Hunter Biden’s Gallery May Have Been Hacked, Art Collective Duels with Michel Houellebecq, and More: Morning Links for June 2, 2023

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The Headlines

TROUBLE IN SOHO. New York’s Georges Bergès Gallery, which represents artist and presidential son Hunter Biden, contacted the NYPD on Thursday to investigate a possible hack of its financial records, according to the New York Post. A client reportedly received a fake invoice asking for payment to a non-gallery account and alerted the firm. (This has been a popular scam of late.) Bergès did not comment. The gallery has also been dealing with a congressional investigation of Hunter Biden’s art career; Republicans argue it could be a conduit for corruption. If you’re in the mood to go down the Hunter Biden-art rabbit hole (it’s a Friday, why not?), critic Donald Kuspit has an essay on the oeuvre, and the artist himself has appeared on the Nota Bene podcast.

JOB POSTINGS. The Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford in England has named Frédérique Duyrat to be its director of collections and—cool job title—keeper of the Heberden Coin Room, Museums + Heritage Advisor reports. Duyrat is coming from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, where she is general curator of libraries and director of the department of coins, medals, and antiques. Also in the United Kingdom: Louise Fedotov-Clements has been tapped to be director of the Photoworks, the multifarious photo-focused nonprofit. She is currently national curator of contemporary art at Forest England (also a cool job title), whose purview is some 1,500 forests.

The Digest

The National Gallery of Canada’s interim director, Angela Cassie, is stepping down after almost a year at the helm, and the museum’s board chair said that a permanent leader will be named “soon.” A recent workplace survey showed that staff confidence in leadership has declined since the last poll, in 2018. [The Globe and Mail]

The Dutch art collective KIRAC (aka Keeping It Real Art Critics) is embroiled in a highly public showdown with the French author Michel Houellebecq over a film they made about him. (One tidbit: The writer called the group’s leader “a cockroach with a human face.”) Some wonder if the fracas is a stunt by all involved. [The New York Times]

At Galerie Christophe Person in Paris, the legendary Cameroonian-born photographer Samuel Fosso is currently showing vivid and imaginative portraits of himself in various guises that he made in 1997 on commission from Tati, the late-lamented department store in the French capital. [The New York Times]

Over the past 20 years, only two works by the 15th-century Italian giant Fra Angelico are known to have come to auction. Now a third will hit the block, at Christie’s London next month: A ca. 1419–24 scene of Christ on the cross that was identified in the early 1990s. Its high estimate is £6 million (about $7.52 million). [The Art Newspaper]

This year is the 10th anniversary of David Lewis’s gallery in New York, and he chatted about how he made the move from critic to dealer. In recent years, he has been showing the late, great Thornton Dial, and he said that “the shift to more historical material started to bring more serious collectors and much higher prices in very quickly.” [Cultured]

SURREAL. Some TikTokers have been apparently been trying to “cancel” the avant-garde legend Salvador Dalí, Artnet News reports. Among their issues: He had a certain fascination with Hitler, and when he was five, he pushed a friend off a bridge. Meanwhile, over in Shrewsbury, England, three large Dalí sculptures are going on view in Shrewsbury, England, BBC News reports.

The Kicker

MISE-EN-ABÎME MAGIC. In the Washington Post, critic Sebastian Smee has a crisp, illuminating essay about “one of those hall-of-mirrors moments that museums can sometimes generate, bringing on brief bouts of dizziness.” What occasioned this? An intriguing photo that Jim Gagnon took surreptitiously in the 1950s at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—that is now hanging at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a winning image. Click to give it a look. [The Washington Post]