May 30 | Parisian African art museum abandons permanent space

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Despite the growing market excitement surrounding contemporary African art, it seems that art museums such as Paris’ Musée Dapper, long dedicated to the field, are experiencing a slump. In other news, French-Chinese artist Zao Wou-ki sets records in Hong Kong, and Tracy Emin makes a dig at those “male artists.”

Private African art museum closes down in Paris

Citing rising costs and a drop in attendance, Paris’ Musée Dapper, a privately funded, nonprofit museum devoted to both traditional and contemporary African arts, has decided to close its doors from June 18.

Established in 1986 by the Amsterdam-based Olfert Dapper Foundation, the museum was established in an attempt to bring African art to a wider audience. The foundation will leave its permanent space in an attempt to cut costs, and give the Dapper Foundation “more flexibility to carry out ambitious projects and invest in other spaces,” including the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, which will stage an exhibition of works from the Dapper collection this October.

 

 

Tracey Emin takes aim at money obsessed male-artists

Speaking at the Hay literary festival in Wales last weekend, Emin called out male “artists who make the same fucking work day in, day out.”

Not one to name names, but considering Emin went on to describe the process artists — such as Damien Hirst — have taken up, “they make it, they sell it, they make another version, they sell it. They get a bigger house, they sell it. They get another house, they make some more work…” etc. It seems pretty clear who she was referring to. “Being an artist is about making art, not about making money.” Details via The Guardian

 

Tracey Emin at Hay Festival ©

 

 

Sam Contis and Myeongsoo Kim awarded grants by the Nancy Graves Foundation

This year’s recipients of the Nancy Graves Foundation annual grant for visual artists — Sam Contis and Myeongsoo Kim — will receive an unrestricted prize of $5,000.

The grant was set up in 2001, five years after Nancy Graves’ death, to support artists experiments in new mediums and techniques. Sam Contis’ work is currently the feature of a solo show in New York at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, though the artist is based in Oakland, California. Contis hopes to use the grant to explore creating work in HD video. Brooklyn-based artist Myeongsoo Kim, who specialises in the creation of sculptural installations, will use the grant to hire high-powered computer-controlled cutting machines. Details via ARTnews

 

Myeongsoo Kim © vcuarts

 

 

Zao Wou-ki sets new record at Christie’s Hong Kong

Last weekend, one of French-Chinese painter Zao Wou-ki's  first large-scale abstract works 29.09.64 sold for $19.7 million — three times the high estimate of $6 million at Christie’s Hong Kong Evening sale of Modern and Contemporary art. This was a record sale for the artist, far surpassing that of Abstraction (1958) at Sotheby’s in Beijing in 2013, which brought in $14.7 million. Details via The Art Market Monitor

 
Zao Wou-ki, 29.09.64 (1964)