News from Around the Art World: April 9, 2018
Saving landmark Eternal Indian statue may hinge on '1 or 2 charitable angels' as supporters try to restart restoration
For three years, fifth-grade teacher Becky Fuller and about 100 students have trudged through Lowden State Park to the bluffs of the Rock River as part of their Outdoor Education program. The objective: to see the beloved, iconic behemoth known as the Black Hawk statue.
Instead, what they encountered resembles a giant mummy.
By Ted Gregory, Chicago Tribune
Kehinde Wiley—the artist behind Obama's presidential portrait—signs with Hollywood talent agency
Kehinde Wiley, the artist whose portrait of former President Barack Obama is attracting record crowds to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, has joined the Hollywood talent agency Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
The firm will licence Wiley’s paintings for use on screen as well as “identify directing opportunities” for the artist, “option books” on his behalf and help him “produce, develop his own material [and] collaborate with other screenwriters,” according to a report on the film and entertainment news website Deadline.
By Cristina Ruiz, The Art Newspaper
11 of the World’s Greatest Sculpture Parks, from Seattle to Oslo
The tradition of mounting works of art outdoors in nature stretches back for centuries. In the late 1500s, for example, Henry VIII adorned his gardens at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, England, with sculptures inspired by Greek mythology. In Renaissance Italy, nobles like the Medicis bedecked their gardens with Classical pieces excavated from ruins. And at the end of the 17th century, Louis XIV lavishly decorated the sprawling grounds of Versailles with over 200 sculptures made of marble, bronze, and lead. Later, when site-specific outdoor sculptures were first commissioned in the 1800s, the earliest iterations of what we now consider sculpture parks began to emerge. Today, these outdoor spaces around the world strike a delightful balance between nature and art, displaying a wide range of work, from massive contemporary sculptures to earthworks and subtler, historic pieces.
By Rachel Lebowitz, Artsy Editorial
An Insider of Design and Media Who Favors Outsider Art
If there were a Collecting Confidence Index, Robert M. Greenberg’s score would be 100.
In the same way he entered a number of fields and excelled — co-founding the influential digital advertising agency R/GA, designing titles and visual effects for hundreds of feature films including “Alien” and establishing himself as a communications guru — Mr. Greenberg goes all-in and doesn’t second-guess.
Scooping up collections by the dozens or hundreds of items is easier when you live in a massive, two-story penthouse loft, as Mr. Greenberg does with his wife, Corvova Lee (an artist whose work is also on view). It’s one of five homes they own, including two in the Hudson Valley.
By Ted Loos, The New York Times