Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi and Adelita Husni-Bey have been chosen by curator Cecilia Alemani to work on the pavilion. The details of the project have not been revealed, but Alemani stresses that all three — born between 1973 and 1985 — are artists that have emerged on the international scene in the last decade and who will bring a fresh and innovative approach to the biennial. More information is available via Italy's Minister of Culture.
The annual art fair Abu Dhabi Art has appointed Dyala Nusseibeh as its new director. Nusseibeh previously worked in the Saatchi Gallery’s education department, and in 2012 she founded Istanbul’s Art International art fair. During her time with Art International, Nusseibeh developed it into a leading platform for showcasing a diverse range of contemporary art. More info available on The National.
Aside from the success of Edvard Munch’s Girls on the Bridge (1902), which sold for $54.2 million with premium, Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art in New York on November 14 was somewhat stunted. The sale realized a total of $157.5 million including premium, towards the lower end of the pre-sale expectations of between $145 million and $186.5 million, with 34 of the 42 lots on offer sold. A number of paintings that were expected to be among the top lots, such as two works by Henri Matisse (Femme En Bleu À Table, Fond Rouge, estimated at $5-7 million and Le Pont, at $600,000-800,000) and a watercolour by Wassily Kandinsky with a low estimate of $1.2 million, failed to sell. Despite these disappointments, the $54.2 million realized by Girls on the Bridge is one of the highest auction prices ever paid for a work by Munch, second only to The Scream (1895) which was sold at Sotheby’s in 2012 for $120 million. The evening’s sole auction record was set for artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whose work EM 1 Telephonbildfetched $6.1 million, smashing the previous record of $1.6 million. Full details of the auction available on Bloomberg.
Following the closure of the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo for renovation work, the Ishibashi Foundation has announced a new partnership with the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. As part of the collaboration between the institutions, masterpieces from the Ishibashi Foundation’s collection — currently housed in the Bridgestone Museum — will be put on show in an exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie set to open on April 5, 2017. The exhibition will bring together 76 Modern and contemporary works by artists from Japan and the West. More information (in French) via the Bridgestone Museum’s official website.
Multidisciplinary artist Nika Autor will represent her native country Slovenia at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Autor is the founder of the collective Newsreel Front, a group of artists and theorists who produce short films and texts about global economic inequality. Though no details of the pavilion itself have yet been revealed, it was announced that Andreja Hribernik, director of Slovenia’s Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts, will curate the pavilion. More via artnet News.
SAM Art Projects, a private initiative aimed at promoting cultural exchange between the French artistic scene and non-Western countries, has announced the finalists of its 2016 SAM Prize. Awarded each December to an artist currently residing in France, the prize is endowed with €20,000 and also includes a solo show at the Palais de Tokyo. The five finalists are Raphael Barontini, Samuel Boutruche, Julien Discrit, Julien Salaud and Massinissa Selmani. The winner will be announced on December 15, 2016. Read the announcement here.
As part of its 2016 global Art Conservation Project, the Bank of America has announced it will provide funding to 21 conservation projects across six countries. The program, which was founded in 2010, provides grants to conserve historically or culturally significant works that are in immediate need of restoration. Claude Monet’s Weeping Willow (1918–1919) and a number of works by Salvador Dalí will be restored thanks to this year’s grants. Artdaily has more details.
