On Instagram, activist Derrick Ingram accused Wiley, a painter most widely known for doing Barack Obama’s official portrait, of having raped him in 2021. Ingram alleged that the assault happened in Wiley’s SoHo apartment.

“Posting something to Instagram doesn’t make it true,” Jennifer Barrett, an attorney for Wiley, said in a statement to ARTnews. “Yet, in today’s world, anyone can spread blatant lies with a single post, and the public accepts it at face value.” She said there was “no evidence” for Ingram’s claims.

Ingram, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist and the executive director of social justice non-profit Warriors in the Garden, said he was in a three-month-long relationship with Wiley, whom he accused of “extreme violence” and “severe emotional manipulation” during their time together. According to the timeline laid out by Ingram, the alleged rape happened during their relationship. He said he planned to sue Wiley in New York.

Barrett said that Ingram and Wiley had had a “one-time consensual encounter.” Ingram did not respond to a request for additional comment.

In the text posted as an image to his Instagram, Ingram explicitly named Wiley. In an accompanying caption that did not name Wiley, he wrote that he had been assaulted by “a predator that met me at my most vulnerable and knew that I was just starting to heal. He actively exploited my pain and today I am taking back my power.”

Ingram linked in his bio to a petition launched by Joseph Awuah-Darko, who accused Wiley of sexual assault last month. Like Ingram, Awuah-Darko claimed he had been assaulted in 2021. Also like Ingram, Awuah-Darko said he planned to take legal action against Wiley.

Barrett, Wiley’s attorney, alluded to Awuah-Darko’s allegations, which she said were untrue.

“The false claims against Mr. Wiley began as a vendetta by an individual who shared a single consensual encounter with him,” she said. “This person pursued Mr. Wiley for over a year, unsuccessfully pushing for a relationship. Recently, this individual has reinvented himself, soliciting cash contributions from followers and encouraging others to join his fraudulent Instagram campaign. His efforts have produced one other person, who also had a one-time consensual encounter with Mr. Wiley years ago and subsequently spent months sending him romantic texts seeking a deeper relationship.”

In a follow-up statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Wiley called the allegations from Awuah-Darko and Ingram “baseless and defamatory,” and questioned whether money, fame, and an “insatiable need for attention” had driven the two to come forward. Wiley included what he said were screenshots of text conversations between him and his accusers, which he said discredited their claims.

“What is clear,” Wiley wrote, “is that my accusers wanted far more than I was willing to give them.”

Wiley previously denied Awuah-Darko’s claims, saying, “Someone I had a brief, consensual relationship with is now making false, disturbing, and defamatory accusations about our time together. These claims are deeply hurtful to me, and I will pursue all legal options to bring the truth to light and clear my name.”

Wiley is renowned for his paintings of Black sitters that reference Old Masters portraiture techniques. A 2022 New Yorker profile labeled him “one of the most influential figures in global Black culture,” and said that with his Black Rock Senegal artist residency program, he was “shifting the art world’s center of gravity toward Africa.”

A Wiley survey held the following year at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco was a hit, drawing massive crowds. It has since traveled, appearing recently at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, with future stops planned at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Minneapolis Institute of Art in the coming year, according to Wiley’s website. Spokespersons for the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Minneapolis Institute of Art did not respond to requests for comment.

Update, 6/11/24, 10:15 a.m.: This article has been updated to include a follow-up statement from Wiley.

In the post, Awuah-Darko claimed that, on June 9, 2021, Wiley sexually assaulted him twice during a dinner held in his honor by Ghana’s Creative Art Council at the Noldor Artist Residency.

“On 9th June 2021 – I was sexually assaulted by @kehindewiley. It almost destroyed me,” Awuah-Darko wrote. “I hope my words and opennness about my painful experience empower others to come forward. I hope all that unravels creates a path towards not only accountability but recompense and collective healing for other victims.”

In the post, Awuah-Darko claimed that Wiley “inappropriately groped” him first, grabbing his buttocks. He then alluded to a “much more severe and violent” assault later in the night, though he did not provide details for that alleged incident. Awuah-Darko instead noted that he had difficulty confronting the alleged assault due to Wiley’s status as a gay man and because of prevalent anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment in Ghana.

