News From Around the Art World: November 26, 2018
Public art grant goes to US city affected by school shooting
A $1m grant has been awarded to the Florida city of Coral Springs for public art projects promoting “collective healing and reflection” after last February’s deadly high school shooting in neighbouring Parkland, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced on 20 November.
The money, disbursed as part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2018 Public Art Challenge, will go toward workshops and artists’ talks at the Coral Springs Museum of Art as well as five temporary art installations to be placed throughout the two cities.
By Nancy Kenney, The Art Newspaper
An Art-Covered Stretch of the Berlin Wall Gains Protection From Encroaching Real Estate Developers
It’s probably the brightest wall in Berlin, but it marks a dark past. An art-covered stretch of the Berlin Wall has just gained protected status after real estate developers threatened to close in on the historic monument.
Popular with tourists, the colorful three-quarters of a mile section of the wall that divided the German capital from 1961 to 1989 is known as the East Side Gallery. This month, the Berlin Wall Foundation, which runs other memorials to the wall throughout the city, took control of the site, bringing a halt to further real estate development around it.
By Kate Brown, Artnet
The Four Social Classes of the Art World
Christopher Hitchens used to tell a joke that had an Oxford don asking an American student what he’s studying. “My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.” “Oh, really? That’s interesting—one didn’t think there was a class system in the United States.” “Nobody does. That’s how it survives.”
The subtlety of class in America has always made it a touchy subject. The topic spurs anxiety, mingling delicate issues of wealth and taste. Because America lacks inherited titles, ranks, and peerages, we instead tend to manufacture class hierarchies within our various subcultures. One subculture where the class hierarchy is on subtle display is in our status-conscious art world…at the ubiquitous art party.
By Evan Beard, Artsy
Excited for Amazon’s Arrival in Long Island City? The Results for New York’s Art Community Won’t Be Pretty
It appears to be official: Amazon will split its second headquarters between Crystal City, Virginia, and Long Island City, New York. The news, rumored since last week, has dropped like a concussion grenade.
Anyone who sells high-end decor is probably excited by all these moneyed new condo owners. Though they might read a Jen Graves piece from the Stranger, which had one Seattle art and real estate maven theorizing, “the common Amazonian wants a flat-screen TV”—not art.
Alongside all this salivating, though, a chorus of dismay and alarm has already been heard.
By Ben Davis Artnet
Chicago’s Framing Master Celebrates 40 Years
When Jay Goltz decided to start a picture framing business right out of college, his family and friends thought he was wasting his degree. “In 1978, if you called someone an entrepreneur, it was an insult, like a hustler,” Goltz says. In hindsight, he thinks the disdain prepared him for the challenges that lay ahead.
Forty years later, Artists Frame Service is the largest framing store in the country and one of a few keeping the art of framing alive. Clybourn Avenue, where Artists Frame Service is headquartered, has even been named Honorary Jay Goltz Way by the city of Chicago.
By Amber Gibson, Architectural Digest
Elmhurst College symposium explores Chicago Imagist artists
Bold, graphic, irreverent and inspired by pop culture, the work of Chicago Imagist artists includes highly original, personal expressions of the human form. On Dec. 16, Elmhurst College will host The Figure, Humor and the Chicago Imagists, a full-day symposium that explores works by Chicago Imagist artists and highlights the college's extraordinary collection of Imagist art.
By Desiree Chen, Daily Herald
Art authentication is not an exact science
The process of art attribution has recently come under attack from all sides. Forgery scandals seem to be rampant... This past January, a Modigliani exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa was forced to close early when it was revealed that nearly all the works were fakes. At the same time, fear of litigation has caused foundations representing Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Keith Haring, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol to dissolve their authentication boards. Just when we need them most, art experts find themselves increasingly on the defensive.
By Jane Kallir, The Art Newspaper