What We're Reading: 6/30
Art Preserve: first museum devoted to America’s homegrown ‘art environments’ opens in Wisconsin
After a ten-month delay resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is opening the Art Preserve, the world’s first museum dedicated to long-neglected art environments, on 26 June. The 56,000 sq. ft facility will exhibit and store more than 25,000 objects from the Kohler Arts Center’s art environment collection as well as serving as a hub for research on, and displays of, artists’ genre-defying creations.
Via The Art Newspaper
Gainsborough showstopper The Blue Boy comes home to the UK after 100 years
A painting by Thomas Gainsborough described as a masterpiece of British art is returning to the UK. The Blue Boy (1770) will go on show at the National Gallery in London from 25 January next year (until 3 May 2022), 100 years to the day since it was last seen in Britain following a public uproar. The work is on loan for the first time from the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, where it has been on display since 1928.
Via the Art Newspaper
After a turbulent year marked by the pandemic and social-justice uprisings, how have salaries in the museum industry changed? According to the just-released salary report from the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the answer is: not much.
Via Artnet
Hybrid Auctions Are Now the Norm. Will Galleries Follow Suit?
One of the surprises following last year’s global lockdown was how well the art market seemed to function in a state of semi-suspended animation. There’s a variety of explanations for the industry’s unexpected ability to survive. There are macroeconomic factors involving stimulus packages and governments further easing already lax monetary policies. There are also technological ones based upon the existence of platforms for displaying art. (Many of these platforms already existed, but few of them were used frequently.) There are even psycho-social factors involving the need for cultural and intellectual engagement that requires minimal interpersonal contact.
Via Artnews