| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Sunday, September 17, 2023 |
| | Bernard Arnault built a luxury empire on 'Desirability.' Who will inherit it? | |
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Bernard Arnault, in front of a painting by Jean Dubuffet, outside his office at the Paris headquarters of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton on July 6, 2023. With brands like Tiffany, Dom perignon and Louis Vuitton, LVMH turned Arnaud into one of the worlds richest men. (Dmitry Kostyukov/The New York Times)
by Liz Alderman and Vanessa Friedman
PARIS.- One afternoon in July, not long after being named the wealthiest man on the planet by Forbes, Bernard Arnault, the head of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury goods empire, took his place on a stage with a view of the Eiffel Tower before a packed crowd of French dignitaries and reporters. In the front row sat four of his five adult children the fifth was watching from New York, where he is an executive at Tiffany & Co. Their father had raised all of them since they could walk to one day run the LVMH conglomerate. The occasion was Arnaults announcement that LVMH would provide 150 million euros (about $161 million) to sponsor the 2024 Paris Olympics. LVMH companies will play a starring role. Chaumet, a Paris jeweler whose clients once included Napoleons wife, Joséphine, will design the Olympic medals, and Moët Hennessy wines will flow in hospitality suites. The partnership will help promote France throughout the world, Arnault declared. As televisio ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado
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| Venice keeps off list of endangered world sites | | Some whales may have been wiped out by Medieval Europeans | | Brick by brick, a sculpture at Storm King, by way of Africa | 
The flooded Campo Erberia during seasonal high water, in Venice, Italy, Nov. 20, 2022. Venice will not be included on UNESCOs list of World Heritage in Danger after a panel voted on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023, to reject the recommendation of experts at the agency who had raised concerns that Italy had not done enough to protect the fragile city from climate change, mass tourism and development. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times)
ROME.- Venice will not be included on UNESCOs list of World Heritage in Danger after a panel voted Thursday to reject the recommendation of experts at the agency who had raised concerns that Italy had not done enough to protect the fragile city, which is threatened by climate change, mass tourism and development. Still, representatives of countries upholding the World Heritage Convention, which seeks to protect and preserve cultural sites, said in a statement that further progress still needs to be made to properly conserve Venice. During a debate Thursday afternoon at a World Heritage Committee session in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, several delegates said Italy should host a new advisory mission in Venice in the coming months to monitor the efficacy of the measures Italy has taken and to make suggestions. Venice is not at risk, Mayor ... More | | 
A photo provided by the journal Royal Society Open Science shows fragments of whale bones. (van den Hurk et al., Royal Society Open Science 2023 via The New York Times)
by Kate Golembiewski
NEW YORK, NY.- Industrial-scale whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries nearly drove many whale species into extinction. Populations of some of the large marine mammals are just starting to recover after the kind of predation described in the novel Moby-Dick, while others face ongoing peril to their existence. But it turns out that whalings effects on where whales live go back much deeper into human history. A new analysis of ancient whale bones, published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggests that medieval European hunting may have played a role in some whales disappearing from northeast Atlantic waters long before Captain Ahab, Ishmael and the Pequod sought their great white whale. As early as 8,000 years ago, humans carved their attempts to capture whales into South Korean cliffs. More recently, medieval texts described the whaling preferences of Europeans. For instance, an Old Norse text from around A.D. 1250 cautions that there are certain varieties ... More | | 
Lookout, a new Martin Puryear sculpture, which, the artist said, some viewers have likened to a single Croc, at the Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, N.Y., Aug. 30, 2023. (Amir Hamja/ The New York Times)
by Ted Loos
NEW WINDSOR, NY.- Deliberately, sculptor Martin Puryear climbed a ladder 20 feet up the side of the scaffolding surrounding his latest work, Lookout. Located on a hilltop in a wooded corner of Storm King Art Center, the domed brick structure debuts as a permanent feature here Sept. 23. Once he reached the top, Puryear balanced on planks that had been placed so that workers could move around. How are you with heights? he asked a reporter. (Answer: Not great, although he went up for a few seconds.) Its a little wiggly up here. At one point, he grabbed a nearby rope momentarily, but at 82, he was remarkably steady, a quality that echoes his consistent art production over his more-than-50-year career. Puryears means of ascent made it hard not to think of his 1996 sculpture Ladder for Booker T. Washington, a work in wood with impractical, curving sides and a dramatically narrowing form that was featured in his 2007-08 retrospective at the Museum of ... More |
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| MoMA raises the price of admission to $30, joining other museums | | Overlooked no more: Molly Nelson, steward of Penobscot Culture | | A party for Steven Meisel, without Steven Meisel | 
Outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Oct. 2, 2019. The Museum of Modern Art has joined an increasingly crowded list of arts organizations that have raised the price of an adult ticket to $30 from $25, an increase of 20 percent. (Winnie Au/The New York Times)
by Zachary Small
NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art has joined an increasingly crowded list of arts organizations that have raised the price of an adult ticket to $30 from $25, an increase of 20%. On Thursday, officials announced changes to the museums admissions policy that go into effect Oct. 16. Senior citizens and visitors with disabilities will now pay $22 (an increase of $4), while the price of entry for students rises to $17 (a $3 increase). Tickets for children 16 and younger remain free. For nearly a dozen years, the adult ticket has been $25. But the museum has since dramatically expanded its footprint in midtown Manhattan, adding 47,000 square feet of gallery space in 2019 at a cost of $450 million. Other museums across the country are dealing with higher operational costs after their own expansions, a challenge matched by slumping attendance as well as rising inflation. In a statement, Glenn Lowry, MoMAs director, said: These changes in admission price will help the museum maintain ... More | | 
A family photo of the dancer, actress and storyteller Molly Nelson from around 1931, the year she performed in Paris, where she lived for several years. Nelson, who sometimes used the stage name Molly Spotted Elk, was a Penobscot from Maine who performed both traditional Native American and popular dances in vaudeville troupes, chorus lines, Wild West shows and nightclubs, and kept diaries that give rare insight into the hardships faced by Indigenous women in the early 20th century. (via Barbara Moore via The New York Times)
by Will Dudding
NEW YORK, NY.- In 1931, when the Penobscot dancer Molly Nelson arrived in Paris to perform at the International Colonial Exposition, she was pleasantly surprised. To win audiences in North America, she had learned, she had to resort to Native American stereotypes, like wearing a floor-length feathered headdress and not much else. But in Paris, she found an enthusiastic, unbiased reception for her traditional tribal dances. After the expo ended and the other members of her group, the United States Indian Band, returned home, she decided to stay. Maybe I am foolish, with no money, but hopes galore, she wrote in her diary. But I DO want to do something with my Indian dancing here in a serious artistic way. And Im willing to take a ... More | | 
A partygoer flips through a new book of Steven Meisels portraits of the model Linda Evangelista at a cocktail party to celebrate a new collection by Meisel for Zara in Manhattan on Friday, on Sept. 8, 2023. (Dina Litovsky/The New York Times)
by Jacob Bernstein
NEW YORK, NY.- At a cocktail party in lower Manhattan on Friday to celebrate a new collection of clothing and accessories designed by fashion photographer Steven Meisel for Zara, practically the only boldface name who didnt show up was Steven Meisel. I would have been surprised if he had come, said Edward Enninful, the editor-in-chief of British Vogue, standing outside the event space on Howard Street as model Kaia Gerber walked by. Hes shy. He lets the work speak for itself. If Meisel were a movie star, said another guest, writer James Reginato, hed be Greta Garbo. Meisels photo spreads are known for their inventive and often satirical narratives. In Makeover Madness, a 2005 feature for Italian Vogue, Linda Evangelista posed as a couture-clad socialite with a plastic surgery addiction. Evangelista was one of many models at the party, along with a number of editors, stylists and other fashion-world people who have worked with Meisel. ... More |
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| The Rolling Stones on starting up again | | Home for NYU's art treasures gets a new name and space | | Back to the 80's at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris | 
Sessions had come and gone; unfinished songs were stacking up. (Thea Traff/The New York Times)
by Jon Pareles
NEW YORK, NY.- In 2022, 17 years after the Rolling Stones released their most recent album of original songs, Mick Jagger decided the band had dithered and procrastinated long enough. Sessions had come and gone; unfinished songs were stacking up. Charlie Watts, the bands lifelong drummer and rhythmic cornerstone, had died in 2021, but the band kept on touring without new material. No one was being the taskmaster, Jagger recalled. No one was saying, This is the deadline. So the singer did just that. The result is Hackney Diamonds, a loud, cantankerous, unrepentant collection of new songs from a band that refuses to mellow with age. For the new album, the sometimes fractious songwriting partnership of Jagger and Keith Richards found a way to realign. Near the end of the sessions, they even completed writing one song Driving ... More | | 
The downtown institution, which generates scholarly yet accessible art shows, is moving east to Cooper Square and reopening next year as the Grey Art Museum.
by Hilarie M. Sheets
NEW YORK, NY.- Who knew New York University even had a dedicated art museum? Probably not the tens of thousands of visitors who have made their way to exhibitions at the Grey Art Gallery, tucked away for nearly half a century in the universitys arts and science center on Washington Square. But the Grey has been the guardian of the universitys trove of art treasures, though that wasnt obvious by its name. That is about to change. Grey Art Gallery is moving several blocks east to a larger, more prominent space at 18 Cooper Square. It will reopen next year on March 2 as the Grey Art Museum to better reflect its history and mission, with the inaugural show Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962. Well be much more visible, said Lynn Gumpert, its director since ... More | | 
Patrick Nagel, Untitled (Noble 1982). Estimate: 80,000-120,000. Photo: Bonhams.
