Category: visual

Collectors generally place a value on the art they covet based on the reputation of the artist who created it. But what to do when you have no idea who painted that picture being offered for sale? The Washington Project for the Arts at the Corcoran Gallery has been having fun with the idea for a few years now, offering works by anonymous artists to anyone with $500 and a willingness to take a risk.

An auction of Russian art at Christie’s of London has set a sales record as Russian collectors continue to put their stamp on the art market. “When Russian collectors want something of top quality, money is meaningless for them: They will pay crazy prices.”

“In the lexicon of modern and contemporary art fairs, collectors recognize Art Basel as the biggest and the best. By the time the fair ends on Sunday some 60,000 visitors will have flocked here to see an international array of some 300 galleries showing more than 2,000 artists. Many will also peruse art in the coinciding smaller art fairs and institutional exhibitions here. But not everyone is upbeat. Dealers are complaining that it has become difficult to sell great works. Collectors are grumbling about the scarcity of top-quality art.”

“It used to be unusual to see packs of schoolchildren in museums and art galleries; it is now unusual not to have them around, sometimes even to the detriment of one’s own quiet enjoyment. Moreover, there is more stimulating art to be seen, in a greater number of good museums, outside of London, than ever before.”

The Barnes Collection is set to move to Philadelphia. Now the county where the Barnes is located wants to buy the buildings and lease them to the collection. “The bonds are backed by the lease payments. The debt service would be $2.5 million per year but the interest on $50 million would be $3.5 million a year. Leaving the Barnes a profit for its endowment fund. After 40 years the debt would be paid off and the Barnes could probably get a 99-year lease at $1 a year. There could be an option to buy back the land and buildings whenever they wanted to. This is a way the Barnes could be economically viable without using millions in taxpayer money.”

A judge has told Fisk University it cannot sell two paintings from its collection – a Georgia O’Keffe and a Marsden Hartley. “The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum argued in a motion last month that Fisk should not be allowed to sell the paintings based on what it saw as a clearly defined “no-sale” condition imposed on all of the artworks in the Stieglitz Collection.”

Getting a new monument approved and built in Washington DC isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s also about the politics of getting it done, and the accomplishment often doesn’t match the thing to be honored. “Monuments in Washington are almost always built to the greater glory of their makers, not the victims or heroes acknowledged, as if in a footnote, in the words carved on them.”

The county where the Barnes Collection is located has written to the Barnes board, asking it to “consider selling the buildings that house the world-famous collection in Merion and the grounds to Montgomery County. The art collection would remain where it is and the Barnes would pay rent to Montgomery County by investing the profits from the sale. The county would use tax-exempt bonds to raise the money for the purchase.”

“It is no secret that the art market has become drunk with money lately, with major auctions routinely raising record prices for artists old and new. Never before have contemporary artists, from London to Leipzig, New York to Shanghai, been at the center of such speculative fever. But $100 million for a diamond skull that cost $23.6 million (£12 million) to make? Even Russian oligarchs and hedge-fund billionaires might think twice. The work, by the way, is called ‘For the Love of God.’ Indeed.”

Collector Francois Pinault has “pledged to spend an estimated $26m (£13.2m) on the former customs house. The centre will show 141 works from Pinault’s 2,500-strong art collection over the next 30 years, including pieces by Keith Haring and Alighiero Boetti. It is due to open in June 2009.”