Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
Happy Wednesday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week.
Industry Moves
Coco Fusco and Jeffrey Gibson Named Speakers for Johns Hopkins’s Sam Gilliam Lecture Series: The artists will each deliver a free talk at the university’s Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C.—Fusco on June 8, Gibson on November 12—as part of a series supported by the Sam Gilliam Foundation.
Hamptons Black Arts Council Announces Plans for Sag Harbor Artist Residency: Founded in 2023 by artist and curator Storm Ascher, the nonprofit is raising funds to establish a permanent artist residency on Black-owned land in one of America’s oldest free Black settlements.
MCA Denver Receives $1 Million Gift for Free Youth Admission: The donation from philanthropist Amanda Precourt, of the Precourt Foundation, will make entry free for all visitors 18 and under through June 30, 2031.
Xavier Hufkens Takes on Richard Aldrich: The New York–based painter will show with the Brussels gallery at Art Basel in June before a first solo exhibition there in spring 2027.
Galatea Announces Representation of Grauben do Monte Lima’s Estate: The Brazilian gallery will represent the legacy of the late self-taught painter, who began painting at 70 and went on to produce an estimated 3,000 works before her death in 1972.
Green Art Gallery Adds Fatma Al Ali to Roster: The Sharjah-based artist works across sculpture, installation, and the moving image, drawing on archival research and oral histories to examine land, memory, and colonial frameworks in the Gulf region.
Richard Rezac Joins Chris Sharp Gallery: The influential American sculptor is known for precisely crafted works in bronze, aluminum, and wood that draw on furniture and architectural detail.
Oakland Museum of California Receives Gift of Ceramics and $1 Million Endowment: The Brian and Edith Heath Foundation donated more than 100 objects by pioneering California ceramicist Edith Heath, expanding the museum’s Heath holdings to over 200 works, along with funds to support the long-term care of craft and decorative arts.
Big Number: $18 M.
That’s the high estimate for Banksy’s Girl and Balloon on Found Landscape, a painting from the artist’s “Crude Oils” series, set to hit the block in an invitation-only live auction staged by Fair Warning inside Tiffany & Co.’s Fifth Avenue flagship. The sale is just the third time Fair Warning has staged a live auction.
Read This
The art world may be focused on New York this week, after a Venice vernissage by turns celebratory and combustible, but the New York Times has its eye further east. A feature by international editor Mercedes Hutton profiles one of Asia’s most important art collectors, the Swiss businessman Uli Sigg, whose collection forms the backbone of Hong Kong’s M+ museum. Sigg’s intention was always to gift the collection—a nearly 1,500-work group of Chinese contemporary art spanning everything from painting to performance and digital art—to a Chinese institution, so that it could be seen by the public. M+ proved a perfect match, as its location in Hong Kong provided more freedom in what to exhibit. But, as Hutton lays out, Hong Kong has changed dramatically in the 15 years since his donation, leading to a narrowing of which works can be shown. Among the pieces no longer considered acceptable: a photograph from “Study of Perspective,” a series by Ai Weiwei in which the artist’s middle finger is raised before world landmarks. The photograph in question showed Ai’s finger in front of Tiananmen Gate.
