Curators

Try These 10 Tasty Cocktail Recipes That Frick Collection Curators Mixed for the Museum’s Hit Lockdown Video Series


For over a year now, art lovers looking to end their weeks on a high note have been turning to the Frick Collection, which for 65 straight Fridays has offered new episodes in its YouTube series “Cocktails With a Curator.”

Each installment shares a drink recipe and invites viewers to join in at home while learning about an artwork in its storied collection of paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts.

Today, that streak comes to an end, with deputy director and chief curator Xavier Salomon having poured his final drink for online audiences last Friday night.

“Like all good things, they naturally come to an end at some point,” Salomon told Midnight Publishing Group News in an email.

The series ended like it began last April: with a Manhattan. Salomon chose that first cocktail in tribute to the island that the museum calls home at a time when New York was under siege, at the epicenter of a global pandemic.

Giovanni Bellini, <i>St. Francis in the Desert</I> (1480). Courtesy of the Frick Collection, New York.

Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert (1480). Courtesy of the Frick Collection, New York.

“It started at the time of lockdown and forced quarantines, when people could not go out with friends to share a drink, so the idea of mixing cocktails with art came about fairly quickly,” Salomon said.

He mixed that first Manhattan, which includes whiskey and sweet vermouth, to go with one of the Frick’s most famous paintings, Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert. Last week, Salomon wrapped things up with a variation of the drink, a Black Manhattan, which swaps Amaro, a bitter Italian digestif, for the traditional sweet vermouth. In the meantime, he discussed Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac by James McNeill Whistler.

“My favorite cocktails are also some of the best known and traditional,” Salomon said, “like the Martini Vesper, Manhattan, and Mint Julep. On the other hand, I had to struggle to drink an Ouzo Lemonade—I never liked the taste of anise.”

The video series was a surprise hit for the Frick, having been collectively viewed more than 1.7 million times to date. (Pre-pandemic, a typical Frick program might top out at just 400 YouTube views.) In May, the museum was honored with a Webby award for the series.

“I have always been surprised and humbled by the success of the program,” Salomon said. “I am glad that people all over the world responded to the simple idea that works of art from the past can have an effect on us and improve our lives, especially at times of crisis.”

Here are 10 recipes to try from “Cocktails With a Curator.”

Xavier’s Manhattan

1 part Italian Vermouth
1 part Bourbon
Stir well and strain into a cocktail glass
Maraschino cherry

 

Aperol Spritz

3 parts Aperol
2 parts dry prosecco
1 splash of sparkling water
Garnish with orange or lemon

 

Vesper

3 parts dry gin
1 part vodka
½ part Lillet Blanc
Chilled

 

Toreador

1 part blanco tequila
½ part apricot brandy
½ part fresh lime juice
1 dash bitters

 

Whiskey Sour

2 parts Whiskey
¾ parts simple syrup
¾ parts lemon juice
serve chilled

 

Jaded Countess

1 part absinthe
½ part vodka
½ part fresh lemon juice
½ part simple syrup
stir with ice and strain
top with champagne and garnish with a lemon twist

 

Widow’s Kiss

1½ parts Calvados
½ part Benedictine D.O.M.
½ part Yellow Chartreuse liqueur
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
mint leaf

 

Genever Brûlée

2 oz genever
1 teaspoon brown sugar
A few dashes of classic bitters
A dash of orange bitters
A splash of sparkling water
Garnished with a caramelized orange slice

 

Bloody Mary

1 part Vodka
2 parts Tomato juice
Lemon juice
Worcester sauce
Few drops of Tabasco sauce
Horseradish
Salt and pepper
Ice
Garnish with celery, lemon, olives

 

Limoncello Spritz

1 part limoncello
1 part sparkling lemonade
Topped with Prosecco and garnished with mint

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‘We Want Art With All Its Contradictions’: Massimiliano Gioni on How Curators Can Help Keep Radical Art Alive


In a remote 17th-century hut in the Engadin Valley in Switzerland, goats peruse around the newest installation by Polish artist Paweł Althamer. Surrounded by lush and largely unpopulated scenery, a sculpture of a thin and naked St Francis stands quietly gazing upwards.

