Art Industry News is a daily roundup of the most important developments emerging from the art world and the art market. Here’s what you need to know this Monday, July 25.
NEED TO READ
The story of the “discovery” of works of art by the director of the Orlando Museum – It turns out that Aaron De Groft, who was fired from the Orlando Museum of Art for organizing an exhibition of supposedly fake Basquiats, he has a long history of finding “lost” masterpieces. As director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art, he oversaw acquisitions of ordinary 16th- to 19th-century paintings that were later reattributed to famous European artists. He too planned show a Pollock disputed in Orlando. (Observer)
Inside Beeple’s new $10 million studio: Digital Artist Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann) Invited New York magazine to Space, his lab of mad scientists in South Carolina. There, the artist plots his transition from the NFT world to the traditional art market. The Space encompasses a huge hangar where Beeple wants to set up immersive art installations and is preparing more hybrid sculptural works like his own. NFT sculpture human one. (Vulture)
Elon Musk had an affair at Art Basel – When gossip heard around the world has an artistic angle, a special siren sounds here at Artnet headquarters. That siren sounded yesterday, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s friendship ended after the tech billionaire had an affair with Brin’s wife, Nicole Shanahan, in December at none other than Art Basel Miami Beach. (Brin and Shanahan are now divorcing.) Musk has denied the allegations. (Wall Street Journal)
Keeping up with Tom Sachs – Andrew Russeth accompanies multifaceted artist Tom Sachs on a recent visit to Seoul, where the artist is presenting three solo exhibitions. Sachs, whose work plays with childhood fantasy and consumerism, has wholeheartedly embraced the commercialism of the NFT space. “I think the smart contract, or Web3, is really about money, and it’s about if everyone is an artist, and that includes bankers, it’s the art of faith,” he said. (New York Times)
MOVEMENTS AND AGITATORS
Pace to represent Virginia Jaramillo – The pioneering abstract painter is now one of the few US-born Latina artists to be represented by a mega-gallery. Pace will present her work at Frieze Seoul in September and in a solo show at her Los Angeles gallery in May 2023. Jaramillo will continue to work with Hales Gallery. (ARTnews)
Drug dealer Perry Rubenstein dies at 68 New York and Los Angeles art dealer Perry Rubenstein, who rose to fame in the 1980s, has died at the age of 68. He was convicted of two counts of embezzlement in 2017 and spent six months in jail. His ex-wife, public relations executive Sara Fitzmaurice, said she died of natural causes. (ARTnews, New York Times)
Shakespeare’s First Folio sells for $2.4 million A copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio sold for $2.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York last week, within its estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million. It is one of 232 surviving copies of the important text, which includes manuscripts for 36 of the playwright’s works. (BBC)
FOR THE SAKE OF ART
Climate activists stuck to a Botticelli – Climate activists pressed their palms to the glass that protects the famous painting by Sandro Botticelli Spring in Florence. The group Last generation (The Last Generation) was inspired by the antics of the UK Just Stop Oil Activist Squad. The Italian press reported that the painting was not damaged in any way. (guardian)
Protesters from the Ultima Generazione action group stick their hands to the glass covering Sandro Botticelli’s house Spring at Uffizi on July 22, 2022 in Florence, Italy. Photo by Laura Lezza/Getty Images.
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