In a photo provided by Fleischer's Auctions shows, a portrait of an unknown Union sergeant, right, in a double frame opposite a smaller tintype of a woman, most likely the sergeant’s wife. Before the sale was to open in person at Fleischer’s Auctions in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, online bidding on William T. Sherman’s belongings reflected interest in one of the war’s most infamous figures, known for inflicting a “hard war” doctrine against the South during his March to the Sea through Georgia in 1864. (Fleischer's Auctions via The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Weapons from the battlefield, books inscribed by hand and a family Bible are among the items belonging to William T. Sherman, the Civil War general known for the phrase “war is hell,” that are up for auction in a sale of Civil War-era artifacts. Before the sale was to open in person at Fleischer’s Auctions in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, online bidding on Sherman’s belongings reflected interest in one of the war’s most infamous figures, known for inflicting a “hard war” doctrine against the South during his March to the Sea through ... More
Commissioned on behalf of the Drapers' Company, this monumental portrait of King Charles - the first to which he has formally sat as King - by the leading figurative artist Jonathan Yeo will be making its way to Philip Mould & Company from Buckingham Palace, where it was recently unveiled.
LONDON.- King Charles III on Tuesday unveiled the first official painted portrait of himself since his coronation just over a year ago — a striking oil painting in which he stares head-on against a backdrop of mottled red, pink and fuchsia hues. The painting, ... More
NEW YORK, NY.- The salesroom at Christie’s was packed Tuesday evening, as spectators rubbernecked to see if buyers would compete for multimillion-dollar artworks at an auction house still hobbled by a cyberattack. But the audience’s chatter about hackers soon dissipated, as auctioneer Georgina Hilton entered the spotlight. Could ... More
VIENNA.- A wellspring of outstanding worksby artists ranging from Alexej Jawlensky and Egon Schiele to Heinz Mack and Emilio Vedovawill be on offer during Dorotheum’s major auction week formodern and contemporary art, the Contemporary Week at Palais Dorotheum in Vienna (22–28 May 2024). Exquisite jewellery and wristwatches go on auction in turn on 23 and 28 May. Thematically ... More
LONDON.- One of the largest pictures that George Stubbs – the most revered animal painter in the history of European Art – executed, and one of the last two on this scale of any subject to remain in private hands, Mares and Foals will be a highlight of Christie’s Old Masters Part I sale on 2 July, ... More
1863 $10 Liberty Ten Dollar, Judd-349, Pollock-421, Unique, PR64 Cameo PCGS. CAC.
DALLAS, TX.- An 1863 Ten Dollar, Judd-349 PR64 Cameo, PCGS. CAC soared to a record $810,000 to lead Heritage's CSNS US Coins Signature® Auction to $27,825,772. That total, combined with Heritage's CSNS Currency Signature® Auction, which ended at $12,610,964, and the CSNS World & Ancient Coins Platinum Session and Signature® Auction that reached $11,904,407 raised ... More
GENEVA.- Eight watches consigned from the private collection of Michael Schumacher, one of the most successful drivers in Formula 1 history, sold today for just under CHF 4 million (US$ 4.4 million / €4.1 million). The F.P. Journe Vagabondage, given by Jean Todt to Michael Schumacher for his seven F1 World Championships, sold for ... More
A family photo of photographer Daniel Kramer in 2023. (via Kramer family via The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Daniel Kramer, a photojournalist who captured Bob Dylan’s era-tilting transformation from acoustic guitar-strumming folky to electric prince of rock in the mid-1960s, and who shot the covers for his landmark albums “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited,” died April 29 in Melville, New York, on Long Island. He was 91. His death, in a nursing ... More
This invaluable tape documents a significant performance on May 12, 1965, featuring Hendrix as part of Little Richard's backing band, The Upsetters.
BOSTON, MASS.- A previously unheard live recording featuring the guitar stylings of the then-unknown Jimi Hendrix during a 1965 concert with rock and roll pioneer Little Richard has surfaced. The recording, made at Boston's Back Bay Theatre—formerly known as the Donnelly Theatre—is set to be auctioned off by RR Auction, a Boston- ... More
The Cast Courts rooms of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which includes a reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, Sept. 5, 2023. (Jeremie Souteyrat/The New York Times)
LONDON.- Even for someone who loves getting lost in museums — especially “everything museums” like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — London’s Victoria and Albert Museum might have been my Waterloo. The statistics are daunting: 5,000 years of artistic production ... More
Lee McColgan points out the original dry-stone foundation in the basement of the Loring House, his restored 18th-century house in Pembroke, Mass., on May 3, 2024. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Lee McColgan’s career in finance was probably doomed as soon as he started visiting historic house museums. The first one he toured was the Fairbanks House, in Dedham, Massachusetts, the oldest surviving timber-frame home in America, built in 1637. It was 2014, and McColgan ... More
Elisabeth Kley, Chacmool with Ladders, 2022. Courtesy the artist and CANADA (NYC).
