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Family Behind Bob Ross Inc. Responds to Unflattering Documentary Depiction

Bob Ross, Inc. (BRI) has spoken out against the new Netflix documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal, and Greed (2021) that chronicles the TV painter’s rise to fame and subsequent legal controversies after his death. In a public statement, BRI denounced the film’s “inaccurate and heavily slanted” narrative and accused its director and producers of bias.

The Joy of Painting star and posthumous meme celebrity, who died of lymphoma in 1995, is remembered as much for his mastery of alla prima landscape painting as for his life wisdom, soothing voice, and exuberant hair. BRI, the company that owns the rights to Ross’s image, admits this is “accurately captured in the film.”

But BRI takes issue with the film’s portrayal of the company’s current owners, Walt and Annette Kowalski. Longtime business partners of Ross who co-founded BRI in 1984 along with the artist and his wife Jane, gained complete control of the business after the couple’s deaths. The second half of the documentary describes their successful bid for Ross’s intellectual property, allegedly using intimidation and ruthless legal force, ultimately snatching the rights to his name and likeness from Bob’s son and heir Steve Ross and continuing to profit from them today.

According to a New York Times review of the documentary, the Kowalskis “are not painted in a flattering light.” The film has prompted growing calls for a boycott of the company and Bob Ross-branded products, from paint sets and swimming trunks to a toaster that burns the painter’s face on bread slices — all featuring images licensed through the family. The Kowalskis have strongly rejected the claims and accused director Joshua Rofé and producers Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone of failing to represent their perspective. If not for their efforts, said BRI’s statement, “Bob’s artistic and cultural relevance … would have been lost decades ago with his passing.”

“Had the filmmakers communicated with openness in their correspondence, Bob Ross Inc. could have provided valuable information and context in an attempt to achieve a more balanced and informed film,” the company said. In an interview with NPR, Falcone said it had been difficult to find people who were willing to speak on the record about Ross for the documentary; many of them were hesitant or outright refused out of a fear of litigation. “That was when we sort of figured out, oh, boy, this might be a little different than what we thought it was going to be,” Falcone said.

“We never set out to make a hit piece. We like Bob Ross and we still do,” Falcone said. “We were just surprised to uncover some of the things we uncovered.”

Bob Ross.

In an interview with NPR, Falcone said it had been difficult to find people who were willing to speak on the record about Ross for the documentary; many of them were hesitant or outright refused out of a fear of litigation. “

Portia Zvavahera Joins David Zwirner

The American hotel chain MGM Resorts announced plans to sell off a group of works by Pablo Picasso at an auction in Las Vegas on October 23. The Sotheby’s sale will be a live-streamed evening auction at the city’s Bellagio hotel with the 11 offered works by the Spanish modernist expected to earn a collective $100 million.

The decision to sell its Picasso collection is a move on MGM’s part to restructure its public-facing art

collection and focus on presenting works by more diverse artists. Ari Kastrati, MGM Resorts’ chief hospitality officer, said in a statement that the decision is part of broader strategy to give “a greater voice to artists from under-represented communities.”

Highlights from the collection include Picasso’s portrait of his early muse Marie-Thérèse Walter. Titled Femme au beret (1938), the painting depicting a young blondehaired Marie-Thérèse is expected to fetch $20 million. It last sold at auction in 1987 for $880,000 and was acquired by Las Vegas casino tycoon and top collector Steven Wynn in 1998. (In 2000, MGM acquired that work and the other soon-to-be-auctioned works when it bought the Mirage casino and hotel from Wynn, who had assembled a blue-chip collection of 19th- and 20th-century art that was housed at his other hotel’s Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.)

MGM’s Picasso works range from paintings like Femme au beret to the artist’s works on paper and experiments in ceramics, spanning from 1917 through 1969. “It’s a relatively complete journey through the artist’s life,” Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s chairman and worldwide head of sales of global fine art, said in an interview. “It gives a survey of the diversity of his life’s work.”

