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'No More Tokens': Why Museums Need to Stop Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists | artnet News 2020/10/05 10'48 AM

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‘No More Tokens’: Why Museums Need to Stop


Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists
The London-based sculptor writes a call to arms for artists to reject being
tokenized by museums that refuse to engage fully with their work.
Anish Kapoor (https://news.artnet.com/about/anish-kapoor-1522), July 13, 2020

Anish Kapoor in London. Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images.

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'No More Tokens': Why Museums Need to Stop Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists | artnet News 2020/10/05 10'48 AM

SHARE Ever since the start of my public career in London in the late ‘70s–
Get hand-picked stories from our editors delivered straight to your inbox every ' Enter email
SIGNaddress
UP TO OUR SDAILY
I G N UNEWSLETTER
P
day. early ‘80s, I have had to suffer what I consider to be the indignity of
! being described as an “Indian” artist. Considered thus not just The best of artnet
because of my name, but also for what I did with my work?
news in your inbox
" This was an enigma to me, but I understood it to come from some
half-understood or misguided notion of my Indian origin and its Enter your email
+ relation to the work I made. I will tr y to explain—my actual origins
are more complex than this, but that is another story. When, in 1998,
I did my first show at the Hayward Gallery, Mr. Waldemar
$ SUBSCRIBE
Januszczak, an art critic for a prominent British newspaper,
described the work I had on show in a mean-spirited review as “the
% Indian rope trick.”

HA HA—shame on him. What this raises is an important issue. An



artist of my origin, or rather an artist of any non-Western origin, has
to suffer the indignity of having their creative force attributed
' almost in full to their background or ethnic culture (“Indian rope
trick”). This is not something that American artists, French artists,
British artists, or artists of Western origin have to endure.

Now, in the light of Black Lives Matter, we have to establish that we


will not allow these small-minded, Neocolonial bigots to determine
our creative individuality in terms of our places of origin, the color
of our skin, or our gender.

I look in horror at the recent reopening of the Museum of Modern Art


in New York and see in the name of so-called “World Art” tokens
from here, there, and everywhere. Artists represented like so many
little jewels found in street markets, displayed like trophies one
stacked on top of the other. But of course the great artist—the great
MALE WHITE ARTIST Richard (bless you) Serra has a room of his own
in which to show off his magnificent master y. Fuck you MoMA. What
a disgrace.

We cannot and will not accept this any longer.

If museums want us they must give full representation to our voice.


No more tokens. We artists from elsewhere must have the courage to
say NO and keep saying NO until there is full and honorable
representation. It is not good enough that Tate, MoMA, the
Pompidou, or others pay lip service to World Art at the expense of
art and of artists.

No more tokens masquerading as representation.

Anish Kapoor is an artist based in London.

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Opinion (https://news.artnet.com/opinion)

The Gray Market: Why Going Into Business


With James Murdoch Should Be a No-Brainer
for Art Basel and the MCH Group (and Other
Insights)
Our columnist tunnels past the toxic legacy of James Murdoch’s lineage and
finds a nearly ideal blue-chip art-fair investor.
Tim Schneider (https://news.artnet.com/about/tim-schneider-641), July 13, 2020

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'No More Tokens': Why Museums Need to Stop Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists | artnet News 2020/10/05 10'48 AM

James Murdoch, then-CEO of 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in
2015. (Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)

SHARE Ever y Monday morning, Artnet News brings you The Gray Market
(http://www.thegray-market.com/). The column decodes important
! stories from the previous week—and offers unparalleled insight into
the inner workings of the art industr y in the process.

" This week, looking at the product, not the packaging…

+
FAMILY BUSINESS
$ On Friday, Art Basel’s parent company, the MCH Group, issued a
statement (https://www.mch-group.com/en/news/2020/finanzielle-
und-strukturelle-starkung-zur-uberwindung-der-coronakrise-und-
% umsetzung-der-langfristigen-strategie/) announcing a
“comprehensive set of measures” intended to stabilize the
 struggling company in the short term and position it for success in

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'No More Tokens': Why Museums Need to Stop Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists | artnet News 2020/10/05 10'48 AM

the long term. My colleague Eileen Kinsella


' (https://news.artnet.com/market/james-murdoch-mch-group-art-
basel-1893719) hit the high points of the proposed deal. But
towering over such boring-but-important minutiae as debt
restructuring with the MCH Group’s Swiss cantonal shareholders is
the big swing: a cash infusion of CHF 74.5 million (about $80 million)
that would make James Murdoch, the younger son of News Corp
founder and right-wing supervillain Rupert Murdoch, the company’s
new “anchor shareholder.”