PARIS.- Following the success of the exhibition on the 80s presented at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs early this year in Paris, Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr is scheduling an auction on the theme of all things 80s, to take place on Thursday 21 September in Paris. The 80s in France have left their mark on everyones mind, be it in music, fashion or history. Indeed, this historic decade resonates in France as a political and artistic turning point in the fields of fashion, design, and graphics, from the election of François Mitterrand in 1981 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Claire Gallois, Director of the Design department at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris, commented: "The 80s, synonymous with form and colour, have been back in the spotlight in recent years, with works by Patrick Nagel, Garouste & Bonetti and Sottsass. This sale will give art lovers the chance to immerse themselves in this colourful, graphic un ... More |
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| Unseen painting by Mai Thu to be offered at Bonhams | | Ruth Asawa: Solid form meets thin air | | Ithel Colohoun blazes a trail in Bonhams sale of Modern British Women artists | 
Mai Trung Thu, Le Collier (detail). Estimate: HK$2,500,000 4,000,000. Photo: Bonhams.
HONG KONG.- A never-before-seen painting by celebrated Vietnamese artist Mai Trung Thu (1906-1980) will be offered at Bonhams Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale on 4 October. Le Collier, carrying an estimate of HK$2,500,000 4,000,000, was formerly in the private collection of Federico Möller de Berg (1899-1991), a renowned Uruguayan sculptor who acquired it directly from Mai Thu in 1948 the year the two artists first met in Paris. Federico studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére and belonged to a circle of artists who shared and admired each others works. It was there Federico came across Mai Thus paintings. Fascinated by Mai Thus art and the tenderness in which he approached his subjects, Federico later exchanged his two sculptures for Mai Thus paintings, one of the two pieces was Le Collier. The work remained in Federicos personal collection and was ... More | | 
Ruth Asawas Untitled (SF.045a. Potato Print-Branches, Magenta/Orange), c. 1951-52, on display at the Whitney Museum in New York, Sept. 12, 2023. Asawa, who had six children, was happy to use simple materials at times, like a potato. (James Estrin/The New York Times)
by Nancy Princenthal
NEW YORK, NY.- A meandering stroll is a thing of leisure. But the meander is also a decorative pattern of repeated sharp turns which makes it a good metaphor for the career of Ruth Asawa. A modernist sculptor acclaimed perhaps mistakenly for her works quietude, Asawa wove sublimely delicate hanging forms out of nested lobes of looped wire. Celebrated early and then politely ignored they have been increasingly visible over the past decade, with good cause. But they are only a fraction of her output. Chasing the intersection of solid form and thin air, Asawa was dedicated above all to drawing, and her works on paper are illuminated by a revelatory exhibition opening at the ... More | | 
Sunflower by Ithell Colquhoun signed and dated Colquhoun/36. Estimate: £20,000-30,000. Photo: Bonhams.
