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 was superseded by bigger events, namely a global financial crisis that made multimillion-dollar animal carcasses in formaldehyde look — what’s the word, garish?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 Bailout
On 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 Gold
The 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?
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