The Headlines

JOB POSTINGS. The Museum of the Moving Image in New York picked as its leader Aziz Isham, the director of the arts nonprofit Twenty Summers, the New York Times reports. Isham follows Carl Goodman in the role, and he wants to have the institution focus more on areas like video games and social media. ● Didier Fusillier has been tapped by the French government to lead the body that operates the Grand Palais (the home of Paris+ par Art Basel) and the Musée du Luxembourg, the Art Newspaper reports. A veteran arts administrator, Fusillier succeeds Chris Dercon, who departed the job to become managing director at the Fondation Cartier. ● TAN also reports that United Talent Agency has named Harrison Tenzer, formerly head of digital strategy for Sotheby’s, to run its fine art and artist space divisions in New York, where it will stage a pop-up next month. It currently has locations in Atlanta and Los Angeles.

ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT. Increased rain and flooding along the Silk Road in northwestern China in recent years has been damaging paintings made by followers of Buddhism in the Mogao Caves more than 1,500 years ago, All Things Considers reports. The nation “has invested considerably on restoration work of the cave paintings,” reporter Emily Feng notes. Over in Northern Peru, Reuters reports, researchers believe that a nearly 10-foot-tall polychrome wall discovered by farmers mid-harvest in 2020 dates back some four millennia. They think that it may have been part of a temple, and if that is the case, excavation work is likely to reveal a hearth at the site.

The Digest

Following a 2022 break-in during which works from its collection were smashed, the Dallas Museum of Art requested $36 million to upgrade its security system. Dallas officials are set to propose $11.5 million for that, as part of a bond package that will go before voters next year. [The Dallas Morning News]

As litigation continues against art adviser Lisa Schiff, who allegedly failed to pay clients, new documents are offering glimpses of her operations. An inventory of her holdings by an outside firm identified almost 900 pieces worth more than $3.1 million. Schiff has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. [The Art Newspaper]

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee is pressing collector Leon Black for more information on his $158 million payment to Jeffrey Epstein for tax and estate planning. A rep for Black said he has “cooperated extensively with the Committee, providing detailed information about the matters under review,” and paid all relevant taxes. [Artnet News]

KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, will make his Canadian museum debut next month at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Featuring more than 70 artworks, the show is titled “Kaws: Family.” [HypeArt/Hypebeast]

Artist Tomashi Jackson has won the annual Rappaport Prize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, which honors an area artist with $50,000. Jackson will show with Night Gallery in Los Angeles later this year. [The Boston Globe]

Reporter Wendy Hurrell caught up with a U.K. husband and wife whose hobby is visiting outdoor art trails—those sculpture displays that dot various locales. They do around five trails a year, and so far have hit 44. [BBC News]

The Kicker

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. A master’s student in forensic art at the University of Dundee in Scotland, Barbora Veselá, has produced a detailed recreation of the face of Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, the New York Times reports. Her sources? Photos of the Young Chevalier’s death mask, accounts from his time, and other depictions him that are believed to be accurate. Did he deserve his handsome nickname? “I don’t think he’s bad looking,” Veselá told the Times. “I just think that beauty is very subjective, and we definitely have different beauty standards than they would have in the 18th century.” Click to decide for yourself. [NYT]

The Headlines

TOURISTS ALLEGEDLY BEHAVING BADLY. Columns along the Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, with the Boboli Gardens, were hit with graffiti, the Associated Press reports, and two vacationing Germans have been accused of doing it. The Uffizi’s director, Eike Schmidt, issued a forceful condemnation, saying, “Enough with symbolic punishments and imaginative extenuating circumstances. We need the hard fist of the law.” The vandalism—the name of a German soccer club, spray painted—comes amid a spat of such acts by tourists in Italy; for instance, a man was caught on camera earlier this summer carving into the stone of the Colosseum in Rome. Those found responsible for the Vasari paint could face up to three years in prison.

