WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The Fourth of July
Here’s a look at the newly renovated wing of the National American History Museum, which is opening to coincide with Independence Day. [WUSA]
An original copy of the Declaration of Independence will be on display at the Commonwealth Museum in Boston. [CBS Local]
Many galleries in New York, and across the country, are closed Tuesday due to the holiday, according to press releases sent out over the weekend. If you want to visit a show, be sure to check the gallery’s website or call ahead to make sure its open. [Press Releases]
That being said, many museums are open, including the entire Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the Guggenheim in New York, which is also having a summer seafood boil in its restaurant, The Wright. [Guggenheim]
Matters of the Market
Scott Reyburn breaks down the moderately successful contemporary evening sales in London. [The New York Times]
And in case you missed it during the start of a busy holiday commute Friday, here’s a look a the London day sales, which wrapped Friday evening at Phillips. [ARTnews]
Gauguin’s Nafea faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry) was reportedly sold by Ruedi Staechelin to the Emir of Qatar for $300 million in 2015. But a lawsuit that Simon de Pury filed in order to secure a $10 million commission, which he alleges was agreed upon in a handshake deal, has revealed the actual price paid was $210 million. Still a lot! [The Telegraph]
Museums of the World
A look back at an intriguing art heist, still unsolved: someone broke into the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and stole a Cézanne right as 1999 flipped over to 2000, right when many expected the Y2K bug to afflict computers around the world. [The Daily Beast]
More trouble at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Days after staff resignations roiled the Colorado institution, collector JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey has yanked work on view from her collection months before the show they were featured in was supposed to close. [The Denver Post]
David Hockney’s early sketches and photos will be on view at an institution in his hometown of Bradford, England, in honor of the artist’s 80th birthday. [The Times]
The Prado in Madrid has opened “The Other’s Gaze. Spaces of Difference,” which “allows visitors to look at the ways homosexuality features not only within some specific paintings and sculptures, but also within the lives of the works’ artists and patrons.” [The New York Times]
Public funding to bring an NFL team to Las Vegas: $750 million. Public funding to bring an art museum to Las Vegas: $1 million. [The Las Vegas Review-Journal]
Collectors and Patrons
A new book explores how three arts patrons were involved in transforming an aging Venice palazzo on the Grand Canal, once an eyesore, into the space that would come to host the Peggy Guggenheim collection. [The Guardian]
Here’s a look at life of Estelle Berg. Alongside her husband, Paul, Estelle pioneered the art-collecting community in South Florida, decades before the current art-buying boom in Miami. She died last week at the age of 76. [The Miami Herald]
The New York Scene
Jerry Saltz has a thousand complaints about the current art world, so it’s nice when he flirts with being sunny and singles out a few things he actually likes. His latest column puts a spotlight on some of his favorite small New York spaces, which include Fortnight Institute and Karma in the East Village, as well as 56 Henry, the Chinatown storefront space which is, as Saltz put it, “run by the super-knowledgeable spark plug Ellie Rines.” [New York]