Richard Prince, Navy Nurse, 2004, inkjet and acrylic on canvas, 76 x 54 ¼ in, ARTBnk Value: 5,968,428.
NEW YORK, NY.-ARTBnk is often queried for objective information about the art market, especially auction markets. With so much hyperbole about up/down liquidity of late and many requests for a reality check, ARTBnk has prepared an in-depth look at the pandemic and the auction markets. ARTBnk reviewed 22 Evening and Day Sales occurring between June 29th - July 30th 2020 at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips. For the purposes of this analysis we focused on the 627 lots that our system currently provides ARTBnk Valuations for, or 52% of Evening and 33% of Day Sale lots. At the end of March the ARTBnk Value algorithm was adjusted based on a number of broad based economic indicators. This resulted in ARTBnk Values in aggregate being reduced by 20% from values prior to the pandemic. As we can see from the graph below, the recent ... More
Signs advertise the New York City Ballet outside the Lincoln Center in New York, March 12, 2020. Vincent Tullo/The New York Times.
by Sarah Bahr
NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- It was born of high hopes: a program for cultural institutions that receive New York City funding and operate on New York City land. Under the plan, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to hold august institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Carnegie Hall accountable for hiring more members of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups and for making their boards of directors and other leadership ranks more inclusive. “This will be a factor in funding decisions by the city going forward,” de Blasio said. “We do this because we believe in fairness.” But the Department of Cultural Affairs did not set numerical goals for what constituted progress, nor did it require that institutions provide baseline demographic statistics about their staffs. So while the program is heralded as one of the first municipally driven ... More
Zeng Fanzhi, The Mask Series No. 11, 1994, oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm, 70⅞ x 62⅝ in. Est. HK$12,000,000 – 22,000,000 / US$1,548,000 – 2,839,000
HONG KONG.- This Autumn, Sotheby’s Hong Kong will present “The First Avant-Garde: Masterworks from the Johnson Chang Collection”. The selection of 14 Chinese Contemporary artworks hail from the private collection of Johnson Chang, the eminent Hong Kong curator, critic and connoisseur, who is widely regarded for his groundbreaking efforts in placing the Chinese Contemporary art genre onto the international stage. The prestigious selection is led by Zhang Xiaogang’s monumental triptych The Dark Trilogy: Fear, Meditation, Sorrow, which will be presented and offered in its entirety for the first time since the early 1990s. Other highlights include early works by iconic Chinese Contemporary masters Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei, Fang Lijun, and Yu Youhan, all of which have been kept in Chang’s private collection since their creation. The advent of the 1990s Chinese avant-garde, and its simultaneous emergence onto ... More
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, March 5, 2020. Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.
by Julia Jacobs and Zachary Small
NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The Whitney Museum of American Art on Tuesday canceled an upcoming exhibition after artists of color objected to the institution’s having obtained their work through discounted sales largely meant to benefit racial justice charities. They have accused the museum of trying to capitalize on their work without properly compensating them. The exhibition, called “Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a Time of Change,” was intended to feature work by artists who participated in projects responding to the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. On Tuesday morning, there was an outpouring of criticism on social media after artists received emails saying that their work would be included in the exhibition, which was to feature about 80 artists and debut on Sept. 17, two weeks after the Whitney plans to reopen. The notice from Farris Wahbeh, the Whitney’s ... More
NEW YORK, NY.- Following the ground-breaking success of ONE, Christie’s $420 million live-streamed global relay auction in July, Christie’s will again break with tradition and introduce a new global auction calendar in October, adding exciting new collecting opportunities to the traditional Fall auction calendar. Presented by Christie’s unified “20/21” department, the new calendar will feature a mid-autumn marquee week of Evening and Day sales in New York ahead of the traditional November auctions, and a synchronised series of sales in London and Paris - all devoted to the best of 20th and 21st Century art. The additional New York sales will be conducted live and live-streamed from Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries on October 6 and 7, 2020. This will be followed by exceptional auctions that celebrate ... More
Gupta’s works often require the viewer to spend time, watching or listening for meaning to unfold, or reevaluate their initial impression shift upon closer inspection.
NEW YORK, NY.- Over the last two and a half decades, Shilpa Gupta has developed a powerful interdisciplinary approach to challenging prevailing notions of individual and collective cultural identity. Gupta examines the role of perception and subjectivity in the status of objects, places, people and experiences, and the way value is defined and impacted by nationalism, trade, religion and notions of security. Incorporating sculpture, text, sound, light and ephemera, Gupta explores the psychology of different media forms by reversing their traditional roles and encouraging viewer participation to create meaning. Subverting the way audio and visual technologies typically present information — such as flapboards displaying fragmented words and phrases rather than train departure times, playfully projecting the ... More
Isabella Icoz, Senior Director at Lehmann Maupin, London, 2020. Photo by Mark Blower.
