Art Industry News: Steve Wynn Just Dropped More Than $100 Million on Two Picassos From the Marron Collection + Other Stories

Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most
consequential developments coming out of the art world and art
market. Here’s what you need to know on this Tuesday, February
25.

NEED-TO-READ

Steve Wynn Paid More Than $100 Million for Marron’s Picassos
– The casino mogul is reported
to have snapped up two Picassos, Woman With Beret and
Collar (1937) and the 1962 portrait Seated Woman
(Jacqueline), from the estate of the late Don Marron
for $105
million. Wynn is believed to
have told friends already about the purchase, but a
spokesperson for his art business did not confirm or deny the
sale. Another collector
who was offered works from the estate, which is being sold
by Gagosian, Pace, and Aquavella galleries, says that artworks worth more than $200
million from the collection have already found new homes.
(Wall Street
Journal)

Korean Museums Close Amid Coronavirus Outbreak –
Museums in Seoul have been forced
to shutter because of the coronavirus, as more than
600 cases are confirmed in South Korea. Institutions
affected include the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, the National
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the National Museum of
Korea. The Ghibli Museum in
Tokyo, which focuses on animation, has also closed. Meanwhile, several museums in
Northern Italy have been
shuttered, including institutions in Milan, Venice, and Castello di
Rivoli, outside Turin. (ARTnews, Dazed)

Is the International Art World Ignoring Asian Museums
Amid the Outbreak? – Philip Dodd, the head of the arts consultancy Made in China,
is calling on the Western art world to support struggling Chinese
museums and galleries as they deal with the fallout from the
coronavirus. With Art
Basel Hong
Kong cancelled this year
and loan shows in peril, Dodd is asking for financial and
logistical support. “Hold an auction, [and] invite Chinese
galleries (when the masks are off) to take up residence in Western
capitals temporarily,” he writes. He is also urging Westerners to
work with institutions in cities like Shenzhen, which he predicts
will soon become the center of China’s art
industry. (The Art
Newspaper)

ART MARKET

Dior’s Kim Jones Will Curate a Sotheby’s Auction – In yet
another sign of the increasing ties between high fashion and the
upper echelons of the art world, Dior Men’s artistic director Kim Jones has
picked 20 works for a Sotheby’s curated sale slated to take place
on March 6 in New York. His selection includes pieces by
Cindy Sherman, David Hockney, Ed
Ruscha, Nick Cave, Richard Price, and Kerry James Marshall.
“It’s an organic relationship for
me,” Jones said in a statement. “From the beginning of fashion,
designers [have] work[ed] with artists and artists [have] work[ed] with designers, it kind of goes hand-in-hand.” (WWD)

Invader’s Mona Lisa Sells for €480,000 – The French street artist Invader’s version of the Mona Lisa, made in 2005 from
Rubik’s Cubes, soared well past its presale estimate at an
Artcurial auction in Paris. The riff on Leonardo’s masterpiece
hammered for €480,200
($520,680), far surpassing the €150,000 auctioneers publicly
predicted they could fetch. (France24)

COMINGS & GOINGS

LA Gets Its First World
Heritage Plaque – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock
House in East Hollywood has been named a UNESCO World Heritage
Site. The designation “underscores what we already
know,” LA city councilman Mitch O’Farrell said at a
ceremony this week. “The structure represents an unparalleled
symbol of cultural heritage and an outstanding contribution to
design in the city of Los Angeles and the
world.” The house,
built between 1918 and 1921, was almost destroyed in the
1940s. (Los Angeles
Times)

Artist James Brown Dies
at 68 – The American-born, Mexico-based painter and
his wife died in a car crash on Saturday in Mexico. The artist, who
was born in 1951 and is known for his neo-Cubist collages and
abstract gouaches, studied in Paris at the École des
Beaux-Arts and had shows early in his career with Leo Castelli
and Tony Shafrazi. (Artforum)

Athens Contemporary
Museum Finally Opens – After repeated delays, the National
Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens is ready to open this Friday,
February 28, to the public ahead of its official inauguration in
April. Organizers are still searching for a director to lead the
institution, which is funded by a €44.6 million government
grant. More than 170 works by nearly 80 artists are included in the
inaugural exhibition. (Greek
Times)

FOR ART’S SAKE

Don’t Forget Your iPhone – The founders of
the selfie-friendly Museum of Ice Cream say their next plan is
to come up with attractions where phones are not permitted. But
if you’re planning on a trip to the already-existing
experience, bring your device, because otherwise, you may have a
lame trip. Anna Silman, a
New York magazine journalist, visited the attraction
recently without her phone and felt like she had “shown up a swim
class without my bathing suit.” Sureying a group of teenage
visitors, she asked if any of them would be willing to leave their
smartphones at the door. “Probably not, unless they had cameras embedded
in the walls taking photos of you so you could still have them,”
said one skeptical teen. (The
Cut) 

A Plan to Move Budapest’s Natural History Museum Has
Sparked an Outcry – The Hungarian government is facing
stern resistance over its plan to banish a 200-year-old natural
history museum from the country’s capital to a small town more than
120 miles away. A collection of 10 million items could be moved if
the plan goes through, but scientists say that specimens could
be damaged, and that the move could make future research and
projects logistically difficult. (Nature)

The Whitney’s “Vida
Americana” Gets a Rave Review… – Critic Jerry Saltz
says a new exhibition at the Whitney focusing on Mexican muralism
from 1925 and 1945 is “the most relevant show of the 21st century.”
It includes political art by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, David
Siqueiros, and José Orozco, among others, and highlights the
cultural exchanges between American and Mexican artists in the lead
up to the end of the Second World War. (Vulture)

… While the Guggenheim’s
New Show Is Getting Panned – Architect Rem Koolhaas’s new
show at the museum, “Countryside, the Future,” has divided critics,
some of whom find what it includes and excludes
troublesome. The
architect’s examination of the present and the past “is populated
largely of people just like him: big-picture thinkers and
privileged dispensers of wisdom,” according to one writer
for New York magazine. (Intelligencer)

Tracey Emin Mourns the
Death of Her Muse, Docket the Cat – The famous
artist’s 19-year-old cat, who was a major inspiration for several
of her works and drawings, has died at age 19. The cat was given to
her by a former boyfriend, artist Mat Collishaw, in 2002.
(Daily
Mail)

The post Art Industry News: Steve Wynn Just Dropped More
Than $100 Million on Two Picassos From the Marron Collection +
Other Stories appeared first on artnet News.