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The Headlines
THE CARABINIERI STRIKE AGAIN. Police in Italy said that they halted the auction of a painting by 17th-century great Artemisia Gentileschi in Vienna that had allegedly been exported from the country under false pretenses, the Associated Press report. Officials said that the work, estimated to be worth €2 million ($2.05 million) or more, was given an export license based on documentation that claimed it was by a follower of Gentileschi, when it was in fact the work of the pioneering artist herself. The piece, titled Roman Charity, went missing from a private collection in 2019, per Courthouse News, which reports that two men are under investigation in the export case. In other Italian art-crime news, a museum recently opened in Rome to show repatriated antiquities.
ARTIST RITZI JACOBI, who approached textiles with an expansive sense of possibility, has died at 80, Nina Siegal reports in the New York Times. Grouped with the so-called “new tapestry” movement, along with Sheila Hicks, the late Magdalena Abakanowicz , and others, Jacobi made sprawling, alluring, and sometimes fearsome works that incorporate a kaleidoscopic array of materials, like goat hair, metal, and coconut fiber. Born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1941, six years before the nation went Communist, Jacobi defected to Germany in 1970 with her then-husband and collaborator Peter Jacobi, while they were abroad, representing Romania at the Venice Biennale.
The Digest
Artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles, who is Caddo, discussed having his work damaged by a vandal who broke into the Dallas Museum of Art last month. “To be one of the first Caddos that had a piece in a major museum like that was a big deal, and for it to be destroyed, it was a blow not only to me, but to my tribe and for representation for our culture,” he said. The DMA said it hopes to restore all the damaged objects. [The Dallas Morning News]
A federal court ruled that artist Jeff Koons has to face a suit that claims that he violated the copyright of sculptor Michael Hayden by incorporating into his notorious “Made in Heaven” series a bench (a “porn prop,” per Reuters) that Hayden had made for Ilona Staller, the adult-film star who became Koons’s first wife. [Reuters]
Archaeologists working in Iraqi Kurdistan believe that they may have uncovered a fortress from around 2,000 years ago that was part of Natounia, a royal city of the Adiabene kingdom. [CNN]
Seattle’s Museum of Museums canceled a planned show that was to be titled “Amazon vs Microsoft” and include work by employees at those two tech behemoths, after public criticism of that focus. “I understand there are blue collar employees at both companies, but I’m not sure giving some of the top earners in the city yet another platform is the way to do this,” one online commenter said. [Geekwire]
GROW OR GO. ArtDaily has news that the Almine Rech gallery is doubling the size of its 18 Avenue Matignon gallery in Paris, with plans to unveil it in September, and that PPOW gallery is opening another space in Tribeca that is adjacent to its current home in that New York neighborhood, also in September.
Artist Adam Pendleton shared a recipe for pancakes (made with rolled oats, pulverized in a food processor) that “involves nearly submerging the batter in a heaping solution of butter and—somewhat unexpectedly—olive oil,” Coco Romack reports. They look tasty! [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]
The Kicker
THE AUTEUR OF THE AVENUES. The gallery boom in Los Angeles has continued apace recently, and the Hollywood Reporter caught up with developer Zach Lasry, who has been inking deals for his spaces near Western and Melrose Avenues with New York–based outfits like David Zwirner, Sargent’s Daughters, and Shrine (the latter two share a venue). Lasry, 32, has a background in TV and movies, and told the Reporter , “I wanted to bring my filmmaking lens to real estate—to approach it with a storytelling ethos. What I’m attempting to do is like producing: Hire people you trust, encourage collaboration, see what happens.” [The Hollywood Reporter]
