via Saatchi Gallery

Forecasted to open early next year, the latest gallery of London’s Charles Saatchi, one of the largest and most successful art collectors in the world, will be admission-free. Though London galleries do not commonly charge for admission, Saatchi’s newest, which expects more than one million visitors a year, will forgo any entrance fee for special exhibitions. Said Saatchi of the admissionless Chelsea gallery, “We hope that free admission will enable many more state schools to organize school visits and bring in more students who can’t always afford normal gallery charges. Free entry can only help spread the interest in contemporary art.” (more…)

via Art Archive

Last week, billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen offered visitors of New York’s Metropolitan Museum the opportunity to behold one of the prized pieces of his collection: a 13-foot tiger shark suspended in a glass case full of formaldehyde. Titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” by British artist Damien Hirst, creator of the renowned $100 million skull piece (“For the Love of God“). (more…)

Jose Berado Opens Museum in Lisbon [WashPost]
Russian Collectors Making a Presence by Buying… Russian? [Economist]
Summertime Art Lull Also Brings Discounts [NYSun]

via Wooster Collective

Just several days after the much-publicized opening of Damien Hirst’s exhibit “Beyond Belief” at White Cube Gallery, these photos were submitted to Wooster Collective.

A faux Hirst skull – this one adorned with 6522 Swarovski Crystals, was placed in an display case and outside the gallery along with the garbage in Masons Yard. It took Laura Keeble, the artist, a month to create.

The original piece by Hirst uses a real human skull and covered with 8,601 pave diamonds, totaling 1,106.18 carats.

Fucking With Perception – Hirst’s “For the Love of God” Diamond Skull [Wooster Collective]

Via Estuaire 2007

Once a center of naval activity, the newest and certainly most eye-catching bateau on France’s Loire estuary is armored with a shell of mirrors, reflecting the riverbank’s factories, natural marshes… and resident gigantic floating plastic duck? Florentijn Hofman’s “Canard du Bain”, a titanic incarnation of every child’s favorite yellow bath time friend is absurdly placed within a dingy, industrial habitat. A cartoon-like beacon, the river-bound sculpture injects a certain lightheartedness into the milieu. If it were not so innocent looking, its size would suggest that it could wipe out a nearby cluster of sailboats in a single gulp. (more…)

Identity of Graffiti Art ‘Splasher’ Possibly Discovered [NYTimes]
Future Design of 166 Perry Street Pays Homage to Artists [NYTimes]

In 2003 mayor Klaus Wowereit dubbed Berlin “poor, but sexy” in an attempt to sell British businessmen on the leaps and bounds the city has taken in cultural production. Artists, designers, and hangers-on are drawn to the city by the cheap rent, an abundance of artist run spaces and, of course, dance parties that last until happy hour the next day. The number of exhibition spaces has exploded with a consistent influx of artists and designers, and galleries are now moving further afield from more established areas like Charlottenburg and Auguststraße to Brunnenstraße and various warehouse spaces strewn around the city. Brunnenstraße, a well worn section of Mitte once deemed ungentrifiable, is now home to boutiques, bars, New York escapees, and a rash of young galleries. (more…)

Bill Powers curated a small show called Drawings in Books sparked off by a book signing for painter Brad Kahlhamer at Jack Spade, the sweetest little general store on the lower east side at the Bowery Hotel. Bill Powers and his wife, Cynthia Rowley, have long been involved in the contemporary art scene and a hefty book collection to prove it. Not only do they own some hard to get limited edition books featuring work by artists such as Jeff Koons and Yoshimoto Nara, but each book shown here has a doodle or sketch inside of it. These scribbles are an interesting artifact, a condensed squiggle that embodies celebrity, artwork and a personal message. (more…)

Billionaire Collector Eli Broad Expecting Price Drop at Basel [Bloomberg]
Art Buying Frenzy Increasing Fine Art Storage Business [WSJ]

On Wednesday, June 6, the Whitney Museum of American Art played host to ART PARTY, a charitable event whose proceeds benefited the Whitney’s 40-year-old Independent Study Program, at Skylight Studios. The guestlist featured an array of celebrities who ran the gamut from Ivanka Trump and Kate Bosworth to Freddie Prinze Jr. and Moby. The music of DJ La Jauretsi powered the event while visual performances by Joshua Light Show and Bec Stupak dazzled guests with a spray of dreadlocks and fluid hula hoop movements. The affair’s dresscode, “Hippy Chic”, revealed refreshingly whimsical pieces by Hervé Léger worn by Arden Wohl, by ThreeAsFour worn by Genevieve Jones and, of course, a slew of damsels garbed in the host’s Max Azria summer frocks. (more…)

Running June 3 – September 10, The Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective exhibit of the work of Richard Serra brings forty years worth of sculpture, often gigantic, to the museum’s forefront. On Tuesday night, LVMH hosted a dinner in honor of the new MoMA’s most ambitious sculpture exhibition to date. The opening of Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years drew over 500 guests to the midtown museum. Among them were painters Brice Marden, Frank Stella, and Chuck Close and a clutch of connoisseurs in the form of Larry Gagosian, Veronica Hearst, and Lily Safra. Beginning at the inception of the artist’s career in the late 1960s, the exhibit features his work with nontraditional materials like neon, rubber and lead, and moves chronologically through the many phases of Serra’s sculpting. (more…)