LONDON.-Lehmann Maupin announced the opening of its new space in London on Monday, October 5, located at 1 Cromwell Place. Alongside galleries located in New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul, this will be Lehmann Maupin’s first in London. Lehmann Maupin London will function as a dynamic multi-purpose space, offering an alternative to the traditional gallery model. Conceived in response to the shifting needs of its artists and the broader arts community, Lehmann Maupin London will forego a fixed exhibition program and instead engage site-specific activations, installations, and performances. This innovative model will allow the gallery to develop focused presentations that highlight critical issues of the day, while also providing a platform for artists to think outside of the traditional presentation of a new body of work. In addition, the gallery will host a regular series of public programs to keep audiences ... More
The unveiling of the statue of women's rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth is seen in Central Park in New York on August 26, 2020, marking the park's first statue of real-life women. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP.
NEW YORK(AFP).- It's a small but significant foot in the door of an urban landscape completely dominated by white men: On Wednesday, New York's Central Park inaugurated its first statue honoring "real women," two of them white and one black, all of them pioneers in the struggle for women's rights. In its 167-year history, the park has seen some 30 statues installed over its vast 840 acres (340 hectares). But they have honored only white men and fictional women -- like Alice in Wonderland at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, or a life-size statue of Juliet, in tender embrace with her Romeo, near the theater that hosts Shakespeare in the Park plays. On Wednesday, that "bronze ceiling" was shattered, as former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said at the statue's inauguration, which was streamed online. The new statue represents Sojourner Truth ... More
Arts Lab Research is a firm devoted to studying the cultures and art representations in every corner of the world, as well as to looking for art opportunities and the well-being of the art industry.
BUCHAREST.- Romanians like art, and 90% of them believe that you do not have to have specialized knowledge to enjoy museums and exhibitions, according to a national survey led by international research company for arts and culture Arts Lab Research, on a sample of 482 respondents from our country. 30% of the participants in the study stated that they visit art exhibitions or participate in art related activities with a frequency of once a month. For 64% of the survey participants, visiting museums and art galleries in the country and abroad is the preferred way to consume art. About 30% are less traditionalist, preferring the events dedicated to street art, more and more popular in our country. Also, 6% of Romanians participate in art classes. All the study participants stated that they visit museums, art galleries, exhibition spaces or participate in art events at least once a year. Almost half of them dedicate themselves to these activi ... More
Doug Leen, a retired backcountry dentist who collects and reproduces national park posters created by Works Progress Administration artists, at his home on Alaska’s Kupreanof Island, Aug. 19, 2020. Annie Tritt/The New York Times.
by Erin Berger
NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Hundreds of thousands of sweaty, athleisure-clad national park visitors have entered the park gift shop after a hike and immediately gravitated toward one particular display: the vintage-looking magnets, postcards and posters with the park’s name in blocky lettering, its best-known vista or features rendered in simple contours and pastels. The style, which has become shorthand for old-school travel posters, can be traced back to one series of 14 posters, created for 13 parks and monuments in the 1930s and ’40s by Works Progress Administration artists. But those original designs were almost completely lost to time and neglect. Most of the credit for their survival lies with a bespectacled, retired backcountry dentist named Doug Leen who homesteads ... More
Veronica Pascual (L) and Sergio Saucet dance tango in their house in Buenos Aires, on August 24, 2020. Ronaldo SCHEMIDT / AFP.
by Sonia Avalos
BUENOS AIRES(AFP).- Argentina's annual Tango World Championships gets underway Wednesday, but instead of hundreds of dancers competing in an arena in Buenos Aires, the pandemic means participants are competing virtually. Coronavirus restrictions in the South American country, which reported a record daily 8,713 cases Monday, mean the judges have to rely solely on videos sent in by participants -- angering tango purists. The Buenos Aires city council decided to go ahead with the annual event even though much of the city -- including its famous milongas, or dance venues -- is shut down. "We are betting on a tango festival that adapts to the situation we are going through because of the pandemic. Different, but with the same vigor as in previous years," the city's head of culture, Enrique Avogadro, said. The organizers will also allow individual competitors for the first ... More
BERLIN.- Michael Schmidt (1945–2014) occupies a unique position in German postwar photography. Born in Berlin, he discovered the medium of photography as a form of artistic expression in the mid-1960s. The retrospective in Hamburger Bahnhof portrays his life work and also represents the first exhibition of the photographer’s oeuvre in his hometown of Berlin in 25 years. Schmidt developed an individual photographic method of accessing reality for each of his work groups. These included portraits, self-portraits, cityscapes, landscapes and still lifes. Along with the series Waffenruhe (Ceasefire), 1987, Ein-heit/U-ni-ty, 1996, Lebensmittel (Foodstuff), 2012, and other original photographs, the exhibition presents unpublished work prints, book designs and archival materials to illustrate the development of Schmidt’s art. Through its continual exploration and innovation, his work has been seminal for a younger ... More
Amanda Rose, formerly Manager of Programming and Special Events, has been named Director of Programming and Operations and will direct the Museum’s security and facilities teams and oversee programming, special events and facility rentals.
