Arts news

• London’s Luxury Sector Thrives Off Art Audiences, But Both Are at Risk: Report

  23-10-2024 20:16 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.London’s luxury sector depends on local museums, galleries, and other cultural spaces bringing in affluent consumers, while cultural institutions rely on luxury brands to attract new audiences, according to a report published earlier this month by Walpole, a UK trade association tha
  
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• This November, $1 K. Can Buy You a Visit to the Studio of Blue-Chip Artists like Jeff Koons and Jeffrey Gibson

  30-10-2024 20:42 via artnews.com
  
  A host of top tier New York-based artists are opening the doors to their studios to benefit the International Fine Print Dealers Association Foundation this November.Eleven artists, including Katherine Bradford, Leonardo Drew, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Jeff Koons, Vera Lutter, Joel Mesler, Marilyn Minter, Tschabalala Self, Joel Shapiro and Mickalene Thomas, are taking part in the STUDIO VISIT benefit sale, which runs live on the IFPDA Foundation’s website from November 9 thought
  
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• Three Just Stop Oil Activists Banned From Protesting In London After Throwing Soup At Van Gogh Painting

  30-10-2024 20:40 via artnews.com
  
  Three climate activists from the group Just Stop Oil have been banned by a judge from protesting in London after throwing soup at a painting by Vincent van Gogh last month. The judgment follows a series of peaceful protest actions by Just Stop Oil across the UK over the past week, including at the British Museum, and after museum directors issued an open letter demanding an end to demonstrations involving notable artworks.Mary Somerville, 77, Stephen Simpson, 71, and Phil Green, 24, had thrown t
  
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• November Evening Sales in New York Include Basquiat Portrait at Christie’s Estimated at $20M. to $30M.

  30-10-2024 19:26 via artnews.com
  
  After this month’s positive results at Frieze London and Art Basel Paris—and in advance of a tense US presidential election soon to be in the rear-view mirror—market watchers are no doubt hopeful that the upcoming marquee November auctions will mark the beginning of the end of this year’s weak art market. Of course, that depends on the material, the true determining factor of a good or bad auction season. So far, the auction houses have been dribbling out information
  
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• Cecilia Vicuña and Julian Charrière Awarded MOCA LA’s Inaugural Art and Environment Prize

  30-10-2024 18:05 via artnews.com
  
  The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced Julian Charrière and Cecilia Vicuña as the winners of its inaugural Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize. The award comes with a $100,000 purse and institutional support from the museum to develop a related commissioned project.The prize, which was established earlier this year by philanthropists Eric and Wendy Schmidt, “is awarded biennially to artists whose work foregrounds pressing environmental concerns a
  
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• Dealers at The Art Show Weigh in on a Soft Market: ‘A Great Picture Always Sells’

  30-10-2024 17:53 via artnews.com
  
  Not even an hour into the opening of The Art Show, the annual fair of the Art Dealers Association of America, New York dealer Charles Moffett had sold half of the seven egg tempera on wood New York City-scapes by emerging artist C’naan Hamburger he had on view—priced $8,000 to $15,000—and had the other half on hold. By the end of the night, he had sold five. That was a strong result, Moffett told ARTnews, considering the state of the market.“The first time I worked t
  
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• British Museum’s ‘Silk Roads’ Exhibition Aims to Tell the Complex Story of the Misunderstood Trade Route

  30-10-2024 15:15 via artnews.com
  
  The history of silk is in many ways wrapped up in the history of humanity. Archaeologists have discovered traces of silk farming dating to 5,000 years ago, providing forensic proof to the story, in Chinese folklore and the writings of Confucius, that Empress Leizu, also known as Xi Ling-shi, developed the cultivation of this valuable commodity around 3,000 BCE. One day while sitting under a mulberry tree drinking tea, a silkworm cocoon dropped into her teacup. Its thread-like texture began to lo
  
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• Sotheby’s Closes Deal with Abu Dhabi Soverign Wealth Fund for $1 B. Cash Injection

