Displaying items by tag: Contemporary Art

BRIC, a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit organization that presents contemporary art, performing arts and community media programs, will open a 40,000-square-foot complex in the borough on October 3, 2013. The $35 million project transformed the historic Strand Theatre into a contemporary art gallery, a performance space with seating for 240-400 patrons, a public access TV studio, a glass-blowing studio and more.

BRIC’s new building will also include the BRIC House Fireworks Residency, an initiative aimed at facilitating collaborative projects by artists working in different media; the program is backed by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund.The exhibition Housewarming: Notions of Home from the Center of the Universe will inaugurate the building’s brand new, 3,000-square-foot gallery. The group show will present works that explore the concept of home.

Leslie G. Schultz, BRIC’s president, said in a statement, “Since 1979, BRIC has used many wonderful spaces in Brooklyn to present artistically excellent and highly accessible programming. The essence of this building’s design – an inviting public cultural space and a welcoming home for the artists in Brooklyn – is entirely consistent with, and indeed was inspired by, the mission of our organization to serve artists and the public in a welcoming and informal environment.”

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will sell a painting by Edward Hopper to start an endowment fund to acquire contemporary art. East Wind Over Weekhawken is one of two paintings by the American Modernist artist in the museum’s collection. The work will be sold at auction at Christie’s in New York in December and is expected to garner between $22 million and $28 million.

East Wind Over Weehawken was purchased by the museum from Hopper’s dealer, Frank K.M. Rehn, in 1952 for $2,750. If the painting realizes its pre-sale estimate, it will quintuple the funds generated annually for acquisitions. While a portion of the endowment will be used for purchasing historic art, the majority of new acquisitions will be in contemporary art, mainly American painting and sculpture.

The Pennsylvania Academy will keep its other Hopper painting, Apartment Houses, which was purchased from the artist directly and was the first oil painting by Hopper to enter the Pennsylvania Academy’s collection.

After leaving the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) board last year, California-based artist Ed Ruscha will join the San Francisco Museum of Art’s (SFMOMA) board. SFMOMA announced on Thursday, August 15, 2013 that Ruscha will take the one spot on its board reserved for an artist. He will serve on the board for a three-year term.

Ruscha has a profound relationship with SFMOMA and the museum is one of the few institutions in the world to have a complete collection of his seminal artist books, which he began making in the 1960s. SFMOMA also hosted Ruscha’s first retrospective in 1982. SFMOMA’s director, Neal Benezra, said, “Given his long history with SFMOMA and his exceptional knowledge and great influence in the art world, [Ruscha’s] input will be invaluable as we dramatically expand to become an international showcase for the best in contemporary culture.”

SFMOMA is in the midst of a $160-million renovation and expansion. Its central building is closed until at least early 2016.

Tate Britain will unveil its new look on November 19, 2013 as part of The Millbank Project. The renovation, which was helmed by Caruso St. John Architects, follows the opening of ten new galleries and is part of the first phase of the twenty-year project.

The recent $70 million project includes the reopening of Tate Britain’s main entrance on Millbank, the reopening of the Whistler Restaurant, new learning studios, the reopening of the museum’s balcony in the Rotunda, which has been closed since the 1920s, and site-specific works by three contemporary artists. Penelope Curtis, the director of Tate Britain, said, “The new Tate Britain opens up the Millbank entrance to reassert and enhance the original grandeur and logic of the galleries. Adam Caruso and Peter St. John have created new spaces out of old ones and artists have helped to articulate a new sense of the public realm.”

The subsequent phases of the The Millbank Project will be implemented after 2014 and will aim to restore the galleries in the museum’s south-west quadrant, create a new suite of galleries and transform Tate Britain’s landscape facing the River Thames.

James Meyer, a former studio assistant to the contemporary artist Jasper Johns, was arrested on Wednesday, August 14, 2013 for stealing 22 unauthorized works, which he then sold through an unnamed art gallery in Manhattan. Meyer, who worked at Johns’ studio in Connecticut from 1985 to 2012, made $3.4 million off of the sales, which totaled $6.5 million.

Meyer was assigned to protecting the works that Johns did not want sold but ended up creating fake inventory numbers and false documents for the paintings, which he photographed inside a binder that catalogued Johns’ authorized works. Meyer told the gallery in New York that he had received the paintings from Johns as a present and offered notarized documents that supported his claim.

