Displaying items by tag: New York

Concurrent Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) exhibitions will open at St. Lawrence’s University’s Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library on October 15. An American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and writer, Kent spent most of his adult life living and working at Asgaard Farm in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. A prominent artist, author, activist, and adventurer, Kent was one of the most noted figures of his time.

The two St. Lawrence exhibitions will present key areas of Kent’s multi-faceted career as a painter and printmaker. A student of William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, Kent’s early paintings exhibit an impressionistic style and simple three-plane composition that anticipated his later, more modern inclinations to simplify his paintings’ compositions. A select group of books highlight Kent’s preeminence as one of the finest illustrators of his time. The prints and drawings on view show Kent’s mastery of chiaroscuro and his knack for reworking original imagery into everything from commercial greeting cards and advertisements to seals and pottery.

Rockwell Kent: The Once Most Popular Artist includes nearly 75 works spanning Kent’s entire artistic career as well as his varied endeavors into different mediums. Kent specialist, Scott R. Ferris, who will also give a lecture at the exhibitions opening on October 15, curated the show. The Once Most Popular Artist will be on view through December 14, 2012.

Sotheby’s has decided to get in on China’s art market boom and has signed a 10-year-joint-venture agreement to form the first international auction house in China. Until now, international auction houses have not been permitted in China outside of Hong Kong. The agreement is with Beijing GeHua Art Company, a state-owned enterprise that is part of the Beijing GeHua Cultural Development Group. Sotheby’s will be investing $1.2 million to take an 80% stake in the undertaking.

The venture, called Sotheby’s (Beijing) Auction Co. Ltd., comes at a time when Beijing is attempting to legitimize their reputation as the auction industry has recently been burdened with rampant fakes, smuggling, and non-payments.

Sotheby’s is looking to tap into China’s growing collector base and also plans to take advantage of the new Tianzhu Free Trade Zone being developed by GeHua in Beijing. The Free Trade Zone will give Sotheby’s clients access to tax-advantage storage facilities. An inaugural auction will take place at the Millennium Hall of the Beijing World Art Museum on September 27.

Last year, China overtook the United States to become the world’s largest art and antiques market so it’s no wonder that other companies are looking to get in on the action. For example, Christie’ International has licensed its trademark to Beijing-based auction house, Forever, although they do not hold sales in China itself. In addition, two of China’s biggest auction houses, China Guardian Auctions Co. Ltd. and Poly International, are looking to attract wealthy international clients. China Guardian opened a New York office this past December and plans to establish a strong presence in London as well.

Starting in the 1950s, Rudolph and Hannelore Schulhof began building a 20^th century art collection that has become the source of much speculation after the widowed Hannelore died this past February. Boasting nearly 350 works in total, Christie’s will auction 63 pieces from the collection including works by Joan Miro, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Indiana as part of its Impressionist and Modern Art Works sale and its Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in November. The sale is expected to bring in about $25 million. Christie’s will open the doors to the Schulhof’s Long Island mansion on Saturday, September 21 and Sunday, September 22 from 10AM to 5PM. Visitors will get a glimpse of an extraordinary, museum-quality collection. In fact, 100 of the works had previously been promised to three museums including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice as well as the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The Sculhofs met in Vienna right before the start of World War II and married in Brussels in 1940. After traveling to the United States with extended family, Rudolph launched what would become a fine art reproduction company. When the couple first started collecting they tended to go after established names but were cajoled by the art dealer, Justin Thannhauser, to consider the art of their own time. As the Schulhof’s company had an office in Milan, they would frequent the city’s galleries as well as the Venice Biennale on their visits to Italy. It was on one of these trips that the Schulofs met the prominent American art collector, Peggy Guggenheim. A longtime friendship ensued, resulting in rapports with the artists themselves and the couple’s generous posthumous gift of 83 works to Guggenheim’s Venice institution. Another 200 artworks will remain in the Schulhof’s home and the family will decide on distribution in the future.

