What We're Reading 9/27/22
Christie's Launches Entirely New Department Devoted to Streetwear
Via PR
Christie’s is thrilled to announce Department X – Sneakers, Streetwear & Collectibles, a new department focused on this emerging collecting space, led by a team dedicated to auctions and private sales. Department X offers rare collectibles across a number of genres - music, fashion, art, and sports history – bringing the best of this exciting category to a new generation of collectors.
The World’s Most Prestigious Art Exhibition Is Over. Maybe Forever
It began with a calumny, it ends with a crack-up.
Twice a decade, for exactly 100 days, the world of culture turns its eyes to this midsize German city for Documenta, a giant exhibition whose intellectual ambitions and hefty budgets have ensured its reputation as the world’s most prestigious show of contemporary art. This year’s edition got off to a dreadful start in June, when its most prominent artwork, an agitprop mural incorporating unmistakable antisemitic caricatures, had to be withdrawn amid national outcry. The 15th Documenta now comes to a close on Sunday — not before another controversy that has seen artists, scholars and politicians trade accusations of antisemitism and racism, harassment and incompetence.
Via New York Times
Six-Figure Artworks, by a Fifth Grader
The contemporary art world has had more than its share of young talent, but it’s tough to recall an artist who has generated as much early-career recognition as Andres Valencia.
In the last year, he has gone from a relative unknown to a bona fide art phenomenon. His surrealist-style paintings were acquired by deep-pocketed collectors like Tommy Mottola and Jessica Goldman Srebnick during Art Basel Miami Beach. In June, he had a solo exhibition at the Chase Contemporary gallery in SoHo, where all 35 works were sold, the gallery said, fetching $50,000 to $125,000.
A new law in England and Wales will give national museums significantly more power to deaccession works and make progress on restitution cases.
The Charities Act 2022, which is expected to come into force this fall, allows charities—including national museums—to dispose of objects where there is a compelling moral obligation to do so. Museums had previously been limited by the National Heritage Act 1983.
Via Artnet