Art Industry News: MoMA Director Glenn Lowry Will Take a ‘Chainsaw’ to the Museum’s Budget and Cut 220 Positions + Other Stories

Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most
consequential developments coming out of the art world and art
market. Here’s what you need to know on this Thursday, May
7.

NEED-TO-READ

Portland Museum Wins Appeal Over Disputed Bequest
– Maine’s Portland Museum
of Art has won an appeal in a lawsuit over a $3.3
million gift from one of its late donors. The patron, Eleanor
Potter, had named the museum as a beneficiary in her will, but
then, in 2015, a few months before she died, changed the document
and turned over the money instead to her caregiver, Annemarie
Germain. Now, Maine’s supreme court has affirmed a lower court’s
ruling that Germain coerced Potter to make the change while she was
unwell and that the museum is the rightful recipient of the
bequest. (Portland Herald)

Russia’s Culture Minister Has Coronavirus – The Russian culture minister has become the
third member of the government’s inner circle to contract the
coronavirus. Olga Lyubimova, who took the post in January, was
confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 by the official state news
service. “It is a mild case of the illness, there is no talk of
hospitalization,” her press secretary said. Lyubimova, who was
responsible for shutting down Russia’s museums and theaters on
March 17, will be temporarily replaced as she recovers. Prime
minister Mikhail Mishustin and construction minister Vladimir
Yakushev have also been diagnosed with the illness.
(The Art Newspaper)

MoMA Prepares for Major Cutbacks – The Museum of
Modern Art in New York will make a drastic $45 million cut to its
planned $180 million budget for the next fiscal year. In a recorded
conference call obtained by Bloomberg, the museum’s director, Glenn
Lowry, said that the museum would take a “chainsaw” to its budget.
To cut costs, it will eliminate about 220 staff positions,
including 60 that were open but will remain unfulfilled; cut $8
million from its exhibitions budget; and cut its publications
budget in half. “You don’t take $45 million out of a budget
elegantly,” Lowry said on the call. “You take it out in very large
units, and you take it very quickly.” The museum is also planning
for radically reduced attendance figures, and is considering
implementing timed tickets to allow only 1,000 people inside at a
time. (Bloomberg)

Natural History Museum Cuts Scores of Staffers
– Two hundred
full-time employees at the American Museum of Natural History in
New York will lose their jobs as the institution struggles to gain
financial footing. Dozens of staffers will be laid off, while
others will be nudged into retirement and those with expiring
contracts will not be asked to return. Another 250 workers will be
furloughed indefinitely (they will be allowed to keep their health
insurance). The museum is now expecting a staggering deficit of
between $80 million and $120 million. (New York Times)

ART MARKET

Lehmann Maupin Now Represents Billie Zangewa –
The gallery will become the New
York representative of the Johannesburg-based artist, a rising star
who is best known for her fabric-based works that contain scenes
from her life. Lehmann Maupin is offering work by the artist in its
online Frieze New York booth and plans to open a solo show of her
work in September. (ARTnews)

French Auction Houses Apply for Emergency Export Certificates
– The French ministry of
culture is implementing an emergency procedure to allow auction
houses to obtain export certificates while the typical process is
on hold. The emergency measure will apply to auction houses that
had applied for a certificate before March 4, or to objects for
which the sale is pivotal to the auction house’s continued
operations. (Journal des Arts)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Kraftwerk Founder Florian Schneider Dies at 73
– As the cofounder of the
widely influential band, which was formed in Düsseldorf in 1970,
Schneider helped shape not only its progressive synthetic music,
but also its striking visual sensibility, which inspired artists
including David Bowie and Daft Punk. After breaking out in 1974
with the album Autobahn, Kraftwerk went on to record six more studio
albums and was the subject of a nontraditional retrospective at
MoMA in 2012. Schneider died of cancer. (BBC)

Broad Art Museum Gets a New Director – Mónica Ramírez-Montagut has been named director
of Michigan State University’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. The
curator, who trained as an architect, is currently director of the
Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she
led a team that organized exhibitions including “Per(Sister): Incarcerated
Women of Louisiana.” Ramírez-Montagut begins her new role next
July. (Michigan State
University)

A Blade of Grass Announces Socially Engaged Art Fellows –
The New York nonprofit has named
its 2020 fellows for socially engaged art, who will receive $20,000
each as well as support from A Blade of Grass’s professional
network. The fellows include New York artist Alfredo Salazar-Caro
and the Carolina-based Hidden Voices Collective. While the grants
are typically given to fund specific projects, this year’s awards
will be unrestricted to help artists in this time of crisis.
(Press
release)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Germany Releases $3 Million for Provenance Research –
The German Lost Art Foundation has
approved €2.7 million ($2.9 million) for provenance research
projects on Nazi-looted art. The funds have been released for
proposals put out by museums, libraries, scientific institutions,
and four private individuals who applied for funding in the first
round of applications this year. (Monopol)

COVID Throws Scholarly
Museum Exhibitions Out of Whack – Many exhibitions
that had been years in the making were closed prematurely due to
the worldwide lockdown. And now, curators are facing the grim
reality that some shows, like the once-in-a-lifetime
exhibition of Jan van Eyck at the Museum of Fine Arts
Ghent, will be impossible to reopen. A show of work by the Greek
sculptor Takis due to debut at the Museum of Cycladic Art has been
called off after loans were rescinded because no one was willing to
accompany the works to Greece. (NYT)

Nicolas Party Shares Watercolors From Quarantine
– Reese Witherspoon isn’t the only one
spending her time in quarantine with watercolors. The Swiss artist
Nicolas Party recently took to Instagram to share some of his
latest works, 11 colorful paintings of treetops from a series
called “Canopy” that he created while in isolation in New York. A
selection is on view now in Hauser & Wirth’s online viewing room.
(Creative Boom)

The post Art Industry News: MoMA Director Glenn Lowry Will
Take a ‘Chainsaw’ to the Museum’s Budget and Cut 220 Positions +
Other Stories appeared first on artnet News.