Category: visual

“After six years of strategic planning and review, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has decided to sell artworks and objects that fall outside the institution’s mission ‘to acquire, exhibit and preserve both Modern and contemporary art.’ The works, which include everything from antiquities to old master paintings and other European art, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2007 and early 2008. The proceeds, expected to be around $15 million, will be used to acquire works that will strengthen the gallery’s holdings.”

An important Kirchner painting sold at the record-setting auction in New York the other day for nearly $40 million. But possibly more interesting than the work itself is the identity of the seller – “Anita Halpin, the 62-year-old stalwart and chair of the far left” Communist Party of Britain. “For a communist, it may seem a galling sum for 200cm by 150cm of canvas. Worse still, perhaps, for a woman with Stalinist credentials.”

The Seattle Art Museum is “aggressively pruning its American collection in the hopes that clearing out the weeds will make way (dollars-wise, that is) for better, bigger purchases… Obviously, the museum believes it can make headway in the department of cheaper and more available American art. Is that true? And does SAM have its eyes on a particular prize? The museum isn’t saying.”

Teri Horton, who lives in a mobile home and gets by on Social Security, isn’t exactly your typical high-end art collector. But ever since she was told that the painting she bought for $5 at a thrift store might just be an Jackson Pollock, Horton has given over her life to a tireless quest to prove the painting’s authenticity. How driven is she? Well, she recently turned down a $9 million offer for the work.

“After an on-and-off restitution battle lasting six decades, the Austrian Culture Ministry agreed on Wednesday to return a painting by Edvard Munch, Summer Night on the Beach, to Marina Mahler. She is the granddaughter of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife, Alma, who originally owned the oil.”

In withdrawing a Nazi-linked Picasso from tonight’s art auction, Christie’s is acknowledging the difficult status of the painting’s ownership history. But the auction house is hardly conceding defeat: Christie’s may yet seek damages from the man who has been claiming rightful ownership of the painting in court.

Italian officials say talks with the Getty Museum over return of art Italians say is stolen have been disappointing. “I don’t think they understand the gravity of the situation. You have a major museum, and it is exhibiting dozens of stolen artifacts.”

The evening’s total, $491.4 million, was well over $200 million more than that for any previous auction, topping its high estimate of $427.8 million. (The previous record was $269 million at Christie’s in May 1990.) Of the 84 lots up for sale last night, only 6 failed to sell. ‘Not only did so much money change hands, but this sale it going to change the whole landscape when it comes to prices for postwar art’.”

How do you get a big donor to step up and invest in your museum’s story? You appeal to his interests. That’s what the Royal Ontario Museum did, and it paid off big yesterday.

Sotheby’s makes a strong showing with Impressionists and Modern. “Throughout the evening, paintings by masters like Cézanne, Modigliani and Matisse that had been up at auction in recent years not only sold but also brought solid prices. Although there were few fireworks and only an occasional bidding war, the evening totaled $238.6 million, Sotheby’s highest auction total since spring 1990 and right in the middle of its estimate, $219 million to $299 million.”