Art News

Ireland has introduced its first basic income program for the nation’s artists and culture workers, offering sorely needed relief for a sector hit hard by the pandemic. On January 6, Catherine Martin, the Irish Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, opened an online consultation to solicit opinions and proposals on the development of the pilot program. In a statement, Martin described it as a “once-in-a-generation policy intervention.”

“I am determined to ensure that permanent damage is not done to the arts sector from the pandemic and that the basic income pilot scheme helps to ensure that the arts in Ireland come back stronger than ever,” she added.

The government has allocated €25 million ($28.3 million) to be distributed among two thousand arts and culture workers and venues over three years. The online consultation closes January 27, while the program is expected to launch later this

Over the last decade, Swiss entrepreneur Pierre Sigg has focused on contemporary art—collecting it, sharing it, and supporting its creation. A tech magnate with prodigious holdings of video and digital art, he has hosted two artist residencies at his family home in Le Castellet, in the South of France. After their success, he started to dream bigger.

“I had all this space in a wonderful landscape and thought I could make better use of it, whilst playing a more active role in the art world, providing a place for artists to evolve their thinking, rather than simply supporting them through collecting,” Sigg said in a statement.

On Tuesday, he announced the Sigg Art Foundation, a new nonprofit aimed at supporting artists working between traditional mediums and new technologies. It will focus on funding residency opportunities, beginning this month with a program in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia. Independent curator Sacha Guedj-Cohen has

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 this Friday, January 7.

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Boris Johnson Isn’t So Thrilled With the Colston Verdict – While he said he would not comment directly on the verdict of the “Colston Four,” the U.K. prime minister managed to give his opinion on the matter: “My feeling is that we have a complex historical legacy all around us, and it reflects our history in all its diversity, for good or ill. What you can’t do is go around seeking retrospectively to change our history or to bowdlerize it or edit it in retrospect,” he said, likening the removal of a statue to “some person trying to edit their Wikipedia entry.” (Evening Standard)

Conceptual Artist Luciano Perna Dies – The conceptual artist died on December

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 this Wednesday, January 5.

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David Zwirner Plans a Montauk Artist Retreat – David and Monica Zwirner have submitted plans to refurbish 17 cottages and a large house on Lake Montauk to turn them into an “artist’s retreat.” The art dealer and his handbag-designer wife plan to subsidize the rental fees of the so-called Bridgeford Cottages “to ensure that artists, many of whom could not normally afford such a retreat, will be able to come and enjoy the natural beauty of Montauk while they work.” (East Hampton Star)

It’s Time for International Museums to Sever Ties With China – Journalist Rachel Spence argues that international museums can no longer do cultural deals with Chinese companies or state entities in good conscience,

This is part one of a two-part series on the rise and fall of the Artist Pension Trust, founded on the premise that artists could join together to create a shared nest egg in a precarious profession. What could go wrong? Read on to find out, then continue to part two here. 

A year ago, deep into the pandemic, nearly 150 artists began strategizing. They were among those who had joined the Artist Pension Trust (APT) in the years since its 2004 inception, and they were worried. 

Over the past two decades, APT collected more than 13,000 artworks with a combined value estimated at $500 million from its 2,000 members—artists who had signed on hoping to invest in their own futures as a kind of insurance policy against the market’s inevitable ups and downs. But by 2017, nearly all communication from the fund’s founders had ceased. Instead, the artists found

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 this Tuesday, January 11.

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Peter Max’s Guardian Sues His Daughter – The court-appointed guardian to ailing 84-year-old artist Peter Max has hit back at claims from Max’s daughter Libra that he is being kept prisoner by the arrangement. Attorney Barbara Lissner is suing Libra Max—who is waging a “Free Britney”-style campaign on behalf of her father—for defamation. Libra falsely claimed Lissner kept the artist isolated, drained his funds, and confiscated his phone and cats, the lawyer claims, when in fact Libra is the one who has been mistreating him. (New York Post)  

New Art Ventures Aim to Do Well by Doing Good – A new class of art spaces is melding for-profit and non-profit, donating a percentage of their revenues

Curiosities is a column where I comment on the art news of the week, sometimes about stories that were too small or strange to make the cut, sometimes just giving my thoughts on the highs and lows.

Below, some questions posed by the events of the last week…

1) What’s With This ‘Bored Apes Are Nazis’ Thing?

I started this column last year because it felt like culture was melting down, and sometimes the best thing to do was laugh at it. Fortunately, 2022 is starting off in a much calmer, more reasonable groove… no, just kidding, people’s brains are still running out of their nose and ears.

Mere days into the new year, the Bored Ape Yacht Club—the famed NFT collection of “edgy, haphazardly constructed art pieces” (in Rolling Stone’s admiring words)—has been rocked (very slightly) by accusations that it is actually coded neo-Nazi propaganda designed to…

A panel of ancient petroglyphs at Big Bend National Park in Texas has been “irreparably damaged” by vandals who etched a series of names into the rock, the National Park Service has announced.

The additions crudely obscure a series of swirling, abstract designs believed to have been created by Native peoples between 4,000 and 8,500 years ago. The Park Service said in a news release that even though staff members have already treated the vandalized rock, “much of the damage is, unfortunately, permanent.”

Managers at the park, which spans more than 800,000 acres in southwest Texas, said the episode is the latest in a string of crimes that have occurred in the area recently. Big Bend archeologists have registered more than 50 instances of vandalism since 2015. 

Damaging park resources is a federal crime, as is defacing ancient cultural sites, which are protected under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of