NEW ORLEANS, LA.-Ogden Museum of Southern Art announced the promotion of three staff members. Dorcas Omojola has been named Director of Finance and Administration, Amanda Rose is now Director of Programming and Operations and Claire Wilkinson is now Director of Development. “This is an exciting moment for our nonprofit organization, and the key pillars of support responsible for the success of our mission have never been stronger,” says William Pittman Andrews, Executive Director. “With these well deserved and strategic promotions, we will continue to expand our reach, introducing a wider audience to the art and culture of the American South.” Dorcas Omojola, who formerly held the role of Controller at Ogden Museum, is now Director of Finance and Administration and is responsible for the Museum’s accounting, IT contract support, Museum Store ... More
Quote There is no progress in art. Ilia Ehrenburg
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The Stephen Zito Collection of Model Trains goes up for bid at Turner Auctions + Appraisals SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Turner Auctions + Appraisals is pleased to present The Stephen Zito Collection of Model Trains on Saturday, September 12, 2020, featuring O Gauge trains and accessories from a wide selection of American and international manufacturers. Amassed over 30 years by an avid collector, this online auction offers over 150 lots. American manufacturers include Lionel, MTH, K-Line, Williams, American Flyer, Rail King, Weaver, Pride Lines, Atlas, Thomas Industries, Allstate, Industrial, Dorfan, Sunset Third Rail, Thomas Industries and Marx. Among international makers are Bing, Märklin, ETS, LGB and Hornby. The sale includes a wide range of models, locomotives, passenger coaches, freight cars, tenders, gondolas, cabooses, and Christmas trains. Among the accessories are bridges, control and floodlight towers, goods wagons, a ... More
In a pandemic first, 3 American theaters will do indoor shows NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The union representing stage actors in the United States has agreed to allow its members to take part in indoor productions at three small theaters, making possible the first such shows since the coronavirus pandemic closed theaters across the nation in March. All three theaters are nonprofits in New England, where virus cases are low. The region has already been home to the first two outdoor productions featuring union actors during the pandemic. The union, Actors’ Equity, said it had agreed to allow its members to work on three shows that will run in repertory at the Weathervane Theater in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire, as well as in a one-man show at Music Theater of Connecticut and a one-woman show at Northern Stage in Vermont. The New Hampshire productions would be a particularly ... More
Orchestras looking to broaden horizons? Start improvising NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Why won’t big American orchestras improvise? The answer might have something to do with a tough night for Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic back in 1964. The great conductor wanted his audience to give serious consideration to John Cage’s chance-based music. But Bernstein couldn’t even get his musicians to put on straight faces. Some played scales instead of the material in Cage’s notated (yet flexible) “Atlas Eclipticalis.” To Cage’s chagrin, Bernstein also led the orchestra in improvisations — which Cage considered a different tradition altogether. Most of the crowd audibly hated the results. Ever since, U.S. orchestral life has pretty much insisted on fully fixed scores. Improvisation has largely been left to the very occasional special guest, like pianist Aaron Diehl, who, after studying both classical ... More
Istvan Rabovsky, ballet dancer who defected from Hungary, dies at 90 NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Istvan Rabovsky, a leading Hungarian ballet dancer who stunned audiences in the West with his bravura in 1953 after he and his first wife, ballerina Nora Kovach, became the first highly publicized dance defectors from the communist bloc, died Aug. 18 in Manhattan. He was 90. He was hospitalized Aug. 17 with a gastric ailment, said his wife, Candace Itow. Trained in Hungary and the Soviet Union, Rabovsky and Kovach created a sensation with their technical virtuosity and an energetic style virtually unknown to Western audiences until the Bolshoi Ballet appeared in London and New York in 1956 and 1959. The Cold War context and headlines provided Rabovsky and Kovach with a warm welcome. They had defected from a guest performance in East Berlin in 1953 by taking a train to West Berlin from a subway ... More
Unopened Gyromite video game from first Nintendo U.S. test market coming to Heritage Auctions DALLAS, TX.- A pristine, unopened matte sticker sealed copy of Gyromite from the first U.S. test market for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the highest-graded copy of The Legend of Zelda will be featured among a selection of high-end Wata-certified video games and iconic video game original art in Heritage Auctions’ Comics & Comic Art Auction Sept. 10-13. Gyromite - Wata 9.6 A+ Sealed [Matte Sticker, US Test Market], NES Nintendo 1985 USA is the highest-graded, factory-sealed matte sticker game ever offered by Heritage Auctions or any other venue. The matte-textured Nintendo-branded sticker that was used to seal this copy identifies that it is from the very first production of Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) sold only at the first U.S. test market in Manhattan. “Since Nintendo’s goal with conducting the test market was ... More
