The First Known Printed Bookplate

Unknown artist, bookplate for Hilprand Brandenburg of Biberach, woodcut, black printing ink, and hand colouring on paper (Germany, 1480). Bookplate is in Jacobus de Voragine’s Sermones quadragesimales (Bopfingen, Württemberg, 1408), on view in The Art of Ownership at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. 

The first known bibliophile to adorn his collection with the personal touch of a bookplate is Hilprand Brandenburg of Biberach. The 1480 woodcut print, on view in The Art of Ownership: Bookplates and Book Collectors from 1480 to the Present at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, depicts an angel holding a shield emblazoned with an ox. Details of the seraphic wings are hand-colored in red and green, with the angel’s cloak, flowing as if in flight, given a rosy hue. The Rosenbach states that this is the “oldest known printed bookplate in the western world.” Read more...

An Artistic Discovery Makes a Curator’s Heart Pound

A drawing, from around 1482, that a Metropolitan Museum of Art curator says is by Leonardo da Vinci. An auction house values it at 15 million euros, or about $15.8 million.

It’s an auctioneer’s jackpot dream. A man walks in off the street, opens a portfolio of drawings, and there, mixed in with the jumble of routine low-value items, is a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci.

And that, more or less, is what happened to Thaddée Prate, director of old master pictures at the Tajan auction house here, which is to announce on Monday the discovery of a drawing that a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art says is by Leonardo, the Renaissance genius and master draftsman. Tajan values the work at 15 million euros, or about $15.8 million USD. On Thursday, this reporter was ushered into Tajan’s private viewing room, where the drawing, of the martyred St. Sebastian, about 7½ inches by 5 inches, stood resplendent in an Italian Renaissance gold frame on an old wooden easel. Read more...

Sotheby's to offer one of the most valuable English books to appear at auction

The Bute Hours. An Extraordinary Medieval English Books of Hours. Estimated at £1.5 - 2.5 million. Photo: Sotheby's.

The Bute Hours, one of the most extraordinary Medieval English Book of Hours in existence, is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s London on 6 December 2016, with an estimate of £1.5 to 2.5 million, making it one of the most valuable English books to appear at auction. The manuscript comes to sale from The Berger Collection Educational Trust, set up by the Denver-based collectors William M. B. Berger and Bernadette Berger, who amassed one of the most important collections of British Art in America, spanning over 600 years. The proceeds will go to benefit future philanthropy. Read more...

Dealer's Hand: Why are so many people paying so much money for art? Ask David Zwirner.

Zwirner at home, with a painting by Raymond Pettibon. “Nobody’s selling expensive stuff like we do with the frequency we do,” Zwirner said. “This is an industry in its golden age.” Photograph by Pari Dukovic. 

Very important people line up differently from you and me. They don’t want to stand behind anyone else, or to acknowledge wanting something that can’t immediately be had. If there’s a door they’re eager to pass through, and hundreds of equally or even more important people are there, too, they get as close to the door as they can, claim a patch of available space as though it had been reserved for them, and maintain enough distance to pretend that they are not in a line. Read more...

Dakis Joannou: A Story of a Collector Told Through Four Works in His Collection

Tim Noble and Sue Webster in Hydra aboard Dakis Joannou’s yacht. 1999. Photo: Dakis Joannou

From left to right: Jeff Koons, Dan Friedman, Jeffrey Deitch, and Dakis Joannou in Hydra (1987). Photo: Lietta Joannou.

At the apex of Greece’s financial crisis, 032c’s Thom Bettridge traveled to Athens and Hydra to visit Dakis Joannou, an industrialist and hotel magnate famed for his contemporary art collection. Much like his yacht Guilty, Joannou is a surreal, unapologetic, and larger-than-life figure. In a turbulent year of capital controls and austerity sanctions, Joannou’s endeavor proved to exist in its own sovereign universe. During 2015, his DESTE Art Foundation hosted more exhibitions than any other in its history. Joannou’s collection tells the story of a 50-year-long infatuation with art that has spun out into a network of objects and friendships. “It’s about changing ideas,” the collector says regarding the public impact of his work. While he has been credited with pulling the art world’s attention to Athens, Joannou insists that the social benefit of his foundation is “collateral.” But what larger project – or desire – this benefit is collateral of remains a mystery. Read more...

Conceptual Art’s Most Ardent Fan, 50 Years In

Paula cooper in New York, April 1983. Portrait by Leslie Schulman

Through her eponymous gallery, Paula Cooper has been conceptual art’s most steadfast champion for nearly 50 years. But unlike many of her contemporaries, the elegant Cooper has done it without clamoring for attention or headlines. Rather, she has quietly powered through with an undiminished passion for the people she has represented: Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Sophie Calle, Zoe Leonard, Christian Marclay, Robert Gober, Rudolf Stingel, Kelley Walker, Mark di Suvero and Tauba Auerbach among them. Read more...

Object Lessons: The New Museum Explores Why We Keep Things

Ydessa Hendeles, a Canadian artist, gathered thousands of photographs of people with their teddy bears for “Partners (The Teddy Bear Project).”

We live in a sharing economy of collaborative consumption — services, not stuff. Crowdsourcing, peer-to-peer rentals like Airbnb: An interest, exemplified by millennials, in a temporary ownership of goods.

Apps, not objects.

What, then, to make of objects? In a culture being redefined by the way it consumes, what to make of people who collect things, who keep things? What to make of the personal archives, the private universes, the physical stabs at permanence and immortality that collectors create?

“The Keeper,” the New Museum’s summer show, a four-floor exhibit that opens on Wednesday, July 20, is a museum blockbuster of a different kind.

With over 4,000 objects representing more than two dozen collectors, including contemporary artists making art conceived by collecting, Massimiliano Gioni, the museum’s artistic director, and his team of curators have mounted a remarkable series of object lessons about what it means to “keep,” the relationship of possession to loss, the madness inherent in love, and the undeniable importance of the individual’s voice in recording and interpreting history and its sweep. Read more...