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5 Chicago Collectors Make ARTnews’ Annual List of World’s Top Collectors

Claudine Isé — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:34:15 +0000

Here are the Chicago-based collectors on the magazine’s 2009 list, in alphabetical order as listed on ARTnews’ website:

Neil G. Bluhm
Chicago
Real estate
Collection focuses on Contemporary art

Stefan T. Edlis and H. Gael Neeson
Chicago; Aspen, Colorado
Plastics Manufacturing (Retired)
Collection focuses on Contemporary art

Anne and Kenneth C. Griffin
Chicago
Hedge fund
Collection focuses on Impressionism; Post-Impressionism

Elizabeth and Harvey Plotnick
Chicago
Publishing and investments
Collection focuses on Old Master prints; Islamic ceramics

Penny Pritzker
Chicago
Real estate, hotels (Hyatt), and financial information
Collection focuses on Contemporary art

None made the magazine’s Top Ten list. Interestingly, Chicago has just slightly fewer collectors on the list than the 6 boasted by Los Angeles (9 if you count those who have secondary residences in Southern California) as reported by Suzanne Muchnic on the L. A. Times’ Culture Monster blog.

This is the first time in my life I have ever paid any attention to this list or its rankings–so take it for what it’s worth to you.

Art News Roundup: Week 2

Christopher — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:45:05 +0000

A week has already gone by and it’s time again for the Art News Roundup, Yeeehaw! This week many great things happened that we would have loved to cover but Duncan died on the Oregon Trail from a snakebite and Richard got dysentery. Christopher and Amanda made it only to open a saloon in a local mining town where Amanda sings twice nightly and Christopher rigs the roulette wheel to never fall red cause you always bet on black.

What can a bankrupt art investor do after he/she looses their home? Sleep in the Guggenheim!
Called “theanyspacewhatever,” the Guggenheim’s latest offering includes a hotel room, created by Carsten Holler — one of 10 artists who make up the exhibition in which artists mix visual arts with other disciplines such as literature, architecture, design and theatre.

The Swedish-based Holler asked if the museum would consider the concept of a sleepover for his Revolving Hotel Room.

“We were very interested in it, because it does in many ways encapsulate the concerns of these artists to really stretch the parameters of what a museum can be,” chief curator Nancy Spector said.

“At night our guests will be able to stay in the museum and enjoy the exhibition by themselves.”

London council votes to paint over Banksy, then installs a camera to watch the camera that didn’t catch him”
Westminster city council in London decided Friday to paint over guerilla-artist Banksy’s largest work in the city.

The council ordered the removal to send a message to graffiti artists.

Robert Davis, deputy leader of the council and chair, told BBC News, “If you condone this then you condone graffiti all over London.” To that I say your right but damn if it isn’t better then any graffiti I have seen in a long while.

Sotheby’s Lost $15 Million Paying Guarantees
Sotherby undersold artworks in auction or failed to sell whatsoever to the tune of $15 million US on guarantees of a minimum price the auction house had with sellers, Sotheby’s said in a filing late yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Good news? with the US dollar at it’s current rate it isn’t that much.

Bilbao’s Guggenheim overpays for art
Director Thomas Krens travels the world living like a playboy and overpaying (for no ulterior motive beyond he’s just a good guy I am sure) with no regard to the bottom line or profitability of the larger company? That is unheard of in the art world! I am [mock] shocked, surprised and amazed that someone can be that irresponsible?

Russians Turning To Art Market As Recession Looms
Russia decides now is the time to get into the Art Market and fair activities. It’s so crazy it brilliant! Now is the time to buy, when no one has the liquid cash. I guess sitting on the worlds diamonds makes that easier to do then most?

Christo and Jeanne-Claude fight to drape a 40 mile stretch of the Arkansas River in Colorado
[artist name] fights [city name] council to enable [cloth type] to be publicly displayed [fill with large dramatic environmental scenario] but some say it’s a stunt that has run it’s course and only props museums needs for tent pole events to get attention. Yet others say it’s an epic event that is shocking and helps elevate the cultural awareness of artistic institutions that glow in the presence of such temporary one of a kind installations over permanent collection additions.