Additional offerings include two large-scale late-period portraits Homme et enfant (1969–70) and Buste d’homme (1969–70). Together, the paintings are expected to fetch at least $30 million. Each were included in the artist’s expansive 1973 exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, France. A still-life painting titled Nature morte au panier de fruits et aux fleurs (1942) is estimated at $10 million–$15 million. The MGM collection sale will also mark the first time that Sotheby’s has ever held a sale of major works in the U.S. outside of its New York headquarters, potentially signaling a broader shift market-wide. Lampley said the decision to host the sale in Las Vegas is a way for the auction house to adapt its offerings to deliver top clients luxury experiences outside of the

traditional auction programming. “One of our key revelations of the pandemic is that our clientele actual welcomes change and specificity of experience,” said Lampley.

Michael Plummer and Jeff Rabin, Co-Founders of Artvest Partners, and Geoff Fox, Principal of Touchstone Event Management. COURTESY ARTHOUSE.

The MGM collection sale will also mark the first time that Sotheby’s has ever held a sale of major works in the U.S. outside of its New York headquarters, potentially signaling a broader shift marketwide.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) repatriated a Prairie Chicken Society headdress and a Weather Dance robe to the Siksika Nation, located in present-day Alberta, in a July 7 ceremony at the museum’s Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland. The Museum of the American Indian, the NMAI’s predecessor institution, acquired the headdress in 1908, while William Wildschut acquired the robe in 1924. Both objects will again be utilized in Siksika ceremonies now that they have been returned.

It is unclear how the headdress, which belonged to the leader of the Prairie Chicken Society, found its way to the Museum of the American Indian, an institution founded by former investment banker George Gustav Heye in 1916 to house his collection of 58,000 — and, by his death in 1957, some 800,000 — Native American artifacts. The collection, which was transferred to the Smithsonian in 1989, represents around 85% of the NMAI’s holdings.

Wildschut, who acquired the Weather Dance robe, went on ethnographic expeditions on Heye’s behalf in the 1920s, operating in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Canada, and North Dakota from 1921 to 1928. He acquired the robe from its maker, notable Siksika Weather Dancer Yellow Old Woman. Weather

Smithsonian Repatriates Sacred Items to the Siksika Nation

Dancers maintain a spiritual connection with Natosi, or the sun, and are responsible for controlling the weather during ceremonies such as the Sundance.

Yellow Old Woman’s great-grandson, Herman Yellow Old Woman, is also a Weather Dancer, having received his transferred rite in 2016. The ceremonial elder has long advocated for the sacred objects’ return, which was approved in May 2021. Alongside Siksika Nation Chief and Council representative Kent Ayoungman, he attended the July 7 ceremony to collect the objects and bring them home.

In a statement released by the Siksika Nation the day of the ceremony, Herman Yellow Old Woman said:

These items have been gone for almost 100 years, so the thing that is amazing for us, is these materials (Natowa’piists) are going to go right back into action. There are transfers that will take place, sweats that will take place when we get them home. The Sundance is coming up in the next two weeks and they will be transferred and put right back into circulation, so today is an honor. It is very emotional.

“You can feel the power and spirit in these bundles, and I feel excited for our Nation, our people,” he added. “The Prairie Chicken Society are going to be able to see and use this headdress the way our ancestors did a hundred years ago, and I can imagine our ancestors and how excited they are.”

“Repatriation has always been one of the highest priorities for the National Museum of the American Indian,” said Machel Monenerkit, the NMAI’s acting director, in a statement. “Our repatriation policy embodies our mission and vision, and we are proud to have worked with the Siksika Nation to ensure the return of these objects.”

The 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act, which was part and parcel of the creation of the NMAI, requires that the museum inventory, identify, and return Native American human

remains and funerary objects. In 1996, the law was amended to extend to sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony — categories that apply to the headdress and the robe. While the law doesn’t include First Nations or Indigenous Peoples outside of the United States, such as the Siksika Nation, the museum’s own restitution policy enables it to make these returns on a case-by-case basis.

Banksy, A Great British Spraycation (2021). Courtesy of the artist.

“Our repatriation policy embodies our mission and vision, and we are proud to have worked with the Siksika Nation to ensure the return of these objects.”

