Arts patron Patricia Turner Walters, widow of civil rights activist and Howard University professor of 25 years Ronald W. Walters, donated 152 works from the private collection which she has been growing since the late 1980s. Included are works by Norman Lewis and contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley.
Ian and Annette Cumming built their portrait collection from 1995 until Ian’s death in 2017, commissioning and purchasing portraits of renowned celebrities by various contemporary artists, including Alex Katz. The 20 gifted works will feature in the exhibition "Visionary: The Cumming Family Collection" from April 24.
The centrepiece of this charity lottery, a formula tested in 2013, is the Spanish master’s 1921 Nature morte featuring a glass of absinth. The painting, owned by David Nahmad and estimated at €1m, is currently on show at the Picasso Museum. The winner will be drawn on March 30 with all proceeds going to ONG Care.
Hans Purrmann, artist and founding member of the Académie Matisse, was targeted by the Nazi campaign against “degenerate” Modern art and had to sell his collection, the Grien going to Berlin state museums in 1937. His descendants agreed to loan the restituted 16th-century work to the Gemäldegalerie for ten years.
In a video posted to Twitter announcing a new National Arts Award, Roberto Alvim appeared to reference a speech by Joseph Goebbels. Although Alvim denies intentionally replicating the Nazi propaganda minister’s rhetoric, labelling the accusation an attempt to discredit the award, President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed him.
Mollison built the NGA’s collection before it opened in 1982, coordinating significant acquisitions including that of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles. His commitment to celebrating Australian art influenced the collections of the NGA and the National Gallery of Victoria which he led for six years. He died on January 19.
Luxembourg & Dayan, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, and SCAI The Bathhouse, are the latest galleries to back out two months ahead of the event, despite incentives proposed by fair organisers to discourage withdrawals amid political unrest; these include booth size reductions and perks such as discounted hotel rooms.
The museum will be built near the site of the pioneering Swiss architect’s most famed creation, the Villa Savoye in Poissy on the outskirts of Paris. It will exhibit never before seen works, including original blueprints and lithographs conserved by the Corbusier Foundation. Construction is intended to finish in 2027.
The Aaron Siskind Foundation of New York made the decision to gift the collection to the museum due to its commitment to photography; the museum will be charged with caring for and displaying the photographs, as well as administering the foundation’s annual fellowship prize for individual artists.
Spanish billionaire Jaime Botin was given 18 months of prison time and a €58 M fine after he attempted to take Picasso’s Head of a Young Woman out of Spain without an export permit, a necessity in the country for any work of art over 100 years old. The painting, valued at €29 M, was seized from his yacht in Corsica.
Built on the site of the castle where Louis XIV liked to retreat far from the pomp of Versailles, a flood forced the museum to close for three years. It reopens on January 18 following renovations; its collections retrace the era, detailing its architecture, destroyed in 1806, as well as its famed hydraulic “machine”.
In May 2019, Koons’ Rabbit matched the price of David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (1972), which sold for $80 M in November 2018. An increase in buyer’s fees at Christie’s between November 2018 and November 2019 resulted in Koons edging past Hockney to claim the title alone, according to Artprice.
Bodies, a medicine cabinet created by the artist for his degree show at Goldsmiths College in 1989, was bought by Young British Artist enthusiast Robert Tibbles for £600 that year; Phillips will put it up for sale for an estimated £1.2/1.8 M next month, with Tibbles’ 30-strong collection totalling around £4 million.
The American contemporary painter will be represented worldwide by the mega gallery while also maintaining his relationship with Sprüth Magers, with whom he has worked since 1983. Their first collaborative project will be an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zürich in June 2020, to coincide with Art Basel.
The space will provide a dozen artists working with mixed reality a yearlong residency to experiment in a subsidised workspace, followed by a month-long showcase. The NEW INC eXtended Reality Studio—ONX Studio, designed by New York-based firm Leong Leong, will open in Onassis USA’s Manhattan HQ in Spring.
Fox, who was formerly chief executive of Reach, the media company in control of publications such as the Daily Mirror, will take charge of the Frieze publications and art fairs. The hire comes as part of a restructuring by Endeavor, the entertainment group which bought an alleged 70% share of Frieze in 2016.
The former president of the Pompidou Centre and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France is succeeding Martin Béthenod as head of the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana, François Pinault’s exhibition spaces in Venice. The current director will lead the Bourse de Commerce, where he will be inaugurated in June.
The donation by veteran supporters of the Los Angeles museum Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle will go towards a permanent endowment fund in order to facilitate the Getty’s work with education programs and conservation. The museum’s directorship will be renamed after the couple in honor of the gift.
The descendants believe that the sale of Wassily Kandinsky’s Bild mit Häusern (1909) to the Stedelijk in 1940 was forced by occupying Nazis. The defence now claims that four of seven members of the restitution committee, which dismissed the case for the work’s return in 2018, have close ties with the Amsterdam museum.
The archives, dating back to the first catalogue raisonné published by Georges Wildenstein in 1922, will be digitised by the Wildenstein-Plattner Institute. It includes a century’s worth of annotated letters, notes, and sales catalogues, as well as material from twelve artists including Paul Gauguin and Édouard Manet.
