Reading lists, 31 August 2019

ICOM has put up a proposal to rewrite its definition of a museum (used around the world) and national chapters are not down with that (Hyperallergic)

How historic house tours in the south of the United States are being rewritten to incorporate the history of slavery and experiences of the slaves who built, laboured and lived in them (New York Times)

teamLab’s Tokyo Museum Has Become the World’s Most Popular Single-Artist Destination (Artnet News)

From the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe: debating the definitions of art and craft, fuelled by social media (New York Times)

A review of The Warmth of Other Suns, an exhibition at Washington's Phillips Collection mapping a century of displaced and immigrant artists' works (New York Times)

The Ringmaster: Is Charles Venable Democratizing a Great Art Museum in Indianapolis—or Destroying It? (Art News)

Talking Digital Colonialism with Morehshin Allahyari (article and podcast) (Hyperallergic)

A beautiful interactive mapping the geographical distribution of artists featured over the history of the Whitney Biennial (New York Times)

Shifting the Balance: a report from Diversity Arts Australia on diversity in leadership in Australian arts institutions (Diversity Arts Australia)

On the radio - August 2019

This month in my spot on RNZ's Nine to Noon programme, I talked aboutJacqueline Fahey's survey 'Suburbanites' at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington; Rembrandt's famous painting 'The Night Watch' undergoing restoration in the Rijksmuseum; and a new study showing a massive leap in value for women artists' work on the auction market.

Reading list, 10 August 2019

Let me suggest an alternate title: new statistics show an area of the secondary market where women artists' work is outperforming mens (it's nuanced)

In follow-up news: Artists Demand Answers [to questions they asked about revisions to the museum's funding policy] One Year After Withdrawing Work From London Design Museum

Andrea K. Scott's summary for the New Yorker: The Whitney Biennial protests and the changing standards of accountability in art

A fascinating write-up in the New York Times, Behind Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: Reframing a Tragedy. Read it for the experiences of Chaédria LaBouvier, the first black woman to curate a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim, which in its 80 year history has never employed a black curator on staff.

The Spinoff making good use of that CNZ money: Megan Dunn and Mark Amery on The art award that’s been annoying the Waikato (and Paul Henry) for 20 years  

Ticketed for reading this weekend: Kyle Chayka's long format interview with Artforum editor David Velasco, appointed in October 2017 when the magazine was in a leadership meltdown.

Jamaica's culture minister challenges the British Museum to return taonga taken when the island was a colony.

New York Magazine identifies New York's most toxic museum boards

Harmony Hammonds is one of those artists I wish I'd known about 20 years ago

Reading list, 6 August 2019

In a democracy, destroying a work of art is never a solution to any offense it may give. Once art has been made and released into the often choppy flow of life, it should stay there. It will live on anyway. To dictate its elimination is an implicitly autocratic move, similar in spirit, if not scale, to the deliberate demolition of ancient art and artifacts by the Taliban and the Islamic State.

Roberta Smith, The Case for Keeping San Francisco’s Disputed George Washington Murals, NYT

Put a little more generously, Mapplethorpe had the canniness and the guts to exhibit pictures that framed his sexual obsessions with a formal elegance that allowed them unprecedented entree into galleries and museums. He aligned perfectly with the historical moment, but that moment has passed.

Arthur Lubow, Has Robert Mapplethorpe’s Moment Passed?, NYT

Hyperallergic podcast: Talking Digital Colonialism with Morehshin Allahyari

Andrew Goldman, ‘Museums Are Contested Sites’: The Art Institute of Chicago’s James Rondeau on Why He Finds the Current Moment So Electrifying, Artnet

Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett, The Tear Gas Biennial, Artforum