Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know this Thursday, June 21.

NEED-TO-READ

The New Yorker on Apeshit – Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s treatment of art in their music has variously been interpreted as a display of wealth from a pair of art festishists or a radical celebration of blackness in a space where it has traditionally been ignored or exploited. But Doreen St. Félix suggests their latest video^[1] is something else entirely: a display of enduring influence. “Beyoncé and Jay-Z seem to suggest that their own footprint will be as indelible as that of the entire canon of Western art,” she writes. (New Yorker)^[2]

Did Glasgow School of Art Ignore Fire Warnings? – A former senior staff member says the art school’s management should admit its responsibility in the two fires that have torn through the beloved institution^[3] in the past four years. While the cause of the blaze is still unknown, the school should own up to ignoring fire safety warnings concerning its outdated heating system, the staff member says. (The Times)^[4]

Why Have There Been No Great Black Dealers? – “If artists of color were, until recently, effectively written out of art history, black dealers have remained almost entirely absent from the narrative of contemporary art,” Janelle Zara writes. But that’s not because they weren’t there. In fact, a dedicated group of black gallerists from the 1960s and ’70s were determined to break into a hostile art system. Today, a new generation is carrying the torch. (T Magazine)^[5]

Namibia Asks Germany to Repatriate Cultural Artifacts – Namibia’s ambassador to Germany is calling for the Deutsches Historisches Museum to repatriate the Stone Cross of Cape Cross, which was removed during Germany’s colonial occupation of then-“German South-West Africa.” Germany has previously agreed to return other African cultural heritage objects, such as the Hendrik Witbooi Bible. (eNCA)^[6]