The near-secret installation was paired with a series of happenings on its opening weekend in mid-July, the inaugural project of the newly established Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, who is also artistic director of the New Museum in New York, the nomadic art foundation plans to rove to unexpected places around the world.

It carries a similar mandate to the longtime collaboration that Beatrice Trussardi and Gioni worked on in Milan as the Nicola Trussardi Foundation, which, for nearly 20 years, brought ephemeral art projects to the public, with lasting effects. In the same vein, this new chapter seeks to be free of any contextual limitations.

We spoke with Gioni about the complexities of public art, and how the pandemic has helped bring collectivity into sharp focus.

Pawel Althamer, <i>Spacer [The walk]</i>Sils Maria - Val de Fex. Performance - Real Time Movie. Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021 Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Paweł Althamer, Spacer [The walk] Sils Maria – Val de Fex. Performance – Real Time Movie. Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021. Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Your present project with Paweł Althamer speaks to overlapping aspects of European history and culture. A small Swiss hut is hosting a Polish artist who is making a work in part inspired by an Italian saint.

It is European in the sense that we are all called upon to rethink “the global” in this time. Paweł is on many levels a very international artist. His sensibility is quite special, including his interest in spirituality. I think that is why the location was relevant. It is walking distance from Friedrich Nietzsche’s house, and not far from Giovanni Segantini’s museum.

I always say his work is ultimately about skin, and the social and physical epidermis—the tissue that both connects and separates, physically, but also ideologically, in the sense of the color of the skin. I see all these aspects in his work. He has always been interested in the ways in which, within Europe, people have redefined borders and traditions and cultures. When we say European, we should try to be a bit more specific. It is a whole patchwork of identities. Paweł has always been interested in understanding how nations and worlds change, and that I think is also present in this exhibition.

Pawel Althamer, Spacer [The walk]Sils Maria - Val de Fex. Performance - Real Time Movie. Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021 Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Paweł Althamer, Spacer [The walk] Sils Maria – Val de Fex. Performance – Real Time Movie. Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021. Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

What a weird time to be working, especially when your whole mode of operation of bringing people together has been complicated. Are there certain tools that you’ve acquired through working in this pandemic, especially as a curator, that will stick around?

It’s a hard question. We have a piece right now at the New Museum and an exhibition by Wong Ping. There is a video piece where he starts off by saying, “I bet you want to ask me about how my work changed in the pandemic.” I think there is fatigue around trying to offer some insight when all of us are being called upon to improvise. We are just winging it like everybody else. What has become apparent and more evident is how everything we do is a collective effort because the projects we make are a form of collective intelligence that bring together artists, producers, shippers, registrars, art handlers, and thinkers. It takes a village to make even the smallest project. That is our strength. It is also where the pandemic hit worst. This sense of community and participation is very important to preserve. Art produces collectivity, and even in a state of emergency, it’s been amazing to see people go to museums, to see people needing exposure to art.

When we did our last project in Milan in 2020, we had an extremely disciplined crowd that would show up every day to listen to the performers play. Even though we had something like 15 people at a time, we had hundreds and hundreds of people showing up. There was a hunger and a thirst for culture and for participation and for collectivity. In a sense, it made clear that all these objects and events we call artworks are a pretext for people to come together. That sense of togetherness is very important to remember, if you think of the frictions that have happened in America. It has a lot to do with the desire for every voice to be heard, and for a sense of participation and ownership that the pandemic made more apparent, or more necessary.

Pawel Althamer, Spacer [The walk]Sils Maria - Val de Fex. Performance - Real Time Movie. Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021 Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Paweł Althamer, Spacer [The walk] Sils Maria – Val de Fex. Performance – Real Time Movie. Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021. Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Museums in the U.S. were a political battleground before the pandemic. Is any of this informing your future programming?

Fortunately, or just because of the history of our institution, it is very much in our DNA to address certain questions. We had a major show by Hans Haacke in 2019. In the middle of all the conversations around museum support and scrutiny around the economy of the museum, we were presenting the artist who had first confronted that system. We presented “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America,” a major show that Okwui Enwezor had created for the New Museum, which looked at what he called the national emergency of Black grief in America. It is not that I’m patting ourselves on the back, but there is a tradition within our institution of looking to art to address bigger questions. The call to responsibility in the last few years has been to align the program to the daily practice. The program is not enough.

