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The Headlines
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ON THE MOVE. Patti Wong, a powerhouse in the Asian art market who departed Sotheby’s late last year after more than 30 years there, is setting up an art advisory, Angelica Villa reports in ARTnews. Wong is going into business with Daryl Wickstrom, who is also a Sotheby’s alum, and is partnering with Philip Hoffman’s international outfit, the Fine Art Group. Meanwhile, the Met has named a new chief operating officer—Jameson “Jamie” Kelleher, who has been its chief financial officer—Artforum reports. And Alex Poots, the founding artistic director and chief executive of Manhattan’s multifarious Shed, is dropping his chief executive duties. He told the New York Times that, “to really take us on to the next chapter, I need to dedicate my entire time to the artistic direction of this organization.”
THE MACHINE AGE. Computer scientist Stephen Thaler is suing to get the U.S. Copyright Office to grant copyright to art created by an artificial-intelligence system of his design, Reuters reports. Currently, only human-created material can be copyrighted in the U.S. Thaler has also been pursuing similar action in a total of 18 jurisdictions. On a tangentially related note, an exhibition in London pits a human curator (artist Fabienne Hess) against Instagram’s algorithm, Wallpaper reports. Their task: Curate a display at the J/M Gallery about “loss,” using open-source images of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. One of its organizers, a researcher from the Oxford University said, “In this exhibit, the algorithm reveals its own ways of seeing.”
The Digest
In perhaps not entirely surprising news, architect (and art collector) Lanfranco Cirillo, who designed a Black Sea compound that is reputedly the domain of Vladimir Putin, has said he will not travel from Russia to his native Italy to face charges of financial crimes. The proceedings will take place with him in absentia. [The Art Newspaper]
The leaders of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei people in New Zealand are calling for Sotheby’s to return 18th- and 19th-century relics that it is selling that come from their culture. The Māori tribe said it currently holds very few of its historical treasures; the auction house said that it “upholds the highest standards of the market.” [The Guardian]
David Chipperfield Architects beat out 10 other firms—including SANAA, Herzog and de Meuron, and Adjaye Associates—to design a new National Archaeological Museum in Athens. [Architects’ Journal]
Behold this absolutely art-stacked Paris “pied-à-terre” (if you can call a two-floor, 5,270-square-foot home a pied-à-terre). Its owner is unnamed, but its interior designer is Luis Laplace, who has also done projects for dealers Iwanand Manuela Wirth and artist Cindy Sherman. [Architectural Digest]
Veteran New York sculptor Ann Gillen, who built her career around public commissions, is still going strong at 88, and has a show up at the Polina Berlin Gallery in Manhattan. It is Gillen’s first solo outing in 20 years; she said she had teachers who told her “you have to do work that’s meaningful to you, and just keep doing it.” [The New York Times]
The Kicker
DO OR DINE. Fellow photographers and friends Jason Schmidt and Roe Ethridgeshared an email conversation with Cultured (Ethridge has a new monograph and accompanying New York exhibitions)—and it is a lively one. At one point, Schmidt asked Ethridge why he became an artist. The reply: “I wanna say I didn’t have a choice . . . or the choice was a grim script of either nine-to-five, Dockers, Oakleys, and Olive Garden, or be an artist, move to NYC, and let the chips fall where they may.” [Cultured]
Source: artnews.com