One of the most immediately recognizable artworks of all time, Edvard Munch’s (1863–1944) 1895 version of The Scream will be on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art for six months, starting October 24^th. Sold for nearly $120 million at Sotheby’s in May to a mystery collector, The Scream is the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Munch created four versions of The Scream between 1893 and 1910. The other three versions reside in Norwegian museums and have not traveled for years. The pastel on board that will be on view at MoMA is the only version in private hands and has never before been shown publicly in New York. It is also the most colorful of the bunch and boasts a frame painted by the artist with a poem describing a walk at sunset that inspired the piece. A part of Munch’s “Frieze of Life” series, it is truly a privilege to be able to see The Scream, a cornerstone of Modern art, in person.

It has been suggested that the New York financier, Leon Black, was the buyer of the pastel that sold at Sotheby’s but neither Mr. Black nor officials at Sotheby’s will confirm. A member of MoMA’s board, Black is one of foremost collectors in the U.S.

The Scream will be on view at MoMA through April 29^th and the museum will be sure to ramp up security during its stay.

Three highly attended and widely acclaimed exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art generated about $781 million in spending by regional, national and foreign tourists this spring/summer season. Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, Tomas Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City, and The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde are to thank for the impressive chunk of change.

The Metropolitan has employed a number of audience studies in recent years to calculate the public economic impact of its special exhibition program. With a direct tax benefit of $78.1 to New York City, it appears the program is well worth its while.

In total, 339,838 visitors came to the Met to see Schiaparelli and Prada and 323,792 patrons came to see The Steins Collect, which will remain on view though November 4, 2012. At the time of the study, Tomas Saraceno on the Roof drew the largest crowd with 368,370 visitors.

As the wider Impressionist and modern market slowly withers on the auction vine — the victim of a paucity of first-rate material — the international market for Surrealism has started to sizzle. Interest in the erotically preoccupied mid-century movement languished for decades as collectors lavished money and attention on Impressionist and Fauve art. Yet in the last two years, works by the handful of brand name artists associated with Surrealism — Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Joan Miró — are taking center stage.

In June at the Christie’s London Impressionist and modern sales, for example, Magritte’s darkly menacing “Les jours gigantesques,” 1928, depicting a violent struggle between a clothed man and a naked woman and remarkable for the illusionistic effect of one body superimposed on and merging with the other, sold to the New York financier Wilbur Ross for £7.2 million ($11.3 million) on an estimate of £800,000 to £1.5 million. Ross outgunned a posse of competitors, including London dealer Daniella Luxembourg.

When was the last time an expert from a top auction house dispensed with longtime allegiances and joined forces with someone from the enemy camp? In the fiercely competitive world of Sotheby’s and Christie’s, such an occurrence is rarer than a prized Vermeer.

But for months now there have been rumors that a new powerhouse partnership was in the works, one that would replace Giraud, Pissarro, Ségalot, the superprivate superdealer that pulled off so many big transactions and whose business began winding down soon after Franck Giraud, one of its partners, announced that he was leaving to “explore options inside the art world and out.”

The players making up this new venture, however, had been something of a guessing game.

The American Folk Art Museum in New York, which almost went out of business last year because of financial struggles, has appointed a new director, the museum announced Wednesday.

The board selected Anne-Imelda Radice, who recently served as director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that supports the work of libraries and museums. She will start next week.

Struggling under a deficit and disappointing attendance, the museum was forced to close its new flagship building in Midtown in 2011 and move to its smaller current location at Lincoln Square in Manhattan.

Christie’s New York has announced that two classic works on paper by Norman Rockwell will lead its American Art auction in September.

One of the Rockwell drawings, Study for ‘The Runaway,’ illustrates a young boy and a policeman sitting side by side at the counter of a coffee shop and is one of the artist’s most iconic images. Underneath the boy’s seat is a bag containing his belongings as he is preparing to run away from home. The policeman, in a friendly manner, tries to talk the child out of his departure. The completed work was used as a Saturday Evening Post cover on the Sept. 20, 1958, issue. The piece is expected to bring in $80,000 to $120,000.

This campaign season, the talk across America is about tightened belts and reduced expectations. The art world hasn’t heard it. New York’s biggest galleries are about to get bigger, and some smaller players are expanding as well.

We’re doing well as a gallery, and the ambitious new space reflects that,” says Maureen Bray, a director of the Sean Kelly Gallery. She’s barely audible above construction being done on an arena-size space due to open late in October. The gallery is moving up from 6,500 square feet in the neighborhood called Chelsea, home of the world’s biggest art souk, to almost four times that floor space farther uptown.