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THE HEADLINES
CHRISTIE’S FALL CURTAIN RAISER. Christie’s opened New York’s fall marquee auctions on Monday with an lively doubleheader that drew a full home of collectors and advisers, ARTnews reviews. The night took $690 million with charges throughout 79 tons, crusing previous the pre-sale low estimate of $534.7 million and touchdown simply barely under the $731.5 million excessive estimate. Not less than a dozen works ignited intense bidding wars. The night time started with the Robert and Patricia Ross Weis sale, that includes 18 prime works from the late grocery store govt’s assortment. Spanning Cubism via Summary Expressionism, the choice included items by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Mark Rothko. This providing represented solely a fraction of the Weis materials heading to public sale, with greater than 60 extra tons scheduled for later gross sales. A 62-lot Twentieth-century sale adopted, showcasing additional works by Matisse, Picasso, Alexander Calder, David Hockney, Marc Chagall, and Alberto Giacometti. Altogether, the night whole marked a 41 % leap from Could’s auctions. Christie’s reported a robust sell-through fee of 97 % by worth and 96 % by lot. Just one lot was withdrawn and three did not promote, regardless of energetic competitors all through.
SPERONE WESTWATER TO CLOSE. Christie’s sturdy exhibiting offers hope that the market is on the street to restoration, however any resurgence appears to be like prefer it arrived too late for one in every of New York’s stalwart galleries, Sperone Westwater. It’s closing after 50 years, Artnet Information reviews. Recognized for propelling artists comparable to Bruce Nauman, Richard Lengthy, and Francesco Clemente to worldwide prominence, its ultimate exhibition is the present present dedicated to Lengthy, the British sculptor who has exhibited with the gallery greater than a dozen instances. In a press release, the gallery mentioned it would stop operations on December 31 as co-founders Angela Westwater and Gian Enzo Sperone will “pursue separate endeavors,” and thanked the many individuals who contributed to its success. It’ll nonetheless seem at Artwork Basel Miami Seaside subsequent month. Rumors of the closure surfaced final week and have been confirmed on Monday. Based in 1975 in SoHo as Sperone Westwater Fischer, the gallery debuted with a Carl Andre exhibition and shortly introduced reveals by Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, and Brice Marden. Within the Nineteen Eighties, it turned a hub for Neo-Expressionism and Italy’s transavanguardia, exhibiting Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia, and Enzo Cucchi alongside Susan Rothenberg.
THE DIGEST
The 2026 version of Artwork Basel Hong Kong will characteristic 240 galleries from 42 international locations and territories, a slight change from final 12 months’s 242. The honest will run from March 27 to 29 on the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre, with previews on March 25 and 26. [ARTnews]
A bible thought-about a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance artwork and described because the “Mona Lisa of illuminated manuscripts” is now on present in Rome. [The Art NewspaperThe Art Newspaper]
Marina Abramović’s 2010 MoMA efficiency The Artist Is Current is usually considered a pinnacle of her profession, but the artist lately disclosed that the museum initially doubted the venture’s viability. Talking on the Louis Theroux Podcast, Abramović mentioned a MoMA curator warned her that “no one has time” for the work, which in the end turned one in every of her most celebrated items. The efficiency concerned Abramović sitting silently throughout from guests every day for 3 months, drawing huge crowds and cementing its place in modern artwork historical past. [Artsy News]
On November 28, the Qatar Basis will launch the Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum devoted to the life and work of artist Maqbool Fida Husain. [Arch Daily]
The Kicker
A MUSEUM ON PLEASURE ISLAND? In 1958, developer Sol Atlas envisioned a radically totally different future for Ellis Island, one he hoped to rename Pleasure Island, the New York Instances reviews. His proposal aimed to transform the previous immigration station right into a leisure vacation spot that includes a 600-room lodge, tennis courts, a museum, a language faculty for immigrants, and a marina full with a “boat-in cinema.” An architect’s rendering by Raniero Corbelletti confirmed immaculate buildings surrounding a tree-lined harbor, with boats dotting the water and the skyline of Decrease Manhattan rising within the distance. The picture is one in every of a number of unrealized waterfront schemes preserved in The New York Instances’s archives, highlighting how New York’s waterways supplied the type of expansiveness the town lacked on land. Atlas repeatedly raised his bid for the island, from $201,000 to greater than $1 million, however the federal authorities rejected every provide. As structure critic Ada Louise Huxtable later famous, New York has an extended historical past of “defaulted desires.” One other instance surfaced in 1966, when the Metropolis Planning Fee proposed a sweeping remake of Decrease Manhattan, together with pedestrianized corridors and waterfront plazas alongside the East and Hudson Rivers. A compromise plan below Mayor John Lindsay and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller launched a multi-level mini-city with housing, places of work, and retail, however the venture collapsed after an office-space downturn undermined its monetary viability.
