Arts news

• 18th-Century Snuffboxes Stolen from the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris

  21-11-2024 20:04 via artnews.com
  
  An exhibition of precious miniature objects from the 18th century at the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris was robbed on Wednesday, according to Le Monde.Four hooded men stole smashed a display case with axes and baseball bats before stealing five collector’s boxes and diamond-encrusted snuffboxes in front of museumgoers. They fled on scooters in a matter of minutes. The two 18th-century snuff boxes were made by Johann Christian Neuber and Daniel Baudesson.Among the items stolen were two works f
  
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• This Beloved Austrian Museum May Never Reveal Which Artist Is Doing Its Big Fall Show Next Year

  22-11-2024 19:15 via artnews.com
  
  The Kunsthaus Bregenz, a beloved contemporary art museum in Austria, has announced what might already count as the most mysterious show of 2025: an exhibition by an artist whose identity may never be known to the press and the general public.That makes the show an unusual one for this institution, whose programming regularly includes grandly scaled exhibitions by well-known names. Its programming for next year features shows by Precious Okoyomon and Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, artists who appeare
  
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• Yale Peabody Museum to Repatriate Native American Remains and Artifacts to Maine Tribes

  22-11-2024 17:54 via artnews.com
  
  The Yale Peabody Museum has flagged human remains and eight funerary objects in its collection for repatriation to Native American tribes of the Wabanaki Nations in Maine. These remains and objects were removed from burial sites and shell mounds in Maine and donated to the museum in 1926 and 1969. The repatriation follows guidelines in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which mandates the return of human remains and culturally significant objects to Native
  
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• Frieze Los Angeles Names Exhibitors for 2025 Edition

  22-11-2024 17:00 via artnews.com
  
  Frieze Los Angeles has named the more than 100 galleries that will participate in its 2025 edition, scheduled to run February 20–23 at the Santa Monica Airport.This year’s fair will continue with some of the changes it introduced last year, including its shift to align with the Presidents Day holiday weekend, site-specific commissions by the Art Production Fund, and a tent designed by the architectural firm WHY. It will also feature a few more galleries than the 95 that exhibited in
  
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• Emily Carr Painting Bought for $50 Auctioned for $250,000, San Francisco’s Museums Struggle Financially, and More: Morning Links for November 22, 2024

  22-11-2024 15:05 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesFROM BARN SALE TO AUCTION. After being picked up earlier this year at a barn sale in the Hamptons for just $50 dollars by an eagle-eyed art dealer, a painting later revealed to be a rare artwork by Emily Carr has sold at auction in Toronto for $250,000 ($349,000 CAD), the CBC reports. That’s a 500,000 percent return on investment
  
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• Led by a $23 M. Basquiat, Christie’s Notches a Solid $106.5 M. 21st-Century Art Sale

  22-11-2024 05:14 via artnews.com
  
  The marquee New York evening auctions came to a close on Thursday with a strong $106.5 million sale of 21st century art at Christie’s, led by a $23 million drawing by auction stalwart Jean-Michel Basquiat, setting a record for a work on paper by the artist. The atmosphere in the packed auction house was lively, and bidding was deep as buyers fought for their treasures in person, via phone, and online; after two withdrawals, every one of the 42 lots on offer sold. The presale estimate
  
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• German Museum Returns Ancient Marble Head to Greece

  21-11-2024 23:14 via artnews.com
  
  A marble head of a man dated from 150 CE has been repatriated to Greece by the Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster in Germany. The museum voluntarily returned the artifact after concerns were raised over its ownership records by researchers.During a repatriation ceremony, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni lauded the deal as fair resolution between the two museums, with repatriation cases between different countries often resulting in legal battles. The artifact, which was g
  
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• Taína Cruz’s Eerie Paintings Merge Gritty Realism and Haunting Spirituality

