Christie’s Gets New Blood in LA: Kelly Ayers will be taking on a new role as SVP, Director of Gallery and Operations, Los Angeles & Western Region after three successful years as Managing Director for the Christie’s Decorative Arts departments in the U.S. …
La Salle University in Philadelphia is Selling Art to Raise $5-7m: If you enjoyed the fighting over the Berkshire Museum’s sale of its art to fund its new mission, you’ll get a kick out of this smaller story of La Salle University making some tough choices between serving its students and keeping its art. The Philadelphia Museum’s Timothy Rub criticizes the school’s decision to sell 46 works through Christie’s but never offers to find a way help keep the works in the city. …
Georgina Adam Has a Crystal Ball: The Art Newspaper publishes series of predictions about the year ahead including more guarantees, more cross-category sales, more private sales, more gallery closures, more Old Master sales and more art finance across the board. (Basically, more of everything.) Making predictions is always tricky and a successful rate should resemble baseball batting stats but Adam’s predictions for 2017 are worth revisiting. Those were that a tide of populism would sweep the West including France; the auction houses would grow apart in strategy; art fairs would begin to fail; the Gulf states would no longer buy trophy art; and art data would become a battlefield. …
Not All Struggling Artists Are Young: The New York Times will publish a long story on Harry Bertschmann who began his career along side the giants of AbEx before pursuing a career as graphic designer. Now in his 80s and facing financial pressures, he’s trying to get some value out of the thousands of paintings he never gave up on making but failed to pursue as a career: “Harry’s never been a salesman,” said Mary Bertschmann, his wife of more than 50 years. “He didn’t get his art out there for them to see.
