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☆ Brent Sikkema, Influential Gallerist, Is Found Dead in His Rio Apartment
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-16 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Manhattan art dealer Brent Sikkema, who represented prominent artists like Kara Walker, Jeffrey Gibson and Vik Muniz, was found dead in his Rio de Janeiro apartment on Monday night. Brazilian publications reported that the gallerist, who helped found Sikkema Jenkins & Co., was discovered with stab wounds to his body after the local Fire Department was called to his apartment in the neighborhood of Jardim Botânico. “It is with great sadness that the gallery announces the passing of our beloved founder,” Meg Malloy and Michael Jenkins, his business partners, said in a statement. “The gallery grieves this tremendous loss and will continue on in his spirit.”The Brazilian police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Officers will listen to witnesses, are looking for more information and are carrying out other inquiries to shed light on the case,” the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro State said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Persons: Brent Sikkema, Kara Walker, Jeffrey Gibson, Vik Muniz, Sikkema Jenkins, ” Meg Malloy, Michael Jenkins, “ Organizations: Co, Fire Department, Civil Police, Associated Press Locations: Manhattan, Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Botânico

☆ Picasso Sells for $139.4 Million, Despite a Sagging Art Market
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A brilliant blue painting by Pablo Picasso of his young mistress was crowned the prized lot of the November auction season so far after it sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $139.4 million, with buyer’s fees, on Wednesday. But it was an anonymous bidder who named the winning price over the telephone. (The work nonetheless fell short of the $179.4 million auction high for the artist, established at Christie’s in 2015.) “When it’s hard to compel someone to sell something, you need to put money on the table,” said Benjamin Godsill, an art adviser watching the sale. There is still a market, even if there weren’t fireworks.”

Persons: Pablo Picasso, Picasso’s, Marie, Thérèse Walter, Emily Fisher Landau, Sotheby’s, Picasso, Auctioneers, ”, Benjamin Godsill Locations: New York, Christie’s, Long Island City, Queens

☆ Will the Art Market Need to Discount Its Masterpieces?
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Major auction houses are hedging their bets in the fall season of sales that begins Monday, offering fat guarantees to sellers to secure their works — and pricing some of their top items more conservatively after the spring season demonstrated weakness in the blazing-hot $60 billion art market. And now, sellers are trying to anticipate how the uncertainty of a new war in the Middle East will affect them. Auctioneers at the three rival companies, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips, have been digging deeper into private collections for one-off paintings that might spice up their modern and contemporary art sales, given the thinning availability of estates to draw from (typically driven by deaths and divorces). “We have built the sale in a very old-school way,” said Alex Rotter, chairman of Christie’s departments overseeing 20th- and 21st-century art, who said that his team shopped around individual collectors to acquire works by Joan Mitchell ($25 million to 35 million), Claude Monet ($65 million) and Francis Bacon ($50 million). “We went for paintings that would create the most buzz.”

Persons: Auctioneers, Phillips, ”, Alex Rotter, Joan Mitchell, Claude Monet, Francis Bacon, “ Organizations: Sotheby’s

☆ To Star at the Venice Biennale, Artists Need Patrons’ Deep Pockets
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-24 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Organizers said that last year’s exhibition there by Simone Leigh cost about $7 million. But curators say financial support from the State Department has not kept pace with the increases. “We consider private-sector support a strength in our approach to this program, as it creates broad engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders,” a spokesman for the State Department said. “I think there is an understanding even before a selection is made that if you apply, then you have the ability to fundraise,” said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, artistic director and chief curator at Madison Square Park Conservancy and the commissioner of the $3.8 million Venice exhibition by the sculptor Martin Puryear in 2019. Robert Storr, who directed the 2007 Venice Biennale and is a former dean of the Yale School of Art, said the rising costs of shipping and other logistics make the system unsustainable.

Persons: William Adams Delano, Chester Holmes Aldrich, Robert Rauschenberg’s, Robert Gober’s, Simone Leigh, “, ”, Brooke Kamin Rapaport, Martin Puryear, Robert Storr Organizations: State Department, Venice Biennale, Park Conservancy, “, Yale School of Art Locations: United States, Venice, Italy, Madison

☆ Mario Can’t Be Super Without Psychedelic Power-Ups
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Oct. 17, 2023Early into his newest adventure, Mario transforms into a large elephant. It’s not a costume like those in previous Super Mario video games, where acrobatics are imbued in the cat suits, penguin wings and frog legs worn by the Mushroom Kingdom’s savior. Zowie!”That peculiar power-up, which lets Mario use his trunk to swat enemies and water benevolent flowers, is just one spectacle in the eccentric Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which arrives Friday for the Nintendo Switch. But by turning its star into an elephant, Nintendo is also acknowledging a simple fact of its Goomba-stomping, Koopa-kicking empire: Mario himself is a little boring. The smorgasbord of power-ups is what keeps players excited.

