Nonie Gadsden, left, and John Axelrod, right, at MFA, Boston © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

One of the most significant cultural developments of 2010 was certainly the unveiling of the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s new American art wing.

I went up for a visit and chat with collector John Axelrod, whose collecting tastes range from American design between WWI and WWII, to painting and sculpture by African-American artists.

Axelrod has donated and lent a number of works to the Boston museum, some of which are displayed in the new John Axelrod gallery. Decorative arts curator Nonie Gadsden, who helped install many of the marvelous new galleries, joined the conversation.

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Westbeth's interior courtyard. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

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Westbeth is the largest and oldest artists’ cooperative in the country. It opened 1970 in an 1894 former Bell Telephone laboratory on Manhattan’s West Side. Architect Richard Meier did the conversion.

For quite a while I have been curious about these roughhewn, industrial buildings, plunked down in the ever-gentrifying West Village. Last week Westbeth, together with the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, held its first public open house as a fundraiser for the preservation group, providing an opportunity for me to visit.

I brought my camera and here is a three minute video capturing some of what I saw.

Westbeth Open Studios from Lindsay Pollock on Vimeo.

Urs Fischer "Abstract Slavery"

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Peter Brant has given Swiss artist Urs Fischer the run of his bucolic Greenwich, Connecticut-based Brant Foundation Art Study Center, resulting in an irreverent, cunning portrait of the collector. Using wallpaper and wax, Fischer raises poignant questions about mortality, reproduction and the very nature of art accumulation.

Brant’s reputation as a longtime collector is well known, but there was still something startling about standing in a two dimensional likeness of his home, filled with so many expensive artworks, reduced to flat copies.  The wallpaper piece, which reproduces Brant’s Warhols and Lichtensteins, alongside shelves arrayed with art books, family photos and silver polo trophies, is pointedly titled “Abstract Slavery.”

To further the point, Brant’s waxy likeness, a life-size human candle, melts amid the material trophies.

Though I couldn’t get an credible explanation from Fischer’s dealer Gavin Brown or Brant or anyone else about the show’s ironic Oscar the Grouch title, the squat green Muppet is best known for his compulsive hoarding of trash.

This is a show well worth seeing. It’s open by appointment through Spring 2011. (To schedule an appointment, email…

Sotheby's Tobias Meyer with Mark Rothko's "Untitled" 1961

Here’s the latest Art Cuts: a look at some of the property coming up for sale at Sotheby’s in a matter of hours.

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Sotheby’s Contemporary Sale from Lindsay Pollock on Vimeo.

Tonight Christie’s sells contemporary art in a marathon (that’s polite for really long) sale, including painting and sculpture from the estate of Michael Crichton.

Here is a video tour of a few highlights filmed during the press preview, presented by Christie’s Robert Manely and Brett Gorvy.

Click here to watch the 3 minute video.

Christie’s Contemporary Sale from Lindsay Pollock on Vimeo.

Sotheby’s evening Impressionist and Modern sale takes place in a few hours, estimated to tally up to $208.8 million. Emmanuel Di Donna, Vice Chairman  and Worldwide Director of Evening Sales, takes us on a tour of the featured lots: a Modigliani and Matisse.

Click here to watch the two-minute video.

Highlights from Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Sale from Lindsay Pollock on Vimeo.

Tonight Christie’s sells the big-money Impressionist and modern artworks, including paintings and scultpures from the collection of Mrs. Sidney F. Brody.

From the new Art Cuts series, Conor Jordan, the head of Christie’s New York Impressionist and modern art department, takes us on a tour of the auction preview, featuring a 1932 Picasso and a few other trinkets.

Click here to view the four minute video.

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Sale from Lindsay Pollock on Vimeo.

I am very pleased to introduce Art Cuts, a new homespun video series produced for my blog Art Market Views.

Here is a is three minute video tour of the Robert and Ethel Scull exhibition on view at Acquavella Galleries, and an interview with the mellifluous Michael Findlay, who knew the Sculls back in the day.  Enjoy!