São Paulo–based gallery Almeida & Dale will officially acquire Millan, a stalwart of Brazil’s contemporary art scene. This move will consolidate a top primary dealership, Millan, and a major secondary one, Almeida & Dale, reflecting a growing trend as the new enterprise aims to remain dynamic and competitive in the global art market.

As part of the deal, Almeida & Dale will take over the management of Millan’s three exhibition spaces in Pinheiros, one of São Paulo’s most sought after neighborhoods, as well as its full artist roster. Additionally, Millan’s associate director João Marcelo de Andrade Lima and general director Hena Lee will become executive partners at Almeida & Dale, alongside that gallery’s founders, Antônio Almeida and Carlos Dale. Millan’s two cofounders, André Millan and Socorro de Andrade Lima, will take on the strategy-focused roles of artistic director and commercial director, respectively.

For Antônio Almeida, the art market needed a change. “By combining Millan’s keen artistic eye and its team of artists with Almeida & Dale’s expertise and portfolio, we will be able to expand the power of Brazilian and Latin American art around the world, and this is positive for the market, for artists, and for collectors,” he told ARTnews.

The merger will go through on March 29, with the opening of the exhibition “Nossa Senhora do Desejo” at one of each gallery’s spaces, placing the work of Pedro Moraleida Bernardes (1977–99), who during his short but prolific career created an expansive oeuvre that criticized aspects of contemporary Brazilian society, in conversation with the work of 20 Brazilian and international artists, including Cinthia Marcelle, Sara Ramo and Guerreiro Do Divino Amor.

Traditionally, there has been a clear distinction in Brazil between galleries operating in the primary market (new and recent work by contemporary artists) and the secondary market (historical work by deceased or established artists). This move now allows them to put an artist like 17th-century Dutch painter Franz Post in an exhibition alongside Alex Červený,  a contemporary Brazilian artist whose work draws from Medieval art, Renaissance altarpieces, and Surrealism, according to Almeida.

São Paulo–based gallery Almeida & Dale will officially acquire Millan, a stalwart of Brazil’s contemporary art scene. This move will consolidate a top primary dealership, Millan, and a major secondary one, Almeida & Dale, reflecting a growing trend as the new enterprise aims to remain dynamic and competitive in the global art market.

As part of the deal, Almeida & Dale will take over the management of Millan’s three exhibition spaces in Pinheiros, one of São Paulo’s most sought after neighborhoods, as well as its full artist roster. Additionally, Millan’s associate director João Marcelo de Andrade Lima and general director Hena Lee will become executive partners at Almeida & Dale, alongside that gallery’s founders, Antônio Almeida and Carlos Dale. Millan’s two cofounders, André Millan and Socorro de Andrade Lima, will take on the strategy-focused roles of artistic director and commercial director, respectively.

For Antônio Almeida, the art market needed a change. “By combining Millan’s keen artistic eye and its team of artists with Almeida & Dale’s expertise and portfolio, we will be able to expand the power of Brazilian and Latin American art around the world, and this is positive for the market, for artists, and for collectors,” he told ARTnews.

The merger will go through on March 29, with the opening of the exhibition “Nossa Senhora do Desejo” at one of each gallery’s spaces, placing the work of Pedro Moraleida Bernardes (1977–99), who during his short but prolific career created an expansive oeuvre that criticized aspects of contemporary Brazilian society, in conversation with the work of 20 Brazilian and international artists, including Cinthia Marcelle, Sara Ramo and Guerreiro Do Divino Amor.

Traditionally, there has been a clear distinction in Brazil between galleries operating in the primary market (new and recent work by contemporary artists) and the secondary market (historical work by deceased or established artists). This move now allows them to put an artist like 17th-century Dutch painter Franz Post in an exhibition alongside Alex Červený,  a contemporary Brazilian artist whose work draws from Medieval art, Renaissance altarpieces, and Surrealism, according to Almeida.

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The Headlines

FREE AND SMALLER MUSEUMS MAKE SENSE. A new study by think tank Remuseum, argues museum admission should be free for smaller institutions, because it drives greater attendance without raising costs, reports NPR. The study doesn’t explain how cash-strapped museums can make up for the lost income, arguing that admissions “don’t generate profit, but instead subsidize the museum experience,” said Stephen Reily, Remuseum founding director. Similarly, the new data suggests that museum expansions intended to serve larger audiences often do not make financial sense, adds The Art Newspaper. “In fact, in some important ways, the data show that it gets much harder to fulfill your mission the bigger you get,” said Reily.

