OLD NEWS

THE SEA GIVETH
<https://tinyurl.com/2yakmsma> _ON&ON / Jeff Weiss

>>>

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION ESTATE SOLD TO FLORIDA RESORT
<https://tinyurl.com/ycy3rvjx>
South Seas, a resort located on Captiva Island in Florida, has purchased all twenty-two acres of the Robert Rauschenberg property located on the same island, according to reports. South Seas, which reportedly spent $45 million on the deal, announced the sale on March 31, inciting the dismay of many in the local community who wanted to see the artist’s property historically preserved. Rauschenberg, a prolific painter, is one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century.
The primary feature of the property is the 8,000-square-foot studio, built by Rauschenberg himself in 1992. A cluster of ten buildings in total dot the property, including Rauschenberg’s “Beach House” and several other cottages. future art-related programming and by incorporating several buildings from the property into our resort.”
“In recent years, the Foundation has dedicated significant resources to address increasingly challenging environmental conditions, including recurring storm damage, broader climate risks, and rising maintenance costs,” the Rauschenberg Foundation explained in a 2025 press release. “A sustainability assessment confirmed that safeguarding the property would require substantial additional investment and site modifications, without ensuring the property’s long-term resilience or reducing the likelihood of future costs.”
“It is difficult to comprehend the extent to which the foundation has failed the island community that Bob Rauschenberg loved and personally sought to protect from development,” the Captiva Civic Association said in a news release “It is a grievous betrayal by the Rauschenberg Foundation.” _Artforum

>>>

SALE OF ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG’S CAPTIVA COMPOUND TO DEVELOPERS IGNITES BACKLASH
The property, whose prime stretch of beach-front land includes Rauschenberg’s first house on Captiva as well as an art studio and several cottages, was sold by the New York-based Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, which has owned and operated the site since the artist’s death in 2008.
Following the announcement, Captiva locals voiced their hope of protecting the land from being developed. There is little public space on the island and one proposal, released in October last year, was for the Captiva Island Fire District to purchase a little under 10 acres with a local investor purchasing the remaining properties. Both parties agreed to preserve and not rezone the property. The fear, one expressed by the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF), was that new development on island would not only threaten the fragile environment, but also make evacuation during a climate emergency more difficult. Residents were forced to evacuate Captiva Island during Hurricane Milton in October 2024.
With hope of a more preservation-minded buyer dashed, the Captiva Civic Association (CCA) expressed its strong disappointment.
“The sale of Rauschenberg property to South Seas constitutes a monumental betrayal by the Rauschenberg Foundation of the Captiva community that Bob Rauschenberg loved and personally sought to protect from overdevelopment,” Lisa Riordan, president of CCA, said over email. “We hope the thousands of artists associated with Bob Rauschenberg and the Foundation can come to understand the extent to which the Foundation has failed the island community of Captiva and the legacy of Bob Rauschenberg.”
For the past three years, the CCA, together with a host of local partners, has been fighting the efforts of South Seas to increase density and building heights on the island. According to CCA, there are currently several pending lawsuits aiming to prevent overdevelopment on Captiva.
On Sanibel & Captiva Island, a group with more than 200,000 followers, the reception was largely one of dismay, with one user noting that the South Seas development could potentially “over crowd and ruin the area.”
A Texas native, Rauschenberg moved to Captiva in 1970 and became a beloved community member, safeguarding land from development, donating art for local charity auctions, and even helping island elders pay rent. In a letter describing his discovery of Captiva, Rauschenberg wrote: “I felt a magic that was unexplainable in its power. Captiva is the foundation of my life and my work; it is my source and reserve of my energies.” One wonders what he would think now. _artnet

