ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

New Orleans Auction Galleries serves up Southern estates

Auction Central News / August 5th, 2009

Summer heat and humidity in the Crescent City hasn't stopped New Orleans Auction Galleries Inc. from putting together an August sale that will have auction-goers wiping their brows as bidding intensifies. The auction Aug. 8-9 will feature art, antiques and curios from numerous Southern estates ...

Sporting Art, Decoys take in $4.15 million at Copley's Auction

Antiques & the Arts / August 5th, 2009

PLYMOUTH, MASS. - Copley Fine Art Auction's July 15 to 16 sale grossed an impressive $4,158,929; even more impressive is the fact that $1.8 million of that total came from the six of the seven Crowell decoys from the Long collection...

RISD Museum of Art's Director Unexpectedly Resigns

UnBeige Mediabistro / August 5th, 2009

Rhode Island School of Design's Museum of Art's director Hope Alswang has announced that she is resigning, effective immediately, to pursue other opportunities.   

The Guggenheim At 50: A Legacy Spirals On Fifth

NPR 1 / August 5th, 2009

A half-century ago, an eye-popping object landed on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It looked like it had dropped from outer space, and was treated as such. It was the Guggenheim museum, and today, tourists come from around the world to marvel at it.

Changing of the Guard at Maine Museums

Down East Magazine / August 4th, 2009

As improbable as it seems, Sharon Corwin, director of the Colby College Museum of Art, may be Maine’s longest-serving art museum director. She’s been in her job for three years. In what some see simply as an extra-ordinary coincidence, the leadership of virtually every other Maine art institution ...

What they painted on the summer vacations

Boston Globe / August 4th, 2009

PORTLAND, Maine - Breezy and to the point, “Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England’’ is an ideal, if flawed, summer exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art. Ideal, because a century ago, painters flocked to New England shores each summer...

Eyeing Provincetown's place in American art

Boston Globe 2 / August 4th, 2009

Some of the great artists of the 20th century put paint to canvas at the Days Lumberyard studios in Provincetown. Robert Motherwell was there, and Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and George McNeil, among others. “Days Lumberyard Studios 1915-1972,’’ a rewarding exhibit at Acme Fine Art, offers ...

'The Chimaera of Arezzo' at the Getty Villa

LA Times Arts / August 4th, 2009

The Getty features an exhibition featuring the masterpiece of Etruscan bronzework known as the Chimaera of Arezzo and traces the myth of Bellerophon and the Chimaera over five centuries of classical art.  

Book reveals Jasper Johns, the Jokester

UnBeige Mediabistro / August 3rd, 2009

Artist Jasper Johns tends to confront cameras with an expression of steely bemusement that stops just short of a glower. But don't mistake Johns's intensity for humorlessness, notes James Rosenquist in his memoir, Painting Below Zero, due out in October from Knopf...  

The Met spotlights Artful Objects from Afghanistan

MET podcast / August 3rd, 2009

Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Said Tayeb Jawad, speaks about the rich culture and history of Afghanistan at the inauguration of the exhibition “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.” Introduction by Met Director Thomas P. Campbell.

Nantucket scrimshaw art losing its bite

Cape Cod Times 1 / August 2nd, 2009

NANTUCKET — Michael Vienneau peers through a bright, white magnifying glass to the polished whale tooth in his hand. He is one of the few remaining scrimshaw artists left on the island of Nantucket...

New York's Pier 57 may host Auction House, Galleries

Artinfo / August 3rd, 2009

NEW YORK - The newly chosen developer's plan includes a Contemporary Culture Center with a mix of auction, exhibition, gallery, and entertainment space. Auctioneer Phillips de Pury is part of the picture...

"Vivid pink" diamond could rock market

Reuters / August 3rd, 2009

HONG KONG - A rare, 5-carat pink diamond will be sold in Hong Kong this December by Christie's, which expects the stone to hover near world record prices, thanks in part to the buying prowess of top Asian jewelry collectors.  

A bumper crop of country Americana at Skinner's, Aug. 9

Auction Central News / August 2nd, 2009

(Marlborough, Mass.) Skinner's 787-lot sale featuring American country furniture and decorative arts, folk art, paintings, rare clocks, American textiles, needlework and even early cast-iron banks, will take place on Sunday, Aug. 9, at the company's spacious new gallery in Marlborough, Mass., 40 ...

A Nazi's Hoard in New Catalog of Looted Art

Bloomberg / August 2nd, 2009

Quantity took priority over quality in Hermann Goering’s sprawling art collection, much of it plundered from Jews. His gluttony for oil canvases becomes clear in Nancy Yeide’s “Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection,” the first comprehensive catalog of as many as 1,800 ...

At the Wolfsonian, Life's a Beach

UnBeige Mediabistro / July 30th, 2009

 The Wolfsonian, the wonderfully eclectic Miami institution, didn't have to look far for the inspiration behind its new summer exhibitions, both of which center around the beach (just a few blocks away). Curated by The Wolfsonian's Marianne Lamonaca, "Beauty on the Beach: A Centennial ...

Eric Owen Moss wants to piece together L.A.'s fragments

LA Times Arts / August 2nd, 2009

(Los Angeles) The architect hopes his latest projects will help bring the city closer to a new vision. The neighborhood around the office of Eric Owen Moss feels first like Mayberry, then a bit like "Killer of Sheep." And just after the block of tree-shaded single family homes runs into a ...

Dillinger's Derringer blasts by auction estimate

About.com / July 30th, 2009

This week Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas sold the pistol gangster John Dillinger hid in his sock the day he was arrested in Tucson, Arizona 75 years ago, just six months prior to being gunned down in Chicago. The Remington .41 caliber Double Derringer sold for $95,600 including Buyer’s ...

Palm Springs Museum gets bonanza of contemporary art

LA Times Arts / July 29th, 2009

The Palm Springs Art Museum's contemporary art collection will rise to a new level with a major gift of works assembled by Donna and Cargill MacMillan. Composed of 116 pieces by 66 artists, the international trove is particularly strong in sculpture...  

'Artful Animals' at the National Museum of African Art

Washington Post / July 30th, 2009

If the lion is king of the jungle, then what's that rooster doing wearing his crown? The exhibition 'Artful Animals' unlocks the mystery...