OLD NEWS

IT'S NATIONAL BIG WIG DAY!
Photograph by James Van Der Zee, 1940s:
<https://tinyurl.com/4uvedjsu> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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DARGAUD'S "STATUE OF LIBERTY" IN SANTA BARBARA by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/t3iy001>
Current L.A. museum shows explore the contradictions of monuments and Impressionism. You can find a sidebar up the coast at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. SBMA owns a remarkable painting by an artist you've probably never heard of, Paul Joseph Victor Dargaud (about 1850–1913).
The painting was featured in "Encore: 19th Century French Art," a companion show to the recently closed selection of the Dallas Museum of Art's collection of French Impressionism. Dargaud however was not an Impressionist. He was more a Canaletto in the age of Manet, specializing in views of the evolving Parisian metropolis that he showed at the Salon. As with Caillebotte, it was Dargaud's empirical eye and unconventional use of perspective that allied him with the avant-garde.
In the U.S., Dargaud is remembered mainly for two small pictures of America's echt-monument: The Statue of Liberty, by Bartholdi (before 1883) in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, and The Statue of Liberty in Frédéric-Auguste-Bartholdi's Studio, Paris (1884) in Santa Barbara. SBMA purchased its painting in 2001. I don't know whether the World Trade Center attacks were a motivation, and Dargaud is not usually thought of as a political painter. But in the present moment, the Statue of Liberty pictures demand that the viewer consider a time when immigration was widely recognized as America's strength.
The Santa Barbara picture shows a plaster model for the statue's left arm, as displayed in Bartholdi's studio. Its industrial setting may recall that of Kara Walker's A Subtlety (2014), a monumental sphinx in sugar. Bartholdi conceived his statue of Liberty Enlightening the World after a trip to Egypt, vowing to make a monument twice the size of the Great Sphinx.
<http://tiny.cc/z3iy001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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LARGER
<https://tinyurl.com/39cy2p3t> _DavidShrigley

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OLAFUR ELIASSON, HELLISGERÐI, 1998 by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/yc6k682b>
The park series (1998) is one of Olafur Eliasson’s earlier photo grids. A topology rather than a taxonomy, it documents a series of views of a single site: Hellisgerði (Lava Cave), a public park built on lava formations in the Reykjavik suburb of Hafnarfjördur. I’d seen The park series at the Menil, but did not recognize the photo above as coming from the grid. I thought it might have been a janky, early pavilion of some kind. And maybe it is, who knows?
<https://tinyurl.com/mtf5kxpz>
But this image is the cover of an artist book <https://tinyurl.com/yfuh9r5f> Eliasson created for a 1998 show at the Reykjavik Art Museum — Kjarvalsstaðir. It’s called Hellisgerði, and is the 24 photos of the park that became The park series grid [which was not in the show, btw.] This echoes another little artist book from 1998, Landscapes with Yellow Background, <https://tinyurl.com/262ke4kr> which contains all 30 pictures <https://tinyurl.com/3s72t4fp> in The landscape series (1997).
<https://tinyurl.com/9waxsccs>
Which, it took me a second to realize that the edition of The park series grid I’d seen—which had come up for sale at Sotheby’s in 2013—had 25 prints, not 24: a 5×5 grid instead of a 4 x 6.
The extra print is at the lower right cornes, at the end [sic]; the series is a sequence, laid out left to right, top to bottom. Does that correspond to the geography? Does it mark a path through or around the park? Grids often look like contact sheets, which have a sense of chronology, documentation of a photographer’s experience photographing. But there’s no reason to make that assumption here. _greg.org