ITALIAN VILLAGE VERSUS THE LOUVRE. Since 2019, leaders in the small Italian town of Avezzano in the Abruzzo region have been calling on the Louvre museum in Paris to return a medieval stone bas-relief that was once part of their local church, San Nicola, which was destroyed in a 1915 earthquake, reports Le Journal des Arts. More recently, they have been supported in their efforts by the Italian government. The 13th century sculpted item is currently on view in the Louvre’s Denon wing, where a label says it was acquired during the German occupation of France, with the intention of displaying it in a Düsseldorf museum. It eventually entered the Louvre in 1983. The Louvre website also labeled the item MNR or “National Museums Recovery,” meaning it is not officially part of France’s national collection, because its rightful owners are not known. In recent years, the Louvre has made an effort to publicize the presence of such MNR-labelled artworks in French museums, which for years, few knew existed. The museum also pledged to be more proactive about their return. Most MNR artwork were looted during the Nazi occupation and returned to France by allied forces after the war. The Louvre has reportedly denied that an official request for restitution was made for the church carving.  

The Digest

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

FREE AND SMALLER MUSEUMS MAKE SENSE. A new study by think tank Remuseum, argues museum admission should be free for smaller institutions, because it drives greater attendance without raising costs, reports NPR. The study doesn’t explain how cash-strapped museums can make up for the lost income, arguing that admissions “don’t generate profit, but instead subsidize the museum experience,” said Stephen Reily, Remuseum founding director. Similarly, the new data suggests that museum expansions intended to serve larger audiences often do not make financial sense, adds The Art Newspaper. “In fact, in some important ways, the data show that it gets much harder to fulfill your mission the bigger you get,” said Reily.

ITALIAN VILLAGE VERSUS THE LOUVRE. Since 2019, leaders in the small Italian town of Avezzano in the Abruzzo region have been calling on the Louvre museum in Paris to return a medieval stone bas-relief that was once part of their local church, San Nicola, which was destroyed in a 1915 earthquake, reports Le Journal des Arts. More recently, they have been supported in their efforts by the Italian government. The 13th century sculpted item is currently on view in the Louvre’s Denon wing, where a label says it was acquired during the German occupation of France, with the intention of displaying it in a Düsseldorf museum. It eventually entered the Louvre in 1983. The Louvre website also labeled the item MNR or “National Museums Recovery,” meaning it is not officially part of France’s national collection, because its rightful owners are not known. In recent years, the Louvre has made an effort to publicize the presence of such MNR-labelled artworks in French museums, which for years, few knew existed. The museum also pledged to be more proactive about their return. Most MNR artwork were looted during the Nazi occupation and returned to France by allied forces after the war. The Louvre has reportedly denied that an official request for restitution was made for the church carving.  

The Digest

Like most, I was carried away by the epochal change to pictures that took place circa 2022, once it became possible to generate photorealistic images with the help of artificial intelligence. I read articles about DALL·E and Midjourney, becoming aware of the technology in much the same way a comfortable painter might have learned about photography in the early 1840s, acquiring a kind of knowledge that felt peripheral and required no action.

Not too much time has passed, even if the technology behind synthetic imagery has improved significantly. The scholar and photography critic Fred Ritchin, who began writing about changes in media in the 1980s, has just published an essential primer for mass visual literacy in the age of artificial intelligence: The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI.

The book’s second chapter, titled “Playing with AI,” ends with a historical coda that made me chuckle: “Many of these early synthetic images are like the daguerreotypes produced soon after the invention of photography, accused by Baudelaire and others of being ‘art’s mortal enemy.’ The critics were right, as many 19th-century painters undoubtedly agreed, but also quite wrong.”

The Synthetic Eye is interspersed with synthetic images “created by the author via text prompts,” as noted at the end of the book, made “in collaboration with either OpenAI’s DALL•E or Stability AI’s DreamStudio between 2022-24.” Indeed, of the 88 illustrations, only one, at the beginning of the first chapter—aptly titled “Exiting the Photographic Universe”—was taken with a camera. This is an impressive indulgence. “With both trepidation and enthusiasm,” Ritchin writes, “after several decades spent editing, curating, and writing about photographs, I began to experiment with generative artificial intelligence systems that bypassed the camera, hopeful that the images produced in response to my text prompts might be freer and more innovative, without some of the restrictions I had experienced.”

