Michigan Dealer Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud, Shelburne Museum Nixes David Adjaye Collaboration, and More: Morning Links for July 17, 2023

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The Headlines

IN THE COURTROOM. Michigan art dealer Wendy Halsted Beard—who was accused of stealing some $1.6 million from clients—pleaded guilty to wire fraud in federal court, Charles E. Ramirez reports in the Detroit News. Beard could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on some of the unusual claims levied against Beard, which included that she replaced “one client’s signed photograph with a $405.26 purchase from the Ansel Adams Gallery’s gift shop,” Ryan Patrick Hooper wrote. The F.B.I. detailed cases of her failing to pay a consignor when she sold a work and failing to deliver a work to a buyer. “This defendant swindled numerous families out of valuable artwork and lied to them repeatedly in order to keep her fraud scheme afloat,” U.S. Attorney Dawn N. Ison said in a statement.

LIVES OF THE ARTISTS. New York fixture Tabboo! discussed his burgeoning painting career with the Los Angeles Times. The 64-year-old just opened a show with Karma in L.A. and told Deborah Vankin, “I don’t like anyone to see me painting. I paint in the nude, at 4 a.m.! It’s a sacred, private thing.” ● Koho Yamamoto, who’s also a New Yorker, is 101, still giving Japanese ink painting lessons, and discussed her life with the New York Times. Yamamoto starts off all of her students by having them paint bamboo. “I tell them to make their minds into nothingness,” she said. “Your brush strokes can be weak or strong. You learn to paint quickly and are allowed to make many mistakes.” ● And the London-based James Barnor, 94, told the Financial Times that when he was getting started as a photographer in Ghana, “you couldn’t leave wedding portraits to go and try new things. You did what you had to in order to make a living, and portraiture was the thing.” He talked to the paper about his favorite images in Tate Modern’s current “A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” exhibition.

The Digest

The Shelburne Museum in Vermont said that it will no longer have David Adjaye design its planned $12.6 million center for Native American art. Adjaye was accused of sexual assault in a Financial Times report earlier this month. The Shelburne said it will continue the project with another architect. [Seven Days]

France passed a law that will allow it to more easily return Nazi-looted art held in museums in the country. Each individual restitution previously required legislation; now a special committee will be able to authorize returns. The legislature next plans to pass a law to facilitate the return of human remains. [RFI]

The U.K. placed an export hold on an Alberto Giacometti chandelier that recently sold for £2.4 million (about $3.14 million) at Christie’s, providing a chance for a museum in the country to step in and match the price. Its seller was the estate of artist John Craxton, who got it at an antique shop for around $700 in the 1960s. [Artnet News]

A new 10-part BBC Radio 4 podcast from James Peak, The Banksy Story, dives into the story of the cloak-and-dagger street artist, and includes an interview with Steph Warren, a gallerist who worked at his print house. “The office was very DIY, you know, very punk,” she said. [BBC News]

Cyprus will stage a group show at the 2024 Venice Biennale that will consist of the duo LLC, the collective Endrosia, and artist Haig Aivazian. It will take take “ghosting” as its central theme. [In Cyprus via Artnet News]

The Kicker

A TEACHABLE MOMENT. The Helsinki deputy mayor who was recently busted spraying graffiti in a railway tunnel with a friend, Paavo Arhinmäki, gave an expansive interview to the Guardian that touches on the history of street art in Finland and his efforts earlier in his career to repeal draconian anti-graffiti laws. Arhinmäki, who was once his country’s minister for culture, admitted that his renegate art action was “a really stupid thing to do,” and said that he will pay a fine if it is imposed and cover the cleaning costs with his accomplice. He also shared one more regret. “It’s a shame that it had to be removed so quickly—I didn’t even get a chance to take proper pictures,” he said. [The Guardian]