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Featured Image: Yayoi Kusama, Flowers that Bloom in the Cosmos (2022), commissioned for the Sydney Modern Project with funds provided by the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation and the Gandel Foundation 2022 © Yayoi Kusama. Photo: © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Zan Wimberley.

In a surprising move, Gerhard Richter is leaving Marian Goodman Gallery after 37 years to join David Zwirner. “I’m happy to be represented by David Zwirner. I have known David since his childhood as I had already in the 1960s worked closely with his father, Rudolf Zwirner,” Richter said in a statement. “I feel this represents a beautiful continuity across generations.”

Philipp Kaiser, Goodman’s president and a partner at the gallery is supportive and understanding of the move stating, “We are very proud to have represented one of the most remarkable artists of our time for nearly 40 years…We acknowledge his decision at this stage of his life.”

Richter will have a solo show in the gallery’s New York space opening March 2023. “To be able to work with Gerhard Richter is an immense honor and a great privilege. Richter has, without a doubt, created one of the most conceptually complex and aesthetically heterogeneous oeuvres in the history of art,” Zwirner said in a statement. “By avoiding adherence to any single ideology or dogma, Richter has been able to both celebrate and subvert the very act of painting. In the process, he has single-handedly opened up the medium to entirely new possibilities and investigations.”

 

Ever wanted to feel like The King? Now is your chance with Elvis Presley’s private jet being offered at auction with Mecum in Kissimmee, FL, January 2023. The auction house, who specializes in car auctions, will be offering the 1962 JetStar recently rescued from 30 years sitting on an uncovered tarmac in Roswell, New Mexico.

The aircraft will need a new engine and cockpit to fly again, but reached maximum speeds of 565 mph with a fuel range of 2,500 miles in its heyday. The aircraft was one of 202 models produced in collaboration with Lockheed, the year before Presely’s 1977 death. Complete with original wood paneling, red velvet seats and couch, microwave, bar, and television, the plane is a time capsule of Hollywood luxury.

Presley had several planes throughout his career with a comparable plane having sold at auction in 2017. Mecum’s site says a Saudi Arabian company acquired another smaller Jetstar of Presely’s for $430,000 after similarly being retrieved a tarmac at Roswell International Air Center’s airplane graveyard. The sale carried a $3.5 million estimate.

The estimate for this Jetstar has not been released by the auction house yet, but they have already stated that they will be offering coordination assistance for whoever buys the aircraft, since it will need to be taken apart before shipping. Its pieces will arrive with paperwork, including copies of the Aircraft Security Agreement document signed by Presley, its Aircraft Bill of Sale, and Official FAA Blue Ribbon documents.

 

Authorities have seized nearly two dozen antiquities from the collection of Shelby White, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the course of 18 months, authorities issued a search warrant for White’s apartment, subsequently confiscating 5 pieces, and then another search, conducted in April of 2022, seizing an additional 18 objects.

White’s collection has consistently drawn controversy for containing objects that are believed to have been unethically sourced. Collecting with her late husband, Wall Street investor Leon Levy, the pair amassed an impressive collection of works, 200 pieces of which were loaned to the Met for their 1990 exhibition “Glories of the Past: Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection.” However, some researchers commented that over 93% of the works in the exhibition had no known provenance, raising red flags and questions of ownership and possible looting.

Homeland Security agents found “reasonable cause” to suspect that the artifacts in the recent seizure were stolen from their country of origin. They constitute evidence of criminal possession of stolen property in the first, second, third, and fourth degrees, according to the documents. These artworks are not the first examples of works in White’s collection that have been restituted. In 2008, she repatriated nine Greek and Etruscan objects to Italy after government involvement and claims that the pieces were illegally exported. Again in 2011, a sculpture she co-owned with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was returned to Turkey.

The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, has announced a new Web3 gallery initiative aptly named, The Duchess Gallery. Created in partnership with Nifty Gateway with technical production support provided by BLKPRL Studios and Candy Studios, the gallery will mint what they call “Cinematic Fine Art,”A.I. art, animated paintings, special effects, and spoken word poetry.

The gallery’s first show, “Gateway To The Self,” will be a collaboration between the Duchess herself, actor Laurence Fuller, and artists David Cheifetz, Mathijs, Jenni Pasanen, and Tania Rivilis. The news was announced during Miami Art Week 2022 with the launch taking place on December 22.

“As technology evolves, traditional aesthetics can find a new life in this contemporary viral world,” Ferguson said in a statement. “I am delighted to work collaboratively with renowned artists, and as well highlight emerging artists worldwide to expand my passion for storytelling through art.”

“Seeing the Duchess of York enter the digital art space is incredible validation for the medium,” Griffin Cock Foster, founder of Nifty Gateway, said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to host this gorgeous, exciting collection from the Duchess of York on Nifty Gateway.”

Australia’s “Sydney Modern”, the unofficial name for the $228 million transformation of the old Art Gallery of New South Wales, is being celebrated as one of Sydney’s most important cultural assets, after the Sydney Opera House. With a focus on modern and contemporary art, Sydney Modern is being compared to the Tate Modern and Guggenheim for the caliber and focus of the collection. The revamped gallery includes a new building, a public art garden, and an update to its late 19th century galleries.

The collection houses over 30,000 works, including premier Australian and Aboriginal Australian art, European art, and Asian art that spans the 15th to the late 20th centuries. Another important part of the Sydney Modern is its new Yiribana Gallery, dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. “An Indigenous lens is held up across our displays as they powerfully herald new art histories to be written from here,” said director of collections Maud Page in a statement to the press.

The new building also features a permanent display that spotlights more women artists than men. “Our curatorial narratives are amplified through networks connecting the urgent social issues that motivate artists in the 21st century, including gender, race, the value of labor, and a strong concern for the precariousness of the natural world,” said Page.