A lovely aggregation of the coverage of the Paris Art Theft, courtesy of The Art Law Blog.
hyde or die
A thief broke into the Paris Museum of Modern Art and stole five paintings possibly worth hundreds of millions of dollars — including major works by Picasso and Matisse.
Installation shot at the Saatchi Gallery of the new exhibition The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today
And here is the weekend/near future guide for cities other than Los Angeles. This week it includes:
New York
- The Gagosian located at Madison Avenue is opening Damien Hirst’s new show End of an Era. I don’t know if it will be good, but it will probably be flashy. So that’s something, right?
- You only have about one more week to go take in some pretty epic Keith Sonnier’s at Mary Boone Gallery. It comes down on February 6.
- A little more than half way through it’s show is Anish Kapoor: Memory at the Guggenheim. Something to do to keep you out of the cold, right?*
London
- The Saatchi is opening it’s newest exhibition (pictured above) entitled The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, looks to be a promising show.
- Ed Keinholz at The National Gallery is certainly a must see! If you haven’t had a chance to go by yet, hurry up because it’s only on through February 21st.
- The Unilever Series by Miroslaw Balka is halfway through its run at the Tate Modern.
Paris
- Palais Tokyo is closing Bertrand Dezoteux this Sunday. Last chance!
- Herman Diephuis: Ciao Bella is at the Centre Pompidou this weekend. Buy tickets here.
- L’interprétation des rêvesat is opening at the Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian this weekend. Looks surreal.
*You’re right, I don’t know how cold it is there. It’s sunny and warm. Sorry for trying to pretend like I understand.
» Paris Evolution Sale: from Dinosaurs to Space Diapers
PARIS (REUTERS).- From entire dinosaur skeletons and fossilised bugs alive more than 400 million years ago, to modern space paraphernalia, there is something for every pocket in a Paris evolution-themed auction next month.
The hundreds of pieces charting life on earth culminate in curiosities from the space age, such as a pair of bright green cloth diapers made for Russian astronauts.
Other eye-catchers include an 8-meter-long Spinosaurus skeleton, complete with its distinctive long spines and sharp-toothed open jaws.
Hand-sized trilobites, marine bugs dating back some 470 million years, are priced at around 2,000 euros ($2,985) each and fossilised dinosaur teeth and small insects can be snatched up for a few hundred euros.
But the dinosaur skeleton is estimated as several hundreds of thousands of euros.
“There’s something for every wallet and every fantasy,” curator Bertrand Cornette de Saint Cyr told Reuters at the Drouot-Montaigne auction house, where the sale will be held on December 1 and 2.
» Gagosian in Talks to Open in Art Gallery in Paris
Gagosian Gallery, the art world’s global leader in commercial exhibition space, is preparing to open a branch in Paris, said dealers familiar with the company and its directors.
The New York-based gallery has been negotiating to acquire premises in the 8th arrondissement of the French capital near the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, said the dealers. Gagosian’s London-based director Victoria Gelfand did not immediately respond to e-mails from Bloomberg News seeking comment.
I knew about this already, but seriously? Seriously? Instead of a fast car and a much younger girlfriend (standard) he’s opening up gallery spaces like he’s going to die tomorrow.
» Picasso Museum Closes for Two-Year Renovation
Feel free to shed a quiet tear from either of your unevenly spaced, asymmetrical eyes: the Picasso Museum in Paris closed its doors on Sunday and will not reopen them to visitors for more than two years as it undergoes an extensive renovation, The Associated Press reported. The 32,000-square-foot museum, which opened in 1985 in Paris’s Marais district, holds about 5,000 pieces of art by Picasso, including paintings, sculptures and sketches, but was only able to display between 250 and 300 at a time. During the renovation, which is expected to cost about $28 million and begin next year, the museum will be expanded and made more accessible, as well having electrical problems fixed. In the meantime, the museum will stop lending out its artworks as experts update its inventory, after which the works will be packaged and shipped to storerooms managed by France’s museum authority. The museum offered free admission to its visitors on Sunday, the last day before its renovations began.
“Old Europe”, with its expertise and long collecting traditions, is suddenly looking stronger and stronger.”
— Georgina Adam in an interesting (if predictable) article about the art market’s status in Europe post-Yve Saint Laurent estate sale.
Today, French president Nicolas Sarkozy will receive the ten architects selected to create Le Grand Paris. Richard Rogers is one of them. Earlier this week, they each gave a 30-minute presentation of their visions (see it here).
The task is herculean, the mission quasi-impossible, but the challenge absolutely irresistible for any ambitious architect. For he or she knows that, as Paul Goldberger writes in the New York Times, “politics and architecture have always been inseparable in this city”. And that “Parisians, with their long and deep commitment to the idea that the city is in the most profound sense a public place, feel that Paris is very much their own possession.” via…
Sarkozy has a better attitude than the new mayor of Rome.
