After entering a system as powerful and monied as the higher echelons of the art world, how do we gauge the threshold between subversion and endorsement? On the one hand, the biggest beneficiaries of FIVE DECADES seem to have little relationship to or even awareness of the social justice movements and protests that have defined […]
If you build it, they will come. Or that’s what the board at the San Francisco Museum of Art is betting on. This week, the 81-year-old institution opens its doors after a three-year renovation, gifting the West Coast with a world-class collection that would make MoMA blush. Sure, you can see Richard Serra in New […]
Jacques Herzog, the more talkative half of the pair of boyhood friends who founded the architectural practice Herzog & De Meuron, is worried about the world. “The things based on the five senses that we like so much, all these values – that we treat people well. They are in danger. There is such a […]
Jordan Wolfson’s art delights me a little—which may be a strange thing to say for an artist whose most recent installation centers on a human-like robot being brutally tortured for the entertainment of its spectators. But Wolfson (b. 1980) delights me because I have this hypothesis that contemporary art—one of its strands, at least, particularly the […]
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands – Michelangelo An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have – Andy Warhol Art is anything you can get away with – Marshall McLuhan A collector has one of three motives for collecting: a genuine love of art, the investment possibilities, or its […]
Iconoclastic American artist Richard Serra launched an exhibition of his latest steel behemoths at Gagosian Gallery in New York this past Saturday, featuring four new works: Above Below Betwixt Between,Every Which Way, Silence (for John Cage), and Through. It’s the thirtieth big show at the gallery for the artist, who splits his time between New York and Nova Scotia. Suffice it to say, the […]
“CAN WE QUICKEN this up?” It’s lunchtime in New York and Larry Gagosian is hungry. It’s time for supper—or at least aperitifs—in Europe, where he recently did a three-week working tour of France, England, Germany and Switzerland, and it’s breakfast in Los Angeles, where last week he hosted his annual pre-Oscars opening at his Beverly […]
Galleries have always provided scholarly support for museums exhibiting their artists’ work. Now they’re expected to provide money, too. In today’s exploding art market, amid diminishing corporate donations and mounting exhibition costs, nonprofit museums have been leaning more heavily on commercial galleries for larger amounts of money — anywhere from $5,000 to $200,000 each time […]
For Wendy Maitland, Town Residential’s president of sales, an Oscar-winning director client of hers was a typical real estate shopper with typical requests. He had a seven-figure budget and was keen to buy into one of the many new luxury condo complexes sprouting around Manhattan. The client was downsizing from a huge country house in Connecticut since his […]
Galleries like Sprüth Magers and Hauser Wirth & Schimmel quietly but fiercely compete for the city’s artists. The grand openings of the Los Angeles branches of European galleries Sprüth Magers and Hauser & Wirth (called Hauser Wirth & Schimmel), on 23 February and 13 March respectively, are sure to generate even more buzz about the […]
A lawyer, a financier, an art advisor, and a journalist walk into a room… It sounds like the start to a bad gallery dinner joke. But at The Armory Show the topic of discussion was serious: “How to Optimize the Unpredictable Art Market.” In a testament to the topic’s immediacy, moderator and Financial Times columnist […]
If a collector wanted to buy a Frank Stella at Art Basel Miami Beach last December, he could have walked up to the booth of New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, which represents Frank Stella. Or, he could have walked up to the booth of London and New York gallery Dominique Lévy, which also represents Frank Stella. […]
Florence Waters takes a closer look at the life and work of the woman behind the dots — the world’s most popular artist of 2015. Illustrated with works offered in our forthcoming Post-War and Contemporary Art auctions in London. 1. Painting became an act of rebellion for Kusama when she was just a child. Her […]
With unstable markets and cautious collectors, art dealers everywhere are adopting leaner strategies that make the most of their gallery’s resources. Driving 40% of annual gallery revenue, according to TEFAF’s 2015 Art Market Report, art fairs remain a crucial part of the bottom line, providing global reach without the need for multiple locations. The opacity of […]
We received the penned note from Miranda at the end of a punishing day. It was just two sentences long, but it raised a slew of legal issues and a few other concerns. “I am about to commission a sculpture of my husband, Carlo, for a 10-year anniversary,” she wrote. “Anything I should consider?” Oh, […]
America’s preëminent museum finally embraces contemporary art. Gertrude Stein’s famous remark that “you can be a museum or you can be modern, but you can’t be both” sounds archaic today. Every self-respecting urban center has its museum of modern art, and climate-change-denying business leaders will spend lavishly to get their name on its walls. The […]
What kind of person opens a private contemporary art museum? According to a new reportby the art collector database Larry’s List and the Chinese art market site Artron, he’s probably in his 60s or his 70s; he’s probably from South Korea, the US, or Germany; he probably founded his museum in the last 15 years; and he’s most […]
Did anyone catch the Guerrilla Girls’ brief appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Masked members of the anonymous feminist art collective gave a short introduction to what they do, and gave some really good answers as to why we should care about what museums collect. When Colbert asked about the important of even noticing […]
Art is a self-starting, entrepreneurial activity, and what is true of entrepreneurs in general is perhaps true of artists. “[T]he most common shared trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital—family money, an inheritance, or a pedigree and connections that allow for access to financial stability….,” Quartz recently explained, debunking the cult of the entrepreneur as visionary risk-taker. “When […]
In a dramatic development for the auction industry, Sotheby’s announced on Monday that it had acquired Art Agency, Partners, a two-year old, New York-based art advisory company, for $50 million plus built-in performance fees that could elevate that number to $85 million over the next four years. “AAP’s profitable business helps drive initiatives that are […]