Billionaire Steven Cohen MIA at ABMB, Romania Demands Brancusi's Body, and More

Language English

by BLOUIN ARTINFO

Published: December 7, 2012

— Steven Cohen a No-Show in Miami: As his $14-billion company, SAC Capital Advisors LP, braces for an insider trading investigation, billionaire art collector Steven Cohen is conspicuously absent at this week's Art Basel Miami Beach fair and its many satellites, where his purchases have accounted for a good deal of gallerists' business in past years — while some speculate that he may even begin to sell works from his prized collection if things go badly for his firm. "We would absolutely hate to have him not active in the market, I can wholeheartedly say that," said gallerist David Zwirner. "This man is a friend of mine. I called him last week — 'How are you? What’s going on?' I think the art world is rooting for him. I’m rooting for him. I wish he were here right now." [Bloomberg, NYT]

— Romania Wants Brancusi's Body: Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta has announced that his government plans to begin legal proceedings to have the body of the Romanian-born French sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) exhumed from Paris's Montparnasse Cemetery and repatriated to Romania. "The government is calling upon a cabinet of Parisian lawyers to obtain all the necessary decrees and legal permits necessary so that Constantin Brancusi's remains may be exhumed and brought to Targu Jiu," Ponta said. Shortly before his death, Brancusi — who spent his childhood in the Romanian town of Targu Jiu — told a bishop in Paris that he was sad to be dying in France and not in his home country. [AFP]

— Artists Play Beach Soccer on Miami Moonscape: The French artist duo Kolkoz have brought their national pastime — soccer — to Miami Beach, where they have organized a three-day beach soccer tournament on a stretch of sand sculpted to resemble the surface of the moon as documented by the Apollo 11 mission. The tourney, sited between the W Hotel and the Setai and presented by Galerie Perrotin (which represents the duo), features four teams clad in shiny outfits corresponding to their names — Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Copper — and star players including Art Basel Miami Beach director Marc Spiegler, his predecessor Sam Keller, artists Bhakti Baxter and Jesper Just. The final playoff is schedule for 4 p.m. on Saturday. [TAN]

— How Poly Came to Rival Christie's and Sotheby's: In the seven years since its first sale, Poly Auction has grown from a subsidiary of a unit of the People's Liberation Army, focused on returning artifacts that had been stolen or exported to China, into the third largest auction house in the world, thanks chiefly to the country's emerging middle class and in spite of the relatively lax laws regulating the domestic art and antiquities market. "We're just getting started in collecting in China," he says. "There's a whole generation of wealth coming up now," said the head of Poly Auction Zhao Xu. "They all have a house and a car. Next, they'll buy art." [WSJ]

— Arts Cuts Killing Public Art in Europe: For the past 20 years European governments — municipal, regional, and national — have seen public art as a way of revitalizing depressed or downtrodden locales, and fostering a more cosmopolitan (and tourist-friendly) culture. As the continent continues to suffer through a widespread recession, however, non-profits are increasingly looking to private sector organizations to help boost public art funding, a model that has already become the norm in the United States. "Nobody would question the notion that a city's theaters, galleries, concert halls and museums are an important part of what that city has to offer," said Yorkshire Sculpture Park program director Clare Lilley. "It is curious, therefore, that people don't consider public sculpture an important part of the civic landscape." [WSJ]

— Margaret Lee Nabs NADA Miami Award: Artist Margaret Lee, whose still-life inspired installation and photography work is featured in the booths of both Milwaukee's The Green Gallery East and New York's Jack Hanley Gallery at this week's NADA Miami fair, has been selected as the recipient the Artadia NADA Award, which comes with an unrestricted $4,000 cash prize and was juried by MoMA PS1 curator Peter Eleey and Kunsthalle Zurich director Beatrix Ruf. Lee, who was born in the Bronx and co-founded the Lower East Side gallery 47 Canal, will be featured in upcoming exhibitions at Murray Guy, PS1, and Jack Hanley. [Press Release]

— S.F. Museums Curator Leaves Mysteriously: Lynn Orr's 29-year tenure as a curator of European art at Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) — the private non-profit that runs the city-owned De Young Museum and Legion of Honor Museum— has come to an end, but the conditions of her departure remain unknown. "I don't know whether she's been fired or quit or is being required to take a sabbatical. No one has given us an explanation," said FAMSF registrar Steven Lockwood. "She's an enormous asset to this institution. She knows things about the European collection that no one else does. She can't be replaced." [SFChronicle]

— Whitney Curator Rothkopf Promoted: Scott Rothkopf, a curator at the Whitney Museum since 2009 — in which time he curated a major solo show by Glenn Ligon and the current Wade Guyton survey — has been named to the newly created position of Curator and Associate Director of Programs, which will have him working closely with the museum's chief curator and deputy director of programs, Donna De Salvo. His next major project is the 2014 Jeff Koons retrospective that will nearly fill the Whitney's entire Marcel Breuer building before the institution moves downtown. "Three years ago we welcomed Scott as one of the most important emerging voices in the field," De Salvo said. "He has made enormous contributions to the Museum as a curator and demonstrated a talent for the kind of broad and strategic thinking that will be invaluable to the team as we chart the Whitney’s future." [Press Release]

— Italian Police Save Stolen Sphinx: A 2,000-year-old Egyptian statue of a Sphinx that had recently disappeared from a necropolis outside Rome was recovered by Italian authorities before its thief could smuggle it — and other ancient artifacts — out of the country and onto the black market. The Ptolemaic-era artifact was only discovered after pictures of it turned up during a police inspection of what turned out to be the thief's truck. "The investigation began with a random check of an industrial vehicle during which police found a decorative ceramic object from an excavation as well as many photos of the Egyptian sculpture," a police statement explained. [AFP]

— Rubells' Resident Artist Reveals All: This summer U.K.-based artist Oscar Murillo was the resident artist at Miami's Rubell Family Collection, super-collector Mera and Donald Rubell's private museum, where he lived in an apartment adjoining the museum and was able to work on his series of large-scale paintings — five of which will be exhibited at the Collection — at all hours of the night. "It wasn’t like a commission—I was never told 'we want this type of work,' but I knew I was going to have a show in that space and there were certain things I wanted to focus on," Murillo said. "However, there was enough time to treat the space as a studio and not assume that certain works were going to be shown." [TAN]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

ARTINFO editor-in-chief Benjamin Genocchio tours his favorite booths at Art Basel Miami Beach: