Art Industry News: Forget Ghost Booths Art Basel’s First In-Person Fair in Over a Year Will Feature Futuristic Holo-Dealers + Other Stories
Plus, the Sharjah Biennial is postponed to 2023 and influential architect and curator Terence Riley has died.
May 19, 2021
Art displays at Art Basel Hong Kong 2017. Photo by Nora Tam/South China Morning Post via Getty Images.
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 Wednesday, May 19.
NEED-TO-READ
Art Faces Pressure in Hong Kong – All eyes turn to Hong Kong this week as Art Basel opens its first edition in the city in two years against a very different political backdrop than last time. Conservative lawmakers are putting pressure on institutions like the M+ Museum to cull political works from its inaugural display. “It shouldn’t be the politicians who curate this exhibition,” collector and donor Uli Sigg said, addi
Review
Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern costs £10 for four minutes in two rooms – but it’s worth it
4/5
The 92-year-old Japanese artist’s Infinity Mirror Rooms exhibition is an emotional plunge into competing visions of the afterlife
17 May 2021 • 1:42pm
It’s like looking out from the trunk of a colossal Christmas tree: detail from Filled with the Brilliance of Life, Yayoi Kusama, 2011
One moment, you’re standing in a gallery at Tate Modern. White walls, wooden floor, solemn hush. The usual. But the next? Clunk. A sliding door shuts, sealing you in a darkened mirrored chamber, like Scaramanga’s funhouse in The Man with the Golden Gun. Just above head height, an ornate crystal chandelier slowly revolves within a transparent hexagonal box. The sort of thing you’d expect to encounter either at Versailles or in a two-bit Vegas casino, it is reflected, seemingly endlessly, on every side. Check out all these hypnotic, kaleidoscopic patterns. It’s like hitting the ja