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/5b5yfurj> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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24. CINDY SHERMAN, UNTITLED #458 by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/4hpuztuc>
Perhaps our pervasive sense of anxiety is not just history gearing up for the latest once-every-century catastrophe. Perhaps there’s something far more profound occurring—the death throes of one way of being as a species and the birth pangs of another. Meaning in a broad, evolutionary sense: the death of a way of being that started with the Enlightenment, or even long before that, with Western Civ itself. And the birth of something new, evolutionarily speaking, for our species.
If the way of being that’s dying is the unconscious assumption that we humans are not natural, that nature is this thing over there that’s separate from us, then it’s probably high time we wake up to the fact that we carry that unconscious assumption in everything we do as a civilization. Time to let it go. There have been benefits, surely—we’ve had a good run assuming that we’re not nature. But there have been undeniable downsides.
Admittedly, such a transformation in thinking is not easy or comfortable, and it will not happen—is not happening—quickly. But it’s as natural and inevitable as growing old and dying.
Which leads me to the artist Cindy Sherman, and her remarkable images of women fighting aging. Our expensive, hopeless fight against what we view as the failure of aging is our birthright as a civilization that assumes it is not nature. We age and die badly in our country; we flail against our essential naturalness. What if it doesn’t have to be this way? _TheImpatientReader

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❌ SCOOBA, MS
<https://tinyurl.com/3de4vnsj> _RuralIndexingProject

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COURT GRANTS PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM’S REQUESTED ARBITRATION WITH SASHA SUDA
In December, former Philadelphia Art Museum director and CEO Sasha Suda had pushed for a trial with jury to settle her wrongful-termination lawsuit against her former employer. The Art Museum argued for arbitration.
On Friday, Common Pleas Court Judge Michael E. Erdos settled the question with a ruling — in favor of arbitration. Erdos directed Suda to submit her claim against the museum in arbitration, per the terms of her employment contract.
The museum in a statement Saturday said that it was pleased with Erdos’ ruling “reaffirming the requirement to arbitrate as previously agreed to in the employment agreement, which is the best use of the resources of all — including the court’s." The statement added that the museum “will now return to our focus on the museum’s mission of bringing art and inspiration to the people of Philadelphia.”
Suda’s lawyer, Luke Nikas of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said Saturday that “the court’s procedural, one-sentence decision requiring arbitration has no relevance to the outcome of this case.”
“We are not surprised that the museum wants to hide its illegal conduct in a confidential arbitration,” he said, “but we will hold the museum accountable wherever the case is heard.“
<https://tinyurl.com/bp3yvsd9>
Suda filed her lawsuit Nov. 10, less than a week after being fired by the museum, arguing that the dismissal was “without a valid basis.” The museum responded by calling the suit “without merit.”
Tensions between Suda and the board over authority in running museum matters were cited in court filings. The former director said she was hired in 2022 to “transform a struggling museum, but was later terminated when her efforts to modernize the museum clashed with a small, corrupt, and unethical faction of the board intent on preserving the status quo.”
In a court filing, the museum responded by saying Suda was dismissed after an investigation determined that she “misappropriated funds from the museum and lied to cover up her theft.”
Suda was let go Nov. 4, three years into a five-year contract. With her lawsuit, she sought two years’ pay, as well as “significant damages for the museum’s repeated and malicious violations of the non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses in her employment agreement, and an injunction enforcing the confidentiality and non-disparagement terms of her agreement,” Nikas said.
Less than three weeks after Suda’s dismissal, the museum named Daniel H. Weiss — who formerly led the Metropolitan Museum of Art — its new director. _ Peter Dobrin_PhiladelphiaInquirer

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YOU KNOW HILMA AF KLINT HAS FINALLY MADE IT
now that they're including her paintings -
<https://tinyurl.com/yhyj7ehe>
or at least facsimiles thereof -
in Marvel TV shows (in this case, Wonder Man)
<https://tinyurl.com/prxc52z4> _MichaelLobel

