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The Headlines
DIRECTORS’ CHAIRS. Jorge Zamanillo, who currently leads the HistoryMiami Museum, has been tapped to be the founding director of the National Museum of the American Latino in Washington, D.C., which was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 2020. Zamanillo, who is 52, told the Washington Post that the opportunity to build an institution “from the ground up” appealed to him. “I’ll be in my 60s when it opens,” he said. “To me that’s exciting.” Meanwhile, Joseph Rosa, the chief of the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, said that he will step down at the end of March, at the conclusion of his contract, after more than five years on the job, the Seattle Times reports.
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THE RULES OF THE GAME. Good news for those in the art business. In a new report, the U.S. Treasury Department says that the art market does not need new federal regulations to address money laundering, at least for now, Graham Bowley and Zachary Small report in the New York Times. They note that the art industry has spent almost $1 million on lobbying efforts during the past two years. The report does recommend that banks and dealers create a database to track bad actors, and a former Treasury official told the Associates Press that the report is “a critical first step for there to be a regulatory structure around the broader art market.”
The Digest
PLANET OF THE APES. Buzzfeed published the identities of the anonymous creators of the much-loved, much-reviled Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The two thirty-something men declined to comment. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that the startup behind the apes, Yuga Labs, is said to be in talks with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to line up financing that would value it at as much as $5 billion.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has reportedly been investigating a forgery ring allegedly creating ersatz George Condo drawings. The artist’s lawyer said efforts are being made “to quell any sale of fake” works. The D.A.’s office declined to comment. [Vanity Fair]
The iconic tapestry version of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) is back on view at the United Nations, where it had hung for decades before its owner, Nelson A. Rockefeller Jr., removed it without explanation a year ago. Rockefeller said that the work was being cleaned and that “there was some miscommunication.” [The New York Times and AFP/South China Morning Post]
James Bidgood, a pioneering photographer of gay erotic images, and the director of the legendary film Pink Narcissus (1971), has died at 88. “Playboy had girls in furs, feathers and lights,” he once recalled. “They had faces like beautiful angels. I didn’t understand why boy pictures weren’t like that.” He helped change that. [The New York Times]
The Gwangju Biennale in South Korea is creating a $100,000 Park Seo-Bo Art Prize, which will be given to one participant in each edition of the closely watched event. The next biennale is on the calendar for 2023. Park, a key figure in the nation’s Dansaekhwa movement, gave $1 million to fund the award until 2042. [The Chosun Ilbo]
Singer Harry Styles and actress Olivia Wilde checked out the acclaimed Francis Bacon show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. [Daily Mail]
The Kicker
NIGHTHAWKS. For a New Yorker “Talk of the Town,” writer Naomi Fry stopped by Monday Night Books, the one-evening-a-week Brooklyn bookstore that Thomas Beard is running in the back room of Light Industry, the film venue that he co-founded. The thousands of books on offer all come from his personal collection. “I realized I’m never going to have an apartment big enough for all these books, unless I get a rich husband, and I’m not the marrying kind,” Beard said. No spoilers here, but while Fry was reporting, some notable writers were perusing the shelves. [The New Yorker]
Source: artnews.com