Top lots are still the art market’s biggest source of revenue
According to a study by Blouin, the top half percent (0.5 %) of the artworks sold at auction over the last six months attributed to 56.3 % of total sales. In comparison, the same 0.5% made up the 40% of total sales in 2005.
Important sales such as that of Untitled (1982) by Basquiat, which went for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s, are therefore still the biggest source of revenue for auction houses — and we’re not about to witness a trend change. More via Blouin.
MoMA appoints a director of editorial and content strategy
MoMA has become the latest museum to go beyond the gallery space to promote their works. The New York institution has announced that curator Leah Dickerman, who was responsible for the museum’s painting and sculpture department, has been appointed as director of editorial and content strategy.
Dickerman will work alongside Rob Baker, previously chief marketing officer for Tate in London. Dickerman added that her aim is to “think in new ways about how our platforms can nurture thought, discussion, and inspiration, [which] is a key challenge facing museums now”. More via artnet news.
Rob Baker. Image courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Martin Sekera. / Leah Dickerman, photo: Martin Seck, Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
A new Jasper Johns monograph
Redo An Eye, the first volume of a recently published, $1,500 Jasper Johns catalogue raisonné, is available as a standalone volume for the more modest price of $60.
The book by scholar Roberta Bernstein, who met the artist at Castelli Gallery in 1967, covers 60 years of Johns’ career, and it is published by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute and the Yale University Press. Together with curator Edith Devaney, Roberta Bernstein is currently working on a Jasper Johns retrospective which will open at London’s Royal Academy in London in September, titled “Something Resembling Truth”. The 150 work exhibition will then travel to Los Angeles’ Broad Art Museum. Read more on The Art Newspaper.
Jasper Johns, Three Flags (1958). (© Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo by Jamie Stukenberg © Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York)
American folk artist M. T. Liggett has passed away
Born in Kansas in 1930, M. T. Liggett was a local celebrity. Towards the end of the 1980s, his metal sculptures — often satirical — were a real tourist attraction.
Between 2009 and 2010, six of his works were shown at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, an institution dedicated to self-taught artist. His kinetic works were also presented at the Folk Art Museum in Lucas, Kansas. More on the artist via The New York Times.
M.T. Liggett — Credit RoadsideAmerica.com