THE NFT WORLD. The former exec at the OpenSea NFT marketplace who was convicted of buying and selling those tokens using internal company information, Nate Chastain, was sentenced to three months of home confinement, CoinDesk reports. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement that “insider trading—in any marketplace—will not be tolerated.” Reuters notes that the judge on the case, Jesse Furman, said it was “difficult” to determine a proper sentence, and that he suspected the government would not have pursued the case if it had not occurred in the “slightly sexy” realm of crypto. Meanwhile, the Art Newspaper has a look at OpenSea’s decision to nix its mandatory resale-royalty policy for artists; many are not pleased about that.

The Digest

A massive Beverly Pepper sculpture that has been on view outside the Worcester Art Museum since 1972 was vandalized with what appeared to be chalk. A conservation removed the graffiti from its Corten surface. [Telegram & Gazette]

Artist and educator Gabi Ngcobo has been named director of the Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, succeeding Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy. Ngcobo, who will start in January, is currently curatorial director of the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. [Artforum]

Philadelphia artist and arts activist Libby Newman, whose abstract works channeled natural forces, died August 8 at the age of 100. At the University City Science Center, in 1976, Newman became the founding director of the Esther Klein Gallery, whose shows bridged art and science. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

The Seoul Museum of Art will open two new branches late next year—one devoted to photography in the northern part of the city, and one in a southwestern district. Its main location in the center of the city is slated to be renovated from October 2024 to May 2026. [Korea JoongAng Daily]

Next month, Gagosian will present the first New York show for the surreal, vaguely nightmarish paintings of Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida, who died in 2005 at the age of 31. High Line Art director Cecilia Alemani, who organized the 2022 Venice Biennale, is curating. [Artnet News]

The Joan Mitchell Foundation named the 15 artist recipients of its annual Joan Mitchell Fellowship, which provides a total of $60,000 over five years. They include Nicholas Galanin, Jayoung Yoon, and Ana María Hernando. [Artforum]

The Kicker

FAMILY BUSINESS. In the New York Times Magazine, Rachel Corbett has an investigation of the famously secretive art-dealing Wildenstein family, who face a tax trial next month in France. There are remarkable details about the firm’s history, like how the late patriarch Daniel Wildenstein came to own—not a typo—500 paintings by Pierre Bonnard, as well as excerpts from his memoir that describe how the art business works. Dealers should not talk about their holdings, he said. “Why? Because it’s the stuff of dreams. Every art dealer must maintain the illusion of the masterpieces he owns or does not own.” It appears that those illusions may now be fading. [NYT Mag]

The Headlines

MARK YOUR CALENDAR. The Metropolitan Museum of Art will stage a show about the Harlem Renaissance in February, with loans from historically Black universities like Howard and Fisk. Denise Murrell, a Met curator at large, is organizing the exhibition. Murrell co-curated the acclaimed shows “The Black Model from Géricault to Matisse” at the Musée d’Orsay (2019) and “Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today” (2018) at Columbia University‘s Wallach Art Gallery. Among the artists in the show are Aaron Douglas, Archibald Motley, Jr., and Augusta Savage. “Becoming painters of modern life within their own communities was key to what the Harlem artists were attempting,” Murrell told the New York Times. Titled “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” it will run February 24 to July 28.

FINISH LINES. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art said that it has surpassed its goal of raising $750 million for its not-uncontroversial Peter Zumthor–designed new building, the Los Angeles Times reports. Construction on the structure is now than 65 percent complete, and is slated to be finished later in 2024. As of March, the Times notes, fundraising was 98 percent of the way there; among the donors who gave large sums are trustee Steve Tisch, who donated $20 million or more, the paper notes. The new structure will be known as the David Geffen Galleries; that mega collector gave $150 million.

The Digest

The sociologist Howard S. Becker, whose 1982 book Art Worlds examines how artworks, from blockbuster films to paintings, are made and interpreted through networks of people, died Wednesday at 95. Becker, who also studied deviance and drug culture, said his work focused on “how people do things together.” [The New York Times]

The Los Angeles art center Self Help Graphics & Art, long a vital catalyst for Chicanx and Latinx art, has named a new director, Jennifer Cuevas, a communications consultant who has worked with the Vincent Price Art Museum and other organizations. Cuevas succeeds Betty Avila, Self Help’s leader since 2018. [De Los/Los Angeles Times]

