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Seattle Asian Art Museum has reason to boast about new acquisitions
Seattle Times / January 17th, 2010
An impressive 40 newly acquired works have beefed up the holdings of the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Two exhibitions show them off: "The New Old" features Chinese paintings and calligraphy dating back to the 17th century, and "The New New" presents contemporary work. Highlights include a painting ...
"Sargent's Daughter's": First 5,000 copies sold out
Publishers Weekly / January 14th, 2010
Curator Erica Hirshler’s story behind the people portrayed in one of John Singer Sargent’s most famous paintings is turning out to be one of the surprise art book sellers not connected to an exhibition this season. Released in October by MFA Publications, the publishing arm of Boston’s Museum of ...
"Grotesque fakes" claim is countered by London art dealer
Times Online / January 14th, 2010
David Mellor, the former Tory minister, is facing the threat of a legal battle involving a pair of 18th-c. Boulle chests that were restored and sold for £600,000 to Limited Brands chief executive Leslie Wexner. Mellor is suing former directors and shareholders of Partridge Fine Arts, claiming ...
Industry Gallery, a new space for 21st-century art, debuts in D.C.
Washington Post / January 14th, 2010
This weekend, Washington, D.C. lawyer Craig Appelbaum opens Industry Gallery, a home for 21st-century design where high art will coexist with the rough-edged feel of the old auto repair shop where the gallery resides. "Most of these pieces are residentially friendly," Appelbaum says of his ...
A twist in Getty Museum's Italian court saga
Los Angeles Times / January 14th, 2010
Today, closing arguments in a long-running legal battle in Italy will determine the fate of one of the finest ancient bronze statues in existence. An Italian prosecutor alleges that the Italian fishermen who discovered the Greek statue in 1964 failed to declare it to Italian customs officials and ...
London Art Fair 2010
Spoonfed / January 13th, 2010
One of the UK’s biggest and best established Modern British and Contemporary art fairs has opened, and good lord it really is enormous. The London Art Fair 2010 has over 100 of the country’s premier art galleries showing everything from abstract prints by Josef Albers at Alan Cristea to mounted ...
Suspect detained in Monet heist
Monster and Critics / January 13th, 2010
Polish police have captured a suspect and recovered Monet's 'Beach at Pourville' which was stolen in 2000 from the National Museum in Poznan, Central Poland. The painting was the sole work by the French impressionist in Polish collections. The theft was reported after museum security noticed the ...
Galleries: Mounting a comeback on Boston's Newbury St.
Boston Globe / January 13th, 2010
Several art dealers have closed up shop and left the city's art center on Newbury Street in the last year and a half. Some said they hoped to come back. Now Beth Urdang has. Her two new exhibitions are exquisitely rendered and easy on the eyes. Olga Antonova’s still life paintings explore ...
Asian artists shine despite tough times
Wall Street Journal / January 13th, 2010
The global recession seems to be making Asian artists the new stars of the art market. Five Asian artists ranked among last year's top 10 money-makers world-wide, according to Artprice. At Sotheby's autumn sale in October, around 47% of the buyers of contemporary Asian works came from mainland ...
Pook & Pook offers estate items from esteemed collectors
Philadelphia Inquirer / January 12th, 2010
Pook & Pook Inc. will celebrate its 25th anniversary Jan. 15-16 with a thousand-lot auction featuring items from the estates of two of Pennsylvania's best-known collectors, H. Richard Dietrich Jr. and Elinor Gordon. Highlights include Gordon's "Home of N.C. Wyeth" by N.C. Wyeth ($50,000 to ...
Auction house porters accused of carrying out more than their jobs
Independent / January 12th, 2010
A closed society of Alpine villagers is at the centre of an art theft scandal which threatens the reputation of the world's oldest auction house. The uniformed, self-governing group of porters called "Les Savoyards" – recruited from a handful of villages in the French Alps – has monopolised all ...
In Los Angeles, an urge to purge
New york Times / January 12th, 2010
For two years the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been quietly buying paintings and publicly selling them. A group of LACMA's old masters, coming up at Sotheby's on Jan. 28, will be sold to raise funds to buy other works such as “Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal” by Hendrick Avercamp, a ...
Art dealer Deitch to head L.A. MoCA
Wall Street Journal / January 11th, 2010
The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art announced Monday that Manhattan gallery director Jeffrey Deitch will take over as director. It is rare in the art world for a private-sector gallery owner to move over to a museum, which is typically a non-profit organization. Last year, billionaire and ...
Thomas Jefferson's personal keepsake to be offered at Christie's
Elite Traveler / January 11th, 2010
A highlight of the upcoming Americana Week 2010 sales at Christie's in New York is a rare personal keepsake that belonged to one of America's most revered presidents, Thomas Jefferson. Conceived as a memento mori, the keepsake is an engraved gold watch key containing a braided lock of hair from ...
$59.5 million building sale, departures roil Knoedler
Bloomberg / January 11th, 2010
Established in 1846 and housed for decades in an imposing Renaissance-style mansion on New York’s Upper East Side, Knoedler & Co. is undergoing big changes. Director and president Ann Freedman has departed, the associate director has been fired, there’s been an exodus of important gallery ...
A lady, not by Leonardo, retains an expensive allure
New York Times / January 11th, 2010
Chronicled in John Brewer's book "The American Leonardo," an intriguing and controversial portrait recently underwent pigment analysis to determine its age. Lead-tin yellow and double red pigments point to an origin in 17th c. France. Thus, 21st-century technology has dashed any hope that the ...
Must-Haves from the Tavern on the Green auction
Luxist / January 10th, 2010
With more than 25,000 lots - from Baccarat-crystal chandeliers and Tiffany lamps to signature topiaries and Venetian mirrors - and values anywhere from $100 to $1.2 million, bidders are likely to need a little guidance sorting through Guernsey's auction of items from the iconic New York ...
Life-size Giacometti goes on block
Reuters / January 10th, 2010
Sotheby's will sell one of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti's rare, life-sized bronzes on February 3. "L'Homme qui marche I" will mark the first time a Giacometti figure of a walking man of this size has come to auction in over 20 years. The estimated sale price is over 12 million pounds ($19 ...
Liberty Head nickel reaches $3.7 million at auction
MSNBC / January 9th, 2010
A rare 1913 U.S. Liberty Head nickel that was featured in a 1973 episode of the television series "Hawaii Five-O" was sold for $3.7 million by Heritage Auction Galleries on Thursday. Known as the Olsen-Hawn piece, the coin is one of only five 1913 Liberty Head nickels known to exist. It was ...
The evolution of American landscape art
New York Times / January 10th, 2010
New Britain Museum of American Art has installed seven exceptional Hudson River School paintings, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in its permanent collection galleries of artwork from the period. Works by Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and others, present a beautiful, ...