The proposed deal would be executed through Lupa Systems, the


private-investment vehicle James Murdoch launched in April 2019.
Lupa Systems has agreed to underwrite the issuance of enough new
shares of the MCH Group, at a discounted price of about $11.28
each, to reach that sweet $80 million promised land. Depending on
how many private shareholders exercise their right to acquire a
tranche of the fresh shares, Lupa Systems would ultimately own a
stake comprising between 30 percent and 44 percent of the MCH
Group.

The investment would also entail a restructuring of the MCH Group’s


board of directors. The number of seats at the table would slim
down to nine, with three being filled by Murdoch and a pair of Lupa
Systems associates: partner Eleni Lionaki and managing partner and
general counsel Jeff Palker.

The new trio would be there for a while. The MCH Group defined
Lupa Systems’s offer as a 15-year relationship agreement with a five-
year lockup, meaning that Murdoch’s team would consent to hold its
entire stake in the company for at least half a decade.

But will the deal actually close? The paradigm-shifting agreement


still needs approval from the company’s existing shareholders. The
vote is slated to take place at my favorite MCH Group staple: an
Extraordinar y General Meeting (will past shareholders rise from the
dead? Could CEO Bernd Stadlwieser be transformed into a giraffe?)
scheduled for August 3.

For anyone with an interest in shunning climate-change denial and


reactionar y demagogues, James Murdoch’s family name looms large
and ominously over the pact—so much so that it’s not impossible to
think it could scuttle the deal. I certainly heard and saw plenty of
snap-take outrage from the art world when rumors of the
partnership first emerged weeks ago (back when it was believed that
James could be negotiating on behalf of his father
(https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-industry-news-june-29-
stories-1890656)).

The question is whether outrage is really warranted given what we


actually know now. After spending the weekend in the official Gray
Market research bunker, my answer is not what I expected it would
be. Even after marshaling all my powers of skepticism, it turns out
that, instead of some soul-chomping right-wing hellion, James
Murdoch looks a lot more like the type of dream investor Art Basel
might have wished for when it blew out the candles on its 50th
anniversary cake this year.

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'No More Tokens': Why Museums Need to Stop Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists | artnet News 2020/10/05 10'48 AM

James Murdoch. Photo by Br yan Bedder/Getty Images for National


Geographic.

JAMES AND THE GIANT BREACH


Let’s start with the man himself. James is the fourth of Rupert
Murdoch’s six children. In a New Yorker
(https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/23/no-james-
murdoch-doesnt-watch-succession) piece last September, Jane
Mayer wrote that he is “often referred to as ‘the smart one’ in the
clan.” He was born on December 13, 1972 in Wimbledon, which, until
9:39 p.m. on Saturday night, was not a place it had ever occurred to
me that people could be born, since my American brain envisioned it
as nothing but an impossibly posh tennis complex.

After attending private school in New York, James went on to study


film and history at Harvard, while also contributing cartoons to the
Harvard Lampoon. However, he dropped out in 1994 to finance the
formation of New York independent hip hop label Rawkus Records.
Rawkus became a major nexus of what was known as “backpack”
rap, a lyrically driven, socially conscious alternative to the high-
gloss hybrid of hip hop and R&B that began dominating the charts in
the mid ‘90s.

News Corp purchased Rawkus Records in 1996, bringing James into


the family business. He was appointed to posts in the
conglomerate’s digital and new-media arms, which were largely
considered backwaters at the time. Yet James made a number of
savvy investments in the next few years that altered his trajectory
within the company.

In 2000, he notched his first major achievement with a pre-existing


Murdoch property: stabilizing News Corp’s Star Television, an Asian
satellite TV provider that was allegedly coughing up £100 million
annually before James took its reins at age 27. His primary insight
was the value of pivoting to India, and Star’s subsequent
investments in the countr y became the turning point in its fortunes.

James continued rising through the ranks of the Murdoch family


empire over the ensuing decade, filling leadership roles at UK
satellite TV service British Sky Broadcasting (colloquially known as
BSkyB), News Corp branch News International, and News Corp itself.
But his ascension was knocked off course in 2011, when he became
entangled in an expanding scandal
(https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/24/world/europe/uk-phone-hacking-
scandal-fast-facts/index.html) accusing some of News Corp’s UK
media outlets—most prominently, the tabloid News of the World—of
hacking the voicemail of royals, celebrities, and other gossip-worthy
citizens.
Related Articles

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'No More Tokens': Why Museums Need to Stop Pigeonholing Non-Western Artists | artnet News 2020/10/05 10'48 AM