Works from the long-troubled Ace Gallery—investigated by Catherine G. Wagley in ARTnews in 2022—will be offered next month at 360bid.sale in what is being billed as “its momentous final auction of remaining original works.” Artists represented in the sale include Dennis Hopper, Jannis Kounellis, and Mary Corse. [Press Release/360 Asset Advisors]

The market for high-end collectible cars appears to be softening. The auctions at the recent Monterey Car Week in California saw a 68 percent sell-through rate, down from 78 percent last year. The average lot price was off, too. Hannah Elliott reports that “buyers complained about too many cars.” [Bloomberg]

The artist list for 11th edition of the Sequences Biennial in beautiful Reykjavík, Iceland, has been released, and it includes Agnes Denes, Benjamin Patterson, and Daiga Grantina. The event will run October 13 through 22. [e-flux].

Artist Marina Rheingantz, who is based in São Paulo, and whose work leaps across painting, tapestry, and other mediums, has joined the powerhouse White Cube gallery. She will have a show at its Mason’s Yard branch in London in October. [Press Release/White Cube]

The Kicker

FINISH STRONG. On his reliably zesty Instagram account, restaurateur Keith McNally (the creator of New York institutions like Balthazar, Pastis, and—RIP!—Lucky Strike) delivered a paean to the museum gift shop. After a couple hours in the Met’s galleries, he wrote, “I’m dying to visit the Met’s Art Gift Shop and buy a truckload of postcards. It’s like being served a delicious dessert after a rather heavy three-course meal.” Hear, hear. [@keithmcnallynyc/Instagram]

The Headlines

AUCTIONEER PIERRE CORNETTE DE SAINT CYR, whose namesake family auction house was acquired by Bonhams last year, died on Sunday in Saint-Tropez, France, Le Parisien reports. He was 84. Bonhams said in a statement that Cornette de Saint-Cyr “will forever be associated with introducing the first contemporary Chinese art, photography, and comic art sales in France.” He started Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris in 1973, and two of his sons, Arnaud and Bertrand, eventually came aboard the firm, which grew to have 14 international salesrooms, AuctionLab reports. Cornette de Saint-Cyr was also a collector, focusing on drawings and photographs, and he chaired the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art center in Paris from 2003 to 2012.

LIVE-WORK SPACES. The Harlem home of writer Langston Hughes from 1947 until 1967, the year he died, is now a museum, the Art Newspaper reports. Located on East 127th Street, the residence is an Italianate-style building from 1869; Hughes worked on the top floor. Meanwhile, on the other side of the United States, a 5,300-square-foot building in the Venice section of Los Angeles that Godfredsen-Sigal Architects created for artist John Baldessari in 2009 is on the market for $6.7 million, Yo! Venice reports. Dubbed the “Baldessari Gallery/Museum,” the handsome modernist structure features an art studio, exhibition spaces, three baths, and more.

The Digest

Italy’s conservative government has been lobbying museums for shows on “cultural touchstones of the Italian right,” the Washington Post reports. Tomaso Montanari, an art historian on the steering committee of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, said, “We are . . . smack dab in the middle of a neofascist revival.” [WaPo]

Dealer Marco Altavilla, who cofounded the influential T293 gallery in Naples, Italy, in 2002, with his partner Paola Guadagnino, died on Saturday after an illness. Now located in Rome, T293 has on its roster acclaimed figures like David Maljković, Simon Denny, and Tris Vonna-Michell. [Italy 24 Press News via Artforum]

Adobe Systems cofounder John Warnock, who was instrumental in developing the PDF, died on Saturday at the age of 82. With his wife, Marva Mullins, Warnock collected Native American art and rare books, which he shared online at rarebookroom.org. [The Associated Press]

Artist Tracey Emin has acquired a former bathing pavilion in Margate, England, and plans to turn it into a community center with a restaurant, gym, and more. Emin opened an art school in the seaside town earlier this year. [BBC News]

Bentonville, Arkansas, the land of Wal-Mart and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, is “becoming a new capital of cool,” the Wall Street Journal argues in a guide to the city’s cultural and culinary offerings. [WSJ]

ARTISTS ON THE RECORD.Joana Vasconcelos, “artist, aristocrat, and karate fighter,” is in El País; Tuan Andrew Nguyen, now showing at the New Museum in New York, was on PBS NewsHour; and Park Mee-na, currently exhibiting at Atelier Hermès in Seoul, is in the Korea Times.

