THE MAG - News

Guillaume Cerutti Named President-Directeur General Of Sotheby´s France
Sotheby’s announced the appointment of Guillaume Cerutti as President-directeur General (PDG) of Sotheby’s France, effective September 1st. Mr. Cerutti, who was the Managing Director of the Centre Pompidou from 1996 to 2001 and later the Chief of Staff to the French Minister of Culture, has more recently headed the Department of Consumer and Competitive Affairs at the French Ministry of Economy and Finance.
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Hirst´s Diamond Skull Sold For US$100 Million
Damien Hirst´s diamond-encrusted human skull has been sold to an investment group for US$100 million. The skull is entirely covered in 8,601 jewels and is considered the most expensive piece of contemporary art. The buyers are planning to re-sell the work in the near future. It is said that Hirst retains part-ownership. The sale is expected to close in three to four weeks, when all the paperwork is finished.
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Christian Faith Insulted Again
Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, is leading a chorus of condemnation against the decision to include two entries in a prestigious art competition that ridicule the Christian faith. A statue of the Virgin Mary shrouded by a Muslim burqa and a holographic image of Osama bin Laden that morphs into Jesus Christ when moved on an angle have outrage politicians and church leaders.
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Donation To Expand Gallery Of NSW
The Art Gallery of New South Wales announced that one of the leading arts families in Australia, the Belgiorno-Nettis family, have agreed to donate $4 million to the Gallery over four years in support of its contemporary art galleries.
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First Digital Installation Auctioned In Australia
An anonymous buyer at a Sotheby´s auction in Melbourne bought the first digital installation work to be auctioned in Australia. The DVD by artist Shaun Gladwell titled "Storm Sequence, 2000" sold for $84,000. The artwork features Gladwell in slow motion sequences on his skateboard, with a stormy Bondi landscape. It was expected to fetch between $70,000 and $90,000.
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Review For Hospital Spending Millions In Art
Health Minister of Northern Ireland, Michael McGimpsey, has decided to start a review and stop controversy over hospital budgets spent on art. The minister thinks art is very important to create a healing environment for patients but the public money should be spent appropiately. Controversy started when Ulster Hospital in Dundonald announced they were spending £4m of a redevelopment budget on art.
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Valuable Donation To The National Portrait Gallery
Adelaide playboy and member of one of the most powerful families in Australia, Kym Bonython, gifted the National Portrait Gallery in Cranberra with a major John Brack. The donation is estimated to be worth more than US$500,000 and is considered the most important Australia portrait of the 1960s.
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Saudi Princess Organizing Art Exhibition In Tehran
Saudi Arabian Princess Nouf Bint Bandar is helping organize an exhibition of photography and paintings in Tehran (Iran) on September 01. Princess will go to Iran with a group of Arab artists to visit the exhibition. This event is being cosponsored by Iran´s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization and the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Tehran.
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Tent Encampment on NYC´s Roosevelt Island
Canadian artist Thom Sokoloski said on his Web site that he wants to install more than 100 white tents on Roosevelt Island (New York, USA) as part of an art installation called "The Encampment." The tents are expected to be visible from both sides of the East River and will be illuminated at night. The exhibit will coincide with the openhousenewyork event Oct. 6 and 7 celebrating design and architecture.
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Sculpture By Altmejd Heading To AGO
The Art Gallery of Ontario will be home to David Altmejd’s "The Index", one of the country’s major pieces of contemporary sculpture, thanks to a generous gift from George Hartman and Arlene Goldman. "The Index" was the star attraction of the Canadian Pavilion at this year’s prestigious Venice Biennale.
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Indian Art At Sotheby´s New York
This September, Sotheby’s will hold two sales of Indian Art: Indian Art including Miniatures and Modern Paintings on September 19th and Contemporary Art South Asia: India and Pakistan on September 21st, 2007. Important works, including paintings and sculpture, by M.F. Husain, Akbar Padamsee, V.S. Gaitonde, F.N. Souza, Ram Kumar, S.H. Raza and R. Broota, among others, will highlight Sotheby’s sale of Indian Art, including Miniatures and Modern Paintings on September 19th, 2007.
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Valuable Cross Found In Trash
A not identified woman in Zell am, (Austria) looking for old crockery in a trash container, found a valuable cross dating to the middle Age worth as much as US$536,620. The woman had no idea the value of the cross. A local museum has custody of it for the moment. Officials said it appears the cross had been looted from a Polish art collection by the Nazis during the World War II.
