CORRECTION: BRETON AUCTION TO PROCEED
The auction of items from the estate of Andre Breton is proceeding at the Htel Drouot in Paris as originally planned, contrary to yesterday's report in the Artnet News. The sale is being conducted by the auctioneer CalmelsCohen, which has set up an extensive website with a detailed online catalogue. The presale exhibition of the collection starts on Apr. 1, 2003, with the sale scheduled to take place over several days, beginning with books on Apr. 7 and concluding with the sale of photography and primitive arts on Apr. 17. In between are sessions devoted to manuscripts (Apr. 11-12), folk art and coins (Apr. 14) and modern art, prints and Old Masters (Apr. 14-15). French culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon did announce that the government might pre-empt certain works. Published reports have put the total value of the material in excess of $30 million.
THOMAS KRENS' POSEIDON ADVENTURE
Guggenheim Foundation director Thomas Krens, who has squandered untold millions on schemes for futuristic museums in Las Vegas, Lower Manhattan and elsewhere (including the cyberspace Guggenheim.com), is eyeing still another improbable destination for the Guggenheim's masterpieces -- a new underwater museum on Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay. According to a report by Jason Edward Kaufman and Victoria Verlichak in the Art Newspaper, the new Guggenheim Rio is designed by French architect Jean Nouvel to be "largely under water, with a glass structure admitting natural light into exhibition pavilions below the water line. A 50-meter cylindrical turret rises above the waves, topped by an observatory gallery and restaurant offering sweeping vistas of the bay."
The plan places the museum within a $150-million, 42,000-square-meter complex that includes a convention center, hotel, shopping mall and restaurants, located at Per da Praa Mau in the city's port. Under the agreement, Rio is to pay $25 million to the Guggenheim for access to its name and collections over the next 50 years. The deal is expected to be signed later this month by Krens and Rio mayor Cesar Maia, with construction to begin this summer and completion slated for late 2006.
SAATCHI GALLERY TO OPEN IN LONDON
London's long-awaited new Saatchi Gallery, located in the historic County Hall building near the Tate Modern, is set to open with a no-holds-barred retrospective of works by Damien Hirst on Apr. 17, 2003. Founded by Charles Saatchi, the museum-like gallery is to display works from the advertising tycoon's collection of Saatchi-favorites Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Jenny Saville.
In another attempt to give his collection a wider audience, Saatchi has also donated 34 works estimated to be worth 250,000 to the Arts Council Collection, which is run by the Hayward Gallery. Some of the works will go on view at the Longside Gallery in Yorkshire Sculpture Park in June.
MATISSE COLLECTION GIFTED TO MET
The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation has donated over 100 works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The trove was originally assembled by art dealer Pierre Matisse, the youngest son of the celebrated painter, and features nearly 50 works by Matisse himself, along with a Leonora Carrington self-portrait and a rare still-life painting by Alberto Giacometti. Other paintings, drawings and prints are by Balthus, Jean Dubuffet, Wifredo Lam, Yves Tanguy and Marc Chagall. The collection goes on view in 2004.
OPEN CALL FOR LESBIAN ARTISTS
The Astraea Lesbian Action Foundation in New York has issued an open call for applications for its second Astraea Visual Arts Fund Awards, a pair of $2,500 cash prizes for contemporary lesbian artists. The awards were established last year, and reflect "Astraea's commitment to supporting art as a powerful force for social change." The winners in 2002 were Xlor Jane and Fan Lee Warren. For applications and rules, see www.astraea.org; deadline for applications is May 1, 2003.
ZIEHERSMITH IN CHELSEA
New York's newest gallery is ZieherSmith Inc., which opened at 531 West 25th Street in the Chelsea art district on Mar. 15, 2003. Gallery principals Scott Zieher and Andrea Smith, who formerly worked at Nohra Haime Gallery and Vance Jordan Fine Art, respectively, plan to specialize in emerging artists. The inaugural exhibition, "Dreamy," features works by 14 artists: Derek Ayres, Charlie Becker, Wijnanda Deroo, Chantel Foretich, Colin Hunt, Melora Kuhn, Joan Linder, Mark Mulherrin, Javier Piñón, André Pretorius, Adie Russell, Mary Temple, David True and Roger White. For more info, check out the website at www.ziehersmith.com.
PRIZES, MORE
The National Academy of Design has elected eight new artists as members of the honorary artists' association: Elizabeth Catlett, William Crovello, Lawrence Fane, Joyce Kozloff, Knox Martin, Dorothea Rockburne, William Scharf and Idelle Weber. . . . Artist Mathieu Mercier is winner of the 2003 Prix Marcel Duchamp, a purse of 35,000 euros plus a solo show at the Pompidou, scheduled to open Dec. 2003. Mercier, known for reconfigurations common household objects, is currently an ISCP studio program resident in New York. . . . Jrgen Teller has won the 20,000 Citibank Photography Prize. Teller's photos include images of Bjork petting a furry head and a pregnant Kate Moss. Three other finalists -- Simon Norfolk, Bertien van Manen and Jitka Hanzlova -- received 2,000 each. . . . The first recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement at the Menil Collection is Roger M. Buergel, an independent curator and lecturer in visual theory at Luneburge University in Germany. The biannual prize carries a stipend of $15,000. . . . The Frick Institute has named art historian Yvonne Elet the first recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, a two-year, predoctoral curatorial program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
JACK GOLDSTEIN, 1945-2003 Jack Goldstein, 57, New York artist whose films, soundworks, performances and paintings from the 1970s and '80s explored issues of spectacle and representation that were central to the "postmodernist" art movement, died of his own hand at his home in Los Angeles on Mar. 14. Friends said that he had been struggling for many years to overcome a drug dependency and chronic depression. Goldstein showed at Metro Pictures and the John Weber Gallery in New York in the 1980s; after an extended period out of the public eye, he had recent exhibitions at 1301PE in Los Angeles and Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Cologne, and at the Whitney Museum in 2002. He had recently completed his own idiosyncratic 18-volume "automatic autobiography"; another publication co-authored with Richard Hertz, titled Jack Goldstein and the Cal Arts Mafia is due to be published soon. A painting by the artist can currently be seen in "American Dream" at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York.
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