“I am actively seeking legal action and hope that speaking about my abuse will empower other victims to do the same,” Awuah-Darko told ARTnews in a direct message on Instagram Sunday.

Not long after Awuah-Darko’s post went live, Wiley responded with a post of his own calling the relationship “consensual.” In a longer emailed statement to ARTnews, Wiley said the claims were “deeply hurtful” and that he would “pursue all legal options to bring the truth to light.”

“Someone I had a brief, consensual relationship with is now making false, disturbing, and defamatory accusations about our time together,” Wiley said. “These claims are deeply hurtful to me, and I will pursue all legal options to bring the truth to light and clear my name. These claims are also a slap in the face for all victims of sexual abuse. I have no idea why this individual has decided to target me this way, particularly since he has been trying to be part of my life ever since we met – flying to Nigeria to attend my birthday party, attempting to visit my home in upstate in New York, sending me warm and cordial text messages, and almost a year-ago to the day attending my exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and posting to Instagram that the show by his ‘dear friend’ was ‘breathtaking.’ He has posted extensively on Instagram about his struggles with mental illness and I hope he gets help with whatever he is going through. I will vigorously defend my name and reputation.”

On Sunday afternoon, Awuah-Darko responded to Wiley’s statement in a direct message to ARTnews, asserting the artist’s characterization of their relationship was not contradictory to claims of sexual assault.

“Reconciling with the painful reality of Kehinde’s assault against me was something that I only accepted in late October 2023, when I confided in one of my best friends, who is a gallerist. That is how recent my acceptance of my assault was and after years of therapy over time,” Awuah-Darko wrote. “My relationship with Kehinde in months and moments prior to my epiphany of the abuse I experienced under his hand, would have been friendly and even cordial; whether it was the birthday party he invited me to or discussions about the possibility of meeting. Much like his OTHER VICTIMS. I think it is important to constantly challenge the misconception that a sexual predator is a complete stranger. There is evidence to show that almost over 90% of sexual abuse cases reported are those where victims know the predator intimately or as family or a friend. I am of sound mind and stand by the integrity of statement today.” (RAINN, a nonprofit focused on fighting sexual assault, has estimated that figure at 80 percent.)

In March, Awuah-Darko referenced an experience with sexual assault by “someone who outranks me” in a post on Instagram, though he did not name Wiley at the time. In the post, Awuah-Darko asked for contributions for “projected legal fees,” with a target of $200,000.

The Noldor Artist Residency’s Instagram page includes a post from June 9, 2021 noting the dinner referenced in Awuah-Darko’s post.

The residency program, the first of its kind in Ghana, was founded by Awuah-Darko in November 2020 to provide emerging African artists with a dedicated studio space and a four-week retreat in Accra. The residency has since evolved into a museum, the Institute Museum of Ghana.

Awuah-Darko is an artist, musician, and curator, as well as a collector of contemporary African and diaspora art, much of which he has donated to the Institute Museum to jumpstart its collection. He has shown work with Gallery 1957 and curated a non-selling exhibition last year in partnership with Sotheby’s and the Olym Collection in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The Awuah-Darkos are one of the wealthiest families in Ghana, according to GhanaWeb, with a reputed net worth of $650 million.

Wiley, who was born in Los Angeles and is now based in New York, is well-known for his portraits of Black men and women done in the style of Old Masters paintings. He famously painted the official portrait of Barack Obama, and has received many institutional surveys.

Sean Kelly and Roberts Projects, who both represent Wiley, did not respond to a request for comment. Black Rock Senegal, the organization that he founded, declined to comment.

Update, 5/19/24, 1:55 p.m.: This article has been updated to include a longer statement from Awuah-Darko responding to Wiley’s comments.

Update, 5/19/2024, 1 p.m.: This article has been updated with a longer statement by Wiley provided directly to ARTnews.

This somber work is a welcome outlier in Wiley’s oeuvre. His current exhibition, which debuted in Venice in 2022 before traveling to Paris and the United States, takes its title from this monumental equestrian. Wiley is better known for idealistic paintings of Black people dressed in designer streetwear and presented in heroic poses typically reserved for their white counterparts in European art history. His 2019 equestrian sculpture, Rumors of War, places a Black rider boldly gazing down Richmond’s Monument Avenue which, until recently, was lined with statues of Confederate generals. Often, his paintings quote directly from the Western canon; horses, borrowed from an iconography of glory that dates back to the Roman Empire, are a frequent motif.

