ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Donations Save American Folk Art Museum

New York Times / September 22nd, 2011

The board of New York's American Folk Art Museum agreed on Wednesday evening to keep the institution operating from its current Lincoln Square location following the last-minute help of donations from trustees and the Ford Foundation.

National Academy Museum Reopens with Six Stellar Shows

DNA Info / September 21st, 2011

The six-story 1902 Beaux arts townhouse on New York's Fifth Avenue that is home to the National Academy Museum and School reopened last weekend with six new shows and a fresh look after a $3.5 million renovation.

Houston Fine Art Fair Debut Totals $6 Million in Sales

ArtfixDaily / September 21st, 2011

The inaugural Houston Fine Art Fair found a ready audience in Texas over the weekend. The gate topped 10,500 with 3,000 attending the opening night of this new 80-dealer show. Sales of artwork were reported to be about $6 million total.

A Peek Inside Mayor Bloomberg's "Baronial" Homes

New York Times / September 20th, 2011

Philanthropist, businessman and billionaire mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg has kept his personal life relatively quiet. But his two homes' lavish interiors and pricey art collections slipped into the spotlight momentarily when...

American Folk Art Museum teeters towards dissolution

New York Times / September 19th, 2011

The board of New York's beleaguered American Folk Art Museum are set to vote this week on the future of its holdings of classic American folk art and 20th-century outsider art. Proposals are under consideration from...

Pacific Standard Time documents the rise of postwar L.A. art

Los Angeles Times / September 18th, 2011

The Getty's unprecedented, six-month initiative "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980," a series of region-wide exhibitions, is set to thoroughly record Southern California in the history of art. This eye-opening cultural extravaganza...

MoMA to Stage De Kooning Retrospective

New York Times / September 14th, 2011

Curators researching works for the upcoming Willem de Kooning retrospective at New York's museum of Modern Art (MoMA) found a wealth of new discoveries about the work of this pivotal postwar American artist. The resulting exhibition, which opens sunday, includes about 200 works made over ...

Richard Hamilton, British Pop Art pioneer, remembered

Washington Post / September 13th, 2011

Richard Hamilton, the artist known as the "Father of Pop Art" who depicted former British prime minister Tony Blair as a cowboy and designed the cover of the Beatles’ “White Album,” died on Sept. 13. He was 89.

Bob Dylan's "Asia Series" in his New York Gallery Debut

New York Times / September 12th, 2011

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan gets his first ever New York gallery exhibition, entitled "The Asia Series," at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Ave., from Sept. 20 through Oct. 22. Created on trips to...

Sotheby's shares may ride up latest art boom

The Motley Fool / September 11th, 2011

After posting record sales of $3.4 billion in the first half of 2011, publicly-traded Sotheby's ended the summer with shares tumbling more than 25% in the first three weeks of August. But the auction giant could...

Tate ranks second most popular arts organization in world

ArtfixDaily / September 8th, 2011

Tate, Britain's family of four art galleries, attracted a record number of visitors in 2010-11 with 7.4 million people visiting its various locations, and 19 million unique users hitting its website during the same period. The Tate says the increased attendance makes it the most popular arts ...

Klimt painting discovered in Dutch home

Dawn/AP / September 7th, 2011

A previously unknown painting by Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) has been discovered in a private home in the Netherlands. The 35 by 35 inch work was determined to be by the famed Vienna Secessionist painter after...

Paul Revere-Owned Skillet Sparks Bidding War at Thomaston Place Auction

ArtfixDaily / September 7th, 2011

A three-footed bronze skillet, with provenance tracking ownership to Paul Revere, sold for $2,500 to the Paul Revere House at the Thomaston Place Auction Galleries’ 2011 Summer Fine Art, Antiques & Jewelry Auction.

Duo of yellow diamonds hit auction market

ArtfixDaily / September 6th, 2011

UPDATE 9/8/2011: The "Golden Eye" diamond fetched a final bid price of $2,843,623 which met the reserve. --- Two spectacular yellow diamonds are set to sparkle at auctions this fall. One fits the best in class category, the other has a sordid past. First is a rare "vivid fancy" pear-shaped ...

Museum director accused of selling off collection

The Independent / September 5th, 2011

The trustees of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum are pitted against its former director in a fight over the sale of 150 objects. In a police report leaked to The Art Newspaper...

Rare painting related to American Revolution at Scottish auction

Digital Journal / September 5th, 2011

A rare 18th century painting with close connections to the American War of Independence will star at McTear's Auctioneers in Glasgow, Scotland, this September. The stunning work by Scottish portrait painter Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) is the only known...

Massive art forgery trial begins in Germany

BBC / September 1st, 2011

The trial of four people behind an alleged art forgery scandal in Germany began in Cologne on Thursday. The multi-million-dollar art scam with victims that include actor Steve Martin...

Art theft increases two-fold in a decade

The Art Newspaper / August 31st, 2011

The FBI estimates that international art crime has doubled in the last ten years. Fakes, forgeries and thefts now account for more than $6 billion in losses annually. Other experts insist that art crime...

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....

"Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement" opens at Royal Academy

ArtfixDaily / August 29th, 2011

A certain crowd-pleaser of an exhibition will be staged by London's Royal Academy of Arts this fall with the debut of "Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement." Edgar Degas's preoccupation with ballet imagery is traced throughout his career, from the documentary mode of the early 1870s to the ...