Sotheby’s to Host Saudi Arabia’s First-Ever International Auction, Australian Museum Stokes Debate After Buying Vandalized Glass Cover for Painting, and More: Morning Links for November 7, 2024

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The Headlines

KINGDOM COME FOR SOTHEBY’S AND ART BASEL TO MANAGE ABU DHABI ART? ARTnews‘ Daniel Cassady looks at Sotheby’s finally closing its deal with Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund ADQ for a cool $1 billion. Cassady also writes that multiple sources told him that Art Basel is in negotiations to receive $20 million in exchange for running the annual Abu Dhabi Art fair. This news was followed by today’s announcement that Sotheby’s will host the first-ever international auction in Saudi Arabia, near the capital of Riyadh, on February 8, 2025, reports George Nelson for ARTnews. “In committing to a physical presence in Riyadh, we’re supporting the enrichment of the artistic landscape of the country, which will empower the large youth demographic of Saudi,” said Sotheby’s CEO, Charles F. Stewart, in a statement.

GLASSY ACT OF PROTEST. Australia’s WA Museum Boola Bardip has acquired the glass cover once protecting a painting in the Art Gallery of Western Australia that was tagged by a climate protester in January 2023 with the logo of the energy company Woodside. reports The Art Newspaper. The glass covered Frederick McCubbin’s (undamaged) 1889 painting Down on His Luck, and the stenciled tag was meant to protest the company’s industrial activity in the Burrup Peninsula of Western Australia, which activists believe threatens 50,000-year-old Indigenous rock art. However, politicians say the museum is “glorifying” the protester’s action by adding the cover to its collection. The debate has even inspired a descendant of McCubbin, Margot Edwards, to defend the acquisition, stating, “It is the museum’s job to collect material significant to our state’s cultural life.” She added the protest action brings awareness to the dangers of fossil fuel extraction. Meanwhile, the WA Museum CEO Alec Coles stated the acquisition, “does not indicate the WA Museum’s support for the cause, but merely its recording of the event. In fact, unsurprisingly, we condemn the targeting of cultural institutions for such protests…”

The Digest

The performance artist and founder of so-called “food art,” Daniel Spoerri, has died at the age of 94. He was known for his artworks made of scraps of food and dirty dishes. [dpa and Monopol]

The copyright case brought by artist Deborah Roberts against Brooklyn dealer Richard Beavers and the artist Lynthia Edwards has been handed a mixed ruling. A federal judge found that for some artworks in question, “no reasonable jury … could find that the two works are substantially similar,” but also did not dismiss the whole case of copyright infringement, as the defendants had asked. On the fence, then. [Artnet News]

Last month Yemen joined the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects after joining other Unesco heritage protection measures. This means Yemen will be better equipped to claw back goods stolen from the country. [Il Sole 24 Ore]

Pioneering Japanese surrealist photographer Eikoh Hosoe has died at the age of 91. [The New York Times]

The Kicker

BIDS FROM THE CHANDELIER. Former chairman of Sotheby’s, James Stourton, reveals the dark secrets and sketchy deals that helped build the auction house empire, and with it, London’s global art market in a new book, Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market 1945-2000. He also talks to The Times’ Rachel Campbell-Johnston, whom he invited to his weekend, 17th-century house in Dorset. Stourton discusses how a new art market emerged in London, specifically, at 9:30 pm on October 15, 1958, with the advent of Sotheby’s first evening sale event, which was attended by movie stars and proved a “raging success.” His book also exposes some of the cheating backroom deals that commonly took place, like auction rings, or “a group of dealers clubbing together to avoid bidding against each other at auction and then selling off the object later in a private ‘knockout’,” he said. Or there were the times the auctioneer would pretend to have a bidder in the room to run up the price, dubbed, “taking bids from the chandelier.”