When it comes to the Trussardi Foundation, we found ourselves, paradoxically, in an interesting place because we don’t have a venue and we have this hidden practice. We had no museum to close down, which was incredibly painful for all institutions. We had this flexibility built in, and an ability to work in a very responsive way. That allowed us to open a new show with Ragnar Kjartansson in a very precarious moment between the end of last summer and the fall.

Paweł Althamer, Szopka [Crib] (2021). Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021. Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

In what ways do your two venues in the U.S. and in Europe overlap?

I think the two projects ask different questions and are different models. The ability to work in these two formats is something that I’m extremely thankful for. One learns that there are different scales at which to work. It’s a lesson also learned from the last year and a half or so: you don’t need to always operate at a grand scale.

There is a tendency in the industry to assimilate numbers of audiences with impact. Right now, I’m in Switzerland, and I have been thinking about how many people were actually here at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916—maybe 50? People are still talking about it. The impact of those ideas still resonate. I’m not in any way comparing our project to that, but I think there is an assumption that we too often fall into, where we think that big numbers means big success.

By virtue of being in the Engadin, the current project is a bit inaccessible to a greater public. It’s a wealthy part of the world. I do agree, of course, that numbers should not always matter, but I wonder how you negotiate the kind of public can get there. It is not as accessible as your previous projects in Milan.

This project falls into a trajectory of nearly 20 years of projects with Beatrice Trussardi and before, with Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan. This new foundation is an international branch. If you see it in that trajectory of history, it’s part of a clear effort to make art available to a very stratified public. All our shows for 20 years have been free of charge and brought art into the streets or formerly inaccessible places. This project is also the result of the fact that Beatrice Trussardi has been here for two years now. Her family is here and so she wanted to begin here. It is a fairly modest project. We have very simple infrastructure and very modest needs. Paweł is sculpting his work here. He has been here for a few weeks making the work here. Every project has tensions at work.

The project, which rotates around the figure of St Francis, has explicit connotations in this place. There are elements of the project that speak to the complexities of this territory, so it is part of a much wider narrative. There are certain connotations with economic conditions, but the world that rotates around here is much more complex and diverse. The people that will stumble upon that artwork will not only be tourists, but also people that live here, people who participated in the creation of Paweł’s work. Paweł is able to bring to the surface all the different agents. Making it somewhat inaccessible has to do with this idea that we are not creating immediate entertainment.

Pawel Althamer, <i>Franciszek</i> (2021). Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021. Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Paweł Althamer, Franciszek (2021). Commissioned and produced by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, 2021. Courtesy of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Photo Credit: Marco de Scalzi.

Taking a decentralized approach and not having an institution as a place with four walls has become an option for many, partly because of the necessities brought on by the pandemic. There is the Uffizi Diffuzi in Florence, for example, and gallery pop-ups around the world. The idea of being attached to one place has totally changed. Could you speak about that from your perspective?

When we started in 2002, it was a gamble and a provocation. I had grown up in the outskirts of Milan as a provincial person who would have to commute to Milan to see art. I grew up with this feeling of being slightly in a world that wasn’t my own. I remember every new city administration that was voted in, the first proclamation they would make was that they would build a contemporary art museum for the city of Milan. I remember this being discussed since I was a kid. So when we started, one of our ideas was that maybe we don’t need to make a museum of contemporary art. The city can be the museum. The museum is actually a software before it is a hardware, so let’s inject the museum into the city itself.

Sometimes in conversations around accessibility, there is also a notion of the dilution of the radicalism of art. I am not talking about accessibility in regards to access for wheelchairs. I am speaking about when making things accessible means making things less disturbing or provocative. We want to make art occur with all its contradictions, its force, its complexities, it’s frictions and shock power. We used to say that we didn’t make public art, we made art public, and without watering down its most complex aspects.

It was not art that had to rethink itself. It was more that we had to present it in such a way that it could become part of quotidian experience in all its complexity and radicalism. There were also pragmatic and economic assumptions. We thought we could achieve so much more this way, rather than running a full museum 365 days a year.

