Artelligence for September 7, 2018

Glenstone Contractor Sues for Cost Overruns: Hitt Contracting is suing Glenstone over their recent completion of the private museum in Bethesday, MD, according to the Washington Business Journal:

• The Falls Church-based contractor sued Glenstone Foundation Inc. Aug. 30 in the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, blaming the foundation’s “disorganized” approach for the millions of dollars in time and cost overruns it took to complete the $200 million expansion. The foundation delayed making crucial decisions, requested more than 2,400 changes and refused to acknowledge the financial implications of its actions, according to the complaint. …

Maecenas Says It Has Sold Its Warhol, But …: The blockchain-based fractional ownership gambit Maecenas has declared victory in its sale of Andy Warhol’s reversal series 14 Small Electric Chairs (1980). We’re quoting from this blog post in broken English because it contains more detail than the blockchain news outlets:

• “For the first time ever, Maecenas has successfully tokenised a multi-million dollar artwork, a portray by way of Andy Warhol named “14 Small Electric Chairs (1980)”. The beta public sale raised US$1.7m for 31.5% of the artwork at a valuation of US$5.6m. 100 members have been hand-picked to take part in the public sale out of greater than 800+ sign-u.s.from 56 nations. Mostly primarily based in Asia and Europe. Criteria to select members used to be to have a illustration from other geographies and investor profiles. The major purpose of this personal beta used to be to validate the end-to-end strategy of the Dutch public sale and artwork tokenisation the usage of blockchain era. Not simplest we completed that, we successfully reached the investment goal for the public sale. During the public sale length, 36 bids have been gained, out of which, 34 have been a success being perfect bid of $6.5M. 2 bids have been unsuccessful as they have been beneath the reserve worth.”

What Maecenas doesn’t say is that sale was under subscribed. The original intention was to sell 49% of the painting. At 31.5%, the sale fell short by more than a third. That doesn’t bode well for share holders who might want to be able to trade their shares in the works on the perception of a changed value. How the value of a work majority owned by another will change in the future, remains a mystery. …

Ticolat’s Attempts to Regain His $1.4m Don’t Seem to be Going Well: Judging from the fact that the battle between Hong Kong dealer Mathieu Ticolat and Angela Gulbenkian has moved to the pages of the South China Morning Post, Ticolat’s moves in the UK courts haven’t yielded his $1.4m deposit for a Yayoi Kusama sculpture that was never received. …

Sean Kelly Launches a Podcast with Tom Hill Interview:  Sean Kelly launched a new podcast, Collect Wisely, a few months ago which he says he hopes will focus on ‘people who care deeply about art to discuss their passion for collecting.’ The first episode was a discussion with Tom Hill whose private museum is planned for The Getty on West 24th St. in Manhattan. …

Andrew Wyeth Documentary on PBS: The documentary debuts tonight on PBS in the US. It will be available to others later through a variety fo distribution channels:

• WYETH is a documentary film telling the story of one of America’s most popular, but least understood, artists. While his exhibitions routinely broke attendance records, art world critics continually assaulted his work. Through unprecedented access to Wyeth family members, archival materials, and his work, WYETH presents the most complete portrait of the artist ever – bearing witness to a legacy just at the moment it is evolving.