PRINT WEEK IN NEW YORK CITY
The intensive swirl of art fairs and auctions that constitutes Print Week in New York is already under way, launching with the Christie’s New York sale on Oct. 30, 2007 (today), of Mary Cassatt etchings, prints and drawings from the holdings of New Jersey collector Robert Harthshorne, who died in 1945. The sale includes over 70 works, and reflects Harthshorne’s effort to compile a complete catalogue of Cassatt prints.
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Christie’s two-day print sale follows immediately, Oct. 30-31, 2007, presenting a total of 786 lots. Highlights include a complete set of Henri Matisse’s Jazz (est. $350,000-$450,000), Edward Munch’s The Sick Child I (est. $200,000-$300,000) and Jean Dubuffet’s Nez Carotte (est. $100,000-$150,000), a duplicate from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. The sale includes a portfolio from the estate of Paul Cadmus of Andy Warhol’s 25 Cats Named Sam and One Blue Pussy (est. $80,000-$120,000), hand-colored by guests at one of Warhol’s "color parties."
Sotheby’s fall print sale takes place Nov. 1-2, 2007, and offers 574 lots, estimated to sell for as much as $14 million total. Highlights include a copy of Rembrandt’s Christ Healing the Sick: the Hundred Guilder Print (ca. 1649) (est. $100,000-$150,000) and six lots of relief etchings by William Blake with extensive hand coloring, with estimates ranging from $5,000 to $45,000. The contemporary selection features 30 prints by Roy Lichtenstein from a single collection, Claes Oldenburg’s black-cast urethane multiple Soft Screw (est. $70,000-$100,000) and Andy Warhol’s suite of ten Campbell’s Soup cans (est. $300,000-$400,000).
The 2007 IFPDA Print Fair, Nov. 1-4, 2007, kicks off at the Park Avenue Armory with 89 exhibiting print dealers from around the world. Now in its 17th year, the fair counts several new dealers this time around, including Galerie Boisserée from Cologne, Two Palms from New York and Leslie Sacks Fine Art from Los Angeles. The preview gala on Oct. 31 benefits the Museum of Modern Art department of prints and illustrated books. For further info on tickets, contact specialevents@moma.org. For further details, see www.ifpda.org
The Editions/Artists’ Books ’07 fair, Nov. 1-4, 2007, takes place at the Tunnel in Chelsea and presents 60 exhibitors from New York, Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, London and Paris. The opening-night gala on Nov. 1 benefits P.S.1, and Art on Paper magazine has organized a series of special free talks in the E/AB lounge. For more info, see www.eabfair.com.
GALLERY SPARKS POLITICAL DISPUTE IN INDIANA
An art gallery has become the center of a political dispute in Carmel, Ind. (pop. 65,000), in a case that illustrates the pitfalls of using art as tool for economic development. On Monday, politicians including Carmel Democratic mayoral challenger Henry Winckler held a press conference outside the Evan Lurie Gallery of Fine Art in the city’s nascent Arts & Design District, denouncing what they called a sweetheart deal between the town’s current Republican mayor, Jim Brainard, and gallery owner Evan Lurie. According to a report in the Indianapolis Star, the town put up more than two-thirds of the $4.1-million cost of the project, and has also paid Lurie more than $100,000 in consulting fees since 2005, financing trips to Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Ann Arbor as part of a $100-an-hour consulting contract to recruit other galleries to the Indiana town.
Lurie has operated Lurie Gallery in the Miami Design District, as well as another namesake gallery in West Hollywood. The artists in his stable include Brad Howe, Marlene Rose, Rusty Wolfe and Dennis Wojtkiewicz, and others who are less known. To date, no galleries from outside Indiana have moved to Carmel’s Arts & Design District as a result of Lurie’s efforts, according to Star’s report, though several galleries from other parts of Carmel have relocated there. The development scheme includes four high-end condos above the gallery, priced from $665,000 to more than $800,000. To date, only one is has sold. Critics have expressed skepticism about this part of the deal, noting the current housing melt-down, and the fact that area homes are available for less money.
Lurie contends that the deal is sound. The controversy, he said, results from local election-year politics: "What sweetheart deal?" he told the Star. "I have $1.5 million of my own money in this. I don’t understand what they think I’ve been given. I’m leveraged up to my eyeballs on this."
