That infamous sale of two 1750 Chinese bronzes at Christie’s Yves St. Laurent auction last February may be rumbling towards a settlement, according to my friend Georgina Adam, an editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper. In her regular Saturday column for the Financial Times, Georgina writes that “the French government is working on a face-saving solution.” 

You may recall that the Chinese buyer of the works, Cai Mingchao, bid a record-setting $40 million for the rabbit and rat fountainheads. He then declined to pay for them because they’d been disappeared — probably looted — from the Summer Palace in Beijing around 1860, when it was sacked by the British and the French. Cai made his bids, which stunned everyone even before they turned out to be a ruse, as a patriotic gesture.

Georgina quotes the French weekly, Le Point (my French is not good enough to read it, sorry to say), suggesting that Carrefour, the huge supermarket chain with a strong presence in China, is forming a consortiom that would buy the bronzes and give them back to China.

Carrefour says that the report is “inaccurate” but does not say it is “untrue” and is not prepared to comment further. Christie’s also refuses to comment on the issue, except to say that “the sale has not been cancelled”, and maintains that the Yves St Laurent sale totalled £332.8m, a figure that includes the price for the bronzes.

This is probably the optimum solution, given the circumstances.  

Here’s a link to Georgina’s column, which as usual has other interesting news about the art market as well.  

 

In case you missed it, I wanted to take note of an article in the Detroit Free Press on Thursday, “Public Can Vote in New Art Competition.” They — not art critics and curators and other experts — will choose the winner of a $250,000 grand prize, plus smaller purses for other contenders, a total of $450,000.

ArtPrize, created by Rick DeVos, a scion of the family that founded Amway and Prince Corp., is probably the largest that goes to an individual visual artist, dwarfing others.

What I like best about the program is DeVos’s plan to display the works of the finalists in Grand Rapids, creating excitement for art there. I hope it generates the kind of enthusiasm sparked by Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “Gates” in Central Park in Manhattan in 2005 (at left). Anyone who strolled through the park during its display could feel the spirit in the air; people seemed to be jubilant just walking through the Gates.  

There are a couples of catches, though. For one, only those who visit the display will be allowed to vote. I wish the contest were open to all. While seeing something on the web is no substitute for visiting in person, it could well be good enough in this case, given the tech tools available today.

For another, the finalists have to get themselves and their art to Grand Rapids, which probably eliminates many who’d like to participate but can’t afford that expense. On the other hand, this limitation aids Michigan artists, and that’s probably a good thing.

It’s an experiment, DeVos says on the prize’s website. A good one, I add.

Here’s a link to the Free Press article, and here’s a link to the ArtPrize website. 

Bank of America is pretty beleagured these days, what with CEO Kenneth Lewis saying the other day that credit conditions, undoubtedly bad now, were going to get worse. The bank reported a $4.2 billion profit in the first quarter, but the stock’s performance is miserable, its acquisition of Merrill Lynch is a mess, and people are agitating for Lewis’s ouster.

Nevertheless, B of A is not only continuing but also expanding its 11-year-old “Museums on Us” program.* Through it, holders of its ATM, credit or debit cards are given free entry to many cultural institutions during the first full weekend of every month.

This season, from May 2-3 through Dec. 4-5, there are 40 new groups, a welcome
development in these tough times, bringing the total to 120 institutions in 26 states.

Newcomers on the list include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL, the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton (at right), the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, and the Phillips Collection in Washington. The best and the biggest are already on the list: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and many more.

Efforts like this have marketing punch, of course. And I have no idea how much this costs B of A (the institutions generally receive some money from the bank as part of its philanthropy program).

But at a time when many businesses are cutting back their charitable efforts — and museums are straining to increase revenues — this is a great way for more people to see what museums have to show. (OK, it could involve more money, but isn’t that always the case?) Let’s hope other corporations take note.  

So if you have a B of A card, this is one way to use it without regrets.  

More information is here.

*The program was started by Fleet Bank, which B of A acquired in 2004, and initially covered a more limited time period.

Photo Credit: Parrish Art Museum 

The Yankees aren’t the only ones having trouble selling tickets.

The other day I was reading an article on nytimes.com when I noticed an ad offering free tickets to the International Fine Art Fair, which runs at the Park Avenue Armory in New York from May 1 through 5. This is a fancy fair, and I’d never seen that before. I clicked on the tab and printed out a complimentary ticket for two.

Then on Wednesday, I saw the same offer on the New York Social Diary site:

Hmmm. Art fairs often give free passes to museums and collectors, or to dealers who pass them on to collectors. But I’d not noticed such an offer, on the web or in print, to the general public. That had to say something about the state of the art market. The tickets go for $20. 

“We realize the economy is tough,” Magda Grigorian, the spokeswoman for the organizer, Haughton International Fairs, told me when I called. She confirmed that this is a first for this fair. “This is the new regime.”

Grigorian said the Haughton organization chose the two websites I happened to be on for their “very targeted audience. It’s very qualified people, and we thought we’d try it. Foot traffic is very important for the fair. We know that sales may be down but it’s also important to have good crowds.”

The International Fine Art Fair has been around for about 15 years, with dealers offering works from the Renaissance through the 20th century. This year it has shrunk — from 61 dealers last year to 40. Still, it’s proceeding: the Haughtons cancelled their International Asian Art Fair this year, which had been set for March.

With so many fairs on the art-market circuit in the last few years, there have already been many cancellations, and there are bound to be more. Organizers and dealers will surely be watching the outcome of this tactic.

Here’s a link to the fair’s site. You may have to rummage around nytimes.com or NYSD to find the free-ticket offer, but it was still available last night.  

 

Having just looked at works by the new crop of Guggenheim fine-arts fellows, the announcement that Linda Gregg had won the $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize caught my attention, and set me off on a mission to read some of her poetry. Gregg has won many other prestigious awards before this (her bio is here). Congratulations to her.

Ploughshares, the literary journal of Emerson College, has published several of her poems online, including The Oar in the Sand, which begins:

He sailed to wherever the sirens were,
surviving by lashing himself to the mast.
An image of stalwart resistance, or weakness.

And ends:

What about afterwards? We never talk
of that. What if he goes on looking?
What if there is no place to go?

Here are links to more:

Without Design All Beauty Melts Away

They Cripple With Beauty and Butcher With Love  

Trying to Believe