George Lindemann Journal - "Remembering a Tragedy" @nytimes - by CAROL VOGEL

George Lindemann Journal

The Museum of Modern Art’s atrium has been home to any number of weird, wild and wacky goings-on. There was the time the performance artist Marina Abramovic sat there for 700 hours, and another when someone played a baby-grand piano from inside a hole that had been cut into it. There was also an installation of hazelnut pollen, and even a giant garage sale.

For its next act, the Modern will install nine double-sided screens, measuring up to 23 feet wide and hung at different heights, that will project a work by the British artist Isaac Julien, “Ten Thousand Waves”; it will be on view starting Monday. The installation deals with the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, when 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned off the coast of northwest England. It incorporates archival footage from a police helicopter showing the rescue of one survivor from a sandbank. There are also audio recordings of distress calls and images of contemporary Chinese culture. (Through Feb. 17; moma.org.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/arts/design/remembering-a-tragedy.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Farts%2Fdesign%2Findex.jsonp&_r=0

George Lindemann Journal "Art Public sculptures will remain after Art Basel 2013 is gone" @miamiherald - Siobhan Morrisey

George Lindemann Journal

 Work by Michelle Lopez will be among the sculptures appearing in the 2013 Art Basel Miami Beach Art Public sector

Work by Michelle Lopez will be among the sculptures appearing in the 2013 Art Basel Miami Beach Art Public sector.


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/29/3763028/art-public-sculptures-will-remain.html#storylink=cpy

Man is by nature a social animal…Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

— Aristotle, Politics

Those of us who fall into the middling range of mere mortals may especially enjoy this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach Art Public sector, with works chosen especially to reflect the exhibition’s theme of “Social Animals.”

Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of New York’s Public Art Fund, selected two dozen works that play on the collective and social nature of a public park. The artists invited to show at Collins Park this year range from emerging to emeritus. There’s even a posthumous display by Charlotte Posenenske, a German artist known for her minimalist works — particularly her steel sculptures resembling ventilation parts. Gallerists Mehdi Chouakri and Peter Freeman are teaming up to recreate six works from her Vierkanthrohre (Square Tubes) Serie D, among the last works she created before abruptly ending her career in the late 1960s. Ironically, during her self-imposed exile from the art world until her death in 1985, Posenenske questioned the worth of public art.

For Silvia Karman Cubiñá, that worth is not questionable at all. As executive director and chief curator of the Bass Museum – which once again joined Art Basel in Miami Beach to produce the outdoor exhibit outside the museum’s front entrance – Cubiñá has seen first-hand how the public interacts with the art previously displayed in Collins Park. Of particular note were six chaise-shaped concrete slabs created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, Cubiñá says, explaining how different groups of people would gravitate to the works.

“They turned into a meeting point, which became lovely, because there would be different populations that would crowd around it,” she says. “Early in the morning we had a lot of homeless people that were having breakfast. Then a little later, the dog walkers. Then at 3 o’clock the students who came from the high school would gather there, and some of them started coming into the museum. Then again the dog walkers; then again the homeless people. So, there were different populations, and I just saw it as a gathering place that came together around art.”

This year British sculptor Thomas Houseago is expected to provide visitors with a similar experience. In addition to his Striding Figure (Rome 1), Houseago plans to provide two studio seats and a chaise lounge, which will be an open invitation for the public to drape themselves across his sculptures. Danish artist Jeppe Hein also is expected to add a bit of interactive art with his Appearing Rooms, a constantly changing sculpture in which jets of water form a labyrinth of wet walls that can end up soaking those who get too close. Matias Faldbakken presents a full-scale adaptation of a Peterbilt 281 big rig truck.

This year’s exhibit in the park, which fronts the museum and spans the area between 17th and 25th streets, is aimed to satisfy the senses from sight to sound and runs through March 31. According to Cubiñá, a grant from the Knight Foundation enabled the show to grow from its original four days to four months this year. As a result, she says, the museum plans to use the sculpture garden as a backdrop for its 50th anniversary in January, complete with a full orchestra in the park.

On the days when there is no orchestra, visitors to the park may hear the chirping of crickets, as imitated by a clarinet player. That’s courtesy of American artist Mungo Thomson, whose installation goes by the working title of “Cricket Solo for Clarinet.”

Abstract expressionist Mark di Suvero, 80, is the show’s oldest artist. His monumental work, Exemplar, was created in 1979 and consists of two intersecting I-beans. British land artist Richard Long will also be showing an earlier work. His Higher White Tor Circle was created in 1996 and is made up of Dartmoor granite chunks arranged in a mosaic-like circle.

