To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
CRACKS IN THE WALL. Ten former employees, including two managers, who worked on The Great Wall of Los Angeles public collaborative mural, allege the revered Chicano artist Judy Baca has been misusing millions of dollars in grants.She designed and leads the project, and the grants were earmarked for expanding the mural, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times. Workers also accuse Baca, the co-founder and artistic director of Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), a non-profit that organizes the mural production,of inappropriately profiting from the center’s facilities, the sale of archives, and artwork related to the community-made mural. Baca and SPARC’s board chair have strongly denied the claims. The mural depicts the history of California “as seen through the eyes of women and minorities,” and is one of the longest of its kind in the world at 2,700 feet, earning it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
LOUVRE STING. The chaos at the Louvre has cost its former president, Laurence des Cars, her job, but it may also come at a heavy political price for French president Emmanuel Macron, writes the New York Times. Per Mark Lander, the NYT Paris bureau chief, Macron— nearing the end of his second term— “is at risk of losing what could be a legacy-defining cultural project,” which, in a country with a so-called “edifice complex,” is no small political matter. French presidents historically have left some sort of grand, cultural statement. For Macron, that project would be the massive Louvre renovation dubbed “Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance,” initiated by the fallen Des Cars and proudly presented by the French president. Among other changes, it would see a new entrance built for the Mona Lisa. But at the price of about $1 billion, the project is as ambitious as it is controversial, and despite the government’s insistence to the contrary, its future is more than ever in doubt.
The Kicker
Three top curators, Key Jo Lee, Cheryl Finley, and Amy Andrieux, have discussed what it’s like to lead Black art institutions in today’s anti-DEI cultural climate. One takeaway? “Raise the volume and stay loud,” says Andrieux, executive director and chief curator of MoCADA. [Cultured Magazine]
Art fairs have always been market-focused, but as the art industry evolves and the cost of participating in fairs becomes more prohibitive, has the outlier “statement stand” become a thing of the past? Recent fairs from Doha to Los Angeles offer cases in point for this trend analysis. [The Art Newspaper]
Chanel Nexus Hall in Ginza, Tokyo, opened a new exhibition on Wednesday, showcasing the work of photographer Roe Ethridge. The show features a series of images and collages commissioned for the inaugural edition of Chanel’s Arts & Culture Magazine and will be on view through April 16. [WWD]
As expected, Rachida Dati has quit her post as France’s culture minister to run for mayor of Paris. But she hung on as long as possible ahead of a March 15 first round of voting, and according to critics, whoever replaces her will be shouldered with a long list of Dati’s unkept promises and unfulfilled initiatives. [Le Monde]
Spain’s Museo Helga de Alvear is organizing the celebration of its fifth anniversary with an ambitious program conceived in collaboration with artist Thomas Hirschhorn. The proposal will connect Cáceres with Madrid and Lisbon, culminating in a large inclusive party at the museum in Cáceres on the last weekend of February. [Museo Helga de Alvear]
The Kicker
IT’S PAUL MCCARTHY’S WORLD. In time for his first Los Angeles show in years at The Journal Gallery, local artist Paul McCarthy opened up to Vanity Fair about the fires that destroyed his studio and home, making the strange and disturbing art that, increasingly of late, runs against the grain, and how the LA art scene came to be. Spoiler: he had a whole lot to do with it. In this long read, McCarthy takes us through LA neighborhoods of yore when they were full of cheap, affordable spaces, and just as packed with artists. It was this cross-breeding of creative freedom that ultimately mushroomed into one of the world’s most fertile art hubs. In fact, McCarthy points to his large-scale sculpture The Garden, shown a second time in a groundbreaking traveling, 1992 Jeffrey Deitch exhibition called “Post Human,” as “probably why Luhring Augustine happened. It’s probably why David Zwirner was around. It’s probably why Hauser was around. It’s probably The Garden.”
