1.
Gagosian’s debt
Gagosian Gallery owes about $4.3 million in back taxes, penalties, and interest to New York State. The attorney general’s office said Pre-War Art Inc., Gagosian’s California affiliate, shipped and sold around $40 million in art from 2005 to 2015 to Gagosian’s customers in New York, but did not pay taxes on those sales. The gallery will start a shipping company of its own as part of an agreement with the office of the attorney general to be legally compliant.
2.
Billy Name, 1940-2016
The photographer Billy Name, best known for collaborating with Andy Warhol, has died, according to former Warhol acolyte and actor Joe Dallesandro. In Dallesandro’s remembrance, he wrote: “Billy was the one who made the silver Factory silver, working with Gerard Malanga and was every bit an artist as anyone else at the Factory. Soon all of us will be gone but because of Billy most of the history is recorded on film. May his journey home be peaceful.”
3.
World Heritage Status for Le Corbusier’s
Seventeen sites, across seven countries, designed by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List for “Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement,” after two previous proposals to add the sites to the list were declined in 2009 and 2011. The sites include his Marseille housing project La Cite Radieuse, La Villa Savoye near Paris, and The Capitol Complex in Chandigarh in northern India.
4.
Hirst exonerated
After a previous study claimed that Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde works may have been dangerous to the public due to leaking fumes, the accusation has been retracted by one of its authors, who now declares that its findings are “inaccurate and unreliable.” A research team led by a professor of chemistry at Milan Polytechnic, Pier Giorgio Righetti, based their original report on monitoring the levels of formaldehyde at Hirst’s 2012 Tate Modern show. Hirst’s company, Science Ltd, investigated the claims and convinced Righetti to change his mind.
5.
Closing of art shop after 111 years
The New York Central Art Supply, which has been owned and operated by the Steinberg family since 1905, will close its doors by the end of the summer. Located at 62 Third Avenue, the building that houses the store is being sold. The family will be selling all of its remaining stock at discounted prices and is even offering to sell their intellectual property rights. The store’s website boasts that the venue has everything a working artist might need. “Quite simply, if we don’t have it, it doesn’t exist. And if it doesn’t exist, we can get it made for you.”
6.
Niels Van Tomme leader of De Appel after Leadership Dispute
The curator will lead the contemporary art institution in Amsterdam after the firing of the center’s former director, Lorenzo Benedetti, which led to an ongoing dispute that almost resulted in the institution being defunded. In September 2015, the board dismissed Benedetti after only fifteen months in the role. Many people in the arts community disagreed, artists, dealers, and curators rallied to his defense. As a result, the staff of the curatorial training program at De Appel, including Charles Esche, Elena Filipovic, and Beatrix Ruf, boycotted their own program in protest. As reported in May, the same board that fired Benedetti resigned in its entirety.
7.
New chair of Sotheby’s Europe
Helena Newman, the cohead of Impressionist and modern art, will lead Sotheby’s Europe. In her new position, Newman will work with fellow chairs Oliver Barker, Mario Tavella, and Philipp Württemberg. In February 2010, Newman presided over the most successful sale ever held in Europe ($263.6 million). She also became the first woman to run a major evening sale in London since the 1990s when she led the first auction in the city after the Brexit vote.
8.
Germany criticised about protecting National Heritage
The German parliament has passed a controversial law that will enforce the strictest import and export regulations on cultural objects in the world. The Cultural Property Protection Law was originally proposed as a way to prevent illegal trafficking of artworks and antiquities and it stipulates that a license is required to export cultural objects older than seventy-five years and worth $300,000 or more. The law has been widely opposed in the arts community. Critics are concerned that the bill will damage the art market, cause collectors to withdraw loans to German institutions and collapse the antiquities trade, which has been declining since the law was first announced. They said that collectors, dealers, and institutions have been preemptively removing works from the country, afraid that the law would be passed.
9.
V&A is 2016 UK Museum of the Year
The Victoria and Albert Museum has won the 2016 Museum of the Year Award, the UK’s largest art prize. It will receive more than $130,000 for having an organization that has demonstrated exceptional imagination, innovation, and achievement. The jurors cited the museum’s ambitious exhibitions, its restoration of its permanent galleries for European arts and crafts from 1600 to 1815, and its record-breaking visitor numbers as reasons why they chose to honor the institution. Last year, the V&A’s venues welcomed 3.9 million people.
10.
Modigliani’s definitive database
Amedeo Modigliani scholar Kenneth Wayne has founded a nonprofit organization that will work to create a definitive database of the artist’s paintings amid a market that is saturated with forgeries and conflicting scholarship. Modigliani’s paintings have been far surpassing their estimates at auctions. At Christie’s in New York in November 2015, the artist’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude), 1917–18, raised more than $170 million. Five specialists on the artist have authored catalogues raisonnés; the only one accepted by auction houses is by Ambrogio Ceroni, which hasn’t been updated since 1972.
Silvia Meloni
CuratingtheContemporary (CtC) 