Other featured artists include Huma Bhabha, Carol Bove, Olaf Breuning, Aaron Curry, Sam Falls, Tom Friedman, Alicja Kwade, Michelle Lopez, Matthew Monahan, Scott Reeder, Santiago Roose, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Tony Tasset, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Oscar Tuazon, Maarten Vanden Eynde and Phil Wagner.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/29/3763028/art-public-sculptures-will-remain.html#storylink=cpy

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"George Lindemann Journal" -Director sees Miami’s new art museum as ‘town center’ @indulge

George Lindemann Journal

For Thom Collins, director of the striking new Perez Art Museum Miami, the past couple of years have rushed by like the time lapse video of the construction project posted on the museum’s website: cranes moving in; rebar and concrete materializing; walls and columns shooting up; wrap-around terraces stretching out — all at dizzying speed.

Collins spent five years as director of the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, N.Y., before taking the helm of Miami Art Museum in the summer of 2010, as the museum prepared to build a new home on the water’s edge. With the Herzog & de Meuron-design art house taking shape, he has lost count of how many groups he has taken on dusty tours, his white cowboy-style hardhat tipped against the blazing sun.
 Museum director Thom Collins walks among the works being installed on Tuesday October 29 2013 for the opening in December 2013 of the Perez Art Museum Miami
Museum director Thom Collins walks among the works being installed on Tuesday October 29, 2013 for the opening in December 2013 of the Perez Art Museum Miami.
PATRICK FARRELL

View photos

“When I was growing up in Philadelphia, we went to the art museum every month. I think the PAMM could emerge as that kind of institution for Miami, a culturally oriented town center where people and ideas meet, and where you know you will always find thoughtful, sophisticated programming.’’

Soon after arriving in Miami, Collins, who favors skinny suits and square-framed glasses, moved to a working-class neighborhood bordering art-centric Wynwood, determined to understand from the inside this young city experiencing a modern cultural boom.

“This is a place with such dynamic cultural diversity, and that gives it such potential. This is a city where the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the New World Center, the new science museum and the PAMM are all going up within a period of about 10 years. That’s remarkable. That’s instant cultural infrastructure.”

The PAMM is scheduled to open during Art Basel week, on time and within budget — though not without its share of controversy over its name honoring Miami developer Jorge Perez, who in 2010 donated $40 million in cash and art. Still, Collins is celebrating the fact that the museum has locked in more than 90 percent of its $220 million fundraising goal ($100 million came from public funds).

“There is a lot of aspiration in Miami. And a recognition that we are building a real repository for the city’s shared cultural heritage. You can see this in the support the museum is receiving.”

Collins himself managed to gain broad support from the community almost from the time he arrived — which is no small feat.

“Thom makes it all look easy,” says Michael Spring, director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. “For the whole cultural community to move forward, you have to have top leaders at the flagship institutions who are steady professionals, who can earn the respect of the people around them.

“When you talk to Thom, you get a sense of confidence. This is someone who is a national leader in the visual arts. And he is charming, funny, good in social situations, which is very important when it comes to building relationships with donors and collectors.”

Perez Art Museum Miami opens Dec. 4 in downtown Miami’s Bicentennial Park. 305-375-3000; pamm.org.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/29/3782668/director-sees-miamis-new-art-museum.html#storylink=cpy


George Lindemann Journal "No plans for repeat of Florida's massive python hunt" @miamiherald

George Lindemann

PythonsintheEverglades

The event drew more than 1,500 would-be snake killers from across the United States. News crews arrived from around the world to film the spectacle. And it netted 68 Burmese pythons, the huge non-native constrictors that have challenged alligators for supremacy in the South Florida swamps.

But there are no plans for a repeat of the Python Challenge, the two-month snake-killing contest that took place at the beginning of the year. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission called it a success despite its modest tally because it delivered a mountain of data to scientists and allowed the agency to more sharply focus the future fight against the snake.

But once was enough.

"Our primary goal for the Python Challenge was to raise awareness, and we felt like we reached that goal," said Kristen Sommers, the wildlife agency's Exotic Species Coordination Section Leader.

Everglades National Park last week hosted a meeting of representatives of various state and federal agencies to discuss how to proceed in the fight against the snakes. They assessed various tactics, such as the use of dogs and fitting female snakes with transmitters.

"All of the data is coming back and scientists are looking at it," said Linda Friar, spokeswoman for the park, the center of the infestation. "A number of these techniques work. The big challenge in South Florida is the landscape. They're very difficult to see. The challenge is how you find and remove snakes in this big wilderness that has so many protections. You have 2,400 square miles, and most of it is inaccessible. It's just a very challenging wilderness."

Hunters have never been allowed to go after pythons in Everglades National Park because national parks don't allow hunting. But the park has tried many tactics to eradicate the snakes, which are blamed for taking a growing toll on the park's wildlife, from wading birds and alligators to the rabbits, raccoons and opossums that had once been common sites along the main park road.

