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 art fair and exhibition platform Object & Thing, founded by Abby Bangser, will begin representing artists, a role typically assumed by galleries. The Rome-based American artist F Taylor Colantonio is now represented by the organization and will be the subject of a solo show opening in April in Venice. (Press release)

–After a decade at the Saatchi Gallery, London’s StART art fair will relocate to the newly renovated Kings Cross Town Hall this fall, running from October 7 to 13, in tandem with Frieze Week. (Press release)

–Nicole Berry is leaving her position as executive director of the Armory Show, after running the New York fair for the past eight years. The announcement comes just seven months after the Armory Show and Expo Chicago were acquired by Frieze. Berry is moving on to a new role at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, as senior director of donor engagement. (Artnet News)

Auction Houses

–Francis Bacon’s first full-scale portrait of his lover George Dyer is estimated to fetch between $30 million and $50 million at Sotheby’s in New York in May. The work was acquired directly from Marlborough Gallery in 1970 and has never been offered on the market since; it was last exhibited at the Royal Academy’s acclaimed 2022 exhibition, “Francis Bacon: Man and Beast.” (Press release)

–Here are five hot lots from the London auctions that smashed their estimates, including an abstract painting by Emma McIntryre and a luxurious interior by Alfie Cain. (Artnet News)

Galleries

–Blum now represents Agata Słowak in collaboration with Foksal Gallery Foundation, Goodman Gallery has announced the representation of the Atta Kwami Estate, Sheila Pepe is now represented by Marinaro, Hesse Flatow now represents Luis Edgar Mejicanos, Brandon Ballengée has joined Various Small Fires, Grimm now represents Rafał Topolewski internationally in collaboration with Alice Amati in London. (Press releases)

–Kyoko Hattori has been appointed vice president of Pace Tokyo. She previously worked as regional director of Phillips in Japan. (Press release)

–Hauser and Wirth will inaugurate its new Basel outpost with a show of works by Vilhelm Hammershøi, opening two weeks before Art Basel begins. (Press release)

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with a Writing Desk (1900). Courtesy of Hauser and Wirth.

Museums, Biennials, and Institutions

–Frieze’s Matthew Slotover and Caius Pawson, the founder of the Youngmusic label, have launched Murmur, a charity uniting the visual arts and music industries against climate change with fellow Frieze figure Victoria Siddall as founding director. Partners—who so far include art-world entities such as Frieze, Hauser and Wirth, Thomas Dane, and Mendes Wood—commit to reducing their emissions in line with climate science targets and financing transformative climate action. (Press release)

–Patrick Moore, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, will step down in May. The museum will soon begin recruiting Moore’s replacement; the museum’s deputy director Rachel Baron-Horn will serve as interim director until then. (Artnet News)

–Russia will lend its unused national pavilion at the Venice Biennale to Bolivia. (Artnet News)

–Russell Storer has been appointed as senior curator and head of curatorial affairs at M+ in Hong Kong. (Press release)

–The San Diego Museum of Art has named Dr. Kara Felt as its new curator of photography. (Press release)

Tech and Legal News

–A federal judge in the U.S. has prohibited digital artist Mason Rothschild from showing a series of digital artworks that feature 3D renderings of Hermès’s famed Birkin bags in the form of NFTs at a museum in Sweden. (Artnet News)

–Nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark copyright decision siding with artist Lynn Goldsmith, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has agreed to pay the photographer a $21,000 settlement to end the dispute. (Artnet News)

–The artist Lynthia Edwards has filed a counterclaim against Deborah Roberts for alleged defamation amid the latter’s heated lawsuit against her and her gallery, the Richard Beavers Gallery, alleging copyright infringement. (Artnet News)

–Daniel García Carrera, the Cuban American ex-husband of gallerist Brent Sikkema, has been arrested in New York on charges of passport fraud as authorities branded him a flight risk amid an investigation that he orchestrated the murder-for-hire of his late husband. (Artnet News)