Mishappening in Berlin museum: Insights from the art world

A SUMMARY OF THE MOST EXCITING ART NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

While we focus on Indian art, we can’t obviously function in a vacuum. It’s a small world and everything is connected, especially on the web. So, let’s train our spotlight across the world map to see what’s going on — from art trends to socio-political issues to everything that affects the great aesthetic global consciousness. Or, let’s just travel the world and have some fun!

Five new board members at Leslie-Lohman museum

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York, which focuses on exhibiting and supporting work by LGBTQIA+ artists, has expanded its 12-person board to include five new members. They are Kat Bishop, Giselle Byrd, Gonzalo Casals, Chella Man, and Raquel Willis. Willis, currently the president of the Solutions Not Punishments Collaborative’s executive board, is a writer, activist, and media strategist known for her work focused on Black trans liberation. She previously served as the director of communications for Ms. Foundation for Women and executive editor of Out magazine, where she launched the Trans Obituaries Project, which won a GLAAD Media Award. In 2020, she was named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list and in 2018, she was an Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow. Her writing was included in the groundbreaking Black Futures volume, edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, and her memoir I Believe in Our Power is slated to be published by St. Martin’s Press next year. *Read more on Art news.

Relief for Art week Tokyo galleries as Japan eases travel restrictions

Art Week Tokyo (AWT), held in partnership with Art Basel, holds its second edition this month (3-6 November), incorporating more than 50 museums and commercial galleries spread out across the entire metropolitan area, from Roppongi to Tennozu Isle. AWT’s soft launch took place last year amid Covid-19 travel restrictions and welcomed more than 20,000 visitors. Its return comes as Japan opens its borders to individual vaccinated tourists on the visa waiver programme. Since last year, Japan has been making a concerted effort to revive its standing as an international art hub, a peak unscaled since the country’s art market meltdown in the late 1990s. In a bid to attract fairs, auction companies and galleries to its freeport zones, regulations were eased in February 2021 for import procedures, duties and taxes for those areas, which typically amount to millions for high value art. Right on schedule then, a new fair was announced earlier this year. Tokyo Gendai will run from 7 to 9 July 2023 in the expansive Pacifico Yokohama convention centre. Its imminent arrival coincides with a significant increase of sales through auctions, both in number of works sold and increase of bidding prices, especially with Tokyo-based SBI Art Auction, which specialises in contemporary works. For details head on to Art Newspaper.

Fake blood thrown on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painting

On Sunday, fake blood was hurled at a painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in a Berlin museum, in an incident reminiscent of recent climate protests, though officials have yet to release a motivation for the attack. The individual, who was taken into police custody, also glued themselves to the wall beside the work. The work, titled Clown, is being examined in the Alte Nationalgalerie’s restoration workshop. The head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Hermann Parzinger, said in a statement that the painting was not significantly damaged. “I am shocked by this further senseless attack on art, which in this case obviously cannot be assigned to any climate-politically active group,” he told the news agency dpa. He added that the museum staff will “continue to do everything we can to protect the art in our collections while keeping them accessible with as few barriers as possible.”