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Picasso Painting Sets World Record

By: Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK, NY (AP).- A 1932 Pablo Picasso painting of his mistress has sold for $106.5 million, a world record price for any work of art at auction. "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," which had a pre-sale estimate of between $70 million and $90 million, was sold at Christie's auction house on Tuesday evening to an unidentified telephone bidder. There were nine minutes of bidding involving eight clients in the sale room and on the phone, Christie's said. At $88 million, two bidders remained. The final bid was $95 million, but the buyer's premium took the sale price to $106.5 million. Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie's New York, said he was "ecstatic with the results." "Tonight's spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works," he said. The striking work of Picasso's muse and mistress Marie-Therese Walter has been exhibited ... More

VMFA acquires prized German Expressionist art

 

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Six Dancers," 1911, oil on canvas. VMFA's Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection.

Photo: Katherine Wetzel, © 2009 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

By KATHERINE CALOS (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A major family collection of German Expressionist art "so rare that it is almost indescribable" has found a permanent home at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

The gift-purchase of the Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection brings to the museum more than 200 pieces of art from the most creative years of German Expressionism.

Museum Director Alex Nyerges, who deemed it "almost indescribable," says the collection is of "not just national but international importance."

"It is a statement of an era, a statement that cannot really be duplicated. It's a snapshot of time taking us back 100 years to look at one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century. ... This collection represents it so marvelously."

Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke, among others, were collected from 1905 to 1925 by Ludwig and Rosy Fischer in Frankfurt, Germany. Half of their collection escaped the Nazis when a son fled to the United States in 1934 before World War II.

Dr. Ernst Fischer moved to Richmond, bringing his art with him, and became chairman of the physiology department at the Medical College of Virginia.

His brother stayed in Germany about a year longer. Max Fischer's half of the collection was "partly sold, partly confiscated and partly lost," Nyerges said.

"That is the typical route for German collections — and Polish collections and Czech collections — that were subjugated to the Nazi regime. It's amazing, absolutely amazing," he said.

Dr. Fischer's wife, Anne Rosenberg Fischer, children and grandchildren agreed to the giftpurchase arrangement 14 years ago.

The plan took effect last year when Anne Fischer died at age 105, after a career in social work and community activism that earned lifetime achievement and humanitarian awards from the Jewish Welfare Campaign, Jewish Federation, Beth Sholom Home, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the YWCA.

The value of the art has increased significantly since the agreement was reached, to the point that "the most valuable painting in the collection is probably worth as much as we paid for the entire collection," said John B. Ravenal, the museum's Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The amount paid was not disclosed.

Read the rest of the article or watch a preview of the new collection of German Expressionism, with comments from the museum's curator of  Modern & Contemporary Art, John B. Ravenal.

Create A Great Waterfront

The Department of Community Development is hosting a public talk to discuss creating a great waterfront.

The Vice-President of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), in New York City, is coming to Richmond Thursday, July 16 at 7:30 am to speak on key steps for creating great waterfronts. The public is invited to attend a talk by Ethan Kent followed by a Question-and-Answer session.

As more cities envision their waterfronts as lively public destinations that keep people coming back, PPS outlines the following principles to make that happen. They are not all hard and fast laws, but rules of thumb drawn from 32 years of experience working to improve urban waterfronts around the world. These ideas can serve as the framework for any waterfront project seeking to create vibrant public spaces, and, by extension, a vibrant city.

Some of the waterfront projects that PPS has worked on include:

- Providence Foundation –Providence, RI

Source: River District News

- Southwest DC Waterfront–Washington, DC

- The Cleveland Waterfront–Cleveland, OH

- Port of Melbourne Place Management–Port Phillip, Australia

- Mill River Park – Stamford, CT

Read the summary pdf document entitled “How to Create a Great Waterfront.”

Project for Public Spaces web site.

Who: Ethan Kent, VP of the Project for Public Spaces

What: Public presentation on creating successful urban waterfront public spaces

Where:Plant Zero in Manchester at 0 E. 4th Sreet (map)

Time: 7:30 am to 9:00 am

Cost: Free (coffee and pastries provided).

