Reading list, 28 December 2019

The 11 Biggest Controversies That Rocked the Art World in 2019 and The Art Controversies That Defined the 2010s - from Artnet, so the American view. The increased scrutiny and publicity around the ethics of patronage, sponsorship and governance was my #1 trend for the artworld in 2019.

And The Biggest Cultural Moments of 2019 from Art Agency Partners

50 years of the museum in the community - a write-up from a symposium held at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum and jointly hosted by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (more a list of the talks held than insights generated but still handy)

Open storage is back - profiling the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum's new building project in Rotterdam

"An exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art shows the limits of “soft power” at a time when museums are being transformed by hard activism" - Soft Power at MOMA

Kent Monkman at the Met (NYT)

A group of American historians challenged the NYT's 1619 project: The Atlantic covers the discussion/dispute, and the NYT responds to the criticisms. Interesting for when academic imperatives and perspectives meet journalistic and activist ones.

The five stages of an art world scandal - how the banana made it

Things I missed earlier this year: a two-part interview with Glenn Lowry on the revamped MOMA, succession planning & more (part one, part two)

Reading list, 2 November 2019

"So why not monetize the intangibles?" Punting the idea of paying admission for popular book stores.

The latest Gray Market: Why Ethical Vetting of Collectors Won't Reshape the Art Market, responding to Brian Boucher's In the Post-Warren Kanders Era, Artists and Dealers Wonder: Should Collectors Be Vetted? for Artnet

Age and readiness are not the same thing: Museum Directors Under 40: A Brief History of 20 Young Leaders Who Helped Shape Their Institutions (American context)

Ngarino Ellis, New Zealand's only Māori art history lecturer, interviewed on RNZ

Teenagers, boomers, and intergenerational critique via merchandise #okboomer

Australian arts activists The Countess have released their latest report on gender representation in the visual arts 

My October Nine to Noon appearance (the Kaldor Public Art Projects exhibition at AGNSW; Renaissance Bologna's unusual support of women artists and The Countess report's data on the not-unusual gender imbalances in Australia's visual arts; the Adam Art Gallery's forthcoming 20th anniversary shows)

Paula Bray on the process of using BookSprints to collaboratively write a book on setting up, running, and shutting down labs in cultural institutions, all in 5 days.

Have been a bit ho-hum on the MOMA opinion pieces, but will always make time for Maura Reilly - MoMA’s Revisionism Is Piecemeal and Problem-Filled: Feminist Art Historian Maura Reilly on the Museum’s Rehang

Reading list, 12 October 2019

New Scrutiny of Museum Boards Takes Aim at World of Wealth and Status - yet another report from the New York Times, this time with stats on the 536 trustees of America's 10 most-visited museums, the sources of their wealth

I didn't know that the Victoria & Albert provided career and skill development opportunities for young people as part of its public programme offer. They've just published Let me in: Getting young people into the Creative Industries, a report on the audiences they've serving through these programmes, which they break down into profiles:

• The Selector: Starting to make decisions that will affect their career path 
• The Multifaceted Creative: Talented and interested in more than one field 
• The Decided: Chosen a career, looking for relevant opportunities in that field 
• The Switcher: Transitioning into a creative career 
• The Explorer: Looking for new ideas, spends time critically thinking to form new opinions.

 The New MoMA Is Here. Get Ready for Change, by Jason Farago for the New York Times:

“We as institutions are so trained to treat our temporary exhibition program as the main tent,” said Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director. “And we made the commitment, financially, programmatically and intellectually, that we’re going to shift that. That our main tent is our collection.” 

"Manchester Museum, which is part of Manchester University, is the first UK institution to return sacred artefacts [to Aboriginal people] under an Australian government-funded project to repatriate items of cultural heritage to mark 250 years since Cook’s voyage in 2020."

In funding:

• National Theatre to end Shell membership from next year
• Oligarchs, as U.S. Arts Patrons, Present a Softer Image of Russia
• The RSC was right to ditch BP’s money, but it must keep funding youth schemes

‘This Is a Criticism of the Art World’: Antwaun Sargent Champions Photography’s ‘New Black Vanguard’

Reading list, 5 October 2019

Sometimes an exhibition turns out so much better than the core idea suggests it might. Two reviews (the Guardian, the New York Times) suggest Gossamer, an exhibition at Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate, England, curated by Zoe Bedeaux and including artists from Sarah Lucas to Man Ray to Enam Gbewonyo who have worked in some way with woman's stockings, is one of these shows. (Check out the articles for some extraordinary images.)