MANCHESTER, NH.- As part of a series of exhibitions and commissions looking at the relationship between fine art and crafts conceived for its Welcome Gallery, the Currier Museum of Art is delighted to announce a new collaboration with New York-based artist Elisabeth Kley (b. 1956). The Welcome Gallery, as the name suggests, is the entry point to the Currier Museum. It is ... More
Paul Noble and Nika Neelova in the Drawing Office. Photo: Harriet Crisp.
LONDON.-Sir John Soane's Museum announced Nika Neelova and Paul Noble as the Soane’s 2024 Artists-in-Residence. Both artists will bring their remarkable work into the very heart of Sir John Soane's historic architectural practice: his Drawing Office. Nika Neelova and Paul Noble follow in the footsteps of Sam Belinfante and Ella Baron, who were the inaugural Artists-in- ... More
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At Cannes, Indian filmmakers show there is more than just Bollywood NEW YORK, NY.- For the first time in 30 years at the Cannes Film Festival, an Indian film will compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition, alongside new movies from Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold. The dry spell might come as a surprise for a country with film industries in multiple regions producing hundreds of films per year, including international sensations like last year’s Oscar-nominated “RRR.” But the inclusion of “All We Imagine as Light,” directed by Payal Kapadia, reflects a growing recognition of the independent cinema made in the shadow of the country’s mainstream hits. Thierry Frémaux, the artistic director of Cannes, noted the new generations of filmmakers in India when he announced the lineup in April. These movies offer what critic Namrata Joshi calls “a young, probing, and provoking gaze ... More
Blessed Foundation premieres a new video work by Andrea Khôra LONDON.-Blessed Foundation announced the UK premiere of a new video work by Andrea Khôra. Enitled RAPTURE, 2024, it will be shown at the foundation’s London headquarters from 16 May 2024, running until 27 June 2024. Described as an AI-infused fiction capturing the darker side of the current psychedelics start-up culture, RAPTURE takes the form of an interview between Ethan Grant, the CEO of a fictional psychedelic start-up, TrandscendX, and Kate Thompson, the host of ‘Mystical Misadventure’ podcast. As the interview unravels, Ethan paints a picture of a business whose ultimate goal is the advancement of human spirituality and wellbeing, akin to some of the common narratives behind psychedelic infrastructures currently developed in Silicon Valley. The belief in one product’s power to advance humanity as a whole, is reminiscent ... More
Alice Munro, Nobel laureate and master of the short story, dies at 92 NEW YORK, NY.- Alice Munro, the revered Canadian author who started writing short stories because she did not think she had the time or the talent to master novels, then stubbornly dedicated her long career to churning out psychologically dense stories that dazzled the literary world and earned her the Nobel Prize in literature, died Monday night in Port Hope, Ontario, east of Toronto. She was 92. A spokesperson for her publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, confirmed the death, at a nursing home. Munro’s health had declined since at least 2009, when she said she’d had heart bypass surgery and had been treated for cancer, though she continued to write. Munro was a member of the rare breed of writer, like Katherine Anne Porter and Raymond Carver, who made their reputations in the notoriously difficult literary arena of the short story, and ... More
James Fuentes exhibits a new body of landscape and still-life paintings by John McAllister LOS ANGELES, CA.-James Fuentes is presenting John McAllister, sometimes splendid seeming...stellar even...ripping at its Los Angeles location, a new body of landscape and still-life paintings capturing the temporal and symbolic cycles of nature. On his ritual bike rides through the land surrounding his home in Florence, Massachusetts, McAllister absorbs the winter’s short days and decaying forests, and returns to his studio to preserve the evolving land on canvas—illuminated with glistening, early sunsets and cloaked with dense, starry skies. McAllister depicts wilderness in a ceaseless “in between,” where spring and fall disrupt the stillness of winter and thrum of summer through perpetual rot and rebirth. In turn, the artist’s practice also mirrors his personal position at the intersection of youth and old age—comprehending his mortality as it exists ... More