You’re much more flexible and radical and risky with the private foundation than with the New Museum, where there are all kinds of structural concerns. How do you try to move forward from the layoffs last year?

Thankfully, the New Museum is far from a rigid institution. I have been working there now for almost 15 years, and that’s because it’s an institution with an amazing history and I hope an amazing future, where the culture is really to embrace artists ideas and making them possible. Obviously, it’s a museum—it’s more stratified in the sense that more people work there. It’s also New York City, so that is also an impact, and therefore [there is a level of] attention to what we do, which is healthy.

What both these projects share is an idea of being a public institution in the highest sense of the term, regardless of who pays the bill. When you make art for others, which is where art begins, you are part of a public debate and a public exchange, and with that come responsibilities and also freedoms. A lot of what we do and what I do is create space for artists and for artworks and for dialogue to happen between the artwork and the public. Within that encounter, so many exciting things can happen.

Franciszek by Paweł Althamer, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and commissioned by the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation, is on view at Val Fex, The Engadin, Switzerland, until August 29, 2021

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Chinese Artist Yu Ji Has Been on a Meteoric Rise Since the Last Venice Biennale. What Is It About Her Art That Enraptures Curators?


There is something about Yu Ji’s work—it can stop even the most seasoned, seen-it-all curator in their tracks. Now, the Shanghai-based artist is continuing her rapid ascent to art-world fame with a solo show at London’s prestigious Chisenhale Gallery, her first institutional exhibition outside of Asia.

Chisenhale is known for propelling emerging artists from Lynette Yiadom-Boakye to Hito Steyerl to international acclaim, and Yu Ji appears to be no exception. Already, her work is making its way around the globe: she is the subject of a concurrent one-person exhibition at West Bund Museum in her native Shanghai, presented in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, and will participate in the forthcoming New Museum Triennial in New York.

For the Chisenhale exhibition, titled “Wasted Mud,” Yu Ji transformed the gallery into a kind of paradoxical urban-meets-wilderness cavern. A large black hammock stretches across the space, sagging under the weight of piles of rubble gathered from construction sites in fast-gentrifying East London. A table sourced from a market in London’s Deptford area holds a sculpture of a headless form. Electronic pumps disperse plant-infused water through tubes threaded around these displays, with some of the liquid leaking onto the floor. 

Yu Ji, <i>Wasted Mud</i> (2021). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2021. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate

Yu Ji, Wasted Mud (2021). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2021. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate

This collection of works—inspired, and in some cases drawn directly, from the show’s surroundings—is classic Yu Ji. Back in 2019, she spent three months in London as a resident of the Delfina Foundation and set aside hours to walk the streets, taking inspiration from the Thames, the city’s canals, and local flea markets.

“It was a time to really stay in the city and be with the city and not do anything for production,” Yu Ji told Midnight Publishing Group News. That experience formed the basis for her current show. 

For Yu Ji’s fans, her work offers a lesson in how to look at what’s around us. “Her work is appealing because it asks us to consider our relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to our external environment,” Aaron Cezar, the director of the Delfina Foundation, told Midnight Publishing Group News. “Rather than focusing on the tensions that often lie underneath these relationships, Yu Ji offers the possibility to explore how these connections can also be transformative. Coming out of the pandemic, I think this resonates with audiences.”

Yu Ji was born in 1985 in Shanghai, where she also received her MFA in sculpture from Fine Art College of Shanghai University in 2011. Though she was nominated for the Hugo Boss Art Prize for Emerging Asian Artists in 2017, it was her inclusion in Ralph Rugoff’s Venice Biennale in 2019 that launched her onto the global curatorial radar. Displayed across the central pavilion were sculptures from her signature “Flesh in Stone” series, in addition to a site-specific installation of resin-coated iron chains suspended from the ceiling, seemingly frozen in time and space.

Installation view, Yu Ji, Flesh in Stone–Component #3 (2017) at La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2019. Credit: © Yu Ji, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: 李欣怡 Li Xinyi.

