Paint Drippings is excerpted from The Back Room, our lively recap funneling only the week’s must-know art industry intel into a nimble read you’ll actually enjoy. Artnet News Pro members get exclusive access—subscribe now to receive this in your inbox every Friday.
Art Fairs
–The inaugural edition of Frieze Live will feature five performances by seven Korean artists exploring the role of poetry in performance art during Frieze Seoul this September. (Artnet News)
–A month after announcing that it was cancelling its New York fair after just one outing, Photofairs said that it will debut a Hong Kong edition next March, during the city’s art week. (Artnet News)
–Instead of taking place in July, Tokyo Gendai announced that the next edition of the fair will go ahead in September of 2025. (Artnews)
–VOLTA New York will feature 45 exhibitors this year. The 16th edition will take place during the city’s Armory Week for the first time, running September 5–8. (Press release)
–SCOPE Art Show has named Hayley River Smith as its director. It also tapped Michael Papadeas, most recently a lead on partnerships for Endeavor and Frieze, as head of strategy and partnerships. (Press release)
Auction Houses
–Christie’s reported total auction sales of $2.1 billion for the first half of the year, down 22 percent from the $2.7 billion it hauled in during the same period last year. Luxury sales were also down significantly, with the auction house reporting a 39-percent drop, to $362 million, from the same period last year. (Artnet News)
–Citidel CEO Ken Griffin was the buyer of a recently excavated stegosaurus skeleton known as “Apex” that sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s New York—more than seven times its high estimate of $6 million. The mega price tag makes it the most expensive megafauna to ever come to auction, surpassing the $32 million paid in 2020 by an Abu Dhabi museum for a T-rex skeleton called “Stan.” (Artnet News)
The “Apex” Stegosaurus fossil on display at Sotheby’s New York for the “Geek Week” sales. Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images.
Galleries
–Hollybush Gardens has taken on representation of Turner Prize nominee Jasleen Kaur, Leon Tovar Gallery added Álvaro Marín Vieco to its roster, Anselm Reyle has joined Opera Gallery, Hales has taken on the estate of Ken Kiff, Sylvie Hayes-Wallace has joined Silke Lindner, and Lisson Gallery now represents Leiko Ikemura. (Press releases)
–Cardi Gallery will open a space in Hong Kong in 2025.
–In October, Cadogan Gallery will open a new space in London at 7-9 Harriet Street during Frieze Week.
–London’s Sundy gallery has closed after six years.
Institutions and Organizations
–South by Southwest (SXSW) London has confirmed that its inaugural festival will take place June 2–7, 2025 in the city’s Shoreditch neighborhood. Additionally, former curator of the David Bowie collection Beth Greenacre has been appointed as Visual Arts Advisor. (Press release)
–The Centre Pompidou’s outpost gallery in the Spanish town of Málaga will remain open for another ten years. The museum signed this into effect under a new partnership with the town’s city council and officials in Paris.(The Art Newspaper)
–London’s Science Museum has been forced to cut ties with Equinor over the oil giant’s environmental impact, thus concluding the museum’s interactive installation “WonderLab,” which the company sponsored. (The Guardian)
–The American Academy of Arts and Letters, founded in 1898, is launching a new year-round, multi-disciplinary exhibition program in its Washington Heights galleries in New York. (Artnet News)
–The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has named Sunwoo Hwang as its inaugural Korea Foundation Curator of Korean Art and Culture. (Press release)
–Julieta González has been named head of exhibitions for the Wexner Center for the Arts. (Press release)
–UOVO has opened its new art storage facility in Los Angeles.
Julieta González. Courtesy Wexner Center for the Arts.
Tech and Legal News
–Data stolen from Disney’s private Slack channel has been leaked online by the anonymous hacker group Nullbulge, which claims to be motivated by protecting artists from the threat of A.I.-generated content. (Artnet News)
–Miami art dealer Gary Nader is embroiled in a legal battle with a law firm over unpaid attorney’s fees, which now threatens to foreclose his private art collection. (Artnews)
–Fotografiska’s New York outpost has reached a tentative settlement agreement with a former worker who alleged in a lawsuit that she faced discrimination for being pregnant. (Artnet News)
–The Brooklyn regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has filed a complaint on behalf of a former Daniel Arsham studio employee who is alleging that they were fired in retaliation for seeking to unionize. (Artnet News)
Awards and Commissions
–Paris-based artist and D.J. Christelle Oyiri has been selected to create Tate Modern’s inaugural Infinities Commission, a new annual commission to showcase the “limitless experimentation” of contemporary art. This year’s selection panel included musician and artist Brian Eno; critic and curator Oulimata Gueye; artist Anne Imhof; artistic director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Andrea Lissoni; and executive director and chief curator of The Kitchen in New York, Legacy Russell. The commission will be unveiled in April 2025. (Press release)
–The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles has announced a new award for environmental art, which comes with a $100,000 prize. The resulting commissioned work will be unveiled at MOCA in spring 2026. (Press release)
–John F. Kennedy International Airport has announced the 18 artists whose work will hang in a new terminal, among them Nina Chanel Abney, Charles Gaines, and Barbara Kruger. (New York Times)
–Prajakta Potnis has received the 2024 Loewe Foundation/ Studio Voltaire Award. Along with a year-long studio space at London’s Studio Voltaire, the prize comes with a $32,522 stipend. (Press release)