To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
AUCTION ACTION. Christie’s will offer almost 1,500 works from the collection of philanthropists Ann and Gordon Getty in October in sales that could fetch up to $180 million, Datebook reports. The proceeds will go to a variety of arts and education charities. Among the pieces being sold are paintings by Henri Matisse and Mary Cassatt and furniture by William and John Linnell. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that New York City nixed regulations last year that govern how auction firms operate, but that reps at some houses said that they “had only learned in recent days of the changes.” Among the withdrawn rules is the requirement that a house disclose if it has a financial stake in a work on the block. Some market watchers worry that the deregulation—part of efforts to assist businesses in the city—may hurt the confidence of customers. Some firms said that they will continue to operate as if nothing has changed.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
MET GALA WRAPUP. Monday night’s Met Gala hauled in a record $17.4 million, the Associated Press reports. Those funds will go toward the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Also, the Los Angeles Times reports that some fashion conservators and curators are not pleased that Kim Kardashian wore a dress to the event that Marilyn Monroe once donned. They fear that collections of historic clothing may face pressure to loan pieces, and that damage could result. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Orlando, Florida, loaned the garment, which it bought in 2016 for almost $5 million.
The Digest
“The NFT market is collapsing,” reporter Paul Vigna writes. The number of active wallets in the space has fallen almost 90 percent since a November high, and the number of daily sales is off a little more than 90 percent since a September high. NFT boosters maintain that the market is just enduring fluctuation. [The Wall Street Journal]
Architect Daniel Libeskind released renderings for his planned transformation of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the site of an anti-Semitic mass shooting in 2018, into a memorial and educational center. The 45,000-square-foot structure is set to include an expansive skylight that Libeskind that calls the “Path of Light.” [NEXT Pittsburgh and Architectural Digest]
The Smithsonian made changes to its collections management policies that will allow its 19 member museums to consider ethical issues—not just legal ones—when considering whether to return objects they hold. It was the institution’s first major revision to the rules since 2001, Peggy McGlone reports. [The Washington Post]
London will soon be home to two new LGBTQ+ institutions: Queer Britain, which describes itself as the “the U.K.’s first national LGBTQ+ museum,” and what the nonprofit Queercircle says will be “the first LGBTQ art space in the U.K.” The former opens tomorrow; the latter on June 9. [The Art Newspaper]
Speaking of London, at its shop in Burlington Arcade this week, Gagosian is hosting a show of photographs of women and girls afflicted by conflict around the world, a partnership with the International Rescue Committee. The display continues through Saturday. [International Rescue Committee/Press Release]
Columnist Carolina A. Miranda (making the first of two appearances in this Breakfast) filed on “Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche,” a show at the Denver Art Museum that considers the contested, and charged, legacy of La Malinche, the Indigenous girl who was Hernán Cortés’s interpreter during the invasion of Mexico. [Los Angeles Times]
The Kicker
‘YOUR BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND.’ The unforgettable 1989 Barbara Kruger work with those words across a woman’s face surfaced on social media on Monday night, following the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion that would gut abortion rights, columnist Carolina A. Miranda writes in the Los Angeles Times . “The graphic remains relevant artistically,” she argues. “It is the modern, feminist, second-person counterpoint to Uncle Sam insisting, ‘I Want You for U.S. Army.’” [LAT]
Source: artnews.com