Wiley demands Black representation in the canon and the museum by adhering to the strict artistic formulas that these exclusionary institutions champion. His monumental paintings use naturalism, painterly skill, and intricate details—from curling foliage to designer logos—to fashion his subjects within the long tradition of European court paintings.

Surely, these skills helped him secure the presidential portrait commission in 2018 from Barack Obama. In a sense, Wiley trained to paint this portrait of power his entire career; tellingly, his non-presidential paintings look similar to that commission. The former president, like Wiley’s work, has come to exemplify how merely placing a Black person in a position of power is not enough to change the racist status quo. (In addition to his historic victory as the first Black US president, Obama’s legacy also involves brutal deportation policies and a ready embrace of drone strikes.)

Wiley’s new paintings and sculptures, made between 2021 and 2022, only render the disturbing dynamics of his older pieces more pronounced. “An Archaeology of Silence” makes abundantly clear that reckonings with history cannot be as simplistic as supplanting Black protagonists into narratives and compositions built on imperialism and anti-Blackness.

This latest body of work reinterprets scenes of martyrdom, war, and slumber from the European art historical canon. In this, they more or less rehash his “Down” series (2007–09): glowing paintings of Black figures in various states of repose set against jewel-toned florals and foliage. He attributes his return to this subject matter to the summer 2020 global uprisings sparked by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.

When “Down” debuted 15 years ago to an art world even less diverse than the present one, Wiley’s focus on dignified representation long absent from popular visual culture felt urgent. Now his depictions of fallen soldiers, saints, and even Greek gods are set explicitly against the backdrop of systemic violence that has long eluded Wiley’s inquiry.

In Christian Martyr Tarcisius (El Hadji Malick Gueye) (2021), Wiley replaces the young boy from Alexandre Falguière’s 1868 marble sculpture with a man he knows. The original work depicts the moment Tarcisius refused to surrender the sacraments he was carrying; for this refusal, he was stoned to death. Here and elsewhere, Wiley borrows compositions concerning sacrifice and martyrdom. But unlike Tarcisius, Saint Cecilia, and Christ—all of whom are referenced in the show—Floyd, whose death inspired the series, was not a martyr who chose to die for a cause. The implication recalls that of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, when she thanked Floyd for “sacrificing [his] life for justice.”

Throughout the show, Wiley spares viewers the explicit, bloody gore of death so often circulated online. He depicts his subjects with unwounded skin, echoing the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief that the bodies of saints are incorruptible and exempt from the rules of nature reserved for ordinary human bodies. The bronze Dying Gaul, after a Roman Sculpture of the 1st Century (2021) features a Black man in a hoodie in a semi-recumbent pose, supporting himself on one arm as vines wrap around his extended leg. Although it references an ancient Roman sculpture of a gladiator bearing a mortal wound to the chest, replete with intricate blood droplets carved in marble, Wiley’s Dying Gaul has no visible signs of injury.

Several of Wiley’s works quote European precedents but keep his subjects largely unharmed. The clothed figure in his painting Reclining Nude in Wooded Setting (Edidiong Ikobah),2022, lies on a grassy ground with her hips twisted to face the viewer, much like the woman in Victor Karlovich Shtemberg’s work of a similar title. It’s unclear whether she is slain, like many figures in the show, or in repose. This seems like an important distinction. And either way, Wiley’s subject manages to keep her bright white shirt unstained and shoes unscuffed as she lies in dirt.

Most of the show seems to gloss over loss, but this is punctuated by Wiley’s Youth Mourning (El Hadji Malick Gueye), After George Clausen, 1916, (2021), a sculpture of a child hunched over on the ground, head in hands. This work, in capturing the feeling of all-consuming, earth-shattering grief, succeeds where much of the exhibition fails. It is decidedly empathetic, and does not endeavor to make metaphor out of tragedy.

In the audio guide, Wiley says, “There’s so many opportunities now to talk about lost potential as a means to create a scaffolding for a better future.” By using the visual language of European colonial power and religious iconography without scrutiny, Wiley’s vision of the future is a constrained one. He may play with systems of power, but he does not shatter them.

[See the best booths at the 2022 Armory Show.]