  21-11-2024 22:25 via artnews.com
  
  Taína Cruz’s studio is cluttered with books: chunky catalogs devoted to Jacolby Satterwhite, Henry Taylor, R.B. Kitaj, Kerry James Marshall, and Emil Nolde; surveys of street art and the culture of New York’s East Village; a novel by Zora Neale Hurston. There is one book that she tells me she is most excited about: Devil Land, a 2011 play by Desi Moreno-Penson about the kidnapping of a Nuyorican preteen able to summon Taíno Amerindian deities.Cruz read the play as a tee
  
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• Magritte’s ‘L’empire des lumières’ Sold for $121 M. Who Else Has Passed the $100 M. Mark at Auction?

  21-11-2024 22:00 via artnews.com
  
  On Tuesday night during Christie’s 20th century evening sale, after eleven or so tense minutes of hushed phone conversations behind cupped hands and quick currency conversions, Rene Magritte’s paintng L’empire des lumières (1954) sold for $121 million.At a press conference after the sale Alex Rotter, Christie’s chairman of 20th and 21st century art, said the house this season had been operating on the “masterpiece approach,” which seems t
  
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• Magritte’s ‘L’empire des lumières’ Sold for $121 M. Who Else Has Broken the $100M Barrier at Auction?

  21-11-2024 22:00 via artnews.com
  
  On Tuesday night during Christie’s 20th century evening sale, after eleven or so tense minutes of hushed phone conversations behind cupped hands and quick currency conversions, Rene Magritte’s paintng L’empire des lumières (1954) sold for $121 million.At a press conference after the sale Alex Rotter, Christie’s chairman of 20th and 21st century art, said the house this season had been operating on the “masterpiece approach,” which seems t
  
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• Congress Passes Bill That Gives Trump the Power to Designate Art Nonprofits ‘Terrorist Organizations’

  21-11-2024 22:00 via artnews.com
  
  On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or H.R. 9495, a bill that grants the Secretary of Treasury the power to designate nonprofit organizations “terrorist organizations” and strip them of their tax-exempt status. The bill will now go to the Senate. The implications of the bill passing the House are immense for American arts nonprofits, a sector of this industry that has historically been invested
  
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• Majority of Britons Support Permanent British Museum Exhibit on Transatlantic Slave Trade

  21-11-2024 21:40 via artnews.com
  
  A recent poll found the majority of Britons, 53 percent, support a permanent exhibit at the British Museum about the transatlantic slave trade.New polling data by British research and data analytics firm YouGov found that 53 percent of respondents thought a permanent display about Great Britain’s role in the trade of slaves from Africa would be appropriate at the British Museum. Two-thirds of respondents said they believe the institution should educate the public about the country’s
  
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• Miami Beach’s Untitled Art Fair Will Expand to Houston

  21-11-2024 18:37 via artnews.com
  
  Untitled Art, which for 12 years has mounted an art fair on the sands of Miami Beach, will expand across the Gulf of Mexico, with plans to host an event in Houston next year.The first edition of the Houston fair will run September 19–21, with a VIP preview on September 18, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, which was recently approved to build a new building in 2025 as part of a three-decade, $2 billion initiative to transform that part of downtown Houston.“We’ve been lo
  
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• Ken Burns and His ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ Co-Directors on Finding a New Angle on an Icon

  21-11-2024 17:47 via artnews.com
  
  More than 500 years after his death, the works of Leonardo da Vinci have never been more ubiquitous. “Mona Lisa” just got her own Lego set, and recently played a central role in Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” A controversial allusion to his famed “The Last Supper” during this summer’s Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony reacquainted the masses with the iconic image’s origins, and his “Vitruvian Man” is still
  
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• Phillips Deputy CEO Amanda Lo Iacono Talks about Focusing on the Next Generation after Things Flatten

