Sotheby’s Financial Woes Giving People the Jitters, Italy’s New Culture Minister Goes Back to Uni to Complete Degree: Morning Links for October 2, 2024

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The Headlines

SOTHEBY’S SPOOK. Concern about Sotheby’s financial woes, which are under recent media scrutiny, have risen to a new pitch. Reasons include a leaked report of fallen earnings in the first half of 2024 and a more recent Wall Street Journal  article stating the auction house has been “pushing off payments” to art shippers and conservators, while reportedly struggling to pay its employees on time. However, Sotheby’s disputed the employee payment claims, and when questioned about rumors of more layoffs, informed Artnet News “no further redundancies were made since this summer.” Meanwhile, in today’s Puck newsletter, Wall Power , art market journalist Marion Maneker writes that the WSJ report about Sotheby’s money woes had “surprisingly little to back up the claim,” and has put “consignors, creditors, and employees … on high alert.” But “there’s some indication that at least one consignor got spooked” by recent news, and withdrew, Maneker notes. Meanwhile, all seem to acknowledge that the 280-year-old house is in major flux amid a host of challenges. Owned by Patrick Drahi , Sotheby’s has $1.8 billion of debt and is waiting for a $1 billion deal to close with an Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund. Now, current and former Sotheby’s employees are concerned Drahi “has diminished this storied brand,” relays Maneker. But without Sotheby’s sending clear signs of reassurance to the market, Maneker concludes: “That silence – and the continued wait for Abu Dhabi to cut that check – has created a vacuum too easily filled with speculation and rumor mongering…”

BACK TO SCHOOL. Italy’s newly appointed culture minister to the country’s far-right government, Alessandro Giuli, has gone back to school to complete the undergrad degree he never finished in the 1990s, reports the Art Newspaper. The former journalist and president of Rome’s Maxxi museum just completed his final oral exam in philosophy at Rome’s Sapienza University , after criticism from political opponents about the gaping hole in his resume. That didn’t stop political protestors from shouting, “we will fail Giuli” outside the university. “We won’t accept [Giuili] coming back to Sapienza today as culture minister, because we know what his office represents: precarity, privatization, and lack of protection [for the arts],” shouted an activist. Next, Giuli is scheduled to defend his thesis, and if all goes well, should graduate by January.

The Digest

This year’s MacArthur “genius” grant winners have been announced, and they include four artists: Justin Vivian Bond, Tony Cokes, Ebony G. Patterson, and Wendy Red Star. With $800,000 up for grabs, the prize is among the biggest given to artists in the US. Other laureates include figures such as Severance novelist Ling Ma, Reservation Dogs co-creator Sterlin Harjo, and Disability Visibility Project founder Alice Wong. [ARTnews ]

For Somerset Arts Week (running until October 6), British artist Lottie Scott is drawing attention to the plight of ash trees in the UK, which are being infected with ash dieback, a chronic fungal disease, by creating a sculptural installation in a stone barn. [Somerset Arts Week]. 

Tomorrow, culture ministers from France and Madagascar will meet to set up a joint scientific committee on the restitution of human remains believed to be King Toera, beheaded in 1897, and two Sakalava leaders, all currently in the French National Museum of Natural History [Muséum national d’histoire naturelle]. The formation of the committee follows an official request by Madagascar for the restitution of the human remains. [ French ministry of culture press release]

A total of 47 tigers and three lions have died at popular tourist sites and parks in Vietnam, after being infected by the H5N1 bird flu virus. Among the parks impacted are the My Quynh safari park in Long An province and the Vuon Xoai zoo in Dong Nai, near Ho Chi Minh City. [AFP and Barron’s]

The Kicker

YOUNG SNAPPERS. Cultured Magazine has announced the names on its 2024 “Young Photographers List.” All under 35, the selected artists “represent a microcosm of a vast and remarkable generation of image makers,” writes Rebecca Bengal. They include  Dawoud Bey,  Justine Kurland,  Cass Bird, Elle Pérez, Lyle Ashton Harris, Tyler Mitchell,  Farah Al Qasimi,  Jack Pierson, Richard Mosse, and Ethan James Green. “Think of this new group as the next ring, moving outward, in an era when photography is perhaps more prized, more omnipresent, and more distrusted than ever before,” she adds.