December 8 | Jochen Volz to curate Brazil Pavilion at 2017 Venice Biennale

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The curator of the Brazil Pavilion is announced, the New Museum welcomes newcomers to its board, and Simon Hantaï tops his previous auction record.

Venice Biennale

Art critic Jochen Volz has been named as the curator of the Brazilian pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, which will be held between May 13 and November 26, 2017.

 

Based in São Paulo, Volz curated the 2016 Bienal de São Paulo and was guest curator at the 2006 Bienal de São Paulo. He has also been program director at the Serpentine Galleries in London and artistic director of the Inhotim Institute — Brazil’s leading collection of contemporary art. Further details of the pavilion are yet to be announced.

 
 

New faces at the New Museum

New York’s New Museum has announced that Isolde Brielmaier, Victoria Mikhelson, and Michael Xufu Huang have joined its board of trustees.

 

Brielmaier is the only of the three new board members who is based in New York. She is currently a professor of critical studies at New York University and the director of arts and culture at Westfield World Trade Center. Mikhelson is a project manager at the Russian contemporary art institution the V-A-C Foundation, and Huang is a collector who confounded M Woods, a contemporary art museum in Beijing. These appointments to the board come as the New Museum plans its expansion to an adjacent building on the Bowery. ARTnews has more information.

 
 

World record for Hantaï

A new auction record has been set for Hungarian-born artist Simon Hantaï at Sotheby’s evening sale of contemporary art that took place in Paris on December 6.

Hantaï’s work M.a.4 Mariale, smashed its estimate of between €1.5 and €2 million, realizing an impressive €4.4 million. The work is an oil painting rendered in a rich, intense red and a prime example of the idiosyncratic folding technique perfected by Hantaï, whereby his canvases would be creased and crumpled, painted, then unfolded to created his striking aesthetic. It also greatly exceeded Hantaï’s previous record of €2.5 million, also achieved at Sotheby’s Paris in December 2013, for a painting in the same series: M.a. 5 MarialeSotheby’s have the full details of the auction.

HAPPENING

Simon Hantaï, M.a.4 Mariale, 1960