Art results of the week: 04.11.2019 – 10.11.2019
- Auction sales of high-end Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art down 24%. The semi-annual sales of high-end Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips are targeting sales of $1.2 billion at the low end of the estimate range, down 24% from a year earlier. Not a single work is expected to fetch $50 million or more. The last time that happened at the November auctions was 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, – reports Bloomberg.
- Bern Museum Sells $4 M. Manet Owned by Notorious Cornelius Gurlitt. Édouard Manet’s Ships at Sea in Stormy Weather (1873) will soon be crossing international waters. The Bern Museum of Fine Art in Switzerland has agreed to sell the painting to Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art for $4 million, the Art Newspaper reports.
- National Portrait Gallery in London to Close for Three Years. While it undergoes the largest redesign project ($45.6 M) in its history, the National Portrait Gallery in London will close for three years. It will reopen in the spring of 2023 with a total rehang of the collection and new public entrance designed by Jamie Fobert Architects.
- ‘Museum Diplomacy’ as New Pompidou Center Opens in Shanghai. The French museum will curate the exhibitions and provide works from its collection. But Chinese officials are keeping a close eye on what gets shown, – The New York Times reports.
- Collector Egidio Marzona buys eastern German castle. The property was once home to Paul Schultze-Naumburg, a leading proponent of Nazi cultural policy. Egidio Marzona plans to host design academy in the castle.
- Puerto Rican artists available to a global online audience. The online platform Google Arts and Culture, the actor Lin-Manuel Miranda and his father, Luis Miranda Jr, announced that they had joined forces to make works by Puerto Rican artists available to a global online audience.
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