The New York Times has a feature on Dylan Brant, the son of collector and publishing magnate Peter Brant in its Style section this week, noting 25 year-old’s passion for curating and dealing, including a recent show, Rawhide, at Venus Over Manhattan.  “As a young man, I’m really aware of the standards for being a man in America, and you see a lot of that represented in cowboys,” he says. “So they’re interesting figures in relation to the disintegration of the American landscape.” (more…)

Gallerist Jonathan Green has found a previously unknown pastel work by Claude Monet taped to the inside of another two works he purchased at auction last year.  “We were very excited,” Green told the Guardian. “Pastels by him are incredibly rare. These are a pointer to his future. You can see his fascination with light.” (more…)

The Smithsonian has acquired the complete records of New York Gallery OK Harris, the renowned downtown dealers who helped launch the careers of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain, among others.  The collection of paperwork includes exhibition files, correspondence, and other documents from the career of Ivan and Marilynn Gelfmann Karp, the gallery owners. (more…)

Maccarone Gallery is the latest New York gallery opening an exhibition space in Los Angeles, the New York Times reports.  The gallery will take up residence at 300 South Mission Road, a location that inspired gallerist Michele Maccarone.  “I saw the space and was very inspired by it,” she says. “The departure point was really the building.” (more…)

Artist and dealer Dorothee Fischer, who headed the Konrad Fischer gallery in Düsseldorf, and advocated for artists like Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, and Blinky Palermo, has passed away at the age of 78.  Fischer’s tireless, focused work in conceptual and minimal art built a dedicated group of artists around her, and she in turn built an impressive collection of 250 works, alongside her gallery archives, both of which were purchased by the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen for over $1 million.   (more…)

Leo Fitzpatrick, the former star of Larry Clark’s film Kids, and longtime director of the Nate Lowman project space Home Alone 2, will join Marlborough Chelsea as a gallery director.  “I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish with Home Alone over those three years, but generally it was me taking art on the subway, trying to put on these shows,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m really excited about having help, and people to bounce ideas off of. We can really do big things. If I was able to do so much with so little, imagine what I can do here.” (more…)

The founders of Frieze, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, are interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week as they prepare to open this year’s edition in New York, reflecting on the early days of the fair, and how they first started their coverage of the art world in London during the 1990’s.  “You couldn’t get away from the feeling that something was happening in London, and though we really didn’t know anything about art or magazines, we just knew we had to respond to it,” Sharp says. (more…)

Bloomberg reports on dealer Yves Bouvier, whose arrest earlier this year over alleged price inflation in the $186 million sale of a Mark Rothko reflects the warnings offered earlier this year by economist Ariel Roubini: “There are a number of serious distortions in the art market that suggest that there is some shady behavior going on.  Price opacity in the art market leads to insider information, which makes insider trading in art far more likely.” (more…)

A Cy Twombly blackboard painting may have sold for $60 million in a private sale, Marion Maneker of the Art Market Monitor reports, taking the news from active Twombly collectors.  If confirmed, the price would come close to the record-setting sale of a similar work last year by Nicola Del Roscio, Twombly’s former assistant and head of his foundation. (more…)

NADA Miami Beach is moving locations this December, leaving its long-time home at the Deauville Beach Resort in North Miami Beach for The Fontainebleau Hotel further south.   Founder Heather Hubbs notes that the new location will see a fair of “the same exact size or a little smaller, but it won’t be bigger and we’re not looking to expand.” (more…)

The New York Post details the intrigue and deception surrounding dealer Yves Bouvier’s arrest this past month in Monaco.  Bouvier recently sold an Amedeo Modigliani, Nude on a Blue Cushion, for hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen to Dmitry Rybolovlev, allegedly charging the Russian $118 million when Cohen had only received $93.5 million from the sale, sparking an investigation that ultimately led to his arrest.   (more…)

Prominent German dealer Helge Achenbach has been sentenced to 6 years behind bars for his role in 20 counts of art fraud, allegedly overcharging clients on a number of sales.  The dealer also currently owes over €20 million to the Albrecht family in damages, but is unlikely to pay after his companies insolvency. (more…)

The Art Newspaper has published a profile on Wolfgang Gurlitt this week, a cousin of the late Cornelius Gurlitt, and an avid art dealer who sold a sizable number of works to the Austrian city of Linz. Much of the collection’s provenance remains shady or undocumented, and investigations are still underway. (more…)

