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The Headlines
GO WEST! The New York dealer Sean Kelly is opening a branch in Los Angeles with his son, Thomas Kelly, at the helm, the Financial Times reports. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Kelly’s business, which he began as a private concern before opening a public space in SoHo in 1995. Now headquartered in Hudson Yards, the gallery shows Marina Abramović, Dawoud Bey, Kehinde Wiley , and many more. “It’s not just a lateral shift, it’s also a generational shift,” Sean Kelly told the paper. The new location—a onetime yoga studio—is in Hollywood, and is due to open in the spring. The Kelly family joins a wave of Manhattan dealers who have alighted in L.A. in recent years, including Jeffrey Deitch, Tanya Bonakdar, and Reena Spaulings. Global powerhouse Hauser & Wirth is also readying a second gallery in the city.
ALLEGATIONS IN THE GARDEN STATE. Federal prosecutors have charged Eugene Lemay, the executive director of the Mana Contemporary arts center in Jersey City, New Jersey, and an accountant of evading taxes totaling nearly $8 million and conspiring to defraud the IRS, the Jersey City Times reports. The case reportedly concerns Lemay’s involvement with Moishe’s Moving Systems, the moving company founded by art collector Moishe Mana . Mana Contemporary, which also has spaces in Chicago and Miami, said that Lemay has been placed on leave until the legal situation is resolved, the Jersey Journal reports. Lemay faces a maximum of 15 years in prison, according to the Real Deal.
The Digest
Four curators—all women—have been tapped to be the artistic directors of the the 2022 Singapore Biennale, which is scheduled for October. They are: Binna Choi, Nida Ghouse, June Yap, and Ala Younis. [ArtReview and ArtAsiaPacific]
On a new episode of the BBC television show The Outlaws, actor Christopher Walken painted over a real Banksy graffiti work that the anonymous artist (who seems to enjoy destroying his art!) was kind enough to create for the program. [The Sun and BBC News]
Water damage stemming from a storm that hit the Oakland Museum of California last month has led to a delay of the opening of a retrospective of the work of ceramicist Edith Heath and the temporary closure of the show “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism.” The art, thankfully, has remained safe, and the museum is still open to the public. [Datebook]
When M+ opens in Hong Kong tomorrow, visitors will find a meticulously preserved Tokyo sushi bar, Kiyotomo, which was designed by the late Shiro Kuramata and acquired by the museum. Alas the sleek, minimalist room will not be operational. [South China Morning Post]
Real-estate listings: The Santa Monica, California home of the late artist John Baldessari is on the market for $3.9 million, Artnet News reports, and the summer home owned by the late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld on the French Riviera can be rented for about $17,000 a night, Architectural Digest reports.
The volleyball assemblage that served as actor Tom Hanks’s lone “friend” on a deserted island in the 2000 smash Cast Away sold for nearly four times its high estimate at London’s Prop Store auction house, going for £230,000 (about $308,000). [BBC News]
The Kicker
AN ALL-STAR SHOW. Negative reviews are always fun, but sometimes it is nice to see a critic deliver a rave. That is what Adrian Searle has done in a Guardian piece that awards five stars to the freshly renovated Courtauld Gallery in London. “It’s all too much, but not so much that one is left numbed,” he writes. “The scale of the galleries, the historical sweep and variety of the collection, the surprises at every turn keep you alert and keep you looking.” He also offers a choice story about spilling paint in front of a Monet at the museum as a young art student. Many years ago, “students were still given dispensation to copy the works, although thankfully few were as messy as me,” he writes. [The Guardian]