>>>

ATE
<https://tinyurl.com/2x3673ws> _DavidShrigley

>>>

LOST CECIL BEATON AND LEE MILLER PHOTOS TURN UP IN OLD SCRAPBOOK by Vittoria Benzine
<https://tinyurl.com/33dwdw2v>
British photographer Cecil Beaton and his American peer Lee Miller first crossed paths when Beaton photographed Miller in Condé Nast’s apartment in 1928. Over a decade later, they were both working as World War II correspondents for British Vogue and sharing the same assistant—Roland Haupt. Now, six decades after Haupt’s death, his family has sold a previously unknown scrapbook featuring more than 150 unseen Beaton and Miller photographs.
The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library now owns the artifact. “It’s a very personal album with personal choices,” London-based photography dealer Michael Hoppen, who facilitated the sale, told me over email. “Many images would not have been published at the time despite [Miller’s] desire to see them shown.”
<https://tinyurl.com/ppsn5f4x>
Haupt assembled this book between 1943 and 1949. That’s four years after Beaton started his war reportage, and three years after Miller joined the staff at British Vogue, though she only became an accredited war correspondent in 1942. Both photographers delivered their undeveloped film to Haupt for processing before he sent the shots to their editors, Hoppen learned from Haupt’s descendants.
“This is the story of my favorite photographer Lee Miller,” Haupt wrote at the very beginning of his memento, outlining Miller’s journey following the American army from Normandy to Berlin alongside at the end of the war, since British troops wouldn’t let women cover them. Miller famously faced house arrest for photographing the battle of Saint-Malo during this stint, even though women correspondents were still barred from combat. “Here are a few of the beautiful pictures she sent back,” Haupt’s inscription concluded.
<https://tinyurl.com/2ka29sc2>
Miller applied the Surrealist eye she’d honed alongside lovers like Man Ray and Roland Penrose to her war photography, transforming journalism into a bona fide art. In his scrapbook, Haupt pits Miller’s photos of corpses with her snaps featuring lazing models—drawing haunting comparisons between the two while also highlighting how Miller treated both subjects with equal elegance.
An unpublished, lesser-seen iteration of LIFE magazine correspondent David Scherman‘s iconic shot of Miller bathing in Adolf Hitler’s Munich tub stands out amongst these crowded pages honoring her and Beaton. Like the image’s more famous counterpart, this b-side shot depicts Miller’s boots, dirty from their harrowing visit to Dachau that day, stationed before the tub. Here, however, Miller’s body language looks less seductive, more troubled. Inhabiting Hitler’s house made him seem “less fabulous and therefore more terrible,” she said.
<https://tinyurl.com/493ecn2d>
Like Miller, Beaton started off photographing WWII’s impact on London, particularly the 1940 Blitz. The role started taking Beaton abroad, though, in 1942—first to Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, then to India, Burma, and China. Many of the shots in Haupt’s book hail from Beaton’s forays in North Africa, documenting “the detritus of war in the dry endless desert landscape,” as Hoppen put it. Portraits by Beaton, Lee, and Haupt all abound in the book’s back half—punctuated by “theater sets and newspaper cuttings” throughout.
Once Haupt’s descendants brought the book to Hoppen, he emphasized the importance of keeping its pages together—which is how it will remain in the Bodleian Library’s very astute care. _artnet

>>>

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/3emujvs8> _LisaAnneAuerbach

>>>

THE FIGHT TO KEEP A TROVE OF FRIDA KAHLO WORKS FROM LEAVING MEXICO
A blockbuster exhibition of works Mexican modernist works, including many by Frida Kahlo in Mexico City has been shadowed by controversy, as the prized collection prepares to leave the country for Spain later this year.
The Gelman Collection, part of which is currently on view at the city’s Museum of Modern Art, is set to be transferred to Banco Santander’s new cultural hub under a deal that has sparked outrage among artists and historians. Authorities have now said the move is temporary—and the works will return in 2028—but the dispute has ignited a broader debate over cultural patrimony, transparency, and the role of private institutions in stewarding Mexico’s artistic heritage.
The dispute has drawn in Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who on Monday defended the bank’s agreement and said officials were obeying the law.
An open letter, published on March 18 on e-flux, claimed the bank’s decision to move the collection to Spain violates national heritage law. “How can Mexicans entrust their financial assets to a bank that, through its decisions, chooses to strip them of their cultural heritage?,” the letter said,
In January, some 18 years since it was last seen publicly, it was revealed that the collection was acquired in 2023 by the Zambrano family, one of Mexico’s wealthiest business families. Its management was turned over to the Banco Santander Foundation as part of a private deal with the Zambranos, who retain ownership of the collection. The bank then announced the collection would be rebranded as the Gelman Santander Collection and would be installed in its new Faro Santander cultural center this summer.
On March 10, the first open letter decrying the move noted that the collection contains 30 artworks by artists such as Kahlo, Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, which are subject to an export ban.
Mexican law strictly protects certain artworks, especially those by Kahlo, designating them as national cultural monuments that cannot be permanently exported, even if privately owned. They may be loaned abroad temporarily, but must be returned to Mexico.
In a press conference on March 30, Mexico’s secretary of culture Claudia Curiel insisted that the collection “wasn’t sold, it’s only on display [in Spain] temporarily.”
The bank also released a statement clarifying that the deal does not imply a change in ownership of the works or a permanent relocation _artnet

