Displaying items by tag: Contemporary Art

Billionaire Ken Griffin donated $40 million to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, one of the largest gifts in the institution’s 85-year history.

The unrestricted gift from the founder of Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel will help provide education and exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, the museum said Tuesday in a statement. In recognition of the gift, MoMA will name its 1964 Philip Johnson-designed East Wing after Griffin.

Ever since Noah Horowitz announced in July that he was stepping down as head of the Armory Show, the art world has wondered who would replace him at a time when that mammoth fair for Modern and contemporary art faces increasing competition from Frieze New York.

ow there is a decision: Benjamin Genocchio, the editor in chief of Artnet News, will become the fair’s executive director next month, in time to put his stamp on the Armory Show on Piers 92 and 94 in March.

A commercial statement filed in New York this summer has raised questions about the circumstances surrounding the sale of a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat at Christie’s, New York, on 13 May.

The work, The Field Next to the Other Road (1981), was consigned to the auction house by the dealer Tony Shafrazi and included in the Post-War and Contemporary evening sale where it sold for $37.1m, the sixth-highest price of the night.

Within the Museum of Modern Art’s announcement on Tuesday of coming exhibitions were signs of a seismic shift underway in how it collects and displays modern and contemporary art — changes that are expected to have a powerful impact on the museum’s renovation.

While curatorial activities used to be highly segregated by department, with paintings and sculpture considered the most important, the museum has gradually been upending that traditional hierarchy, organizing exhibitions in a more fluid fashion across disciplinary lines and redefining its practice of showing art from a linear historical perspective.

At nearly 78, American artist Ed Ruscha has promised to donate to London’s Tate museum one impression of all future prints he makes for the rest of his life. The initiative launched with the inaugural group of prints that includes “Jet Baby,” 2011, “Wall Rocket,” 2013, and “Sponge Puddle,” 2015, along with 15 other works reflecting the artist’s interest in signs, language, and the landscape of Los Angeles.

Will François Pinault finally bring his collection to Paris? The luxury goods magnate and mega-collector chose to show his contemporary art collection in Venice's Palazzo Grassi after excessive bureaucracy and administrative complications prevented him from showing the works on Paris' Île Seguin in 2004.

However, according to the French newspaper La Croix, the billionaire is reconsidering showing at least a part of his art collection in the French capital.

The British artist Anish Kapoor unveiled a gory triptych of reliefs in the Rijksmuseum’s Gallery of Honour today (27 November), the Amsterdam museum’s most ceremonial space. Internal Object in Three Parts, which are large-scale works made of silicone, earth and pigment, refer to themes of “violence, trauma and social and political unrest,” according to the Dutch national museum’s press statement.

Michael McGinnis, president of auction house Phillips, is leaving the company after 16 years as the smaller rival to Christie’s and Sotheby’s undergoes a transformation under new senior management.

McGinnis will step down on Nov. 30 to spend time with his family and pursue other opportunities, Phillips said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. After founding the contemporary-art department in 1999, McGinnis became the boutique auctioneer’s chief executive officer in 2012 and held the post until CEO Edward Dolman’s arrival in 2014, when he assumed his current role.

On December 13 the Art Institute of Chicago unveils 44 contemporary works donated by collecting titans Gael Neeson and Stefan Edlis. The largest gift in the museum’s 136-year history, the mix reads like an art lover’s “Twelve Days of Christmas,” with one Robert Rauschenberg, two Cy Twomblys, four Gerhard Richters, six Cindy Shermans, and nine Andy Warhols among the blue-chip pieces.

On the heels of its historic sale, "The Artist's Muse," which combined Impressionist and contemporary masterworks, and achieved a new $170 million Modigliani record, Christie's focused this evening's sale purely on postwar and contemporary art.

The sale realized $331.8 million compared with expectations of roughly $320 million. While, overall, it was a solid night, it was clear that the real fireworks had already passed; they happened the previous night.