The Art Angle

It’s a cliche to say that going to greater China is a bit like visiting the future, where technology is threaded into every aspect of daily life in ways that are both wondrous and scarily dystopian. But it’s totally true! And it was certainly the case for collectors and dealers who went to Art Basel’s revitalized art fair in Hong Kong last week. A little more than a year after the pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 edition, the fair was back in a cutting-edge new format that might sound like something out of science fiction. Here are three words to give you the idea: hologram art dealers. So what was it like inside the fair? And did all of the high-tech bells and whistles actually help anyone sell art? To find out, Artnet News executive editor Julia Halperin spoke to our redoubtable Hong Kong correspondent Vivienne Chow.

As much of the art world is beginning to rebound from the pandemic, the art market got a major shot in the arm itself: in little more than a week, New York’s big three auction houses held a spate of absolutely mammoth art sales, bringing in a cumulative $1.3 billion and showing, pretty unequivocally, that the art business is back, baby. But, to me at least, one of the most remarkable things about these historic sales was that Artnet News’s veteran market columnist Kenny Schachter didn’t seem to care, or even pay them much mind. That’s because his mind has been transported to a distant planet, far away. That planet is called NFTs. Yes, Kenny has become obsessed with non-fungible tokens, and perhaps more to the point, the possibilities that they open up for the hidebound way the art world works. Since earlier this year, he has written a series of columns on NFTs that have been pretty astonishing, and, in inimitable Kenny fashion, he’s made some significant money off this novel marketplace along the way. This week, we just published the latest of this series as Kenny’s big debut behind our new premium Artnet News Pro membership, which we launched to provide analyst-calibre coverage for people who want to participate in the art market. On this week's episode, Kenny joins the show, in all his glory, to discuss (among other things) his career trajectory, his latest column, and how NFTs have changed his life.

Right now, there's an exhibition at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, that is gaining international attention for a tragic reason. That’s because the show, titled “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” is dedicated to the memory of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman who was killed by police during a raid of her Louisville home on March 13, 2020. A former emergency medical technician whose unjustified slaying led to widespread protests and the nationwide "Say Her Name" campaign, Taylor has become something of an inspiration to some of the country’s most prominent socially engaged artists, whose tributes to her have made her a symbol of the protest movement. Those tributes, by artists like Hank Willis Thomas, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Theaster Gates, now fill the exhibition at the Speed, where the centerpiece is the already iconic portrait of Taylor by the artist Amy Sherald that originally graced the September cover of Vanity Fair. The show, celebrated for its emotional power, was organized by the Alison Glenn, associate curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. So how did a museum exhibition dedicated to a victim of police violence come to be? To find out, we're pleased to have Allison Glenn on the show today.

In the final installment of our mini-series Shattering the Glass Ceiling, Artnet News's art and design editor Noor Brara spoke with pioneering gallerist Mariane Ibrahim, founder of her eponymous gallery. Ibrahim opened her first outpost in Seattle, later launching another outpost in Chicago's West Town neighborhood. Now, as the last year's turbulence begins to level off, Ibrahim is taking another giant leap—this time, overseas—to open a location in Paris. Ibrahim is known within the industry for nurturing an exceptional roster of artists, all of whom she retains a fiercely close relationship with. Though many consider her to be a dealer of African artists, Ibrahim told Artnet News in 2019, "I don’t see artists as ‘African artists,'" adding that reducing individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds would be "very dangerous and opportunistic." This dedication is evident in the strength of the exhibitions and near-universal acclaim that follows in the wake of many artists she introduces to the market and continues to represent, from Amoako Boafo to Clotilde Jiménez.

The biggest story at Artnet HQ this week is not, as you might imagine, the opening of the first IRL art fair in more than a year, it's the launch of Artnet News Pro! After being in the works for literally years, we have unveiled a very exciting new members-only section of the website dedicated to covering the inside-baseball nitty gritty at the heart of the art market. It encompasses exclusive data-driven reports on the behind-the-scenes machinations driving the sector, together with our popular industry-leading market columns like Tim Schneider's 'Gray Market,' Nate Freeman's 'Wet Paint' gossip sheet, and now, Katya Kazakina's unique dispatches as the 'Art Detective.' That last column is particularly exciting because Katya has just joined Artnet News after nearly 15 years at Bloomberg, just in time for the art world to open back up, and the market feeding frenzy to begin in earnest. So who is Katya Kazakina? What is her origin story? How does she land those killer scoops? And what does she make of the future of the art market as it stands today? This week, we're thrilled to welcome our newest colleague (!!) on the podcast.

