George Lindemann Journal - "At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction" @nytimes -by Carol Vogel

George Lindemann Journal

At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction

2013 Estate of Francis Bacon/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London

It took seven superrich bidders to propel a 1969 Francis Bacon triptych to $142.4 million at Christie’s on Tuesday night, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. William Acquavella, the New York dealer, is thought to have bought the painting on behalf of an unidentified client, from one of Christie’s skyboxes overlooking the auction.

The price for the painting, which depicts Lucian Freud, Bacon’s friend and rival, perched on a wooden chair, was more than the $85 million Christie’s had estimated. It also toppled the previous record set in May 2012 when Edvard Munch’s fabled pastel of “The Scream” sold at Sotheby’s for $119.9 million and broke the previous record for the artist at auction set at the peak of the market in May 2008, when Sotheby’s sold a triptych from 1976 to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich for $86.2 million.

When the bidding for “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” finally stopped, after more than 10 fraught minutes, the overflowing crowd in the salesroom burst into applause. Two disappointed bidders could be seen leaving the room. “I went to $101 million but it hardly mattered,” said Larry Gagosian, the super-dealer who was trying to buy the painting on behalf of a client. Another contender was Hong Gyu Shin, the director of the Shin Gallery on Grand Street in Manhattan, who said he was bidding for himself.

“I was expecting it to go for around $87 million,” Mr. Shin said. Although he explained that he collects mostly Japanese woodblock prints and old master paintings, he found the triptych by the Irish-born painter, who died in 1992, irresistible. “I loved that painting and I couldn’t control myself,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll have another chance.”

For more than a month now, Christie’s has been billing the sale as a landmark event with a greater number of paintings and sculptures estimated to sell for over $20 million than it has ever had before. The hard sell apparently worked. Nearly 10,000 visitors flocked to its galleries to preview the auction. The sale totaled $691.5 million, far above Christie’s $670.4 million high estimate, becoming the most expensive auction ever. It outstripped the $495 million total set at Christie’s in May.

Of the 69 works on offer, only six failed to sell. All told, 10 world record prices were achieved for artists who, besides Bacon, included Christopher Wool, Ad Reinhardt, Donald Judd and Willem de Kooning.

The sale was also a place to see and be seen. Christie’s Rockefeller Center salesroom was standing room only, with collectors including Michael Ovitz, the Los Angeles talent agent; Aby Rosen, the New York real estate developer; Martin Margulies, from Miami; Donald B. Marron, the New York financier; and Daniel S. Loeb, the activist investor and hedge fund manager.

The Bacon triptych was not the only highflier. A 10-foot-tall mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture that resembled a child’s party favor, Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold to another telephone bidder for $58.4 million, above its high $55 million estimate, becoming the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. The pooch was being sold by Peter M. Brant, the newsprint magnate who auctioned the canine to raise money to endow his Greenwich, Conn., foundation. In the 1990s, Mr. Koons had created the sculpture in an edition of five, each in a different color. Four celebrated collectors own the others: Steven A. Cohen, the hedge-fund billionaire, has a yellow one; Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier, owns a blue one; François Pinault, the French luxury goods magnate and owner of Christie’s, has the magenta version; and Dakis Joannou, the Greek industrialist, has his in red. Christie’s had estimated Mr. Brant’s sculpture would fetch $35 million to $55 million.

(Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)

Another strong price was set for a classic image in contemporary art history — Andy Warhol’s “Coca Cola [3],” one of only four paintings of a single Coca-Cola bottle that the artist made in 1961 and 1962. Jose Mugrabi, the New York dealer, bought the painting from S. I. Newhouse Jr. in 1986 and he was said to be selling it on Tuesday night. That painting made $57.2 million. It had been estimated to sell for $40 million to $60 million.

Three bidders went for Rothko’s “No. 11 (Untitled),” one of the artist’s abstract canvases, this one in an orange palette and created in 1957. It was being sold by the estate of Bruce J. Wasserstein, the financier who died in 2009. Christophe van de Weghe, a Manhattan dealer, bought the painting for $46 million, above its high $35 million estimate. Mr. van de Weghe also bought “Apocalypse Now,” a seminal painting by Mr. Wool, whose work is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Bidding on behalf of a client, he paid $26.4 million for the painting. Created in 1988, the white canvas is filled with the words “Sell the House Sell the Car Sell the Kids,” a line from the Francis Ford Coppola movie of the same title. The painting belonged to David Ganek, the former New York hedge fund manager and Guggenheim board member. Mr. Ganek has since resigned from the board.

After the sale, Jussi Pylkkänen, chairman of Christie’s Europe and the evening’s auctioneer, noted how international the bidding was. Besides a healthy showing of American bidders, there were also a lot of potential buyers from Asia and Europe trying to get into the action. “There were more players from the New World than ever before,” he said, “and more people spending over $20 million.

“But,” he warned, in order to have such a successful sale, “you have to have the material.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 13, 2013, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction.

George Lindemann Journal - "Sotheby's Strong Sale Anchored by $50 Million Giacometti Bronze" @wsj -by @KellyCrowWSJ

George Lindemann Journal

After Christie's bumpy lead-in to the New York fall auctions, Sotheby's held a robust sale of Impressionist and modern art on Wednesday that could reassure collectors about the trajectory of the market overall.

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Alberto Giacometti's "Large Thin Head (Large Head of Diego)" sold for $50 million at auction in New York Wednesday. Reuters

Earlier this week, Christie's three-day series of Impressionist and modern art sales totaled $293.7 million. On Wednesday, Sotheby's got nearly that much from its evening sale alone. Its $290.2 million total represented one of the highest in the company's history, thanks to a trio of pieces that each topped $30 million.

New York dealer Bill Acquavella, who buys for American billionaires, paid $50 million for Alberto Giacometti's "Large Thin Head (Large Head of Diego)," a 2-foot-tall, spindly bronze bust of the artist's brother that was priced to sell for $35 million to $50 million. An anonymous telephone bidder also paid $39.9 million for Pablo Picasso's colorful 1935 portrait of his mistress sporting a purple beret, "Head of a Woman." That painting was only expected to sell for up to $30 million.

Picasso's cherry-red, 1969 portrait of a swashbuckling musketeer, "Musketeer with a Pipe," also sold for $30.9 million, exceeding its $18 million high estimate and resetting the high bar for a late-era work by the artist. The buyer was Monte Carlo dealer David Nahmad, whose son Helly was recently accused by federal prosecutors in Manhattan of participating in an illegal gambling ring. The Nahmads have denied any wrongdoing.

The art market is a high-stakes table all its own, and Sotheby's said collectors from 13 countries anted up on Wednesday—notably those hailing from the U.S., Switzerland and Latin America. Collectors from the last group, including Brazilians, took home Francis Picabia's $8.8 million "Volucelle II," a confection of black-and-white stripes dotted with colorful, bowling ball-shaped orbs, as well as works by Marc Chagall. Chinese collectors also underbid heavily for classic examples of Impressionists like Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet.

At least five bidders chased after Monet's shivery "Icicles," and a telephone bidder won it—after a protracted bidding war—for $16.1 million, over its $14 million high estimate.

Dealers said Sotheby's won out this week in part by offering works that hadn't been traded lately in the marketplace, which gave the works a where's-that-been freshness that collectors crave. Only a dozen of its 64 offerings had even turned up at auction in the past two decades and several of the priciest offerings, like the Giacometti bronze, were auction first-timers. After Christie's saw some of its most expensive examples by Picasso fail to find takers earlier this week, Sotheby's also had the luxury of time to go back to its sellers and adjust their reserves, or minimum asking prices, downward. Bidding for some of Sotheby's works, like a Juan Gris that sold for $8.8 million, started at $4.7 million—well below a typical starting price.