Noted German dealer Helge Achenbach has been accused of falsifying accounts on artworks and classic cars he purchased on behalf of the Albrecht family, the heirs to the Aldi Grocery Store fortune, including paintings by Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein.  In court documents, Achenbach is accused of claiming a higher price on works purchsed to achieve a higher commission, although he claims he offered a buyback deal on all sales, and that his client’s failure to return any work indicates his innocence.  “Where there has been no damage, there can be no fraud,” he said in a statement through his lawyer. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal writes on the Chinatown gallery operated by young curator and art dealer Amy Li out of her father’s He Zhen Snap Button Co. Shop  “There are so many assumptions attached to the word ‘gallery,’” Li says. “This is just a space where I work as a curator and art dealer.  I didn’t know anyone who could introduce me to a job opening.  That’s why I continue to do this.” (more…)

The New York Times takes an in-depth look at the ongoing court battle between Ronald Perelman and Larry Gagosian, noting the immense legal fees that the collector has racked up (over $3 million) in his ongoing battle over the sale of a Cy Twombly work he claims was fraudulently overpriced, and Gagosian’s subsequent lawsuits over his failure to pay.  “Ron Perelman’s disingenuous claims that he is a crusader are nothing more than a cover for the fact that he is a notorious bully with a well-known history of filing meritless litigations who once again won’t pay what’s owed,” says Gagosian’s lawyer, Matthew S. Dontzin. (more…)

Gavin Brown is opening a new location on the Lower East Side at 291 Grand Street, a building which has also recently seen the addition of Margaret Lee’s 47 Canal.  The gallery will also maintain the same name has his original space.  “We couldn’t think of what else to call it!” the gallerist says. (more…)

Dealer Marian Goodman is profiled in The Guardian this week, as she prepares to open her new exhibition space in London.  In the interview, Goodman discusses first discovering the work of Gerhard Richter, and her work in bringing him to international prominence.  “He was a bit drowned out by all these loud, expressionist voices,” she says. “So I wrote him a letter just telling him how much I loved the work and maybe I could make a difference. Then I went to meet him in Düsseldorf in 1984 and everything started from there.”

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The New York Times takes an inside look at the selling techniques and strategies galleries are embracing during massive art fairs like last week’s Art Basel, including massive mailings of available works (“jpeg bombing”) and pre-selling works before the fair opens.  “‘First Choice’ V.I.P. access is no longer the priority as most of the major pieces at fairs are bought in advance,” says collector Kamiar Maleki.  “But still, nothing beats coming to the fair.” (more…)

The New York Times takes a look at the fading presence of art galleries in the Central London neighborhoods of Mayfair and St. James’s, as increasing rents push dealers from an area they have traditionally occupied for decades.  The article also cites the challenges associated with the state of the current market.  “Modern art is not 500 weeks old — it’s 500 years old,” says dealer James Mayor. “London’s pre-eminence in art dealing and connoisseurship comes from that fact. The perception is that the only art that exists is new art sold in supermarket-type galleries. That doesn’t give the public a chance to develop a taste for anything that’s not force-fed them by the supermarkets. We need diversity.” (more…)

San Francisco real estate mogul Luke Brugnara has been charged with mail fraud following the aborted purchase of $11 million in works by Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.  Brugnara reportedly purchased the works from a New York dealer with the intent of opening a museum, but never paid for the artworks, claiming he had received them as a gift.  When the dealer accompanied the works to California for delivery, she was astonished to find that the address he had given was not inhabited.  “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage. The art dealer had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage,” writes FBI special agent Jeremy Desor. (more…)

As the art market continues to see record highs at auctions each season, many collectors are digging deeper into the history books to find historically significant artists that may command a high price at auction. “Whether the artists are old, dead or overlooked, people are turning over all the stones,” says Wendy Cromwell of Cromwell Art LLC and president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors. “It’s a function of a global market. Dealers have to have new material all the time.” (more…)

W Magazine has published a profile on dealer Maxwell Graham and his Essex Street Gallery space.  Having worked previously with Greene Naftali, Graham has run Essex Street for the past several years, and discusses his approach to running his space.  “It’s good to not do things properly sometimes,” he says. “I don’t always like the shows that happen here—but sometimes it’s not about me. It’s okay if something fails, as long as it’s taking a risk. I don’t want my artists to rely on art to make a living. I almost wish my younger artists would take after the older ones and disappear for 30 years. And, hopefully, I’ll be here for them to come back to.”  (more…)

Dealer James Fuentes will launch a show next month reflecting on the infamous Real Estate Show held in the Lower East Side in 1980, a seminal exhibition in protest of the city’s dealings with low-income neighborhood residents that ultimately led to the formation of the famous ABC No Rio space.  The show will include many artists from the original show, as well as videos and films documenting the event. (more…)