LONDON.- Artist Ithell Colquhoun, influenced by Surrealism and the occult, will lead the Blazing A Trail: Modern British Women sale at Bonhams New Bond Street on 20 September 2023. Sunflower, from 1936, is one of four works by the artist offered in the sale, and carries an estimate of £20,000-30,000. A world record was created at Bonhams last year when her work, Anthurium was sold for £258,699 against an estimate of £8,000-12,000. Janet Hardie, Bonhams Senior Specialist in Modern British and Irish Art commented, Flowers and plants often appear in Ithell Colquhouns work and indeed formed the subject of her first solo London exhibition in 1936, Exotic Plant Decorations, which included this painting. With Sunflower, Colquhoun gives the still life a new Surrealist frisson. Sunflowers are often interpreted in modern art as symbols of desire. A painter, occultist, poet and author, she was a remarkable talent. Born ... More |
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Our Shared Struggle: The International Imperative for Repair
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 Neue Auctions to offer The Heusinger Japanese Art Collection, Sept. 30BEACHWOOD, OH.- The Heusinger lifetime collection of fine and rare pieces of Japanese art including lacquerware, porcelain, bronze, silver, enamel, netsuke, inro, sculpture, paintings and works on paper, 325 lots in all will be will be held online-only Saturday, September 30th, by Neue Auctions. The sale will start at 11 am Eastern time. James and Christine Heusinger started collecting Japanese art in the late 1970s and expanded it through various dealers. The items offered in this auction are from their personal collection. Recently, the Heusingers made a gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art of works by Seifu Yohei III and the Seifu Yohei Studio one of the finest ceramics collections found outside of Japan. I cant stress enough how important this collection of Japanese art is and how honored we are to be able to offer it at auction, said ... More  Cottone Auctions to hold an Important Clocks & Timepieces AuctionGENESEO, NY.- Cottone Auctions will present an Important Clocks & Timepieces Auction on Saturday, September 30th, starting promptly at 12 oclock noon Eastern time. The sale will feature the collection of internationally known scholar and horologist Thomas Grimshaw of Cheshire, Conn.; the lifelong collection of Dr. Stephen Wallace, also of Cheshire, Conn.; and clocks from the collection of Jim Cipra from Long Beach, Calif. The auction is loaded with a large selection of clocks, automatons, vintage Bakelite radios, automobiles and more from various estates and private collections. The full catalog, complete with photos and detailed descriptions, can be viewed now, at www.cottoneauctions.com. Items from the collection Thomas Grimshaw include a fine and rare E. Howard & Co. No. 6 Figure Eight regulator clock (est. $15,000-$25,000; a rare E. Howard ... More  In Toronto, films that will break your heart (and heal it, too)TORONTO.- If you are on the sensitive side, please take your Kleenex out, Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland warned the audience Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Holland was trying to prepare us for her latest, Green Border, a great howl of a movie about the crisis at the border between Poland and Belarus. There, migrants largely from the Middle East have become pawns in what European Union officials have called a hybrid war, a conflict that she dramatizes with formal rigor, deep feeling and palpably restrained outrage. Holland said she only began shooting Green Border at the end of March, a remarkably brief timeline for a movie on this scale. We made it with a lot of passion and urgency, she said, qualities that infuse every minute of this mostly black-and-white nail-biter. Divided into chapters, it shifts among ... More  Michael McGrath, Tony winner and 'Spamalot' veteran, dies at 65NEW YORK, NY.- Michael McGrath, who won a Tony Award in 2012 for his work in the musical Nice Work if You Can Get It and was a regular on Broadway, off-Broadway and regional stages, known especially for comedic roles and for his ability to conjure the likes of Groucho Marx, George M. Cohan and Jackie Gleason, died Thursday at his home in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He was 65. His family announced the death through publicist Lisa Goldberg. No cause was provided. McGrath was one of those stage actors who might rarely be recognized on the street yet worked steadily for decades, drawing good notices throughout. He did much of his early work at Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, Rhode Island, where he appeared regularly from 1977-91, including in the title role of a 1989 production of George M!, a musical about Cohan, the famed song-and-dance man. ... More  Charles Gayle, saxophonist of fire and brimstone, dies at 84NEW YORK, NY.- Charles Gayle, an uncompromising saxophonist who spent years living and performing on the streets of New York before beginning a recording career when he was nearly 50, died on Sept. 5 in Brooklyn. He was 84. His son Ekwambu, who had been caring for him as he dealt with Alzheimers disease, announced the death but did not specify a cause. Gayle said he had chosen to be homeless because it gave him the opportunity to explore music unencumbered by worries about changing tastes or living expenses. He was part of an ecstatic lineage of jazz avant-gardists such as late-period John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, purveyors of a style often referred to as fire music. Gayles playing was eventually documented on nearly 40 albums under his name on a host of labels; he also recorded with pianist Cecil Taylor, bassist ... More  How Pharoah Sanders beckoned the gods on the intimate 'Pharoah'NEW YORK, NY.