Early 19th century gold mounted, rock crystal and ivory staff of office to be auctioned LONDON.- A rare and unusual ceremonial rock crystal and gold mounted staff of office or tipstaff, dating from the first half of the 19th century, discovered in a recent house clearance on the outskirts of London, is to be sold by International Coin, Medals, Banknotes and Jewellery specialists Dix Noonan Webb in a live/ online auction of Jewellery, Watches, Antiquities and Objects of Vertu on Tuesday, September 15, 2020 at 1pm. The piece, offered for sale in original condition, without restoration, measures 26.5cm in length. Estimated to fetch £5,000-7,000, it is believed to be of possible historical interest and perhaps of Royal association. The ivory shaft is topped with a rock crystal sphere, beneath gold crown surmount, and engraved below with a crowned lion passant upon a crown. As Frances Noble, Head of Jewellery at Dix Noonan ... More
Green Art Gallery opens an exhibition of Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck's work DUBAI.- Green Art Gallery announced the opening of Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck’s solo exhibition on Vortic Collect, a new art platform designed by art world professionals to provide you with the highest-quality virtual viewing experiences. This new mobile app enables collectors to navigate three-dimensional exhibitions, view works in detail and virtually place artworks in your own home. Distilling irony into humor the artist focuses on the human nature behind cyclical historic events. Analyzing the domineering modern Western worldview, he proposes an understanding of contemporary global culture as one more entangled, more decentered and more tongue in cheek. By inviting us to look at ancient empires using the visual codes of the present, the series "All the Lands from Sunrise to Sunset" (2018), suggests that today’s networked digital culture gives ... More
Theater to stream: A world of fringe and more apples NEW YORK(NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Theater is a physical art form, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that its expanded online presence is here to stay, especially as the web smooths out issues of collaboration and access, both financial and physical. In Australia, for example, the Sydney Fringe Festival is expecting its new virtual event to be more than a stopgap measure. For the festival’s chief executive and director, Kerri Glasscock, the Global Fringe initiative is not so much a replacement for the live festival as “a new project that will hopefully continue beyond the pandemic,” she wrote in an email. “It opens up a doorway for festivals like ours to support and present a wider selection of works annually, to push form and function and develop new ways of presentation, and to ensure that our audiences are getting to see the best work from around ... More
Extraordinary Tony Parker Collection a sell-out sensation at Ewbank's in Surrey WOKING.-Ewbank’s Auctions proved that there is someone for everything when one of the most bizarre and eclectic collections ever to come to auction sold out for twice the predicted price today (August 26). The ‘white glove’ auction included 274 lots which sold together for more than £76,000 including premium – well over the high estimate of £34,340. With nearly all of the lots going to online bidders, the result was a fitting tribute to the late Tony Parker, who died aged just 70 last year. A fine example of the ultimate collector, his home in the south of England was covered wall to wall, ceiling to floor in his beloved rock, pop and entertainment memorabilia – especially linked to The Beatles – as well as the historical, the quirky and the quaint. From gold discs and musical instruments, to movie costumes and photos of the stars, as well as an extraordinary range of taxidermy, he had it all, with co ... More
Hetti Perkins appointed Curator of 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial CANBERRA.- Leading curator Hetti Perkins, an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman from Central Australia, has been appointed curator of the National Gallery of Australia’s 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial, which will open in late 2021. Director of the National Gallery of Australia Nick Mitzevich said he was delighted Ms Perkins was joining the gallery to help lead its mission to tell an inclusive story of Australia through the presentation of art from multiple points of view. “The National Gallery is the custodian of the largest collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in the world – we feel privileged to have Ms Perkins join us to help share the diverse voices and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and communities with all Australians and with growing audiences across the globe,” he said. “As the first large scale recurring ... More
Shem Tov Bible: A Medieval Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain Goes to Auction | Sotheby’s
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Flashback
On a day like today, Italian artist Titian died
November 27, 1576. Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 - 27 August 1576) known in English as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth. In this image: A woman looks at Titian's painting "Mary Magdalene in Penitence" during a press preview of an exhibition of 16th and 17th century Italian painting at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, Greece, on Monday Sept. 22, 2008. The exhibition "From Titian to Pietro da Cortona: Myth Poetry and the Sacred," ran until Dec. 20. On display were 24 works by Titian and other Italian masters, on loan from a score of Italian galleries and collections.
