NADA, the New Art Dealers Alliance, is poised to launch a new art fair July 30-31, in a brick 19th century former foundry in Hudson, New York.

The non-profit dealer group run a successful December oceanside fair in Miami at the Deauville Beach Resort, concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach.

The group is currently soliciting applications for exhibitors wishing to present artworks, sculptures and performance pieces at the Basilica, an 8,000 square foot 1884 building in Hudson.

Hudson, two hours from New York City, is stocked with antiques stores and cheap, charming real estate. A few years ago artist Marina Abramovic acquired a dilapidated theater as a future home for her performance art foundation. (Read more here).

"Southern Barbarians Come to Trade," attribted to Kano Naizen, courtesy Christie's

Today Christie’s sells a selection of Japanese artworks, a poignant reminder of the country’s rich cultural heritage coming in the wake of Japan’s recent national disaster.

The sale’s highlight is pair of twelve-foot wide gold-leaf six-paneled screens, attributed to Kano Naizen – who died in 1616 – titled Southern Barbarians Come to Trade. The screens had been in storage for 400 years, according to Christie’s, and never previously published.

The subject matter is commerce between the East and West circa 1600. By 1542, Portuguese traders were profiting by exchanging Chinese silk for Japanese silver. These foreign merchants were the Southern Barbarians referred to in the title.

The screen’s pre-sale estimate is unpublished, but is in the region of $4 million according to Christie’s.

Lesley Vance "Untitled," Courtesy FLAG Art Foundation

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

New York’s FLAG Art Foundation has announced what sounds like a plush artist perk: an inaugural summertime Hamptons art residency program (assigned the catchy acronym SHARP) for 2011. Lucky Los Angeles-based painter Lesley Vance has been named the first SHARP recipient.

The program supports emerging artists by providing a studio and living space for six weeks in a private farmhouse in seaside Sagaponack, Long Island.

The Hamptons have long been a refuge for New York artists. Back in the pre-air conditioning days,  when land was cheap, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s Springs home and painted splattered studio in was part of a larger East Hampton artists colony, which included fellow Ab-Exers Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and others. Andy Warhol also owned a waterfront estate in the surfers’ enclave, Montauk.

Represented by L.A.’s David Kordansky Gallery, Lesley Vance’s has been featured in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, as well as at the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, and The Suburban, Chicago. Inspired by 17th century Spanish still-lives, Vance dramatically stages objects and…

Ron Mueck 1996 "Big Baby," est. £800,000 to £1.2 million, via Christie's

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

Christie’s will offer 32 works from the collection of noted British collector Kay Saatchi in its June Post-War and Contemporary art auctions in London. The works are estimated to sell for up to £3.4 million.

Saatchi is moving to Los Angeles after 25 years in London as a major YBA patron. (She and ex-husband, advertising magnate and private museum owner, Charles Saatchi, divorced in 2001.) Read a long profile on Saatchi from the Times London here.

Take heed David Kordansky and Tim Blum: Saatchi is quoted in a Christie’s press release explaining that she plans to sell the U.K. works to make space for West Coast art acquisitions.

Evening sale highlights include Ron Mueck’s life-size, blue-eyed Big Baby sculpture from 1996, estimated to sell for £800,000 to £1.2 million. Kay and Charles Saatchi acquired seven of the hyper-realist sculptor’s earliest works, three of which were on display at the traveling Sensation show during the late 1990s.

Paula Rego’s Looking Back (1987), a large-scale painting of buxom lounging ladies, is estimated to sell for £600,000 – £800,000. The Saatchi duo purchased the work (along…

In the wake of Leo Steinberg’s death on Sunday,  here is a round-up from the first wave of obits:

Fun with Leo by Charlie Finch

Leo Steinberg, Art Historian, Dies at 90 by Ken Johnson

Leo Steinberg, Giant of Renaissance and Postwar American Art History, Has Died by Andrew M. Goldstein

Jean Dubuffet 1961 "L'Erratique," sold fof $698,500 at Christie's on March 10, 2011

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

Christie’s First Open sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art totaled $10.3 million yesterday, the highest grossing First-Open sale since the pre-bust days of March 2007.

The tally suggests a market uptick, even at lower points on the pricing index, and arrives on the heels of a commercially successful New York fair week. (See results here).

Eighty-four percent of lots found buyers, with 262 of the 312 lots selling. The top lots were acquired by U.S. private and trade buyers, along with Russian, European and Asian dealers and collectors.

The priciest work was Jean Dubuffet’s impasto oil on masonite, L’Erratique (1961) which sold for $698,500, trumping the $300,000 – 400,000 presale estimate.