>>>

THIS MAJOR COLLECTION OF MODERN MEXICAN ART,
now creating controversy over its potential move outside of Mexico,
includes this Frida Kahlo painting ("Diego on My Mind," 1943)
that has to be one of the most stunning & luminous self-portraits
I've ever seen in my decades as an art historian
<https://tinyurl.com/3yfcu5rw>
Kahlo drama
<https://tinyurl.com/5b5a5ex8>
Also this one, which hello, Frida Kahlo with monkeys, what more could you want..?
<https://tinyurl.com/2mz5wx3d> _MichaelLobel

>>>

DADDY TAKES CONFESSION
Leave it to Maurizio Cattelan to turn Catholic guilt into a participatory artwork and a soft sales funnel at the same time. His new “hotline for sinners” invites you to literally call in and confess your sins, only to be “absolved” by the artist himself in a livestream, all conveniently orbiting a new edition drop of his infamous pope sculpture.
<https://tinyurl.com/5fkpmbux>
It’s camp, it’s sacrilegious, it’s theater, and most importantly, it’s incredibly legible. Cattelan has always understood that the real medium isn’t sculpture, it’s attention, and here he collapses religion, performance, and the market into one seamless gesture. This is what Art Daddy has been circling for years: the art world as spectacle, confession as content, and the audience not just as viewers but as participants in their own commodification. Press one for absolution, press two to join the mailing list. _Theartdaddy

>>>

KLASSY KARROT HOLTVILLE, CA
<https://tinyurl.com/39myj5fw>
<https://tinyurl.com/yc6rf9z2> _‪RuralIndexingProject‬

>>>

ISA GENZKEN MOMA T-SHIRT by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/4ch4d5v8>
My apologies, Ms. Genzken, I did not recognize your merch game.
When I snapped this MoMA t-shirt at the Daniel Buchholz show, I assumed it had been just some merch, or one of the museum’s Uniqlo collabs, readily findable. But so far there is no trace.
Is it a mockup? A prototype? The credit format throws me. It feels like, which party would put “©ARS, New York” like that?
<https://tinyurl.com/y476c88w>
The photo of the sculpture, Rose II (2007), is MoMA-specific. The highlights of the morning light hitting the painted highlights of the rose petals and leaves matches MoMA’s own image of the work <https://tinyurl.com/ycyehx5k> installed at the west end of the Sculpture Garden. [If it’s the same edition, from November 2010 until August 2013, it was on the facade of the New Museum https://tinyurl.com/3dtxpcwn, which dated it as 2008.]
<https://tinyurl.com/46u9yhuk>
The t-shirt obviously cropped out the sculpture’s base. Interestingly, the base was also edited out of the photo on this 2019 MoMA postcard [ganked from ebay, not important now]. Which also clumsily cloned out the reflection of the base from the black glass wall of the porch.
In any case, before I get too far into conceptual bootleg territory, I’d like to figure out what this actually was. It’d be sick to make an intensely artisanal, 15-color screenprint, only to find out the shirt was Uniqlo junk. _greg.org