Persons: Mario Organizations: Nintendo

☆ A.I. Excels at Making Bad Art. Can an Artist Teach It to Create Something Good?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-22 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +15 min

“Is It Good Enough to Fool My Gallerist?” David Salle, one of America’s most thoughtful painters, hoped an A.I. “We are sending the machine to art school,” Salle quipped, before expounding on the principles of light, shadow, depth and volume that good painting requires. Safe to say that nobody would mistake this image for a Salle painting. Salle’s style has changed over the years, which made capturing his essence a little more challenging for an algorithm. Put through the blender of a machine, Salle’s art becomes a remix: a pastiche of pastiches.

Persons: ” David Salle, David Salle, ” Salle, wisps, ”, —, Justin Kaneps, Danika Laszuk, Grant Davis, Ben Lerner, “, David Salle ”, Hillary Clinton doppelgänger, Edward Hopper … …, Giorgio de Chirico, Bernini, Salle, Salle’s, Sarah French, ” Davis, David, John Baldessari, Peter Arno, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Alex Katz, Katz, Jackson Pollock, Davis, … …, …, tutus, Barbara Gladstone, Arno, shrugged Organizations: The New York Times, New York Times, Whitney Museum of American Art, Betaworks, ” Salle, California Institute of, Arts, New Yorker, Salle Locations: ” Salle, ”, Seoul

☆ Spider-Man 2’s New York Is a Web of Skyscrapers and Brownstones
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-09 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Reality and fantasy were deeply intertwined in Marvel’s Spider-Man, where gamers swung from webs above Lincoln Center and leaped from the Empire State Building’s spire into the crowds leaving the subway station at Herald Square. The comic book icon also brought his own landmarks to that version of New York City, which hosted the Avengers headquarters a few blocks north of the United Nations and a supervillain prison in the East River. The designers at Insomniac Games are now expanding the superhero’s jurisdiction beyond Manhattan for the sequel, to be released for the PlayStation 5 on Oct. 20. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 swells into Queens and Brooklyn (including Coney Island attractions), testing a design team responsible for nearly doubling the real estate of the 2018 original. The game’s design director, Josue Benavidez, said his research involved contacting organizations like the Center for Brooklyn History, posting on Reddit groups devoted to the borough and calling businesses near the buildings he was studying.

Persons: Josue Benavidez Organizations: Lincoln Center, Empire, Herald, Avengers, United Nations, Insomniac Games, PlayStation, Insomniac, for Brooklyn Locations: New York City, East, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Coney, United States, Burbank , Calif, Durham, N.C

☆ Museum Curators Evaluate A.I. Threat by Giving It the Reins
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Marshall Price was joking when he told employees at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art that artificial intelligence could organize their next exhibition. As its chief curator, he was short-staffed and facing a surprise gap in his fall programming schedule; the comment was supposed to cut the tension of a difficult meeting. But members of his curatorial staff, who organize the museum’s exhibitions, embraced the challenge to see if A.I. Professions of all kinds — military pilots, comedians, firefighters, advertisers — are confronting how artificial intelligence will change longstanding responsibilities, as well as assumptions they have about the technology. “We naïvely thought it would be as easy as plugging in a couple prompts,” Price recalled, explaining why curators at the North Carolina university have spent the past six months teaching ChatGPT how to do their jobs.

Persons: Marshall Price, ” Price Organizations: Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, North Locations: North Carolina

☆ This Artist’s Next Project Has Her ‘Terrified.’ That’s the Point.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-07 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Jade Kuriki-Olivo’s guided tour through her apartment on the Lower East Side ended in the bedroom, where the performance artist spends most of her time. Tropical vines crawled along the walls and into a giant lantern hanging opposite a tapestry of green synthetic fur. She burned incense and described her room above a busy Greek restaurant as a sanctuary. “I’m terrified,” Kuriki-Olivo said, “but I really can’t watch the trans community suffer and not make work about that. She withdrew from a series of exhibitions for her safety, passing the opportunities onto other artists.

Persons: Jade Kuriki, Olivo’s, “ I’m, ”, Olivo Organizations: New Museum, Art, Conservative Locations: Jan, Art Basel, Switzerland

☆ Christie’s Cancels Sale of Jewelry Connected to Nazi-Era Fortune
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Christie’s announced on Thursday that a second sale of jewelry from the collection of the Austrian heiress Heidi Horten had been canceled, citing the “intense scrutiny” that the auction house had faced from Jewish organizations and some collectors. Helmut Horten died in 1987 and Heidi Horten in 2022. The Heidi Horten Foundation said then that the proceeds would go toward medical research and to a Vienna museum dedicated to artwork the couple had owned. But some historians found the auction house’s decision to move forward with the sale distasteful, and employees had raised concerns internally about tarnishing its reputation. After the criticism, Christie’s added information to the auction materials saying that Helmut Horten had bought Jewish businesses that were “sold under duress,” and said the auction house would donate a portion of the proceeds to Holocaust research and education.

