The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore will reopen in October. The museum closed in September 2012 due to lack of funding. The new museum will focus on the story of Poe in Baltimore, as well as on the house itself. Read More
A look inside the Nahmad family. [NYT]
A little late to this, but worth a listen: fashion-trend forecasters say that Dubai and Frank Stella are hot. [NPR Planet Money]
Here are some obscure Dalí watercolors of rather erotic fruits. [The Guardian]
Thomas M. Messer, a pioneering director of the Guggenheim, Read More
The sculptor Mark di Suvero was awarded a gold medal by the American Academy of Art and Letters at a ceremony at the academy’s headquarters last night. Read More
Artist Tracey Emin: Critics Are Harsher Because I’m a Woman [Vanity Fair]
“Buoyed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s decision this month to return two stolen statues, Cambodia is asking other museums to examine any Khmer antiquities they acquired after 1970, when a 20-year period of civil war and genocide gave thieves free range to Read More
A bit of news that was overlooked last week due to art fair frenzy: Georg Baselitz, the esteemed painter and cranky misanthrope, had his home in Bavaria raided by tax authorities. Der Spiegel reports that it’s “likely that Baselitz had been given advance warning” of the raid, and was on his way to his property on the Ligurian Coast in Italy when investigators arrived. Read More
MONDAY, MAY 13
Opening: Dena Yago at Malraux’s Place
I have never been to an opening at Sebastian Black’s studio, but cannot fault his taste. I have to miss this one tonight because of the Leonardo DiCaprio auction, but if I didn’t have that I’d go in a second. Photo courtesy of Art Observed. —Dan Duray
Malraux’s Place, 253 36th Street (Sixth floor), Brooklyn, 7–9 p.m.
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It’s rare to see an artist at his dealer’s booth at an art fair. Most don’t like to witness the mercantile–or, as one artist put it, “shopping mall”–side of the business. But at NADA, the booth of Jose Martos was practically swarming with artists.
Mr. Martos was giving a tour of his booth, pointing out works.
“This is a Justin Lieberman painting,” he said, “and this is Justin Lieberman.” The artist, bald and bearded with round spectacles, was standing in front of his work, clutching a newspaper. He chuckled jovially and offered his hand. Read More
Daniel Reich, the art dealer who passed away on Christmas Day last year, was an early member of NADA, and many of the organization’s current members credit him with bringing them aboard. At the NADA New York fair, there’s a booth dedicated to him, with a notebook racking up numerous notes and signatures, and a portrait of Mr. Reich by the artist Henry Taylor. The painting belongs to the artist Christian Holstad, and the goal, said Heather Hubbs, the fair’s director, is to have it donated to the Museum of Modern Art. Read More
The New Art Dealers Alliance’s New York fair is held this year at Pier 36 off of South Street on the Lower East Side–”Basketball City,” a facility that houses seven basketball courts. (For the fair, they’re covered in carpet.) There are big scoreboards lining the walls, and basketball hoops with glass backboards attached to the ceiling. At the booth of dealer Joe Sheftel, the artist Alex Da Corte has installed a wall of Nike neon-colored basketball sneakers. How appropriate! Read More
You can hear the booth of Fergus McCaffrey at Frieze before you actually see it. Installed are several works by Jack Early, an artist who had great success in the late ’80s before placing himself in an exile from which he has only recently emerged, appearing in shows at Brooklyn’s Southfirst Gallery. On view was Jack Early’s Ear Candy Machine, a glistening white phonograph with a speaker inside of the horn blasting music, resting in a black-lit room with a streak of rainbow paint on the floor. Elsewhere, there were cut-out sculptures of Yoko Ono, and one of Paul McCartney with a sign that read, “JOHN IS THE ONE THAT IS DEAD ACTUALLY.” Read More