KIKI SMITH DOES VASES
Just in time for the onset of the holiday shopping season, artist Kiki Smith is teaming up with Steuben Glass to debut a line of art-glass works this November. Dubbed "The Tattoo Collection," the centerpiece is Tattoo Vase, a hand-blown vessel with a polished skin covered in tattoo-like images of snakes, flowers, birds and stars (the engraving is by Max Erlacher). Produced in an edition of five, Tattoo Vase will set you back $60,000.
Also available are four small cast lead crystal sculptures. Smith’s designs feature a snake ($8,700), a cat with a daisy ($6,500), a bird perched on a branch ($6,800) and sections of an apple (titled Eve’s Apple, $6,300). The sculptures are produced in unlimited editions -- though each purports to be unique -- and can be purchased at Steuben Glass’ flagship store at 667 Madison Avenue in New York, or online at www.steuben.com
Smith gets around -- word is that she’s also working on her own fragrance in a hand-blown vessel with Jon Tomlinson of Artware Editions in Greenwich Village.
SLEEPWALKERS TO MIAMI
While its new Herzog & de Meuron-designed headquarters won’t open until 2011, the Miami Art Museum has announced that it is planning a unique signature artwork for the building: a permanent installation of Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers, the large-scale, dream-like video projection shown earlier this year on the exterior of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While the original Sleepwalkers focuses on the randomly intersecting storylines of five archetypal New Yorkers -- a bike messenger, an electrician, a postal worker, a businessman and an office worker -- the revised version, dubbed Sleepwalkers (Miami), adds two new stories to the mix. The new narratives reflect characters more indigenous to Florida, a female Latin-American lighthouse attendant and a transient.
PANZA TO PERSONALLY INSTALL HIRSH SHOW
Milan collector Giuseppe Panza di Biumo is personally devising and overseeing the installation of a show of 39 works he recently sold to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden [see Artnet News, Oct. 23, 2007] for an exhibition opening October 2008 at the institution. Panza’s bonus assignment is to construct a simultaneous show from the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, continuing the "Ways of Seeing" series of exhibitions, guest-curated by famous figures and launched two years ago by John Baldessari. The Panza-fest was brokered by Hirshhorn deputy director/chief curator Kerry Brougher, who was curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, when Panza made a collection-defining sale of pre-Pop, Ab Ex and other art to MoCA and installed it at the Temporary Contemporary.
FIRE RELIEF FUND FROM AMERICANS FOR THE ARTS
Americans for the Arts (AftA) is setting up a fund to help arts institutions and artists affected by the devastating wildfires in Southern California. The group has given an initial $20,000 to the effort, and is soliciting donations -- "many venues have canceled performances, artists have been displaced, and public art has been damaged," writes AftA, which will be accepting grant applications in mid-November from those in the affected areas. In addition, the group’s website is now featuring an online bulletin board, where artists can share their stories from the disaster area (nothing is posted yet).
To donate, visit the Americans for the Arts Emergency Relief Fund online
LUCAS INSTALLATION IN CENTRAL PARK
Public Art Fund is installing a new work of public sculpture by British artist Sarah Lucas in Central Park. Known for works laced with sexual innuendo, Lucas has devised a large-scale bronze sculpture of a horse pulling a cart with two giant, squash-shaped blobs lying on each other in the back. The work, dubbed Perceval, can be seen in Doris C. Freedman Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, Nov. 11, 2007-May 1, 2008.
GRYNSZTEJN TO MCA CHICAGO
Madeleine Grynsztejn has been named director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, succeeding Robert Fitzpatrick, who announced his resignation in March. Grynsztejn is currently curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As SFMoMA, she organized the recent touring survey of work by Richard Tuttle, as well as the current mid-career retrospective of Olafur Eliasson. She is completing the planning for an upcoming exhibition of Luc Tuymans before assuming duties at the MCA in spring 2008.
MORSIANI TO CMA
Paola Morsiani has been appointed curator of contemporary art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Morsiani has served as curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston since 1999, where she has organized shows dedicated to the work of Andrea Zittel and Pipilotti Rist, among others. She assumes her new duties Jan. 1, 2008.
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