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Thomas W. Gaehtgens Named Director Of The Getty Research Institute
The J. Paul Getty Trust announced yesterday that Professor Thomas W. Gaehtgens has been appointed Director of the Getty Research Institute (GRI) effective November 1, 2007. Dr. Gaehtgens currently is the Director of the German Center for the History of Art in Paris, an organization he founded in 1997. He also was Chair of the Department of Art History at the Free University of Berlin where he served as a professor. Dr. Gaehtgens holds degrees in art history from the Universities of Bonn, Freiburg, Vienna and Paris, received his Doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1966, and achieved his Habilitation in 1972, the highest academic qualification in Germany, from the University of Göttingen.
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New York Socialite, Brooke Astor, Dies At Age 105
The grand dame of New York, Brooke Astor, died Monday of pneumonia at Holly Hill, Westchester County estate. She was 105. Famous for being able to conduct in the same way with the Queen of England and the drug addicts in the street. It is believed that during all her life, she gave away nearly US$200 million. She was interested to use her husband´s fortune, Vincent Astor, to alleviate human misery.
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Wright On Time. After 50 Years, The House Is Ready
Joseph Massaro has just finished to build his house. Of course, this is no ordinary house. It is a genuine Frank Lloyd Wright design and it was just completed 56 years later. The plans for the one-story house in a 10 acre private island in Lake Mahopac, New York (USA) were drawn up in 1951 for a previous owner of the property. Mr. Massaro, a heating and air-conditioning contractor decided four years ago to make the plans a reality.
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Christie´s Auction House Will Open Office in Moscow
Christie's International, the world's largest auction house, plans to open its first office in Russia as the country's wealthy buyers play an increasingly important role in the global art market. The new branch, scheduled to open by the end of the year, will be in Moscow, though the auction house hasn't made a final decision on the location. Sotheby's, the world's No. 2 auction house and a fierce rival to Christie's, opened a Moscow office in May.
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Luxury Louis Vuitton Bags At Murakami´s Exhibition At MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (California, USA) will merge the worlds of art and commerce this fall by including a Louis Vuitton boutique as part of a retrospective of the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. The boutique will offer limited-edition handbags and small leather goods featuring Murakami designs. Bags will be between US$875 and US$920 (US$300 more than a regular LV bag without the Murakami designs).
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Gap Founder Plans New SF Art Museum
Founders of the Gap retail store, Donald and Doris Fisher, announced their plans to build a 100,000 square-foot museum in San Francisco´s Presidio to show their contemporary art collection. The New York firm of Gluckman Mayner Architects will be responsible for the design of the museum. The museum will be built on a seven-acre parking lot at the Main Post. No construction costs or opening dates were disclosed. Presidio is an old army fort overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge which is being converted into parkland with an emphasis on cultural institutions.
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Ce Fini For Stolen Picasso´s
Two paintings and a drawing by Spanish master, Pablo Picasso, were recovered by French police in Paris. Police surveillance teams arrested the three suspects on Tuesday morning in the 16th arrondissement. The works were stolen from the Paris flat of Picasso´s granddaughter as she was sleeping last February.
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Nice Art Theft Of Valuable Paintings
A museum in France suffered a robbery of 4 important paintings. Four or five hooded and armed men entered the Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret Museum in the French Rivera city of Nice when entry was free for the public. There were only six visitors in the late 19th century building at the time of the crime. The robbers threatened staff members and then took the four paintings, put them in bags and escaped.
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Van Gogh: One Fake And One Discovered
Australian art gallery, The National Gallery of Victoria admitted that a portrait attributed to Vincent van Gogh and valued at US$15 million was not from the Dutch master. A specialist team in Amsterdam test the painting "Head of Man" and concluded that the work was not made by van Gogh.
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The Passion Of (Gay) Jesus Christ
A gay version of Christ’s Passion was the hit of the recent National Festival of Progressive Spiritual Art in Taos, New Mexico (USA). Opening-night crowds jammed around the gay Passion series, which shows Jesus as a contemporary gay man jeered by fundamentalists, tortured by Marine look-alikes and rising again to enjoy homoerotic moments with God and friends.
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Ciao Getty! 40 Antiquities Return To Italy
Italy’s Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli, and the Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Dr. Michael Brand, announced today that they have reached an agreement regarding the Ministry’s claim for objects in the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection.
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Director Of The Guggenheim Will Join Sotheby´s
Sotheby’s has announced that Lisa Dennison, the Director of the Guggenheim Museum, will be joining the Company in September as an Executive Vice President of Sotheby's North America. She will be a member of Sotheby’s international team of senior executives responsible for international business development and client relationships.
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