But bidders at Sotheby's also exuded more exuberance, a sign they may have simply preferred the house's offerings over its rival this time around. The telephone buyer of the Gris also picked up a $1.9 million Giorgio de Chirico, a $2.6 million Jacques Lipschitz, and a $1.4 million Auguste Rodin.

Overall, 52 of Sotheby's 64 pieces found buyers, helping the sale achieve a strong 92.3% of its potential presale value. Records were broken for artists like Picabia, Lipschitz, Jean Arp, and Gustave Courbet.

After the sale, Sotheby's specialist Simon Shaw said collectors are still willing to shop, but they no longer want to overpay. "The market sorts out what's truly great."

George Lindemann Journal - "2 Founders of Dia Sue to Stop Art Auction" @nytimes by @randykennedy

George Lindemann Journal

Two founders of the Dia Art Foundation have taken the unusual step of going to court to try to stop the art organization from auctioning off as much as $20 million in works from its world-class holdings next week at Sotheby’s.

 

The foundation has come under fire from many parts of the art world over its decision to sell the works and has defended itself by saying that it needed the money to continue to grow and to buy new artworks.       

Heiner Friedrich and Fariha de Menil Friedrich, who formed Dia in 1974 to support contemporary artists doing challenging work, filed suit in state court in Manhattan on Thursday, seeking an injunction against the foundation and Sotheby’s, which is planning to auction Dia works by luminaries like Cy Twombly, John Chamberlain and Barnett Newman on Wednesday. Many of the works named in the lawsuit were donated by Mr. and Ms. Friedrich when they created the foundation with the art historian Helen Winkler. The lawsuit claims that selling the works to private collectors would remove them “from public access and viewing in direct contravention of Dia’s entire intent and purpose.” The auction would be a breach of an “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing” with the Friedrichs and the artists who made the works, the suit states.

In a phone interview, Mr. Friedrich, who last served on the foundation’s board in the mid-1980s, said: “The foundation must raise funds differently than through selling works of art, selling its heritage.”

Officials at Sotheby’s and Dia said they were reviewing the papers and had no comment.

Mr. and Ms. Friedrich and other opponents of the sale have met over the last several months with Dia’s director, Philippe Vergne, to try to dissuade the foundation from selling the works. Mr. Vergne has said he believes the sale to be crucial for helping the foundation evolve as it embarks on building a new Manhattan home in Chelsea. In 2004, Dia closed its two Chelsea galleries, saying it had outgrown the buildings. Its permanent collection — a huge array of works from the 1960s to the present — is now displayed in the foundation’s outpost in Beacon, N.Y.

“Dia cannot be a mausoleum,” Mr. Vergne said in June, in announcing the planned sale. “It needs to grow and develop.”

Shortly after that announcement, Paul Winkler, the former director of the Menil Collection in Houston, which has one of the best Twombly collections in the world, wrote to the foundation urging it to rethink the sale, which includes Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea,” a suite of 24 drawings from 1959, and Newman’s “Genesis — The Break,” a 1946 abstract canvas. “Poems” is expected to sell at Sotheby’s contemporary art auction next week for $6 million to $8 million.

“Cy Twombly considered ‘Poems by the Sea’ to be one of the greatest sets of drawings,” wrote Mr. Winkler, brother of Ms. Winkler. “It is a masterwork, not a minor piece to be sold to beef up an acquisition fund. The same can be said of the exceptional Chamberlain work in your care and Newman’s ‘Genesis — The Break.’ ” The Friedrichs, who were once married but have since divorced, acknowledge in the lawsuit that terms under which these works passed to the foundation may not be clear. An original statement of purpose, saying that “works of art purchased by plaintiffs through Dia or donated by them to Dia were to form permanent collections for the public” cannot be located in Mr. and Ms. Friedrich’s documents, the suit says.

But the court papers also raise the possibility that Twombly’s “Poems,” as well as some Chamberlain works and other Twomblys, might not be legally owned by Dia but might be long-term loans from the Friedrichs. The suit claims that a museum, possibly the Menil, was in discussions to buy “Poems” but that Dia rejected the offer.

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Helen Winkler. She is an art historian, not an artist-historian.

George Lindemann Journal - German Officials Provide Details on Looted Art @nytimes -By @MELISSAEDDY

George Lindemann Journal

Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Paintings Discovered in Germany: Hundreds of forgotten art works were found hidden in a Munich apartment.

By MELISSA EDDY, ALISON SMALE, PATRICIA COHEN and RANDY KENNEDY 

It is almost certainly the biggest trove of missing 20th-century European art discovered since the end of World War II, and the first glimpse of it on Tuesday brought astonishment but also anger and the early stirrings of what will likely be a prolonged battle over who owns the works.

For the first time, German authorities described how they discovered 1,400 or so works during a routine tax investigation, including ones by Matisse, Chagall, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and a host of other masters. Some were previously not known to have existed. Others appear to have disappeared around the time the Nazis raided German museums and public collections in the late 1930s to confiscate works they classified as “degenerate.”

Meike Hoffmann, an art historian called in to evaluate the discoveries in the spring of 2012, said she could not believe her eyes, realizing that “we are missing a part of our culture” that the Nazis had tried to destroy and that had now miraculously reappeared.

“These are truly museum-quality works, and you simply do not find these on the market anymore,” she said.

But she and German officials offered only a peek — pictures of a mere handful of the works and a short list of artists — at a packed news conference on Tuesday in Augsburg, an old Bavarian town, leaving many unanswered questions and provoking mounting criticism of officials’ slow and perhaps overly discreet handling of the trove.

Fully aware that the discovery is bound to set off a storm of claims — already being mobilized — officials in Augsburg would not release a complete inventory of what they know so far about their discovery, citing privacy rights and concerns that tracing the provenance of the works will be a costly labor that could take years. Officials would not say where the works are stored. They would not even confirm the name of the man who is believed to have kept the art hidden for decades in his Munich apartment. Nor, they said, do they know where that man is now.

The discovery of the works was first reported by Focus magazine on Sunday. They were thought to have been found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, 79 or 80, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who was stripped of two museum posts by the Nazis after it was determined that he had a Jewish grandparent. Nonetheless, the elder Mr. Gurlitt later became one of the few art dealers selected by Joseph Goebbels to sell to buyers abroad the Modernist works banned by the Nazis.

Some of the works seized in the apartment appear to resemble the titles of works that were in the custody of American and German investigators sent to safeguard cultural treasures in the late 1940s, said Marc Masurovsky, founder of the Holocaust Art Research Project. In 1950 that unit ultimately returned 115 works to the elder Mr. Gurlitt because he convinced the unit that the works were not illegally acquired, said Mr. Masurovsky, whose organization recently joined with the Paris-based dealer and restitutions expert Elizabeth Royer. For example, American cultural advisers returned “Self-Portrait,” by Otto Dix, and “Lion Tamer,” by Max Beckmann, both names of works that have been identified as being in Mr. Gurlitt’s possession.

The heirs of Jewish and other German collectors whose missing artworks may be among those discovered minced few words, accusing the Germans of failing to live up to the spirit of the 1998 Washington accords on restituting confiscated art or works that sellers were forced to give up for rock-bottom prices in order to flee Nazi Germany.

One of the only former owners to be publicly identified is Paul Rosenberg, a French dealer whose family has spent decades searching for hundreds of confiscated works. His granddaughter Marianne Rosenberg said she was angry that her family members had not been contacted and that they were still unable to get more information about a Matisse that reports have identified as belonging to her grandfather.

