The buzz at Art Basel

14 June 2010

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"Trois Hommes qui Marchent I" by Alberto Giacometti is offered at $25 million by Landau Fine Art.

(Bloomberg via Landau Fine Art )

A $25 million Giacometti sculpture, “Trois Hommes qui Marchent I,” offered by the Montreal-based dealer Landau Fine Art is one of the classic modern pieces already causing a stir at the 41st Art Basel.

The modern and contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland, opened its marketplace to VIPs on June 15.

Bloomberg reports that Louise Bourgeois’s 5-foot-high (1.5 meters) mixed-media work on paper, “A Baudelaire (#7),” will be priced upwards of $650,000 by Brussels-based dealer Xavier Hufkens. The artist passed away in May.

Read more at Bloomberg

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Julien Hudson, 1811-1844 American. Creole Boy With A Moth, 1835, oil on canvas, courtesy of a private collection; photo courtesy of Fodera Fine Art Conservation, Ltd.

First Retrospective of Early African American Artist Julien Hudson at Worcester Art Museum

A groundbreaking exhibition opened Dec. 9 at the Worcester Art Museum entitled “In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre-Civil War New Orleans.” Julien Hudson (1811-1844) is the second-earliest documented portrait painter of African descent to work in the United States. Little-known today, Hudson died an untimely, somewhat mysterious death, and only fragments of his oeuvre survive to tell his story.

'May,' by Alexander Motyl, $25/month to rent ($550 to buy), artsicle.com.

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An installation view of the new Tuscaloosa Museum of Art: Home of the Westervelt Collection.

New Tuscaloosa Museum of Art to Showcase Important American Art

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Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior, painted about 1666, by Eglon van der Neer (Dutch, 1634–1703). Oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Seth K. Sweetser Fund.

Museum Curator as Art Detective

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Victoria Reed is the first and only endowed curator of provenance at an American museum. Since 2010, her role has been to research objects in the museum's collections, and new acquisitions, in order to determine the right of ownership. At times, Reed's findings have led to restitution...