Installation view, Yu Ji, Flesh in Stone–Component #3 (2017) at La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2019. Credit: © Yu Ji, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: 李欣怡 Li Xinyi.

On the heels of the biennale, during her London residency, “there was a huge interest in her work,” Cezar said. “Almost every major gallery requested studio visits!” 

Indeed, both Sadie Coles—the tastemaking London gallerist who snapped Yu Ji up after Venice, and now represents her—and Margot Norton, curator of the forthcoming New Museum Triennial, cited Venice as a critical moment. “It convinced me that we wanted to commit to representing her,” Coles said. “Great work always finds a market.”

“The work really did stick out,” Norton said. “I do think the ideas she’s exploring resonate, and the techniques she’s using are original. The work in Venice was doing something new and something I hadn’t seen before.”

Top curators and critics familiar with Yu Ji emphasize the novel nature of her use of materials and the underlying themes of connection with others. Plus, in a moment when the art market favors bright, figurative painting, Yu Ji’s work is the opposite. It’s not trying to be decorative, or clean. Instead, it seeks to directly confront tension: between the natural and urban worlds, between varying media and matter, and between the physical and the ethereal.

Yu Ji, "Inside China : L’Intérieur du géant" at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2015 © Yu Ji. Courtesy Palais de Tokyo. Photo: Aurélien Mole.

Yu Ji, “Inside China : L’Intérieur du géant” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2015 © Yu Ji. Courtesy Palais de Tokyo. Photo: Aurélien Mole.

“After a year of being wed to our screens through necessity, I think Yu Ji’s commission gives us a welcome break from a digital interface and allows us to get lost in physical material,” Chisenhale curator Ellen Greig told Midnight Publishing Group News. “Her work also explores the human body and shared space, and in that way, her work comments on how we are all connected and dependent on one another in some way; something I think is important not to forget.”

Jo-ey Tang, an artist and former curator at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, recounted an unrealized performance idea that was vetoed by the Parisian art center upon the artist’s 2014 inclusion in a group show. The proposal would have seen Yu Ji shatter a bag of cement, with the resulting dust particles continuing to linger mid-air long afterward, levitating in the space due to emissions from low-frequency speakers positioned skyward.

The concept was rejected due to safety concerns, but Tang remembers Yu Ji’s vision to “take the unconscious of the room… challenged curatorial and institutional authority.”

Yu Ji, "Inside China : L’Intérieur du géant" at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2015 © Yu Ji. Courtesy Palais de Tokyo. Photo: Aurélien Mole.

Yu Ji, “Inside China : L’Intérieur du géant” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2015 © Yu Ji. Courtesy Palais de Tokyo. Photo: Aurélien Mole.

This sentiment of pushing boundaries has long been reflected in Yu Ji’s work. Testing limits is what Yu Ji does in her art practice: the limits of the body, the limits of memory, the limits of materials, and further, the limits of what constitutes a series of works that spans years and multiple mediums and forms,” Tang said. “Ultimately, Yu Ji is asking: how does art work, how does art live in real time?” 

 

“Yu Ji: Wasted Mud” is on view through July 18 at Chisenhale Gallery in London. 

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Audemars Piguet’s In-House Curators on the Luxury Watchmaker’s Art Commissions


In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Midnight Publishing Group News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art. 

 

Fine watchmaking and the arts have a long parallel history. In great examples of both, craft, history, and specific absorbing details take center stage, producing strong emotional reactions in art and watch lovers alike. 

The Swiss luxury watch house Audemars Piguet—one of the oldest watch companies in the world, established by Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet in 1875—has for many years run an art program that exists separately from its watchmaking initiative, aiming to support artists from around the world in their endeavors to investigate lived experiences of all kinds. 

To discuss the program, the links between horology and contemporary art, and how artwork can help viewers enhance their emotional intelligence, Midnight Publishing Group News spoke with Audemars Piguet’s in-house art curators, Audrey Teichmann and Denis Pernet. 

What drew you to your roles at Audemars Piguet?

