Here Are the 12 Biggest Controversies That Rocked the Art World in 2020 and Why They Won’t Disappear Next Year
From turmoil inside museums to extremely bad public sculptures of women, here are a dozen issues that got the art world talking in 2020.
December 31, 2020
Protesters attempt to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House on June 22, 2020, in Washington, DC. Police stopped them using pepper spray. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.
Within the art world and, to a much larger extent, outside of it 2020 was one of the most tumultuous years in history. Museums and galleries faced financial challenges that threatened their very existence, as Black Lives Matter uprisings forced a reckoning with the art world’s structural racism and controversial monuments that celebrate shameful histories around the globe.
Will a looted Pissarro end up in Oklahoma, or France?
Camille Pissarro, Shepherdess Bringing In Sheep, 1886.
by Doreen Carvajal
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- For more than 70 years, Léone Meyers family has fought to reclaim a looted painting, and yet she cannot bear the thought of displaying it in her Left Bank home, across from the River Seine.
The small work, by Camille Pissarro, shows a shepherdess tending her flock, and hangs not far away at the Musée dOrsay, with other precious French impressionist paintings. But the peaceful countryside scene from 1886 is fraught with a backstory of plunder, family tragedy and legal battles that stretch from Paris to Oklahoma.
A director confronts âglaring statisticsâ in her museumâs collection
By Diane Bair and Pamela Wright Globe Correspondent,Updated December 18, 2020, 2:53 p.m.
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Min Jung Kim is director and CEO of Connecticutâs New Britain Museum of American Art.G. L. Kohuth/Courtesy New Britain Museum of American Art
Min Jung Kim, director and CEO of Connecticutâs New Britain Museum of American Art, is a first-generation immigrant, born and raised in Seoul. She came to the United States to attend Wheaton College and later worked with institutions including the Guggenheim and the Louvre. She served as deputy director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University before joining the New Britain Museum of American Art five years ago. We caught up with Kim at the museum last month to talk about her views on American art, the museumâs new 2020/20+ Women initiative, and her overall vision for the institution â established in 1903,
Will a Looted Pissarro End Up in Oklahoma, or France?
A painting by the French Impressionist artist, with a back story of plunder and family tragedy, is at the center of courtroom battles on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep,” an 1886 painting by Pissaro, was looted from Léone Meyer’s family by the Nazis.Credit.Musée d’Orsay
Dec. 17, 2020
PARIS For more than 70 years, Léone Meyer’s family has fought to reclaim a looted painting, and yet she cannot bear the thought of displaying it in her Left Bank home, across from the River Seine.