Displaying items by tag: kunstmuseum

A new record price for an artwork, nearly $300 million, may have been achieved with the sale of a Paul Gauguin canvas by a Swiss collector. The buyer is rumored to be the Qatar Museums.

The seller, Rudolf Staechelin, a retired Sotheby's executive who now lives in Basel, confirmed the sale this afternoon to the "New York Times," but declined to identify the buyer or disclose the price. The 1892 oil painting, "Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?)," is one of over 20 works in his collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Prior to the sale, the Gauguin canvas had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel for close to fifty years.

Jewish World Congress president Ronald Lauder has publicly threatened the Kunstmuseum Bern with an "avalanche" of lawsuits if the institution accepts the collection of approximately 1,300 artworks bequeathed to it by the late Cornelius Gurlitt - stated in an article published by German weekly "Der Spiegel." The museum is currently still in the process of making this delicate decision - whether or not to accept the collection - which includes works by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others famous artists.

Gurlitt died on May 6th of this year, leaving the entire collection to the Swiss museum - but nearly 600 works from the collection are suspected to be of questionable provenance, possibly Nazi loot.

Artists Gillian Wearing from the UK, Pierre Huyghe from France, Manfred Pernice from Germany, Willem de Rooij from the Netherlands, and Anri Sala from Albania and France have been shortlisted for the Vincent Van Gogh Biennial Award  and stand to win €50,000 when the winner is announced on November 21. The contemporary art award will promote much-needed unity in the European Union, according to the head of the Hague’s Gemeentemuseum.