VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Market
In a New York Times op-ed, Olav Velthuis diagnoses the current art-fair system as being the source of a number of problems affecting galleries around the world. “The current structure,” he writes, “is in nobody’s interest.” [The New York Times]
Ten years after the start of the Great Recession, Katya Kazakina reflects on how the 2008 financial crisis influenced collectors. “The cleverest collectors buy in distressed moments, even as the heavens are falling,” dealer Brett Gorvy tells her. [Bloomberg]
The Trump administration’s tariff on imported Chinese goods no longer applies to artworks and antiquities. [The Art Newspaper]
Lives
Mary Nooter Roberts, a scholar of African art who served as consulting curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has died at 59. [The New York Times]
The French philosopher Paul Virilio, whose influential writings about architecture and urban space focused on technology and speed, has died at 86. [Libération]
“Venice Bitch”
Lana Del Rey’s new album will be called Norman Fucking Rockwell, in reference to the kind of guy “who is such a genius artist but he thinks he’s the shit and he knows it and he like won’t shut up talking about it,” the singer said. (Its first single, “Venice Bitch,” appears to be unrelated to art, however, as it makes no mention of the Biennale.) [Vulture]
The Future Now
For a project for Tate Britain, Steve McQueen wants to photograph every Year 3 primary school student in the London. (The kids are around 7 years old.) He will then bring the pictures together to create a new installation, set to go on view in 2019. [Press Release]
Once favored by the Surrealists and postwar collectors, Haitian art has largely fallen into obscurity in the West, according to a Telegraph report. But now London’s Gallery of Everything aims to bring Haitian art back into the spotlight. [The Telegraph]
Collecting
Caroline Hirsch and Andrew Fox are the latest collectors to participate in the New York Times’s “Show Us Your Wall” series. Lining their home’s walls are works by John Currin, Richard Prince, and George Condo. [The New York Times]