Displaying items by tag: arnold lehman

Ratcheting up one of the oldest rivalries in history, 219-year-old Phillips Auction House is resurrecting its Modern art business and launching a blitz of hiring and powerful partnerships. It will seek to compete head-to-head with age-old rivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s this fall in the high end of the billion-dollar art market.

People close to the matter say that, after downsizing about a decade ago in the wake of some unsuccessful sales, the company—working with just-announced partners eBay, former Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman and executives with ties to the deep-pocketed Arabian collecting world—could be making a play to disrupt the Coca-Cola/Pepsi-like hold on the art auction market that the Big Two have long enjoyed.

Last September, Arnold Lehman announced that he was retiring from his post as director of the Brooklyn Museum, a job he has held since 1997. Today, however, it became clear that his retirement won’t last very long, with Phillips announcing that he has joined the auction house as a senior advisor to its chairman and CEO, Edward Dolman.

Dolman joined Phillips last July after having spent 27 years at Christie’s and three years as the executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority.

The Brooklyn Museum announced this evening that it has named Anne Pasternak, president and artistic director of Creative Time, as its next director. The appointment completely upends the well-established career path to the directorship of a major museum, and makes Ms. Pasternak, who has virtually no museum experience, one of the few women helming a top museum in the U.S.

Current director Arnold Lehman had previously announced he will retire, after 17 years, next month.

A selection of 100 works from the nearly 10,000 acquired during the tenure of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, is being presented in his honor on the occasion of his retirement in the summer of 2015. "Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015," on view through August 2, 2015, includes works in a wide range of media from every corner of the globe. Spanning many centuries, the exhibition brings together important objects from all of the Museum’s collecting areas.

The selections range from an ancient Chinese mythical carved figure (5th–3rd century b.c.e.) to contemporary works by Kiki Smith and Chuck Close, and a mixed-media collage (2013) in a customized frame from the American artist Rashaad Newsome.