ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Second-generation art dealer keeps Pace

Wall Street Journal Magazine / August 30th, 2011

New York's Pace Gallery represents the estates and careers of 54 of the world's leading artists whose clout helps push the gallery's annual sales above $400 million. Owner Arne Glimcher has big plans for expansion and succession....

Birger Sandzen painting sets record price in $2.8m auction

ArtfixDaily / August 27th, 2011

Auction In Santa Fe 2011 (AISF) offered the largest and one of the most brilliant Birger Sandzen works ever sold at auction, shattering the record for a work by this artist by nearly $150,000. “Summer In the Mountains” (1923) sold for...

Cook Fine Art sued by collector for $5m in missing art

Courthouse News Service / August 28th, 2011

A New York art dealer has taken off with about $5 million worth of art, or the proceeds of their sale, claims one collector. Works by the likes of Picasso, Klee, and Matisse are missing. The "money has been spent"...

Art Institute of Chicago names Douglas Druick as director

ArtfixDaily / August 24th, 2011

Douglas Druick, a 26-year veteran curator and department chair at the Art Institute of Chicago, was named its new president and director on Wed. An internationally recognized scholar and curator...

Sotheby's scores Denver deal for Clyfford Still paintings

ArtfixDaily / August 23rd, 2011

Sotheby's was granted the right by the city of Denver to sell four rare-to-market paintings by American abstract expressionist Clyfford Still (1904-1980). Rival auction house Christie's says it could offer the city a better deal. Both Sotheby's and Christie's submitted proposals to handle the ...

Warner collection of American art on view at University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Inquirer / August 21st, 2011

Since the 1950s, Jonathan Westervelt Warner, known as Jack, accumulated a notable collection of more than 700 American artworks and objects. His intention, says the 94-year-old, was to form a collection "as an investment for my family company,"...

Keno brothers unearth "Buried Treasure" on FOX-TV series

ArtfixDaily / August 18th, 2011

The human drama of reality television is mixed with the excitement of revealing some valuable art and antiques on a new FOX-TV series hosted by identical twin brothers Leigh Keno and Leslie Keno. The two Americana experts debut in "Buried Treasure" on Aug. 24 at 8pm/7pm Central. The duo expands ...

Freer Gallery reveals light-filled Whistler's Peacock Room

ArtfixDaily / August 17th, 2011

For the first time in 25 years, the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art will open the shutters of James McNeill Whistler’s famed Peacock Room for public view on the third Thursday of each month, beginning Aug. 18, 12-5:30 p.m. Visitors to the room will have a chance to experience the tonal ...

Edward Hopper scene becomes a new stamp

Cape Cod Times / August 16th, 2011

Edward Hopper's 1930s painting of a sailboat near Long Point Light, titled “The Long Leg,” was selected for the Postal Service's American Treasures series. The scene combines two of Hopper's most iconic maritime imagery...

Love letters of O'Keeffe, Stieglitz exposed in new book

Albuquerqe Journal / August 10th, 2011

When Albert Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe met in 1916, he was 52 and already considered the nucleus of the New York art world. She was an unknown 28-year-old Texas art teacher. National Gallery of Art photography curator...

George Caleb Bingham painting discovered in governor's mansion

Progress-Index / August 4th, 2011

For decades, a mysterious 19th-century portrait of a young boy and his dog hung in the Virginia governor's mansion. The sitter and artist were unknown. Earlier this year, antiques dealer Alexander Reeves mentioned on a private tour of the mansion that the painting resembled the work of ...

Battle over the Barnes bubbles up again

AP / August 2nd, 2011

With its new building scheduled to open in Philadelphia next spring, the Barnes Foundation has met another challenge to its impending move from suburban Lower Merion, Penn. On Monday, Judge Stanley Ott presided over a hearing requested by...

States' arts funding slashed further

New York Times / August 1st, 2011

Small arts groups nationwide are feeling the pinch of recession-time cuts as state grants have dwindled. In Kansas, the state arts budget went to zero in May. Thirty-one states cut their arts budgets for the 2012 fiscal year, which began on July 1, continuing a downturn that has seen such ...

A last look at the old Barnes

New York Times / July 27th, 2011

The New York Times gives an interactive final tour through the Barnes Foundation, the amazing collection of Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and early modernist art that was displayed in a neoclassical home in Merion, Penn., until June. Pharmaceutical tycoon Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) created ...

Copley sets auction records for Crowell decoys, A.L. Ripley painting

ArtfixDaily / July 26th, 2011

Copley Fine Art Auctions' July 21 to 22 sale, featuring over 700 lots of antique decoys, folk art, books, and American art, smashed auction record prices for bird carver A. Elmer Crowell (1862-1952) and sporting artist Aiden Lassell Ripley (1896-1969).

Bierstadt, Russell lead $17 million Coeur d'Alene auction

San Jose Mercury News / July 25th, 2011

Two Western landscape paintings by Albert Bierstadt sold at the Coeur d'Alene weekend auction in Reno, Nevada, for a total of $4 million. Bierstadt's 1890s oil "Mount Rainier," measuring 54 x 83 inches, fetched $2.1 million against a presale estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million. His 1863 ...

Auction market bullish in 2011, so far

ArtfixDaily / July 21st, 2011

The market for fine and decorative arts roared through the start of 2011 at the world's two biggest auction houses. Christie’s reported worldwide sales for the first half of 2011 of $3.2 billion, up 15% over last year's figures. Sotheby's just breezed through a summer of blockbuster sales in ...

Salander director Leigh Morse gets weekends in jail

Reuters / July 20th, 2011

Leigh Morse, the former gallery director who worked for disgraced art dealer Lawrence Salander, will owe defrauded clients $1.65 million in restitution. Manhattan criminal court also sentenced Morse, 55, to weekend confinement in prison...

"The Great American Hall of Wonders" opens at Smithsonian

ArtfixDaily / July 19th, 2011

The first mass-produced American clock, a locomotive prototype, and Charles Willson Peale’s iconic self-portrait, “The Artist in His Museum,” are part of a major exhibition showcasing American innovation on view at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art until January 8, 2012. "The Great ...

American Masterpieces from the Batten Collection at Chrysler Museum

ArtfixDaily / July 18th, 2011

The Chrysler Museum of Art has extended the exhibition "American Masterpieces from the Batten Collection" through July 31, 2011. This extraordinary collection of American art is from Jane and the late Frank Batten, Sr., who have placed nine of their paintings on long-term loan as promised gifts ...