Charlotte Burns of Art Agency Partners gives Max Hollein, director of the Met, a good poking on repatriating taonga, the stats on women artists & the market & collections & exhibitions,  ethics & governance, and the museum's one billion dollar package of capital projects.

Dropping this here because I'm still working cancel culture out but it's full of useful links: Osita Nwanevu for The New Republic, The “Cancel Culture” Con

And ticketing this one up for value-clashes: Massey University's statement on providing venue hire to a group called Speak Up 4 Women for an event called 'Feminism 2020' that throws the university's commitment to fostering free speech into opposition with its commitment to fostering a campus environment welcoming to all identities.

The latest from the MuseuPunks podcast: Decolonization and its Discontents featuring Sumaya Kassim and Nathan “Mudyi” Sentance.

A request from The Spinoff about gender diversity in exhibition programming circulated around public and private art galleries a couple of months ago - the outcome is Anna Knox's lengthy article Gender bias and art in Aotearoa: a Spinoff survey reveals the harsh reality which ends up focusing on dealer galleries and has some interesting insights / observations (and reveals data is indeed a slippery fish)

Aligned to the proposed re-definition of a museum by ICOM and growing focus on ethical leadership, in the NYT: Shareholder Value Is No Longer Everything, Top C.E.O.s Say:

 Breaking with decades of long-held corporate orthodoxy, the Business Roundtable issued a statement on “the purpose of a corporation,” arguing that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders. Instead, the group said, they must also invest in their employees, protect the environment and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers.

Kara Walker takes over the Tate's Turbine Hall

By me (cough, cough)

• On RNZ talking about the Amsterdam Museum's decision to no longer use the phrase 'Golden Age', and the theft of Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet
• A short speech given to remember Paul Reynolds at the event to celebrate Gareth Seymour's award of the scholarship set up in Paul's name.

Reading list, 14 September 2019

Wow, I have a lot of reading to catch up on ...

Daniel Weiss, Adam Weinberg and other museum leaders speak out following the fallout from the resignation of the Whitney’s vice chairman and the ongoing Sackler affair - for The Art Newspaper

There was “next to nothing” about Muslims in the Brooklyn Historical Society’s century-old archives. Now there are 54 oral histories, which serve as the foundation for a new art exhibition.

The Amsterdam Museum will no longer use the descriptor "Golden Age" to for the 17th century:

The Golden Age occupies an important place in Western historiography that is strongly linked to national pride. But positive associations with the term such as prosperity, peace, opulence and innocence do not cover the charge of historical reality in this period. The term ignores the many negative sides of the 17th century such as poverty, war, forced labour and human trafficking.

The Wellcome Collection's new long-term exhibition Being Human has been designed "accessibility first" and has garnered a lot of well deserved press: No art lover left behind: how galleries are finally welcoming disabled people (Guardian); Is This the World’s Most Accessible Museum? (NYT);

A British survey shows that four in ten cultural organisations pay their junior front of house staff less than a living wage.

Lorraine Boissonneault for Slate: The Complicated Decisions That Come With Digitizing Indigenous Languages

Look, I haven't engaged with the Jeffrey Epstein thing at all so just dropping this in here for future reference: Martin Levine, Must Modern Philanthropy Be So Corrosive?, on Epstein's philanthropic relationship with MIT.

The Ford Foundation's president Darren Walker in conversation with artnet's Andrew Goldstein: ‘We Don’t Need to Demonize Wealthy People’: Ford Foundation President Darren Walker on the Unnerving Aftermath of the Warren Kanders Protests

ICOM shrugged off the vote on the proposed new definition of a "museum": Should Art Museums Be More or Less Ideological? After Pushback, a Gathering of Museum Leaders Refuses to Address the Question

Suse Anderson is teaching a new first-year course on museum ethics at George Washington University, and the course outline looks like a primer in contemporary museum discussions

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, 27 July 2019

In sponsorship, boards & ethics

Alex Greenberger for ArtNews: After Months of Protests, Warren B. Kanders Resigns from Whitney Board and ‘It’s Just the Beginning’: Art World Responds to Warren B. Kanders’s Resignation from Whitney Board

Elizabeth A. Harris for the New York Times: The Louvre Took Down the Sackler Name. Here’s Why Other Museums Probably Won’t.

