Displaying items by tag: art galleries

Police in Madrid are searching for about 70 paintings worth an estimated €600,000 (£475,000) after three men walked out of an art gallery with the works as the sun rose last Thursday.

The thieves are thought to have spent two to three hours carrying the paintings out of the Puerta de Alcalá art gallery and propping them against nearby trees before loading them into a van.

The men are believed to have entered by punching a hole in the wall of a neighboring bar, said Pedro Márquez of the gallery, noting that the bar had been closed for about a year.

While there’s an ongoing mini-exodus of smaller galleries from Chelsea due to rocketing rents, not everyone is leaving the neighborhood. In early 2015, Lisson Gallery — which currently has two locations in London, one in Milan, and a private showroom on the Lower East Side of Manhattan — will open an 8,500-square-foot space at 504 West 24th Street. That address situates them on a block with peers like Gagosian, Luhring Augustine, Andrea Rosen, and Gladstone Gallery.

“Designed by Markus Dochantschi of Studio MDA in collaboration with Studio Christian Wassmann, the gallery will be constructed around the foundational elements of the High Line,” according to press materials

Two Trees Management Company — the New York-based real estate firm behind the plan to develop the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg  — has announced details of a cultural space subsidy program in DUMBO. Through the program, artists and arts groups will be able to apply for below market rate rents ($12/foot compared to $40/foot) in Two Trees-owned buildings in the neighborhood. “Artists and groups will be chosen based on their commitment to community engagement and social impact, and their quality of work,” according to the press release.

This new program formalizes existing agreements Two Trees has with 50 arts and cultural groups in DUMBO including St. Ann’s Warehouse, Smack Mellon, and the DUMBO BID. 50,000 square feet will be reserved for those groups while another 50,000 square feet will be opened up to new artists, art galleries, and community groups. Applications are due by July 31.

When Robert Blumenthal decided to open his first gallery, he didn’t consider Chelsea, where most of his local contemporary-art peers operate.

He thought about the Lower East Side, where several younger art dealers have found lower rents, but in February, he opted for a third-floor location with distinctly un-Chelsea crown molding at 1045 Madison Ave., near 79th Street.

“The Upper East Side is so unhip, it’s hip,” said Mr. Blumenthal, 33 years old. “Chelsea is a generation before me.”

When demolition begins on 540-544 West 26th Street in New York, three prominent contemporary art galleries -- Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, and Stephen Haller Gallery -- will say goodbye to their current spaces. Located in Manhattan’s booming Chelsea neighborhood, the two-story property, which includes a neighboring parking lot, will be transformed into a 130,000-square-foot commercial and office space with community facilities. The site will be co-developed by commercial real estate broker, The Manhattes Group LLC, and Savanna, a real estate private equity firm and asset management company.

Stephen Haller Gallery, which has been in Chelsea for over a decade, plans to open a new location in the neighborhood. Lehmann Maupin and Tony Shafrazi Gallery have yet to announce their plans for the future. Lehmann Maupin has a second gallery on Chrystie Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The Manhattes Group and Savanna have not released a start date for the project.

German police arrested two people and raided 28 locations in an effort to halt a multi-million dollar international forgery ring responsible for selling fake paintings they claimed were by Russian avant-garde artists including Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Apartments, business premises, and art galleries in Wiesbaden, Mainz, Suttgart, Munich, and Hamburg were searched by police officers. Over 1,000 items were seized including supposed forgeries and sales documents. Additional searches were carried out in Switzerland and Israel.

The forgers are believed to have sold over 400 works ranging in price from $1,332 to over $1 million since 2005, accruing more than $2.7 million. The two men who were arrested are believed to be the leaders of an international group of six counterfeiters. Private collectors in Germany and Spain acquired most of the fakes sold by the forgery ring.

Confidence in the German art market has been unstable since it was shaken by the largest forgery scandal to date in 2011. Art forger Wolfang Betrachhi was sentences to six years in jail after admitting to painting copies of works by Fernard Leger (1881-1955) and Max Ernst (1891-1976) and then selling them as masterpieces to unwitting collectors.  

2nd Annual Naples Art, Antique & Fine Jewelry Show
February 8–11, 2013; Preview: February 7, 2013
Naples Exhibition Center, 100 Goodlette Road
South Naples, Florida 34102

10th Anniversary Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show
February 16–19, 2013; Preview: February 15, 2013
Palm Beach Country Convention Center, 650 Okeechobee Blvd.
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401

After its successful debut in 2012, The Palm Beach Show Group (PBSG) is proud to announce that the Naples Art, Antique & Jewelry Show will be held this year from February 8th to the 11th. More than 75 high-caliber dealers will be exhibiting. As an indicator of how strong the inaugural show was, the majority of the 2012 participating dealers signed up again for 2013.

Scott Diament, President and CEO of the PBSG remarked, “The second annual Naples Show will again provide exhibitors with the unique opportunity to not only meet sophisticated and educated clientele from Florida’s Paradise Coast, but also from the Midwest region, an area from which many attendees travel during this peak season.” Show visitors will gain access to major works of art, antique and estate jewelry, furniture, porcelain, Asian antiquities, American and European silver, glass, textiles, sculpture, contemporary art and many more of the world’s most beautiful collections.

The show's location is ideal for collectors and decorators alike, located just steps from Fifth Avenue, Naples’ world-renowned shopping, dining and entertainment district, and its cultural attractions including museums, theaters, and art galleries.

On President’s Day Weekend, following just four days after the Naples Show, the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show is celebrating its 10th anniversary. With the addition of so many top painting dealers this year, it has become the preeminent show for American and European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the art and antiques industry, this is an annual must-attend event and a hallmark in Palm Beach. Many exhibitors, including Peter Finer (the world’s leading specialist in antique arms and armour and new to the show this year) also exhibit at other top-notch shows such as TEFAF Maastricht, The Winter Antiques Show, Masterpiece London and The American Art Fair.

The Palm Beach Show was so successful last year that over 50 dealers were waitlisted for this year's show since the demand to exhibit exceeded capacity, an exceedingly rare situation in this volatile economic climate.

“Our Naples Show is the perfect complement to our Palm Beach Show,” adds Diament. “We are now providing our exhibitors with tremendous back-to-back exposure to the most affluent collectors from the Northeast, who choose to winter in Southeast Florida, and the most affluent collectors from the Midwest, who choose to spend their winters on the West Coast of Florida. Thousands of patrons—from private collectors to museums curators to investors—are anticipated to attend.

Two months ago, Hurricane Sandy battered New York City and caused severe flooding in many art galleries, especially those located in Chelsea. Initially, the prominent firm AXA Art Insurance estimated that the damage they would be paying out totaled around $40 million. Due to the severity of the destroyed gallery spaces and damaged artworks, that number is now closer to $500 million. The hard-hit area is slowly recovering but many galleries remain closed and under construction.

One of the main contributors to the growing price tag on Sandy-related art losses is Pop artist Peter Max (b. 1937) who lost an entire collection of works on paper that had been stored in a flooded warehouse. The claim for the lost Max works was set at $300 million.