Archives for September 2011

 In the middle of this horrible week for the stock market, collectors came out and put up a lot of money at the Artists for Haiti auction Thursday night. The total, $13.7 million, exceeded the presale estimate of $7.5 million to $10.5 million, and four world record prices were set! All 27 works, donated by the artists with some specifically for the auction, sold.

Christie’s, which conducted the auction but took no fees, sais that Artists for Haiti became the most successful charity auction it has ever held (but not the overalll record for a charity auction, which is held by Sotheby’s: it raised $42.6 million in 2008 for a Bono-staged event). 

All $13.7 million will go to selected charities in Haiti.

Two works were sold for seven figures: a Marlene Dumas painting fetched $2,000,000 and a Luc Tuymans brought $1,150,000. Records were set for Adel Abdessemed ($350,000), Glenn Ligon ($450,000), Nate Lowman ($140,000), and Raymond Pettibon ($820,000), who had donated a pair of surfer drawings. 

The Dan Flavin, donated by his estate, fetched $950,000.

You can see more works from the sale on the website of David Zwirner Gallery; Zwirner organized the auction with Ben Stiller.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery

Next Friday, Sept. 30, the Frick Collection is trying something new to attract young audiences: College Night. And it’s free.

This outreach attempt is a pilot program developed by the Frick’s Education Chief Rika Burnham. This summer, she used a college-age arts intern to research the “viability” of a College Night. They discovered that a few other museums have tried it, and liked it apparently.

So, on Sept. 30, undergraduate and graduate students need only show their IDs to gain entry from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., with one catch: They need to reserve in advance (Capacity is always a problem for these open events). Even that makes sense, though, because the Frick is supplying — also free — beverages and light snacks.

But it’s the programming that counts (all here in a PDF).  Yes, there will be a DJ in the Music Room, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Before that, interns will give introductory talks about the Frick, and curators will speak in more detail on Rembrandt, Fragonard, and other topics. The college kids may sketch in the courtyard, learn about the Frick Art Reference Library in an information lounge and see what other educational programs the Frick offers for students.

This idea is not completely new; among the other museums that have tried are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Getty Center, Getty Villa, Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

But for the Frick, it’s breaking new ground. I hope the turnout is excellent.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Frick Collection

 

The Ford Foundation and some trustees have stayed the closure of the American Folk Art Museum.

At a board meeting last night, according to published reports, the board decided against closing and transferring the museum’s collections and voted to remain open.

It also elected a new board president, Edward Blanchard, who told The New York Times: “We are confident that we’re embarking on a prudent course with the facilities that we have and the staff that we have. I think we’re going to do some very exciting things.”

There is no indication of the size of the new donations.

 

The wonders of technology have revealed a new portrait by Goya. It’s underneath his Portrait of Don Ramón Satué (below), which is owned by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

According to a press release, the new imaging technology is called scanning macro-Xray — flourescent spectrometry and it was developed by the University of Antwerp and the Delft University of Technology. It quotes Professor Joris Dik of the Delft University as saying “We can take the new mobile scanner to a museum and examine a painting layer by layer. This enables us to reconstruct the layers of paint and colours present underneath the visible painting without ever touching it.”

In this case, the scans reveal that Goya (1746-1828) painted over a more formal portrait of a man in a uniform, bearing honors and distinctions of someone in the highest ranks of an order of knights, which was established by the then-King of Spain and brother of Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte. They date the portrait to 1809-1813.

Goya’s Satué portrait,on the other hand, was signed and dated in 1823.

No one know who the man in the uniform is, but the Rijksmuseum says that the picture “most likely depicts a French general who accompanied Joseph to Madrid. Another distinct possibility is that the portrait depicts Joseph Bonaparte.”

The museum also says that the painting was probably still with Goya “when the French army withdrew from Madrid in 1813.” By 1823, Goya was experiencing “trying” times:

Having supported the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1820, Goya was forced to hide out with a member of Satué’s family after the restoration of absolutist rule under Ferdinand VII. Given these circumstances, possessing a portrait of a Napoleonic officer would have been construed as highly suspect, which may be what motivated the decision to paint over the original portrait. 

The picture is on view at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam until the Rijksmuseum reopens its main building in 2013.  

What, ArtInfo said this morning, no visual artist geniuses? “For the first time in 15 years, there are no contemporary visual artists on the illustrious list of MacArthur Foundation fellows,” read one post on the site. 

Maybe the MacArthur judges were chastened by last year, when there was one: Elizabeth Turk. Turk makes very beautiful carvings that lie pretty much outside the mainstream of contemporary art, and critics (including some on my blog post) called them “boring.” A sample is at right.

I wondered what happened to Turk — what, in other words, happened in the wake of the award? Last month, she was in New York, to discuss her new work with Hirschl & Adler Modern, the gallery that had shown her work in 2006 and 2008. It has scheduled another solo exhibition for her next March. When I received that notice, I asked the publicist what else had occurred?

She spoke at TED Atlanta, for one. And she received a research fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution that lasts through this year. That’s pretty much it.

Whether or not you like Turk’s works or not, you have to admit that she really works hard on them. According to the description I received:

[She] works in marble and transforms a slab of one ton raw material into a seemingly weightless object. On average it takes Elizabeth one year to complete a piece. Elizabeth uses a variety of tools, including electric grinders, files and small dental tools, to transform one solid piece of marble into detailed patterns and complex shapes that range from the figurative to the abstract. The finished piece weighs between 50 and 120 pounds.