Ben Davis for MOMUS: Where Do We Go From Here? Dubious Wealth and Ethical Funding

The Gray Market: Premature Evacuation: Why the Late Withdrawal of Eight Artists from the Whitney Biennial Ushers in an 'Asterisk Era' for the Art World

Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation on why museum boards must diversify

Bendor Grosvenor for The Art Newspaper on the National Portrait Gallery (London) and their ethical dilemmas around sponsorship & exhibition choices

In new museums

1 museum for every 39,000 people: South Korea's government-dictated museum building boom (partly funded by levies on entry fees)

The French Development Agency, the public funding group that supports the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, will loan €20m towards construction of a new museum on Abomey, Benin, to house returned artefacts

In other stuff

Francis McWhannell reviews Mary Kisler's Frances Hodgkins exhibition for The Spinoff 

Colleen Dilenschneider's latest touches on research showing local audiences have negatively skewed perceptions of the organisations in their area

Elizabeth A. Harris and Robin Pogrebin round up pay disputes happening across American museums for the New York Times

Four major non-profit foundations joined together to buy the archives of Ebony and Jet magazines at auction, to donate to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Getty Research Institute

Reading list, 30 June 2019

ArtNews's summer edition has some good good writing:

Better Safe Than Sorry: American Museums Take Measures Mindful of Repatriation of African Art 

Exhibiting Change: When Some of the Best-Attended Exhibitions in Museums Are Protests, Where Do Institutions Go from Here?

 The Sound of Listening: Candice Hopkins’s Curating Lets Indigenous Artists Do the Talking 

 Emma Ng's forthcoming essay for the Guy Ngan catalogue being co-published by The Dowse and Artspace appeared on The Spinoff: Guy Ngan, an artist ignored but not forgotten (another experiment in sponsored content from The Dowse)

 Also on The Spinoff: Rebecca Kiddle's The buildings are ‘uniquely Aotearoa’. Their Māori designers are ignored 

V&A director Tristram Hunt asks Should museums return their colonial artefacts? (and then answers himself: no)

I'm fascinated by how Maria Yeonhee Ji's piece for The Pantograph Punch The Truths we Bury About Childbirth in Aotearoa draws on the thinking of Puawai Cairns and Moana Jackson, in a health and wellbeing context.

Dr Spencer Lilley of Massey University has been awarded a grant to study te reo Māori capacity in GLAM organisations

Reading list, 19 May 2019

"on occasion, we feel it’s necessary to step away from gifts that are not in the public interest, or in our institution’s interest" - the Met turns down Sackler money; Anand Giridharadas opinion piece.

There's something nice about seeing a director interviewed four years in about their philosophy & changes they've made, rather than at the time of their appointment: ‘There Were Women Working Then, Too’: How Dia Director Jessica Morgan Is Breaking Open the (Male) Canon of Postwar Art

Interesting for museum interpretation: the Guardian is changing the language it uses when reporting on the environment to be more emphatic. “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue. ... The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”

In a similar vein - Erin Banks' guide to trans-inclusive design, which has a lot to share about communicating with people across all media.

Julia Halperin for Artnet: Borrow, Barter, Crowdsource: How Small Countries Bootstrap Their Way to the Venice Biennale

Still open in my tabs: a reflection, 30 years on, on the importance of the 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre

Reading list, 11 May 2019

Stagecoach South East, the bus company, was brought onboard by Turner Contemporary in Margate, host of this year's Turner Prize: the company and the gallery have parted company one day after the announcement, due to protest over Stagecoach's boss's anti-gay views.

Marc A. Thiessen's column for the Washington Post on Jenny Holzer's installation: A museum has turned itself into an instrument of anti-U.S. propaganda:

It’s no surprise that the art world is left wing. But the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao — an institution owned by an American foundation, in the heart of Spain — has turned itself into something worse: an instrument of anti-American propaganda. The museum is spreading calumnies against the men and women of the U.S. military and fueling hatred of America in a foreign land.

Linking to Rebecca Solnit's writing is so passé, and yet: When the Hero is the Problem

teamlab and Meow Wolf are taking over the world: here's Rachel Monroe on the latter for the New York Times - Can an Art Collective Become the Disney of the Experience Economy?

The papers from the 2019 Museums and the Web conference are available online

A useful history of art / artists / arts communities on the internet by Kelsey Ables for Artsy: The Rise and Fall of Internet Art Communities

Canadian Heritage has allocated $680,000 Canadian i to the Canadian Museums Association to undertake a national review of museum policies with Indigenous communities, to ensure alignment with the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People and make recommendations for best practice.

The New York Times Magazine documented the development of its cover designs for a year