Audrey: I joined Audemars Piguet last year after a few years working as a curator in architecture for Villa Noailles in France and also for Galerie Lauren Bernard in Geneva, so I had experience in transdisciplinary arts and supporting artists through the gallery spectrum. Before that, I worked in research, like Denis, at HEAD, a design school in Geneva, where I was able to follow the work of art and design students and try to share critical points of view on subjects that are very important to the cultural moment, which I really enjoyed.

I really liked that AP, you could support artists with carte blanche, and give them opportunities that they might not otherwise have. It’s important for us to be radical, and to have a practice that really respects the core of the research and the diversity of positions that artists represent today.

Denis: I joined in 2018. For a long time, I was a curator at the Contemporary Art Center in Geneva, where I was mostly doing solo exhibitions and producing new artworks. Then for many years, I was doing research and freelance work as an independent curator. Like Audrey, I was really happy to join a program such as AP’s that’s very focused on supporting new production and developing projects with the artists we work with. 

Installation view of Cao Fei's Isle of Instability (2020) commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, on view at West Bund Art & Design, Shanghai. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

Installation view of Cao Fei’s Isle of Instability (2020) commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, on view at West Bund Art & Design, Shanghai. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

How does the program work?

Denis: What we do is support international artists by commissioning new artworks from them. We let them decide what they want to do—maybe they want to redevelop a project they didn’t get to do yet or reimagine it as something more ambitious or something new. We support diversity in our artist selection—they can be emerging or mid-career or more established if the support makes sense. The artwork belongs to the artist so it’s part of their body of their work and will eventually be exhibited with their other projects and in future shows. We also follow the development of the project from inception to the first presentation and exhibition. We’re very happy to accompany the artist afterwards, too, if they have another opportunity to present the work and need our help.

Audrey: Also, it is important to mention that we are co-curators in house, and it’s not only financial support that we provide, but a curatorial dialogue as well. That’s why we mention the fact that it’s a long-term relationship: it’s important to go beyond the immediate collaboration, to follow the presentation of the artwork, and to support the artist in the continuation of their careers. 

What kinds of artworks have you overseen recently and what do you have planned for this year? 

Audrey: We have two kinds of programs within the larger program.

The Audemars Piguet Art Commission is one of the programs, a competition that takes place every two years in which we invite a guest curator who is an expert in his or her region to participate. With their guidance, we select an artist. They then produce a large-scale artwork; most of the time, it’s a first attempt at a project of that scale—we tend to support artists who are not yet internationally recognized, and that’s very important to us. We’re working on our fifth commission at the moment, and it’s going to be held in April and May in Hong Kong. We’re working with two Hong Kong-based persons, Ying Kwok—she was the curator of the Hong Kong pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale—and the artist she selected, Phoebe Hui. Her practice is research-based, and the project she’s doing for us is called The Moon Is Leaving Us. It’s a great project, a poetic interpretation of the fact that the moon is slowly but surely migrating away from the earth. And our part is to facilitate dialogue around it and help her deepen her research—for example, we helped her to meet with an astronaut and provided a lot of information that was key for her, including data we pulled on the mutable laws of the universe and how they could be best represented visually. 

Denis: The other program we have is called Studio Audemars Piguet.

For that one, we go directly to an artist and propose him or her to develop a commissioned artwork, whatever they want to do. We accompany them from the development of the idea to the exhibition. A few years ago, for example, we had a conversation with the Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda. He had a very ambitious and a little bit crazy idea of doing a trilogy of video works called data-verse. It was going to translate in images all the data that human culture has produced, from the microscopic—for example, the quark on the inside of an atom—to the macroscopic.

We were very happy to help him present the first part of the trilogy, which was shown in the international exhibition of the 2019 Venice Biennale, curated by Ralph Rugoff. We then had the opportunity to present the first and second variations in tandem at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany last November as two immense, synchronised projects. And now in London, at 180 the Strand, the third variation and the complete trilogy is ready to be presented in the same room. It’s not open yet, but we hope it will debut in March or April. 

 Ying Kwok and Phoebe Hui in the artist’s Hong Kong studio. Images courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

Ying Kwok and Phoebe Hui in the artist’s Hong Kong studio. Images courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.

How do you ultimately decide which artists to work with?

