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

Little big web

Little is big on the web, from mechanical turks to microcredit.

Now a Brooklyn start-up is doing micro-patronage of the arts. Kickstarter describes itself as "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers". Artists submit their projects to Kickstarter, who load them to the site, where people can then chose to support a favoured project by donating a couple of bucks.


Crucially, donors don't just get warm fuzzies in return for their donations: the artists offer insider access to the project, and sometimes physical or tangible exchanges. In return for a $50 donation, audio engineer Earl Scioneaux III offered a gumbo dinner and a chance to listen to his recordings with other financiers; Emily Grenader got both the funding and the participants for her project of mailing out a postcard every day for a year.

The site is run by Perry Chen and Yancey Strickler, who raised $30,000 in seed finance before launching the service. In this New York Times article Chen emphasises that Kickstarter is not "an investment, lending or a charity [but] something else in the middle: a sustainable marketplace where people exchange goods for services or some other benefit and receive some value." Fittingly, the article appears in the NYT's Business section rather than being filed under Arts.

At the moment the site is curated; Strickler and Chen review and select the projects. According to the NYT article, they're considering opening the site up to anyone and charging a small fee for transactions. I wonder if that will be as successful - curation is so often the key to quality and appeal.

Of course, sometimes big is good too. Check out Chris Heathcote's loca london.* The page (yup, you read that right - a 5100px wide page, not a site) grew out of his @localondon feed on Twitter, which sends out reminders of when art exhibitions open and close. In this blog post Heathcote tells how this feed of alerts and reminders has turned into a page giving an overview of current exhibitions, plus reviews of the shows. Heathcote clearly sees the curatorial aspect of the page as important: it's not *everything* that's on, and nor is it regurgitated gallery press releases. Instead it's quality, easy to skim critical responses to shows. From the post:

these two services are trying to be slightly different – super simple, low volume, presented in a neutral voice and delicately curated. It reflects what I want to go and see, not everything that’s on.

Interestingly, Heathcote notes that the one-pager is partly inspired by a part of the Guardian that's only available in the print edition: the G2 grid of culture reviews.

Heathcote also describes why he went for one big page, not a 'normal' site. If you ask me, it's inspired - a really clever, thoughtful, elegant tool that re-uses information intelligently and subtly.

*Thanks to @gnat for the tip-off

Dollar signs

In an alternative life, I'd quite like the idea of being groomed to take over the family business of arts patronage.

I'm less sure about the notion of buying shares in an artist. Although perhaps that's an alternative to the resale royalty?

A lump of coal in your stocking

The announcement that influential LA collector Eli Broad will create an independent foundation to maintain control of his collection, rather than gifting it to a museum (or museums) is creating chatter on the American blogs. The foundation will loan the works to museums.

The announcement is seen as a particular slap in the face for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which is due to open the Renzo Piano-designed, Eli Broad-financed Broad Contemporary Art Museum next month. One of Broad's reasons for his decision is his concern no museum has space to place a large portion of his 2000+ piece collection on permanent display.

The most interesting quote for me in the article was this:

Mr. Broad ... said he did not view his decision as a vote of no confidence in the museum. Rather, he said, it represents no less than a new paradigm for the way museums in general collect art and interact with one another.

“I think it’s a new model that makes sense for other collections,” he said. “If it was up to me, I believe that museums ought to own works jointly.” Mr. Broad encouraged that practice last year with his purchase of a work by the artist Chris Burden, which he then gave jointly to the county museum and another Los Angeles institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art, where he was a founding trustee.

Image: The Broad Contemporary Art Museum under contruction, photo from the New York Times.

Lighter reading

Hummm. Today's post (below) might be kinda heavy going. For more relaxed reading, try Jerry Saltz on the New Museum, or Charles Isherwood on Donor Graffiti.

Patron of the year

On Tuesday Auckland arts patron Jenny Gibbs was announced as 2007 recipient of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Award for Patronage, presented by Webbs - Fine Art Auctioneers.

The Arts Foundation gave Gibbs $20,000 to distribute, which she personally matched. The four recipients were:

• Gretchen Albrecht
• ARTSPACE
• Auckland Writers and Readers Festival
• The New Zealand Opera School.

Webbs - taking it to the mat

Perhaps as a profile-building exercise in the face of the new Art + Object auction house publicity attack, Webbs have just been announced as the presenting sponsor for the Arts Foundation's New Zealand Award for Patronage. The news isn't posted on either the Webb's or the Art Foundation website, so here's the release:

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SPONSOR ANNOUNCED - WEBBS (FINE ART AUCTIONEERS)

The Arts Foundation of New Zealand is proud to announce a new partnership with Webb’s - Fine Art Auctioneers.

Webb’s are the Presenting Sponsor of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Award for Patronage.The annual Award honours a philanthropist for their generous support of the arts. In 2006, the inaugural recipients were Denis and Verna Adam.

The 2007 recipient of the Award will be announced at a special ceremony on May 8th at the Auckland Art Gallery.

“As a company with an in-depth understanding of the quality of art, the Arts Foundation is proud to be associated with Webb’s”, said Ros Burdon, Chairman of the Arts Foundation.

“We are grateful for Webb’s generous support of the Arts Foundation and their contribution to recognising our leading arts patrons.”

“Webb’s has strongly supported the visual arts in New Zealand since its inception over thirty years ago”, said Peter Webb, Director of Webb’s.

“We have done this by pioneering a sound secondary market for local works of art; by cataloguing and displaying such works in a professional manner and by initiating ‘collectives’ to further introduce buyers into the market.

"It therefore makes perfect sense for Webb’s to give its enthusiastic support to an award that recognises the vital role of the patron and donor in the world of the arts. Without the foresight and generosity of patrons, we as a community would be very much the poorer.”

The Arts Foundation of New Zealand Award for Patronage is made annually to a person, couple, or private trust for outstanding private contributions to the arts. The recipients of this Award will, in time, constitute a grand circle of patrons whose generosity has impacted significantly on New Zealand, by nourishing, enriching and bringing us closer to the artistic world.

Honoured for their philanthropy, the recipients are celebrated as role models for all those who are passionate about the arts and as inspiration to those that wish to support the arts to do so at any level.

To demonstrate that patronage is alive and well the recipient is provided the task of distributing $20,000 (gifted by the Arts Foundation) to artists or arts projects of their choice.

The Foundation intends the gifting of funds to the arts as an appropriate reward for the patrons and a direct honour of them as experts in supporting the arts.

“Through its association with the Arts Foundation, Forsyth Barr too understands the value of patronage, so we are delighted to welcome Webb's to the family of supporters and sponsors.

"Their support for the Arts Foundation of New Zealand's Award for Patronage speaks volumes of their understanding of the vital role that Patrons play. We look forward to joining with them and the Arts Foundation on May 8 in Auckland," said Neil Paviour-Smith, Managing Director, Forsyth Barr.

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Webb's was established in 1976 to bring to the New Zealand market a higher level of professionalism in the selling of works of art in all categories by auction. Since that date the company has grown to become a leader not only in selling fine art but also in the specialist fields of decorative arts, jewellery, estate, household effects and wine under the hammer.

Webb's auctions are a great place to learn about the markets for art, antiques and collectables. Webb's conducts more than one hundred and fifty sales each year from its salerooms off Broadway, in Auckland. The sales attract art and antique dealers and collectors from all over New Zealand, and frequently buyers from locations abroad.