Carol Vogel reports that Pace Gallery has won back representation of the Willem de Kooning estate from Gagosian:

This week the Pace Gallery said it had won the rights to the estate of Willem de Kooning. The Abstract Expressionist painter, who died in 1997, had previously been handled by the Gagosian Gallery. Officials at Pace said they were planning to hold a major drawing exhibition next year. “We have had a long relationship with de Kooning,’’ Arne Glimcher, the gallery’s chairman, said in a telephone interview. “I knew him personally, and after he died the gallery was the first to sell paintings for the estate.’’

Pace Gallery Secures de Kooning Estate (Arts Beat/New York Times)