Audrey: Essentially, it’s about the interests of the artists and their practices, their contributions to the contemporary art discourse today and also the diversity of positions they stand for. Engaging with all this is also why we work with invited curators—most of the time they have an interest in specific questions that are very important to the regions they represent. They are very involved and sensitive to the evolution of the specific art scenes they come from and the artists they’re interested in working with. 

Denis: In addition to the independent curators, we consult our colleagues, too. We’re a company that’s present in many countries, which is also why we’re so interested in artwork from a global standpoint. We collaborate with our international colleagues frequently—for instance, we worked with our colleagues in China to do something at the West Bund Art & Design fair last year, where we had the great opportunity to commission a work by Cao Fei. We also try to work with artists who can provide a certain critique or point of view on the world we live in today and how to better understand it and imagine what the future might look like. Topics we return to again and again are technology, science, and cultural identity. We’re also working with the Norwegian artist Jana Winderen whose work covers a number of environmental issues and seeks to raise awareness about the ways in which we treat the planet and its living creatures. Research-based practices are especially interesting and appealing to us.

How do you view the similarities and differences between fine art and horology? 

 Audrey: Where we see affinities is really in the interest of going beyond a first impression or a first look, which is applicable to both worlds. You know, fine watchmaking has such a degree of refinement that you can really enjoy learning about horology as a kind of science all its own; it’s packed with history, science and stories of craftsmanship. And the same goes for contemporary art. The more you know about it, the more you understand it. 

Denis: We’re also always looking for different perspectives in how both practices can bring value to lived experiences in society. We like to introduce that dialogue to both art lovers and watch lovers and engage them in a conversation. 

How has engaging with artists and art shaped how you work and how you think about the work you do? 

Audrey: It’s an interesting question because we’re never really working alone. It’s a job in which you have to talk a lot since nearly every part of it is collaborative. It has also made me sensitive to the fact that doing this kind of work is about everlasting change and mutability and the evolution of work, from its inception to its realization. It makes you question your own ideas all the time.

Denis: What has always amazed me is how efficient and fast artists can be and how they take constraints and deal with them in very inventive, productive ways. It’s amazing to see how quickly artists imagine solutions, which also leaves a lot of time for the philosophical aspect of the work. I really enjoy the balance between the practicalities of completing and then showing an artwork, and the desire to talk about the subject matter which often focuses on larger life things that we all spend a lot of time thinking about. 

Ryoji Ikeda’s immersive audiovisual exhibition at 180 The Strand in London. Photo courtesy Jack Hems and Audemars Piguet.

Ryoji Ikeda’s immersive audiovisual exhibition at 180 The Strand in London. Photo courtesy Jack Hems and Audemars Piguet.

Emotional intelligence is something we’ve been talking a lot about in the Midnight Publishing Group offices, considering the divisive times we’re in now. Can art be used to teach empathy and compassion, and perhaps lend us a greater understanding of the world? 

Audrey: If you look at emotional intelligence as something that assesses your ability to understand yourself and others, we truly believe that art is one of the greatest ways to engage people in that conversation. How we choose the work we show is very much based on how you experience it, so we choose art based on the strength and range of emotions it procures, from joy to sorrow to hope. We are convinced that these ways of questioning and discussing art can deepen someone’s emotional intelligence.  

Denis: We also tend to choose artists that are really interested in these questions themselves and how they apply to issues surrounding social and environmental issues and questions of identity. I think constantly being around artwork in our professional lives has really enhanced our own senses of empathy, too.

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Art Industry News: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Offers Aid to Capitol Curators Assessing Damaged Artworks + Other Stories


Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know on this Friday, January 15.

