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Perennially Popular: This Weekend's Merchandise Mart Antiques Fair
Pioneer Local / September 30th, 2009
CHICAGO - Two local antique dealers are looking forward to showcasing their finds at the Merchandise Mart International Antiques Fair, Oct. 2-5. Margaret Chung of Three Friends Studio is riding the market high for Chinese antiquities. Her stand will present a sandstone triad with a Buddha figure ...
Stunning Art Theft: Ransom note left for uninsured masterpieces
Boston Globe / September 30th, 2009
Some of the world’s most expensive paintings and drawings, valued over $27 million in an outdated appraisal, were stolen last week from the Pebble Beach, Calif., home of retired Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Ralph Kennaugh and his business partner Angelo Amadio. Sixteen of the most ...
Scarlet Splatters: Museum mess made by Anish Kapoor on view
Bloomberg / September 29th, 2009
LONDON - Anish Kapoor is certainly making a mess of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Every 20 minutes, a cannon goes off in one gallery and shoots a projectile of red wax into a second space. What’s more, this brilliantly colored detritus looks beautiful. The Turner exhibition at Tate Britain ...
Fire Truck is Top Lot: Kaufman toy collection sale cruises to $3 million
Auction Central News / September 29th, 2009
VINELAND, N.J. - Exhibiting all the "bells and whistles" collectors yearn for, a circa-1912 German Marklin live-steam fire pumper blazed to the top of prices realized in Bertoia Auctions' Sept. 25-26 sale of the Donald Kaufman antique toy collection, part II, achieving $149,500 (inclusive of 15% ...
Founder's Vision vs. Bottom Line: New documentary on Barnes Foundation relocation debuts
Wall Street Journal / September 29th, 2009
In 2004, a judge gave permission for the Barnes Foundation, with its unparallelled collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Early Modern paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse and others, to relocate its gallery from suburban Merion, Pa., to downtown Philadelphia. More than a decade of ...
Portrait of a Portraitist: Van Dyke's last image of himself may snag auction record
Telegraph / September 29th, 2009
LONDON - Painted in London in 1641, Flemish artist Sir Anthony Van Dyck's final self-portrait is the star lot at Sotheby's sale of Old Masters and Early British Paintings on December 9. The work is conservatively estimated at £2-3 million and may exceed the current auction record for a van ...
Sharing Andy's Art: Michelle Obama visits Warhol Museum with G20 spouses
Journal-Sentinel / September 28th, 2009
PITTSBURGH - While their husbands were off attempting to address the world's problems, Michelle Obama and the G20 spouses lunched at the 7-story Andy Warhol Museum. The museum holds the largest collection of work by Warhol, a Pittsburgh native. Some of the spouses donned aprons and tried Warhol's ...
New Video: Artists recall birth pains of contemporary Chinese art
Reuters / September 28th, 2009
HONG KONG (Reuters Life!) - Just over 30 years ago, not long after the death of Mao Zedong, a group of young Chinese artists staged an exhibition that pushed back on a decade of tyranny and helped pave the way for Chinese art's global rise. Artwork was hung outside Beijing's National Art Gallery ...
Sotheby's Sale of Naked Icons: Big-name photographers, supermodels spice-up auction
Luxist / September 28th, 2009
NEW YORK - On October 9th, Sotheby's will stage a stunning sale of photographs including several nude portraits of supermodels, with work from the likes of Chuck Close, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton and more. One of the top lots is a series of six full frontal nudes of Kate Moss by Chuck ...
Master Forger's 'Fake' now Deemed Real: A Dutch masterpiece emerges, possibly from Vermeer's home
The Independent / September 28th, 2009
LONDON - He made his name as the world's most ingenious art forger. So when the Courtauld Institute of Art was presented with a copy of a Dutch Golden Age painting by the arch-counterfeiter Hans van Meegeren, the gallery's director accepted the work as a fake of the highest order. Now, 50 years ...
