ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Asia Week in New York

New York Times / March 18th, 2010

Lacquered luxuries and dragon thrones are among the gems to be showcased next week in New York. Dealers in Asian art and antiques, mostly located on the Upper East Side, will open their doors to the public for a look at five millenniums' worth of treasures. Many participating galleries are ...

Korean art magnate steps in to revive auction house

Joongang Daily / March 18th, 2010

Lee Ho-jae, 59, is a superstar in the Korean art world. He is chairman of Gana Art Gallery and recently was named co-chief executive officer of Seoul Auction, a company he founded in 1998. Lee hopped aboard to steer the auction house with a new strategy to halt a steady downhill trend in the ...

The new generation of curators

New York Times / March 18th, 2010

A set of curators born in the digital age, now in their 30s and early 40s, is making strides at major American museums, bringing new and exciting ideas to their sometimes staid institutions. Harvard-educated Jen Mergel, for example, is the newly-appointed senior curator for contemporary art the ...

Irish beauties, rarities on the block

Seattle PI blog / March 17th, 2010

The Irish Sale on March 23 at New York's Bloomsbury Auctions includes such star lots as Sir John Lavery's 1936 oil on canvas "Sunbathers" (estimate: $350,000 to $450,000) and the only known full-sized tricolor flag from the 1916 uprising (estimate: $500,000 to $700,000). For book lovers, there's ...

Picasso's Absinthe Drinker under the gavel

The Australian / March 17th, 2010

Christie's in London will sell a coveted Blue Period Picasso portrait, owned by the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's Art Foundation, with a conservative estimate of between ₤30 million ($49.8 million) and ₤40 million, the highest for a work of art offered at auction in Europe. The June 23 sale of ...

China ranks #3 in art market

Luxist / March 17th, 2010

In global auction sales, China trailed New York and London, but eclipsed France last year, according to Artprice. Fine art sales in China reached $830 million, 17.33% of the market worldwide, up from 7.83% a year earlier. Poly International, China Guardian and Beijing Council transacted nearly ...

Van Gogh's 'The Bedroom' gets a blog

Mediabistro Unbeige blog / March 17th, 2010

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is restoring one of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous works. While "The Bedroom" is out of view, the museum's staff will keep the painting in the public eye with a blog about the restoration process. The new blog, called "Bedroom Secrets; Restoration of a ...

Broad museum underway in Michigan

/ March 16th, 2010

A groundbreaking ceremony took place yesterday for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Billionaire Eli Broad ponied up $28 million for the new building, designed by London-based architect Zaha Hadid, as a centerpiece for contemporary art at his alma mater. Of his ...

March in Montana Auction features Sharp paintings, Navajo weavings

Great Falls Tribune / March 16th, 2010

Nearly 650 pieces of artwork and artifacts, including two fine oils by J.H. Sharp, will be offered next weekend in the annual March in Montana Auction. About 225 lots come from the collection of Bob Praegitzer, a wealthy West Coast industrialist who was a fixture at the Russell Art Auction and ...

FBI seeks help of Boston commuters in art heist

Boston Globe / March 16th, 2010

Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,’’ his only seascape, has been plastered on Massachusetts billboards along two interstates in an effort by the FBI to publicize the Gardner Museum theft two decades after it transpired. In 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers talked ...

Steady sales at The European Fine Art and Antiques Fair

Telegraph / March 16th, 2010

American museums have prowled TEFAF, the Maastricht art fair on through the end of this week, and made significant purchases. Washington's National Gallery of Art bought a 17th-century winter landscape with skaters by Adam van Breen for €910,000 (£830,000). The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of ...

'Millard Sheets: The Early Years 1926-1944' at Pasadena Museum of California Art

LA Times / March 15th, 2010

The leading California exponent of so-called American Scene painting, Millard Sheets was a prolific artist whose bucolic pastoral images of farms, the shore, rural Mexico and Hawaii, in oils and, notably, watercolor, capture a picturesque view of the 20th century. His work has a sunny, quiet ...

'Geography of ideal': Henry James and the Hudson River School

The Daily Mail / March 15th, 2010

On Sunday, Dr. Linda Ferber, of the New-York Historical Society, presented a lecture based on her new-ish book “The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision.” Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in the Catskills, hosted this third of four Sunday Salon lectures. ...

Backstory on one of the American West's most important paintings

Old West New West / March 15th, 2010

Thomas Moran's 1875 oil "Mountain of the Holy Cross" has returned to the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, after serving a tour of duty in two traveling exhibitions. This iconic image of the West, a place viewed in the 19th century as monumental and grand, befitting the expansionism ideals of ...

Auction ahead to pay creditors in Salander fiasco

Bloomberg / March 15th, 2010

Inventory from New York's bankrupt Salander-O’Reilly Galleries LLC, including European art from the 12th century to about 1725, will be auctioned, possibly by Christie's in June. Last year, proprietor Lawrence Salander was charged with 103 counts of fraud, forgery and other crimes, in relation ...

Botero copies used to conceal Europe-bound drugs

Yahoo News / March 15th, 2010

Replicas of sculptures by Colombia's most recognized artist, Fernando Botero, were used to stash 16 kilograms (35 pounds) of cocaine intended for shipment to Spain, Colombian police said. The contraband was discovered by police on Saturday inside the sculptures held in a shipping warehouse. No ...

Treasure hunt on in Maastricht

New York Times / March 14th, 2010

The talk of TEFAF, so far, are a pearl-dropping neoclassical clock, a $25 million Giacometti sculpture, and the new works on paper section including such gems as Gainsborough drawings and Irving Penn photographs. Opening night, some collectors grumbled that there were no big-ticket paintings ...

Reward, but not ransom, offered in Gardner case

Boston Globe / March 14th, 2010

Twenty years ago this week, 13 major artworks by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, and others were swiped from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The world's biggest art heist still baffles investigators who have no viable leads. A $5 million reward is offered for the recovery of all, or ...

Famous forger de Hory gets a museum show

Star-Tribune / March 14th, 2010

In 1969, Mark Forgy was a young, backpacking Minnesotan in Europe when he met a debonair Hungarian who happenend to be one of the world's most notorious art forgers. Elmyr de Hory was a master faker of Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, and especially Modigliani. Before he was caught, de Hory let loose ...

Sneak Peak: Chinese export on view at TEFAF

Luxist / March 14th, 2010

For serious collectors of Chinese export porcelain, TEFAF, the Maastricht art fair going on now through March 21, has some choice examples for sale. Highlights offered by Cohen & Cohen Gallery (Booth 246) include a striking pair of three foot tall Famille Rose Baluster vases and covers that ...