Meyer could spend anywhere from 10 to 20 years in prison and has been accused of transporting stolen good across state lines and wire fraud.

The international auction house Sotheby’s reported that their second-quarter profits rose 7 percent, thanks in part to a $6.8 million net income tax benefit recognized by the company. Sotheby’s said that second-quarter profits reached $91.7 million, or $1.33 a share, up from last year’s profit of $85.4 million, or $1.24 a share. Expenses rose 2 percent to $171.6 million for the auction house.

Bill Ruprecht, Chairman, President and CEO of Sotheby’s, said, “Our business and the market for quality art at the high end continue to be strong. We saw significant sales growth in Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art and posted the best results in the market in the vast majority of key sales this spring. We continue to see fierce competition for high-end consignments and as a result, lower auction commission margins.”

Helsinki, Finland is expecting a second proposal for a Guggenheim museum after rejecting the first offer due to its high cost. Plans for a Guggenheim franchise in the Finnish capital were vetoed by the Helsinki city council in May of last year, despite having the support of the city’s mayor Jussi Pajunen. The original proposal speculated that the project would cost around $186 million to complete.

Helsinki’s deputy mayor Rita Viljanen told AFP that executives of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York have been talking with several Finnish representatives. Together with the foundation’s director, Richard Armstrong, they are trying to determine a way to improve the project plan while keeping costs down. A new proposal is expected to be submitted to the city by September 2013.

The Guggenheim’s proposition has been met with some opposition from The Greens, Finland’s Social Democratic Party, the Left Alliance and the populist Finns Party. Dissenters feel that the Guggenheim’s endeavor is motivated more by tourism than a true interest in the development of contemporary art in Finland.

The Guggenheim currently has museums in New York, Bilbao, Berlin, Venice, and another is under construction in Abu Dhabi.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England will partner with the Hall Art Foundation to present a series of exhibitions of contemporary and post-war art drawn from the collections of the Hall Art Foundation and Andrew and Christine Hall. Together, the Foundation’s collection and that of the Halls includes some 5,000 works by Richard Artschwager, George Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Eric Fischl, Anselm Kiefer, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol and many other important contemporary art figures.

The collaboration will kick off on October 8, 2013 with an exhibition of works by leading British-born artist, Malcolm Morley. Malcolm Morley at the Ashmolean: Paintings and Drawings from the Hall Collection will present 30 works dating from 1964 to the present. Morley, who often paints colorful scenes of man-made disasters, is considered one of the founders of hyperrealism, a genre of painting resembling a high-resolution photograph. Malcolm Morley at the Ashmolean will be on view through March 30, 2014.

The partnership between the Hall Art Foundation and the Ashmolean Museum is expected to develop into a long-term relationship and will eventually include a new contemporary art gallery at the institution.

Christie’s first-half sales increased by 9% thanks in part to its record postwar and contemporary art sale, the most expensive auction ever held. The sale, which took place May 15th in New York, garnered $495 million and set 23 new salesroom highs for artists including Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Christie’s brought in over $1 billion in total contemporary art sales.

Interest in postwar and contemporary art has increased significantly in the past few years. This year alone Christie’s saw a 52% rise in new clients bidding on contemporary works less than $200,000. The auction house’s second most lucrative category was impressionist and modern art, which fetched over $625 million during the first-half.

Christie’s releases its sales total twice a year. The auction house’s total first-half sales reached $3.6 billion.

On November 4, 2013, Christie’s will auction works from the private collection of the prominent art dealer Jan Kruiger. The sale, which will take place five year’s after Kruiger’s death, is expected to garner over $160 million. A consequent sale of works on paper and sculpture will likely bring around $15 million.

The sale at Christie’s will present a mere fraction of Kruiger’s personal collection. The remainder has either been sold privately or resides with his family. Highlights from the upcoming auction include Wassily Kandinsky’s landscape Herbstlandschaft, which carries an estimate of $6 million to $8 million, and Pablo Picasso’s sheet-iron sculpture Tete (Head), which is expected to fetch $25 million to $35 million.

While Christie’s and Sotheby’s were in close competition to helm the sale, Christie’s allegedly offered a more profitable financial package to Kruiger’s heirs, giving them a more significant percentage of the buyer’s premium.

Kruiger opened the Jan Kruiger Gallery of New York, which specialized in 19^th century, 20^th century and contemporary art, in 1967. It remained a fixture of the art world for decades.