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Major works from Minor collection bring $21.1 million
Bloomberg / May 16th, 2010
Part of CNet co-founder Halsey Minor's contemporary art collection was hammered down by Phillips de Pury & Co. Proceeds from the $21.1 million sale, the first of three auctions, which included 22 of his artworks, will go toward a $21.6 million judgment obtained in October by ML Private ...
Who's hot list
Wall Street Journal / May 16th, 2010
Monet, Renoir and Dali are among the artists who have weathered the recession well, according to the Wall Street Journal. New buyers, such as China's emerging wealthy elite, are stepping up to buy pretty pictures by the big names of Impressionism and early Modernists. "Before the crisis, people ...
John Haberle's delightful visual trickery
Philadelphia Inquirer / May 16th, 2010
Only about 40 trompe l'oeil paintings---images that literally "fool the eye"---are known by 19th-century artist John Haberle. The Brandywine River Museum is presenting about half of his meticulous, illusionist works, in a show augmented by the paintings of Haberle's contemporaries, such as ...
Wedgwood Museum woes
BBC / May 13th, 2010
The collections of Britain's Wedgwood Museum, a repository of artifacts chronicling the pottery firm's 250-year history, is in jeopardy. Opened in 2008, the museum was hard hit by the economic downturn, went into administration last year with £400m in debts and a hole in its pension fund. ...
Enormous appetite for luxury goods worldwide boosts sales
AFP / May 13th, 2010
An Asian private buyer paid almost $100,000 for a case of French wine this week. The six bottles of 1961 Hermitage La Chapelle sold for a record price of 109,250 Swiss francs (98,587 dollars, 77,469 euros) at Christie's in Geneva. Christie's sales of fine jewlery, watches and wine this week ...
New antiques show this weekend in Boston 'burbs
Wicked Local / May 13th, 2010
Nearly 50 art and antique dealers will exhibit at the inaugural Wayside Inn Antiques Show, Friday through Sunday, in Sudbury, Mass. A portion of the proceeds from the show will be donated to the Wayside Inn Historic Site, the nonprofit corporation that oversees the sprawling 122-acre grounds ...
Solid sales at Sotheby's for contemporary art
New York Times / May 13th, 2010
Sotheby's hammered down 50 lots of contemporary art for $190 million Wednesday night with an excellent 94.3 percent sell-through rate. Five artist records were broken. Minimalist paintings made a big splash. Richard Serra’s “Corner Prop” sold with one bid: $1.98 million. Andy Warhol's ...
SFMOMA names four finalists for expansion
San Francisco Chronicle / May 11th, 2010
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has narrowed the list of architects for its $250 million expansion to four firms that vary wildly in size and style - but which almost certainly guarantee the new wing will be a distinct contrast with the institution's iconic home. Foster + Partners, David ...
Selective buyers send post-war art soaring
Reuters / May 11th, 2010
Christie's post-war and contemporary art auction Tuesday evening totalled $232 million, including commissions. Of the 79 lots on offer, only five failed to sell. Author Michael Crichton's collection, one of the season's star estate sales, has already reaped $93.3 million, the highest ever total ...
Keeper of the bygone cityscape
The Atlantic / May 11th, 2010
A roaring zinc lion from the El Dorado carousel in Coney Island and a languorous allegorical figure of Night, carved of granite, from the iconic Pennsylvania Station complex designed by McKim, Mead & White, are a couple examples of important New York architectural fragments saved by a ...
Jasper Johns' Flag sets artist auction record
ABC News / May 11th, 2010
Christie's sold Jasper Johns' iconic "Flag," from the collection of the late best-selling author Michael Crichton, for $28.6 million, an auction record for the artist. The sale continues today with more works from the Jurassic Park writer's 20th-century art trove. American art dealer Richard ...
Frido Kahlo retrospective in Berlin
Time / May 10th, 2010
For someone who has achieved cult status for the way she spilled her guts onto the canvas, Frida Kahlo's work remains wrapped in an aura of mystery. "You can't separate the paintings from her biography," says Helga Prignitz-Poda, the curator of "Frida Kahlo — Retrospective." "But there is always ...
Latin American art collection enlivens Florida museum
Sun Sentinel / May 10th, 2010
The walls of the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale are quietly, elegantly pulsating with passion, politics, controversy, violence, magic, humor, grief, longing and hard work. A vivid Diego Rivera painting of a stone cutter is part of the museum's new exhibit, "Latin American Art From the Collection ...
Stunning world record price for a car
Wall Street Journal / May 10th, 2010
A prized 1936 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic, from a private New Hampshire collection, sold for between $30 and $40 million last week in a transaction brokered by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Gooding & Company. The Wall Street Journal calls this Bugatti "a heartbreaking piece of European automotive ...
"Mona Lisa of wristwatches" sells for record price at Christie's
Bloomberg / May 10th, 2010
A rare, WWII-era Patek Philippe sold for the equivalent of $5.7 million, the highest price paid for a yellow-gold wristwatch at auction. The 18-karat gold chronograph, from 1944, which has a calendar that adjusts for leap years and displays the phases of the moon, reached 6.26 million ...
Ravi Varma: art as enterprise in colonial India
The Hindu / May 9th, 2010
Ravi Varma's rise on the Indian art scene was meteoric. From the end of the 1870s until his death in 1906, at the age of 58, he was the best known and most sought after painter in India. But his fall from grace was as dramatic as his rise. Rupika Chawla's new book Raja Ravi Varma: Painter of ...
Miniature rooms big attraction at Chicago museum
Huffington Post / May 9th, 2010
"It's something about being dominant over something that is so charming and diminutive," said Lindsay Mican Morgan, curator of an appealing exhibit of miniature room displays at the Art Institute of Chicago. The 68 rooms showcase European, American and Asian interiors and furnishings from the ...
Multi-million dollar gift strengthens Whitney's holdings
New York Times / May 9th, 2010
Emily Fisher Landau, the noted philanthropist and art collector, has made an important gift of 367 works of art to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Estimated to be worth between $50 million and $75 million, the collection will help broaden the Whitney's collection as the New York institution ...
New bio on Leo Castelli, contemporary art's master marketer
Culturekiosque / May 9th, 2010
How did a dandified dilettante, after two decades of living (in good part) off his father-in-law’s money and his own personal charm, turn himself, at the age of fifty, into one of the formative influences on the art of the second half of the twentieth century? Leo ...
Broad leaning toward downtown art museum
LA Times blog / May 6th, 2010
Billionaire Eli Broad envisions a 120,000-square-foot building to display and store his 2,000-piece collection, which includes works by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He just hasn't decided where to build it. Still in the competition are sites in downtown Los ...