The restrictions Ritchin describes relate mostly to photography’s troubling inability to illustrate what is outside the frame. Though the technology powering photography has changed significantly—lighter weight cameras, DSLRs, Photoshop, sharper lenses, smartphones with front-facing cameras—its images are still indexical, traces of what is or has been there. Bypassing the camera and its constraints became possible only because the technology of making photographs has produced a surfeit, with an estimated 5 billion photos produced daily, mostly on smartphones. That is, these cameraless, synthetic images are progenies of those camera-born ones.

Like most, I was carried away by the epochal change to pictures that took place circa 2022, once it became possible to generate photorealistic images with the help of artificial intelligence. I read articles about DALL·E and Midjourney, becoming aware of the technology in much the same way a comfortable painter might have learned about photography in the early 1840s, acquiring a kind of knowledge that felt peripheral and required no action.

Not too much time has passed, even if the technology behind synthetic imagery has improved significantly. The scholar and photography critic Fred Ritchin, who began writing about changes in media in the 1980s, has just published an essential primer for mass visual literacy in the age of artificial intelligence: The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI.

The book’s second chapter, titled “Playing with AI,” ends with a historical coda that made me chuckle: “Many of these early synthetic images are like the daguerreotypes produced soon after the invention of photography, accused by Baudelaire and others of being ‘art’s mortal enemy.’ The critics were right, as many 19th-century painters undoubtedly agreed, but also quite wrong.”

The Synthetic Eye is interspersed with synthetic images “created by the author via text prompts,” as noted at the end of the book, made “in collaboration with either OpenAI’s DALL•E or Stability AI’s DreamStudio between 2022-24.” Indeed, of the 88 illustrations, only one, at the beginning of the first chapter—aptly titled “Exiting the Photographic Universe”—was taken with a camera. This is an impressive indulgence. “With both trepidation and enthusiasm,” Ritchin writes, “after several decades spent editing, curating, and writing about photographs, I began to experiment with generative artificial intelligence systems that bypassed the camera, hopeful that the images produced in response to my text prompts might be freer and more innovative, without some of the restrictions I had experienced.”

The restrictions Ritchin describes relate mostly to photography’s troubling inability to illustrate what is outside the frame. Though the technology powering photography has changed significantly—lighter weight cameras, DSLRs, Photoshop, sharper lenses, smartphones with front-facing cameras—its images are still indexical, traces of what is or has been there. Bypassing the camera and its constraints became possible only because the technology of making photographs has produced a surfeit, with an estimated 5 billion photos produced daily, mostly on smartphones. That is, these cameraless, synthetic images are progenies of those camera-born ones.

In this epic collab between two titans of prestige, entertainment behemoth Roc Nation and luxury bookmaker Assouline offer up the chance to own a historic work of art—a sleek tome that embodies Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter’s enduring blend of artistry and enterprise.  

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A thematic journey through rare insights, illuminating essays, and thousands of artifacts spanning JAY-Z’s 25-year career, The Book of HOV: A Tribute beckons dedicated fans and collectors alike. The impressive Ultimate Edition, hand-bound and printed on luxuriously thick pages, comes nestled in an embossed clamshell case, complete with gloves and a signature canvas tote bag.  

It’s no wonder the New York Times refers to Assouline as “the Birkin bag of the book world.”

If you were one of the 600,000 fans who visited Roc Nation’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library in 2023, these pages will transport you back to those hallowed halls that brimmed with the lifeblood of a cultural legend. For those just beginning your journey through this legacy-in-artifacts, prepare to be awed by the masterful work of the curators, documentarians, and craftspeople who brought this project to life.  

Among the book’s nearly 700 images underscoring every milestone, roadblock, and metamorphosis of JAY-Z’s storied career, you’ll find photos of the iconic Baseline Studios, original recording masters, custom stage outfits, art pieces like Daniel Arsham’s HOV Hands, magazine covers, VIP credentials, even the guitar Hov played during his tongue-in-cheek performance at Glastonbury.