- In trying to capture what lay at the powerful core of saxophonist Pharoah Sanders music, British journalist Valerie Wilmer once referenced a conversation with a Nigerian composer. In all ritual song, there is that slow beat, trying to call the gods, the (unnamed) musician had told her. Theres no rush. Its a slow process, as though one is praying. Pharoah Sanders, Wilmer declared, achieved precisely this mood in the music he made in the late 1960s and 70s, just before and then after his mentor, John Coltrane, died. Sanders generally used large ensembles to get there, with horns, mixed percussion and multiple basses cracking open the firmament over incantatory grooves. But in the summer of 1976, after parting ways with Impulse! Records the house that Trane built, and his home for more than a decade he dialed down. He ... More  A quirky auction to support crew members affected by the writers strikeNEW YORK, NY.- A typical Hollywood charity auction, such as the Baby2Baby Gala, might consist of beauty sessions with sought-after dermatologists, autographed books and set memorabilia, and the occasional 5-minute photo op. It might also be closed to the public, available only to those connected individuals who can afford to bid richly. The charity auction organized by The Union Solidarity Coalition, a group of writers and directors who came together this year to help crew members affected by the Writers Guild of America strike, is trying something different: It offers dozens of quirky experiences, many featuring hidden talents of celebrities that have little to nothing to do with their current career paths. (For example: Oppenheimer actor David Krumholtz has pledged to donate a three-song Zoom serenade to the highest bidder.) The strike, now ... More  36 hours in Burlington, VermontNEW YORK, NY.- Sitting on Lake Champlain and framed by the Green Mountains and New Yorks Adirondacks, Burlington Vermonts most populous city, at just under 45,000 residents draws visitors for its natural beauty, farm-to-table food scene and progressive sensibility. Among the longtime producers and makers (many of whom appear at the citys Saturday farmers market, which relocated in recent years), Burlington has a crop of new bars, cafes and wellness experiences, including a lakefront sauna. The city is also a jumping-off point to discover gems in neighboring Addison County, and to explore the Lake Champlain region, which is an almost sacred experience in fall, when the landscape unfurls into a spectacular temple. Ben & Jerrys may be synonymous with Vermont, but it isnt the only place to grab a cone. Down the street ... More  Finding 'Ghost Collaborators' for an All-American balletNEW YORK, NY.- In American dance history, the 1938 ballet Filling Station is something between a milestone and a footnote. Made for American dancers by an American choreographer with a score by an American composer a rare combination then it was also novel in theme, about the interactions of local characters at a gas station. It was a pioneering work, and a popular one, that has become an infrequently revived curio. Multidisciplinary artist Matthew Lutz-Kinoy discovered Filling Station through a fragment of it: Paul Cadmus original costume design for Mac, the station attendant, as recreated in artist Nick Mauss 2018 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. That costume looks like the coveralls that a 1930s filling station attendant might have worn, except that its see-through. It was a glimmer of queer liberation, Lutz-Kinoy ... More  1930s carving by Henry Moore stars in Bonhams Modern British Art saleLONDON.- A unique female head carved in ironstone by Britains greatest modern sculptor, Henry Moore, will star in Bonhams Modern British Art Sale on Tuesday 22 November 2023. A work from early on in Moore's career, the seven-inch sculpture has an estimate of £2,200,000 2,600,000. Head from 1930, set on a marble base, shows a female head in profile. Its elegant form is carved from ironstone, one of Moores favourite materials of this period. Moores passion for direct carving is evident together with his desire to allow the natural structures of his materials to dictate his interpretation of human form. Penny Day, Head of UK and Ireland for Modern British and Irish Art comments, This exquisite work exemplifies Moores ability to surprise and demonstrates a masterly simplification and elegant line. His interest in shape, animals and ... More  Erik Aschengreen, 88, dies; Historian and critic illuminated Danish danceNEW YORK, NY.- Erik Aschengreen, an eminent dance critic and scholar who did much to show the international importance and history of Danish ballet while also exploring aspects of French, American and other dance traditions, died Sept. 9 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was 88. His husband, Per Morsing, said the cause was an aortic rupture. Aschengreen had been treated for amyloidosis, a rare disease that can lead to organ failure. No ballet company stays frozen in amber. Yet the Royal Danish Ballet, from the late 19th century to just after World War II, kept an exceptionally large part of its 19th-century repertory and traditions going, although they were scarcely known outside Denmark. Having been preserved, Danish dance rapidly won acclaim across Europe and in the United States from the late 1940s on. It was during this period that ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Gabriele Münter 
TARWUK 
Awol Erizku 
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, Indian painter M. F. Husain was born  September 17, 1915. Maqbool Fida Husain (17 September 1915 - 9 June 2011) commonly known as MF Husain, was an Indian painter. Husain was associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. A dashing, highly eccentric figure who dressed in impeccably tailored suits, he went barefoot and brandished an extra-long paintbrush as a slim cane. He never maintained a studio but he spread his canvases out on the floor of whatever hotel room he happened to be staying in and paying for damages when he checked out. In this image: M.F. Husain, India's most famous artist finishes off a canvas he painted together with Shah Rukh Khan, right, one of India's biggest movie stars, during a fund-raising auction in a central London's auction house, Thursday June 7, 2007. The pair, two of India's biggest cultural brands, painted the piece that was to be sold in the auction along with other works by both established Indian masters and a newer generation of artists.
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