The Art Angle

• The Magician Who Became an Artist

  One of the things Ben Davis likes about contemporary art is that he is always learning new things, because art spaces are always bringing new ways of making and thinking into the mix. Recently, unexpectedly, this has included magic. Specifically, Jeanette Andrews. Andrews began her career as a professional magician, but now works mainly in museums, creating a body of work that’s something new, exploring magic as an expressive medium. Her works usually bring together the science of perception, the intrigue of coded messages, and the history of illusion as a craft. Andrews has performed parlor tricks dreamed up by an algorithm to investigate human versus machine creativity; re-performed the earliest documented magic trick from 1584; and made art inspired by the use of sleight of hand in actual CIA espionage in the 1950s. And her explorations of this unusual creative space are actually getting their first dedicated museum exhibition soon, at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois—that’s a little bit of news we’re breaking on the Art Angle, as a matter of fact. Earlier this month, Ben went to see one of Jeanette Andrews’s most recent commissions in Boston, "The Attestation," at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology. He describes it as a hybrid of stage magic and social experiment. The questions of why, if, and how magic fits in in the museum seem fascinating to me, so he was happy that Andrews agreed to talk about how she pulled off her biggest trick of all: making magic art.

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• Art World Infamy: Inigo Philbrick – Nowhere to Run (Ep. 4)

  Art World Infamy is a special series from the team behind The Art Angle, investigating the scandals and schemes that have rocked the art world. In the first chapter, told over four episodes, senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella unravels the rise and fall of dealer Inigo Philbrick. After months on the run, U.S. authorities finally tracked Inigo Philbrick to a remote island nation in the South Pacific: Vanuatu, a tropical archipelago more than 9,000 miles from London and a world away from the art fairs and galleries where he once thrived. What followed was a scene straight out of an action thriller: a dramatic arrest, a secretive extraction by private jet—at the height of the pandemic, no less—and a return to face justice, along with tens of millions in claims from furious investors and collectors. In this fourth and final episode, we uncover what happened in the months after Philbrick disappeared and how his high-flying double life came to an abrupt end. Law enforcement officials and art-world insiders weigh in on how they found him, what it takes to prosecute art fraud—and whether a man like this could ever make a comeback in the art world.

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• Manga Mania Gets Its Big Museum Moment

  Manga is surely one of the most beloved and influential types of culture in the world. And while there’s long been a thriving international fandom around Japanese graphic novels, in the last 5 years in particular, there’s been a huge surge of popular interest, with manga impossible to miss in book shops and comic stores—and now in museums too. The big exhibition “Art of Manga” at the De Young Museum in San Francisco is proving to be a real event. As the title suggests, the show looks at manga not just as a cultural phenomenon but as visual art, digging into the history of the medium and celebrating its dynamic graphic and storytelling style. Specifically, “Art of Manga” focuses on 10 Japanese creators, selected to show the breadth of what manga has meant, and can be. They are: Akatsuka Fujio, Araki Hirohiko, Chiba Tetsuya, Oda Eiichiro, Tagame Gengoroh, Takahashi Rumiko, Taniguchi Jiro, Yamashita Kazumi, Yamazaki Mari, Tanaami Keiichi, and Yoshinaga Fumi. What is the connection of manga to Japanese art history? What does a museum have to add to the story of manga? And what can the popularity of manga, in turn, teach museums? The show’s curator, Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, agreed to talk to us about all of this.

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• Art World Infamy: Inigo Philbrick – Flight Risk(Ep. 3)

  Art World Infamy is a special series from the team behind The Art Angle, investigating the scandals and schemes that have rocked the art world. In the first chapter, told over four episodes, senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella unravels the rise and fall of dealer Inigo Philbrick.   After a bombshell $13 million lawsuit from angry collectors, Inigo Philbrick vanished. What followed was a cascade of international claims from clients who had entrusted him with millions, drawn in by his supposed Midas touch in the art market. From art fairs to gallery openings to gala dinners, the question on everyone’s lips was the same: Where’s Inigo? In this third episode, we examine the fallout from Philbrick’s fraudulent deals, and the frenzy that erupted in the art world after his sudden disappearance.

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• The Silent Emergency Facing Museums

  Museums across the globe are facing unprecedented challenges. In the West, public funding is shrinking, politics is creeping into the galleries, and institutions are asking hard questions about how to stay relevant to their donors and their publics. In an era of increasing scrutiny and diminishing returns, even the most established museums are questioning what long-term sustainability means. Meanwhile in China, the private museum boom that once symbolized cultural ambition and real-estate wealth is cracking, and some of these lavish new museums are having to close or scale back. In short, museums are in crisis. Senior editor Kate Brown recently worked with Margaret Carrigan, our news editor and host of the Art Market Minute, to edit a four-part series examining this issue from different angles. Margaret joins her on the podcast to talk about the takeaways and the financial, political, and ethical pressures reshaping museums. We also discuss whether this breaking point could be the start of a new era of reinvention.

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