Art News Roundup: Week 1

Christopher — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:02:00 +0000

Weekly art news roundup with all the news that we’re too busy to cover, but still talk about around the chuck wagon water cooler. Yeeehaaw lets get started:

Pulitzer widow donates art, $45M to Harvard art museum:
The Harvard Art Museum has received a gift of 31 works of art and $45 million US from Emily Rauh Pulitzer, a former assistant curator, 1963 Harvard graduate, spouse of Joseph Pulitzer Jr., and also was assistant curator of drawings at the museum from 1957 to 1964. This marks the largest gift in the history of the museum.

3 Canadian projects recognized for sustainable design:
The Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction has recognized three Canadian projects in its annual awards for the most environmentally responsible construction projects. The winners: The Living With Lakes Centre in Sudbury, Ont. – The Evergreen Brick Works project in Toronto. – The North Vancouver Outdoor School.

National Gallery exhibit designed to interact with viewers:
The National Gallery of Canada opens an exhibition Friday that’s designed to display how much impact a viewer can have on a work of art, rather than the other way around. Caught in the Act: The Viewer as Performer is made up of 17 large works, many of which interact with the viewer.

Birmingham Named Britain’s Ugliest City:
More than a third of 1,111 people surveyed thought Birmingham had the ugliest buildings in the country. Ugliest building? Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre has “won” that prize.

Roman Sim City Brought To Life:
A team of archaeologists, scientists and software programmers has created a 3D virtual model of the city of Cologne as it was 2,000 years ago. Though not yet online, the software allows visitors to fly through the city in its Roman glory, just in time for Gladiator 2: Chariots of Fire.

Damien Hirst Tops Art Review’s Power 100:
The uber-seller is no. 1 on the British magazine’s list of the art world’s most powerful people for the second time; runners-up include dealer Larry Gagosian and MoMA’s Kathy Halbreich. With the art world conquered he next shoots for Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Award.

Southern Illinois To Get Major Art Gift
New Yorkers Herbert and Dorothy Vogel… working with the National Gallery of Art in Washington and federal arts agencies, chose the University Museum at Southern Illinois University to receive 50 pieces [of the Vogel collection.] The gift is part of a plan announced in April to donate 50 works from the Vogels to one art institution in each state. Ten recipients were named then, and announcements about the remaining 40 are expected this week. Forget Harvard like it needs the money!

You Fucking Sellout.

duncan — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:03:51 +0000

Lori Waxman sent me a note today saying that I had too check out this blog and post something about it. She was right. I love the Sellout Blog.

It is the perfect blend of useful information and random “experience of life in the arts, style life dissections.”

Other notable blogosphere art things…

Art Info Updated their site design and have been posting steadily and it is often worth checking out for Museum and blue chip level stuff.

Art Review magazine rebuilt their whole set up to be the most bizarrely exhaustive art site on the interweb. Part Art Magazine, part Art MySpace, and part open source art blog, it proposes itself as all thing contemporary art. It might be but it is so big it scares me and I open it an have trouble remembering what I was looking for.

I also have to mention New Art TV which is an all art, web oriented video “channel.” Because who doesn’t want to watch Alex Katz talk about his boring paintings. (It is better then the paintings themselves)

Mark Wallinger: Turner Prize Winner.

duncan — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:07:46 +0000

Last week it was announced that Mark Wallinger would be the recipient of this years Turner prize. Lucky for all of Chicago as he still has a show up at Donald Young Gallery.

Artist builds hidden apartment in a Mall, gets arrested after 4 years.

Richard Holland — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:49:51 +0000

A Providence, Rhode Island artist was arrested day by mall security as he left the secret apartment he’d built almost four years ago, in an unused utility space in the mall’s parking garage. The apartment which had no running water (they used mall bathrooms) did include “a sectional sofa and love seat, coffee and breakfast tables, chairs, lamps, rugs, paintings, a hutch filled with china, a waffle iron, TV and Sony Playstation 2,” according to the Boston Globe.

The man, with the help of seven other artists, built the apartment and various people have lived in it over the past few years for up to three weeks at a time. The artist’s website about the project offers both an explanation of the “installation,” and a few strained apologies that sound suspiciously court-ordered.One of which includes this “thank you”:

“Thank you mall. I have grown exponentially from having this opportunity and it has been a major and most valuable part of my life and imagination. In the future I hope to share some of my experiences and observations with a wider audience and can only say that living in the mall is great. I am saddened that I am not allowed to ever return to the mall again, but I understand. The mall made me think very carefully about what we buy.”

