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The Headlines
TOMORROW MARKS THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States. In ARTnews, Sarah Douglas tells the story of intricate abstract works that the Korean-American painter Young-Il Ahn made in response to the event. They are now on view at Harper’s Chelsea in New York. In the Village Voice, Christian Viveros-Fauné has a story on how the Tribute in Light memorial came to be. Architect Santiago Calatrava told Architectural Digest about how he conceived his Oculus transportation hub at Ground Zero. In the New York Times, Jason Farago looks at how art struggled to contend with the horror of the day. And the Art Newspaper spoke with Paul Chan, Keith Mayerson , and other artists about their memories of the event, and how they responded. Said Trevor Paglen, “I wouldn’t say that the attacks had a big effect on my thinking so much as the amorphous and ambiguous war on terror and the authorization of military force giving the president unlimited power to wage war.”
A MARKET ROUNDUP: Beating out the competition, Sotheby’s will sell art from the fabled collection of the divorcing couple Harry and Linda Macklowe, ARTnews reports. Stocked with prime pieces by Warhol, Twombly, and Giacometti, it is estimated to total more than $600 million at sales in November and May in New York. It is not the only major collection making news. More than 360 lots of wine from collector Pierre Chen will be offered at Sotheby’s Hong Kong next month with an estimate north of HK$88 million (US$11.3 million), making it the second-biggest single-owner wine auction ever held in Asia, per the Drinks Business. And on Thursday the house sold a set of 107 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs (101 plus the ability to mint 6 more) in an online auction for $24.4 million. That is almost $228,000 per ape, for those keeping score. There are a total of 10,000 computer-generated apes in the series, created by Yuga Labs.
The Digest
In Kabul, Taliban officials have been covering up street art at a rapid pace and replacing it with slogans celebrating their victory. “They were afraid of these murals and they had a very clear plan for them,” said artist Omaid Sharifi, whose Artlords group facilitated the creation of 2,000 murals around Afghanistan. [Financial Times]
The Barbican Centre in London, which turns 40 next year, will undertake a major renovation of its Brutalist home. The project is slated to cost £150 million (about $208 million). [Evening Standard/Yahoo! News]
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California has tapped Kehinde Wiley to create a painting in response to its beloved Thomas Gainsborough portrait, The Blue Boy (ca. 1770). It goes on view October 2. [The New York Times]
Chinese artist Cao Fei has won the vaunted Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize, which comes with a purse of £30,000 (about $42,000). The foundation’s director said that the artist’s work presents “a uniquely poetic dystopia.” [The Guardian]
Libbie Mugrabi told a judge that she plans to represent herself in her ongoing legal war with her former husband, billionaire art collector, David Mugrabi, explaining she has been educated in “the school of life.” Earlier this year, she moved to reopen their divorce. [Page Six]
Princess Eugenie, a Hauser & Wirth director in London, recorded a video interview with the TV program Sky Arts about an art exhibition at Buckingham Palace that is called, straightforwardly enough, “Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace.” [Town & Country]
The Kicker
WHO KNOWS WHAT HISTORY LURKS JUST OUT OF SIGHT? In 2018, an old wooden coffin was discovered in a pond at a golf course in Lincolnshire, England, with a man and a ceremonial axe inside. Now research has dated it to 4,000 years ago, the Guardian reports. Before the area was a golf course, it was a farm operated by the family of its present owner, Mark Casswell . He told the paper, “It’s amazing how well preserved the axe is with its handle still there like it was made yesterday. We’ll have a nice photograph of it up on the clubhouse wall.” [The Guardian]