With nearly 250 exhibitors across some 250,000 square feet at the Javits Center, just north of Hudson Yards in Manhattan, there is a lot of art to see at the fair, which runs until Sunday. Below a look at highlights from the dozens of sales that occurred.

The Headlines

RENOVATION ROUNDUP. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is fundraising for a $40 million overhaul of its galleries for Ancient Near East and Cypriot art, Zachary Small reports in the New York Times, and is about halfway there, according to director Max Hollein. Architect Nader Tehrani, founder of the firm NADAAA , is helming the project, which is slated for a 2025 unveiling. The Met is also planning a $500 million renovation of its modern and contemporary art wing, which was boosted late last year by a $125 million gift from trustee Oscar Tang and his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang. Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will double the size of its galleries for Islamic art via a $3.5 million renovation, Gabriella Angeleti reports in the Art Newspaper .

AN AUCTION ARRAY. An auction of 200 Nike x Louis Vuitton “Air Force 1” sneakers created by the late Virgil Abloh netted $25.3 million at Sotheby’s, Bloomberg reports. The proceeds will go to a scholarship fund for students of color pursuing fashion. Meanwhile, a new NFT by the artist Pak went for some $52.8 million in cryptocurrency, Reuters reports; those proceeds will go to support the legal defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fighting extradition from the U.K. to the U.S., where he faces espionage charges. On the more traditional auction front, a 1986–87 Francis Bacon triptych will hit the block at Christie’s London on March 1 with a £55 million (about $74 million) high estimate, Melanie Gerlis reports in the  Financial Times.

The Digest

Unionized staffers at the California College of the Arts, which has campuses in the Bay Area, began a strike on Tuesday that will continue through Friday, amid lengthy contract negotiations. [The Art Newspaper]

Claire Spencer, the CEO of Arts Centre Melbourne in Australia, has been hired as the first CEO of London’s Barbican Centre. The arts venue has faced allegations of racism from staff members, which led to changes in leadership last year. [Press Release/City of London and Artforum]

The national tour of the portraits of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively, has been extended to include San Francisco’s de Young Museum and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. They are now on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
[The Washington Post]

Speaking of Kehinde Wiley, Prince Charles paid a visit to the artist’s current show at the National Gallery in London, as well as the museum’s Albrecht Dürer exhibition. [@NationalGallery/Twitter]

And speaking of the Prince of Wales, today in Winchester, England, he will unveil a statue of Licoricia, a revered 13th-century Jewish woman who ran a successful moneylending business. Artist Ian Rank-Broadley created the depiction of Licoricia, who was murdered in 1277, 13 years before Jews were expelled from England. [The Guardian]

The Arizona home of Phoenix Suns basketball star Devin Booker includes a Cy Twombly lithograph and a Franz West chandelier. [Architectural Digest]

The Kicker

THE PACE NEWS JUST KEEPS COMING! Last week, the blue-chip gallery announced a new Los Angeles venture, earlier this week it hired author Kimberly Drew, and now it is adding to its roster the Austrian avant-gardist Hermann Nitsch, the aforementioned Melanie Gerlis reports in the Financial Times. Pace will work alongside Galerie Kandlhofer, the blood-wielding Actionist’s rep in Vienna. The gallery’s president, Marc Glimcher, told the FT that he paid a visit to Nitsch’s museum in Austria, and explained, “There’s some radical shit. And no one in America knows about it.” A 2023 Pace show will aim to change that. [FT]

Headlines

PROVENANCE. The Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland has announced that it will return more than two dozen artworks that were part of Cornelius Gurlitt’s collection, a sizable portion of which is believed to have been Nazi loot. Two of the pieces, both watercolors by Otto Dix will be returned directly to the heirs. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, the heirs to Piet Mondrian  have filed suit against the Philadelphia Museum of Art, claiming that its prized work Composition with Blue (1926) by the Dutch-born artist likewise has questionable provenance. The museum has pushed back, arguing that Mondrian never objected to the work being on display at PMA during his lifetime.

