Global Art Times March 2008
Choice articles from leading newspapers and art sources from around the world.
Supplement to The South African Art Times
Guggenheim’s Provocative Director Steps Down
Banksy’s Laugh Now, (detail above) sold for £228,000
Bonhams’ top Banksy on its way to Hong Kong? Viv Lawes The Art Newspaper
Thomas Krens in front of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, in 2005. By Carol Vogel New York Times After nearly 20 years, Thomas Krens, the provocative director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, is stepping down, its board announced on Wednesday. The move comes three years after Mr. Krens triumphed in a him-or-me showdown with the foundation’s biggest benefactor, the Cleveland philanthropist Peter B. Lewis. Mr. Lewis resigned after arguing that Mr. Krens was spending too much money and should focus more on the foundation’s New York flagship museum rather than on funneling resources into developing Guggenheim satellites around the world. In a statement on Wednesday the foundation emphasized that Mr. Krens would remain at the foundation as a senior adviser for international affairs, overseeing the creation of a 452,000-squarefoot museum in Abu Dhabi to be designed by Frank Gehry. In resigning as director Mr. Krens is clearly taking his cue from the Guggenheim’s board. “This is something that Tom and the board decided together,” Jennifer Stockman, the board’s president, said. She characterized Mr. Krens’s new position as a “natural transition.” She added, “The museum is in a strong position to move on.” The foundation said that Mr. Krens would remain as director until a successor was hired, and that the search would begin immediately. But it added that the institution would revert to the management structure that existed until 2005, appointing a director who would run the Manhattan flagship and Guggenheim satellites. In September 2005 the foundation promoted Lisa Dennison, then a deputy director and chief curator, to director of the Manhattan museum. She served less than two years, departing last summer to join Sotheby’s auction house as an executive. Curators and other museum directors have been saying privately for months that the
Guggenheim has been unable to fill the crucial job of director of the New York museum. They said that candidates who were informally approached were not shy about communicating that they would not work under Mr. Krens, who is known as a difficult personality. Supporters of Mr. Krens, however, say he has been disappointed with the foundation’s board, especially its shortage of particularly generous donors. With no replacement for someone like Mr. Lewis, who gave the Guggenheim about $77 million overall — nearly four times as much as any other board member in its history — the Guggenheim may not have the financial muscle to keep growing, some art-world insiders say. Mr. Krens cast his job change in a positive light on Wednesday. “This is a great move for everyone,” he said in a telephone interview after stepping off a flight from Paris to New York. “In July I will have been at the Guggenheim for 20 years, and I like that round number.” A towering 6 foot 5, with an M.B.A. in management from Yale and a manner that is often taken for arrogance, Mr. Krens, 61, has long been synonymous with the Guggenheim. He is best known for his ambitions for developing an international network extending from Las Vegas to Bilbao, Spain, and for the types of high-profile exhibitions he presented, including shows like “The Art of the Motorcycle,” a personal passion, and ones that tackled entire countries like China and Brazil. He has also organized trend-setting shows of contemporary artists, among them Matthew Barney, Richard Prince and, most recently, Cai Guo-Qiang. Mr. Krens has drawn criticism for some of his programming choices, including a show devoted to Armani suits underwritten by the fashion house itself.
Photo: Luis Tejido/European Pressphoto Agency izing high-profile exhibitions. In addition to overseeing the New York museum, the director will have authority over the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. “The New York museum is the center of the entire constellation,” Ms. Stockman said. Although some critics argue that Mr. Krens has in effect turned the Guggenheim into a McDonald’slike franchise at the expense of expanding its collections and endowment, he has actually created a model for expansion that is being copied by institutions around the world, including the Tate in Britain and the Louvre in France. The titanium-clad Guggenheim Bilbao, designed by Mr. Gehry, is viewed as a major success, attracting more than a million visitors every year since it opened in 1997. During his tenure Mr. Krens has increased the Guggenheim’s endowment to $118 million from $20 million, although he has been known to dip into the endowment to cover operating costs. (The museum’s endowment dropped by 20 percent from 1998 to 2005, when it was $45 million, which drew harsh criticism from Mr. Lewis.) In 1989 Mr. Krens negotiated a gift of Impressionist paintings from the widow of Justin K. Thannhauser, acquired the Panza di Biumo collection of Minimalist art and oversaw the commissions of major artworks by Jeff Koons, James Rosenquist, Rachel Whiteread and Gerhard Richter at Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin. These works later became part of the Guggenheim’s collection.