  21-11-2024 16:53 via artnews.com
  
  On Tuesday night, Phillips New York began its auction week with its modern and contemporary evening sale generating $54.1 million with fees. That result marked a 23 percent drop from the $70 million total that last year’s equivalent November sale generated. The sale’s hammer total of $44.2 million was a far cry from the original low estimate of $62 million, and 28 percent below the estimate even when factoring in the two withdrawn lots. Not exactly an explosive st
  
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• An Astonishing, Rarely Seen Islamic Art Collection Goes on Display

  21-11-2024 14:00 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  At the oldest public art museum in the United States, miniatures, glassware and other intricately created works transport visitors around the world
  
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• Cattelan’s $6.24 M. Banana and Its Buyer Justin Sun Steal the Show at Sotheby’s $110.4 M. Contemporary Evening Sale

  21-11-2024 06:21 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s Now and Contemporary evening sale on Wednesday didn’t border on the absurd, it dived headfirst into it as Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s chairman of Europe, sold a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.24 million. Minutes later, Chinese-born, New York–based cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun announced on X not only that he was the buyer of that work, Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), but that he would eat its centerpiece, the banana, “honoring its plac
  
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• Cattelan’s $6.24 M. Banana and Buyer Justin Sun Steal the Show at Sotheby’s $110.4 M. Contemporary Evening Sale

  21-11-2024 06:21 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s Now and Contemporary evening sale on Wednesday didn’t border on the absurd, it dived headfirst into it as Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s chairman of Europe, sold a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.24 million. Minutes later, Chinese-born, New York–based cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun announced on X not only that he was the buyer of the work, Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), but that he would eat the banana “[to honor] its place in both art his
  
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• Maurizio Cattelan’s Duct-Taped Banana Sells for $6.24 M. at Sotheby’s

  21-11-2024 01:51 via artnews.com
  
  “The world’s most expensive banana” sold Wednesday night at Sotheby’s New York. That’s how auctioneer Oliver Barker put as he was trying to eke out the last of the bids for Maurizio Cattelan’s viral artwork, Comedian (2019). The famed artwork, of a banana duct-taped to a wall, hammered at $5.2 million, with the final price (including buyer’s premium) being $6.24 million. It went to a client of Jen Hua, Christie’s senior vice president, deputy chair
  
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• Hong Kong Artist Receives Prison Sentence for Political ‘Subversion’

  20-11-2024 23:15 via artnews.com
  
  45 well-known pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong were sentenced in a mass trial on Tuesday under the national security law implemented in 2020, the Hong Kong Free Press reported. It is the largest case of its kind invoked under the national security law.Among those who were sentenced was former law professor Benny Tai, prominent activist Joshua Wong, and artist and elected official Clarisse Yeung. They are among 47 pro-democracy activists who were arrested and charged in 2021 with conspiracy to
  
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• Italian Authorities Bust Illegal Excavation of Etruscan Burial Site

  20-11-2024 23:00 via artnews.com
  
  The illegal excavation of an Etruscan burial site in Umbria, in central Italy, has been seized by Italian authorities, Italy’s Minister of Culture announced on Tuesday. Police now seek two people suspected of stealing an urn and sarcophagi, among other artifacts, worth a total 8 million euros ($8.5 million) with the intent to sell sell them on the black market.As first reported in English by the Associated Press, the illegal operation neighbored another Etruscan burial site unearthed by a
  
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• Steve Locke Talks About His Painterly and Polemical Provocations

  20-11-2024 20:28 via artnews.com
  
  Steve Locke’s best-known works are paintings of faces with their tongues sticking out. This fatuous facial gesture is immediately relatable but also, as Locke discusses below, one that can be read in a number of different ways. Such multifaceted readings are typical for Locke, who trained as a painter and considers his subjects carefully and from many different vantages. Often, in work that can be moving or maddening, inspiring or impish, and sometimes more than a little funny, he captures
  
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• Third Just Stop Oil Activist Charged After Orange Paint Protest at Stonehenge Monument

