June 8, 2015: Gagosian Adds 15th Gallery & Steve Cohen Might Have Bought $141 Million Giacometti
Opening
In New York …
“Kenneth Noland: Color and Shape 1976-1980” opens at Leo Castelli Gallery.
In London …
“Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans” and “Five Decades: Sculpture and Works on Paper,” with pieces by Koji Enokura, Noriyuki Haraguchi, Tatsuo Kawaguchi, and Noboru Takayama, open at Simon Lee Gallery.
In Beijing …
“Ai Weiwei: AB Blood Type” opens at Magician Space.
Today’s Notable News
In a widely reported rumor, billionaire Steve Cohen has been identified as the buyer of the $141.3 million Giacometti bronze, L’Homme au doigt (1947), that became the most expensive sculpture to be sold at auction when it was purchased at Christie’s in May. (via ARTnews)
Gagosian Gallery will add a 15th location in October, opening its third gallery in London and inaugurating the new space with an exhibition of Cy Twombly’s work. (via the New York Times)
The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts has established a $250,000 fund for grants to Los Angeles County arts organizations. The fund formalizes the artist’s longtime penchant for donating to the local art scene, for which he created the foundation in 2007, five years before his death. (via the LA Times)
Letters written by the teenaged Lucian Freud to poet Stephen Spender, a frequent subject of the painter’s portraits, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on July 2nd. (via the New York Times)
Kelly Baum has been appointed as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s curator of postwar and contemporary art and will work in the museum’s contemporary-art department as it expands to the Marcel Breuer-designed building that was formerly home to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Baum joins the Met after five years as curator for Princeton University’s Art Museum, where she helped found the department of modern and contemporary art. (via ARTnews)
Best of Instagram
Via @snarkitecture: “We’ve had a special #CulturedCommission project in the works. It will be revealed in Cultured’s newest issue and will be for sale through @artsy.”
Via @artbasel: “#ShilpaGupta, ‘24:00:01’, 2012 via #DvirGallery | Galleries 2015 #ArtBasel”
Via @robertlenne: “Lines in four directions.”
Good Reads
“Gauguin painting’s $300m price tag may have been confirmed” (via The Art Newspaper)
“The Queen’s Vagina Sparks Controversy at Versailles” (via Hyperallergic)
“Alexander Melamid Begins Artenol, an Art Magazine” (via the New York Times)
Want to catch up with the rest of this week’s news? Review past Daily Digests here.
