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 Venice Week and for all of you at the Biennale, stay dry. Here’s a round-up of the art trade’s comings and goings.
Industry Moves
• Robert Therrien Estate Leaves Gagosian for David Zwirner: The late sculptor’s work was recently surveyed by the Broad museum in Los Angeles.
• Olney Gleason Now Represents Jill Magid: The artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery will open at the gallery on June 11. She is currently having an exhibition at New York’s Mister Fahrenheit gallery.
• Tianyue Zhong Joins Marianne Boesky Gallery: Zhong’s work will be featured in the gallery’s Art Basel booth in June, followed by her debut New York solo exhibition in 2027.
• OCHI and Management to Co-Represent Africanus Okokon: Based in Providence, Rhode Island, the artist is known films, installations, paintings, assemblages, and more that deal with the concept of memory.
• Seung Ah Paik Has Joined Bortolami: Her current exhibition at the New York gallery runs in tandem with a presentation of her art at the Rubell Museum in Miami. Bortolami will represent her alongside New York’s Gratin gallery.
• Sebastian Gladstone Gallery Now Represents the Franne Davids Estate: A solo presentation of Davids’s work is on view at the gallery’s Los Angeles location through May 16. Sebastian Gladstone will represent the estate alongside Ricco/Maresca.
• Khalif Tahir Thompson Heads to Victoria Miro: The London-based gallery, which represents the artist alongside Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery, will show new work by the artist at Frieze New York, then stage a solo show in the British capital in October.
• Miriam Machado Named Director of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum: She previously served as interim director and has been a part of the museum’s leadership team for more than 15 years.
The Big Number
$1 M.
That’s roughly what it can cost just to retrofit a single Biennale venue with basic infrastructure like electricity and air conditioning, before a single artwork goes on view. In Venice, many spaces aren’t built for exhibitions, so organizers are effectively turn historic buildings into temporary museums on tight timelines. Add in rent, and the price can hit $30,000 to $50,000 a month when also accounting for complex shipping routes, security, and installation. Staging a show in the city is less about hanging art and more about building a working system from scratch.
Read This
According to the Art Newspaper, the Venice Biennale has stopped pretending it isn’t a marketplace. This year, Christie’s is hosting an invitation-only selling show at Palazzo Ca’ Dario with works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, and others priced from $500,000 to $50 million, while other exhibitions across the city are also quietly or openly for sale. The article makes clear that this isn’t a sudden shift so much as a change in tone. Dealers and collectors have been underwriting Biennale shows for years, covering production, shipping, and staffing, but now they are more willing to say the obvious out loud: they need to sell for this whole enterprise to work. Add in Italy’s new 5 percent VAT on art imports and the fact that many of the works are newly made and priced on the primary market, and Venice starts to look less like a staging ground for future deals and more like a place where the deals actually happen. —Daniel Cassady, Art Business Reporter