NEED-TO-READ

Mike D. on Selling the Family Jewels at Sotheby’s – The New York Times tours the late Hester Diamond’s collection at Sotheby’s offices in Los Angeles with her son, Mike Diamond (better known as Mike D of the Beastie Boys). Her eclectic holdings will hit the block at the end of the month. Diamond recalls asking his mother how she ended up hobnobbing with Willem de Kooning and other Ab Ex stars. “She would laugh and be like, ‘Oh, honey, you don’t understand—it was the same 35 people who would show up to any of these things.’” (New York Times)

Howardena Pindell on Diversity in Museums – The artist and former Museum of Modern Art curator considers how museum and gallery representation has changed since she conducted a highly influential seven-year statistical report on the presence of BIPOC artists in New York in 1989. “There’s more exposure today, but that’s mainly African Americans,” Pindell says. “I don’t think there’s more exposure for Latino and Asian artists. I’m concerned for everyone. But for Black artists, it’s better.” (ARTnews)

The Met Condemns US Capitol Damage – The Met’s president Dan Weiss and director Max Hollein have spoken out against the riots that took place at the US Capitol on January 6. “The actions of these treasonous rioters underscore the threat to democracy in a society where misinformation, racism, and other hateful ideologies are allowed to run rampant,” they said in a statement. They noted that while early reports indicate damage to art was minimal, they have reached out to Capitol authorities to offer whatever assistance might be helpful. Without mentioning the outgoing president by name, they added that an essential first step towards “healing and reconciliation” will be to bring those responsible for the criminal actions to justice. (The Art Newspaper)

Why Art-Market Regulation Is Good Foreign Policy – While new measures to crack down on the unregulated art market in the US have been greeted with skepticism by the trade, those in foreign affairs say the new rules are an important step in rebuilding America’s reputation and relationships abroad. There is still more work to do to close loopholes, including by establishing a federal office for investigating cultural property crimes, fostering bilateral agreements with countries at high risk for illicit trade, and enacting a blanket ban on importing stolen cultural patrimony. (Foreign Affairs)

ART MARKET

Dallas Art Fair Is Postponed – The Dallas Art Fair has been postponed (again) due to the pandemic. Originally slated to take place in April, it will now be held from September 30–October 3. (Midnight Publishing Group News)

Galleria Continua Expands to Paris – As Brexit continues to make Paris an increasingly attractive art-market hub, the international art dealership Galleria Continua is launching a new space in the Marais. The 800-square-meter gallery stretches across two floors around the corner from the Centre Pompidou. (Press release)

Frieze New York Reveals Exhibitors – The fair has announced the lineup for its inaugural edition at the Shed in Hudson Yards from May 5–9. Sixty-six dealers will take the plunge, including, notably, such international participants as Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Goodman Gallery, Xavier Hufkens, and Proyectos Ultravioleta. (ARTnews)

COMINGS & GOINGS

Shortlist Announced for the Next Big Thing – Eleven artists have been shortlisted to participate in a televised art competition to find “the Next Big Thing” in London’s art scene. Final contestants include sculptor Elyssa Sykes-Smith, portraitist Joshua Donkor, and street artist Frank Riot. With 40,000 votes from the public, the people’s choice winner was artist Tanya Harrison. (Press release)

Uniqlo Unveils Keith Haring Collection – The Keith Haring estate is really going for it with the licensing deals right now. After Dr. Martens revealed its new collaboration with the artist’s estate earlier this week, Uniqlo has released a line of t-shirts and hoodies inspired by Haring’s relationship to Tokyo, where he showed and opened an outpost of his Pop Shop in the 1980s. (ARTnews)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Amazon Donates $1 Million to Museum of African American Music – The online retailer has gifted $1 million to the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee. The company will help inaugurate the museum’s new venue at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on January 18. (Billboard)

See Cristina Iglesias’s Incredible Sculpture Inside a Lighthouse – The Spanish artist is creating a new work inside a historic lighthouse on Santa Clara Island, in the bay of Donostia/San Sebastián in the Basque Country. Iglesias is filling the structure with geological forms cast in bronze resembling the rocks and roots of the surrounding coastline. The finished product will be unveiled in June. (Press release)

Cristina Iglesias portrait. Photo by José Luis López de Zubiria.

Cristina Iglesias portrait. Photo by José Luis López de Zubiria.

The Lighthouse of Santa Clara Island. Photo by Idoia Unzurrunzaga.

The Lighthouse of Santa Clara Island. Photo by Idoia Unzurrunzaga.

The Lighthouse of Santa Clara Island. Photo by José Luis López Zubiria.

The Lighthouse of Santa Clara Island. Photo by José Luis López Zubiria.

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