Good Morning!
- Amid an ongoing investigation into the mysterious death of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, the actor’s less-famous art practice comes to light.
- Artist Andil Gosine’s exhibition based on his book about queer theory and colonial law, due to open at the Art Museum of the Americas, was cancelled abruptly, in what the artists believes was an anti-DEI-related sanction.
- Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated auction on Feb. 26 yielded $19.88 million, including fees, despite 64 percent fewer lots than last year.
The Headlines
GENE HACKMAN, THE PAINTER. Developments continue to unfold in the mysterious deaths of legendary actor Gene Hackman, his wife, classical musician Betsy Arakawa, and one of their dogs, who were all found dead in their home above downtown Santa Fe. In its coverage of the story, The New York Times has also taken a closer look at the Academy Award-winning star’s less famous art practice. “An enthusiastic painter who would use the surrounding [Santa Fe] mountains as inspiration,” Hackman was also a former board member at Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. He also spoke at its opening in 1997, and narrated a documentary about the artist, reports the NYT. Several of Hackman’s paintings of landscapes and portraits are also hanging in a Santa Fe Asian fusion restaurant in which he and his wife had invested, called Jinja. This would certainly be fitting time to go take a closer look at them.
2nd CANCELLED EXHIBITION AT D.C. MUSEUM. Another exhibition scheduled to open in the spring at Washington D.C.’s Art Museum of the Americas, organized this time by Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, was cancelled earlier this month, without explanation, reported The Washington Post. Gosine’s “solo show with many artists” was based on his 2021 book about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean per reports. Meanwhile, earlier this week Hyperallergic broke the news that the same museum had dropped an exhibit on artists of African descent, because the Trump administration allegedly withdrew the show’s funding, due to it being considered a “DEI program and event.” Gosine later told Hyperallergic the museum had viewed his exhibition as a “queer show,” though the artist said he would not characterize it as such. “This is an anticipatory move,” Gosine said, referring to the museum aligning with President Trump’s agenda. “I fear, at this moment, that means throwing queer people, queer artists, marginal people, under the bus.”
The Digest
Sotheby’s live Contemporary Curated auction in New York on Feb. 26 yielded $19.88 million, including fees, despite having 64 percent fewer lots than last year, in what assistant vice-president and head of sale Haleigh Stoddard described as an intentionally, “highly edited selection.” This year’s sale included 101 lots, 21 of which did not sell and six withdrawals for a 73.3 percent sell-through rate. Last year’s mid-season, March sale, which had 276 lots, and a 75.7 percent sell-through rate, yielded $25.7 million with fees. [ARTnews]
The Centre Pompidou’s famous public library in central Paris will close for renovations on March 2, and be temporarily moved to another location in the southeastern, Bercy neighborhood of the capital. The library has been open every day for nearly 50 years and hosts some 4,000 visitors per day. The 1970’s-designed museum by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers is progressively closing for major renovations that will last for five years, beginning in September 2025. [ Le Figaro]
Japanese Superflat artist Takashi Murakami has launched a new, limited-edition collaboration with Major League Baseball for the March 2025 MLB Tokyo Series between the Dodgers and the Cubs, and it is a home run. Items in the collab, to be released March 7, include caps with Murakami’s signature, colorful, smiling flowers, clothing, and—not to be forgotten—an all-American favorite collector’s item: baseball cards. [ Artnet News and Complex]
Calls by US President Trump and Russian President Vladamir Putin for economic “normalization” between both countries, or the lifting of US sanctions on Russia, could widely impact the illicit art trade, and “oligarch-owned art,” warn observers. [The Art Newspaper]
Libbie Mugrabi, Manhattan socialite, and ex-wife of top art collector David Mugrabi, discusses her complex legal battle with the art-backed lending company Art Capital Group (ACG), and its executives, involving a $3 million loan that she never received. Meanwhile, the popularity of such art loans has reportedly grown in recent years and estimated to reach a high of $34 billion in 2023, according to a study that year. [The New York Times]
The Kicker
A PORTRAIT OF A LOST HOME. Artists are offering free-of-charge “portraits” of homes lost to the recent Los Angeles wildfires, reports the Los Angeles Times. The nationwide initiative called Homes in Memoriam is made of a collective of some 150 artists who paint the burnt homes from photographs and other documents and then offer them to the families who once lived there. It is run by two native Palisades residents, Ashley Miller, a therapist who also lost her family home in the fire, and interior designer Amy Beemer Lev. A GoFundMe page helps pay for costs of shipping the paintings, and reimbursing artists who make the paintings. “For me, it was a matter of feeling really compelled to do something,” said participating, LA-based artist Ruth Askren . “And this is what I do. I mean, this is it: I’m a painter. This is what I can do to help people cope with their loss in the smallest of ways.”