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DAVID ROSS RESIGNS FROM SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AFTER EPSTEIN REVELATIONS
David Ross, chair of the School of Visual Arts (SVA) MFA Art Practice Department for 17 years, has resigned from his post following the Department of Justice's release of his extensive email exchanges with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Much of the newly revealed correspondence dates from the period during and years after Epstein’s conviction, including an email from January 2015 in which Ross stated that he was “still proud” to call Epstein a friend and that it was “depressing” to see Epstein “once again being dragged through the mud.”
A spokesperson for SVA confirmed that the school is aware of the communications between Ross and Epstein, and said in a statement shared with Hyperallergic that it “has accepted Mr. Ross's resignation effective immediately.”
Ross’s resignation comes after SVA students and alumni circulated calls for the school to sever its relationship with him over his email exchanges with Epstein, released among millions of documents concerning the sex offender’s crimes.
The public records of Ross’s correspondence and involvement with Epstein date as far back as 1999, and include flight logs and sympathetic email exchanges related to Epstein’s 2008 conviction and jail sentence.
On July 22, 2009, the day Epstein was released from jail after being convicted in Florida on charges including soliciting prostitution from a minor, Ross embraced Epstein’s release.
In another email exchange, from October 2009, Epstein discussed mounting an exhibition featuring images of minors.
“I might want to fund an exhibition entitled statutory.. girls and boys ages 14 - 25.. where they look nothing like their true ages. Juvenile mug shots. , photo shop, make up. some people go to prison because they can't tell true age. controversial . fun. maybe it should be a web page , with hits, tallied,” Epstein wrote to Ross.
Ross appeared to embrace Epstein’s exhibition idea and suggested speaking later that day.
“You are incredible,” Ross replied. “This would be a very owerful [sic] and freaky book. Do you know that total porno commercial kiddie picture of Brooke Sheilds that Richard Prince appropriated for an exhibition in the early 1980's?”
Ross was named chair of SVA's MFA Art Practice program in 2009 after holding multiple executive roles at art museums across the country. He served as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, for nearly a decade, from 1982 to 1991; the Whitney Museum of American Art until 1998; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art until 2001. In 2008, Ross also co-founded the auction data platform MutualArt. _Hyperallergic

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SEMYON FAIBISOVICH, DAFFODILS, 1985
<https://tinyurl.com/b9yjk2n5>_RabihAlameddine

