The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

10 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016

News

United States

Charity begins at

home for the Mike

Kelley Foundation

MOBILE HOMESTEAD: MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART DETROIT. MEMORY FLAT WARE #58: © MIKE KELLEY FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS; COURTESY OF THE FOUNDATION AND HAUSER & WIR

TH; PHOTO: STEFAN ALTENBURGER PHOTOGRAPHY ZÜRICH. TRUMP: © MICHAEL VADON. CLINTON: © GAGE SKIDMO

RE

Germany to

open culture

house on

Fifth Avenue

New York. The German Foreign

Office is planning to use a former

ambassador’s residence at 1014 Fifth

Avenue, across the street from the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, to

establish a German Academy of Art

in New York. The building, which

belongs to the German government,

will host cultural and diplomatic

events, exhibitions, symposia and

artists’ residencies.

Originally built between 1906

and 1907 for the family of James

Gerard, who became the US

Ambassador in Berlin, the six-sto-

rey townhouse was bought by the

Federal Republic of Germany in

1960. For decades, it was used by the
      Goethe-Institut, the German culture
      and language organisation that has
      150 international outposts. In 2010,
      the institute moved downtown.
      Since then, the building has
      mostly remained vacant. The
      German Foreign Office now plans
      to modernise the townhouse and
      is aiming to raise money for the
      project, mainly from private spon-
      sors, with some state support.

Lutheran exhibitions

“In these stormy times, our trans-

atlantic partnership with the US

remains crucial,” says Andreas

Görgen, the director-general for

culture and communication at the

German ministry of foreign afairs. As

well as the new German Academy in

New York, the German government

hopes to acquire Thomas Mann’s

house in California. That property,

in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, is

the place where the German author

wrote Doctor Faustus. It was put

on the market for $15m this year,

prompting appeals in Germany for

the government to buy it and trans-

form it into a writers’ retreat.

The German government has

also backed a series of exhibitions

in the US tied to the 500th anniver-

sary of the publication of Martin

Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. A trio of

exhibitions dedicated to Luther is

now on view at the Morgan Library

& Museum in New York, the Minne-

apolis Institute of Art and the Pitts

Theology Library at Emory Univer-

sity, Atlanta. Meanwhile, Renais-

sance and Reformation: German Art

in the Age of Dürer and Cranach,

which includes more than 100

works on loan from German state

museums, is due to open at the Los

Angeles County Museum of Art on

20 November (until 26 March 2017).

Helen Stoilas

• For comment, see p

ARTISTS

Detroit. Mike Kelley had no way of pre-
dicting the incredible controversies
of the 2016 US presidential election,
but he did create a powerful platform
for viewing it. His Mobile Homestead
project, which ofers an alternative sort
of community centre on the grounds
of the Museum of Contemporary Art
Detroit, has become the scene of bois-
terous debate-watching parties, with
an election party due to take place on 8
November. Inside the structure, which
is modelled on the working-class ranch
house outside Detroit in which the late
artist grew up, an election-themed show
fills the rooms and garage. It’s Your Party
(until 1 January 2017) is an exhibition of
presidential campaign memorabilia
from the vast collection of Morry “the
Button Man” Greener.
The museum’s director, Elysia
Borowy-Reeder, says that it plans to take
Mobile Homestead back on the road in
2017—the venues have not yet been
confirmed—“to do a politically nuanced
exhibition that deals with water”. She
says: “While some states are facing a
drought, Michigan is the biggest ‘fresh
coast state’, but has issues like what
happened in Flint,” referring to the dis-
covery last year that the city’s drinking
water was contaminated with lead. In
2018, the museum is planning a show
(the details have yet to be announced)
that will focus on Kelley’s influence on
other artists.

Artists’ legacy

Mobile Homestead is one of a growing
number of projects and exhibitions
across the US supported by the Mike
Kelley Foundation for the Arts, which
the artist founded in 2007, five years
before his death. This summer, the foun-
dation announced a $100,000, two-year
grant to support Mobile Homestead, and
$310,000 for other projects. The founda-
tion has also been working hard behind
the scenes to organise his archives and
the works of art in his estate, which is
fuelling a number of gallery exhibitions.
Most notably, Hauser & Wirth, which
has exclusive representation of the
estate, will show Kelley’s Memory Ware
Flats at its 69th Street space in New York
this month. These works have long been
seen as his most decorative series: wood
panels decorated with beads, buttons,
shells and other found objects that Kenny
Schachter once quipped “pass the Park
Avenue test” for being easy to transport
in pre-war elevators, not visually chal-
lenging and “instantly recognisable”.

But in an effort to plumb the works’

complexity, Hauser & Wirth will show

them alongside related sculpture, and

will publish a scholarly catalogue with

an essay by Ralph Rugoff, the director

of London’s Hayward Gallery. The show,

Memory Ware (3 November-23 Decem-

ber), and the book have been produced in

partnership with the artist’s foundation.