Source: River District News

Arts Council of Richmond Reaching Out

From RVANews

This past Friday, John Bryan, president of the Arts Council (soon to be renamed “CultureWorks”) invited some local blogger-type people over for lunch and a chat. The topic of discussion: How the Arts Council is trying to change Richmond’s relationship with (and support of) the arts.

We started the discussion by going over a summary of the Richmond Region Cultural Action Plan (RichCAP), an effort lead by WolfBrown, a marketing research and consulting firm for nonprofits. They worked for over a year with a 23-person task force composed of members representing the City of Richmond and Henrico, Hanover, and Chesterfield counties, corporate funders, and visual, performing, and history cultural arts organizations. The final report was ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN pages, but Mr. Bryan thankfully pared it down for us to six goals presented by the task force upon completion of their research:

Read the rest...

VCU MFA Candidates Named Javits Fellows

Source: ArtDaily.org

RICHMOND, VA.- Two graduate sculpture students in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts have been selected for the prestigious Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.

Ian McMahon and Nataliya Slinko, who are both MFA candidates in the Department of Sculpture, became the fifth and sixth students from the sculpture program to be named Javits Fellows in the past six years. Javits Fellowships are awarded to graduate students of superior academic ability in the arts, humanities and social sciences. There are typically only five to seven Javits recipients each year in the studio arts, which includes sculpture. Javits awardees receive payment annually for tuition and fees and a generous stipend for four years.

Three current VCUarts students -- Angela White, John Henry Blatter and Sami Ben Larbi – are Javits Fellows. Amy Hauft, chair of the Sculpture at VCU, said McMahon and Slinko fit the profile of other recent selections for the fellowship from the university.

“Javits has selected some profoundly interesting artists from VCU,” Hauft said. “All of them with eccentric takes on the world.”

McMahon, originally of Ithaca, N.Y., builds works ambitious in both scale and theme. Often working with reinforced plaster, McMahon tailors pieces to the specific space of the locations in which he installs them. Hauft said McMahon’s sculptures are architectural and have a “physical feat to them.” McMahon has traveled extensively, especially in China, and exhibited widely in the United States with three former classmates from Alfred College, where he received his undergraduate degree. A sample of his portfolio can be found at http://tinyurl.com/coklht.

Slinko was born in the Ukraine and moved to the United States in 1996 at age 22. Hauft describes Slinko’s work as cerebral, typically consisting of independent objects that are meticulously made and result from intense observation. A former graphic designer in advertising, Slinko’s work has dealt with the oppressive nature of office work and with her youth in Ukraine, especially the contrast of physical freedom and political constraint she felt there. Slinko received her undergraduate degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. A sample of her portfolio can be found at http://tinyurl.com/c355ke.

The newest work from McMahon and Slinko will be on view starting Friday in Viva Comet Unis, the VCU Sculpture MFA candidacy show at 1621 W. Main St. The show, which includes work from five other sculpture MFA students, will feature an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. on Friday. The show can be viewed by appointment following Friday. Call (804) 828-1511.

NEA Announces Research on Artist Unemployment Rates

		Contact: Sally Gifford 202.682.5606 giffords@arts.gov

March 4, 2009

Washington, D.C. — Unemployment rates are up among working artists and the artist workforce has contracted, according to new research from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008 examines how the economic slowdown has affected the nation’s working artists.  The study looks at artist employment patterns during two spikes in the current recession – the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008.  This downturn reflects larger economic declines: a Commerce Department report last week noted a 6.2 percent decrease in the gross domestic product in the last quarter of 2008.

Among the findings:

• Artists are unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers, a category in which artists are grouped because of their high levels of education. The artist unemployment rate grew to 6.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with 3.0 percent for all professionals. A total of 129,000 artists were unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2008, an increase of 50,000 (63 percent) from one year earlier. The unemployment rate for artists is comparable to that for the overall workforce (6.1 percent).

• Unemployment rates for artists have risen more rapidly than for U.S. workers as a whole. The unemployment rate for artists climbed 2.4 percentage points between the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008, compared to a one-point increase for professional workers as a whole, and a 1.9 point increase for the overall workforce.

