The art world is bananas 🍌
and more art news this week
Two main headlines are dominating the art world this week: Dean Kissick’s essay on the state of art and politics for Harper’s and the sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous banana for $6.5 million. I’ll write about the former in more detail for paid subsribers; in the meantime, you can join the chat where we’ve been discussing it.
In today’s newsletter:
An excerpt from my article for the Globe & Mail on the reimagining of Agnes Ethertington in Kingston.
Links to art news and essays.
Two artists you should know this week.
The following is a short excerpt from my article in the Globe & Mail. You can read it here online or in print this weekend.
Agnes Etherington, the granddaughter of a wealthy grain dealer, bequeathed her neo-Georgian house to Queen’s University with the mandate that it be used to further the arts in Kingston and on campus. She died in 1954, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre has remained a steady, if predictable, source of art programming since opening in 1957 – until now.
The centre is closed as it undergoes a multimillion-dollar reimagining that will expand the gallery space with a curvilinear addition, turn Etherington’s house into a live-in artist residence and challenge what it means to be an institution in the 21st century.
Leading the transformation, expected to be completed by 2026, is Emelie Chhangur, the director and curator of Agnes. (One of Chhangur’s early moves was to drop “the” from the gallery’s title – a clear sign of the changes to come.)
“I’m looking at these bequests papers of Agnes Etherington, and it’s a story of this beautiful Georgian home and beautiful historic campus. Her bequest was to further the cause of art and community. I’m like, ‘That is my job,’ ” Chhangur said.
But, she wondered, what does it mean to further the cause of art and community in the 21st century, and what would it mean to return the house back into a home?
Art News
The buyer of Cattelan’s infamous piece, Justin Sun, wrote on Instagram: “Additionally, in the coming days, I will personally eat the banana 🍌as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture. Stay tuned!” Do we think the banana is organic?
This profile on Jamian Juliano-Villani is one of the wildest things I’ve read lately. It has everything: outsourcing paintings to China, getting trapped in an art gallery, ruthless firing of friends, erratic spending.
Anonymous Was A Woman awarded $50,000 to 15 grantees—doubling the prize amount from previous years.
I loved this tidbit from The New Yorker essay on the relationship between art dealer Asher Wertheimer and John Singer Sargent: “If you were fumbling for conversation with an heiress, it used to be said, you could always ask her, “And how do you like your Sargent drawing? As modernism bloomed and the Gilded Age became a punch line, so, inevitably, did its premier portraitist.”
The Art Newspaper rounded up the best dressed artist. Notable best dressed artist was missing…Keiran Brennan Hinton (iykyk). Maybe I’ll make my own contemporary version of the list. There are some very well-dressed artists out there!
Two Artists I Love
James Morse
Morse currently has a two-person exhibition with Heidrun Rathgeb at Galerie Elsa Meunier in Paris. I love their programming and this show is no different.
Mathieu Larone
I can’t explain it but Larone’s illustrations really scratch an itch in my brain. They feel like representations of a memory I didn’t know that I had, of a surrealist cartoon I watched when home from school sick on cough medicine.
