Art Market Monitor

The AP inadvertently shows the importance of partnering with the right people when owning a painting:

James Haggerty took the painting, noted French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s circa 1857 Portrait Of A Girl, to a Manhattan hotel on July 28 for a potential buyer to examine, Kristyn Trudgeon’s lawsuit said. Then Mr Haggerty went to the hotel bar and was seen on security cameras leaving the building with the painting after midnight. Read the rest of this entry ›

If the spate of high-profile art thefts in France weren’t bad enough, France is getting more bad publicity in the Telegraph. It comes from traditional rivals in the UK  like Josephine Oxley, a curator for English Heritage, who doesn’t like to lend works across the Channel:

Mrs Oxley, who is head of visitor relations at Apsley House, the first Duke of Wellington’s home, said she would not be keen to see valuable items exhibited in France. Referring to some of the house’s most precious works of art, she said during a tour of the property last week: “We wouldn’t lend that to the Louvre. We don’t know what state we’d get it back in.” She added: “They’ve got a history of damaging items or putting them in a cupboard and forgetting where they’ve put them.” Read the rest of this entry ›

The New York Times reports on the battle between the city of Florence and the Italian government over the ownership of Michelangelo’s statue “David.” Florence’s mayor, Matteo Renzi, is pushing the issue for broader political and economic reasons:

But for critics like Mr. Renzi, who at 35 is a rising star of the Italian center-left, the Culture Ministry is besieged by an elephantine bureaucracy and an outmoded view of its mandate that effectively resists any attempt at modernization.

“Culture in Italy is in the hands of people who may know everything about Vasari” but are afraid to open up to change, he said. His administration, on the other hand, “wants to view culture as economic development,” offering improved services, like longer opening hours for museums, so that the city can be more competitive for tourist dollars, he said. Read the rest of this entry ›

August seems to be the month for architectural mayhem in LA as a Beverly Hills home designed by John Lautner is being demolished after the owner could not find a buyer or get the City of Beverly Hills to make a decision on having the house moved. LA’s Culture Monster blog explains some of the wrinkles:

The city of Beverly Hills lacks the power to halt the demolition of historic structures like Shusett House, said Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy. Read the rest of this entry ›

The New York Times paid attention to the James Hotel which has a curator on staff named Matthew Jensen who worked from an online database of 1000 artists to come up with 14 whose work could each be featured on one of the hotel’s 14 floors.

Hotels have been hanging fine art on their walls for decades now. Ian Schrager commissioned a series of Robert Mapplethorpe prints for what is considered the original boutique hotel, the Morgans, in 1984; the Roger Smith, a small property in Midtown Manhattan, transformed its lobby into an art gallery and performance space as part of a 1991 renovation. [...]

“Hoteliers are not only trying to come up with a theme or a style that attracts customers, but they are approaching it in a much more professional and involved way,” said Sean Hennessey, chief executive of Lodging Investment Advisors, a consulting firm in Valhalla, N.Y. “It used to be that you could get away with just slapping something up in the lobby,” he added, “but more and more customers are looking and evaluating it much more closely.” Read the rest of this entry ›

The Independent‘s Arifa Akbar reports on the departure of the London ICA’s Executive Director, Ekow Eshun. The ICA has struggled to reduce its costs ever since the financial crisis hit two years ago:

Eshun, who came to the ICA in 2005, will leave the London gallery in March 2011, after which he plans to write a book. As well as serving as the gallery’s artistic director, he had more recently been appointed its executive director. Read the rest of this entry ›

The Financial Times gets cute with The Bruce High Quality Foundation:

Their growing presence has been met with a mix of excitement from those who feel that the New York art scene has become stale and overly commercial since the 1970s, and scepticism from those who, like curator and White Columns director Matthew Higgs, find it hard to know “what they are up to, or why”. Read the rest of this entry ›

The always excellent and interesting Daniel Grant weaves together another one of his essays on current themes in art and litigation with several cases where artists and patrons came to blows over the construction–and restoration–of work. At the center of his story is the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990:

Artists’ moral rights have been enshrined in law for 20 years through the Visual Artists Rights Act, or VARA, which was enacted as an amendment to the U.S. Copyright Code in 1990. VARA prevents the owners of artworks of “recognized stature” from destroying or altering them without the artist’s approval. The reason: Unapproved alterations or destruction may damage an artist’s reputation. The law establishes mechanisms by which an artist may retrieve a work of art that the owner might otherwise destroy, as well as enables an artist to disclaim ownership of a piece that has been altered. Read the rest of this entry ›

Not all Biennials are fancy events. In Paris, the raffish neighborhood of Belleville is throwing it’s own beginning on Sept. 10th:

The Biennale de Belleville is a brand-new event that maps out a new generation of Parisian galleries: most opened in the past decade and are often little known to the public — making this festival a different beast from its Italian cousin, the endlessly chic Venice Biennale.

The Biennale, which takes place between Sept. 10 and Oct. 23 and ranges all across the neighborhood, will consist of a series of shows, performances, installations and various other “happenings” in art spaces, parks and even right out on the pavement. Read the rest of this entry ›

The Daily Beast makes a big deal about all of the art apps being produced by museums and galleries. Though Spencer Bailey is quick to point out that museums are conflicted. They want to use apps to market to their patrons and provide convenient information on handheld devices but they also fret that the app might become a distraction from the art. However, looking at the sample of apps that the Daily Beast provides, only a handful seem dazzling and useful enough to really distract:

“It’s like the Wild West right now,” said Nancy Proctor, head of mobile strategy and initiatives at the Smithsonian Institution. “It’s our own mini-dot-com boom.” Read the rest of this entry ›