Julie Mehretu to Create BMW Art Car, Helsinki Deputy Mayor Caught Spraying Graffiti, and More: Morning Links for July 27, 2023

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

ISLAND DISPATCH. Taiwan will be represented at the 2024 Venice Biennale by veteran video artist Yuan Goang-ming, ArtAsiaPacific reports. Abby Chen, head of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, will curate the exhibition, which will address topics like “war in the everyday” and “the everyday in war,” per AAP. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is in charge of the pavilion (which is typically billed as a collateral event, not an official national pavilion, because of Taiwan’s fraught geopolitical status). Yuan was also part of the group show that Taiwan staged for its 2003 display in Venice. In a statement quoted by Ocula, Chen said, “’My cooperation with Yuan Guang-Ming will involve issues such as personal anxieties and hopes.”

CORPORATE CROSSOVERS. The next BMW Art Car will be designed by superstar artist Julie Mehretu, CNN reports. Mehretu joins the ranks of colleagues like Jeff Koons and Jenny Holzer in winning the commission, and her car—a BMW M Hybrid V8—will race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France next June. Meanwhile, Wallpaper went behind the scenes of Fendi’s collaboration with architect Kengo Kuma, whose many projects have included the Nezu Museum in Tokyo (in 2009) and the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum in Japan (2005). Kuma’s creations for the fashion label include handbags and shoes utilizing materials like washi paper and bamboo.

The Digest

The Brooklyn Museum’s director, Anne Pasternak, spoke with writer Emily Gould about her institution’s controversial Picasso show, which was co-curated by comedian Hannah Gadsby. “I was not prepared for how viciously the art world would treat Hannah,” she said. “It’s been shocking, and hugely disappointing.” [Curbed]

Artist Grayson Perry was knighted by Prince William at Windsor Castle while wearing a burgundy-colored dress of his own design. A show of Perry’s tapestries is currently on view at Wentworth Woodhouse in Rotherham, England. [BBC News and BBC News]

Antonia Ruder has been hired to run Gallery Weekend Berlin. Previously the communications chief at the Schaubühne Berlin theater, Ruder succeeds Maike Cruse, who was tapped last month by Art Basel to run its Swiss fair. [Press Release/Gallery Weekend Berlin]

The 2023 edition of the Maria Lassnig Prize, which honors a mid-career artist every two years, has gone to Lubaina Himid. The award comes with €50,000 (about $55,000) and a solo show at a partner institution, which this year is the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. [ArtReview]

A Mesoamerican ritual object that is believed to date to around 400 to 900 was returned to Mexico after its government asked an Austrian auction house not to sell it. In recent years, Mexico has been attempting to repatriate cultural artifacts that it says were illegally exported. [The Art Newspaper]

A new book looks at the controversial Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, and the effects that its unorthodox philosophy may have had on Jackson Pollock’s self-destructive impulses. [GQ]

The Kicker

BREAKING BAD. One of the deputy mayors of Helsinki, Paavo Arhinmäki, was caught spraying graffiti in a rail tunnel with a friend last weekend, according to the Associated Press. Intriguingly, the news agency reports that “Finnish street art experts” have said that the art “looked partly inspired by works seen in New York City in the 1970s.” (Arhinmäki, as it happens, is in charge of cultural matters in the capital city.) Finland’s agency for transportation infrastructure said that cleanup will cost some €3,500 (about $3,800), and police are investigating. The deputy mayor is rebuffing calls to resign, but said, “I have committed a crime and bear full responsibility for it.” [AP]