Sotheby’s is leading its June London Impressionist and Modern sales with Amadeo Modigliani’s Jeune homme assis, les mains croisées sur les genoux, 1918, with an estimate range of £16-24m. (more…)
Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle head Rein Wolfs has been chosen to fill the Stedelijk Museum’s directorship, Art News reports. “I grew up with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,” Wolfs said, “and I hope to provide the guidance and support needed to lead this museum, with its revolutionary history and fantastic collection, into the future.” (more…)
Joel Silver and Gagosian have settled their court cases over an $8 million Jeff Koons, with the Die Hard ultimately acquiring a 2013–15 Balloon Venus Hohlen Fels sculpture. The pair issued a statement that they were “pleased to have settled their lawsuit in New York state court. The claims and counter claims have been voluntarily dismissed.” (more…)
Miami’s Rubell Family Collection is moving to a 100,000 square foot space in Wynwood, and changing its name to the Rubell Museum. “We were just looking for storage, and we wound up with this extraordinary space,” Mera Rubell says. “It was just too good to be storage.” (more…)
Kehinde Wiley is profiled in the NYT this week, as he opens his new residency program, Black Rock, in Dakar, Senegal. “An artist can come here and have an experience that is at once about getting work done and about rigor,” he says. “But I think it’s also about being able to just spoil the artist and make them feel like they’re respected as thinkers and as part of the culture.” (more…)
Socialite and philanthropist Dede Wilsey is stepping down from her position as president of the board of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, a position she has held for over 20 years. “Dede is so much more than a checkbook,” Director Thomas P. Campbell said. “She has a steel-trap memory for things that happened decades ago — she’s an institutional memory vault.” (more…)
Collector and Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton is reportedly the purchaser of Robert Rauschenberg’s silkscreen work Buffalo II (1964), which sold for a record-setting $88.8 million at Christie’s in New York this past month. The news was broken by reporter Jeremy Hodkin’s newsletter, Canvas. (more…)
A visitor to the Lázaro Galdiano museum has helped identify a portrait of Rodin, previously attributed as an image of King Leopold II of Belgium. “I got to the last picture and thought I’d misread the caption, because I recognized who it was straight away,” says Luis Pastor, who first identified the painting. “I love Rodin and have been to the Rodin museum in Paris a lot. I was obsessed with him as a student. I started Googling pictures of Leopold and thought ‘They do look like each other but that’s not Leopold.’” (more…)
A piece in Art News this week notes the increased competition outside the Art Basel fair between mega-galleries, auction houses and other dealers, as powerful figures battle for control of the city’s bustling crowd of art buyers during the week. The piece profiles the published output and special exhibitions of galleries like Hauser & Wirth and Gagosian during the fair. (more…)
A piece in the Art Newspaper this week charts the ongoing conflicts at the Barnes Foundation, as an auction of material from the institution opens new wounds over the indenture of trust banning sales of works. “They don’t want to deal with what happened last time,” says alumnus Nicholas Tinari. “They’re shifting their mission, and I guess you like to do that as quietly as possible.” (more…)
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise has closed the branch it opened in Chinatown, saying in an email announcement, “We will miss the space and our neighbors.” (more…)
Marlborough Gallery is planning an expansion in Chelsea, which will consolidate the gallery’s various brands under one roof, Art News reports. “In today’s globalized market, the geographically-specific programming of the individual galleries no longer seems viable,” says Max Levai, who will supervise the new flagship. (more…)
Dr. Carmen Bambach, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has criticized Christie’s for suggesting she had attributed Salvator Mundi to Leonardo Da Vinci. “I have not wanted to answer because I do not want to be listed among people that said ‘yes’ because I wasn’t really asked what I thought about the Salvator Mundi at the time,” she says. “If my name is added to that list, it will be a tacit statement that I agree with the attribution to Leonardo. I do not.” (more…)
Paula Cooper now represents artist and filmmaker Ja’Tovia M. Gary, and will open a solo show there in spring 2020. “Ja’Tovia demonstrates a remarkable and incisive ability to explore ways in which place and time define our bodies and self,” Senior Director Steve Henry said. “Using a broad range of techniques including animation, documentary, and narration, she creates potent, and often unsettling collages of images and sound. We are ecstatic to be working with her.” (more…)
Hartley Waltman will serve as general counsel of the Americas for Phillips auction house, Art News reports. CEO Edward Dolman says Waltman “brings with him considerable expertise, sharp judgement, and a long track record of successfully negotiating high value art transactions and resolving complex disputes.” (more…)
Christie’s will offer a 1913 work by Fernand Léger from the artist’s influential “contrastes des formes,” series this June in London, carrying an estimate of £25 million. “[The] contrastes des forms changed the direction of art as we know it,” says Jason Carey, Christie’s head of impressionist and modern art in London. With this series, executed between 1912 and 1914, Léger went beyond the Cubists and Futurists of the time by “completely deconstructing representation,” Carey says. (more…)
The New York Times has a piece this week on budget woes at the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion-Winning Lithuanian Pavilion, which have caused performances of the “beach opera” to be cut back to once a week. “Going into the vernissage week, we didn’t have enough money to guarantee us until the end of the Biennale, even performing once a week,” said curator Lucia Pietroiusti. (more…)
The State Hermitage Museum is exploring a possible outpost in Saudi Arabia, Art Newspaper reports. The Museum is also looking to expand its footprint in the Crimea. (more…)
The Iraqi Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities has stated intent to recover thousands of antiquities from the United States, including “5,500 artifacts from the Hobby Lobby company and 10,000 clay figurines from Cornell University as well as artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania.” (more…)
Lonnie G. Bunch III, the first head of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, will serve as the next secretary of the entire Smithsonian, the NYT reports. “I want to help it transform America,” he said. (more…)
Sharis Alexandrian has joined Lévy Gorvy as its new senior director, following a seven-year run as director at White Cube. “What really drew me to Sharis is her fierce loyalty to the collectors and the clients she works with,” Lévy says. “She has their best interests at heart in a way that can at times mean fighting the gallery for the client, and I really appreciate that.” (more…)
The recently expanded Glenstone Museum, founded by the Rales family, gets a profile in Washington Post this month, examining its claims of public accessibility and vision of a new public art museum. (more…)
Marianne Boesky Gallery has tapped Bradford Waywell as senior director of sales and acquisitions, starting in September. “His keen eye and wide-ranging relationships with collectors, curators, and artists are incredible assets,” Boesky says. “With my vision to grow equally the gallery’s primary and secondary market business, I know Brad’s experience will prove invaluable.” (more…)