Pinballs and petroliana perform well at Miller & Miller auction NEW HAMBURG, ON.- A Canadian 1940s McColl-Frontenac service station sign, six feet in diameter, soared to $22,420; a Bally’s Gilligan’s Island pinball machine from 1991 went for $10,030; and a Japanese 1950s Linemar toy Good Humor Ice Cream delivery truck hit $3,245 in three days of online auctions held May 10th-11th-12th by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd. The auctions included a Toys & Historic Ephemera auction featuring Part 2 of the late Howie Meyer Legacy collection held on Friday, May 10th; a Toys, Advertising & Coin-Op auction held on Saturday, May 11th; and a Petroliana & Advertising auction featuring the late Syl Rumas collection held on Sunday, May 12th. The three sales combined totaled a gross of $947,156.50. “Toys sold in our inaugural online-only sale for the late Howie Meyer Collection performed well,” said Ethan Miller of Miller ... More
The Brooklyn Museum to acquire five works by Kyohei Inukai from the private collection of Miyoko Davey BROOKLYN, NY.-The Brooklyn Museum announced the acquisition of five major paintings by Japanese American artist Kyohei Inukai (1886–1954), expanding the Museum’s diverse holdings of American art. The generous gift comes from Manhattan-based collector Miyoko Davey, a dedicated researcher, collector, and champion of Inukai’s work since the 1980s. Davey brought further attention to the artist by publishing his biography, Kyohei Inukai (1886–1954), in 2014. “We are incredibly grateful to Mrs. Davey for her generous gift to the Brooklyn Museum. It is a tremendous acquisition that falls perfectly in line with our mission for our reimagined American Art galleries: to expand the representation, engagement, and research of previously marginalized American artists,” says Stephanie Sparling Williams, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American ... More
Akane Saijo joins BLUM TOKYO.-BLUM announced global representation of Kyoto-based artist Akane Saijo. Kyoto, where Saijo currently works and studies, has been a thriving pottery production center for generations—from the seventeenth-century up through the more recent Sodeisha group, which was at the forefront of Japanese ceramics for fifty years after World War II. Saijo both acknowledges and innovates upon this history with forms in Saijo’s small-scaled ceramic sculptures that make nod to the artist’s predecessors and build out from their legacy. Saijo creates ceramics of various sizes with intricate glazes that evoke the gradation of different tree species in a far-off forest or the earth’s naturally occurring clay deposits. She often collaborates with performers to activate the cavities and holes in her ceramic works, turning them into sound-producing devices. ... More
Dozens of fine toy, bank and holiday collections brought variety and surprises to Bertoia's Annual Spring Auction VINELAND, NJ.-Bertoia’s Annual Spring Auction held April 19-20, 2024 offered bidders a wonderfully varied selection from collectors throughout the United States and abroad. Just over 1,000 lots were presented, with categories that included cast-iron mechanical banks, automotive and horse-drawn toys, pressed-steel and tether cars, European automotive and wind-up toys, trains, and aviation toys of every imaginable type. Additionally, there were rare spelter banks from the Jim and Genia Willett collection (Part II) plus holiday antiques, which climbed to dizzying prices. The top lot of the sale was a 37-inch-tall rabbit candy container that was quite likely intended for use as an Easter holiday store display. ... More
VMFA appoints inaugural Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art RICHMOND, VA.-The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts announced today that Siera Hyte (Cherokee Nation) has been appointed as the museum’s inaugural Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art. Hyte will begin working at VMFA on August 26, 2024. “We are delighted to welcome Siera to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where she will be an incredible addition to our curatorial team,” said Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “Siera will advance our commitment to Indigenous American art through important acquisitions, community engagement, exhibitions, publications, public programs and research.” Hyte will be charged with the development, interpretation and stewardship of VMFA’s Indigenous American art collection, which comprises nearly 1,000 works of art in a variety of media, including beadwork, ceramics, paintings, ... More
From Agnes Pelton to Rembrandt Peale: The 2024 American Art Signature Auction.
Flashback
On a day like today, Polish-American painter Tamara de Lempicka was born
May 16, 1898. Tamara Lempicka (born Maria Górska; 16 May 1898 - 18 March 1980), also known as Tamara de Lempicka, was a Polish painter active in the 1920s and 1930s, who spent her working life in France and the United States. She is best known for her polished Art-Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and for her highly stylized paintings of nudes. In this image: A man stands beside the painting "M. Tadeusz Lempicki" during the exhibition of works of art made by Tamara de Lempicka which opened at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
