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The Headlines
FRIEZE FOR SALE. As the next edition of the Frieze art fair in Los Angeles approaches, from February 20 to 23, the big story is the brand’s potential sale by its parent company, Endeavor. While Endeavor and Frieze declined to comment to The Art Newspaper, readers have been brought up to speed on a few key developments in the story. For one, in case you missed it, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel has reportedly told the company’s board he is interested in tabling bid on Frieze, along with the Miami and Madrid Open tennis tournaments owned by Endeavor. To that end, he has evidently raised $100 million from investors. Yet Endeavor’s leadership made a point to tell reporters they “won’t show Emanuel any favoritism and will sell to the highest bidder,” adding that he is not the only potential buyer interested. What might Frieze cost? And what’s more, how much is it really worth? That, and who else might be in the bidding mix, is the multi-million-dollar question, and “fiendishly difficult to estimate without first-hand knowledge of the financials,” writes TAN’s Tim Schneider.
POLICE INVESTIGATE SALLY MANN PHOTOGRAPHS. Texas officials have filed a legal complaint, resulting in an active investigation over controversial Sally Mann photographs currently on view in a group show titled “Diaries of Home” at the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth in Texas, reports Francesca Aton for ARTnews. The images have been decried by locals and elected officials as containing what they deem to be inappropriate depictions of children. This is not the first time Mann’s artwork has been characterized as “child porn” for showing nude children, nor the first time she has defended her practice. “All too often, nudity, even that of children, is mistaken for sexuality, and images are mistaken for actions,” she wrote in a 2015 article for Times Magazine.
The Digest
Will a new museum in Paris dedicated to political cartoons include the controversial drawings of the prophet Muhammad by the left-leaning French satirical publication, Charlie Hebdo? Ten years after several of its illustrators were murdered in a terror attack over the drawings, organizers of the Maison du dessin de presse, set to open in 2027 after many years of planning, are questioning how to show Charlie Hebdo’s story and its famous Muhammad cartoons, while simultaneously keeping the institution’s workers safe. [Le Figaro]
The small Uruguayan town of Pueblo Garzon has ambitions to carve out a place on the global art map with an international art festival featuring over 20 artists, called the CAMPO Artfest, held in late December. The event, created by American photographer Heidi Lender just completed its 8th edition, which reportedly drew about 6,000 visitors. [AFP]
Artist Ruth Patir, who shut down her feminist exhibition “(M)otherland” at the Israeli pavilion at the Venice Biennale, will show work at the Jewish Museum in New York, and before that, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in March. [TAZ]
An intriguing rare 19th-century painting by the Black artist William Henry Dorsey was found at a thrift store and bought for just $10 in a Philadelphia suburb. [Artnet News]
The Kicker
ARCHITECT FRIDA ESCOBEDO PROVES THEM WRONG. The architect Frida Escobedo from Mexico City is the first woman to design a wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was unveiled last month, and that’s just the start of it. The rising, 45-year-old architect is profiled by The New York Times in a piece which, while praising Escobedo’s vision, also dwells extensively on how reserved and ego-less she is. “That quiet aura should not be mistaken for timidity or deference,” writes Robin Pogrebin. Yet Escobedo’s “understated” confidence and a certain “muted forcefulness” is repeatedly backed by quotes throughout the length of the piece, best defended as “an enlightened idea of what leadership actually means,” per Met curator David Breslin. “She’s not like those starchitects,” chimes the Pompidou Centre president Laurent Le Bon, for whom Escobedo is designing a major renovation. To this, Pogrebin adds, “the Met has rapidly raised her profile, yet apparently not her ego,” and “much like her personality, Escobedo’s design for the new wing is not attention seeking or noisy.” In discussing sexism in her field, Escobedo says, “people don’t have the same level of trust in a young woman as, say, an older-age guy. So it’s difficult to get commissions.” To this, she tells herself, “I’ll prove you wrong, I can make it.” Her creative philosophy? “One of the things that I’m interested in is this idea of architecture as being a living thing, that is constantly changing and shifting and that it needs to adapt and it’s not fixed,” she said. “That’s a condition for every aspect of life: Nothing is permanent.”
The post “Frieze’s Potential Sale Comes into Sharp Focus, Police Probe Sally Mann Photos Over ‘Child Porn’ Complaints: Morning Links for January 6, 2025” by George Nelson was published on 01/07/2025 by www.artnews.com