The new director of the Guggenheim will face the task of balancing growth with acquisitions for the
In Bilbao Mr. Krens led an acquisitions program that has included major installations of works by Richard Serra, Mr. Koons, Jenny Holzer and Louise Bourgeois. He also has doubled the size of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and partnered with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia,
permanent collection and organ-
and the Kunsthistorisches Museum
in Vienna on programming. Twice Mr. Krens has overseen the restoration and expansion of its landmark Frank Lloyd Wright building on Fifth Avenue. The first, completed in 1992, was an $80 million restoration of the building’s interior, along with the construction of a 10-story tower gallery and office building designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates. The second, a $29 million restoration of the Wright building, is to be completed this summer. Mr. Krens said Wednesday that the proposed Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emitates, was his most ambitious project to date. “It’s 35 percent larger than Bilbao,” he said, adding that the new museum’s programming would be more ambitious, too, and that a staff of about a dozen people would be dedicated exclusively to the Abu Dhabi branch. “It will be truly global,” he said, “representing art from the Middle East, Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, as well as Europe and America. It will change the model of the art museum.”
LONDON. A consortium of four people led by an antiquarian book dealer paid £228,000 ($443,000) for a row of spray-painted chimpanzees by the anonymous street artist Banksy at Bonhams first Urban Art Sale on 5 February. Laugh Now, measuring six metres across, had been estimated by the auction house at £150,000£200,000. It was originally commissioned for the backdrop of the Ocean Rooms Night Club in Brighton in 2002 and was consigned to the sale by the bar’s owner. The work’s poor condition—it has many scuffs—did not deter lively bidding, most notably from Ian Brown, frontman of the British band the Stone Roses, who was the lot’s underbidder. Another underbidder was Andreas Andipa of the Andipa gallery which is currently hosting a Banksy exhibition in Mayfair (until 29 March). Speaking to The Art Newspaper after the sale, antiquarian book dealer James Allen said he started buying and selling Banksy’s work in 2003. “We’ll keep [Laugh Now] on hold for a while but there’s a possibility of it going to a collector in Hong Kong. It was extremely cheap.” Indeed another Banksy canvas with a single spray-painted chimp, one of an edition of five, sold later in the evening for £74,400 ($144,000) and the artist’s 2005 screenprint Kate Moss (edition of 50), after Warhol’s famous
image of Marilyn Monroe, sold for £96,000 ($186,000). Doubling pre-sale expectations, the auction, which included 74 lots, made a total of £1.3m ($2.5m). All but one of the works sold. The 21 works by Banksy made £867,600 ($1.7m). Other high-selling lots included Nick Walker’s original Moona Lisa, 2006, which sold for considerably above its estimate of £3,000£5,000 for £54,000. Also included were five works by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, a mainstay of contemporary art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s and not previously recognised on the urban art scene. Even more intriguing was the lack of the Droit de Suite symbol next to lots by eight different artists who are eligible to receive the payment. Droit de Suite became law in Britain in February 2006 and obliges vendors to remunerate artists 4% of the hammer price when a work is resold for over e1,000 ($1,450). This would suggest that the works were consigned for the sale directly by the artists themselves or their dealers—in effect a primary market auction. On 14 February three Banksy works in the charity Red auction at Sotheby’s New York made $2.9m against an estimate of $650,000$950,000. This total includes the artist’s collaboration with Damien Hirst, Keep it Spotless, 2007/8, which made $1.9m (est $250,000-$350,000).
Dealer ‘lost out’ on lost Diane Arbus art By John Marzulli New York Daily News
Photos taken by late Diane Arbus of denizens of Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus with letter addressed to R.C. Lucas, circus ringleader. A Brooklyn collector of African-Americana says another collector tricked him into selling a trove of previously undiscovered photographs by the legendary Diane Arbus for a mere $3,500.
The photographs, depicting eccentric characters and freaks from Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus in Times Square in the 1950s, are to be auctioned next month in Manhattan. They could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. “I feel victimized,” said Bayo Ogunsanya, 50, of Fort Greene, who bought a storage trunk containing artifacts that belonged to Richard (Charlie) Lucas, a manager and ringmaster at the wacky sideshow. Ogunsanya sold the first batch of photos in late 2002 to Philadelphia collector Robert Langmuir for $1,500, unaware of the Arbus connection. Several weeks later, Langmuir paid an additional $2,000 for the rest
of the pictures and offered to give more if the photos turned out to be valuable, Ogunsanya said in court papers. “He was morally bound to give me a fair price especially since he had more knowledge [about the photos] than I did,” Ogunsanya said. The Brooklyn Federal Court suit seeks to stop next month’s sale of the photos at a Manhattan auction house. Langmuir’s spokesman dismissed Ogunsanya’s complaint as sour grapes. “Mr. Ogunsanya is a professional who seems to have had a case of seller’s remorse and is trying to wring a few dollars out of my client,” lawyer Peter Meltzer said.