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July 08, 2021 at 3:35pm

German Heiress Pleads Guilty to Swindling Collector out of Kusama’s $1.4M Pumpkin

German socialite and art dealer Angela Gulbenkian pleaded guilty in a London court of defrauding a buyer out of $1.4 million in relation to the supposed sale of Yayoi Kusama’s 2012 Yellow Pumpkin. Mathieu Ticolat, a Hong Kong–based art advisor, paid Gulbenkian for the fiberglass work in 2017 but never received it. Gulbenkian claimed that insurance issues were preventing her from shipping the work, and threatened to cut off communication with Ticolat completely if he continued to “bother” her in regard to its whereabouts.
The case was to be heard in London in February 2020, but Gulbenkian failed

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July 08, 2021 at 12:41pm

Smithsonian Acquires Nancy Holt Archives

The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives for American Art is to receive more than 50,000 documents related to pathbreaking Land artist Nancy Holt, The Art Newspaper reports. The papers, part of a bequest that is jointly held with the Holt-Smithson Foundation, pertain to her art and personal life, and limn, among other efforts, her successful attempt to secure the legacy of her late husband, Robert Smithson. Plans for two unrealized works that the foundation hopes to produce in the future are also included.
The papers, which cover four decades and will eventually be digitized, include Holt’s notebooks

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July 08, 2021 at 12:39pm

Art Basel Miami Beach to Lose Director, Open a Day Early

Noah Horowitz, Art Basel’s director of the Americas and the overseer of its Miami Beach iteration, is unexpectedly departing the organization at the end of August, having tendered his resignation July 2, according to Artnet News, which broke the story. Art Basel confirmed the departure in a statement, noting that Horowitz, who has held his post for six years, was leaving “to pursue other opportunities.”
Under Horowitz’s leadership, Art Basel Miami Beach grew steadily despite an increasingly saturated market, from 77,000 visitors in 2015 to 81,000 visitors in 2019. Horowitz, who earlier in the

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July 07, 2021 at 5:33pm

South Korea to Build New Museum to House Samsung Collection

South Korean minister of culture, sports, and tourism Hwang Hee on July 7 announced that a new museum is being established to house the art collection of late Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee. Lee’s heirs donated the multibillion-dollar collection—which comprises 23,181 artworks and cultural objects by artists including Picasso, Monet, and Giacometti, plus at least twenty antiquities officially designated as National Treasures—to several state institutions in April in order to offset a substantial inheritance tax.
The collection is expected to remain in Seoul, with two central locations currently

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July 07, 2021 at 11:00am

Ngaire Blankenberg to Lead National Museum of African Art

The Smithsonian has named Ngaire Blankenberg as the next director of the Museum of African Art. Blankenberg, a member of the African diaspora and a longtime arts consultant with a history of helping museums and cultural organizations become more inclusive and engaged with their surrounding communities and the world at large, assumed leadership of the Washington, DC, institution July 6. She succeeds interim director Deborah Mack, who stepped in after Augustus Casely-Hayford left the post in March 2020.
“The National Museum of African Art embodies the Smithsonian’s mission to foster understanding,

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July 06, 2021 at 6:00pm

51,000-Year-Old Carved Deer Bone Reveals Artistic Capabilities of Neanderthals

A 51,000-year-old carved fragment of bone unearthed at the mouth of the Einhorn-hohle, or Unicorn Cave, in West Hertz, Germany, may prove that Neanderthals had the capacity and skills to create works of art, scientists say. The bone, believed to have belonged to a deer or other hoofed animal, was discovered in 2019, and its existence revealed to the wider world this week in a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Until the shard was found, some 150 miles southwest of Berlin, Neanderthals were thought to have been brutish creatures able to feed, clothe, and house themselves but incapable

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July 06, 2021 at 2:51pm

Faces of 850 Trans People to Grace London’s Fourth Plinth

London’s Fourth Plinth Commission has announced the next two works to occupy the fourth plinth in the city’s Trafalgar Square. The first, to appear in autumn 2022, is to be a bronze sculpture by Malawi-born artist Samson Kambalu of preacher and African independence hero John Chilembwe and his friend the British missionary John Chorley. The work is based on a 1914 photograph taken at the opening of Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland (now Malawi), showing both men wearing hats—and thus depicting Chilembwe engaged in an act of rebellion. “In 1914 in Nyasaland,” Kambalu told Reuters, “Africans were

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July 02, 2021 at 5:50pm

Norway’s Momentum Biennial Fires Curator, Artists Withdraw in Protest

The eleventh edition of Moss, Norway’s Momentum biennial opened last weekend without its curator, and without the support of a number of the artists originally scheduled to participate, The Art Newspaper reports. Organizers last month fired the event’s Paris-based curator, Théo-Mario Coppola, citing poor professional conduct on Coppola’s part that caused “irreparable damage” to the relationship between curator and team. Rather than hire a new curator, the organizers, under the leadership of director Dag Aak Sveinar, went ahead and presented the biennial Coppola had curated, titled “House of

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July 01, 2021 at 7:15pm

Artnet’s Nate Freeman Moves to Vanity Fair

Will Wet Paint dry up? Nate Freeman, senior art business reporter at Artnet News, the news site affiliated with virtual art-market platform Artnet.com, will join Condé Nast heavy hitter Vanity Fair as art columnist and staff writer on August 2. Freeman, who announced the news June 30 via Twitter, is perhaps best known as the author of Artnet’s juicy and widely read art-world gossip column, Wet Paint. A welter of information on topics ranging from insidery business tidbits (“Cryptopunks Buyers Revealed”) to titillating personal news (“Julian Schnabel is having a baby at 70”) and often including

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July 01, 2021 at 3:50pm

New Museum Taps Salome Asega to Lead Cultural Incubator NEW INC

New York’s New Museum has announced Salome Asega as the director of NEW INC, the museum’s incubator for art, design, and technology. In her new role, which Asega will assume July 26, she will steer the organization through its eighth yearlong cycle, overseeing one hundred creative entrepreneurs as well as six hundred alumni and an eminent group of mentors. Asega is additionally charged with growing the not-for-profit, museum-led incubator, which was founded in 2013 as the first of its kind. She replaces Stephanie Pereira, who departed in May after three years as the platform’s director.
“Salome

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June 30, 2021 at 4:04pm

Founder of Portugal’s Museu Coleção Berardo Arrested on Fraud Charges

José “Joe” Berardo, Portugal’s top art collector and the founder of Lisbon’s Museu Coleção Berardo, was arrested June 29 on fraud and money-laundering charges stemming from allegations that he moved high-value artworks into a trust in order to protect them from creditors. The seventy-six-year-old business tycoon was hauled in during a police sweep of more than fifty residences and businesses and is expected to appear in court within forty-eight hours of his arrest.
Berardo, whose museum draws visitors from across the world with its acclaimed collection of contemporary works, including major

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June 30, 2021 at 3:04pm

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Announces $190 Million Expansion

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has announced plans for a 200,000-square-foot renovation and expansion expected to cost more than $190 million. Work on the project at the Richmond institution, which is to be overseen by international architectural firm SmithGroup, is projected to be completed in 2025. VMFA director and CEO Alex Nyerges described the project—which represents the museum’s fifth expansion to date, with the last being completed just over a decade ago—as “the largest expansion and renovation project in the history of museum.”
The expansion will comprise several additions,

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