In February 2012, after the emergence of a damning email and


Media
testimony from a former News of the World attorney that both
Now
evinced James had been briefed on the magnitude of the hacking
Stake
operation as far back as June 2008, James vacated his position as Base
executive chairman of News Corp’s UK publishing division. Two Comp
(https://news.artnet.com/market/mch- (https:
months later, he resigned as chairman of BSkyB. He retained his title
group-shareholders-1899121) group-
of deputy COO at News Corp, but the company announced that he
would be reassigned to focus on premium TV and international
business. Art Industr y
Kerry James
Marshall’s N
Paintings Ex
Theory That
(https://news.artnet.com/art- James Audu
world/art-industry-news-
Black + Othe
july-29-stories-1897996)
(https://news.ar
world/art-indust
july-29-stories-1

Ruper t Murdoch attends the 2015 Time 100 Gala at Frederick P. Rose Hall,
Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 21, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew
Toth/FilmMagic)

DOING THE SPLITS


Although the phone-hacking saga damaged James’s standing inside
and outside the Murdoch empire, he bounced back. In 2013, News
Corp spun off its TV and film assets into a new entity called 21st
Century Fox, leaving News Corp itself as a silo for the family’s print-
media properties. James was awarded a seat in both boardrooms.
He was also named 21st Century Fox’s co-CEO in 2014 before
assuming sole ownership of the role the following year. He proved
effective enough there to reclaim the chairmanship of BSkyB in 2017,
though not without resistance from a vocal faction of the company’s
shareholders.

His comeback inside the Murdoch domain would be relatively short-


lived. In 2018, Comcast acquired a majority stake in BSkyB, leading
to James’s departure as chairman less than two years after his
triumphant return. In 2019, his father sold most of 21st Century
Fox’s entertainment assets to Disney for a knee-buckling $71.3
billion. More importantly, he also tapped James’s older brother,
Lachlan, to lead Fox Corporation, the conglomerate consisting of the
family’s few post-Disney media properties.

If you haven’t already put together why fans of HBO’s Succession,


the show widely understood to be inspired by the Murdoch dynasty,
relate James Murdoch to Kendall Roy, the wily, hip hop-loving
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1kjQOrVL5c) son hell-bent on
vanquishing his father and siblings for control of the family’s
fictional media empire, now you know. I will also mention that the
headline of the New Yorker piece I mentioned earlier is “No, James
Murdoch Doesn’t Watch Succession.”

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But did Lachlan win the succession war, or did James forfeit? A
profile of James in the Hollywood Reporter
(https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/whats-next-james-
murdoch-1200454) last year cited anonymous “insiders” who alleged
he “was never interested in joining his father and brother… at Fox
Corporation.” Notably, the anchor holding in Fox Corp’s portfolio is
the divisive right-wing conspiracy cauldron Fox News.

Instead, THR reported that James began angling with CEO Bob Iger
for a post at Disney shortly after news of the 21st Century Fox
negotiations leaked in 2017. But the talks soon halted, allegedly for
a reason that now becomes urgent to the MCH Group:

Some observers say Iger balked at the notion of any


involvement at Disney from anyone named
“Murdoch,” given the moniker is so closely associated
with Fox News, a brand that is more polarizing in
Hollywood than perhaps anywhere else in the world.

US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media. Photo by Alex


Wong/Getty Images.

Now, it would be easy to read those aforementioned insider


accounts of James’s disdain for a role at Fox Corp as revisionist
history from James’s inner circle. Yet his public statements and
financial moves over the past few years, including while he was still
leading 21st Centur y Fox, suggest the counter-narrative stems from
something more solid than wounded pride.

In 2017, he denounced
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2017/08/18/foxs-james-murdoch-blasts-trump-on-
charlottesville-there-are-no-good-nazis/) President Trump for his
infamous statement that there were “some very fine people on both
sides (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-
fine-people-charlottesville-who-were-they-2/)” of an alt-right rally in

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Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly. James and his wife,


Kathryn Murdoch, also made a $1 million donation to the Anti-
Defamation League in response to the episode.

The couple’s rebukes of the political right have intensified since


then. This January, James and Kathryn issued a statement blasting
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/murdoch-family-
discord-plays-out-publicly/2020/01/15/ab4d177e-37c1-11ea-9541-
9107303481a4_story.html) News Corp’s Australian media outlets for
denying the influence of climate change on the country’s horrific
wildfires (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/murdoch-
family-discord-plays-out-publicly/2020/01/15/ab4d177e-37c1-11ea-
9541-9107303481a4_story.html).

