The work taking place was for a luxury condominium located next to the gallery on 24th street in Chelsea. According to Weiss, the demolition of the previous building incurred severe damage to 100 feet of the gallery’s wall and humidity damage to artworks. Things even escalated as far as construction workers verbally assaulting Weiss, his staff and his artists. The final straw for Weiss was when the construction company planned to put up 30-40 feet of scaffolding in front of the gallery’s entrance. Weiss has filed a lawsuit against the company. More via ARTnews.
The Fine Art Group, the art investment and advisory house founded by Philip Hoffman in 2001, have announced they are to launch Fine Art Financial Services, (FAFS) a new finance company aimed at helping buyers borrow against their assets. FAFS are funding the lending and offer up to 50% of the value of the assets on works from $250,000 up to $20 million, for loans that will be available from three months to up to three years. More information via Antiques Trade Gazette.
At this year’s Venice International Architecture Biennale, Google is renewing its partnership with the event to offer digital tours of the biennial. The digital tours, called “Reporting From The Front,” will feature on Google Arts and Culture — a Google Cultural Institute platform that digitizes materials such as images of artworks, exhibitions, and museum collections in order to make them freely available to the public. More than 3,700 images of the main exhibition curated by Alejandro Aravena, three special projects, forty-three pavilions, and eleven satellite events will be made available. Further details on Artforum.
American photographer Louis Stettner passed away yesterday aged 93. The artist had recently donated 104 works to Paris’ Centre Pompidou, where he had a major solo exhibition earlier this year. Serge Lasvignes, director of the institution, remembers the artist as “an extraordinary observer of life in the second half of the 20th century”. Represented by Gallery Howard Greenberg, Stettner’s work was acquired by international institutions such as LACMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, La Maison Européenne de la Photographie and MoMA. More information about Stettner’s career is available via his official website.
Filipino artists Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo have been chosen by the The Philippines’s National Commission for Culture and the Arts to represent their country at the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, taking place through May 13 to November 26, 2017. Their proposal, titled “The Spectre of Comparison,” will explore the “notion of cross-cultural comparisons” as elaborated by filipino author and politician José Rizal. The pavilion will be curated by Joselina Cruz, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila. Read more via Art Forum.
Sotheby’s has just announced that it is restructuring its Buyer’s Premium fees. The changes will go into effect on November 13th, just before the New York sales cycle commences. According to Sotheby’s, the new fees only affect 5-10% of the lot. The 25% bracket of the New York Buyer’s Premium now applies to artworks with a hammer price up to and including $250,000, rather than $200,000. In addition, the rate for works above $3 million has increased by half a percentage to 12.5%. These increases, however, will not affect Wine sales or sales held in Beijing. Art Market Monitor has the full fee structure.
Photo via Mark Weiss Gallery