Other highlights included work by the auction block’s old faithful, Andy Warhol. His 1985-1986 black and white cartoonish silkscreen text, Heaven and Hell are Just One Breath Away! (Positive) sold to an Asian collector for $242,500.  Christopher Wool’s 2007 black and white abstract Untitled enamel on aluminum sold for $362,500, above the the $250,000 – 350,000 estimate.

The Top Ten:

Artist / Title / Year / Price Realized / Estimate…

1959 Gio Ponti conference table from Time-Life building, sold for $104,500

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

Sotheby’s 20th Century Design sale totaled $3.5 million yesterday, with works from  modern design dealer Mark McDonald fetching $1.3 million.

The single owner sale, titled What Modern Is: The Collection of Mark McDonald, resulted in 84 percent of lots finding buyers. (View results here).

McDonald had said he was selling works to focus on advising studio jewelry collectors. (See AMV’s preview here).

McDonald’s top lot was a Gio Ponti blonde wood conference table from the offices of New York’s Time-Life Building, which sold for $104,500 to an American collector.

Among American makers, ESU steel-frame, birchwood storage cabinets by Charles and Ray Eames – almost a mid-century cliche at this point – sold well. A custom ESU sold for $46,875, over a $35,000 high estimate. A 1st edition ESU-400 fetched $31,250, above the $20,000 high estimate.

McDonald works closely with the estate of modernist jeweler Art Smith.  A patinated copper and brass Lava cuff made $28,125, zooming past a conservative $20,000 high estimate. Other jewelry on the block included pieces by Claire Falkenstein, Ed Wiener and Sam Kramer.

Top Ten:…

The Dia Art Foundation will present multimedia and performance artist Robert Whitman’s latest theater piece on April 16 and 17 in two venues. The work, Passport, will be performed simultaneously outdoors near Dia:Beacon and indoors on a stage at Montclair State University.

Passport uses performance and video projection, capturing images and sounds from each venue and streaming them to the other location. In Beacon, for instance, Whitman will use images of the river and the sound of a Metro-North train.

Whitman first gained notice for his performances in the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1966 he teamed up with Robert Rauschenberg and engineer Billy Kluver on Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering held at the 69th Regiment Armory. The complex work involved eight or nine cars with men holding projectors in the back seats, according to a New York Times article.

Dia has been a longtime supporter of the artist. The foundation organized a 1976 retrospective and presented Robert Whitman: Playback, another survey, in 2003-2004.  Whitman has had solo shows at the Jewish Museum, the Whitney and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. He has staged over 40 theatre…

via Flickr

We want to take a moment to thank our sponsors for the month of February, who have made all the posting we’ve done possible.

The Association of Professional Art Advisors (APAA) is an international organization of leading independent art advisors and corporate art curators. An art advisor provides professional guidance on the acquisition, installation and maintenance of works of art, working with collectors as well as architects, designers and museums.

On Friday, March 4, APAA will present “Public/Private: For and Against the Private Collector Museum,” a panel moderated by Lindsay Pollock with speakers Sam Keller, Raymond Learsy, Allan Schwartzman and Mary Zlot.

In The Life Media are the producers of In The Life, the longest running television show documenting the gay experience. In The Life Media’s January 2011 Hidden Histories presented an episode of In The Life that documented the opening of the Smithsonian’s Hide/Seek exhibition and spoke with the artists, historians and curators involved in the show. The online video Censoring Wojnarowicz follows up on the exhibition’s censorship of a key artwork.

The art world’s top collectors, curators, & dealers come to Art Market Views for daily…

Steve Holmes, via Bass Museum

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

Steven Holmes has been appointed adjunct curator at Miami’s Bass Museum of Art. The independent curator began working with the museum two years ago, spearheading the three-part exhibition series,The Endless Renaissance, which pairs Renaissance and Baroque works with contemporary artworks.

Holmes will continue to live in West Hartford, Connecticut, and serve as head curator of the Cartin Collection. The Cartin Collection, a 4,000 sq. foot storefront in downtown Hartford, features the private holdings of Connecticut electric supply mogul Mickey Cartin. Since 2006, Holmes has overseen Cartin’s collection, curating shows for the Hartford space and organizing exhibitions from the collection in museums and galleries across the country.

Prior to his position at Cartin, Holmes was director of visual arts at Real Art Ways in Hartford; and founder of the Khyber Arts Society in Halifax Nova Scotia. He has curated projects for Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Kunste-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Museo del Arte de Puerto Rico.

Located on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, the Bass Museum of Art was founded in 1963 when John and Johanna…