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SCOOPS FROM KENNY SCHACHTER’S DESK
<https://tinyurl.com/yrdhvs3k>
As we roll into February 2026, Mr. Green still hasn’t shown up (the turn of phrase used by lawyers for the withdrawal of counsel due to a client’s inability to pay). I am referring to the ongoing market downturn for emerging artists, young and old, and the small to mid-sized galleries that continue to struggle to sell their works. This was exponentially exacerbated by a period of rapid expansions that, in hindsight, occurred at the least propitious time imaginable—the early 2020s—before a systematic implosion occurred across all sectors of the economy, the stench of which still lingers strongly.
The frenetic pace of international gallery bloating was analogous to the American car industry investing a trillion dollars into electric vehicles before reversing course after gas tanked and drivers switched lanes back to hybrids (Puns “R” Us). What many in gallery land failed to foresee or comprehend was that we were (and continue to be) squarely in a transitory art economy that has never existed before in its present guise. Other than the few anointed artists who still manage to buck the trend, non-canonized work from all genres is, at best, sputtering ahead.
One dealer told me: “Even the hills are looking for someplace to run.” Selling contemporary art is akin to working in a supermarket where a potential buyer swaggers in, ruthlessly negotiates down the price of a quart of milk, doesn’t pay for six months, and then returns it claiming it’s rancid. There has been much talk of a K-shaped economy amplifying blatant inequalities, where the rich get incomprehensibly richer and everyone else declines. The world is small and the art world minuscule, thus the concentration of hardship is as interminable as it is grueling.
I believe, though, that the economy is “i”-shaped. We live in a monetary caste system, a top-to-bottom hierarchy perpetually inflating and compounding, with a little disconnected dot floating above that signifies wealth far beyond the conception, never mind the reach, of mere mortals, including successful ones. The speckle above contains the mammoth monied class, comprised of global tech overlords, hedge funders, industrialists, property tycoons, and an elite hodgepodge of others.
In art, there’s the likes of Klimt, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Magritte, Monet (or Mon-ey, as Paul Thek referred to him in his writings), and others. And then there’s Basquiat illustrating the “point” on another level altogether. (Read on!)
<https://tinyurl.com/zab75u4z>
An Art Market Case Study: London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery
Where are Stephen Friedman Gallery’s accounts? Its 2024 financial reports are overdue, according to the U.K. Companies House database, and the London firm seems to be in serious financial straits.
Not long ago, the gallery’s success appeared to be mushrooming. The profits it reported in 2022 were more than double the previous year. In 2023, the gallery, whose roster includes David Shrigley and Yinka Shonibare, moved into a large new space on Cork Street—Mayfair’s premier gallery address—and expanded overseas with a New York outpost in Tribeca. Yet the annual report and financial statements of Stephen Friedman Fine Art Limited for the year ended December, 31, 2023, tell a more complicated story. The company recorded a loss of £1.7 million (about $2.33 million at the present exchange rate), larger than the profit it had made the year before.
The auditors signed their report in February 2025. They stated that the business’s ability to meet short-term operating cash requirements was reliant on obtaining external financing and the outcome of discussions with creditors to extend normal payment terms. The auditors added that these factors created a “material uncertainty” that may cast doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern—accounting language used when there is uncertainty over whether a business is expected to continue its operations for the foreseeable future.
This concern was echoed in the company’s own accounts. Its financial statements, approved last February, explained that the business relied on bank facilities to meet its day-to-day cash needs. The gallery’s forecasts showed a period of several months during which additional borrowing would be needed to meet its commitments. The statements also said that wider economic conditions were creating uncertainty over demand for the artworks it sells. Friedman, the sole director of the company, concluded that, until additional financing was secured, there remained a material uncertainty over its ability to continue as a going concern.
Someone by the name of Alison Jayne Mosheim, of Pentland Group Limited (who I have reached out to, unsuccessfully), is indicated in the company filings as the owner of somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of the gallery. Pentland is a British privately held multinational company that owns and invests in businesses in the sports, outdoor, and fashion sectors, including Speedo swimwear. She’d be well-served to start swimming—away from what may very well be a sinking ship.
Late in 2025, Stephen Friedman told the Financial Times that he would close its New York space, only a few years after opening, with the explanation that he wanted to concentrate on activities in London and that he was adding three new U.K. directors. He said:
…the decision to close [New York] was not specifically financially related, but we spent money fixing up that space and money fixing up this [London] space and we had losses in that year [2023], for the first time in a long time. [Now] we are very much back on track [financially] and in a position to focus more time, investment and other resources to enhance the London operation…
In my digging, which involved reaching out to a handful of gallery artists, I heard allegations of outstanding sums owed to artists and vendors alike—in some instances, substantial sums. Additionally, one source told me that an “emergency” call was scheduled with gallery staff last week; I have yet to determine the outcome. Repeated attempts to reach Friedman and the gallery by phone and email have been unsuccessful (even during business hours). The writing is on the walls; but, it appears, the paintings may soon be off of them—at this stage, closure may very well be a fait accompli.
Conclusion: The only thing worse than over-aggressive, premature expansion is borrowing money to effectuate such a misguided strategy.
A Los Angeles Mystery
Dealer Matthew Brown has a seemingly far healthier balance sheet, but both of his spaces in Los Angeles (where he founded his gallery in 2019) have closed and are listed for rent, after expanding to New York’s Tribeca in April. To pick up on Janelle Zara’s recent Wet Paint column (someone convince her to stay!), Brown hasn’t staged an L.A. show since September, and no new L.A. location (or show) has yet to be announced. As I type, the gallery is “by appointment only” in the city, though any rendezvous would need to transpire in a parking lot—in fact, that would be a very L.A. way.
<https://tinyurl.com/29ntydyd>
The Basquiat Bonanza
Jean-Michel Basquiat belongs in a category of his own in just about every respect.
He is currently the subject of a just-opened exhibition at the Louisiana Museum outside Copenhagen called “Headstrong,” which has works on paper depicting—you got it—a cache of craniums (through May 17), and he remains a perennial market maven, breaking one record after another, despite an unremitting torrent of economic upheavals. All pretty astonishing, especially since he lived only until 27 and still managed to create around 2,500 to 4,000 works.
I can potentially reveal yet another monetary milestone (not that that’s indicative of anything good in the world, but we’ll leave that for now). Ken Griffin might have broken his own recent record Basquiat purchase, of $200 million, by perhaps paying $250 million for Norman and Irma Braman’s 1982 painting Philistines, I’m told, though it will take another article to confirm.
Unequivocally, though, what I can assure you is that Griffin has been washing down one major Basquiat acquisition after another, such as paying $35 million for the 1984 canvas Pez Dispenser from the estate of long-time Basquiat dealer and raisonné publisher Enrico Navarra. That would bring Griffin’s Basquiat binge over the past six months alone to the tidy sum of $500 million for just a handful of canvases.
<https://tinyurl.com/33njxtvx>
Doig and Damien in a Diamond Dot of Their Own Devising
Speaking of stupidly expensive art, here’s an artist who’s tragically turned from kind of fabulous to fatally fatuous. Damien Hirst has just unveiled a grotesquely ostentation amethyst grotto tackier than words could tell at the private estate of Mark Getty, the grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, in Buckinghamshire, England. (The estate is called Wormsley: good name for it.)
In a recent podcast, Hirst revealed that the most influential person in his life is none other than Joe Hage, his single-minded business manager. Hirst also revealed that he may give up painting, as he is the first artist in history to profit more from the sale of his prints than his brushwork, through Hage’s publishing company Heni. Hirst might want to spend some time brushing up on his art history now that he’s not painting. That distinction belongs to 16th-century artist Albrecht Dürer, who proclaimed that printmaking was more lucrative than painting, leading him to halt production on paintings for a period to instead focus on engraving and woodcuts.
Peter Doig certainly doesn’t have much in common with Hirst, other than the fact that they share Hage as a business manager. This may account for the fact that two of Doig’s recent works in his museum exhibition, “House of Music,” at the Serpentine in London are quietly for sale via my old friend Larry G, from $4 million (for a paper mounted to canvas) to $7 million for a canvas. (Don’t worry: Doig’s also has Heni prints on offer from Hage.) In other words, the Serpentine shares much in common with Sotheby’s new Breuer outlet—two museums flogging art, one present and one past. Lord have mercy on us all. _artnet

