Category: visual

“A sculpture of Christ that Salvador Dali gave to his exorcist has been found among the belongings of the deceased Italian priest.”

In return for a $45 million donation, the Smithsonian says the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation will get its name on two museums. “The Las Vegas-based foundation, now the second largest donor in the Smithsonian’s history with a total contribution of $75 million, directed its new multimillion-dollar support to the renovation and exhibitions at the landmark building. The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum will retain their individual names.”

“Art investment funds represent something of a revolution in the relationship between art and commerce. A dozen art-only investment funds are now trying to raise money from investors looking to cash in on the art market’s current boom. Last year, Picasso’s ‘Boy with a Pipe,’ which had been sold in 1950 for thirty thousand dollars, went at auction for a hundred and four million, while a Canaletto that had fetched two hundred and eighty thousand pounds in 1973 sold for more than eleven million pounds three decades later. Next to such numbers, those shares of Wal-Mart that haven’t budged in five years start to look pretty dull.”

One hundred and twenty Old Master paintings in the Barnes Collection have been reattributed. “Some 22 works formerly attributed to Bosch, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, El Greco, Watteau and others have been reattributed by scholars taking part in the Collection Assessment Project, which has been examining the foundation’s roughly 9,000 objects and works of art over the past four years.”

More than 200 architects and city planners gather to talk about rebuilding the Gulf Coast. “On Wednesday, the opening day, many participants suggested that while they intended to respect the local character, they did not hope to replicate what existed before the hurricane. ‘People know that this took a wrong turn somewhere. People know this has become honky-tonk, and this is the chance to get it right. This place has lost its neighborhood structure over the last 50 years. This is a chance to rezone it in a much finer grain, so people can walk to the corner store, kids can walk to school’.”

“The new de Young Museum, designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, is proof that despite these naysayers, a museum can be both gorgeous to look at and a cozy place to view art. Clad in its elegant copper skin, this building suggests that art and architecture can make good bed partners, after all, and that a dialogue between the two can be creatively fruitful.”

It’s been a good fall for art sales. “Contemporary fairs and auctions in 2005’s fall and winter that might rake in 375 million euros ($455 million) or more from collectors by yearend, according to published figures and estimates by fair organizers.”

“The Smithsonian Institution plans to announce today that it is receiving a $45 million donation for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, making the donor — the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation — the second-largest benefactor to the museum in the past dozen years.”

“[New York’s] Museum of Modern Art has received a gift of 174 contemporary works from a Los Angeles real estate developer, including prime examples of paintings, sculptures and drawings by artists like Philip Guston, Vija Celmins and Christopher Wilmarth… These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern’s contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists.”

“The Florence Biennale is predominantly an Old Master paintings fair, although a few dealers venture into the 19th century and one, Tornabuoni Arte, showed modern works by Lucio Fontana. Most of the mainly Italian visitors have conservative tastes and come in search of traditional paintings, drawings, sculpture and furniture produced by artists and craftsmen from their country… Despite efforts by the fair to promote itself internationally, most overseas visitors this year were Americans and Britons who have second homes in Italy. This left the field largely clear for Italian collectors.”