The Kicker

BURDEN OF DREAMS. This week’s New Yorker features a personal essay by the inimitable filmmaker (and former Whitney Biennial participant) Werner Herzog that is as rich and bizarre as one would hope. It touches on some of his exploits in his early years, like running stereos into Mexico for “well-off rancheros,” breaking his ankle jumping out of a window to spray children (housemates) with shaving cream in Pittsburgh, and . . . let’s not spoil it all here. Herzog also discusses his methods, and turns philosophical at some points. “Truth, like history and memory, is not a fixed star but a search, an approximation,” he writes. [The New Yorker]

The Headlines

CRIMINAL LAW. A London court convicted two men on charges stemming from the theft of a £2 million ($2.55 million) 15th-century Ming dynasty bottle from the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva in 2019, the Guardian reports. A third had pled guilty earlier this year. The trio was apprehended trying to fence the Chinese piece in a sting operation in the city by U.K. authorities, who posed as would-be buyers. The bottle was recovered. Two more men nabbed in the operation are awaiting trial in Switzerland for the theft, which allegedly included three pieces, the Associated Press reports. A $100,000 bowl was recovered after it was sold at a Hong Kong auction house; a wine cup remains missing, and officials are offering a £10,000 ($12,700) reward for its return.

CIVIL LAW. A U.S. federal court ruled that Vermont Law School is within its rights to obscure two sprawling murals that it has determined are offensive, Courthouse News Service reports. The artist Samuel Kerson, who created the pieces in 1993, had argued that covering his pieces would violate the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA), which protects art from being modified or destroyed. Parts of his works depict enslaved Black people in what the court termed a “cartoonish, almost animalistic style” with racist tropes. The court determined that placing acoustic panels in front the artworks did not conflict with VARA, which “does not mandate the preservation of art at all costs and without due regard for the rights of others,” Judge Debra Livingston wrote.

The Digest

Jean-Louis Georgelin, the retired French general who was tapped to lead the restoration of the fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, died at 74, “likely in an accident” while hiking in the Ariege region. French President Emmanuel Macron termed him one of the country’s “greatest soldiers, greatest servants.” [The Associated Press]

Artist Hideo Sakata, who survived the U.S. atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki in 1945, when he was 10 years old, and went on to become a vital arts organizer in Los Angeles, where he settled in 1970, died on July 30 at the age of 87. [Los Angeles Times]

U.S. officials returned 281 artifacts to Mexico last week that had been smuggled out of the country between 2016 and 2021. They included Olmec figures and grinding stones dating as far back as 900 B.C.E. [CNN]

The Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said that it is shuttering its Delbridge Museum of Natural History, after tests revealed that chemicals from its taxidermy collection, which dates from the 1940s to the 1970s, had been found inside the institution. It will take months to dispose of the pieces. [The Associated Press]

Artist Lim Ok-sang, a member of the pro-democracy Minjung art movement in South Korea beginning in the late 1970s, was convicted of indecent assault on Thursday. Some institutions have removed Lim’s work from their galleries and websites; the nation’s culture ministry may bar Lim from receiving financial support. [The Korea Herald]

ARTISTS SPACE.Fiona Connor, who has a show up at Chateau Shatto in Los Angeles, is in the L.A. Times. Tammy Nguyen, hot off an exhibition at Lehmann Maupin in Seoul, is in Tatler. And Katherine Bernhardt let T: The New York Times Style Magazine into her Memphis design–filled St. Louis home.