Last month, Hauser & Wirth pre-

sented its first London show of the artist,

Framed and Frame (until 19 November),

featuring his Chinatown Wishing Well

installation, a craggy mound covered

with votive candles and reliquaries. And

next year, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel

will hold the first show dedicated to the

artist’s Superman-inspired, cave-like

Kandor series in Los Angeles.

Supporting artists

Group shows looking to include Kelley

are also happening across the country.

“I would say that the level of interest

right now is very high,” says Mary Clare

Stevens, who became the executive direc-

tor of the foundation after working as the

artist’s studio manager. “We don’t have

a full list yet for the collection, but we

work closely with curators to help direct

them and go over what might work.”

Stevens says that the foundation

issued $310,000 in grants to artists

and small arts organisations this year,

including a grant for Radio Imagination,

a project exploring the legacy of the

African-American sci-fi writer Octavia

Butler through events and exhibitions.

“Mike saw his legacy as a way of sup-

porting other artists’ work,” says Paul

Schimmel, a curator who initially served

on the foundation’s board and was later

instrumental in helping Hauser & Wirth

to gain exclusive representation of the

artist’s estate. “Almost all artist founda-

tions are begun by artists very, very late

in life. The fact that Mike started this

when he was in his early 50s and asked

John [Welchman] and I to be directors is

really unusual and speaks to his commit-

ment to supporting other artists.”

Welchman, an art historian, contin-

ues to serve on the board, alongside the

artist Jim Shaw, the arts patron Gary

Cypres, the Getty Foundation’s deputy

director, Joan Weinstein, and Los Angeles

County Museum of Art curator Steph-

anie Barron, who took Schimmel’s place

as a museum expert when he stepped

down to become a partner in his gallery.

Stevens did not have an update on

the preparation of the archive, which

the foundation’s website says will be

available for consultation by research-

ers and scholars “in the near future”,

or on the placement of works of art in

museums. But she says that finding good

homes for the remaining art is an impor-

tant goal. “Part of our bigger plan is to

make works available to a broad public,

to place them in important institutions

internationally,” she says.

Jori Finkel

As shows open in

London and New York,

the artist’s Mobile

Homestead will hit the

road again in Detroit

next year

Would Clinton or Trump be better for the arts?

We examine the two presidential candidates’ arts policies—or lack of them

POLITICS

Washington, DC. With so much at stake in this
month’s US presidential election, little attention has
been paid to how the next leader of the free world will
afect the arts in the US. But as the nation’s symbolic
and bureaucratic leader, the next president stands to
hold profound sway over its cultural agenda.
Although neither campaign has an officially
stated position on the arts, a spokeswoman for
Hillary Clinton pointed us towards several quotes
by the candidate on the matter, including one from
a forum in October 2015 in which she defended

funding for the National Endowment for the Arts

(from which Republicans have recently sought to

remove funding entirely). Clinton said: “I believe that

the arts and culture are important in their own right,

but they’re also important drivers for economic

growth, tourism [and] attracting young people.”

This sentiment would seem consistent with Clin-

ton’s public roles as secretary of state, senator from

New York and even First Lady, a role in which she

was awarded the Americans for the Arts National

Arts Award for Arts Advocacy in 1999. As senator, she

voted in 2004 to allow artists to write of fair-market

value on charitable gifts, rather than simply the cost

of the materials used. At the State Department, her

ability to support the arts was more limited, but in

2013, she wrote an essay for Vanity Fair praising the

Art in Embassies programme.

Donald Trump’s record on the arts is less clear.

His campaign made no comment, and he has had

fewer opportunities to support the arts in the

way Clinton has. But for a man of his purported

wealth, his interactions with the art world have

been markedly limited: no public collecting and no

museum-board membership. Intriguingly, in 2006,

the presidential candidate trademarked “Trump Art

Collection”, but he has yet to capitalise on it.

On a policy level, there is only so much a pres-

ident can do. The arts in America are much more

dependent on the private sector than in other parts

of the world; US museums receive just 18% of their

revenue from public sources, according to the Asso-

ciation of Art Museum Directors. So even if Presi-

dent Trump were to get into a Twitter war with the

On Kawara bot, an automated account that tweets

on the late conceptual artist’s behalf, it is unlikely

that he would be able to pull down the US’s cultural

infrastructure single-handedly.

Dan Duray

Art lovers?

Presidential

candidates

Donald Trump

and Hillary

Clinton

Jonathan Horowitz’s sculpture Hillary Clinton is a Person Too (2008), in front of Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead in Detroit

Kelley’s Memory Ware Flat #58 (2009),

from his folk art-inspired series