Richard Prince Launches Lemony Soft Drink, Donald Young Gallery Closes, and More

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by ARTINFO

Published: October 19, 2012

– Richard Prince Releases His Own Soft Drink: From soup to sex toys, there seems to be no limit to what contemporary artists can brand. Now, Richard Prince is teaming up with the iced tea company AriZona to create a new lemon-flavored drink called Lemon Fizz. The drink, described as "a slightly carbonated beverage that contains natural lemon flavor and is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, honey, and sucralose," will come packaged in a 23-oz can partially designed by Prince himself. Strangely enough, iced tea enthusiast Prince approached the company about teaming up, not the other way around. The fizzy drink will debut at Art Basel Miami Beach. [Bevnet]

– Donald Young Gallery to Close: After 29 years and nearly 200 exhibitions, Chicago's Donald Young Gallery will close at the end of October. The announcement follows the death of the gallery's founder in April. Young was known for his early involvement with media artists such as Bill Viola, Rodney Graham, and Joshia Mosley; he also showed work by Minimalists Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, and Sol LeWitt. Save for a brief move to Seattle in the early 1990s, the gallery was firmly rooted in Chicago and placed important work in collections across the Midwest. [Press Release]

– SOFA New York Shutters: The Sculpture Objects and Functional Fair (SOFA), which took place every spring at the Park Avenue Armory in New York for 15 years, has folded. SOFA Chicago, which kicks off November 2 at Navy Pier, will continue. The fair's owner, Mark Lyman, said the cost of exhibiting at the Park Avenue Armory had tripled in recent years and that "galleries just weren't position to pay the kind of rent that I have to charge to make it happen." He said his company is working to organize a new fair in New York in a different location. [AiA]

– Gagosian Now Represents Helen Frankenthaler: Larry Gagosian, who apparently never takes a day off, has added the estate of American abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler to his ever-expanding roster. (Gagosian already handles the estates of Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and other legends.) Former MoMA curator John Elderfield, who wrote the 1989 monograph of Frankenthaler's work, will organize an exhibition of her paintings this spring at Gagosian's West 21st Street gallery in Chelsea. Until it closed last year, Knoedler Gallery represented Frankenthaler's estate. [NYT]

– Neon Museum's Lights Back On: Next week Las Vegas's Neon Museum will reopen after a two-year hiatus in a fitting new setting — an old 1960s motel — though its displays are decidedly more DIY than other sign preservation institutions like Cincinnati's American Sign Museum or Glendale's Museum of Neon Art. "They make wonderful habitats for pigeons," said Dennis Connor of the Federal Heath Sign Company, which restored many of the Neon Museum's signs. "There’s something beautiful about a patina’d sign." (To see a preview, click on our VIDEO OF THE DAY, below.) [NYT]

– South African Art on the Rise: Wednesday's sale of art from South Africa at Bonhams London fetched a total of £3.1 million ($4.9 million) and set new records for three of the featured artists, including Vladimir Griegorovich Tretchikoff and Stanley F. Pinker, both of whom saw their works sell for more than triple their high estimates. "The message of this sale is that while the best South African artworks continue to reach world record prices in London where the world comes to buy," said Bonhams director of African art Giles Peppiatt, "bidders are being far more selective." [ArtDaily]

– Italian Winery Serves Up Installation Art: Do you like contemporary art with your Chianti? Then take a trip to Castello di Ama in Tuscany, a winery that is also home to a dozen site-specific contemporary art installations by some of the world's most revered artists. The vineyard's owners, Lorenza Sebasti and Marco Pallanti, have commissioned one artist every year to create a work of art inspired by the surrounding landscape. Anish Kapoor, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Louise Bourgeois, and Daniel Buren have all taken part. [WSJ]

– Baltimore Museum Wing Reopens With Oppenheimer: When the Baltimore Museum of Art's revamped contemporary art wing reopens on November 18, it will boast its first permanent installation, by New York artist Sarah Oppenheimer. Visitors passing through the museum's main staircase will be greeted by strange, disorienting views through a series of mirrored openings in the walls and floors — although the museum vetoed her original plan to cut into the staff bathrooms. [WSJ]

– Huntington Buys Wright Dining Room Set: San Marino's Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has acquired 13 pieces of furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, including a nine-piece dining room set that the famed American architect and designer created in 1899 for Chicago's Husser House. That set, plus four chairs, were purchased directly from New York collectors Joyce and Erving Wolf, who had been loaning the pieces to the Huntington since 2009. [LAT]

– Bob & Roberta Smith Paints Protest Letter for U.K. Secretary: The outspoken artist known as Bob and Roberta Smith has created a new artwork that he'll carry during Saturday's A Future That Works march in London. The work, titled "Letter to Michael Gove," calls on the British education secretary to restore art's place in the country's schools. "Michael a look at your tie and shirt combinations in images of you online informs me you are not a visually minded person," Smith's painting reads. "You need to rethink the role of creativity in society and realize innovation comes from optimism, creativity, risk-taking, and art." [Guardian]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Preview of the reopened Neon Museum in Las Vegas