New York’s Monitor gallery relocates to Lisbon, Portugal
After two years with a temporary space in New York City, Monitor gallery has announced a big move, over the other side of the Atlantic, to a permanent space in Lisbon. In the heart of the historical quarter of Rato, on Rua d. João, Monitor will occupy a two room space. Originally a paper shop, the spot has been abandoned for 20 years and is in major need of restoration.
A solo exhibition by British artist Graham Hudson will inaugurate the gallery on May 19, on show until June 29. Commenting on the opening, Monitor stated: “The large-scale site-specific installation will open Monitor’s program in Lisbon, attempting to start with a statement and staple exhibition that reveals the interests of having a new project-based space.” Coinciding with the event, Monitor will also take part in Arco Lisboa, May 18 until 21 at Stand H04.
Graham Hudson © Another Mag | Graham Hudson, On Off (2008) installation view
Christie’s delivered a whopping $448 million in sales last night
Despite Wednesday being the worst trading day of the year for Wall Street, this seems to have done little to spook art buyers at Christie’s last night in New York.
Led by the $52.9 million sale of Cy Twombly’s Leda and the Swan (1962) along with another four works exceeding $20 million, Christie’s reported a $391.3 million sale in just two hours of bidding. With buyers’ premiums, the British auction house tallied $448 million — up 60 per cent on last year’s equivalent — easily surpassing its low estimate and setting new records for fours artists: David Salle, Robert Gober, Rudolf Stingel, and Mark Grotjahn.
Among the night's winners were a number of works by Andy Warhol: Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) selling for $27.5m with premiums; Self-Portrait for $4.2m; and the silkscreen Last Supper for $18.7m. The second highest price of the night came with Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1963), the artist’s first portrait of his long-time muse and lover, which realised $51,767,500. Details via The Financial Times.
Cy Twombly, Leda and the Swan (1962) | Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1963)
Major new art centre and sculpture park taking shape in Bangladesh
Bangladesh’s first major contemporary art institution, the Srihatta-Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, looks to make its debut (in stages) in late 2018. The centre is entirely funded by Nadia Samdani and her husband Rajeeb — Bangladesh’s most high profile collecting couple — through their Samdani Art Foundation, established in 2011, who also launched the first edition of the Dhaka Art Summit biennial in 2012.
Located in the rural area of Sylhet 150 miles from Dhaka, the Srihatta-Samdani Art Centre will include an “100-acre sculpture park; 10,000 sq. feet of artist residency spaces; 10,000 sq. feet of plazas; and a 5,000 sq. foot gallery designed by the Bangladeshi architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury/URBANA.”
Diana Campbell Betancourt, the foundation’s artistic director, revealed it is “not a private museum... It is a free venue, ticketless, geared to the public and the art viewing public.” Details via The Art Newspaper