“We were aware of the name Gurlitt,” she said. “We are trying to track down things ourselves and fail to understand why the German authorities have said nothing to date.”

Renée Price, director of the Neue Galerie in New York, which specializes in German Modernism, said that the discovery was a bombshell. “I think many people thought that works like these were never going to be found,” she said.

Jonathan Petropoulos, a professor of history at Claremont McKenna College in California and the author of “The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany,” called the trove “the most important discovery of Nazi-looted art since the Allies discovered the hoards in the salt mines and the castles.” The only comparable revelation in terms of numbers of works that disappeared from Nazi-era Germany was the public display at the Hermitage in 1995 of Impressionist and Post Impressionist works, mostly from private collections, looted by the Red Army at the end of World War II.

Mr. Petropoulos added that one reason the younger Mr. Gurlitt might not have been on the radar of those looking for missing art was that his father died relatively soon after World War II, in a car crash in 1956, and had said that his papers about art transactions had been destroyed.

The son, Cornelius Gurlitt, is assumed to be the man German officials have said was searched by customs officials on Sept. 22, 2010, on a train from Zurich to Munich, and whose conduct, or possessions, prompted suspicion that led the police and customs officials to raid his Munich apartment 17 months later, on Feb. 28, 2012.

There they uncovered 1,258 artworks that were unframed and 121 more framed works, said Reinhard Nemetz, head of the state prosecutors’ office in Augsburg, in whose jurisdiction the initial encounter on the train occurred. It is unclear how many of the works are paintings and how many are drawings, prints and other works on paper.

Evidently stunned by their find, the authorities took three days to pack up the works and take them to a special storage facility. In March 2012, Ms. Hoffmann was summoned to start evaluating the collection, which she said included drawings, lithographs, prints and watercolors.

Many of the works cited by Ms. Hoffman on Tuesday were by German artists of the Expressionist period that is her specialty, including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. A previously unknown Chagall painting and a previously unknown Dix self-portrait, thought to have been painted in 1919, just after his service in battle in World War I, were among the few images of works shown.

The descendants of Alfred Flechtheim, a Jewish gallery owner and dealer forced to flee Germany before dying penniless in London in 1937, called for the results of research done so far to be made public, in keeping with the Washington accords, which stress that speedy release of information can be crucial for aging heirs.

David Rowland, a lawyer representing several families and heirs trying to find and reclaim art, said: “They should publish a photo of each artwork, front and back, and any and all provenance information that they have.”

Ms. Hoffmann said the decision not to disclose a list of the findings was due partly to the difficulty of researching each work, made harder because there are no records to build on. “This was not about keeping something secret,” she said. “We had, of course, to reach a certain level of knowledge about this collection to understand what we had.”

Charles Goldstein, counsel for Commission for Art Recovery, which is based in New York and was founded by Ronald S. Lauder, said his group had heard a few months ago “that a cache had been found,” and that it had belonged to “one of Hitler’s dealers.”

He expressed some understanding for the Germans’ difficulty in proceeding. “They’ve got a hot potato,” he said. “This stuff belongs to Gurlitt, and they have no proof that it’s not his. In order to determine that it’s not his, they have to make a determination that it was stolen or taken from the museums.”

He added that it was not clear that some or even most of the art can be restituted because of the statute of limitations and problems proving ownership.

Focus cited as just one example the case of Henri Hinrichsen, a Leipzig collector who was said to have died in Auschwitz in 1942. His two granddaughters are still looking for the works taken from him, Markus Krischer, one of the two Focus journalists who broke the story, said in a telephone interview.

A copy of a letter, obtained by The Times from the state archives in Berlin, sheds light on the matter. It is a copy of correspondence dated Dec. 5, 1966, sent to Helene Gurlitt, the widow of Hildebrand and mother of Cornelius.

She was asked if she knew anything about the whereabouts of four pictures said to have belonged to Mr. Hinrichsen, by the French artist Camille Pissarro and three German artists. She replied that her husband’s entire collection had been destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in 1945.

“Dear Sirs!

“Regarding your inquiry from December 5, 1966, which according to the enclosed envelope was received on January 1, 1967, I can only tell you that all business records and inventories of our company were incinerated on February 13, 1945 — during the major attack on Dresden, where we had moved to from Hamburg.

“My husband died on November 9, 1956 in Düsseldorf. The art gallery Dr. H. Gurlitt hasn’t opened since 1945.

“Sincerely,

“Helene Gurlitt”

George Lindemann Journal - Report of #Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar @nytimes - By ALISON SMALE

   

Lennart Preiss/Getty Images

The Munich apartment building where the authorities were said to have found about 1,400 works of art that were confiscated under the Nazis or sold cheaply by owners trying to flee Hitler.

BERLIN — There was no hint that the older man who called a couple of years back about selling a picture could be sitting on an unimaginable trove of art confiscated or banned by the Nazis. When the proffered work, “Lion Tamer” by the German artist Max Beckmann, was collected, the seller seemed to be a proper gentleman in Munich dispensing with a lone, dusty art gem at the end of his life.

It was a “fantastic picture,” recalled Karl-Sax Feddersen of the Cologne auction house Lempertz, who noted how pleased the auction house team was with the auction price: 864,000 euros, or $1.17 million.

When he learned on Monday that the Beckmann seller, Cornelius Gurlitt, now 80, had reportedly sat on hundreds of works, including art by Picasso and Matisse, that were confiscated under the Nazis or sold cheaply by owners desperate to flee Hitler, Mr. Feddersen was amazed. “Imagine!” he said, envisaging seeing and selling such a collection.

But even before the Beckmann was sold, the Bavarian authorities swooped in on Mr. Gurlitt’s home to seize the rest of his treasure, according to the newsmagazine Focus: about 1,500 works estimated to be worth $1.4 billion. Focus said the works were seized after the police and customs officials entered Mr. Gurlitt’s home in Munich in spring 2011.

If confirmed, the discovery would be one of the biggest finds of vanished art in years. But word of it left almost equally big questions unanswered: Why did the German authorities let more than two years pass before such a sizable find was disclosed? What will become of the recovered works of art? Did Mr. Gurlitt continue to make sales even after the raid? And where is he today?

There are no reports that Mr. Gurlitt has been detained or charged, and questions about the history of the artworks, including whether they were confiscated or subject to a forced or voluntary sale, would determine whether a current sale or auction would be judged legitimate.

Since news of the find was first reported Sunday, the German authorities have come under fierce criticism in the art world as to why they did not make the discovery public.

Even on Monday, Bavarian and federal German officials who knew of the spectacular 2011 raid remained quiet. The German government’s only comment, from a spokesman, Steffen Seibert, was that it was aware of the case. However, the German authorities scheduled a news conference for Tuesday.

“They should have come out with this list pronto,” said Jonathan Petropoulos, the author of “The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany.”

“That’s the way that restitution works,” Mr. Petropoulos added, calling it “unconscionable” that the authorities “sat on the trove for two and a half years,” particularly because it appeared to be an exceptionally large find.

The trail to the artworks, the magazine said, stemmed from an incident in September 2010, when Bavarian customs officials on a train to Germany from Switzerland became suspicious after finding Mr. Gurlitt carrying €9,000, or about $12,150, in crisp €500 notes.

The inquiries spurred by the money eventually led investigators to the apartment in Munich, the magazine said, reporting that Mr. Gurlitt had apparently lived there for decades, selling off pictures as needed over the years, to judge by empty frames found in his home. Emma Bahlmann, an employee of the Cologne auction house that sold the Beckmann work, said she went to an apartment with Mr. Gurlitt but saw no evidence of other artworks as she took the Beckmann off the wall.