The Washington Post spoke to departed News Corp and Fox officials
who confirmed that James had “chafed for years against the
direction of his father’s empire,” with its dismissal of climate change
as only a single problem within a larger set of fundamental
disagreements. Another one: James “was long at odds” with Fox
News founder Roger Ailes and “pushed to have Ailes fired after he
was accused of sexually harassing and assaulting women who
worked for him.”

James and Kathryn Murdoch’s center-left crusade continues on the


nonprofit side, too. The couple founded the Quadrivium Foundation
to funnel philanthropic money into causes that include reversing
climate change, amplifying evidence-based solutions in science and
health, expanding voting rights, combating online extremism and
foreign interference in politics, and more. Frankly, if you have a
problem with James Murdoch’s actual political stances, you’re
probably wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

The Capitoline Wolf, Rome’s famous 5th centur y Etruscan sculpture of


Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf Lupa. (The babies are a 15th-centur y
addition to the work.) Photo by Jastrow, cour tesy of Wikimedia Commons.

‘SYSTEMS’ SHOCK
Most relevant of all to James’s pending partnership with MCH Group,
though, is that the ideological chasm between him and the Fox News
mindset bears out in his investment portfolio.

James and his siblings each received a payout of roughly $2.2 billion
from 21st Century Fox’s sale to Disney. A month after the deal
closed, James launched Lupa Systems—an invocation of the Roman
mythological wolf-goddess that nurtured twin brothers Romulus and
Remus after they were cast out of their kingdom (and, according to
the Washington Post, “exactly the kind of historical reference that

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used to draw eye rolls from Rupert Murdoch’s executives, when they
were forced to work alongside their boss’s sons”). At the time,
sources close to James told the Wall Street Journal
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-murdoch-is-investing-his-
fortune-one-bet-comic-books-11555424725) he intended to use the
holding company to invest as much as $1 billion of his fortune.

Lupa Systems’s portfolio currently splits cleanly into three types of


assets: media properties, advanced technology startups, and
sustainability ventures. Among its first moves was a $5 million
investment in Artists Writers & Artisans
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-murdoch-is-investing-his-
fortune-one-bet-comic-books-11555424725), a comic-book imprint
headed by a Marvel veteran intent on creating its own widely
franchisable universe. Lupa Systems partnered with Attention
Capital to take a controlling stake in the Tribeca Film Festival in
summer 2019, and it acquired a minority stake in Vice Media that
October.

Its tech assets are even more diverse. According to CB Insights, the
premium branch of business-intelligence platform Crunchbase, Lupa
Systems has invested more than $86 million in startups specializing
in everything from mixed reality technology, to data analytics
powered by machine learning, to online education. Two of its known
tech holdings are based in India: DailyHunt, a mobile-reading app
and news-aggregation service designed to support content in
English and Indian languages; and Harappa Education, an online
learning platform geared toward career skills.

But the biggest chunk of Murdoch’s investing activity overall has


gone into developing products geared toward planetary health. Its
single largest position so far, per CB Insights, is a $102 million stake
in Greenlight Biosciences, which describes its current focus as
“creating RNA-based products [that] can be used to more naturally
and safely solve healthcare and agricultural issues.” Lupa Systems
also owns a chunk of Cove, a startup working to engineer a
completely biodegradable water bottle.

Combine all of the above with James’s current board seats at


electric-car giant Tesla and the Dia Foundation, as well as his
previous directorship at Sotheby’s (from 2010 to 2012), and it
becomes increasingly difficult for me to imagine a legitimate basis
for MCH Group shareholders to reject Murdoch’s offer.

At a time when the entire world, not just the art and live-events
world, is under pressure to adapt in transformative ways, he rides
onto the scene with a massive amount of capital, an international
focus, decades of experience in technology, an arsenal of potentially
synergistic ventures, high-grade art-world credentials, and a track
record of sensible political positions backed up by action.

His drawbacks boil down to a family whose most-hated positions he


has been publicly condemning for years… and a phone-hacking
scandal, mostly concerning British celebs, that spit him out almost a
decade ago.

I’m not suggesting James Murdoch is a secular saint, or that he has


all the answers to the MCH Group’s very real trials and tribulations.
But if the company’s current investors turn away his offer, it would
represent an expression of bile counter to both the facts on the
ground and any real business sense. In a year of economic calamity,
I’m betting they vote with their wallets. And honestly, they should
feel comfortable doing it.

[Artnet News (https://news.artnet.com/market/james-murdoch-mch-


group-art-basel-1893719) | Press release (https://www.mch-
group.com/en/news/2020/finanzielle-und-strukturelle-starkung-zur-

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