Art Newspaper: "T-Rex takes on Twombly at Christie's $341m 20th-century evening sale" - Oct 7, 2020
Unusual $32m Jurassic-era offering stole the high-tech livestreamed show in New York, but buyers kept bids cautious elsewhere
Art News: "$28 M. Richter from Perelman Collection Sets Record for Western Artist at Auction in Asia" - Oct 6, 2020
After Sotheby’s successful $96.5 million Hong Kong modern evening auction on Monday, the house’s contemporary evening sale on Tuesday brought HKD 678.4 million ($87.5 million) with buyer’s fees across 24 lots, realizing a near-perfect 92 percent sell-through rate.
Artnet: "The Mellon Foundation Will Invest a Staggering $250 Million Over Five Years to Overhaul America’s Public Monuments" - Oct 5, 2020
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will commit an unprecedented $250 million to overhaul historical monuments in the US over the next five years, the philanthropic organization announced on Monday. The “Monuments Project,” as the ambitious initiative is called, is the most substantial effort in the foundation’s history.
New York Times: "Baltimore Museum to sell 3 blue-chip paintings to advance equity" - Oct 2, 2020
As museums face increasing financial pressures and industrywide demands from staff to create more equitable workplaces, a second institution is taking advantage of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ temporary pandemic-era loosening of its deaccessioning guidelines: They now allow the selling of art from museum collections to fund the direct care of collections — not just the acquisition of other artworks.
New York Times: "Whitney Biennial Postponed Until 2022" - Oct 1, 2020
The museum says that it is prioritizing exhibitions that have been delayed because of the pandemic, including Jasper Johns and Julie Mehretu shows.
Art News: "Amoako Boafo, Titus Kaphar, Matthew Wong Lead Phillips $5.8 M. ‘New Now’ Sale" - Sep 30, 2020
The fall edition of Phillips’s “New Now” sale realized a total of $5.8 million with buyer’s premium across 185 lots. The result marks a drop from the $7.9 million achieved in the spring edition of “New Now” this past March. But it is a stark increase from the fall 2019 “New Now” sale, which totaled $5.2 million across 173 lots.
New York Times: "A museum puts its fakes on show" - Sep 30, 2020
A German institution found that many of its Russian avant-garde paintings weren’t genuine. A new exhibition puts those works front and center, despite protests from the gallery that sold some of the works.
The Times: "Museums warned not to drop contentious works" - Sep 28, 2020
Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary in the U.K., said in a leaked letter that British institutions could jeopardise their taxpayer support if they stopped displaying statues or objects because of public pressure.
New York Times: "Early works by Edward Hopper found to be copies of other artists" - Sep 28, 2020
Grad student Louis Shadwick discovered that three of Hopper's earliest oil paintings, from the 1890s, can only barely count as his original images. Two are copies of paintings Mr. Shadwick found reproduced in a magazine for amateur artists published in the years before Hopper’s paintings. The reproductions even came with detailed instructions for making the copies.
Art News: "Controversial Philip Guston Show Postponement Met with Shock and Anger from Art Community" - Sep 28, 2020
The choice to delay the retrospective by four years was driven by a desire to reformulate the show so that it better reflects the “urgencies of the moment,” the directors of the four museums said in a joint statement on September 21. But many artists, curators, and critics said that, in postponing a show with these works included, the institutions had erred significantly.
Antiques Trade Gazette: "Sandro Botticelli portrait comes to Sotheby’s with $80m estimate" - Sep 24, 2020
While few fully-attributed works by the great Renaissance artist have ever emerged at auction, Young Man Holding a Roundel has been described by the auction house as comparable “in its inventiveness and superb quality” to some of Botticelli’s finest portraits. It will be offered as part of Sotheby’s Old Master sales series in January.
Artnet News: "‘Business as Usual Went Right Out the Window’: How Lockdown Forced Auction Houses Into the Future—for Good" - Sep 24, 2020
Despite suffering a nosedive in revenue, here’s how the biggest auction houses in the world are evolving to survive.
Artnet: "Germany is boosting its culture budget by $140 million next year—bringing the ministry’s total spend to $2.2 billion" - Sep 24, 2020
The German federal government has announced that it will increase its culture and media budget by more than €120 million in 2021, bringing the culture ministry’s total budget up to €1.94 billion.
Artnet: "Austria’s biggest art fair is forging ahead with an in-person edition despite growing restrictions on travel" - Sep 22, 2020
Against seemingly all odds, the annual Vienna Contemporary art fair will be one of a handful of industry events to have an in-person edition this year, even as Europe braces for what may be further lockdowns in the days and weeks to come.
Art Newspaper: "Court-ordered auction of works from disgraced Brazilian banker's collection prompts new controversy" - Sep 22, 2020
An auction of works left over from the collection of the bankrupt Banco Santos and its owner, Edemar Cid Ferreira, has caused controversy in Brazil, with one of the country’s most important contemporary art museums alleging that they are due R$20m ($3.6m) for the preservation and storage of the vast majority of the works up for sale.
Guardian: "Royal Academy's cruel dilemma: sell a Michelangelo or lose 150 jobs" - Sep 20, 2020
The threatened sell-off by London’s Royal Academy of Arts of its great Michelangelo sculpture is nothing new. Over 40 years ago its secretary, Sidney Hutchison, told the RA’s banker that a sale was possible. Once again, last week, there has been talk of selling the Michelangelo to deal with the current Covid-19 financial deficit.