The hundreds of works found in the Munich apartment reported to have been raided by authorities — including paintings but also many graphics and even an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, the German Renaissance artist — were taken to a customs facility near Munich for storage, Focus said. Meike Hoffmann, an art historian at an institute specializing in Nazi-confiscated art at the Free University in Berlin, was engaged to go through the discovered works.

Ms. Hoffmann declined to talk to reporters on Sunday or Monday about what she described in an email as “this case.”

But a video of a conference in September, posted on the institute’s website, showed her saying that her institute would soon be doing more work associated with Hildebrand Gurlitt, Cornelius Gurlitt’s father. The elder Mr. Gurlitt had trouble with the Nazis because he was deemed a quarter Jewish under the Nuremberg race laws, and he was dismissed from two museum posts. Yet he was also one of the few Germans granted permission by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, to sell confiscated art. Sales to foreign buyers were meant to fill Nazi coffers, but art historians have documented many sales in Germany, as well as proceeds pocketed by the dealers involved.

“The research institute has had comprehensive material from private ownership put at its disposal,” Ms. Hoffmann said at the meeting. The materials “were completely unknown till now and will bring much to light.”

Hildebrand Gurlitt was detained and questioned by Americans investigating art looting just after the war ended in May 1945, Mr. Petropoulos said. The elder Mr. Gurlitt, who had an apartment in Dresden during the war, is said to have told the authorities that his collection burned in the bombing of that city in February 1945.

The German authorities have established several offices aimed at assisting in finding out the complex provenance of artworks that were seized by the Nazis or by invading Soviet troops at the end of World War II, and that were then sold off cheaply but according to legal formalities, or that simply disappeared in the chaos.

Any claims that do arise from the Gurlitt case are likely to take years to sort out. German museums whose collections were ravaged by the Nazis are as likely to submit claims as the heirs of Jewish collectors and dealers whose work was confiscated by the Nazis. The sale of the Beckmann painting by the Cologne auction house represented what Mr. Feddersen characterized as a relatively rare occasion in which Jewish heirs — in this case the heirs to Alfred Flechtheim, a gallery owner and dealer forced to flee Nazi Germany who died poor in London in 1937 — were able to share proceeds with the owner, Mr. Gurlitt.

The Galerie Kornfeld, a gallery in Bern, Switzerland, reported by Focus to have been the source of the cash found on Mr. Gurlitt on the train in 2010, denied having any dealings with him since 1990. Back then, the Galerie Kornfeld said in a statement, Mr. Gurlitt got 38,250 Swiss francs from selling works on paper by artists whose work was confiscated by the Nazis in 1937 as “degenerate.”

Hildebrand Gurlitt had acquired the works his son sold in 1990 “for cheap money in the years after 1938,” the Kornfeld gallery’s statement said. Cornelius Gurlitt never declared that he inherited the works upon the death of his mother, Helene, in 1967, the gallery said. (Hildebrand Gurlitt died in a traffic accident in 1956.)

The Bern gallery said Eberhard Kornfeld, who runs the gallery, was not available to speak to a reporter by phone. His gallery’s statement did not provide details of past dealings with Mr. Gurlitt, but emphasized how carefully one must distinguish between confiscated art and art that was acquired legally, even if the acquisition now seems to have been strange or made under duress. These works “are freely available for purchase to this day,” the statement said.

Mr. Kornfeld was recently portrayed as dealing in art looted from Jews in a proceeding that made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. He has denied the allegations.

His gallery’s statement said: “Cornelius Gurlitt’s statement to customs authorities in 2010 that the money came from business dealings with the Galerie Kornfeld in Bern is not accurate. The last sales date back to 1990.”

The gallery indicated, however, that its business with Mr. Gurlitt was mutually satisfying. For 16 years after those last dealings, Cornelius Gurlitt regularly received mailed catalogs from Kornfeld, sent to his Munich address. Only after 2006 were they returned, the gallery said, with a stamp indicating “Reception refused” or “Undeliverable.”

By ALISON SMALE

"So You Want to Be A World-Class Art Collector" @wsj - The George Lindemann Journal

The George Lindemann Journal

 

So you want to be the next Peggy Guggenheim. Besides wealth, what does it take to qualify as a heavyweight art collector today? Kelly Crow has answers on Lunch Break. Photo: André Klotz for The Wall Street Journal.

Last year, Brazilian collector Pedro Barbosa spotted a tumbling spiral made with hundreds of rubber tires at the Swiss fair Art Basel. The next day, Mr. Barbosa told a collector friend, Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, that he intended to buy the tires, actually a $150,000 installation by British artist Mike Nelson.

Surprised, Mr. Augusto reminded Mr. Barbosa that the artwork wouldn't fit inside Mr. Barbosa's São Paulo home. "Doesn't matter," Mr. Barbosa said. "I bet I can lend it to some museum in America." (For now, he is storing the work with a dealer in Italy).

It takes great wealth—and a little hubris—to ascend the ranks of the world's top art collectors. Mr. Barbosa, a 48-year-old former bond trader, is determined to qualify. Like many collectors of his generation, he began buying art on a whim just over a decade ago, but his pursuit has steadily grown serious. By collecting younger, hard-to-get Brazilian artists like Paulo Nazareth along with global superstars like Olafur Eliasson, he has earned a reputation as a highflying tastemaker on the international art scene. Mr. Barbosa employs a personal curator, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, to manage his collection and allows guest curators to organize shows inside his spacious home in São Paulo's prestigious Jardins neighborhood. He also keeps an apartment around the corner where favored artists like Amalia Pica can stay to make and show their work. Friends say he is ever on the move, traveling to far-flung biennials and fairs from London to Istanbul to the United Arab Emirates. Altogether, his 500-piece collection amounts to roughly half his net worth, he said.

Mr. Barbosa is part of an emerging class of collectors springing up from all corners of the globe who are transforming the art marketplace with their willingness to splurge on art that suits their own tastes—not only the canons of New York or London. From Beijing to Bogotá, new art hubs are thriving in large part because these up-and-comers continue to amass art—in good economic times and bad. Many are investing heavily in contemporary art, the most speculative end of the spectrum, and changing the way the market functions.

Pedro Barbosa's Art Collection

Pedro Barbosa has earned a reputation as a high-flying tastemaker on the international art scene by collecting younger, hard-to-get Brazilian artists like Jonathas de Andrade, shown here. This piece is titled 'Education for Adults' (2010). Jonathas de Andrade/Galeria Vermelho

A few generations ago, collectors like Henry Tate or Peggy Guggenheim needed aristocratic ties—or robber-baron-level fortunes—to ascend the ranks of the art world elite. Today, there are no rules for assembling a group of contemporary artworks that will one day prove iconic. Newcomer collectors say they pick up clues where they can. Some, like French investment banker Edouard Carmignac, have created art prizes to ferret out fresh discoveries—which they later showcase in their own art spaces. Others such as Roman entrepreneur Pierpaulo Barzan run foundations that mount traveling museum-style shows featuring artists they also happen to buy. Plenty more, like Costa Rican real-estate developer Judko Rosenstock, give pieces by hotshot artists to major museums like the Tate—moves that could bolster the cachet of his own pieces by those artists.

Mr. Barbosa's evolution is emblematic. Early on, he said he only collected artists from Brazil, but last year he decided to "go global," and he's been "going nuts" ever since—traveling to international fairs to collect artists like Germany's Wolfgang Tillmans and Lebanon's Rayyane Tabet. These additions serve to diversify his holdings, he said, but they also put his Brazilian pieces into a broader art context. To the same end, he also recently donated pieces by two young Brazilian artists, Jonathas de Andrade and Andre Komatsu, to London's Tate Modern.

