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The Headlines
ART COLLECTORS ACCUSED OF HOARDING WATER AS LA FIRES RAGE. People are asking how fire hydrants ran out of water in the Pacific Palisades LA neighborhood that is being devastated by wildfires. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered an independent investigation into the LA Department of Water and Power over the issue, and why a Pacific Palisades reservoir was left empty for over a year, reports The Los Angeles Times. But online, many are pointing the finger at billionaire art collectors Lynda and Stewart Resnick, accusing them of hoarding the state’s water supply. Through their fruit farming conglomerate, Wonderful Company, the couple own a 57 percent stake in the Kern Water Bank, a reservoir of water surplus two hours north of LA. The Kern reservoir is actually separated from LA by the San Gabriel Mountains, so it does not supply water to the city. The company said in a statement relayed by Artnet News that “water intended for municipal use is not taken for agricultural purposes or food production,” and that the Kern reservoir conserves water that would be lost to the sea. Still, the idea of a private company owning so much of an essential resource, regardless of online rumors it could have helped stop the LA fires, is making headlines. “The Resnicks are powerful and their control of so much water is ridiculous,” filmmaker Yasha Levine, who co-directed the documentary Pistachio Wars, told the Daily Mail. Another online “digital museum” called Collecteurs, posted on Instagram that the Resnicks own “almost all the water in California.” In response to similar claims, the LA-headquartered Wonderful Company stated it actually owns one percent of California’s water. Seth Oster, Wonderful Company’s chief corporate affairs officer, told Fortune that current “disinformation and ignorance” on social media has hit a “new level of absurdity,” and is “often openly rooted in antisemitism” aimed at the Resnicks, who have been scrutinized in the past for their support of Israel.
MARY MISS AND IOWA ART CENTER REACH SETTLEMENT. Artist Mary Miss and the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) have reached a settlement over the demolition of the artist’s beloved outdoor installation at the institution, which will see Miss pocket $900,000 and the museum proceed with the artwork’s destruction, reports The Art Newspaper. The artist had tried to block the museum from scrapping her land artwork, titled Greenwood Pond: Double Site and built in 1996, and filed a lawsuit in April. But the DMAC claimed it could not afford to repair the piece it had commissioned, and despite $1 million spent on keeping up the work, parts of it were now dangerous and fenced off, requiring at least $2.6 million to restore it, an amount Miss disputed. The installation’s curving footpath and a boardwalk that appears to dip into the water inspired “decades of experiences at Double Site that were truly moving” to hear about from locals who reached out to the artist, Miss said in a statement. “The settlement should serve as a cautionary tale for future commissions of outdoor work, making it clear to institutions, corporations, government agencies, and individuals that long-term preservation cannot be an afterthought,” added Maxwell Anderson, president of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and former director institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Digest
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced $36.8 million in grants awarded to 1,474 individual artists, organizations, and museums in the US. Lucky winners include the Indigenous Youth Media Workshop at Northern Arizona University, slated to receive $25,000, and the Chicago urban design studio Territory NFP, due to receive $30,000 to support its community center Creating Space. [Hyperallergic]
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has appointed Soyoung Lee as its new director and CEO. She will start in April. [Press release]
Art collector Ron Rivlin said he lost about 30 works by Andy Warhol, as well as works by Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, John Baldessari, and Kenny Scharf in the Pacific Palisades fires, which destroyed his home. [The New York Times]
Yves Saint Laurent’s erotic male nude drawings are among the star lots in an upcoming sale from the late designer’s private collection with his partner Pierre Bergé at Sotheby’s in Paris. “Our emails will clearly indicate that the drawings will be sent to clients on request, because some of them are more than a little saucy,” said Florent Jeanniard, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of design. [WWD]
The Kicker
COPING BY COLLECTING. After the daughter of Yannick and Ben Jakober died at age 19, “they poured their grief into art,” reports The Guardian. The result is an exceptional collection of portraits of children made between the 16th and 19th centuries located in their Mallorca museum. The paintings are far from sentimental keepsakes and instead often tell stories of similar loss and tragedy experienced by others, including the children depicted, who sometimes died young, or went on to live troubled lives. The portraits, by the likes of Ottavio Leoni, Frans Pourbus the Younger and Francois Quesnel, are reminders that children, in all their innocence, can also bear the shadows of life’s inseparable darkness.