Weekly News Roundup: March 4, 2022

Taiwan Pavilion Reveals Backup Plan for Venice Biennale

Following the cancellation of exhibition plans for the Taiwan Pavilion’s original representative artist Sakuliu Pavavaljung, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) disclosed their new exhibition plan titled “Impossible Dreams” at the upcoming 59th Venice Biennale. According to the proposal, “impossible” means “not-yet possible,” which describes: “a condition and a hope for better things, persons, and worlds to come. Just like dreams arising from trauma and bodies and spirits migrating across different realms, the project is a work of memory and conversation.” The exhibition will be divided into public programs and displays of archival materials. While the participating artists are yet to be confirmed, the public events will be led by Patrick Flores and organized by Taiwanese curators Manray Hsu and Amy Huei-hwa Cheng. TFAM was forced to change its plans after several women have come forward to accuse Pavavaljung of committing rape and sexual assault in several social-media posts since December. TFAM subsequently terminated its contract and collaboration with him.

Youn Bummo Continues to Lead MMCA

Youn Bummo will be reappointed as the director of South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). He has served as MMCA’s director since 2019, and his second term began on February 25 and will end in 2025. During his tenure, MMCA hosted exhibitions including solos of Korean artists Soungui Kim, Park Seo-Bo, and Lee Seung Jio, as well as “The Square,” a multi-chapter anniversary exhibition about the role of public squares and social movements in Korea. In 2021, the museum also published Korean Art 1900–2020, a comprehensive overview that examines 120 years of modern and contemporary Korean arts. Before leading MMCA, he was a professor of art history at Dongguk University in Seoul and has been an expert in Minjung art (“people’s art”). In the 1980s, he co-founded the Reality and Utterance movement, which advocated for a stronger link between art and politics.

Inaugural Director for Zaha Hadid Foundation

The Zaha Hadid Foundation in the United Kingdom has appointed art historian and museum director Paul Greenhalgh as its first director. An experienced curator in art, design, and architecture, Greenhalgh was previously director of the Sainsbury Centre (Norwich), director and president of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design (Washington, DC), president of NSCAD University (Halifax, Canada), and head of research at the V&A Museum (London). In his new role, he will oversee the construction of the new Foundation’s buildings, the archive and presentation of Hadid’s works, and make the Foundation’s collections available online. The Foundation was founded by the architect Zaha Hadid in 2013, and fully launched in 2022 as an initiative to preserve and promote the heritage left by Hadid and to make progress in the fields of art, design, and architecture.

IMPART Art Prize 2022 Winners Announced

On February 11, Singapore’s nonprofit Art Outreach named Berny Tan, Lin Huiyi, and Zarina Muhammad as the winners of the Impart Art Prize 2022 in a private ceremony at the ArtScience Museum. Each winner will receive SGD 20,000 (USD 14,700) to explore their interests and further their practice. An artist and curator, Tan focuses on questioning the system in personal experiences and deconstructing the binary between the rational and the emotional; Lin has been active as part of the duo Chow and Lin, and her research-based, collaborative art projects stems from her knowledge and perspectives from her economics background; Muhammad is an artist, educator, and researcher whose performance, installation, sound, and moving images delve into ecocultural and ecological histories, myth-making, haunted historiographies, water cosmologies, and chthonic realms. The jury of the prize this year comprises Tan Boon Hui, Patricia Chen, Catherine David, Honor Harger, and Russell Storer.

Phillips Donates Auction Profits to Ukrainian Red Cross

On March 3, Phillips auction house announced that it will donate the proceeds—comprising the buyer’s premium and vendor’s commission, totaling USD 7.7 million—from its March 3 sale of modern and contemporary art to the Ukrainian Red Cross. Since 2008, Phillips has been owned by the Russian luxury conglomerate the Mercury Group, which was started by Leonid Fridlyand and Leonid Strunin in 1993. On February 28, Phillips released a statement from its CEO Stephen Brooks condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and calling for “an immediate cessation of all hostilities in the strongest possible terms.” Neither Fridlyand nor Strunin have been named on the lists of sanctioned individuals by the United States or the United Kingdom. The March 3 sale totaled more than USD 40 million, despite five lots being withdrawn at the last minute including a Glenn Ligon work that was pulled after the evening sale had begun.  

• Taipei Fine Arts Museum
• Taipei Pavilion
• MMCA
• Zaha Hadid Foundation
• Impart Art Prize