It helps that his growing ambitions also coincide with his country's emergence as a global art hub. Until a few years ago, Brazil's art market was steady but relatively insular, anchored by South American collectors who were willing to pay as much as $50,000 for Lygia Clark's foldable aluminum sculptures or $15,000 for Beatriz Milhazes's flowery abstracts. But as Brazil's economy has expanded, local collectors have found themselves increasingly competing for their hometown favorites with buyers from around the globe—and prices have spiked as a result.

Even now as Brazil confronts higher inflation and signs of tapering growth, collectors keep bidding record sums for Brazilian modern and contemporary art. In May, Phillips in New York sold Ms. Clark's 1959 black-and white abstract, "Against Relief (Object No. 7)," for $2.2 million, the most ever paid for a work of Brazilian art.

Pedro Barbosa's collection includes 'Fine Tapestry' by Adriano Costa Adriano Costa/Mendes Wood DM, Sao Paulo

The auction record still represents a fraction of what China's counterpart collectors have paid lately for their own masterpieces, so market-watchers say Brazilian art still has plenty of room to grow, price-wise.

All this attention is pointing a bigger spotlight on the handful of Brazilian contemporary collectors who have positioned themselves as regional kingmakers, such as Mr. Barbosa. "The galleries look at everything Pedro is buying," said Mr. Freitas, the collector who saw the tires with him in Basel.

One of Mr. Barbosa's latest moves is telling. In September, he invited a curator from London's nonprofit Chisenhale Gallery, Polly Staple, to visit Brazil. He helped pay for her stay, and one morning he picked her up from her hotel for a tour of a few nonprofit art spaces and galleries. He had borrowed his wife Patricia Moraes ' black SUV for the occasion: "Welcome to an armored, bulletproof car," he said, chuckling, as Ms. Staple climbed in.

First up was Pivô, a nonprofit art incubator that opened last year in a former dentist's office inside architect Oscar Niemayer's undulating Copan building in downtown São Paulo. Next, they stopped by Galeria Vermelho—vermelho means "red" in Portuguese—to see a group show with artists like Cildo Meireles exploring issues of crime. The gallery had been robbed the week before, but the thief only took a CD player, so Vermelho didn't press charges. "The guy didn't think to steal the art," said dealer Akio Aoki.

An untitled work by Francesca Woodman Francesca Woodman/Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo

Mr. Barbosa also took Ms. Staple to meet Jaqueline Martins, a new dealer who specializes in selling São Paulo artists from the 1970s who have since been "overlooked" by the market, Mr. Barbosa said. Ms. Martins' roster includes Genilson Soares, a conceptual artist in his 70s who was once hailed for making large geometric installations often employing colored lighting and optical illusions. A few weeks after Mr. Barbosa's guided tour with Ms. Staple, Ms. Martins displayed one of Mr. Soares's oversize triangle works from 1973 at London's Frieze Art Fair—even though it wasn't technically for sale. "I bought that a month ago," Mr. Barbosa said. (He paid around $20,000.)

In São Paulo, Mr. Barbosa is well known for scouting Brazilian art schools and often buys pieces from promising students—a collecting tactic that's commonplace in New York but still relatively rare in São Paulo, dealers say. Local gallery Mendes Wood DM recently signed up one of his latest discoveries, sculptor Michael Dean. When Mr. Barbosa created an artist residency, one of the first artists he invited was Ms. Pica, another early find who just had her first U.S. solo museum show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Next up: New Yorkers Ken Okiishi and Nick Mauss.

Mr. Barbosa doesn't move through art circles with the panache of some of his countrymen, though. He is a millionaire, but he can't spend apace with Brazil's best-known collector, Bernardo Paz, a billionaire mining magnate from the Belo Horizonte region who reportedly spends $60 million a year commissioning and installing artworks throughout his vast jungle compound called Inhotim. Mr. Barbosa said he usually spends between $8,000 and $250,000 apiece on his art purchases. Still, he has found other ways to stand out.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Barbosa attended the opening party for the Mercosul Biennial in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. The event was held at the hilltop mansion of the biennial's president Patricia Fossati Druck, with partygoers like steel titan Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter dressed in designer suits. By contrast, Mr. Barbosa showed up wearing bluejeans, a baby-blue gingham shirt and Pac-Man cuff links. Shunning the glowing swimming pool and bar set up nearby to serve Brazil's favorite sugary cocktail, the caipirinha, Mr. Barbosa spent the night huddled on the lawn with artists like Mario Garcia Torres and Inhotim director Eungie Joo.

Ms. Joo mentioned her favorite piece in the biennial was a rusty landscape installation by Brazilian artist Cinthia Marcelle —at which point Mr. Barbosa leaned toward her and whispered, "I might have the best collection of Cinthia's work." Ms. Joo's eyes widened, and she grinned her approval.

Half of São Paulo's 40-odd contemporary-art galleries are less than five years old. Mr. Barbosa knows the strengths and weaknesses of their rosters better than anyone, said Buenos Aires collector Mauro Herlitzka. This market intelligence gives Mr. Barbosa's collection a competitive edge. But as Mr. Barbosa's collection takes in more artworks from beyond Brazil, his ancillary costs have also mounted. Because of Brazil's punishing import-tax laws, he must pay up to 50% above a foreign artwork's sale price just to bring it into his country—a markup he may not be able to recoup unless the art's value appreciates significantly over time. Dealers say some Brazilian collectors have found ways to avoid these import taxes by buying and storing pieces abroad or smuggling them into their luggage. Mr. Barbosa said he buys from the local SP-Arte fair, where taxes are typically discounted by the government. He said he also has proof he has paid the appropriate fees for everything displayed in his house.

Mr. Barbosa and his wife Patricia, who is head of investment banking for JP Morgan in Brazil, and their two children live in a cream-colored, two-story house on a leafy block in the wealthy São Paulo district of Jardins. Throughout their home, they have arranged a mix of sleek, geometric pieces by contemporary classics like Sérgio de Camargo and Jesús Rafael Soto alongside newer sculptures made from ordinary materials like hair curlers. In their backyard, a pair of conjoined shopping carts by Marcelo Cidade stands sentry beside the pool. On a bench in their living room sits a row of handbags that were dipped in concrete like candlesticks by Mr. Tabet, the artist from Lebanon. Even the walls of the children's bedrooms have been commandeered for art: "Sometimes my son complains, but I run a dictatorship," Mr. Barbosa said, grinning.

His own introduction to art was considerably less in-your-face. His father was a high-school gym teacher who only wanted his three children to get a solid education, which they did. Mr. Barbosa's first cousin was a major art dealer, Raquel Arnaud, but he said he rarely hung out in her gallery growing up—he preferred to hang out in nearby Ibirapuera Park and sell ballpoint pens to his friends for a profit. (He stuffed the clear pen cases with shredded currency to add cachet.) After he married in 1999 and settled into a life as a banker specializing in emerging markets and depressed bonds, he started buying art.

His first piece was a $20,000 Soto that he bought from his cousin, but he later switched to buying cheaper pieces by younger living artists, and he's largely stuck to that pattern ever since. When he finds an artist with potential, he tells them he likes to buy several works at a time, but he warns them he will likely stop collecting their work after they turn 40. He said he does this because it compels him to keep seeking fresh talent rather than pay ever-higher premiums for examples by artists he already owns.

