The Week That Was (March 21 – 28, 2008)

NEW YORK—During a week in which the juicy news breaks that superstar Jeff Koons’s porn star ex-wife is suing him for child support, it can be tough to zero in on the serious stuff. And yet… Scotland Yard seized two 18th-century paintings by Francesco Guardi that had been taken out of Italy illegally, archeaologists discovered that some 1,000 ancient artifacts decorating a rich Italian's home had been stolen from a first-century Roman emperor’s villa, and the Austrian government is broadening rules governing restitution, such that private foundations like Vienna’s Leopold Museum will be subject to claims.

Starchitects are ever in the news. Even as the Guardian pondered whether Frank Gehry's Serpentine pavilion project, for which plans have just been unveiled, might help him make inroads into building in Britain — "It was never the point of the Serpentine pavilions to act as Trojan horses for top architects, of course, but wouldn't it be good if they did?" wrote Steve Rose on the paper's blog — New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff lamented the possibility that plans for a Gehry-designed basketball stadium in Brooklyn might go forward, but, due to lack of funds, the proposed adjacent set of buildings, also by Gehry, could be scrapped. "Postpone the towers and expose the stadium, and it becomes a piece of urban blight — a black hole at a crucial crossroads of the city’s physical history," the critic declared. Another starchitect’s design was cause for befuddlement in Moscow. A firm owned by the mayor’s wife announced plans for a new Norman Foster building that could replace the Central House of Artists, but the director of the Tretyakov gallery, which is housed within the Central House, knew nothing of the plans. Meanwhile, in Paris, a bold redesign of the Eiffel Tower's viewing platform and reception area has sparked some controversy as well.

Not a week goes by in which the art world isn’t dogged by controversy. After protests from local activists, the San Francisco Art Institute canceled an exhibition of video art by Adel Abdessemed depicting the bludgeoning of animals. A controversial sculpture of an inverted church by Dennis Oppenheim will be removed from a Vancouver park after residents complained about its view and the fact that it blocks views. Meanwhile, a group of Czech artists was let off the hook – a judge determined that their award-winning artwork involving superimposing mushroom clouds on a landscape during a live weather forecast did not, in fact, constitute scaremongering. Opponents of the Barnes Foundation's move to downtown Philadelphia urged the judge who approved that decision in 2004 to let them argue for keeping the collection in suburban Lower Merion, Pennsylvania.

Winds of change in London… The new director of the National Gallery said that, contrary to the museum's previous push to incorporate more recent art, he would prefer beefing up the museum's collection of 19th-century holdings to acquiring modern and contemporary. He also discovered that a Veronese in the museum’s basement is not a copy but an original. And a curator discovered that another of the museum’s paintings, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, once hung in Hitler’s apartment.

In market news, it was musical chairs in Cologne when Los Angeles gallerist Daniel Hug was hired to run the Art Cologne fair. His predecessor, Gerard Goodrow, who was pushed out following a letter from dealers complaining about the fair’s “bitter loss of status,” will open a new Cologne office for auctioneer Phillips de Pury & Co.

There was also plenty of news about who will be coming to market. A collection of Chinese contemporary art amassed by New York dealer Michael Goedhuis that was bought by New York’s Acquavella Galleries in August, and that Sotheby’s now has a financial stake in, will come up for sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong next month. Sotheby’s New York, meanwhile, is gearing up to sell a Francis Bacon painting in May; it’s estimated at $70 million. The house will also auction off some 34 works from German private collectors Helga and Walther Lauffs' sizable holdings. Christie’s will auction a rediscovered Watteau painting estimated at $3–5 million in London in July. In a stroke of bad luck for the American Folk Art Museum, collector Ralph Esmerian will sell Edward Hicks's famous painting The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity at Sotheby’s in May, rather than donate it to the museum, as had originally been planned. And late dealer Ileana Sonnabend’s outstanding collection of postwar American art could also hit the block soon, as her family looks to pay off taxes on her $400 million estate.