Museum of Chinese in America Gets $3 M. Grant and More: Morning Links from October 12, 2020

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Museums
The Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, which met for the first time last month, includes collectors Pamela Joyner, AC Hudgins, Denise Gardner, and others on its steering committee. The organization aims “to increase inclusion of Black artists, perspectives and narratives in U.S. cultural institutions” by addressing inequities in museums’ leadership, staffing, programming, and more. [The New York Times]
Billionaire Tom Gores, who has served on the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art since 2006, has stepped down from his position as a trustee at the institution following criticisms of his business connections to Securus Technologies, which activists say charges high rates for calls from prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers. [The Art Newspaper]
The Museum of Chinese in America in New York, whose archives were endangered by a fire in January, will get a $3 million grant from the pandemic relief initiative called America’s Cultural Treasures. Part of the funds will go toward the conservation and repair of objects imperiled in the fire. [The New York Times]
Later this month, the Asia Society Museum in New York will open its inaugural triennial across various local venues. Boon Hui Tan, director of the museum and co-curator of the triennial, said of the two-phase exhibition, which will run through June 2021 and feature works by 40 artists, “We want to put Asian art in the foreground.” [South China Morning Post]
The National Galleries of Scotland is taking steps to cut ties with dealer Anthony d’Offay, who has been accused of sexual harassment. [The Art Newspaper]
The Market
Katya Kazakina writes on how art institutions are “expanding the canon and hoping to turn this crisis into an opportunity” by way of deaccessioning artworks and acquiring pieces by women and artists of color. [Bloomberg]
Sotheby’s is set to hold its contemporary and Impressionist & modern art evening auctions on October 28, with works by Rothko and van Gogh leading the sales. [Art Market Monitor]
Art & Artists
Google Arts & Culture will showcase Arts Council England’s project “The Way I See It,” an exhibition of paintings, dances, films, poems, animations, and more created by children in response to pandemic lockdowns. [The Guardian]
Frank Bowling, who is known for his semi-abstract paintings exploring forced migrations and histories of colonialism, has been knighted by the Queen of England. The artist said in a statement, “Trained in the English art school tradition, my identity as a British artist has always been crucial to me and I have viewed London as my home since arriving in 1953 from what was then British Guiana.” [ARTnews]
Here’s a piece on photographer Joana Choumali, whose work is featured in the digital edition of Photo London this year. The artist uses various materials and embroidery processes in her practice, and she said that “the different layers simultaneously veil and reveal the feelings that coexist in my imagination.” [The Guardian]
And more
Public Art Fund curator Daniel Palmer wrote on an untitled performance by David Hammons that involved the Henry Ward Beecher Monument in Brooklyn. “The power in Hammons’s action stems from his addressing the bigoted 19th-century norms about how the figure of the freed slave was represented,” Palmer writes. [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]
Finally, read about Che Zhao Sheng, a penjing specialist at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in California, which has expanded its Chinese Garden. [Los Angeles Times]read more