Increasingly, Mr. Barbosa is looking farther afield for his art. The shift started in 2008 when he went to Frieze in London for the first time and marveled at how few collectors had turned up in the wake of the Lehman Bros. closure weeks earlier. Walking around the fair's vacant aisles, he realized he could ask galleries for steep discounts if he was willing to broaden the scope of his collection beyond Brazil. He took home pieces by Mr. Eliasson and Tomas Saraceno.

Last year, he ratcheted things up again by hiring his curator, Mr. Visconti, who has planned Brazil's pavilion for the Venice Biennale. Besides paying Mr. Visconti an undisclosed monthly retainer, Mr. Barbosa pays him to travel and inform him about artists to consider. The pair now invites young curators to mount shows of Mr. Barbosa's collection.

In a few more years, the plan is to publish a book about these shows—yet another way Mr. Barbosa hopes to lend lasting credibility to his collection. It's a tactic museums have been using for years, after all. "I don't want to spend too much on the parts," he said. "I'm more interested in the whole."

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

"The Gang’s All There, Talking Art in Qatar" @nytimes

The Gang’s All There, Talking Art in Qatar

Eyes in Doha Are on Damien Hirsts and Warhols

Natalie Naccache for The New York Times

The Qatar Museums Authority’s Al Riwaq exhibition space in Doha is decorated as a giant Damien Hirst spot painting.

By CAROL VOGEL
Published: October 13, 2013  

DOHA, Qatar — The art-world equivalent of McDonald’s golden arches, Damien Hirst’s candy-colored spots, now covering the exterior of the exhibition space Al Riwaq, glaringly mark this Persian Gulf city as a player in the increasingly branded art world. And the exhibition inside, which includes all the touch points in the career of Mr. Hirst, 48, is just one of a constellation of openings organized to attract a who’s who in the art world (or at least a who’s afraid of being left out).

Dealers, auction house experts, museum directors, collectors and artists from around the world descended on this city last week, ostensibly to support the many artists whose exhibitions were opening here but primarily in the hopes of doing business of their own. It was as if Chelsea and Mayfair had been transplanted to this overheated city of shiny skyscrapers and waterfront promenades. There was Jeffrey Deitch, the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and gallery owners like David Zwirner, who represents Adel Abdessemed, an Algerian-born artist who is having a show at Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art. Alberto Mugrabi, the New York dealer, came too, along with Aby Rosen, the Manhattan real estate developer and collector, and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate in London. (The Qatar Museums Authority sponsored a retrospective of Mr. Hirst’s work at the Tate last year.) Even the artist Jeff Koons made an appearance.

The culturally engaged and deep-pocketed Qatari royal family, along with a new generation of moneyed collectors living in this oil-rich city, are making it an increasingly frequent stop on the global art tour.

Christie’s, which holds auctions in Dubai and exhibitions in Doha, reported last year that sales in the Middle East were approaching 10 percent of its annual turnover.

“Our numbers are probably similar,” said Alexander Rotter, who runs Sotheby’s contemporary art department in New York and was in Doha last week, too. Sotheby’s opened its office here in 2008 and had its first Doha auction the next year. In April it had its first auction of contemporary art here with works by artists from the United States as well as the Middle East and Asia. “There is a new breed of collector here that didn’t exist 10 years ago,” said Mr. Rotter, who organized the sale and was its auctioneer. “And they are in it to win it.”

Last week Sotheby’s took over a gallery in the Katara Art Center — a collaborative cultural village of galleries with an open-air theater — where it showed highlights from next month’s important contemporary art auctions in New York. On view were two major Warhols: “Liz #1 (Early Colored Liz),” a 1963 image of Elizabeth Taylor on a bright-yellow background that is estimated to sell for $20 million to $30 million, and “5 Deaths on Turquoise (Turquoise Disaster),” painted the same year and expected to bring $7 million to $10 million. While the seller was not named and officials at Sotheby’s declined to comment, the paintings are part of a larger group of works, which also includes an abstract canvas by Gerhard Richter, being sold by Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire, whose company, SAC Capital Advisors, is fighting criminal charges of insider trading. Sandy Heller, an art adviser who works with Mr. Cohen, declined to comment on the sale, but art experts familiar with Mr. Cohen’s collection identified the works as his.

In Doha, seminal images of Pop Art, like the Warhols, might be familiar, but most of the public sculptures, and the new art in museums and galleries is not. For the first time Middle Eastern audiences can see the breadth of Mr. Hirst’s career on their home turf. Last Monday “The Miraculous Journey,” 14 monumental bronze sculptures by the artist were unveiled in front of the Sidra Medical and Research Center on the outskirts of Doha. Charting the gestation of a fetus inside a uterus from conception to birth, the suite of bronzes includes a 46-foot-tall anatomically correct baby boy.

Three nights later, “Relics,” Mr. Hirst’s retrospective, opened at Al Riwaq. Organized by Francesco Bonami, an independent curator who lives in New York and Milan, it includes three of the artist’s giant sharks submerged in tanks of formaldehyde; two of Mr. Hirst’s human skulls encrusted with thousands of sparkly diamonds; a room of stainless-steel medicine cabinets filled with drugs; and an array of paintings.

Weeks before the show opened, the Qatar Museums Authority was flooded with school groups requesting visits. “It is totally booked through November,” said Jean Paul Engelen, the organization’s director of public art and exhibitions, who estimates thousands of students from local schools and universities will have seen “Relics” by the time it closes on Jan. 22.

During the last three years Mr. Engelen, together with Sheikha al Mayassa Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, 30, the Qatar Museums Authority chairwoman and a sister to the new emir, have overseen the installation of outdoor sculptures around the city by an international array of artists. Some have been more popular than others. Last week when a 16-foot-tall bronze sculpture by Mr. Abdessemed depicting one soccer player head-butting another was installed on the Corniche, the popular waterfront promenade, some residents called for its removal, claiming it offended their sensibilities. Other works have been embraced, including one of Louise Bourgeois’s monumental spiders at the Qatar National Convention Center and “7,” an 80-foot-tall sculpture by Richard Serra that sits on a plaza extending 250 feet into Doha Harbor at the tip of the Museum of Islamic Art Park.

The Qatar Museums Authority has also tried to open up a dialogue with the public about some of its shows. Last week it installed booths in two shopping malls where people could view images of one of Mr. Hirst’s sharks and his diamond skull and give their opinions, which can be found online; users can also express their opinions directly on a Web site. (Tweets are also encouraged.) Another exhibition inviting comment on the Web site is “The Museum of Crying Women,” in which streams of tears are added to portraits of Hollywood stars, first ladies, fashion celebrities and pop-culture figures; the creator of that show, which opened last week in Katara, is Francesco Vezzoli, the Italian artist and filmmaker.

Asking for public opinion is a novelty in this absolute monarchy. But the Qatar Museums Authority seems to be drumming up feedback even more aggressively than most American museums do.

“We try to learn who our audience is,” Mr. Engelen said, “where we can do better, and how we can reach even more people.”

<img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>

A version of this article appears in print on October 14, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Gang’s All There, Talking Art in Qatar.

"Dia Foundation to Sell Works to Start Acquisition Fund" @nytimes - The George Lindemann Journal

Dia Foundation to Sell Works to Start Acquisition Fund

Left, Cy Twombly Foundation; right, 2013 John Chamberlain/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Cy Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea” (1959), left, and John Chamberlain’s “Candy Andy” (1963) are among works to be auctioned by the Dia Foundation in November to start an acquisition fund.

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: June 27, 2013

There hasn’t been any news about the Dia Art Foundation since it announced more than a year ago that it had bought the former Alcamo Marble building at 541 West 22nd Street in Chelsea. Dia is in fund-raising mode, trying to secure at least half the money needed to build its new Manhattan home on that site and on two spaces either side of it.

