Artelligence for December 1, 2017

Selling Your Laura Owens Through the Whitney: James Tarmy takes a look at the Laura Owens market in the wake of the Whitney retrospective noting that normally reticent lenders to the show have been eager to have their names included on the wall tags. Are they looking for the street cred of having bought early? Or hanging out a shingle to sell? …

Canova Bust of Murat Sells for €4.3m at Christie’s: The re-discovered marble bust of Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law whom he installed as the King of Naples, was sold at Christie’s this week for a spectacular sum. The story behind its re-discovery is told here. …

MCH Buys Controlling Stake in Masterpiece: It’s looking like Art Miami is going to eclipse Art Basel in Miami Beach for sales and attention this year as Miami Art Week opens next week. So Art Basel’s parent company, MCH, chose today to announce it had made another purchase in its growing panoply of regional art and collectible fairs. The move further points to the limits upon Art Basel’s growth and signals MCH’s interest in flooding the art fair zone by other means. …

With Sackler Story The New York Times Takes Another Assignment from the Art Press: Over recent months, the New York Times has shown a striking tendency to rewrite culture stories that first appear in the art press. The latest is today’s expansion upon an opinion piece in The Art Newspaper calling for museums to reject donations from the Sackler family due to the role played by their pharmaceutical company in the opioid crisis.