  20-11-2024 18:08 via artnews.com
  
  A third Just Stop Oil activist was recently charged in connection with a protest at the Stonehenge monument in June, after orange powder paint was sprayed on the ancient stones.Luke Watson, a 35-year-old resident of Manuden, Bishop’s Stortford, was charged with “one count of aiding, abetting, counselling and/or procuring destroying or damaging an ancient protected monument, and one count of aiding, abetting, counselling and/or procuring causing a public nuisance,” according to
  
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• ICA Boston Picks MCA Denver’s Nora Burnett Abrams as Next Director

  20-11-2024 18:00 via artnews.com
  
  After a year-long search, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has selected Nora Burnett Abrams as its next director. She will begin in the post on May 1, succeeding Jill Medvedow, who has directed the ICA for 26 years.Abrams comes to the ICA after a 15-year tenure at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, where she successfully rose through the curatorial ranks, starting as an adjunct curator in 2009 and rising to the museum’s directorship in 2019. During her tenure there, she incre
  
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• A Curious Industry Once Gave Anyone With a Song in Their Heart a (Long) Shot at Stardom

  20-11-2024 16:00 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  How the dubious tradition of song-sharking led to a strangely beautiful repository of folk art
  
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• Anonymous Was A Woman Reveals 2024 Grantees in Milestone Year for the Celebrated Program

  20-11-2024 14:06 via artnews.com
  
  The grant-making organization Anonymous Was A Woman has revealed the 2024 recipients of its celebrated grants, which are awarded to women-identifying artists over the age of 40 in support of their ongoing practice.Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) has awarded $25,000 annually to at least ten artists since its founding by artist Susan Unterberg in 1996. This cycle, however, marks a milestone—one of several—for the organization. The cash prize has been doubled, with $50,000 now awarded each
  
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• $486 M. Total at Christie’s Double Header Hides Uneven Night of Sales

  20-11-2024 06:50 via artnews.com
  
  If there is one thing we have learned this year, it’s that the collector class still has money to spend, but will only spend it on the choicest, most fresh-to-market works. Christie’s 20th century evening sale on Tuesday, which totaled $486 million with a sell-through rate of 92 percent by value and 83 percent by lot, certainly proved that maxim true.The evening opened with 19 lots from the collection of designer and philanthropist Mica Ertegun, which alone brought in $184 million. A
  
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• $486 M. Total at Christie’s Double Header Hides An Uneven Night of Sales

  20-11-2024 06:50 via artnews.com
  
  If there is one thing we have learned this year it’s that the collector class still has money to spend, but will only spend it on choicest, most fresh-to-market works. Christie’s 20th century evening sale on Tuesday, which totaled $486 million with a sell through rate of 92 percent by value and 83 percent by lot, certainly proved that maxim true. The evening opened with 19 lots from the collection of designer and philanthropist Mica Ertegun, which alone brought in $184 million. And w
  
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• Phillips $54.1 M. Evening Sale Drops 23 Percent from Last Year

  20-11-2024 02:22 via artnews.com
  
  On Tuesday night, Phillips began a week of sales in New York with its modern and contemporary evening sale of roughly 30 lots generating $54.1 million with fees. That result marks a 23 percent drop from the $70 million total that last year’s equivalent November sale generated. That sale’s low estimate was $60 million, on par with this year’s expectation.During the sale, 26 works sold for a collective hammer price of $54.1 million after two were withdrawn. That figure is 15 perc
  
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• German Foundation Rescinds Architecture Award for Writer Who Signed Israel Boycott Letter

  19-11-2024 23:44 via artnews.com
  
  The Schelling Architecture Foundation, a German organization that recognizes artists and writers for their contributions to architectural theory, has rescinded a prize awarded to British artist and writer James Bridle over the signing of an open letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions. The award included a cash prize of €10,000 (roughly $10,600). Bridle, an Athens-based artist who uses they/them pronouns, was announced in June as the recipient of the foundation’s
  
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