Personnel from the Stadel Museum hang Sandro Botticelli’s “Minerva and the Centaur” a few days before the exhibition opens in Frankfurt. The Städel Museum will show the first monographic exhibition on Sandro Botticelli (1444/45–1510) in the German-speaking world from 13 November 2009 to 28 February 2010. Taking the artist’s monumental Idealized Portrait of a Lady, [...]

French and Italian could be heard throughout Christie’s salesroom Tuesday night as the fall auction season began unsteadily: While there were some strong prices, there also expensive failures. It was a thin sale of Impressionist and modern art, with just 40 works on offer and prices that fell below estimates. The evening totaled $65.6 million [...]

Caravaggio (Italian 1571-1610). Bacchus, 1595. Oil on canvas, 37 x 33 inches. The tiny image of the Renaissance master is hidden in a carafe of wine in his 1597 oil painting Bacchus, one of his most acclaimed works which hangs in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. It shows a man, thought to be Caravaggio at the age [...]

It’s the business … Martin Westwood’s corporate collage, Sunset Clause (2004) Martin Westwood makes art from corporate culture. Literally: he builds sculptures using the paraphernalia of commerce, fabricating collages out of brochures, pie-charts, carpet tiles and paperclips. The resulting installations sit somewhere between the sterile world of the car showroom, with its promotional balloons and [...]

Jean-Leon Gerome, “Man with a Waterpipe and Dog”. Estimate: £800,000 to £1,200,000 Christie’s will offer a highly curated auction of 24 Orientalist masterpieces on November 25, 2009 in London. An important Private Collection of 9 works will form the core of the sale and includes four works by Jean-Léon Gérôme and three exceptional watercolors by [...]

Bill Thompson, Toro, 2009, 24″ x 20″ x 7″ Urethane on polyurethane block. Thatcher Projects presents Shift an exhibition of new work by Bill Thompson. From curvilinear and cloud-like to pointedly flexed and bowing, Thompson’s colorful wall structures combine painting and sculpture into a unique minimalist art form.