Sellers Hold-Out: Contemporary art auction values dip 81%, volumes low
Bloomberg / September 27th, 2009
LONDON - The estimated value of London’s October contemporary-art auctions is down 81 percent from 2008 as prices and lots on offer decline amid the financial crisis. Sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury of “Part I” works during the week of the Frieze Art Fair are ...
Donald Fisher Dead: Gap co-founder, art collector, dies at 81
Huffington Post / September 27th, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - Donald Fisher, 81, passed away at his San Francisco home on Sunday, Sept. 27. The Fishers' personal art collection is renowned and includes some of the 20th century's most well-known artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. The ...
Teenage Michelangelo's Masterpiece: Recent attribution brings the Renaissance superstar to Texas
Star-Telegram / September 26th, 2009
FORT WORTH - After recent research revealed the artist's identity, Kimbell Art Museum has hung a stunning discovery. "We have the only Michelangelo painting in the Western Hemisphere," Kimbell Director Eric M. Lee said. "There are only four known easel paintings that he created. That’s as rare as ...
Museum Sleep-over: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater now open to overnight guests
Reuters / September 24th, 2009
MILL RUN, Penn. - Fans of Frank Lloyd Wright's house Fallingwater have long been able to visit the architect's modernist masterpiece as a museum, but soon they can enjoy the house almost as if they were living in it. A new Insight Onsite program allows guests to lounge about reading, enjoy a ...
Brazen Daytime Heist: Armed robbers steal Magritte's painting of his wife
New York Times Art / September 24th, 2009
BRUSSELS (AP) - Two armed robbers in masks made off with a $1.1 million painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte in a morning heist at a small museum in the Belgian capital on Thursday. Brussels police say the two men escaped with the 1948 ''Olympia'' by car after holding museum staff and ...
Aeronautic History Gem: October 8-9 auction of Amelia Earhart's goggles
Aircraft Maintenance Technology / September 24th, 2009
CALABASAS, CALIF. - Profiles in History, a leading auctioneer of Hollywood memorabilia, has landed Amelia Earhart's original flight goggles worn during her historic 1932 record-breaking solo transatlantic flight. The goggles, estimated at $100,000-$150,000, were worn when she set several ...
Asian Art Week: New Chinese buyers, import restrictions jiggle the market
Wall Street Journal / September 24th, 2009
NEW YORK - Asian Art Week, amid the most entrenched art-market recession in nearly two decades, saw many auction prices go through the roof while other sales languished with 40% unsold lots. Together, Christie's and Sotheby's raised about $56 million, high above expectations. Works from the ...
Illusions & Allusions: Art scholars, public love Duchamp's enigmatic, unforgettable diorama
Wall Street Journal / September 23rd, 2009
PHILADELPHIA - Famous for making artwork out of a mass-produced urinal, artist Marcel Duchamp also created the lesser-known, more mysterious "Étant Donnés," now the object of a fascinating, scholarly show. Organized by Michael Taylor at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition documents the ...
From Thomas Hart Benton to Tiffany Studios: Cottone's Sept. 26 auction offers fresh-to-market goodies
RocNow / September 23rd, 2009
GENESEO, N.Y. - Off the beaten track, Cottone’s is dubbed the Christie’s of cow country. The upstate New York firm is known to yield treasures long tucked away in local houses — recently, a Remington bronze brought $600,000 and a Tiffany lamp garnered $90,000. Highlights in next Saturday's ...
Today at Bloomsbury Auctions: Quirky, intruiging celebrity self-portraiture for sale
Artinfo / September 23rd, 2009
NEW YORK—A self-portrait collection assembled without spending a single dollar will be sold off at Bloomsbury Auctions on Sept. 24. The house estimates that the sale — which includes pieces by artists Jamie Wyeth, David Hockney, and Robert Motherwell as well as names like Maya Angelou, Muhammed ...