Macron Announces Long-Sought Pompidou Outpost in Shanghai: After meeting with Xi Jinping, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the Centres Pompidou would open a gallery in Shanghai’s West Bund art museum. Shanghaiist says the deal involves 20 shows over five years with a focus on contemporary Chinese art:
- Although the gallery will only open next year, The Pompidou Centre has been in talks with Chinese officials for more than a decade. They also staged their first show in China in 2016 called “Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou 1906-77.” …
Faena House Sees Another Resale, This Time from Investor Blavatnik’s Brother: In another way that art dealing and luxury real estate sales are beginning to travel the same path, the art-inflected Faena development in Miami has borrowed tactics from multi-million-dollar art sales. Dealers like to place big paintings with well-known collectors on the promise of resale in the not-too-distant future. That’s what’s been happening at Faena House where early deals with Leon Black, Kenneth Griffin and Larry Gagosian became resale stock for high-end brokers.
It turns out the big-name art collectors from finance aren’t the only flippers soaking up inventory for the developers. Len Blavatnik, who stores his massive Damien Hirst vitrine at Faena House, is a backer of Faena. His brother Alex Blavatnik just sold one $13m unit for a $1.25m profit. That was enough to convince him to do it all again, as The Real Deal reports, “two months after closing on unit 6A, he spent $11.55 million to buy unit 5A.” …
The Verdict Is In on Controversial Modigliani Show in Genoa: The Telegraph reports that 20 of the 21 works seized have been declared fakes by art historians. …
Patricia Cisneros Re-Ups on LatAm Donation with Another 202 Works to Six Museums: The New York Times has the announcement that MoMA board member will spread 202 works across six museum collections following her similar donation of 100 works two years ago. MoMA will get 90 of the pieces of art:
- “The donation includes work by 91 artists from 22 countries across Latin America, most of whom are still living. They include Jac Leirner (Brazil), Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay), Amalia Pica (Argentina) and Regina José Galindo (Guatemala). While the earliest works date back to the middle of the 20th century, a majority of them were made after 2000, and range from sculptures to videos to tapestries.”
- “The other museums receiving artwork in this gift are the Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid); the Museo de Arte Moderno (Buenos Aires); the Museo de Arte de Lima (Peru); and the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin.”