Flexible Gallery Art House to Come to New York

Art House, a new hybrid art exhibition space is set to open in New York this November. The new venture will be located in the former Barneys flagship store on Madison Avenue. Designed by wHY architecture’s creative director Kulapat Yantrasast, Art House, which aims to bring a flexible solution to gallery space, will offer an exhibition space in New York city for galleries based in other cities and countries around the world. Barneys closed the doors to its New York store in February after filing for bankruptcy last year and liquidating its leftover merchandise during the holiday season.

The venture is founded by the team behind TEFAF New York— Michael Plummer and Jeff Rabin of New York advisory firm Artvest and Geoff Fox, the principal of consulting firm Touchstone Event Management. It follows the launch of a similar space in London.

On November 4, Art House says it will host 60 exhibitors (vendors have not been announced) in the

five-floor venue with showcases organized around a common theme. The space will also have offices and salon-style viewing rooms, allowing dealers to host year-round programming in an “à la carte” fashion, said Rabin.

The founders reportedly plan to host another multi-gallery event in May 2022. The schedules mimic the pre-pandemic Fall and Spring seasons of Tefaf New York and the marquee auctions between November and May.

The venue has a goal to encompass all corners of the art market, from small to mega dealers, to top auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s—while targeting buyers across all art categories from antiquities to the ultra-contemporary. “Dealers need a new toolkit to reach clients,” Rabin said in an interview referring to the needs of dealers, which were only exacerbated by the spread of the pandemic last year. “The online activity was not sufficient to make up for lost art fair and in-person activity at galleries.”

The pandemic has left major art fairs across the globe in crisis. For example, Art Basel and Frieze are unable to reconvene for largescale events, while restrictions on international travel continue to limit the circulation of dealers and collectors. Some fairs, like TEFAF Maastricht, were forced to cancel their live editions scheduled for the Fall after multiple postponements. Frieze New York’s most recent edition in July at The Shed only hosted around 60 exhibitors.

“The community is now more interested in highly curated, more selective fair or exhibition venues,” said Plummer. “The 200-plus dealer events, even before Covid, were getting to be overwhelming.” The cofounders say the space will provide much of what an art fair does, public programming and a luxury space to entertain top clients supported by an online platform. The site will include a members club housed in the former Barneys restaurant, Fred’s. The space is also designed to have the feel of an upscale atmosphere of an art fair VIP lounge and will host pop-up showcases that adhere to collectors’ travel patterns.

Art House will charge galleries a leasing fee to exhibit and rent office space, which will be in line with what major art fairs charge vendors to showcase their works. The founders say that London’s newly minted Cromwell Place— a membership-based gallery hub in South Kensington where dealers and collectors run their operations that opened in August 2020— is a close comparable to Art House.

Plummer and Rabin considered recent trends and shifts in the art market when conceiving Art House. Younger gallerists and specialist niche dealers are vital players in the market, the two stressed. That demographic, said Plummer, tends to get lost in an art fair economy that is heavily focused on vendors of blue-chip 20th-21st century art. “The model caters to a broader range of the market,” said Rabin. “It’s really meant as a rejuvenation of the city’s art footprint.”

Art House will charge galleries a leasing fee to exhibit and rent office space, which will be in line with what major art fairs charge vendors to showcase their works.

Banksy Confirms He is Responsible for New Murals in Coastal England Towns

Not long after reports first emerged about a possible series of new Bansky murals across coastal England, the anonymous street artist has confirmed that he is responsible for the works.

The murals appeared in the towns of Lowestoft, Gorleston, Oulton Broad, Cromer, and Great Yarmouth and feature many of the themes that are common in Banksy’s world, including his stenciled rat.

The artist, who confirms his street works on Instagram and his website, posted a video taking viewers on a journey he dubbed the “Great English Spraycation.” It opens with an RV transporting the artist from one site to the next, set to an accordion rendition of the 2019 song Dance Monkey by Australian singer Tones & I.’

The murals variously feature children wearing paper pirate hats and playing in an abandoned canoe, hermit crabs holding up a sign reading “Luxury rentals only,” an arcade crane claw painted on a wall above a bench (poised to pluck unassuming bystanders), a dapper couple swing dancing next to an accordion player, and a man enjoying an adult beverage while pumping air into a dinghy floating off with his lightweight children inside .