The Kicker

HOME TRUTH. Was the architect Simon B. Zelnik (1896–1980) a master? That question is gripping the tony New York town of Scarsdale, the Wall Street Journal reports. Its preservation rules state that people applying to tear down a structure must prove that it is not “the work of a master.” An application to demolish a house by Zelnik—whose projects included a synagogue that is now part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York—has foundered as residents and experts take sides. “This man is a giant—was a giant,” one local said. “You know, who else do you want? God to come down and design a building in Scarsdale?” [WSJ]

The Headlines

PHOTOGRAPHER ROLAND F. FREEMAN, who devoted his practice to chronicling Black culture in the United States, documenting the lives and work of quilt makers, musicians, vendors, woodworkers, and other artists and creators, died on August 7 in Washington, D.C. at the age of 87, Brian Murphy reports in the Washington Post. Freeman, who usually shot in black and white, took up the discipline after seeing photos of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, which he had attended, in his Baltimore neighborhood. He later became a quilt designer, applying his photos to fabric. “I’m interested in traditional folklife practices,” he said in an interview quoted by the Post. “And in a lot of places in the South, a lot of those folklife practices are closer to what they were 50 to 100 years ago than in a lot of other places.”

OWNERSHIP DISPUTES. New York dealer Edward Tyler Nahem has filed suit in New York, seeking a declaration that his gallery owns a $8.7 million Alexander Calder mobile that he acquired from dealer French dealer Elizabeth Royer-Grimblat, the Daily Beast reports. Photographer Lea Lee, the daughter of the Calder’s prior owner, has claimed in legal actions that her sisters sold the piece to Royer-Grimblat without the permission of their mother. Nahem alleges that Lee has harassed him at art fairs and filed a criminal action against him in France. A judge previously dismissed a lawsuit from Lee; she appealed. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that there is a rather more low-stakes duel ongoing between the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury Department over who owns a 143-year-old painting of Hugh McCulloch, who led those entities at different points. For now, Treasury holds it.

The Digest

The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, is planing to open a three-acre sculpture park on its grounds in 2025. It is running a $22 million capital campaign to fund the project, which will be called Speed Outdoors and feature works by Mark Handforth, Sol LeWitt, and others. Reed Hilderbrand is handling its design. [The Architect’s Newspaper]

In a blow to selfie takers and Anish Kapoor fans, construction work in the Chicago plaza that houses the artist’s much-loved Cloud Gate (2006), aka “the bean,” will limit access to it until some point in 2024. Those seeking an unimpeded (little) bean experience can instead head to Lower Manhattan. [The Art Newspaper]

An 18,000-square-foot, four-year-old home in the Repulse Bay section of Hong Kong is on the market for HK$2.2 billion (about US$281.1 million). It has 11 bedrooms and eight bathrooms, and if it finds a buyer at that price, it will be among the priciest homes ever sold in the city. One expert said the price is high. [Bloomberg]

Photographs that Tria Giovan shot of everyday life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side between 1984 and 1990 are the subject of a new book and show at Crane Kalman Brighton in England, and the Guardian has published a trove of them. They are intimate, casual, and charming. [The Guardian]

Art publicist Kaitlin Phillips got married at New York City Hall to her boyfriend Joe Passmore, whom she described as “international man of mystery.” Artist Sam McKinniss served as the witness. [Page Six]

Speaking of McKinniss, columnist Annie Armstrong reports that he is “(probably) joining the roster of David Kordansky,” which has locations in Los Angeles and New York, following the closure of his Manhattan rep, JTT. Both the Kordansky gallery and the painter declined to confirm that. [Artnet News]

The Kicker

TOP GEAR. If the aforementioned $281.1 million Hong Kong mansion is out of your price range, RM Sotheby’s has a red 1962 Ferrari 250 GTOcoming to the block in New York during the big week of art sales with an estimate above $60 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. The seller bought it in 1985 for a cool $500,000—about $1.4 million in today’s dollars. “After looking over the car and driving it, I knew that this was the one,” that collector, Jim Jaeger, told the Journal. “It was a car that could also be enjoyed around town.” A very cool thing to say about about a car that is valued in the upper eight figures! [WSJ]

The Headlines

ARCHITECT, DESIGNER, AND ARTIST THIERRY DESPONT, who refurbished the Statue of Liberty and designed the galleries of Richard Meier’s Getty Center in Los Angeles, died on Sunday at 75, Architectural Record reports. Born in France, Despont worked for the Lewellyn-Davies firm in New York before hanging up his own shingle in the city in 1980. His clients included designer Calvin Klein, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, and the art-collecting Niarchos family. He also exhibited paintings and sculptures at Marlborough Gallery. “The interiors he concocts for his immensely wealthy clients are a swirl of highly focused, carefully edited clutter,” Karrie Jacobs wrote in a 1996 Los Angeles Times article. In it, Despont spoke of the architect as “the guardian of memories,” and of his aim to capture “the elements of the perfect house, the dream house one is always after like a writer is always after the great American novel.”

