Today’s FOUND is 100% news! There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the large amount of interesting art news. Some days there’s more news than others. The art news is normally in the free preview section of the newsletter—so I’ve kept with this tradition and today’s newsletter is going to be free for everyone.
Norway Rights Prize Awarded To Jailed Cuban 'Artivist' Otero Alcantara
From Barron’s
Norway's Rafto Prize, honouring human rights champions, was on Thursday awarded to imprisoned Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, "for his fearless opposition to authoritarianism through art."
The Rafto Foundation said that "Otero Alcantara spearheads a new generation of independent Cuban voices using creative forms of resistance to challenge the authoritarian regime."
"Like many artists before him, his art and his civic position push the limits of freedom of expression in the face of censorship and repression," it said in a statement.
‘Art changes people and people change the world’: the artists targeting UN’s general assembly
From The Guardian
Posters by global artists have been placed around New York City to coincide with the annual meeting, hoping to drive home the importance of certain issues
This year, global artists have decided to shake up the scripted, polished performances of high politics at the UN general assembly. As delegates make their way toward UN headquarters in midtown Manhattan to debate goals for a sustainable future, they will be greeted by posters encouraging them to do things like commit crimes against reality, stop to ponder that we are all solar powered, consider African food emancipation and think about urban planning from the perspective of a child.
These posters are part of a carefully planned artistic intervention into what is widely considered one of the most pivotal meetings of the UN general assembly in years. The 79th general assembly, which opened on 10 September, will attempt to accelerate progress toward 17 major sustainability goals, covering such issues as climate change, women’s equality, ending global hunger and developing sustainable consumption models. Artists hope to have their own say into these goals and how they are achieved.
‘Impossible task’: NGV to take largest international exhibition of Indigenous art to US
From The Guardian
The show, which will tour for three years across North America beginning in 2025, will feature the gallery’s ‘absolute masterpieces’ – including works by Emily Kam Kngwarray and Albert Namatjira
The largest international exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art will open in 2025 at Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art and tour for three years across North America.
Titled The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, the show will feature more than 200 works from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) collection from the 19th century to the present day – including masterpieces by the late Emily Kam Kngwarray, Rover Thomas, Sally Gabori and Albert Namatjira.
The exhibition takes on an “impossible task”, says curator Myles Russell-Cook, “to fully capture the diversity of First Nations communities and art from Australia”. Rising to the challenge, the exhibition will feature works from across the continent – including art hotspots such as the central desert, Arnhem Land and the Torres Strait – and a range of media, from bark and canvas paintings to textile, video and neon works.
Report Finds Art Sales Stagnate, Even as the Luxury Sector Continues to Grow
From ARTnews
Given the art market’s well-documented “correction” this year and last, you might think the larger luxury market would be down as well. If so, you’d be very wrong.
A recent study analyzing global luxury spending found that while art sales only grew between 1 percent and 3 percent last year, the overall luxury sector grew between 8 percent and 10 percent. The total revenue figures, according to the study published in June by consulting firm Bain & Company and Italian luxury association Altagamma, estimated the global luxury market at approximately $1.66 trillion; fine art accounted for a mere $45 billion of that.
It’s Too Early to Know if Fed’s Interest Rate Cut Will Revive a Flagging Art Market, Experts Say
From ARTnews
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday, signaling that it is shifting focus from battling inflation to safeguarding the job market. The cut will likely have major implications for the larger economy, but as for the art market, experts say the move is unlikely to be enough to ease fears and cautious spending.
Raf Simons to auction off Picasso ceramics and other works.
From Artsy
Fashion designer Raf Simons will auction part of his personal art collection, which includes 18 rare Pablo Picasso ceramics. The auction, titled “Design + Picasso Ceramics From the Collection of Raf Simons,” will take place today at the Piasa auction house in Paris.
From 1947 to 1971, Picasso designed approximately 633 ceramic editions, according to Christie’s. The artist experimented with creating household objects, including plates and bowls. All of the 18 works Simons is selling in the auction are either pitchers or vases. The price estimates for these Picasso ceramics range from €8,000 to €200,000 ($8,900 to $222,360).
Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Swirls Are Surprisingly Accurate, Say Physicists
From Artnet
Van Gogh painted the work in a windowless studio at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum.
In his swirling 1889 masterwork, The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh took certain artistic liberties. The quaint valley village is imaginary and the brilliant crescent moon was actually in waning gibbous. Fair enough, it was, after all, painted during the day from Van Gogh’s windowless studio at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum.
When it comes to depicting the physics affecting the sky’s cloud and air movement, however, Van Gogh is remarkably accurate. This is the conclusion of researchers who have thoroughly examined The Starry Night’s atmospheric dynamics and found that the artist had an “innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
Graffiti Artist RAMS Tags the Peak of an Abandoned 44-Story Skyscraper
From Artnet
The artist had to rappel down the upper levels of the building to leave his mark.
For five years, 45 Park Place has been a blight on the New York City skyline, the top third of its 43 stories sitting unfinished, concrete underpinnings exposed to the elements. This week, it got a new coat of paint courtesy of the graffiti artist RAMS, who somehow managed to rappel down the side of the building’s upper levels to throw up an epic piece.
“RAMS is one of the best graffiti writers in the world right now—every time I see RAMS do something, I’m always like ‘what’s he going to do next?’ And it’s always something bigger and more ambitious, daring, and stylistic,” street art expert Roger Gastman, the mastermind of the blockbuster Beyond the Streets graffiti exhibition series, told me. “He’s just pushing the limits of this culture.”
Michigan Art Dealer Sentenced for Defrauding Elderly Collectors
From Hyperallergic
A judge also ordered Wendy Halsted Beard to pay over $2 million in restitution after she consigned fine art photographs without giving the original owners their cut of the profit.
A Michigan art dealer accused of swindling seniors out of $1.6 million in a photography consignment scheme was sentenced to five years and three months in prison on Wednesday, September 11, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Detroit.
Former art dealer Wendy Halsted Beard, 59, allegedly used her fine art gallery in Birmingham to sell consigned photography without providing the original owners their cut of the profit, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In addition to cheating clients out of sales proceeds, Halstead reportedly failed to deliver the works to the new owners after receiving payments.
Rare Dürer artwork 'found at tip' fetches £26,500
From BBC
A 500-year-old engraving by Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, which is said to have been found at a tip, has sold at auction for £26,500.
Mat Winter, from Cranbrook, Kent, said he discovered the artwork when he was 11 and was unaware of its value until he took it to a specialist as an adult.
The engraving - titled Knight, Death and the Devil and signed and dated 1513 - was sold in an online auction, external by Rare Book Auctions on Wednesday.