>>>

BORN #ONTHISDAY IN 1820, THE FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER FELIX NADAR,
most remembered today for his photographic portraits of the Parisian cultural elite.
He also sometimes turned the camera on himself, such as in this "revolving portrait".
<https://tinyurl.com/bdh3j7ft> _PublicDomainReview

>>>

CHRISTINE RUIZ-PICASSO DIES AT 97
<https://tinyurl.com/mt45tzew>
Christine Ruiz-Picasso, who helped found a museum in Málaga, Spain, dedicated to the Cubist artist, died on April 6 at 97. She died at her home in Provence, France,
She was born Christine Pauplin in 1928 in France. She met Paul Ruiz-Picasso at some point in the 1950s and together they had their only child, Bernard, in 1959. The couple wed in 1962. As the daughter-in-law of Pablo Picasso, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists, she took it upon herself to become one of the artist’s fiercest proponents, especially in the years after her husband’s death in 1975.
The most important example of this devotion was through the realization of a lifelong dream of Picasso’s: to establish a museum in Málaga, the coastal city in the country’s Andalusia region where the artist was born in 1881.
It was Christine Ruiz-Picasso, whose husband was Picasso’s eldest son with his first wife Olga Khokhlova, who revived the idea of establishing a museum dedicated to the artist in Málaga. She had initially been involved in the mounting of two Picasso exhibitions at the Episcopal Palace of Málaga in 1992 and 1994. _ARTnews

>>>

WALKER EVANS [WORKERS LOADING NEON "DAMAGED" SIGN INTO TRUCK] 1928–30
<https://tinyurl.com/33up3y2r> _RabihAlameddine

>>>

BILLIONAIRE ART DEALER LOSES BID FOR NAZI-LOOTED MODIGLIANI AFTER DECADE-LONG BATTLE
<https://tinyurl.com/zvwnw25r>
Billionaire art dealer David Nahmad, who spent eleven years attempting to prove in court that he was the rightful owner of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1918 painting Seated Man with a Cane, has lost his case. New York Supreme Court judge Joel M. Cohen on April 3 ruled that the canvas in fact belonged to the estate of Jewish antiques dealer Oscar Stettiner, from whose Paris shop it was taken as he fled the Nazi invasion of France during World War II.
The painting was purchased at auction from Christie’s by International Art Center, a holding company controlled by Nahmad, in 1996 and placed in storage in Switzerland. In 2011, Philippe Maestracci, a farmer living in France and a grandson of Stettiner, began legal action to try to recover it. _Artforum

>>>

WHAT THE ART WORLD SHOULD TAKE AWAY FROM THE TWIN SHUTDOWNS OF SORA AND METAVERSE
"we in the art business should stop automatically treating tech founders with new products to launch like aliens or gods visiting earth with mind-expanding paths to evolving humanity’s relationship to images"
_Tim Schneider

