Christie’s Details Paul Allen Collection Sale, Duro Olowu’s Latest Curated Exhibition, and More: Morning Links for September 23, 2022

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The Headlines

OPENING THE TREASURE CHEST. That’s how the New York Times describes its preview of Paul Allen’s storied art collection, which will head to auction this fall at Christie’s New York. More than 150 of them will be sold and are expected to bring in over $1 billion, as we learned last month. But at last, we know more about which works the ultra-wealthy can bid on, like  Georges Seurat ’s 1888 Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version), which features a section of his famed painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. That work is expected to sell for more than $100 million, as is van Gogh’s Verger avec cyprès, one of five works by the post-Impressionist still in private hands and a rarely exhibited piece. A Klimt could sell for over $90 million, or more than double what Allen paid for it in 2006. It’s a collection filled with art historical gems. 

ARTISTS SUPPORTING ARTISTS. The Guardian reports that artist Tracey Emin, who made her name as a Y.B.A. back in the ’80s, will soon auction her painting Like a Cloud of Blood to benefit a residency program for emerging artists that she is creating in Margate, England. To be sold by Christie’s next month, the work is expected to fetch £700,000 ($775,000). Fashion designer and sometimes-curator Duro Olowu has organized another exhibition, this time for octogenarian artist Robert Earl Paige, who was a member of AfriCOBRA and identifies as a “a doodler, a tinker, and a dabbler.” The show is on view at Salon 94 Design in the Lower East Side until October 29. And finally, Hilarie M. Sheets has a close look at a group of artists who were formerly incarcerated, including Jesse Krimes, Russell Craig, and Jared Owens , who have supported each other as they established their now closely watched art careers. 

The Digest

Acaye Kerunen, an artist who represented Uganda for the country’s first-ever pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, is now represented by Pace Gallery, Galerie Kandlhofer, and Blum & Poe. [ARTnews]

Phillips will partner with one of China’s main auction houses, Yongle, that will see the two firms host sales in Hong Kong and Beijing later this year. [Artnet News]

Stephen Smith reviews The Story of Art Without Men a new book by Katy Hessel, which got its start as an Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists started by the author. Smith describes the book as “a study of one brilliant, wronged woman after another.” [Financial Times]

The Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna has just opened its iteration of “The Painters of Pompeii,” the largest version of the show to date, including several frescoes that have never left the museum’s vaults.  [The Art Newspaper]

Christopher Knight reviews “The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, writing, “It’s ably presented, if without much excitement. … Few of the 131 paintings, photographs and sculptures are compelling, except in a documentary way.” [Los Angeles Times]

A new archaeological discovery in Prague appears to date back some 7,000 years to the Stone Age, making it older than Stonehenge and the pyramids in Egypt. [Artnet News]

The Kicker

AWARD WINNING. In case you missed it, late in the afternoon yesterday, the Whitney Museum announced that Ralph Lemon has won its $100,000 Bucksbaum Award, which goes to an artist participating in the Whitney Biennial. In a statement, the museum described Lemon’s contributions to the recurring exhibition as “hundreds of drawings from over or more than 25 years in five transient variations that unfolded monthly over the course of the exhibition” held to the wall by pushpins. Curiously, the winner of the Bucksbaum is typically announced during the run of the Biennial; the 2022 edition, however, closed on Labor Day. Perhaps, the day has to do with one of the exhibition’s cocurators, David Breslin, jumping ship earlier this week to head up the modern and contemporary department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [ARTnews]