  30-10-2024 14:57 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s has closed a deal, previously announced this summer, for Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and investment company, ADQ, to acquire a minority stake in the auction house. ADQ, along with the family of telecoms tycoon Patrick Drahi, the auction house’s billionaire owner, bought newly-issued shares of the company worth $1 billion. While the exact terms of the deal—or the company’s new valuation—were not disclosed, a Sotheby’s spokesperson sai
  
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• Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Archives of American Art Co-Present “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return”

  30-10-2024 14:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art invite visitors to contemplate what a portrait can be with “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return,”on view through July 6, 2025. This is the largest presentation of the late artist’s work in Washington, D.C., in 30 years.Related ArticlesBanksy Migrant Boat Decried as 'Vile,' Louvre Accused of Copying Dance Program, St. Louis Art Center Shutters Pro-Palestinian Exhibition, and More: Morning Links fo
  
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• Lawsuit Claims Artist Scott Kahn Ditched Phillips Asia Show for David Zwirner Deal

  29-10-2024 22:43 via artnews.com
  
  Dealer and curator Eric Ian Hornak-Spoutz has filed suit against painter Scott Kahn, who is accused of breaching his contractual obligations to Hornak-Spoutz by abruptly terminating an exhibition at the Phillips in Hong Kong in order to join David Zwirner’s roster.At the center of the suit, which was filed on Monday in New York State Supreme Court in Westchester County, is the exhibition, which Hornak-Spoutz says was born out of an hours-long Zoom call in November 2022. Also on that call w
  
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• Former Palace of Bangladesh’s Ousted Leader to Become ‘Uprising’ Museum

  29-10-2024 21:21 via artnews.com
  
  The former palace of Bangladesh’s ex-leader, Sheikh Hasina, will become a museum following the democratic revolution that saw the autocrat ousted.“The museum should preserve memories of her misrule and the people’s anger when they removed her from power,” Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus told reporters at the Ganabhaban, the onetime residence of the prime minister in Dhaka, as quoted by South China Morning Post.  Yunus, an 84-year-old microfinance visionary, w
  
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• Previously Unknown Chopin Waltz Identified at New York’s Morgan Library

  29-10-2024 19:54 via artnews.com
  
  A 200-year-old musical score believed to be composed by Frédéric Chopin has been discovered in the vault of New York’s Morgan Library and Museum.While cataloguing new collections at the Morgn, curator Robinson McClellan came across a card with the Polish composer’s name and holding a waltz dating between 1830 and 1835, the New York Times reported.It was initially uncertain, however, if the piece was in fact written by Chopin, so the curator worked alongside leading
  
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• For His Latest Exhibition, Artist Hugh Hayden Returns to Texas, Revealing More About Himself in the Process

  29-10-2024 17:00 via artnews.com
  
  In the late 1980s, in a suburb of Dallas, an estimated 5,000 community members took part in creating Kidsville, an all-wood, medieval-inspired extravagant playground that claimed to be the largest volunteer-built playground in the world, aided by children raising funds through penny drives and local retailers supplying equipment and wood.Speaking to a community’s resourcefulness, the story of Kidsville, completed during two weeks in April 1989, serves as a fitting introduction to Hugh Hayd
  
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• Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol Collaborator Behind Cult Classic Films, Dies at 86

  29-10-2024 16:28 via artnews.com
  
  Paul Morrissey, the director of several Andy Warhol film collaborations that earned the scorn of critics and the admiration of audiences around the world, died in New York on Monday after being hospitalized with pneumonia. He was 86, according to the New York Times, which first reported the news.Morrissey is most famous for the vulgar, rough-hewn features he produced during the late 1960s and early ’70s. Many flirted with the conventions of Hollywood films, appropriating the trappings of W
  
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• Collectors Howard Rachofsky and Thomas Hartland-Mackie Launch The Warehouse Dallas Art Foundation

  29-10-2024 13:00 via artnews.com
  
  Dallas-based mega-collector Howard Rachofsky, a former hedge fund manager and fixture of ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list, is teaming up with a collector some 40 years his junior, Thomas Hartland-Mackie, to start The Warehouse Dallas Art Foundation, a non-profit arts foundation at The Warehouse, an 18,000 square foot exhibition space in a former storage facility that Rachofsky opened in 2012.The new foundation, which, according to a statement, has been formed to ensure an educational miss
  
