The countdown begins: On Feb. 26, The Art of the Steal -- Don Argott's documentary about the struggle for the control of the Barnes Foundation -- opens in theaters (two days after it can be seen on demand) in New York and Philadelphia. I have not seen the movie, which was shown last year at the Toronto and New York film festivals, but last week the trailer went up on IMDB -- you can see it here. It calls the move into downtown Philadelphia "the scandal of the art world" and labels those who are doing it "vandals." Clearly, … [Read more...]

Sotheby's had a spectacular Old Masters week (compared with Christie's), and the sales of La Belle Ferronnière by a Follower of Leonardo da Vinci for nearly $1.54 million, about three times its presale estimate (including the premium), and of Francisco Zurbarán's full-length picture of Saint Doroty Holding a Basket of Apples and Oranges for a record $4.22 million, rightly made the biggest splash. But the Old Master paintings sale held some other surprises, including a mini-mystery (not as good as the record-setting American silver … [Read more...]

As I mentioned here last October, The New Republic planned to start a new web page called The Book to "rush in and fill the vacuum in book criticism that is being left by the carnage in American newspapers." Now it has. The Book made its debut on Jan. 11. Have a look. In the visual arts, Jed Perl has led off with a joint review of The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov and The Journals of Grace Hartigan: 1951-1955 in which he discusses the realm of books about the Abstract Expressionists and their … [Read more...]

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hit it out of the park in 2009: attendance climbed to 1.3 million, far exceeding the record set in 2008 of 1.1 million. Credit a combination of great exhibits, lots of publicity, the building's restoration and the museum's 50th anniversary. Now for a few details: In mid-year, the Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, on view from May 15 - August 23, 2009, set a museum record with 409,117 visitors. It didn't last long. The Kandinsky exhibition, on view from September 18 through this past … [Read more...]

Depending on what the financial markets are doing, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is either described as the richest, or the second richest, or sometimes the third richest man in the world. But he keeps a very low profile in the world of philanthropy and culture, though he has been loosening his wallet -- currently estimated at close to $60 billion -- in the last few years. Now he's about to give Mexico a new museum -- by year-end. Ground was broken last year on the structure, whose cost has not been disclosed but is … [Read more...]

I interrupt this blog for a non-commercial, commercial message: This Friday, the Partnership for the Homeless in New York is holding an art auction at Gagosian Gallery on W. 21st Street in Chelsea to benefit its Brooklyn-based Family Resource Center. The pitch calls it unprecedented -- whether it is or not is immaterial; it's a good cause.  This "first-time" event was proposed by Richard Serra and his wife Clara (above) to the Partnership and they offered to chair it. Almost everything has been donated -- the space, … [Read more...]

Are the visual arts coming to Broadway again? And what picture will be drawn? It's not always "good" for art: Art was a winning play, more about friendship than painting, but it still reinforced some conventional antipathy toward art. Now there's word around New York that Red, a play by John Logan about Mark Rothko that opened on Dec. 8 at Donmar Warehouse in London, is likely to transfer to New York, probably this spring. The play is set in 1958-59, and involves the commission Rothko won for a series of murals from … [Read more...]

Let's give credit to the Fine Arts Fund in Cincinnati. In the belief that funding for the arts -- private and public -- has hit a "plateau that has little to do with the current economy," the group began a study of public attitudes toward the arts, trying to find out why people take little responsibility for financing them with public money. The theory: if we change the message, maybe we can change their minds -- but first we have to understand their minds. After a year of study, here are some of their findings: People view the arts as … [Read more...]

If a painting, drawing or sculpture sold at auction for more than seven times its high estimate, you'd read about it, want to see it and want to know what accounted for the gap. But there's nothing in the newspapers I've seen this morning about the silver punch bowl that fetched a record-smashing $5.9 million at Sotheby's yesterday. The previous record for American silver was $775,750, set twice, once in 2001 and once in 2002. This is the second highest price ever paid for any piece of silver at auction, Sotheby's said. Yesterday's … [Read more...]

Thomas Moran, Asher B. Durand, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Eakins, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Hart Benton, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley...those are the kind and caliber of artists whose names have been associated with the collection being assembled by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. You can see the images here. Here's another, and it was a bit of a surprise to me: Walton Ford. This week, the museum announced that it had purchased his 2009 work called The Island, described as a "writhing … [Read more...]