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JUSEPE DE RIBERA, JACOB'S DREAM, 1639
<https://tinyurl.com/2us5kmm6> _JesseLocker

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GLASGOW’S CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS TO PERMANENTLY CLOSE
Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) is closing permanently due to financial difficulties, Creative Scotland has confirmed.
A statement from an email address claiming to represent CCA staff. , the board of the CCA closed the building this morning, announced its intention to ‘commence a formal winding up process’ and ‘informed staff they are no longer employed on a days notice via an online call.’
Creative Scotland released a statement this afternoon confirming that the CCA board had decided to cease the institution’s operations and that the organisation has been placed in administration. Though the two organisations entered a three-year funding agreement worth £3.4 million in 2025, Creative Scotland confirmed they will not be making further payments to the CCA as the institution ‘is unable to demonstrate its ongoing viability and therefore cannot deliver the activity set out in its multi-year funding agreement’. _ArtReview

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ART BASEL QATAR OPENS WITH SLOW SALES
Few galleries reported sales during the opening day, which put the fair in a type of holding pattern. _ARTnews

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SAUDI ARABIA SCALES BACK SPENDING, LEAVING ART INSTITUTIONS IN LIMBO
Over the last week, so-called “gigaprojects” that are part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s $2 trillion Vision 2030 have been scaled back or halted, due to lower oil prices and overspending. The tightening will undoubtedly have international repercussions.
Over the past 12 months, a few firms have told me that payments from the kingdom are often incomplete or delayed. As such reports pile up, will organizations reassess their plans with the kingdom?
Struggling with high overheads and declining state support, major cultural organizations in the United States and Europe have been quick to ink deals with the oil-rich kingdom, which wants to diversify its economy through culture, tourism, and tech.
It’s not just big organizations either. A source at a U.K. art services firm told me they had been waiting on more than $2 million in unpaid invoices with the Saudi government at the start of 2025—around a year after services had been rendered. _artnet

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IT'S NATIONAL POLKA DOT DAY
and I'm crushed I didn't realize it before getting dressed. Anyway, here is a painting by George Luks, 1927, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection:
<https://tinyurl.com/2tu4eda9> _‪PeterHuestis‬