Metropolitan museum of art

PARIS — In 2001, when Daniel Wildenstein lapsed into a coma here just days before his death at 84 , French authorities say, his two sons and a team of financial advisers began quickly reshuffling the holdings of this wealthy patriarch who had led one of the greatest art dealing-dynasties of the 20th century. Almost $250 million worth of art was shipped from family vaults in New York to tax havens in Switzerland, the French government’s criminal investigators say in a report; even the ownership of his prized thoroughbred horses was abruptly transferred to a newly formed family company while he lingered unconscious in a hospital bed. The secret effort was part of a gigantic undertaking, the French authorities say, to avoid an estate tax bill in France and potentially in the United States. The French government has calculated that the estate could owe, with fines and interest, at least 550 million euros, or roughly $600 million, in France alone. Next month, several family members … [Read more...] about Wildenstein Trial to Lift a Veil on Opaque Art World Dealings

Correction Appended A YOUNG, ethereal-looking beauty, big-eyed, rosy-cheeked, gazes down and off to the side, lost in thought, one hand to her breast. Her frizzy hair is a tangle of black and red chalk, a halo. White highlights pick out the light on her cheekbones and chin and around her mouth. The artist understands the nuance of skin as it stretches over bone, knows how to make flesh look silken and breathe. The artist is Peter Paul Rubens, and the drawing is in the Rubens show opening this afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum. Rubens exhibitions come and go all the time in Europe, but not so often in this country, until lately, it seems. A cache of his oil sketches recently arrived at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn. And now this, the first big Rubens drawings survey ever in the United States. Why the historic reluctance (if that's the right thing to call it) on Americans' part toward Rubens? He was too Baroque, too Catholic, I suppose -- all those angels, all that … [Read more...] about From the Assembly Line of a Genius

Emily Fisher Landau, a New Yorker who used a Lloyd’s insurance settlement from a spectacular jewel heist in her apartment to fund what would become one of America’s premier collections of contemporary art, died on March 27 in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 102. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Candia Fisher. From 1991 to 2017, Ms. Landau opened her collection of 1,200 artworks to the public in the Fisher Landau Center for Art, a repurposed former factory in Long Island City, Queens. In 2010, she pledged almost 400 works, then worth between $50 million and $75 million, to the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she had long been a trustee. Ms. Landau’s trajectory into the art world began unexpectedly on a spring afternoon in 1969, while she was out at lunch. Armed burglars disguised as air conditioning repairmen broke into her apartment in the Imperial House building on the Upper East Side, bound the cook in a guest closet and opened a floor safe hidden inside another … [Read more...] about Emily Fisher Landau, Art Patron Who Had Her Own Museum, Dies at 102

Spring auction week tends to be a swirl of heartachingly beautiful works of art and mind-bendingly big prices. But it also serves a more practical purpose: setting the level of the art market. Is it strong overall or ailing? Were prices inflated, appropriate or low? Which artists broke out and which tanked? On the face of it, the past week of New York sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips seemed solid, with the amount of art sold totaling nearly $2 billion at high sell-through rates. But compared to the stratosphere of the past few years , this series of auctions fell considerably short, with less exciting inventory, lower price points and some serious discounting. “This week looked like ’08, where all of a sudden people are hunting for deals and you can get ’em,” said Neal Meltzer , a New York art adviser, adding that collectors were at the same time still willing to pay top dollar for unusual pieces by Klimt, Rousseau, Magritte and Bacon . As a result, the art … [Read more...] about 5 Takeaways From Auction Week

Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at Mayor Eric Adams’s assault on those outdoor restaurant sheds that have become eyesores. We’ll also meet the artist commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to do an installation around an escalator. Mayor Eric Adams put on a hard hat, grabbed a sledgehammer and took a swing. He connected with a waist-hight wall that easily gave way. It was the kind of Twitter-ready photo op that he relishes. The target was an abandoned restaurant shed on West 32nd Street in Manhattan. The restaurant that put up the shed during the pandemic did not take it down when it closed. The mayor said the city would do the demolition, starting with more than 20 “neglected sheds” like the one he was standing in front of. Adams defended outdoor dining — “it saved 100,000 jobs” in the restaurant industry during the pandemic, he said — and said that it should be a permanent part of city life. “What I want to say, loud and clear, as much as I can … [Read more...] about There Are Good Dining Sheds and Bad Ones, Adams Says

Brian Henry is a dancer of biblical proportions. It’s not just that he’s commandingly large and muscular, with a Moses-like beard. His dancing, though rooted in the street style called krump, has an ancient gravity. Standing in profile with his chest angled forward, he could be an Assyrian sculpture. Breathing like a dragon and then opening his eyes, he could be inspirited clay, the first man. Or that’s how he appears in “song,” a solo he made in collaboration with the choreographer Andrea Miller that he’s performing this week during her dance company’s 15th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater . For Henry, 34, a self-described street dancer who has become the face of krump in New York, performing in a concert dance setting is an opportunity to show that krump “is a dance form to be held on the same level,” he said recently. But Henry, also known as HallowDreamz, isn’t altering how he dances. “Because I’m telling a different story doesn’t mean I have to step outside of … [Read more...] about For Brian Henry, Finding Krump ‘Felt Like Home, but a Better Version’