— Betting Big on Hirst Comeback: Swashbuckling dealers, collectors, and advisers are wagering on a Damien Hirst resurgence to follow the October opening of his new free museum, Newport Street Gallery, in south London, which will present his private collection of works by other artists. Their concerted effort to revive Hirst’s market could catapult the artist’s fallen prices, which suffered in the post-recession years. Jose Mugrabi, a New York dealer with a 120-piece Hirst collection, just bought $33-million dollar work off the artist a few months ago. “I’m telling anybody who will listen to buy him because Damien Hirst is here to stay,” art advisor Kim Heirston. This might prove a good study of the contemporary art market caprices, controlled by a few art-world elite, the Journal’s Kelly Crow suggests. [WSJ, Art Market Monitor]
— Koch Brothers “Giving Back” to Kansas: The Koch brothers, who made their billions in Kansas with a little family business called Koch Industries, are pouring $10.5 million into the Wichita Center for the Arts, which will move to new premises. Controversy often follows their giving — some scientists have asked that museums reject David Koch’s money because of his support of climate change denial, for instance — but so far, no signs of that. The new Wichita campus will include a performing arts theatre, art gallery, and education spaces. [LAT]
— Incoming DIA Director to Raise Endowment: Amid the noise surrounding news of Salvador Salort-Pons’s promotion at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) yesterday, we missed an important comment by the incoming director regarding the scale of his financial ambitions. In an interview with reporter and blogger Lee Rosenbaum, Salort-Pons admitted that the previous endowment target of $400 million, floated during the “grand bargain” talks that saved the museum’s collection from Detroit’s bankruptcy creditors, is out. The new figure is $600 to 700 million, which is in line with comparable endowments at institutions of DIA’s size (when the $400 million figure was first floated, the New York Times observed that the Cleveland Museum of Art’s endowment was $700 million). For DIA, that’s a long way to go; the endowment currently stands at $124.4 million. [CultureGrrl]
— A Walk to Remember: Art news monopolists Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor took a hike across London yesterday. But it wasn’t any old stroll: their eight-mile journey was done in solidarity with the refugee crisis. [TAN]
— Getty Lands Tuchman Archive: The Getty Research Institute has acquired records from Maurice Tuchman’s storied tenure as curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 1964-1994. The archive comprises a range of materials, from correspondence to audio and video, and relates to such artists as Edward Kienholz, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, and R. B. Kitaj. [Artforum, Artdaily]
— Hirschhorn Museum Doubles Board: The Washington, DC institution has expanded its board to 21 members, seven of whom are based in the capital. “In the first year of Melissa Chiu’s tenure as director, fundraising is up 50 percent, board support has increased 75 percent and most important, museum attendance is up 27 percent,” board chair Peggy Burnet said. [Washington Post]
—An unidentified vandal has defaced Munich’s Haus der Kunst with anti-Semitic graffiti. [Artnet, Bayerische Rundfunk]
— Following the Honolulu Art Museum provenance feud, Joel Alexander Green has lodged a countersuit against the museum for breaching contract and damages. [ARTnews]
— Collector Nicolas Berggruen has launched Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center in Los Angeles, and announced a $1 million philosophy prize. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama, writer Alain de Botton, and journalist Fareed Zakaria are on the advisory board, among others. [Artnet, Berggruen Institute]