FAREWELL. The storied New York gallery Metro Pictures closed its doors once and for all on Saturday at 6 p.m. To mark its closing, Roberta Smith and David Colman sat down with the gallery’s founders Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer to reminisce on the enterprise’s lasting impact on the art world, in particular how it ushered in the Pictures Generation. Critic Jason Farago pointed his Twitter followers to the gallery’s OVR from last year, which includes a detailed history of Metro Pictures by writer Andrew Russeth. And Whitney Museum chief curator Scott Rothkopf shared a photo on Instagram of two matchbooks by artist Louise Lawler from ca. 1995 to honor the gallery’s closure.

The Digest

Investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s decision to remove the Sackler name from its galleries might have also been influenced by a letter (produced in full) that was organized by photographer and activist Nan Goldin and signed by several prominent artists, including Ai Weiwei, Kara Walker, Arthur Jafa, Maurizio Cattelan, and others. [The New Yorker]

The National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul has reportedly reopened since the Taliban seized power in August; members of the Taliban’s militia are apparently acting as guards. [The Art Newspaper]

BTS member RM recently paid a visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and enjoyed seeing works by Giorgio Morandi, Claude Monet, and more. [Twitter]

French luxury fashion house Chanel has named the 10 artists who are the recipients of its inaugural biannual Chanel Next Prize, which comes with €100,000 ($113,000) each. [ARTnews]

An exhibition dedicated to Suzanne Valadon at the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia “reveals how the French artist explored love, desire, family and jealousy,” writes Ariella Budick. [Financial Times]

Adrian Searle reviewed Kehinde Wiley’s latest exhibition at the National Gallery in London, which includes five paintings and a new six-channel film installation. [The Guardian]

The Kicker

SPIRITUALITY. As part of a new exhibition titled “Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice Across Asia,” featuring works owned by New York collector Alice Kandell, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has commissioned composer Philip Glass, a practicing Buddhist, to “craft a hypnotic 90-minute performance responding to artworks,” the Art Newspaper reports. The Brooklyn Museum currently has on view “Andy Warhol : Revelation,” exploring the Pop artist’s Catholic side, which Eleanor Heartney has reviewed. All around it seems like a moment to take stock and reflect as the new year approaches.

The company also said that it would give $1 million to the Studio Museum to help the institution continue supporting artists of African descent throughout their careers. That gift is part of a larger initiative by the credit card company to allocate $1 billion to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities. American Express’s contribution is being given in the name of Kathryn and Kenneth Chenault, two longtime patrons of the Studio Museum. Kenneth was American Express’s CEO from 2001 to 2018.

“We are so thrilled and honored that American Express will support the Studio Museum so we can offer deeply meaningful experiences to audiences in Harlem and beyond,” Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum’s director and chief curator, said during the conversation. “Both of these artists are innovators. What’s important about these artists is the way in which they’ve opened new paths, new ways of thinking. Their art has changed the way we think about art, but it also changes the way we see the world.”

Mehretu is considered one of the most important artists working in abstraction today. Her deeply layered canvases reference architectural plans and public spaces, as well as today’s most pressing issues, from protests for racial justice to the ongoing global migrant crisis. She was the recently the subject of a major mid-career survey that showed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019 and the Whitney Museum in New York in 2021. In 2004, with a group of fellow artists, she cofounded a residency program, Denniston Hill, in the Catskills.

Throughout his career, Wiley has created large-scale paintings and portraits that reimagine famous works from the Western art canon by replacing their central white figures with Black ones, who are often dressed in luxurious clothing amid colorful floral backdrops. He was the subject of a major traveling survey that opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 2015 before heading to six other institutions across the country. In 2017, Wiley was selected by President Barack Obama to paint his official portrait, which was unveiled in 2018 and is currently on a national tour. Next month, he will open an exhibition at the National Gallery in London. In 2019, Wiley established a residency program, Black Rock, in Senegal.

Both Mehretu and Wiley participated in the Studio Museum’s famed artist-in-residence program, in 2000–01 and 2001–02, respectively. Each year, the Studio Museum hosts three artists for the 11-month program, which includes studio space and culminates in an annual exhibition of their work. Over 150 artists have participated since its launch in the early 1970s. Other alumni include some of the most closely watched artists working today, including Kerry James Marshall, David Hammons, Simone Leigh, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, and Lauren Halsey.

“What the Studio Museum did, and what we’re trying to do at Denniston Hill,” Mehretu said during the conversation, “is create places where new futures are formed. They became important because they don’t exist—they haven’t existed in the past. The Studio Museum created a platform for us to have a very different platform and provide a different future.”

Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite (2017) depicts Yiadom-Boakye on a life-size scale. In it, she is outfitted in traditional English hunting garb, rifle in hand. At her feet are five dead hares, and behind her extends a lush green landscape. The work is a reinterpretation of British artist George Romney’s 1763 portrait of the aristocrat Jacob Morland that is now in the collection of London’s Tate Britain.

“Through my time at Yale I was drawn into the language and history of power—its negotiation, its use, and its potential promise for Black figurative painting, as is exemplified in the body of work titled Trickster,” Wiley said in a statement. “Lynette’s portrait takes its cues directly from the tradition of British hunting portraits and evokes a new sensibility, temperature, and cultural logic with regards to the Black female body in hallowed space.”

The portrait—the first work by Wiley that Yale’s museums have acquired—is an example of the artist’s practice of placing Black figures within art historical spaces. Wiley’s aim is to subvert the norms of Western art while also creating a new portraiture tradition.

The painting is part of Wiley’s “Trickster” series, which establishes a pantheon of some of the most prominent contemporary Black artists. Also depicted in that series are Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Derrick Adams, and Carrie Mae Weems. Each artist is shown in the grand style of court portraiture, with dramatic lighting and hauteur.

“In addition to its merits as an unusual and effective example of his work, Wiley’s portrait of Yiadom-Boakye stands as a meaningful tribute from one painter to another,” said Keely Orgeman, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Yale University Art Gallery. “We hope it will hold particular significance for Yale’s community of artists.”

The portrait will be on view through 2021 at the Yale Center for British Art, after which it will travel to the Yale University Art Gallery.

The Headlines

THE RECLUSIVE ARTIST CADY NOLAND IS BACK with an extremely rare solo show that includes new work at Galerie Buchholz in New York. The exhibition, which was unannounced and just opened, is tied to a freshly printed book by the artist and the art historian Rhea Anastas titled The Clip-On Method. The duo approached Buchholz about doing a show, and the gallery’s proprietors handed over the keys to their Manhattan space, Nate Freeman reports in Artnet News . (As it happens, dealer José Freire told ARTnews a few years back that he once gave Noland gallery keys so she could install a piece at her leisure.) Meanwhile, ARTnews contributor Greg Allen has investigated where Noland may have sourced some steel fencing and plastic barricades in the show.

WITH VIRUS TRANSMISSION EBBING IN SOME PLACES, museums are getting back to business. The latest sign: the reopening of various Yayoi Kusama “Infinity Rooms,” the small, enclosed, mirrored chambers that are great for taking selfies but not necessarily great for enjoying during an airborne pandemic. The Art Newspaper reports that, starting this week, the New York Botanical Garden has put on sale tickets to an “Infinity Room” that will allow visitors to enter in August; it’s part of the museum’s major Kusama show that it opened back in April. Per ArtDaily, the Rubell Museum in Miami is welcoming people back into its two rooms starting today. As it happens, one of the Rubell pieces, from 2017, has an apropos title: INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM – LET’S SURVIVE FOREVER.”

The Digest

The sculptor Laura “Missie” Thorne, who cofounded what is now the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado with two other artists, has died at the age of 79. The institution opened in 1979 in an old power plant, and relocated to its current Shigeru Ban–designed home in 2014. [Aspen Times]

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt astride a horse—long criticized as racist and colonialist—is set to be removed from the grounds of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. The New York City Public Design voted unanimously that it should reside, as a long-term loan, with an as-yet-undecided institution that focuses on Roosevelt. [The New York Times]

An edition of a very different equestrian sculpture, Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War, which features a young Black man on horseback, will be offered by Phillips at a moment when the artist’s market is ascendent. [ARTnews]

The trial has begun of the Egyptian man who attacked French soldiers with a machete at the Louvre in Paris in 2017. He is accused of “attempted terrorist murders” and faces life in prison. [AFP/Barron’s]

Aiming to bring transparency, and sensible pricing, to the notoriously opaque art market, a new service called Facture unites catalogue raisonné records for more than 60 key artists with auction results, museum inventory, and gallery listings. [ARTnews]

After four years of work and millions of dollars, a remarkable Diego Rivera mural has been moved from the City College of San Francisco to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It goes on view there on June 28. [The New York Times]

