Nan Goldin.Beald Getty
The Power 100, which has been compiled by the international art magazine ArtReview since 2002, measures the forces in the art world every year. Nan Goldin (70) is in first place for the first time. Last year, the Indonesian group of curators Ruangrupa was the most powerful according to the list. The highest-ranked person on the list who is not an artist is Larry Gagosian at number 12. The multi-millionaire runs a gallery empire with nineteen locations worldwide.
Painkiller Oxycontin
In recent years, the all-powerful Nan Goldin, according to ArtReview, has fought against the American pharmaceutical family Sackler, which has marketed the highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin. The Sacklers are also active as patrons in the art world. Goldin’s struggle was successful: many major museums removed the family’s name from museum galleries and wings.
How Nan Goldin’s activism is intertwined with her life and artistry was beautifully shown last year in the prize-winning documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. The fact that she is now number one certainly has to do with her moving solo exhibition that can now be seen at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and previously at the Moderna Museet museum in Stockholm. According to ArtReview, it clearly shows how current her work is, due to, among other things, its autobiographical character and her attention to the LGBTI community.
It is not just any artists who are calling the shots, according to ArtReview. The forty-member panel of specialists that was consulted (their names are confidential) mainly chose committed artists such as Goldin. For example, in eighth place is the British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen, who partly lives in Amsterdam. He made the film Grenfell about the catastrophic fire in 2017 in the London apartment building. That film was shown to the public for the first time this year. McQueen’s long documentary The Occupied City, about Amsterdam during the Second World War, can now be seen in cinemas.
Geographical change of power
In addition to the strikingly high positions for committed artists, it is striking in this year’s list that a geographical change of power is taking place in the museum world. In 2019, Glenn D. Lowry was still at the top of the list, as director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He now has to make do with place 42. This year’s three highest-ranking museum directors run museums in Hong Kong, Johannesburg and Singapore.
This does not mean that the art world completely reinvents itself every year. This year, the compilers included four people who were already on the very first list of 2002, including the aforementioned gallery owner Larry Gagosian, who recently started representing Nan Goldin. Committed art also does well in the commercial art market.
The Netherlands does not seem to be of great significance for the hundred art bobos on the list. But the Netherlands is represented through Goldin’s exhibition at the Stedelijk, in Steve McQueen as a part-time Amsterdammer. Furthermore, the Nigerian curator Azu Nwagbogu, who is co-curator at Buro Stedelijk in Amsterdam, is in 87th place on the list. Nwagbogu also curated the exhibition ‘In Beautiful Light’, which until recently was on display in the (now closed) Africa Museum in Berg en Dal and will be shown in Wereldmuseum Leiden from December 21.
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2023-12-01 00:01:18
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