TAKING THE FLOOR. A possible loan of a third-century floor mosaic from Israel to the controversial Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., is igniting debate, the Associated Press reports. The piece in question is the Megiddo Mosaic, which was found in 2005, and it sits inside what may be the oldest Christian prayer hall in the world. Some are objecting to the proposal loan on various grounds: Research is not complete on the work, it should be kept within its original context, and the Washington museum and its founder collected (and returned) thousands of smuggled objects. One religion professor in the article also termed the institution a “right-wing Christian nationalist Bible machine.” A spox for the museum defended its practices and said it “would welcome the opportunity to educate our thousands of visitors on important pieces of history such as this mosaic.” The Israel Antiquities Authority is expected to make a decision soon.

The Digest

After 14 years as co-director of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine, Sarah Workneh is stepping down in December. Katie Sonnenborn will continue on as co-director, and a hunt is on for someone to succeed Workneh. [@skowheganart/Press Release]

Readying a survey of the 20th-century painter Chang Uc-chin for September, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea found a painting—the first Chang ever sold—whose whereabouts were long unknown. It was sitting in a closet of the initial buyer’s son in Osaka, caked in dust. [The Korea Times]

Artist and writer Coco Fusco will open a retrospective at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin next month that covers “themes of racial representation, feminism, postcolonial theory, institutional critique, military interrogation, and post-revolutionary Cuba,” she said in an interview. [Contemporary &]

A former “nightlight concierge” in the club paradise of Ibiza wrote about his work, with tales of a €69,000 (about $75,000) bottle of Champagne (with 16 gallons), hangover-curing IV infusions, and all sorts of bad behavior. Some art-world courtiers may notice parallels. “It’s not a circuit, it’s a circus,” one restaurateur said of the jetset scene. [Bloomberg]

Far-right Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei’s unusual hair “seems to move in all directions at once, culminating in a swoop that resembles a treacherous alpine slope or a scrap-metal John Chamberlain sculpture,” columnist Jacob Gallagher writes. [WSJ]

The Kicker

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. For the Guardian’s “My Best Shot” column, Marilyn Minter talked about the photographs she shot for her new book, Elder Sex, which addresses that topic in her typically luminous, engaging style. “They’re not perfect bodies, but this is everybody’s future,” Minter said, “and I wanted to show it is not this dismal, barren place. Sex is a natural human instinct that doesn’t go away.” [The Guardian]

The Headlines

A NEW LEGAL FRONT. In the New York Times, Brett Sokol and Matt Stevens report that the Orlando Museum of Art has slapped its former (ousted) director, Aaron De Groft, with a lawsuit alleging he had worked out a deal to pocket a cut if disputed Jean-Michel Basquiats shown at the museum in 2022 found buyers. The F.B.I. has been investigating those works, and an auctioneer admitted in a plea deal earlier this year that he actually helped to create the possible forgeries. De Groft and the owners of the so-called Basquiats, who were also named in the suit, have denied wrongdoing and maintain that the pieces are real. The former OMA leader told the Times that he had only talked to the owners about steering a gift to the museum. The OMA has not yet specified damages it is seeking for what it says amounted to fraud, conspiracy, and more.

THE NEW NORMAL. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is joining the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the $30 ticket club, Sam Whiting reports in Datebook, hiking its general admission price from $25. That price had been in effect since the unveiling of its 2016 expansion. Those between 19 and 24 will have to pay $23, and seniors $25. Visitors under 18 are free. The new pricing structure takes effect on October 14, the day SFMOMA opens a major Yayoi Kusama show. That said, you can pay $30 now by selecting the ticket that also offers access to Ragnar Kjartansson’s video masterpiece The Visitors (2012).

