Displaying items by tag: estate

The estate of a Paris art dealer filed a suit against the Nahmad family in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday over the restitution of a $25 million Nazi looted portrait by Amedeo Modigliani purportedly in the possession of the Nahmads, the New York Times reports.

The same court dismissed a previous attempt by the original owner's grandson, 71-year-old Philippe Maestracci, to secure the return of Modigliani's Seated Man With a Cane (1918) in 2012, after a judge ruled the France-based claimant lacked standing to pursue the case in the US.

An important archive comprising Lucian Freud’s sketchbooks, drawings and letters has been acquired by the nation from the estate of Lucian Freud through the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme. The archive has been permanently allocated to the National Portrait Gallery, which in 2012 staged the acclaimed Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition, the Gallery’s most visited ticketed exhibition.

The National Portrait Gallery plans to make the archive, which has never been published or exhibited, accessible to the public.

Gallerist and art collector Adam Lindemann is in contract to purchase an estate in Montauk, New York that once belonged to Andy Warhol, according to the New York Post. The seller is J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler, who purchased the 5.7-acre property for $27 million in 2007 and combined it with a 24-acre horse farm; he's listing the entire compound for $85 million.

But like a savvy collector, Lindemann is only interested in purchasing the six-cottage, oceanfront former Warhol estate, known as Eothen ("from the East").

Another veteran of the McKee, Philip Guston, joined in 1974, when his shift from Abstract Expressionist to figurative canvases, filled with bean-shaped heads, rogue limbs and light bulbs, was controversial. David and Renée McKee helped steer a reappraisal of Guston’s late work — now revered by artists and critics — after his death in 1980.

News of the gallery’s closing brought out a rush of suitors courting the Guston estate, which has just selected Hauser & Wirth to handle its representation worldwide.

Christie's and Sotheby's jump-started the fall season last week with announcements of respective blockbuster consignments including a $100 million Modigliani nude and the roughly $500 million collection of illustrious former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman's estate.

According to the 8-K SEC filing Sotheby's made on September 9, the publicly traded auction house is betting big on the $500 million Taubman collection, having given estate overseer and Taubman's son Robert a financial guarantee "for the collection at approximately that level." The SEC Filing was first flagged by the Art Market Monitor's Marion Maneker in a post this morning.

Andy Warhol's former Hampton's estate was recently listed by its current owner for an astounding $85 million. Warhol and his business partner/friend Paul Morrissey purchased the estate back in 1972 for a modest amount of $225,000.

The Montauk compound is currently owned by J. Crew CEO, Mickey Drexler. Drexler purchased the place for $27 million in 2007. According to Chron, the place was also formerly used as a fishing camp by its former owners. The 30 acres of land covers a beachside main house and also six cottages, which total to about 14,968 square feet.

Celebrated poet, writer, actress, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou’s private collection of African-American art, most of which has never been shown publicly, is heading to auction at Swann Auction Galleries on September 15.

The collection of nearly 50 artworks, including pieces by Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Melvin Edwards, and Jonathan Green, was directly consigned by Angelou’s estate to auction house’s African-American Fine Art Department. Angelou’s family are “happy to have the art that she loved, bring joy and inspiration to the lives of others,” according to a statement by the author’s son Guy Johnson.

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has announced that a trio of high-powered galleries will now represent the estate of the artist worldwide: The Pace Gallery, which has branches in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Beijing; Gallery Thaddeus Ropac, which is situated in Salzburg and Paris, and Galeria Luisa Strina, which is located in the teeming metropolis of Sao Paulo. The news is a shake-up on the gallery circuit since Rauschenberg’s estate has been represented by Gagosian Gallery since the artist’s death in 2008.

In a statement, David White, the Foundation’s senior curator, who had a 30-year working relationship with Rauschenberg, stated: “It was always invigorating to embark on new adventures with Bob and his art.

Cheekwood is taking important first steps towards the historic restoration of its Mansion, which is slated to debut in 2017. Further building on its reputation as “one of the finest examples of an American Country Place Era estates in the nation,” Cheekwood will refurnish the lower levels of the Mansion to reflect the lifestyle and setting of the 1930s era; originally used by its first residents, Mabel and Leslie Cheek, and designed by legendary landscape and structural architect Bryant Fleming. Several rooms in the 1929 Cheek family home will be restored to furnishings and décor representative of the original period, including rooms that have never before been on view to the general public.

To spearhead this initiative, Cheekwood has hired Leslie B. Jones as its new Curator of Decorative Arts & Historic Interpretation, following her time as the Curator and Director of Historical Resources and Programming for the White House Historical Association in Washington, DC.

The art collection of the late John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, is being offered as the cornerstone in Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art sale this May in New York.

The 90 piece estate, with rare works by Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pierre Bonnard, is expected to achieve over $40 million in sales.

Whitehead served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he commanded a landing craft at Omaha Beach, in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.