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Art Business News, March, 2001

It takes a price tag of $50 million to make the top-10 list, but Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Lady" did all right, going for $29 million at Christie's in London--a grand $22 million above the estimate.

In Vienna, Egon Schiele's "Portrait of the Art Dealer Guidot Arnot" sold for a record $20,365,890. Arnot was the first dealer in Austria to sustain a committed interest in Schiele's work.

The Dia Foundation in New York hit the $50 million mark, receiving two $25 million donations which will go toward the completion of its new satellite museum in the Hudson River Valley at Beacon, N.Y., in the year 2002.

Construction starts this year on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on a new Ukrainian Museum. The $3.5 million for the 17,800-square-foot building on Sixth Street is the gift of Eugene Shklar of Keynote Systems in San Mateo, Calif., a provider of Internet consulting and other services.

At the same time, Mayor Giuliani's administration plans to move the Museum of the City of New York from its home along the "museum mile" stretch of Fifth Avenue to the notorious Tweed CourthoUse on City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. As in days of yore, the venerable courthouse is still setting building cost records. A recent renovation went from a $37 million estimate to an actual cost of $89 million.

Ursus, the New York-based art book store on West Broadway, has decided to go with the flow and is moving to Chelsea, relocating to 132 West 21st Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

Dealer Michael Steinberg, founder of the fabled "Blue Parrot" print gallery on Manhattan's Madison Avenue, is teaming up with Jeffrey Deitch to launch "Deitch/Steinberg Editions." They plan to release prints and multiples of a variety of "leading artists of the younger generation" in relatively small editions, from 15 to 60, with prices to match.

At the advance-screening of Ed Harris's film biography, Pollock, present among the sprinkling of art-crowd celebrities was painter Jasper Johns. His date for the evening was Jocelyn "Catwoman" Wildenstein, recently divorced from the art dealing clan.

Art and Hollywood continue to go hand-in-hand. Steve Martin's stage play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," is set for filming. Australian Fred Schepisi is to direct this fiction about a meeting between Picasso and Albert Einstein in a Parisian cafe.

The Golden Boy of Las Vegas, Wayne Newton, recently paid a visit to the NYPD headquarters where with many a thank you he picked up "Anemones," a work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The painting, worth $80,000, was among 20 pieces of artwork owned by Newton which were stolen from a Las Vegas storage unit in 1994.

Another of life's mysteries has been put to rest, or so says Dr. Margaret Livingston, a Harvard neuroscientist. This time it's the smile of the "Mona Lisa." It's all an optical illusion. Look at the eyes in the painting; you see the smile. Look at the mouth, you don't. It all has to do with the construction of the human eye, with its central and peripheral vision areas.

Turks are finding out what Americans have long known: Cartoons can be dangerous to your health. There, Health Minister Osman Durmus has asked television stations to stop broadcasting Pokemon cartoons after a second child jumped from an apartment balcony trying to imitate characters from the popular show. Earlier, a four-year-old boy tried to fly; the second time it was a 7-year-old girl.

In neighboring Greece, the quiet war between Greece and Great Britain over the rights to the treasures of the Acropolis has taken a fresh turn. Foreign Minister George Papandreou promises that a new Acropolis Museum will open in time for the 2004 Olympic Games and that by that time, Athens will have the Elgin Marbles back.

In Rome, 31 years after it was declared unsafe, the Vittoriano, the national monument in the Piazza Venezia commemorating King Victor Emanuel II, has reopened after a restoration job costing $4.5 million. A bookstore and cafeteria are scheduled to open shortly.

in Chicago, the Terra Foundation for the Arts has announced its $4-million acquisition of the "Portrait of Mrs. John Stevens" by John Singleton Copley, who is considered to be one of the most important portraitists of the colonial United States. The portrait was commissioned after the 1769 marriage of Judith Sargent, an ancestor of John Singer Sargent, to Captain John Stevens, a successful Gloucester merchant.

In New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has come up with a new fund-raising gimmick. Rather than sending out a mailer asking for money signed by its director, as most museums do, the Guggenheim recently sent 17,000 letters to museum members and former donors on actor Jeremy Iron's personal stationery. "He's part of our family," said Laurie Beckelman, deputy director for special projects. "He is committed to what we do."

In Texas, art advisor David Kusin has come up with a new way of evaluating art as an investment. Unlike other indices, his formula takes into account lots bought in at auctions by the house. The Dallas entrepreneur has a new book coming out this year, called The Art Economy.