Frieze New York at The Shed will bring together over 60 leading galleries (mostly US-based). Photo: AFP
Much has been made over the last 14 months of pop-up” art galleries in Palm Beach, Florida, Aspen, Colorado, and the Hamptons, New York, with dealers and collectors gushing about the wealthy provinces’ sales, attendance, and exposure.
Yes, New York’s galleries have been open (and selling art!) since at least last fall, and yes, there’s evidence that the trend of rich New Yorkers fleeing” the city has been exaggerated-and is already in reverse.
But there hasn’t been anything in the art world to actually bring people, particularly out-of-towners, back to the city. There’s been nothing to coalesce around-nothing, dealers say, to bring energy back to a place that remains the contemporary art capital of the world.
On a recent afternoon behind a scruffy door in South London, remarkable alchemical transformations were taking place under the watchful eye of the painter Frank Bowling. Wearing industrial masks, a team of assistants brushed and dolloped ammonia, gold powder, acrylic gel and water onto a dripping canvas hung onto Bowling’s studio wall.
Looking dapper in a fedora and a green velvet jacket, the 87-year-old artist directed proceedings from a wheelchair in the center of the room.
“Put gel on the edges of the square. No, you’re putting it on the flat,” Bowling said, guiding the action on the canvas with a laser pointer. “Dust that with the gold. Brush the water all over.”
Art Institute of Chicago Names Its Next Board Chief
Denise Gardner, who will start in the post in November, is believed to be the country’s first Black woman to lead a major museum board.
Denise Gardner, who has championed Black artists, as well as art accessibility and education for underrepresented audiences. “In this role, I can help the museum accelerate their progress,” she said.Credit.Lori Sapio, via Art Institute of Chicago
April 13, 2021, 1:32 p.m. ET
The longtime art collector and marketing executive Denise Gardner will become the chairwoman of the Art Institute of Chicago in November, perhaps the country’s first Black woman to hold that position on a major museum board.
Swann Galleries announces spring sale of African American art
Charles Alston, City at Night, oil on canvas, circa 195660. Estimate $100,000 to $150,000.
NEW YORK, NY
.-Swann Galleriess spring sale of African American Art will take place on Thursday, April 22. The sale will present quality works spanning mediums and movements within the canon.
Artists of the Harlem Renaissance feature in the sale, with a run of works by Richmond Barthé and prints by Aaron Douglas. African Boy Dancing, 1937, is an important and strikingly beautiful bronze by Barthé; which represents the culmination of the artists significant study of the male figure in sculpture, anatomy and African dance in the 1930s, and his pioneering realization of an ideal male nude. This is the first time this sculpture has come to auction, and only the second time that an original 1930s cast by Barthé has appeared at auction. The sculpture is expected to bring $150,000 to $200,000. Also by Barthé is Stevedore, 1