Court Papers Reveal Details of Sotheby’s Dealings with Berkshire Museum: With just about two weeks to go before the first sale of works by the Berkshire Museum to fund its transformation from an art museum to a museum of science and technology, activity in the courts is reaching an operatic pitch. The Massachusetts Attorney General now wants more time to review the sale. But the museum and Sotheby’s are confident in their right to sell the works. The Berkshire Eagle reports that the museum has now made public their research into the donations of the works to be deaccessioned which shows there are no restrictions.
In the same story, the Eagle outlines some previous financial arrangements between Sotheby’s and the museum that helped secure earlier consignments:
- The Eagle has learned that, to secure the museum’s business in an earlier deaccession, Sotheby’s made an upfront gift to the museum of $500,000. That figure was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of the transaction, which resulted in the auction house beating out Christie’s and Bonhams to handle the sale of three paintings by Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev that netted the museum more than $7 million in 2008. Proceeds were placed in a fund devoted to the good of the museum collection. …
Africa’s Art Fair Starts Gaining Momentum: Quartz reports on the second Art X Lagos art fair that opens on November 3rd on Victoria Island in the Nigerian capital. …
Anderson Cooper Explains How He Got Into Collecting Art: Town & Country interviews Anderson Cooper about his interest in art:
- I really got serious on this about two years ago. I met a great art advisor named Marisa Kayyem, who is affiliated with Christie’s, and started going around with her, educating my eye and figuring out what I liked. I’m not in any rush
- I’ve visited Adrian Ghenie a couple of times in Berlin, and have been to Mark Bradford’s studio in LA a number of times. They are both remarkable.
- I really love Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Toyin Ojih Odutola. I view this as a long-term, life-long thing, and am having great fun learning along the way. …
Artforum on the Precipice: A by-product of the scandal surrounding Knight Landesman’s behavior as the publisher of Artforum will be the loss of an important buffer between the magazine and the powerful forces militating against magazine advertising.