>>>

OVERDUE PAYMENTS TO ARTISTS, LANDLORDS AND WORKERS AT A POPULAR GALLERY
Los Angeles’s art week in February is one of the busiest periods on the international art calendar, with galleries staging exhibitions, events and fair presentations across the city in an effort to maximise sales and visibility. This year, The Hole was among the more prominent participants, showing work by more than a dozen artists,a, at the Felix Art Fair, heldCourt records show that between July and September 2025, landlords for The Hole’s two Manhattan properties filed non-payment complaints against the gallery’s New York entities. The filings concerning the gallery’s Tribeca location claim more than $120,000 in unpaid rent and real estate tax arrears. Court filings from September 2024 and August 2025 allege that the gallery failed to pay real estate taxes for multiple years: the 2024 filing cites unpaid taxes for 2023 and 2024, while the 2025 petition adds alleged outstanding taxes for 2025, indicating that the arrears had not been resolved at the time of the second filing. at the Roosevelt Hotel.
Another of the week’s most popular events was 99CENT, a pop-up exhibition co-organised by The Hole and Jeffrey Deitch. Featuring works by Barry McGee, from his personal collection and by more than 100 of his friends and friends-of-friends, the project transformed a former dollar store on Wilshire Boulevard into a temporary exhibition space, drawing sustained crowds throughout the week.
<https://tinyurl.com/msw9dw4p>
The visibility generated by those short-term projects contrasted with The Hole’s long-term space in West Hollywood, which remained inactive during Los Angeles’s art week. It has now permanently closed; its final exhibition came down in September 2025.
As interviews with artists, former employees and the gallery’s founder illustrate, The Hole has suffered from a pattern seen at many other galleries that expanded to larger spaces and additional cities as new buyers spent lavishly in the art market from 2021 to 2023. When those buyers disappeared, dealers who had banked on their continued patronage to expand were suddenly left exposed. Many galleries have shrunk or closed in the aftermath; in the case of The Hole, the fallout has resulted in late payments to artists and workers, unpaid rent and a shuttered Los Angeles location.
“I’ve been here for 15 years and after two extra-successful years, sales were down significantly starting at the end of 2023. For everyone in our zone, not just for us,” Kathy Grayson, the gallery’s founder, “I’m recalibrating things here to focus on New York and getting everything stabilised again. The up can often be as destabilising as the down.”
Launched in 2010 by Grayson, a former director at Deitch Projects, The Hole has established itself as a prominent gallery known for hosting crowded openings, organising buzzy exhibitions and showing a roster of emerging and mid-career artists. Its large Bowery space has been a cornerstone of the Lower East Side gallery scene and, in 2021, it expanded to a second New York location in the ascendant Tribeca neighbourhood. In 2022, The Hole added a large West Hollywood space to its operations, joining a wave of New York galleries expanding to Los Angeles while maintaining a consistent presence on the global art fair circuit.
Court records show that between July and September 2025, landlords for The Hole’s two Manhattan properties filed non-payment complaints against the gallery’s New York entities. The filings concerning the gallery’s Tribeca location claim more than $120,000 in unpaid rent and real estate tax arrears. Court filings from September 2024 and August 2025 allege that the gallery failed to pay real estate taxes for multiple years: the 2024 filing cites unpaid taxes for 2023 and 2024, while the 2025 petition adds alleged outstanding taxes for 2025, indicating that the arrears had not been resolved at the time of the second filing.
A separate filing from September 2025 related to the Bowery location alleges more than $60,000 in unpaid rent and additional charges under a lease agreement that began in 2021 and runs through January 2031. In both cases, the gallery’s landlords were seeking possession of the premises and monetary judgments. According to Grayson, the gallery is working to resolve both disputes. “We are current with Bowery rent and paying off arrears for the Tribeca space, slowly but surely,” she says.
Artists and former employees who spoke said The Hole’s expansion to Los Angeles, which occurred as the art market entered a period of contraction, added substantial overhead, including additional rent and operating costs. Multiple sources described the plan to open the Los Angeles space as rushed, with limited infrastructure in place to support the expansion.
Workers interviewed for this story said they experienced delays in compensation throughout this period. Several individuals said they were required to follow up repeatedly to receive their wages, in some cases over the course of months.
Artists showing with The Hole described having similarly drawn-out experiences receiving payment for works sold. Of the five artists who spoke, two said they were eventually paid in full, while the other three remain unpaid as of this writing.
The financial pressures facing commercial galleries like The Hole and even much larger businesses have become increasingly visible across the sector over the past two years, with dozens of emerging and established galleries announcing abrupt closures or significant retrenchments.
Taken together, these dynamics point to a widening divergence between visibility and sustainability within the gallery sector and the market at large. In this context, the situation at The Hole reflects pressures faced more broadly in the trade. While fairs and pop-up projects continue to offer critical exposure and sales opportunities, the challenges of maintaining permanent spaces, particularly in cities like New York and Los Angeles with some of the most expensive commercial real estate markets in the world, risk creating a powder keg for the wider ecosystem. _ArtNewspaper

>>>

ON THE WAY TO MALACCA IN 1545,
St. Francis Xavier was caught in a terrible storm and lost his crucifix at sea.
But when he got to shore, a friendly crab brought it back to him.
Portrayed here in the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome in the 1670s,
attributed to Giovanni Andrea Carlone _JesseLocker