News from Around the Art World: April 30, 2018
A 48,000% return on a painting may be Illinois' best investment
(Bloomberg) — Art may not save the world, but it could help a municipal authority in Illinois.
The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority voted Tuesday to sell a painting by Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall, estimated at $8 million to $12 million, at a Sotheby's auction next month. The MPEA purchased the monumental canvas “Past Times” for $25,000 in 1997, a potential increase of as much as 48,000 percent.
Illinois can use all the help it can get. On Wednesday, the state sold $500 million of federally tax-exempt bonds. Moody's Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings rank Illinois one level above junk, the worst rating of any state.
Via Crain's Chicago Business
From the Archives: A Look at Leon Golub’s Early Work, in 1955
An enthusiastic appreciation of younger talents developed in the Windy City. Leon Golub is a highly educated painter. He has two B.A.’s (one in art history) and an M.F.A. He now teaches at Wright Junior College and Northwestern University. In an effort to evaluate his own painting and the art of his time, he has made critical revisions of some established evaluations of contemporary art and, in this regard, his writing is more socio-psychological than that of most artists.
Via the Editors of ARTnews
‘It Is an Unusual and Radical Act’: Why the Baltimore Museum Is Selling Blue-Chip Art to Buy Work by Underrepresented Artists
Lots of museum leaders talk about wanting to diversify their collections. Christopher Bedford, the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, is actually doing it—though not everyone may agree with his tactics.
Next month, the museum is due to sell off seven works from its collection by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and other 20th-century titans. The proceeds from the sale of these works by white men—a sum that could exceed $12 million—will be used to create a “war chest” to fund future acquisitions of cutting-edge contemporary art, specifically by women and artists of color.
By Julia Halperin, artnet
French museum discovers more than half its collection is fake
A museum in southern France has handed more than half the works in its collection over to police investigators after experts said they are fakes. The Musée Terrus in the village of Elne, near Perpignan, which is dedicated to the local painter Étienne Terrus, who was friends with Henri Matisse and the sculptor Aristide Maillol, reopened after renovation on 27 April. But around 80 of the 140 works owned by the municipal museum are now believed to be falsely attributed to Terrus or outright forgeries...
By Hannah McGivern, The Art Newspaper