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Sotheby's tallies record $3.4 billion first half sales
ArtfixDaily / August 3rd, 2011
Competitive bidding for high value works combined with commissions from booming private transactions pushed Sotheby's consolidated sales to a record $3.4 billion in the first half of 2011. Sotheby's private sales were up 114% in the first half.
Met Museum to return 19 antiquities to Egpyt
AP / August 2nd, 2011
Nineteen artifacts excavated from the tomb of boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun will be returned to Egypt next week after residing for more than 50 years at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, according to Egypt's antiquities authority.
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...
Sotheby's locks out art handlers, picketing ensues
Wall Street Journal / August 2nd, 2011
Art handlers locked out by Sotheby's over a contract dispute picketed the Upper East Side auction house early this week. The contract between the handlers' union, Teamsters Local 814, and the auction house's Manhattan headquarters ended in July...
"Chasing Aphrodite" reveals the Getty's illicit treasure-buying
The National / July 31st, 2011
In recent years, the Getty Museum has given back some of its finest pieces of classical art to Italy. Museums worldwide have followed suit. The reason for this voluntary submission of an art trove?
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 ...
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to unveil new contemporary art wing
ArtfixDaily / August 1st, 2011
This September, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), will unveil the 80,000-sq.ft. Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art. Located in the building I.M. Pei designed for the MFA in 1981, the wing will include seven new galleries. The Henry and Lois Foster Gallery for rotating exhibitions will ...
Phaidon Interview: Artist Carl Andre describes ripping up his plans for '5 x 20 Altstadt Rectangle'
Phaidon / July 20th, 2011
The American minimalist artist Carl Andre is perhaps best known for his sculptures made from square metal plates placed in grid-like formations lying flat on the surface of the ground. Yet over the course of five decades, Andre has created an immense body of work. Andre’s vision lies in his ...
Fairs, online sales boost art dealers' outlook
ArtfixDaily / July 29th, 2011
A new report sponsored by the non-profit dealer association CINOA finds that fairs and online business are poised to become the main source of revenue for the art and antiques trade. E-retail is expected to surpass traditional offline sales by 2020. Dr. Clare McAndrew's CINOA study reports...
Sheryl Crow's vintage Mercedes in charity auction
ArtfixDaily / July 27th, 2011
The Grammy Award-winning singer Sheryl Crow is parting with her 1959 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL Roadster in order to raise funds and awareness for tornado-ravished Joplin, Missouri. Gooding & Co. will auction the vintage roadster in Pebble Beach, Calif., next month. The sale proceeds are slated for ...
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 ...
Jeweler Ralph Esmerian gets 6-year prison sentence
Courthouse News Service / July 26th, 2011
The former owner of luxury jeweler Fred Leighton who was once a major donor to New York's American Folk Art Museum, Ralph O. Esmerian, was sentenced on July 22 to 6 years in federal prison for...
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).
Museum launches public appeal to buy Dale Chihuly piece
Boston Globe / July 26th, 2011
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has begun a campaign to raise more than $1 million to acquire the 42-foot-tall “Lime Green Icicle Tower,’’ a signature work by glass artist Dale Chihuly...
Philadelphia dealer charged with smuggling elephant ivory
Philadelphia Inquirer / July 26th, 2011
A Philadelphia African art dealer was arrested Tuesday by federal agents and charged with the illegal importation and sale of African elephant ivory. A staggering one ton of ivory was seized by federal agents...
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 ...
Tulsa taping yields record treasure on "Antiques Roadshow"
Antiques Roadshow / July 25th, 2011
Rare antique Chinese cups brought into the Tulsa stop of "Antiques Roadshow" on Saturday became the most valuable discovery in the PBS television show's 16-year history. Appraisers gave the collection of five Chinese carved rhinoceros horn cups, dating from the late 17th century or early ...
Guy Wildenstein claims ignorance of missing art
New York Times / July 21st, 2011
After 36 hours in police custody and under questioning, billionaire art dealer Guy Wildenstein is sticking by his claim that he knew nothing about 30 missing paintings held in his family institute's vault in Paris. He was formally charged with concealing art that had been reported missing or ...
Figurative painter Lucien Freud dies at 88
The economist / July 22nd, 2011
"He wasn't cruel--he painted what he saw," remarked a robust model for one of Lucien Freud's nude portraits. Freud, who died in London on July 20, at age 88, painted raw and unsettling images of people he knew, often naked with skin of a pasty hue. The German-born artist, a grandson of ...
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 ...