The Digest

Philanthropist Joan Kaplan Davidson, a former chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts who helped start Westbeth Artists Housing in Manhattan while working at the National Endowment for the Arts, died on Friday at 96. [The New York Times]

It took a year of negotiations, but more than 500 workers at the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago have approved a contract that will see them get raises between 12.25 and 16.25 percent. The minimum wage there will now be $17 an hour. [The Art Newspaper]

Mitra Abbaspour was named curator of modern and contemporary art at the Harvard Art Museums. She is coming from the Princeton University Art Museum, where she holds the same title. At Harvard, she will also oversee that department, whose purview—fun fact—is art from 1901 to the present. [The Harvard Gazette]

Artist and art dealer John Riepenhoff, who co-owns the Green Gallery in Milwaukee, was named executive director of Sculpture Milwaukee, the annual outdoor art show in Cream City. He is also the curator of its current edition, which runs through next October. [Press Release]

A retired political science professor, Lawrence Gray, 79, was arraigned in Manhattan on charges that he stole luxurious jewelry while moving in the upper echelons of East Coast society, selling some through a Manhattan auction house. “He didn’t do it,” his lawyer said. [New York Post]

Claire Armitstead penned an essay about hidden, “deliberately obscure” art. It “isn’t sellable or even necessarily classifiable as art, but it has an energy and an integrity that touch you if you’re lucky enough to find it,” Armitstead writes. [The Guardian]

The Kicker

TOURISTS BEHAVING BADLY. A video is making the rounds that shows a woman climbing onto Rome’s beloved Trevi Fountain and . . . wait for it . . .  filling up a water bottle, Insider reports. The video was shot last month, and it is not clear what became of her after being confronted by a guard. The viral footage comes after a spate of incidents in Italy that have seen people behaving inappropriately at important monuments—carving into the stone of the Colosseum, for instance. When a man swam in the Trevi Fountain last month, a city official declared it “pure barbarism.” [Insider]

The Headlines

PHOTOGRAPHER FREDERICK EBERSTADT, who pursued a remarkably multifarious career over his many decades, died late last month at the age of 97, Alex Williams reports in the New York Times. After briefly working at his father’s storied investment bank, Eberstadt & Company, he spent time in television, then became an assistant to Richard Avedon after telling the famed photographer that he would enjoy that job if he got the chance to do it. Eberstadt documented vanguard cultural scenes in Downtown Manhattan in the 1960s, wrote about style, and later became a cognitive therapist. Writer Bob Colacello gave the Times a wonderful quote about Eberstadt and his wife of more than half a century, Isabel, saying that they “stood out among their Park Avenue social set. They were hipper, cooler, more open minded, curious and adventurous.”

FALLOUT. Last week, it was reported that the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) had rejected an advisory panel’s recommendation that the seasoned curator Defne Ayas organize the 2024 Istanbul Biennial and instead went with Iwona Blazwick, the former Whitechapel Gallery director. Esra Sarıgedik Öktem, the curator of Turkey’s pavilion at next year’s Venice Biennale, which is presented by the IKSV, has resigned from that post in protest, Artforum reports. Öktem said on Instagram that “recent events involving my dear friend and colleague Defne Ayas, have distressed me very deeply and it also highlighted the need for a more transparent selection process and the lack of mutual communication.” The IKSV has maintained that it acted appropriately, and emphasized that the process called for it to make the final decision.

The Digest

The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a rare 19th-century group portrait that shows three white children and an enslaved Black child who was at one point painted out of the picture. The New Orleans Museum of Art sold the piece through Christie’s in 2005, but an eagle-eyed collector helped bring it to light. [The New York Times]

Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam allege that the Denver Art Museum holds eight antiquities that were illegally exported beyond their borders. Six were donated by the late Emma C. Bunker, a former DAM trustee who reportedly trafficked in contraband material. (She was never criminally charged.) DAM said that it has deaccessioned five pieces donated by Bunker and is working with the US to repatriate them. [The Denver Post]

