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The Headlines
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ON THE MARKET. In about a month, the international art world will descend on Hong Kong for the first Art Basel without tough quarantine conditions since 2019—a key test for the city’s art market as other Asian metropolises, like Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo, vie to become major players in the region. In an interview with Bloomberg, the Asia chairman of Phillips, Jonathan Crockett, said that the auction house is going big in Hong Kong . Next month, it will move to a new 52,000-square-foot space in the city, and it plans to add at least 30 staff members by the end of the year, going from around 70 to more than 100. “I don’t believe there is another alternative to Hong Kong as far as what we do as a business,” Crockett told the outlet. Next year, Sotheby’s is opening a 60,000-square-foot space there, and Christie’s will move to a new home with 50,000 square feet.
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES. Tate Britain announced that when it reveals a full rehang of its collection in May—its first in a decade—half of the contemporary artists on display will be women, the Guardian reports. Tate’s director of collection for British art, Polly Staple, said that the display “will embody our commitment to expanding the canon.” Across the pond, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., said that it will reopen following its $67.5 million renovation in October, the Art Newspaper reports. The project, by Baltimore’s Sandra Vicchio & Associates, adds 20 percent more space for exhibitions. “Our renewed and reimagined spaces will enhance our ability to share great works of art,” the NMWA’s director, Susan Fisher Sterling, said, terming the institution “both a museum and a megaphone.”
The Digest
An auction of clothes, accessories, and art from the estate of the storied fashion editor André Leon Talley made $1.4 million at Christie’s in New York on Wednesday, with an Andy Warhol portrait of the late Vogue chief Diana Vreeland going for $94,500. An online sale of more material from his collection closes today. [Bloomberg]
The final home of artist Georgia O’Keeffe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sol y Sombra (what a name!), is on the market for $15 million. Its seller is the estate of the art collector and Microsoft legend Paul Allen, according to property records. A bonus: It features a Bodhi Tree believed to be related to the one under which the Buddha sat. [Mansion Global]
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is pursuing a $125 million grant program called Imagining Freedom that will support “people directly affected by the carceral system” in the United States, the organization’s president, Elizabeth Alexander, said. So far, $41 million has awarded as part of the effort. [Artforum]
James Turrell has designed a structure that will open in Fort Worth, Texas, in mid-2023. Called the Keith House and Quaker meeting houses, it will be a secular space for meetings and events like weddings and memorials. It can fit 120 people, and it includes one of his trademark Skyspaces. [Fort Worth Report]
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT.George Condo is in Los Angeles Magazine, Anne Imhof is in Cultured, and Ferrari Sheppard is in the Los Angeles Times. All three are showing work in L.A. this week, respectively at Hauser & Wirth, Sprüth Magers, and Massimo De Carlo’s booth at Frieze , which opens today.
The Kicker
HIGH PRAISE. In the New York Times, Alex Hawgood profiled Paul Soileau, the Brooklyn-based performance artist and musician who does frenetic shows as his alter ego, Christeene—a “drag terrorist” in her terms. Artist Karen Finley, who is something of an expert on no-holds-barred actions, told the Times that she sees Soileau as “a fractured romantic dystopian character that lives between ‘Buffy the Vampire Killer,’ Wallis Simpson, Veronica Lake, and a fainting couch.” What more could you possibly ask for in a performer? [NYT]
Source: artnews.com