The art world is rarely at a loss for great stories, but 2008 may have provided even more than usual. Below, what we considered to be the top 5 (actually, 6) stories in an exciting and turbulent year.
1. Hirst’s First (and Last?)Although he is not without his competitors, by 2008 perennial art world prankster Damien Hirst had emerged as the leading heir to Warhol, heading up a movement that views art less as solitary pursuit than corporate venture. This fall Hirst pulled off his latest, perhaps most audacious stunt: a straight-from-the-studio auction of primary market material (all from 2008) — and this shortly after announcing that he would be discontinuing his spin and butterfly series, instantly increasing their value. Well, everything in that sale turned out to be valuable. The three-session auction earned £111,576,800 ($200,953,342), a number that easily eclipsed the combined pre-sale high estimate of £98 million. Not bad for a year’s work. Then a funny thing happened. The event that threatened to upend the way business is done in the art world (dealers, who needs dealers?) was superseded by bigger events, namely a global financial crisis that made multimillion-dollar animal carcasses in formaldehyde look — what’s the word, garish? unnecessary? silly? overpriced? — and with a single stroke Hirst’s bold auction was transformed from avant-garde to rearguard, a quaint sort of swan song, the let-them-eat-cake moment of what will someday be known as the great art market boom of the early 20th century.
2. An Art World BailoutOn November 19, just after the New York contemporary auctions tanked and it seemed like art-world news couldn’t get much more depressing, the Los Angeles Times reported that the city’s revered Museum of Contemporary Art was in deep financial crisis and possibly looking to merge with another institution. The first donor to speak out after the initial shock wore off was mega-collector and philanthropist Eli Broad, who penned an op-ed piece in the Times offering to bail out MOCA to the tune of $30 million. The museum’s board of trustees remained relatively quiet in the face of this mega-proposal, until some three weeks later, when, on the day before they were set to meet, the head of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan, stepped out of the shadows and put forth a different proposal: a merger between the two institutions.
After much deliberating, MOCA’s board accepted Broad’s offer, which involves a matching grant system for half of the money and the donation of the other half in $3 million installments over five years. But more important than the crisis’s resolution is what it revealed about MOCA, namely that the trouble had been mounting long before the economy went south: Director Jeremy Strick had been overspending and dipping into the museum’s reserves for nine years, and past trustees had gone so far as to leave in protest of his excessive habits.
Now Strick has resigned, and the museum has brought in its first ever CEO, UCLA chancellor emeritus Charles Young; the hope is that under new leadership, the museum will get itself back on track. But the experience has been a scary one for MOCA, as well as the entire art community, and hammers home the all-too important reminder that a museum’s health hinges on much more than just its exhibitions and reputation. As the country’s arts institutions collectively brace for a recession predicted to be the biggest in more than half a century, we can only say, hopefully, lesson learned.
3. Art World Goes for the GoldThe art world dips its toe in many a water in the name of inspiration, collaboration, and, well, business, venturing into the worlds of fashion, say, (see Chanel’s [one-time] roaming art pod) or politics (Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous Obama portrait). But one area art has generally left untouched is sports. That is, until 2008, when the largest sports happening on earth just so happened to be taking place in what is (or was, anyway) also one of the art world’s most exploding markets — an opportunity that was not lost on that event’s hosts.For this year’s summer Olympics in Beijing we saw the Chinese government pouring billions of yuan into putting its best cultural foot forward in hundreds of new or updated museums and galleries. Chinese artists Ai Weiwei and Cai Guo Qiang also got in on the spectacle, and Western dealers like Pace and James Cohan hoped to stake their claims in a new frontier. But what will come of all those shiny new spaces now that the athletes have returned home?
4. A Tale of Two TransitionsWhen the Metropolitan Museum of Art named little-known Thomas P. Campbell as the successor to outgoing director Philippe de Montebello, the art world let out a collective gasp: Who? The choice of an obscure, bookish tapestries scholar to lead America’s, and perhaps the world’s, leading arts institution came as a shock in the era of… well, Thomas Krens, the controversial, high profile, celebrity-courting Guggenheim director who announced in Februrary that he was stepping down from his post. With his eye toward blockbuster exhibitions and global expansion, and his eccentric taste (motorcycles, anyone?), Krens practically reinvented the role of museum director — from gentleman scholar to swashbuckling, globetrotting, and, according to some, irresponsible rainmaker/entrepreneur. But as the stately de Montebello began to lobby on his successor’s behalf, the logic of the choice came into focus: Campbell was a vote for continuity, in favor of de Montebello’s steady stewardship and against the Krens CEO model. Meanwhile, the Krens resignation marked the end of a drawn-out power struggle between grandiose ambition and the limits of the possible — a battle whose many casualties have included former board chairman Peter B. Lewis, former Guggenheim Museum director Lisa Dennison, and numerous half-baked projects across the globe. With the appointment as Krens’s successor of Richard Armstrong, a former curator in the Campbell model, the Guggenheim seemed to indicate that it would be moving in a more subdued direction. And yet Krens soldiers on — in pursuit of his most quixotic project to date: a sprawling arts complex on a remote desert island.
5. U.K. Tries to Keep Its Titians (Or, What’s Good for Main Street)While Hirst racked up more than £111 million in a couple of days this fall, the English and Scottish national museums, have spent months trying to raise the £50 million it would take to keep a prized Titian painting, Diana and Actaeon, from going on the open market. If they succeed, the work’s longtime owner, the Duke of Sutherland, who decided this summer to take advantage of the booming market, will throw in the chance to raise £50 million all over again, for the sister work Diana and Callisto. Which is actually a deal: The pair are estimated to be worth more than £300 million together. Dozens of British artists have spoken out in support of the government effort, including Lucian Freud, whose own work sells for almost that kind of money, and Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall even stripped in support of the campaign, but at last check the Brits were still scrambling (although the original December 31 deadline has now been pushed to January). The story recalls Austria’s similar struggle, in 2006, to keep Gustav Klimt’s 1907 masterpiece Adele Bloch-Bauer I. The country was not successful, and the work is now in the private collection of American cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder, who paid the then market rate of $135 million.
And an honorable mention goes to... It's Not Easy Being GreenAny story involving an Italian politician on a hunger strike, a sculpture of a crucified frog, and the Pope deserves at least an honorable mention. When Italian official Franz Pahl launched a hunger strike in July over a piece by Martin Kippenberger, Zuerst die Füße (Feet First) (1990), which depicts a crucified frog holding a mug of beer in one hand and an egg in the other, he took indignation over a controversial artwork to a new level. Though it’s hard to see what all the fuss was really about — the artist said the piece depicts his internal struggle at the time that he made it, and it is, after all, just a frog — the story ended in hospitalization for Pahl, an erroneously reported intervention by the Pope, and the eventual firing of Corinne Diserens from her post as director of the state-funded Museion Museum of Contemporary Art, where the work was displayed. Local officials promised that Diserens’s dismissal was merely the result of “the difficult financial situation” and had nothing to do with her refusal to take down the foggy-eyed amphibian, but her supporters are not entirely convinced.David Grosz, Jillian Steinhauer, and Kris Wilton contributed to this article.
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