Persons: Christie’s, Heidi Horten, Helmut Horten, ” Organizations: New York Times Locations: Austrian, Vienna

☆ After the Sudden Heralding of Hilma af Klint, Questions and Court Fights
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-28 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In a lawsuit filed in April, Erik af Klint, the great-grandnephew of the artist and the Hilma af Klint Foundation’s chairman, said that business agreements have been struck without the approval of the foundation board and without his knowledge. The suit accuses board members of collaborating with its chief executive, Jessica Höglund, on deals to produce NFTs, books about af Klint and an immersive experience that would benefit them, not the foundation. The suit also asserts that publishing profits associated with af Klint have increased tenfold, from an estimated $350,000 in 2018 to $3.5 million in 2021, but that the revenue has gone to a foundation run by Almqvist, the scholar, rather than the Af Klint Foundation. “They are trying to gain a profit from people’s search for inner meaning,” Erik af Klint said about the board members in an interview. “As to my alleged dismissal,” Höglund said in a statement, “Erik af Klint has not been authorized to dismiss me.”Three board members have resigned in response to the infighting with the family.

Persons: Erik af Klint, Klint Foundation’s, Jessica Höglund, ” Erik af Klint, Höglund, ” Höglund, “ Erik af Klint, Almqvist, Hilma, Ax:son Johnson Organizations: Almqvist, Af Klint Foundation, Ax:son Johnson Foundation

☆ The Price of Admission to America’s Museums Keeps Rising
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Audience sizes just aren’t what they used to be at the Guggenheim Museum, where membership — once a dependable source of income — has declined by nearly 16 percent since 2019, and attendance in June slumped by 26 percent, from 89,600 to 65,900, over the same time frame. At the Guggenheim, leaders said that options for relief were limited after three years of managing the fiscal crisis of the pandemic. And so on Tuesday, the museum raised admission fees, bringing the cost of an adult ticket from $25 to what is becoming the new normal for major museums: $30. Museums, which are concerned about alienating the families and the diverse crowds they have been trying to court, say it’s typically a measure of last resort. “As we recover from the lingering financial strain caused by the pandemic, the museum needs to increase its admission prices, which have not been adjusted since 2015,” said Sara Fox, a spokeswoman for the Guggenheim.

Persons: —, ”, Sara Fox, “ Organizations: Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim Locations: New York City

☆ He Created the Katamari Games, but They’re Rolling On Without Him
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-28 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Keita Takahashi did not want to say much before an official announcement for his upcoming project except that it would include a boy and his dog. Yet the creations by one of the video game industry’s most eccentric designers are never that straightforward. One of his games stars a mustachioed green cube on a mission to reunite a group of giggling objects in a circle of friendship. Surreal characters, simple controls and a catchy soundtrack turned the 2004 PlayStation 2 title into a masterpiece. Last month its sequel, We Love Katamari, which arguably perfected those qualities, was rereleased with improved graphics and new levels.

Persons: Keita Takahashi, Katamari Damacy

☆ Video Games at MoMA: Do They Belong There?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When the Museum of Modern Art began collecting video games a decade ago, curators boldly asserted that games were an artistic medium. The MoMA exhibition “Never Alone: Video Games and Other Interactive Design,” which runs through Sunday, represents the museum’s cautious advance into the gaming world at a time when digital culture has overtaken its galleries. However, the museum could do more to break the firewall between art lovers and game designers. Curators need to unleash that same passion for games, which struggle in the current exhibition to convey the profundity, and complexity, of their designers’ thinking. On the first floor, old computer monitors cantilevered above visitors are drawn from the museum’s collection of video games.

Persons: John Maeda Organizations: Museum of Modern Art

☆ After a Year of Climate Protests, the Toll Rises for Museums and Activists
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Two climate activists made a beeline for a beautiful Monet painting exhibited at the National Museum in Sweden on a recent Wednesday morning. They wanted to convey the urgency of the environmental crisis — pollution, global warming and other man-made disasters — that could turn the artist’s gorgeous gardens at Giverny into a distant memory. So the young protesters followed what has become a familiar playbook: gluing a hand to the artwork’s protective glass and smearing it with red paint. Similar scenes have unfolded at more than a dozen museums over the last year, leaving cultural workers on edge and at a loss for how to prevent climate activists from targeting delicate artworks. Just last weekend, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan was targeted for the second time, as more than 40 activists occupied galleries, silently holding signs that proclaimed “No art on a dead planet.” Meanwhile, the costs for security, conservation and insurance are growing, according to cultural institutions that have experienced attacks.

Persons: Monet, Degas, “ Organizations: National Museum, National Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art Locations: Sweden, Giverny, Washington, Manhattan

☆ With Art Colleges Closing, a Chicago Museum Has an Alternative
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Zachary Small | More About Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the educator Romi Crawford have become partners in a new program that focuses on pairing instruction by artists of color with hands-on learning by students working alongside them. This intensive, semester-long course, which its founders announced on Monday, is called the New Art School Modality and will start in September at the museum. Traditional models of art education have become increasingly endangered as trusted schools — from the San Francisco Art Institute to the Watkins College of Art in Nashville — have fallen into bankruptcy or merged with larger institutions. The New Art School Modality is intended to create a sweet spot in academia. “The flashing words are experimentation and improvisation,” said Crawford, 56, an art historian at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Persons: Romi Crawford, ”, Crawford Organizations: Contemporary Art Chicago, New, San Francisco Art Institute, Watkins College of Art, Terra Foundation, American Art, School of, Art Institute of Chicago Locations: Nashville

☆ Met Museum Trains ‘Monuments Men’ to Save Ukrainian Cultural Heritage
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Twenty men and women in military fatigues huddled around a 19th-century painting of a fiery sunset at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a recent Saturday afternoon. They leaned toward the vivid picture of the Ukrainian wilderness as their tour guide spoke. The program was announced three years ago but interrupted by Covid and bureaucratic hurdles. Blake Ruehrwein, an Air Force veteran who also runs education and outreach at the Naval War College Museum in Newport, R.I., was instructing a new unit learning the ropes from some of the world’s top art experts. “Take what you learn from here and apply it,” he told the officers attending the museum workshop in early June.

Persons: ” Alison Hokanson, “, Blake Ruehrwein, ” Organizations: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 353rd Civil Affairs Command, Men, Air Force, Naval War College Museum Locations: Staten, Newport, R.I

☆ At Christie’s ‘21st Century’ Auction, the Sound of Records Breaking for Women
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Seven artists achieved new sales benchmarks at Christie’s Contemporary Art sale in New York on Monday night, including Simone Leigh, a star of the 2022 Venice Biennale, and Robin F. Williams, a figurative painter still in her 30s. Lively bidding from inside the sale room at Christie’s helped the auction house sell nearly $99 million worth of paintings and sculptures, with buyer’s fees. Interest in female figurative painters who are not necessarily household names is rising for artists like Danielle McKinney, Rebecca Ackroyd and Williams. in 2017, Roberta Smith wrote that she was “extravagantly in-your-face regarding execution, style, image and social thrust. Lower estimates helped propel prices.

☆ How The Legend of Zelda Changed the Game
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Zachary Small | Rumsey Taylor | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +17 min

More than six million people watched the preview for hints about the next video game in Nintendo’s beloved Legend of Zelda franchise. Tears of the Kingdom, the next entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise, will encourage players to manipulate and combine objects to fight enemies and explore Hyrule. The immersive gameplay of the Zelda franchise is bolstered by its deep mythology , convincing players they are unearthing ancient secrets. Retrieving the Master Sword often marks the point in a Zelda game when the difficulty spikes and the stakes are raised. Clockwise, from top left: The Legend of Zelda (1986), A Link to the Past (1991), Ocarina of Time (1998) and The Wind Waker (2002).

☆ An Art Professor Says A.I. Is the Future. It’s the Students Who Need Convincing.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Lance Weiler is preparing his students at Columbia University for the unknown. “What I’m going to show you might disturb you,” he warned the class in January, at the beginning of his graduate course on digital storytelling. His classes have combined augmented reality with Edgar Allan Poe, virtual reality with Sherlock Holmes and machine learning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Now, Weiler wants his students ready for an art world that is gradually embracing the latest digital tools. He told his class in a dramatic whisper: “I’m going to show how you can leverage these technologies in your artistic practices.”

☆ Nazi Cloud Hangs Over One of the Largest Jewelry Sales in History
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One standout piece, the “Briolette of India,” includes a 90-carat diamond and carries a high estimate of $7.8 million. They are among the 700 jewels from the estate of an Austrian heiress that will go on sale at Christie’s on May 3 as part of one of the largest jewelry sales in history. The proceeds are to benefit a charitable foundation established by Horten, whose husband, Helmut, was a German retailing billionaire whose specialty was department stores. “It’s one of the most beautifully curated collections that will ever come up in the jewelry world,” said Anthea Peers, president of Christie’s Europe, Middle East and Africa. That’s important for the estate and for us.”

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