instead as kin, a being that can actually help save the land,” writes Durón.