"It remains a high priority, and we're concerned," said Friar. "We are seeing less small mammals. We know through necropsies that they eat them, in addition to wading birds."

During the state's Python Challenge, which took place on Everglades lands outside the park, it quickly became clear that the most successful hunters were the ones who had experience catching pythons. So the wildlife agency has begun meeting with hunting groups to train them in the rudiments of finding and killing pythons as they tramp through the woods during hunting seasons that run roughly from August through the middle of April.

"Just because we're not having a Python Challenge, doesn't mean there aren't the opportunities for people to hunt pythons," Sommers said.

It was one such accidental encounter in May that led to the killing of the state's record python, an eighteen-foot, eight-inch monster spotted in some bushes by a man riding an all-terrain vehicle near Florida City. He killed the 128-pound female with a knife, after a long struggle in which the snake wrapped itself around his legs.

The wildlife commission has also established programs to train people who are out in the wild anyway – such as electric company workers and law enforcement officers – how to kill or where to report sightings of the snakes. Since 2010, they have trained 449 people, as well as an additional 1,000 or so in how to detect them.

George Lindemann Journal - "A Blend of Beauty and Violence" @wsj -By Mary Lane

George Lindemann Journal

By
Mary M. Lane

Updated Nov. 15, 2013 12:13 p.m. ET

On a fall evening in 2007, New York-based dealer Arne Glimcher sat in a Sotheby's BID +2.46% Sotheby's U.S.: NYSE $51.99 +1.25+2.46% Nov 15, 2013 2:20 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 685,095 P/E Ratio 33.76 Market Cap $3.49 Billion Dividend Yield 0.77% Rev. per Employee $536,709 5352515010a11a12p1p2p3p 11/14/13 Peltz Holds On to Mondelez Sta... 11/14/13 'Pink Star' Diamond Fetches Re... 11/12/13 Stocks to Watch: Sarepta, Dish... More quote details and news » BID in Your Value Your Change Short position auction room in London and watched bidding soar for "Garden of Earthly Delights III," a fantastical painting by artist Raqib Shaw.

The seascape—made with glitter, rhinestones and enamel—featured underwater fights between marine chimaera, including a toucan-headed man attacking a malevolent creature with piranha fangs. When the hammer fell, the painting sold for $5.5 million, almost seven times its $811,000 low estimate. (Mr. Glimcher had given up after $2.5 million.)

Seeing the works convinced Mr. Glimcher that the Calcutta-born artist would be a perfect addition to Pace, his New York-based gallery. The dealer began wooing Mr. Shaw with an ambitious plan to fill three of Pace's four Manhattan spaces with the artist's work for his debut gallery show in America.

That exhibition, "Paradise Lost," opened last week and runs through Jan. 11. It depicts bizarre fantasy worlds being destroyed by violent savagery through 10 paintings, three sculptures and three works on paper. The show has been drawing 1,000 visitors a day—a lot for a small gallery space—and represents four years of labor for Mr. Shaw, a self-described "recluse" who goes weeks without leaving his London studio. He lives there with his dogs Minty and Mr. C and a collection of over 50 indoor bonsai trees.

"I don't do friends and family. I think they're a waste of time," he says, adding that he leaves the long-term safekeeping of his career to Mr. Glimcher, who nurtured the careers of heavyweight artists Robert Rauschenberg and Agnes Martin.

At the Pace show in New York, Mr. Shaw's paintings run from $500,000 to $1.5 million, his works on paper are $275,000 and his sculptures are $375,000 to $3 million. All have already sold.

Each of Mr. Shaw's works requires several months. The 39-year-old artist says that their painstaking detail has ensured that he hasn't taken a vacation in 15 years.

He spends weeks crafting intricate drawings on vellum parchment before transferring them to absorbent, high-grain birchwood panels reinforced by metal. Then, Mr. Shaw uses flammable enamels including Mercedes-Benz auto paint to create fantasy characters in loud colors, including neon green and orange.

In "Arrival of the Rain King—Paradise Lost II," Mr. Shaw depicts an imposing neoclassical edifice being torn apart by zebras with human arms and lion-like heads. The creatures also battle for dominance, tearing off chunks of each other's flesh.

Mr. Shaw's inspiration was the contemporary clash between Eastern and Western cultures, the writings of John Milton and the apocalyptic paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, he says.

The trio of sculptures by Mr. Shaw all feature athletic male nudes with smooth bodies that contrast sharply with the heads of reptiles, rams and rhinoceroses. Each creature wears a pair of trendy, lace-up boots, a reference to Mr. Shaw's original wish to become a fashion designer as a child.

"I can't do scissors and stitching," he says.

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