Monday, October 4

Ortuzar Projects and Hannah Hoffman to Co-Represent Anita Steckel Estate

New York’s Ortuzar Projects gallery has announced it will jointly represent the estate of Anita Steckel with Hannah Hoffman gallery in Los Angeles. The enterprises, along with the Stanford Art Gallery, will show Steckel’s work throughout the year in dedicated showcases at their respective exhibition spaces. Steckel, who died in 2012, was a feminist artist known for her satirical style; she used erotic imagery in her mixed media paintings to critique Western art history. Ortuzar Projects will exhibit Steckel’s work at Frieze Masters in November. Her work is currently on view in a solo exhibition at Hannah Hoffman.

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Jenny Saville Gifted the Keys to the City of Florence

British artist Jenny Saville was gifted the keys to the city of Florence this past Wednesday. The honor is meant to mark the opening of five new exhibitions across the city at the city’s leading museums: the Museo Novecento, the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the Museo degli Innocenti and the Museo di Casa Buonarroti. The works Saville has prepared for these exhibitions respond to the themes of the Italian Renaissance and especially the work of Michelangelo. The exhibitions opened will run through February 20, 2022.

David Ross Reappointed as Chair of London’s National Portrait Gallery

British philanthropist David Ross has been reappointed by the U.K. Secretary of State to serve as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London for another four-year term. The position begins this month and will last until October 2025. Following the government’s reappointment, the trustees of the museum reelected Ross as chair of the board, a role he has held since 2017. Ross, the cofounder of mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse, has served as a trustee at the museum since 2006 and has held positions on the museum’s audit and risk committee and development board. In 2020, Ross made headlines for purchasing a prized David Hockney portrait sold by the financially embattled London Royal Opera House, where he served as chairman, for £12.8 million ($16.9 million) at Christie’s. The telecom mogul pledged to return Hockney’s Portrait of Sir David Webster (1971) to the London venue, where it had been displayed for five decades. He also promised to loan it to a 2023 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery when the institution reopens following a renovation.

Baer Faxt Launches Database of Auction Buyers and Bidders

Following investments from Museum of Modern Art board member Glenn Fuhrman and boutique New York financial firm LionTree last year, the art industry newsletter the Baer Faxt has announced it will launch a database dedicated to information on auction clients. The Baer Faxt Auction Database takes advantage of the company’s archive of auction buyers and bidders who have taken part in evening and day sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips dating back more than two decades. The new search engine comprises an index of identifying information about sale participants, including collectors and art advisers, who vied for 10,000 auction lots sold between 1996 to present. The information was collected on-site by the newsletter’s founder, Josh Baer. “It’s not enough for you in the business to know what a work of art sold for at auction,” said Baer in a statement. “What’s more important is who bought it—or, perhaps even more valuably if you’re the one looking to sell.”

Walters Art Museum Names Director of Learning & Community Engagement

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has appointed Theresa Sotto as its new director of learning & community engagement. Sotto joins to the Walters from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she served as the associate director of academic programs and spearheaded the formation of the museum’s diversity and inclusion affinity group. Prior to joining the Hammer, Sotto worked for seven years as an education specialist at the Getty Museum and held consulting roles for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.