• Artist unemployment rates would be even higher if not for the large number of artists leaving the workforce. The U.S. labor force grew by 800,000 people from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. In contrast, the artist workforce shrank by 74,000 workers. Some of this decline may be attributed to artists’ discouragement over job prospects.

• Unemployment rose for most types of artist occupations. Artist jobs with higher unemployment rates are performing artists (8.4 percent), fine artists, art directors, and animators (7.1 percent), writers and authors (6.6 percent), and photographers (6.0 percent).

• The job market for artists is unlikely to improve until long after the U.S. economy starts to recover. Unemployment is generally a lagging economic indicator, or a measure of how an economy has performed in the past few months. During the prior recession (2001), artist unemployment did not reach its peak of 6.1 percent until 2003 – two years after economic recovery began nationwide.

As an example of how arts jobs intersect with the larger economy, consider the construction industry. Industry-wide declines, which began in 2006, have contributed to the shrinking job market for architects. While this group usually has the lowest unemployment rates among all artist occupations and all professionals, architect unemployment rates doubled, from 1.8 percent in fourth quarter 2007, to 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Unemployment in the designer category also doubled, from 2.3 percent to 4.7 percent. This broad category includes interior, commercial, and industrial designers, whose work is closely associated with the construction industry. Eighty-three thousand designers left the artist labor market during that time period.

"We conducted the research to quantify what we hear in the field and read in the news every day, that art workers -- alongside all workers -- are suffering," said NEA Director of Research & Analysis Sunil Iyengar. "Unfortunately, the data reveal that artist unemployment is increasing at more rapid rates than for the total workforce, and could have more of an effect over time."

The contraction of the arts workforce has implications for the overall economy. A May 2008 NEA study revealed there are two million full-time artists representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, only slightly smaller than the number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the military (2.2 million). More recently, a National Governors Association report recognized that the arts directly benefit states and communities through job creation, tax revenues, attracting investments, invigorating local economies, and enhancing quality of life. There are 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations that support 5.7 million jobs and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year, according to a study by Americans for the Arts.

The NEA Office of Research & Analysis produced Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008 using published and unpublished data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The research note measures unemployment rates among workers who self-reported an artist job as occupying their greatest number of working hours per week, whether the employment was full-time or part-time.

Resources

The NEA issues periodic research reports, brochures, and notes on significant topics affecting arts policy, often in partnership with other federal agencies such as the Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau. Other recent NEA reports on the arts economy include Artists in the Workforce, on artist employment and demographic trends, and All America’s a Stage, which examines the fiscal health of nonprofit theaters. Artists in a Year of Recession and other NEA research are available in print and electronic form in the Research section of the NEA Web site. Artists in a Year of Recession can be downloaded as a PDF document.

About the National Endowment for the Arts

The NEA is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts – both new and established – bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the largest annual national funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. For more information, please visit www.arts.gov.

The Fine Art of Surviving the Crash in Auction Prices

By ALEXANDRA PEERS

VIA The Wall Street Journal

So where does it go from here? The art-market bubble has burst. Prices of contemporary, modern and Impressionist artwork tumbled about 30%, and sometimes more, at the huge auctions that finished last Friday in New York. There's no guarantee that further declines aren't yet to come.

The art market's crash -- for that is what it is -- threatens to remake the art world. In the past few weeks, auctioneers, dealers, artists and collectors have changed strategies and policies, and it's likely that future changes will be even more sweeping. With Sotheby's stock hovering at about $9, down from $50 a year ago, it's now cheaper to buy the 164-year old brand than all the art it sold in the past three months.

It's all been a reality check for art collectors. Noted one West Coast art dealer: "Their houses are worth less, their stocks are worth less, but they thought their Rudolph Stingel was still priced the same? No."

In the wake of the auctions, says Tobias Meyer, a vice chairman of Sotheby's: "The price disparity between good and great has widened to humongous." The problem for the trillion-dollar global art industry is that most of the art it has for sale is, by definition, just average.

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