The Week That Was (Feb. 29 – March 7, 2008)

NEW YORK—This week the art market continued to send mixed messages. TEFAF opened with a bevy of sales but there were notes of collector caution and a gang of thieves who made off with a £1.2 million necklace. A market research company concluded that the February auctions, which were up 50 percent from last year, weren’t as good as they were thought to be. And the art fairs Pulse London and Photo-London were canceled. Not all the news was grim, however. Other reports cited the art market’s resilience despite volatility in the wider financial markets. Bonhams shattered records at an auction in Dubai. And a Damien Hirst spin painting sold for five times what it was bought for.

What else? Art dealer Larry Gagosian and one of his artists, Takashi Murakami, both opened new spaces this week. Gagosian’s is an annex to his Upper East Side digs where he will show Picasso and other modern masters. Murakami’s is a gallery in Japan under the auspices of his production company, Kaikai Kiki. The first exhibition there will include work by Mark Grotjahn, who shows with Gagosian.

And the borders between the commercial and noncommercial worlds continue to be porous. To advise him in his new venture, Gagosian hired Picasso scholar John Richardson. To open its upcoming New York space, London’s Albion gallery has hired former Whitney and SFMOMA director David Ross.

As one of the projects for the Whitney Biennial, which opened last week, Ellen Harvey is sketching portraits of visitors to the exhibition. A public art project by artist Raul Vincent features photos of pedestrians in Times Square projected onto a skyscraper. Artist Chris Burden will construct a giant toy skyscraper in Rockefeller Center. A charity auctioned a lunch date with artist Jeff Koons. And dealer Moti Hasson made a small fortune on The Celebrity Apprentice.

Following a legal battle with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Fisk University will keep works donated by O’Keeffe in 1949. A collector feels “victimized” after having sold a cache of Diane Arbus photos for what he now feels was too low a price. And an Italian police officer in the art protection squad effectively turned himself in by returning 42 missing artworks, when only 34 were reported missing.