Dia closed its two Chelsea galleries in 2004, saying it had outgrown the buildings. Those who want to see its permanent collection — primarily works from the 1960s to the present — can visit its outpost along the Hudson River in Beacon, N.Y.

Philippe Vergne, the Dia director, said this week that he had more on his mind that just the new building, though. Surprisingly, the foundation has no acquisition fund for its collection, which includes works by artists like Warhol, Walter De Maria, Joseph Beuys, Robert Ryman and John Chamberlain. “Dia cannot be a mausoleum,” Mr. Vergne said. “It needs to grow and develop.”

So the foundation plans to sell a group of paintings and sculptures at Sotheby’s in New York on Nov. 13 and 14, hoping to raise at least $20 million for an acquisition budget.

The works for sale include pieces by Cy Twombly, Chamberlain and Barnett Newman. In 1991 Dia gave the Menil Collection in Houston six of its best works by Twombly in anticipation of the Twombly Gallery that opened there in 1995. Mr. Vergne said that when he started evaluating Dia’s collection he felt it no longer made sense to keep the remaining Twomblys because there are not enough to fill a gallery.

The Sotheby’s sale will include 14 works by Twombly from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, including “Poems to the Sea,” a suite of 24 drawings from 1959 created when the artist moved to Sperlonga, a fishing village between Rome and Naples. “Poems” is expected to sell for $6 million to $8 million.

Chamberlain has been crucial to Dia since its founding in 1974. “Dia has about 100 Chamberlains, and even after the sale we will still have among the largest and deepest representation of works by him,” Mr. Vergne said.

Among those being sold is “Shortstop,” from 1958, one of the artist’s first sculptures fashioned from crushed automobile parts. It is estimated to bring $1.5 million to $2 million.

Dia has also decided to sell its only Newman, “Genesis — The Break,” a 1946 abstract canvas that is a precursor to the artist’s so-called zip paintings, which feature feathery bands of contrasting color. It is estimated at $3.5 million to $4.5 million. (Dia tried unsuccessfully to sell “Genesis — The Break” before, in 1985, to raise money for an endowment.)

Mr. Vergne said it was premature to say what he planned to buy with the auction proceeds, but he did give a hint: “There are things at Beacon that are on long-term loan and don’t belong to us,” he said. He was referring to works by the German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher and by Louise Bourgeois.

MORE KELLYS AT MOMA

Ellsworth Kelly’s 90th birthday on May 31 has become a summer-long celebration, with exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit, as well as Paris and London. At the Museum of Modern Art, which has a show of 14 paintings from Mr. Kelly’s “Chatham Series” on view through Sept. 8, the occasion was also an excuse for the museum’s curators to assess their Kelly holdings and come up with a plan to barter some for better ones.

MoMA was an early supporter of Mr. Kelly. In 1959 Dorothy Miller, one of its first curators, organized “Sixteen Americans,” the first show there to feature his work. The next year it bought “Running White,” a black canvas with a giant white swirl that appears to be moving. It now has 22 Kelly paintings and sculptures, along with prints and drawings. Many of these works are regularly on view, but others have languished in storage.

“We decided to collaborate with the artist,” said Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, “to see how we could best enhance the collection.” She, Mr. Kelly and Matthew Marks, the artist’s Chelsea dealer, devised a plan for Mr. Kelly to trade five works from his own collection for paintings and sculptures from MoMA’s.

Three were even exchanges with Mr. Kelly. But because of differences in value among the works, trustees stepped in to help the museum with promised gifts. Marie-Josée Kravis, MoMA’s president, and her husband, Henry, the Manhattan financier, and Glenn Dubin, a trustee, and his wife, Eva, bought works from Mr. Kelly and promised them to the museum. In addition, Agnes Gund, the museum’s president emerita, has promised the museum a sixth work, “Orange Green,” a 1964 painting she owns.

“Two of the works from the 1950s are paintings that Ellsworth had never been willing to part with,” Ms. Temkin said. In exchange, the museum gave Mr. Kelly two works of lesser importance from the same period. The museum got “Fête à Torcy,” a 1952 painting named for a village outside Paris where the artist spent the summer. It is composed of two canvas panels separated by a thin, dark wood strip. It also received “Two Blacks, White and Blue” (1955), a multipanel painting inspired by tugboat smokestacks in the harbor near his Lower Manhattan studio.

CHRISTIE’S DEPARTURES

After a decade at Christie’s, Joshua Holdeman left two weeks ago to join Sotheby’s, where in March he will become a vice chairman working globally with various departments, including postwar art and design.

Mr. Holdeman, who was Christie’s international director of 20th-century art, is yet another top business-getter there to leave. Most recently, Ken Yeh, its Asia chairman, departed for the Acquavella Galleries in New York.

"One Eye on Art, the Other on Water" @nytimes - The George Lindemann Journal

One Eye on Art, the Other on Water

Whitney Revamps New Museum After Hurricane Sandy

Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

The interior of a future gallery in the new downtown home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, expected to be completed in 2015.

When Adam D. Weinberg was planning a new home in the West Village for the Whitney Museum of American Art, he did not expect to have to worry about waterproofing walls or finding a hydro-engineering firm that makes watertight hatches for the United States Navy.
But then Mr. Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, also didn’t expect Hurricane Sandy.

The storm hit the Whitney hard, just as construction had started on the museum’s new home by the Hudson River, flooding the basement with 30 feet of water and ensuring that weather protections would become nearly as important as aesthetics.

Mr. Weinberg talked about these changes during a tour on Wednesday that offered a first glimpse of the building designed by Renzo Piano and expected to be completed in 2015. The new Whitney, Mr. Weinberg said, will be a temple of American art and a model of storm protection.

“It’s the worst thing that ever happened to us and the best thing,” Mr. Weinberg said. “We will now have a building in which we can be assured that the art will never be at risk.”

Fortunately for the museum, work had not progressed very far before the 2012 storm, and the construction equipment was insured. Moreover, the Whitney had taken some precautions because its location, at the corner of Washington and Gansevoort Streets, was just a block from the river. While most museums keep their art-handling activities below grade, the Whitney put them on the fifth floor. “We always knew it was a vulnerability,” Mr. Weinberg said.

Nevertheless Sandy did force significant adjustments. The water had risen a foot above the 500-year flood plain, Mr. Weinberg said, so the museum searched the world’s leading hydro-engineering firms — including those in watery places like the Netherlands and Venice — for help. It settled on the German firm WTM, which partnered with the Franzius Institute at Hanover University, which specializes in storm modeling.

“They did an analysis of water conditions, wave conditions,” Mr. Weinberg said. “They came up with a plan for us to bolster and retrofit the lobby and basement to make sure we could withstand far beyond what happened in Sandy.”

Now the building will have a temporary barrier system — an aluminum wall with steel footings that can quickly be assembled around the perimeter — and the Whitney will conduct flood drills once or twice a year. The northern glass wall will be waterproofed. And both the loading dock and west entrance will have watertight doors, designed by Walz & Krenzer, which made high-pressure doors for Chevron’s “Big Foot” drill rig and a watertight hatch for the Canadian Coast Guard.

To pay for this, the museum has increased its capital goal by $40 million, bringing the project’s total expense to $760 million, including endowment and other costs. Mr. Weinberg said 77 percent of the total had been raised. About half of the additional funds will pay for flood mitigation, Mr. Weinberg said; the other half will cover unexpected costs.

Mr. Weinberg detailed these developments as he walked through the site, riding the construction elevator to the top floor, which offers views of the Statue of Liberty. He was clearly most excited to show off the art-related aspects of the project taking form around him.