Are gardens art? When do you own art? When can you destroy art?

Christopher — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:30:35 +0000

Chapman Kelley calls the Chicago, IL Grant Park wildflower garden he created more than 20 years ago “my Mona Lisa.”

The 66,000-square-foot plot of 45 different kinds of species splashed yellow and purple when in full bloom was once called a “magnificent piece of art.” by then Mayor Harold Washington.

But is the garden — or was it, before the Chicago Park District halved it — art by legal definition? Can you own art, does the buyer/commisoner own it and therefor destroy it when it sees fit to? Those questions and more go before a federal judge today in regards to the lawsuit filed by Mr. Kelley.

In consideration is the federal Visual Artists Rights Act which protects the destruction or alteration of works of art of “recognized stature”. The city posits that the law awsa created to protect outdoor paintings, murals & sculpture and not to protect gardens. Mr. Kelley is stating that his garden is an environmental sculpture.

Kelley is a painter, but his garden in Daley Bicentennial Plaza, just east of Millennium Park, brought him his greatest praise. It appeared in travel guides. And at one point, the district compared Kelley to other “heroes of Chicago landscape” such as Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Jackson Park.

Is it protected art, what is the right of the artist, what is the right of the commissioner, if artists can not get longevity and recognition from public work will they continue to do it? If cities have to fear lawsuits and damages in the 6 figure or higher level when they redesign city areas will that put a freeze on public art commissions?

Miami Art Collection Crumbles

Christopher — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:59:15 +0000

Miami-Dade has spent three decades — and more than $33 million — building one of the largest and richest art collections in Florida, destined to enhance courthouses, libraries, transit stations, the airport and the seaport. Now many are missing, dying, destroyed or just in general disarry. Romare Bearden’s etching The Train [missing], George Tice’s photograph Petit’s Mobil Station [missing], Robert Rauschenberg’s lithograph Unit (Buffalo) [missing] and the same goes for dozens of other artworks that have gone missing from Miami-Dade’s Art in Public Places program.

• A county audit of the program is under way to determine, among other things, why dozens of artworks have been lost or stolen.

• Signature works by seminal artists have deteriorated, with no money and no plans to restore them, while others sit in storage, belying the notion of art in public places.

• At least 20 works that together cost more than $800,000 have been dropped from the collection inventory because they are either damaged or missing.

• Program administrators still rely on an inconsistent, incomplete inventory to track and manage the collection.

At the center of the chaos is the tax-supported program that is supposed to oversee these works. Funded through a 1973 ordinance that sets aside 1.5 percent of public-building construction costs to underwrite art. It received $5 million last year and is projected to receive $1.5 million this year.
Many supporters say the program has strayed from its beginnings as a collection intended to beautify community spaces and educate residents about the value of art.

”Disappearance and neglect was never a part of the vision of the program,” says Ruth Shack, a former county commissioner and member of the first Art in Public Places selection committee, established in 1973.

County officials say, in turn, that Art in Public Places has been hindered by inadequate funding, hurricanes, computer failures and insufficient staff — and they do not foresee improvements soon.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez has proposed cutting the program’s six-member staff to three and folding it into the Department of Cultural Affairs as a cost-saving measure.

”It needs general funds, which is not about to happen now,” says Ivan Rodriguez, director of Art in Public Places, who has overseen the program since December 2000 and expects to retire this year. “That will make all the difference in the world. And everything falls in line with that.”

Over the years, program administrators have lost track of more than 10 percent of the collection — at least 87 pieces. And although the missing art initially cost about $95,000 in total, comparable works are fetching much more in today’s exuberant art market.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich down right unfriendly to artists.

duncan — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:48:24 +0000

We have received this a couple of times this week and the more we think about it the more evil it seems. What is up Rod? That seven million is not going to save your sinking popularity and taking funding from artists and arts organizations is just going to alienate another (mostly Chicago) constituency. (As if this crap with th El wasn’t enough Read here) We know who were voting against. And hey why not we are getting our pens out and letting our government know what we think. So should you.