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• A Blockbuster Met Exhibition Takes Visitors Back to Siena to Trace the Origins of European Painting

  29-10-2024 10:00 via artnews.com
  
  A tremendous poster greets visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Advertising the show of the season, “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350,” the poster features a detail from the Raising of Lazarus (1310–11) by Duccio di Buoninsegna, founder of the Sienese school. It shows Christ, surrounded by a crowd, raising his extended arm. If you are familiar with the uncropped painting, you realize that on the right should appear Lazarus in his tomb, eyes now open, co
  
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• 2,000-Year-Old Nabataean Temple Found off the Coast of Italy

  28-10-2024 21:26 via artnews.com
  
  A Nabataean temple was discovered off the coast of Pozzuoli, Italy, according to a study published in the journal Antiquity in September. The find is considered unusual, as most Nabataean architecture is located in the Middle East.Puteoli, as the bustling port was then called, was a hub for ships carrying and trading goods across the Mediterranean under the Roman Republic. The city was home to storehouses filled with grain exported from Egypt and North Africa during the reign
  
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• France’s Culture Minister Proposes Charging Notre-Dame Visitors Five-Euro Entry Fee

  28-10-2024 21:18 via artnews.com
  
  Rachida Dati, France’s culture minister, has suggested charging an entry fee for visitors to Notre-Dame de Paris when the cathedral reopens in December following its five-year restoration.Dati told Le Figaro that forcing people to pay a five-euro entry fee could raise 75 million euros a year. Those funds could then be used to “save all the churches in Paris and France.” The 75 million euros would apparently be generated by an estimated 15 million visitors to Notre-Dame in 2025.
  
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• Clark Art Institute Gets $45 M. Trustee Gift to Establish New Gallery and 331 Works for Collection

  28-10-2024 19:03 via artnews.com
  
  The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received a significant posthumous donation from the foundation of one of its former trustees, Bulgarian-American software developer Aso O. Tavitian, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 80.The donation includes 331 artworks and a $45 million endowment to support a new curatorial position, fund ongoing collection care, and finance the construction of a gallery wing named in Tavitian’s name, focused on European artworks.The collect
  
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• TEFAF Returns to Maastricht Next Year with 26 Newcomers Among 266 Exhibitors

  28-10-2024 18:22 via artnews.com
  
  The European Fine Art Foundation announced Monday that TEFAF Maastricht will return to the Maastricht Exhibition & Conference Centre (MECC) from March 15-20, 2025. The 2025 edition with bring together 266 exhibitors from 21 countries to showcase 7,000 years of fine art, antiques, and design, just four galleries shy of their participation in 2024. Still, of those galleries, 26 will be joining TEFAF in Maastericht for the first time, including France’s Galerie Lelong &
  
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• Yacht Owners Are Commissioning Copies of Original Art to Bring to Sea

  28-10-2024 18:08 via artnews.com
  
  Superyachts have always been risky homes for art collections, and not just because of the damp salt air and constant motion. “Crew ignorance is the biggest danger at sea” for all types of artworks, says art historian Pandora Mather-Lees. “Often they don’t know the cultural value of the work or its emotional value for the owner.” Consider the contemporary masterpiece in one superyacht salon: Valued at $110 million, it required expert restoration after
  
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• French Weaver Marie Hazard Loses Herself in Cross Hatches and Spirals

  28-10-2024 16:45 via artnews.com
  
  To communicate beyond the word, beyond “the disastrously explicit medium of language,” per James Baldwin: This is Marie Hazard’s obsession.Hazard is a weaver, and we converse well. Yet words are hard for her. She is dyslexic. She wishes she could write. Writing, she says, is “difficult to next to impossible” for her. But recall: “text” came into French from the Medieval Latin texere, meaning “to weave.” In earlier Latin, textus meant “a
  
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• Newsmakers: After Opening in Paris, Gurr Johns CEO Harry Smith Says Everything Hinges on the US