These include a fifth-floor temporary exhibition gallery, which will be perhaps the largest column-free exhibition space in the city and has floor-to-ceiling windows at the east and west ends.

“It’s the first thing you can see coming down the street,” Mr. Weinberg said. “So you’ll know it’s a building about art.”

Four terraces will serve as outdoor galleries, doubling the museum’s total exhibition space to 63,000 square feet, and will feature plantings. Piet Oudolf, the garden designer for the nearby High Line, has been hired as a consultant.

The museum’s ground level will be entirely open to the public, including a free gallery space, an outdoor cafe (which Mr. Piano refers to as “the piazza”) and a Danny Meyer restaurant.

“People can get a taste of the museum” before deciding to buy a ticket, Mr. Weinberg said. “It feels like a community space.”

When the Whitney moves, its landmark Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue will be used for at least eight years by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a place to showcase its modern and contemporary art.

Mr. Weinberg said the new Whitney pays homage to Breuer’s brutalist design, namely its use of industrial materials like the concrete core that holds the building’s mechanicals and the central staircase.

“It’s rough, robust, but at the same time has an elegance to it,” Mr. Weinberg said.

Unlike the heavy blockiness of the Breuer, which Mr. Weinberg described as “castle-like,” the rest of the new Whitney aims to be more transparent, welcoming and connected to the neighborhood. The galleries will be warmed by wooden floors made of recycled pine from old factory buildings. The central staircase will be walled in by glass, allowing visitors to look out to the river at every level.

And if another storm does come this way, the Hoppers and DeKoonings will be out of danger, Mr. Weinberg said, 60 feet above the lobby level.

“If the water comes up that high, I’m sure Manhattan is gone,” he said. “And we’ll have a lot more to worry about than art.”  

The George Lindemann Journal

"Water managers weigh putting South Florida lands up for sale" @miamiherald - The George Lindemann Journal

 FILE Wetlands at the SW corner of SW 157th Avenue and SW 8th street now owned by the South Florida Water Management District and outside the Urban Development Boundry where Florida International University wants to move the Miami-Dade County Fair and Exposition which is now at SW 107th Avenue and SW 24th street and expand FIUs Medical School to the current sight of the fair near the college campus Environmentalists say the proposed move would endanger the everglades Tuesday February 14 2012

By CURTIS MORGAN

Cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

The South Florida Water Management District, one of the state’s largest landowners with some 1.5 million acres ranging from wild banks of the restored Kissimmee River to bird-covered marshes at the southern end of Miami-Dade County, is pondering unloading some of its vast holdings.

Environmentalists are closely watching what the district is calling a “land assessment process,” worried that an agency that has been forced to slash its budget over the past few years by Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature may shed important acreage that could shrink wildlife habitat, compromise Everglades restoration projects or, worse, wind up in the hands of developers.

The district’s initial assessment, for example, includes 209 acres along Old Cutler Road bordering Biscayne Bay in Cutler Bay, which includes a 138-acre chunk the district purchased for $24.5 million less than three years ago to protect it from pending conversion into suburbia.

“Are we really going to get into the business of the South Florida Water Management District selling land fronting Biscayne Bay to a private developer?’’ said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon of Florida.

Water managers insist that’s not the intention and say they expect to keep the vast majority of the lands. One goal is to transfer or swap parcels to other government agencies, where they would continue to be used as conservation or recreation areas. The district, for instance, is negotiating transferring ownership of the 3,300-acre-plus Strazzulla wetlands in Palm Beach County to the bordering Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.

“Clearly, we would like to see that lands bought with public money continue to be used in some public fashion,’’ said Tommy Strowd, the district’s deputy executive director.

But water managers also won’t rule out that some scattered tracts that no longer serve useful purposes may wind up for sale to private bidders — but only after another round of more thorough evaluation and appraisals, public comment and approval from the agency’s governing board.

Lawmakers ordered the state’s water-management districts to slash property tax rates by nearly a third several years ago, but Strowd said the district is not pursuing the assessment as a money maker — though it could wind up saving millions in maintenance costs.

It comes, he said, as part of an initiative ordered by Scott for every state agency to analyze whether public lands they manage fulfill “core missions.” In the case of the district, that’s defined as flood protection along with maintaining water supply, water quality and the ecological health of natural areas.

Some of the district’s parcels are clearly a poor fit — like the graceful home and 16-acre estate of former state lawmaker Edna Pearce Lockett along the Kissimmee River in Highlands County, which the district wound up with as part of a 1993 deal to acquire 423 surrounding acres. But other agencies have since passed on offers to take it over, largely because of the expense of maintaining it.

The district is initially analyzing only half its land, about 750,000 acres it owns outright without any sort of easements or other complicating restrictions. The biggest chunk lies in the Everglades region, which covers much of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County and includes an array of critical restoration and clean-up projects. Some are already constructed, such as the massive artificial marshes used for cleaning up farm pollution, but many others are in the works or awaiting future approval and funding.
The area also includes other important swaths of wild lands. One is the so-called East Coast Buffer, which winds from western Palm Beach County down through Miami-Dade along the border of Everglades National Park and was intended to preserve a transitional area between Southeast Florida’s sprawling suburbs and the marshes to the west. There are also sprawling wetlands in South Miami-Dade as well as some of the last remaining large chunks of undeveloped land along southern Biscayne Bay.

The district hasn’t yet identified specific Everglades parcels to formally consider for land swaps or to “surplus” for potential sale to private owners. But the most likely targets are isolated tracts in areas where plans for restoration projects have fallen through or been scaled back. Those include the Las Palmas area of west Miami-Dade, once known as the 8.5 Square Mile Area, as well as the Bird Drive basin east of Krome Avenue and north of Tamiami Trail, where the district owns a checkerboard of small wetland tracts, many of them overrun with exotic vegetation.

At a Wednesday workshop at the district’s headquarters in West Palm Beach, environmentalists urged water managers to preserve as much as possible and not undervalue land that might temporarily be choked by exotic vegetation. Even degraded lands provide critical habitat for birds and other wildlife, help recharge ground water and control flooding, said Laura Reynolds, executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society in Miami.

Land can easily be restored, she said, but “even just sitting there open land is incredibly valuable.”

Drew Martin of the Loxahatchee chapter of the Sierra Club urged the district to apply protective conservation deed restrictions to any land it may decide to give up to other agencies or counties.

“We forget, these lands were purchased for a reason and that was to provide a buffer for natural areas,’’ he said

Representatives from the U.S. Interior Department, Loxahatchee refuge and Miami-Dade County government also urged water managers to proceed cautiously.

Gwen Burzycki, a special-projects administrator for Miami-Dade’ environmental division, said both the county and district had invested a lot of time and money to protecting and managing wetlands.

“It would be a financial travesty to let these lands go after we have put so much effort into getting them into shape,’’ she said.

Ray Palmer, section leader of the district’s real estate division, said the process of deciding what and how to surplus any parcels was complicated. For starters, at least two dozen different sources of state, federal and county funding have been used to acquire land over the decades, and many , from the Florida Save Our Everglades trust fund to assorted other state, county and federal programs. Many of those programs came with covenants that restrict how land can be used, swapped or sold and could require approval from other agencies.

The district staff intends to come up with an initial list of proposals for the Everglades region in August and, after another period of public comment, present a final list to the district’s governing board in September. A list for a region north of Lake Okeechobee presented to the board last month included some 6,200 acres of land for disposal.

Water managers said they have no target number they are shooting for. Palmer said he expects a very small percentage of land in the Everglades region to make the list.