Dear Friend in the Arts,
Governor Rod Blagojevich wants to cut over $7 million (30%) from the 2008 Illinois Art Council (IAC) budget. A chorus of voices is needed to restore state’s investment in the arts and arts education! We must act now to send a powerful message to Governor Rod Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones, House Speaker Michael Madigan, and other state lawmakers that the arts are not pork!

The Governor’s FY08 spending plan will significantly reduce the funds available for IAC grant programs, with a devastating impact on the arts statewide. Furthermore, the Governor completely eliminated the Arts and Foreign Language grant program through the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).

Please tell Governor Blagojevich, senate and house leadership, and your state lawmakers TODAY how essential the arts are to you and your community. The Illinois Arts Alliance has made it extremely easy for you to effectively advocate for the arts. Here is what you can do:

1) Write two e-letters to lawmakers using the talking points provided in the links below.

a. One requesting that funding for the Illinois Arts Council be restored to $23.2 million as proposed by the General Assembly on August 10, 2007

Click Here:
http://capwiz.com/artsusa/il/issues/alert/?alertid=10235401&type=ML&show_alert=1

b. The other urging lawmakers to restore funding to the Arts and Foreign Language grant program through the Illinois State Board of Education.

Click Here:
http://capwiz.com/artsusa/il/issues/alert/?alertid=10235931&type=ML&show_alert=1

2) Make two phone calls to the numbers listed below expressing your concern with the proposed budget cuts to the arts and urging that funding be fully restored for the Illinois Arts Council and the Illinois State Board of Education’s Arts and Foreign Language grant program.

a) Ginger Ostro
Budget Director for Governors Office of Management and Budget
Ginger.ostro@illinois.gov
312-814-0023

b) Governor Rod Blagojevich
312-814-2121 (Chicago) OR 217-558-0880 (Springfield)
The Illinois Arts Alliance is moving forward with an aggressive campaign to restore full funding for the Illinois Arts Council and arts and foreign language education funding at the Illinois State
Board of Education. We NEED your help now more than ever before! While the road ahead is rocky, together we can restore full funding for the arts in Illinois!

Should you have any questions or concerns please contact me at 312-855-3105 ext 14 or email joy@artsalliance.org

Sincerely,
Ra Joy
Executive Director
Illinois Arts Alliance

Hirst reported as major investor in the purchase of his own diamond skull

Christopher — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:09:54 +0000

As reported on Artnet and referred by Tony Fitzpatrick

HIRST BUYS HIS OWN SKULL. . .
“He only recognizes art with his wallet,” Damien Hirst once said of collector Charles Saatchi, “he believes he can affect art values with buying power, and he still believes he can do it.” The quote reverberated ironically as it was announced that Hirst himself was part of the investment group that is purchasing For the Love of God, his $100-million platinum-and-diamond skull, recently on view at the White Cube gallery in London.

Hirst’s involvement in the purchase (as well as the sale) raised immediate questions about the deal, with Bloomberg reporter Linda Sandler suggesting that perhaps “Hirst hasn’t yet found a final buyer for his most expensive artwork, at a time when hedge fund managers and other art collectors have lost money in the credit markets.” Several years ago, when Saatchi sold off his collection of Hirst works, the artist teamed up with his gallery, with much fanfare, to repurchase his own works — a move that no doubt boosted his market value, not unlike when corporations buy back their own stock to raise their share price.

“Three to four weeks of paperwork” remain before the transaction is completed, said Frank Dunphy, the artist’s partner and business manager. Dunphy declined to identify other investors involved in the purchase. Hirst is requiring that the object be exhibited internationally as part of the deal, according to the report on Bloomberg.

Hirst’s recent show at White Cube was reported to have totaled $262 million in sales. For the Love of God cost Hirst an estimated $20 million to fabricate. Asked if the gallery had retained any stake in the skull, a spokesperson replied, ”Not that I’m aware of.”

Bad at Sports » Art News

5 Chicago Collectors Make ARTnews’ Annual List of World’s Top Collectors

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Art News Roundup: Week 2

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You Fucking Sellout.

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Mark Wallinger: Turner Prize Winner.

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Artist builds hidden apartment in a Mall, gets arrested after 4 years.

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Are gardens art? When do you own art? When can you destroy art?

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Miami Art Collection Crumbles

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Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich down right unfriendly to artists.

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Hirst reported as major investor in the purchase of his own diamond skull

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