COURTESY RIJKSMUSEUM
Market Matters
Christie’s will offer billionaire Joe Lewis’s prized Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, at its November sales with an estimate in the region of $80 million. If it sells for that amount it will be the most ever paid for a Hockney—and the most ever paid for a living artist. [ARTnews]
In other Hockney news, Janelle Zara checks in with the artist in Los Angeles to talk about a new video installation he’s showing at Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago. “The people telling me to stop smoking are saying it’s about time that I should think about my body,” Hockney said. “I’ve gotten to be 81 not thinking about it, so what’s the trouble?” [Architectural Digest]
At the art fair La Biennale Paris, “no significant historical work or masterpiece was unveiled,” but “the First Lady Brigitte Macron toured the stands for three hours, perhaps a salve for the dealers.” [The Art Newspaper]
The New York Art Year
Month by month, show by show, protest by protest, Andrew Russeth looks back on the past art season. [ARTnews]
The Law
A probate hearing regarding the estate of the law artist Robert Indiana “reveals that his caretaker was paid nearly $500,000 in the last two years of the renowned artist’s life, received 118 pieces of art and made cash withdrawals totaling $615,000 from Indiana’s bank accounts during the same period.” [Portland Press Herald]
“You’ve got to remember,” Indiana’s caretaker, Jamie Thomas, said, “that he paid another person $400,000 for absolutely nothing.” [The New York Times]
The Talent
Bartomeu Mari, who became director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul in 2015, will reportedly not have his contract extended. He will depart the institution in December. [The Korea Herald]
Lisa Laskowski has been named director of development and chief development officer of the Remai Modern museum in Saskatoon, Canada. She was most recently chief development officer at the Royal University Hospital Foundation. [Press Release]
Christina Turner has been named director of the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, Wisconsin. [The Post-Crescent]
After Dark
Ben Detrick tells the story of a now-closed “Sunday night salon called Headz” in Lower Manhattan, which “resurrected the spirit of Andy Warhol’s Factory, the art club Area and creative gatherings of yore in a gentrifying downtown where such avant-garde pockets are on the precipice of extinction.” The ringleader? None other than artist and D.J. Spencer Sweeney. [The New York Times]
The St. Louis Art Museum was closed yesterday because of a power outage. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
Far Out
A wide-ranging show at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, considers the moon. “The moon has always been an object of fascination,” Marie Laurberg, the exhibition’s lead curator, said. “We’ll never be done with it.” [The New York Times]
Here’s a look at the Museum Workout, “a hybrid of performance art and aerobics class” that is being held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the city’s Fringe Festival. [WHYY]