In the third episode of the Art Angle's podcast miniseries "Shattering the Glass Ceiling," Artnet News's London editor Naomi Rea spoke to curator and author Legacy Russell.  Russell is currently serving as the associate curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and is the award-winning author of Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020), which explores how digital tools have created space to escape the limitations society places on our bodies. Her second book, BLACK MEME is forthcoming, and will also be published by Verso.

You know the scene at the end of Bong Joon-ho's 2013 film Snowpiercer where they leave the hellish bullet train and see that the frozen Tundra is starting to melt and nature is coming back to life? That kind of gives you the sense of the relief that the art market is hoping to feel next week when, miracle of miracles, the Frieze New York art fair opens to real in-person audiences. This marks the first major art fair to return to life since the pandemic shut down the international art calendar, along with the rest of the world, in March of last year. After all, art fairs are, for better or worse, the lifeblood of the art industry, a place where collectors and professionals meet, greet, and do a huge chunk of their business. And they have been sorely missed. Marking a new beginning as the pandemic begins to wane, Frieze New York will also be a swan song of sorts for Loring Randolph, who has been overseeing the fair since 2017 and will now be stepping down to become the director of the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger collection in Dallas this fall. On this week's episode, Randolph joins the podcast to discuss the fair's move from Randall's Island to the Shed, how they're preparing for an influx of art-starved VIPs, and what she has in store for the future.

The second installment of this four-part podcast miniseries features Artnet News senior writer Sarah Cascone's interview with art collector and media executive Catherine Levene. Levene's 25-year career runs the breadth of the media space, beginning at the New York Times Company in both the corporate sales realm and later as part of its burgeoning digital strategy. After obtaining her MBA, Levene ventured into media startups, and ultimately started a new company, Artspace, alongside business partner Christopher Vroom in 2011. Artspace was one of the first platforms to introduce e-commerce to the art market, and in 2014 the publishing house Phaidon bought the company, helmed by Keith Fox. In 2020, Levene was announced as the new head of media organization Meredith Corp., becoming the first female executive to lead the magazine conglomerate that includes People, InStyle, Travel + Leisure, and Cooking Light. Born in Binghamton, New York, Levene has kept a pulse on the art world, beginning a collection that she continues to build year after year.

Welcome to Shattering the Glass Ceiling, a podcast from the team at the Art Angle where we speak to boundary-breaking women in the art world and beyond about how art has shaped their lives and careers. In the first episode of this four-part podcast mini series, Artnet News executive editor Julia Halperin spoke to Lauren Haynes, the director of artist initiatives and curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Arkansas. In June, she will take on the role of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasser senior curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Haynes, who was born in East Tennessee and grew up in New York, has worked in museums including the Brooklyn Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem, curating distinctive and influential shows on artists like Alma Thomas and Stanley Whitney. She has worked at Crystal Bridges since 2016, where she helmed the first U.S. presentation of the exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” (2018), which traveled from the U.K.

As we begin to emerge into the new realities of 2021, the challenges of the past year have made vividly clear the importance of having leaders in all areas of society who reflect the true diversity of modern life.Women, in particular, have stepped forward in ways more visible than ever before—from the history-making occupant of the White House to the scientists creating the vaccine and nurses administering it to, yes, the women shaping the art world as well.To celebrate these figures, we at the Art Angle are very happy to introduce a new special mini-series called Shattering the Glass Ceiling where we will be speaking to a group of contemporary women innovators who have become outstanding leaders in their fields, ranging from the trailblazing museum curators Lauren Haynes and Legacy Russell to the game-changing gallery owner Mariane Ibrahim to the entrepreneurial art collector and media powerhouse Catherine Levene, who, in building their impressive careers, are collectively “shattering the glass ceiling” of their chosen industry.