  28-10-2024 14:36 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a new ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.Over the years, Harry Smith, CEO of Gurr Johns, has transformed the London-based advisory firm, which values around $12 billion in art each. Since acquiring the firm in the mid-1980s, Smith has grown it into a larger enterprise modeled on mid-sized auction houses, opened a branch in New York and, in 2022, launching an art
  
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• Christie’s Will Sell Monet Painting From Chicago’s Union League Club At 20th Century Evening Sale

  27-10-2024 05:12 via artnews.com
  
  Christie’s has been consigned to sell Claude Monet’s Pommiers en fleurs (1872) by the Union League Club of Chicago to help fund a $10 million renovation of its building.The auction house will feature the painting of a French lane with blooming white flowers and bushes at its 20th Century Evening Sale on November 19. The estimate is $7 million to $10 million. Club member Judge John Barton Payne purchased the painting in 1895 and sold it to the club for $500. By the late 1950s, th
  
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• Egon Schiele’s Death Mask Surpasses Expectations at Sloane Street Auctions Sale

  25-10-2024 22:43 via artnews.com
  
  An “exceedingly rare” bronze cast of Egon Schiele’s death mask sold for $24,600—more than ten times its estimated price—this week at London’s Sloane Street Auctions sale of 20th Century, Modern and Old Masters, Islamic and Asian Art and Jewelry. (All figures included the buyer’s premium and fees.)The mask was made by Gustinus Ambrosi two days after Schiele died from the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. According to Artnet News. Ambrosi &
  
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• 3 Takeaways from the Art Basel & UBS Global Collecting Survey

  25-10-2024 21:49 via artnews.com
  
  Few years have been as tumultuous in the art market as 2023. Of course, 2008 and 2016 were bad (and not to mention 1990), but the ongoing art market “correction” was preceded by the post-Covid low-interest rate economy that drove a speculation bonanza for young and emerging artists. That bubble has popped. Today’s market is happening amid what Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz called, in the recently released Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, “an ongoing backd
  
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• School of the Art Institute of Chicago Students Hold Walkout to Protest War in Gaza

  25-10-2024 20:16 via artnews.com
  
  Students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago organized a walkout on Thursday to protest Israel’s war in Gaza.The walkout, which happened during class hours, began outside SAIC’s MacLean Center, the building that houses the school’s art history, critical studies, and journalism programs. Organized in part by the Students for Palestinian Liberation (SPL), the walkout saw protestors move up Michigan Avenue to a public park, evading conflict on SAIC’s campus. Studen
  
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• Ancient House with Erotic Frescoes Discovered at Pompeii

  25-10-2024 18:50 via artnews.com
  
  Age-old paintings of satyrs bedding nymphs and mythological figures fornicating have been newly unearthed at a small house at Pompeii.In its announcement of the house’s excavation this week, the Pompeii Archaeological Park compared the little domicile to the “tiny house” phenomenon. The dwelling, the park said, was “extremely refined in decoration.” It is one of many like it that have been found at Pompeii recently.The house, which dates to the 1st century CE, is ha
  
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• Chicago Exhibition Weekend Highlights Founder Abby Pucker’s Ambitions For the Windy City’s Art Industry

  25-10-2024 14:58 via artnews.com
  
  Chicago Exhibition Weekend (CXW) came into being last year because Abby Pucker was tired of hearing people saying they didn’t know what was going on in the Windy City, how to find interesting events or that they felt intimidated by the art world.“I was like, ‘Screw this. This is so annoying. There’s so much going on. You’re just not taking the step to actually go find it,'” Pucker, the founder and CEO of the cultural and civic consultancy firm Gertie, told ART
  
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• Sotheby’s to Sell Maurizio Cattelan’s Duct-taped Banana, Art Basel and USB Report Looks for Positives: Morning Links for October 25, 2024

  25-10-2024 14:34 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesGOING BANANAS. Maurizio Cattelan’s famously provocative duct-taped, yellow plantain sculpture will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York on November 20. Has the piece managed to retain its crowd-drawing a-peel? These are the irresistible questions The Art Newspaper is asking today. Cattelan’s controversial work, appropriately titled Comed
  
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