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded grants totaling $3.35 million to 137 artists and nonprofits, including Amy Feldman, Laddie John Dill, and Olga Balema. [Artforum]

An 822-page new book provides meticulous documentation of the Sistine Chapel. Produced from 270,000 photos shot over two months at the Vatican, it is priced at £16,500 (about $23,100). [Financial Times]

The Kicker

IN A PUBLICITY STUNT FOR THE AGES, the first home that architect Antoni Gaudí ever designed, the Casa Vicens in Barcelona, Spain, will be available to book on Airbnb for a single night—for €1 (or about $1.20.) The 1883–85 structure was a private residence until 2014, is now a museum, and was described in great detail in a recent ARTnews primer on Gaudí. Architectural Digest story has the details about the hot, and very limited-time, deal: the single first-come, first-served reservation will go live on July 12 at 4 p.m. locally (10 a.m. in New York). Good luck! [Architectural Digest]

Thank you for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Nestled between two driveways, a stone’s throw from the headquarters of the Daughters of the American Confederacy, Wiley’s Rumors of War anticipates its role as monument to inclusion and representation. Wiley hastened the battle over Monument Avenue four years earlier when he was invited to visit Richmond by the VMFA and responded after a week in the city by proposing the 27-foot-tall Rumors of War. The museum eventually commissioned the work.

Rumors of War may be the most impressive execution of Wiley’s career-long project to depict contemporary descendants of the African diaspora in heroic poses of power. But before he created the huge work which was unveiled in New York’s Times Square before its installation in Richmond, he made an edition of nine smaller (though still more than 7ft. tall) bronze casts of the statue.

The third in that edition is being offered on Thursday at Phillips during its 20th Century & Contemporary Art day sale. The low estimate is $350,000. If it sells there, the statue will set a new record for the artist. In December of last year, also at Phillips, Wiley’s portrait of Mickalene Thomas made $378,000. Two other strong prices were paid for Wiley’s work in the last year too. Charles I and Henrietta Maria patterned after Anthony van Dyke and painted in 2006 was sold at Sotheby’s in May for $352,800. A year earlier, in June of 2020, Le Roi à la Chasse II from 2007 was also sold at Sotheby’s for $350,000 to a third-party guarantor. These are the three highest prices paid at auction for Wiley’s work to date.

Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War

Work from earlier in the artist’s career is particularly prized. Long before the boom in figurative painting or the current vogue for Black artists, Kehinde Wiley emerged as an artist using portraiture to represent young African-American men in the style of Old Master paintings. During 2003’s Art Basel in Miami, developer Craig Robins hosted a show of Wiley’s Faux Chapel, a collection of eight arched works and a ceiling piece, at one of his buildings. A collector saw the piece and agreed to buy the entire group from dealer Jeffrey Deitch. (Robins kept one of the works presumably for being the sponsor.)

Later, the Brooklyn Museum’s Arnold Lehmann, now an advisor to Phillips, told Deitch he wanted to buy the chapel for the Brooklyn Museum and feature it in what became a seminal show of Wiley’s work Passing/Posing that ran from late 2004 until early 2005. Although a number of the Passing/Posing works have been sold at auction, the Faux Chapel paintings are closely held. The Brooklyn Museum’s website shows that four of the arched chapel works are in the permanent collection. The ceiling piece, Go, is there too. Robins still has his. One seems to be unaccounted for. But the last two works are now on offer at Phillips. Passing/Posing (Mercury After Raphael) and Passing/Posing (Decoration of the Chapel of the Sacrament in the Cathedral of Udine, Resurrection), each with a low estimate of $150,000. That’s pretty much where the most recent sales of Passing/Posing works have landed recently. Though one painting did make $252,000 at Sotheby’s in March.

The real question isn’t what price the chapel works will make—though their rarity and relationship to a prominent museum series would generally suggest they’ll attract an above average price—but whether the buyer has good feelings toward the Brooklyn Museum. The only hope the museum has of finally re-assembling the Faux Chapel is for a generous collector to buy these two works and promise them to the museum. For an artist like Wiley—with a market lagging far behind many of his peers from the same period—that still seems like a faint possibility. Given the painter’s prescience and influence, and his market’s rapid recent acceleration, that moment may already have passed.