Zurbarán’s Jacob and His 12 Sons Coming to the Frick: The UK’s Auckland Castle is being renovated which provides the opportunity for the 13 17th Century Zurbarán paintings acquired by the Bishop of Durham in the late 18th Century to be sent to the US for conservation at the Kimbell Museum and display at the Frick beginning at the end of January. …
Zwirner Opens in Hong Kong as Gallery Celebrates 25th Year: The WSJ ran a profile (one of many its done) of David Zwirner in the WSJ. Magazine over the weekend. In it, Zwirner claimed an impressive sales level that would average out to around $400k a work or more:
- “The art dealer estimates that when he started out, over 95 percent of his sales revenue came from shows. Last year, when, according to Zwirner, the gallery sold about 1,400 works for a total of “well above $500 million,” only half the revenue derived from shows, with the remainder divided equally between art fairs and private sales of consigned works. Over the past five years, the artists he represents have been featured in 247 one-person exhibitions in museums in 40 countries.” … “Zwirner estimates that already, 30 percent of his customers buy work solely on the basis of emailed images. “It has really changed our business in the last five years,” he says.” …
Think It Is Easy for the Met Fund Free Admission? We’ve heard from a host of art critics and a number of others on Twitter that the Met’s decision to confine its pay-what-you-wish policy to New York residents is some sort of a betrayal of democratic ideals. The tenor of much of the knee-jerk commentary is that the Met’s wealth donors ought to fund free admission to the museum. One the constraints on that glib analysis is that donors prefer tangible evidence of their largesse and there is no way to compel them to be public spirited. On that note, novelist Jacob Bachrach digs into the Met’s annual reports to show that nearly half of the Met’s endowment is encumbered in ways that prevent using the funds for operating expenses thus revealing the complexity of the task facing Daniel Weiss. …
Street Art Gallerist Partners with Qatari to Open New Gallery: The FT gives Steve Lazarides some ink as he opens his new Mayfair gallery with a JR show. Listen to our podcast interview with Lazarides from three years ago. Since that time, Lazarides has taken a seven-figure investment from Wissam Al Mana:
- “Al Mana, whose family conglomerate includes 55 companies encompassing retail, property and media interests, came along at the right time. Lazarides asked him to come on board after “overstretching the gallery for years”; his cash injection was announced early in 2016.” …
Collector Eugene Thaw Dies: The New York Times has the obituary for the dealer who began his career in the 1950s when “he sold Nabis prints and Toulouse-Lautrec posters. But he also researched Rembrandt drawings, handled some Native American material and mounted the first solo show of a newcomer named Joan Mitchell.”
- His personal collection featured more than 400 drawings, including rare works by Goya, Van Gogh and Andrea Mantegna and price-setting items by Rembrandt and Samuel Palmer.