With the art market reaching new highs, the plague of middlemen taking portions of multi-million dollar sale prices rises, ultimately decreasing the seller’s proceeds (Christie’s typically takes 20% of the first $500,000 and 12% of the rest of the work’s sale price). As a result, a new hedge fund known as the Art Trading Fund was born with hopes of exploiting the art market’s current inefficiencies. Founded by Justin Williams, an investor well-versed in the sale of highly-priced fine art, and partner Chris Carlson, former trader and Deutsche Bank and UBS, the fund hopes to have raised more than $50 million by the end of the summer. (more…)

In the UK, Justin Williams and Chris Carlson have set up the Art Trading Fund, an investment group aiming to trade art much like a hedge fund. According to their website, they are “focused on 3 to 12 month returns” and “buys and sells art via its global network of dealers, renowned artists, auction houses and galleries.” (more…)

Dinner with Donner Party: Jim Shaw’s Cannibal Exhibition [P.S. 1 Gallery]

Marianne Boesky and the Big Bad World of Art Business [Portfolio]

With Chinese contemporary art sales through the roof and seeing a burst of Korean and Indian artists breaking through New York City’s contemporary art scene, it’s not surprising that the Asian Contemporary Art Fair is debuting this year.

From November 8-12, about 80 galleries will be showing works from more than 10 Asian countries. Thomas Arnold, a co-director of the fair, tells Crain’s that he estimates more than 25,000 visitors and around $11.5 million for the local economy.

“This will be the first time we’ve actually had so much Asian art from so many different countries under one roof… The interest in Asian art and culture has never been greater.”

New York City is host to Asia Week, organized by the Asia Society, usually in the Spring. Perhaps ACAF NY is trying to avoid becoming a satellite event in the roster of the affluent Asia Week and emerge as a prominent event in its own right. However, they did use the opportunity on March 18th to hold a Fair preview at Sotheby’s.
ACAF NY | Asian Contemporary Art Fair New York
Asian Art Fair Comes to NY [Crain’s]

This month and next, British sculptor Marc Quinn brings his most recent exhibition, “Sphinx,” to New York’s Mary Boone Gallery. Known best for creating busts out of frozen blood and sculptures that depict the limbless, Quinn tackles a new form in Sphinx. Attempting to comment on mortality alongside divinity (each work in the exhibit is titled after a different Greek god or goddess), Sphinx features a collection of sculptures of supermodel Kate Moss, each twisted into a different Yogic position.The piece titled “Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment),” perhaps the exhibitions stand-out work, is unpainted bronze, unlike the majority of painted sculptures, and portrays Moss in a Buddha-like position, complete with robes and an exposed ribcage. Other sculptures feature Moss in a less overtly religious, yet equally posed form. (more…)

On a cloudy day in May, in a drab gray room in Rockefeller Center, three hours ticked by at a normal pace. Within these 3 three hours, nearly $400 million worth of postwar and contemporary art was sold at the Christie’s auction house Wednesday evening. Only one day before, the post-war and contemporary art auctions at Sotheby’s closed at a grand total of $255 million, enabling the two-day total sales in Manhattan alone to surpass a cool half-billion dollars with ease. The undoubted financial star of Christie’s evening was Andy Warhol‘s silkscreen painting “Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I).” Inspired by a 1963 Newsweek photo depicting a car crash that impaled one driver on a telephone pole, the painting ignited a heated bidding war between two parties, urging bids to as high as $64 million. (more…)

With a cluttered presentation sprawled over two floors of Midtown space, the Columbia University MFA show comes across as energetic, adventurous, but undeniably student-y work; heck, at times it’s slightly muddled, unfinished, and, yes, even downright messy. Who’d ever have thought this would amount to a good thing? But, I must admit, it was all surprisingly refreshing. Over the last couple of years, Columbia has consistently met the challenge of its increasingly high profile, pumping out art stars in the making with graduate presentations as smoothed and polished as anything Chelsea might throw at you. Last year’s class’ offering in Dumbo was no exception: a cavernous space, filled with pristine pieces, thoughtfully arranged into a compelling exhibition which gave the Whitney Biennial “Day for Night” (on view at the same time) more than a run for its money. As expected, a new set of rising stars was ushered in, such as Tamy Ben-Tor and Julieta Aranda, who have already garnered pretty major accolades (and with good cause). (more…)

Spring auction season is here in New York and in this heated seller’s market collectors are cleaning out their storage spaces to make room for large loads of cash.

Here is the schedule for those ready to wield a paddle and get spanked by an often much more than six figure invoice.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale – Session 1: Tuesday, May 15th, 7:00 pm

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Sale – Session 1: Wednesday, May 16th, 10:00 am

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Sale – Session 2: Wednesday, May 16th, 2:00 pm

Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale – Wednesday, May 16th, 7:00 pm

Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Morning Session – Thursday, May 17th, 10:00 am

Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Afternoon Session – Thursday, May 17th, 2:00 pm