For a third time since the cost-of-living crisis took hold in the United Kingdom, the National Gallery in London is allowing visitors to pay as little as £1 (about $1.27) for a special exhibition on Friday evenings. This time the arrangement is for a Frans Hals show that opens tomorrow. [The Guardian]

Media kingpin Rupert Murdoch is said to be dating molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, the mother of noted art collector and patron Dasha Zhukova. [Tatler]

A 19-year-old lifeguard on a beach south of Rome dug up an amphora from the 2nd century BCE after a bather spotted its neck. It will likely go on view in a museum in the city of Lazio. [ANSA]

ARTISTS (AND ARCHITECT) SPACE. Lucía Vidales is in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Tang Da Wu is in the South China Morning Post, and Peter Cook is in the Financial Times.

The Kicker

CASH AND CARRY. This week’s New Yorker has a charming letter to the editor that was written in response to Patrick Radden Keefe’s barnburner of a profile of art dealer Larry Gagosian. Frankly, you may want to read the letter yourself, rather than have it summarized here. In any case, it comes from someone who visited Leo Castelli‘s gallery in 1964 and pulled out a $10 bill to buy an Andy Warhol print. Castelli was apparently shocked to see cash, but then Warhol chimed in. He said (spoiler alert!): “Take the money, Leo. That’s what it’s all about.” Thank you for sharing that, Rudy Franchi. [The New Yorker]

The Headlines

THE RENAISSANCE MAN. Collector T. Kimball Brooker, president of the Barbara Oil Company and a former Morgan Stanley managing director, is sending a trove of more than 1,300 Renaissance texts from the 16th century to auction at Sotheby’s, the Guardian reports. It is estimated to haul in more than $25 million. The action kicks off in New York on October 11, when the first of—count ’em!—eight sales of Brooker’s holdings will occur. One highlight is an early manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci‘s writing on painting, which is tagged to go for at least $120,000. That’s a large number . . . but also a lot less than what some are paying for paintings by young artists these days.

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE. For his radiant sculpture of a milkwood tree, artist Keith Wikmunea took home the AU$100,000 (US$64,700) top prize at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. It is the first art award for the artist, a member of the Apalech and Winchanam clans, the Guardian reports. ● Rodney McMillian received a key to the city of Columbia, South Carolina, where he was born in 1969, ArtDaily notes. Two works by McMillian were recently acquired by the Columbia Museum of Art, which is showing them through October. ● And in ARTnews, Francesca Aton has a rundown of more artist-award news, including Dakota Mace winning the $45,000 Ellsworth Kelly Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

The Digest

The Art Gallery of NSW’s AU$344 million (about US$222.6 million) SANAA-designed expansion has been open for eight months, but still does not have a name, “with political intervention and conflicting advice over language behind the deadlock,” Kelly Burke reports. For now, it’s being referred to as Sydney Modern. [The Guardian]

Following a bomb threat, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was evacuated on Saturday afternoon and closed for about two hours, before being reopened to the public. [Bloomberg and CNN]

On Friday, Italy toasted the return of 266 antiquities that it identified as having been looted from the country. Some had been seized from a New York storage unit used by dealer Robin Symes, while others were returned by a collector who had offered them to Houston’s Menil Collection, which turned down the gift. [The Associated Press]

Examiners in Hong Kong who review arts projects for funding will be required “to shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding national security,” the special administrative region’s culture minister said. Some have criticized that decision as vague and argued that it could cause some to choose not to take on that job. [South China Morning Post]

Banksy has a show up at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Scotland, and got the profile treatment from CBS News Sunday Morning. [CBS]

Tennis legend Venus Williams shared a selfie to Instagram in which she poses with artist Anna Weyant’s (double) portrait of her. “Now I will live forever,” Williams wrote. [@venuswilliams/Instagram]

The Kicker

A QUASQUICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. Artist René Magritte’s 125th birthday is in November, and in Brussels, which he long called home, the biennial Flowertime floral festival is honoring the artist by taking Surrealism as its theme, the Brussels Times reports. Nearly two dozen florists have created pieces in and around the Brussels City Hall, which, the Associated Press notes, has temporarily been renamed “This is not a city hall,” in a nod to one of Magritte’s most famous paintings. [BT and AP]