INSTALLATION AT WALKER WITHDRAWN, THEN SOLD AT AUCTION

A work by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping was loaned to an exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and then pulled from the show following a dispute over restoration costs. It was then sold at auction in New York a few months later, setting a new auction record for the artist, report Cristina Ruiz and Vanessa Fewster for the Art Newspaper. The Walker borrowed Yong Ping’s installation Da Xian (The Doomsday), 1997, from the Pisces Trust, a Geneva-based art investment fund. The trust’s collection has been assembled by Simon de Pury, chairman of auction house Phillips de Pury, on behalf of a private owner. “I was very upset about this,” said Phillippe Vergne, the Walker’s chief curator. “We had already promised the piece to other museums on the exhibition tour, so we had to find a work to substitute for it. People who behave like this are not interested in art or artists. They are only interested in making money.”