Category: visual

“On the eve of a major Sydney art auction, the provenance of several Aboriginal paintings for sale, including four by Rover Joolama Thomas, has been questioned by experts.”

The financial people are watching this week’s auctions to see if the art market is slowing. “The strong prices achieved last night for everything from a striped wood barber pole ($16,250) to an early abstract painting by Willem de Kooning ($5.3 million) was a confidence builder.”

Beijing is making itself over for the Olympics, with some of the world’s most audacious building projects.

“Three academics from the Universities of Leipzig and Hamburg have written a five-volume study that casts doubt on the works held in Britain, which are among up to 40 per cent of the world’s Michelangelos that they believe should be dismissed as copies.”

“Despite evidence that the art market is larger, deeper, and more independent from other financial markets than ever before, if the art market sneezes, Sotheby’s stock catches the flu. Oddly, in this case, there is no evidence yet of a significant slowdown in the art market. Even in a disappointing sale, 35% of the lots that sold at Sotheby’s went for prices above the high estimate.”

“Nine cities are invited to compete for the prize of securing the portrait gallery. Toronto is on the list, along with Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. The catch: this will be a private/public partnership. Translation: someone in the lucky city that wins gets to pay the bills so that Stephen Harper’s government won’t have to.”

“This week’s $914 million combined top estimate of Christie’s International, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Co. represents twice as much art as the world’s biggest contemporary fair, Switzerland’s Art Basel, traded in June, and would beat May’s auction total.”

“Some on the Menil’s board had been skeptical about appointing then-37-year-old Franklin Sirmans as curator of modern and contemporary art, primarily because of his age. But his youth was one of the qualities that made him appealing, too.”

The Seattle Art Museum has opened two major expansions, announced $1 billion in donations of art and bumped up its endowment. But admission prices are up, some obvious acquisitions have slipped through the museum’s fingers, and the museum isn’t showing leadership is presenting art from the region…

“The Wadsworth as it existed under Austin is never coming back because Hartford as it existed when Chick Austin was here is never coming back. Efforts can be made to turn the city and the museum into something new. Something that is vital and alive but it won’t be what it was when, as has been breathlessly recounted, Gertrude Stein was hanging out with Chick.”