Kehinde Wiley, “Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman” (2018) (image courtesy Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art)
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, has acquired several new pieces for its permanent collection, including paintings by Kehinde Wiley, Jordan Casteel, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and works from the Gordon W. Bailey Collection, according to an email from the museum. “Each new acquisition advances the conversation about American art in ways that are representative of more of the American people and their stories,” said Austen Barron Bailly, the museum’s chef curator, in a statement.
The FBI’s art crime team at its field office in Washington, DC, has returned a Ukrainian painting stolen by the Nazis to the Embassy of Ukraine in a repatriation ceremony on September 9. After its theft from Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Art Museum in 1941, the painting, “Secret Departure of Ivan the Terrible Before the Oprichina” (1911) by Mikhail N. Panin, made its way into the home of the Tracy family for decades until the family put it up for auction in 2017, when the FBI was contacted. (Per the FBI: “Anyone with information about missing or stolen artwork is asked to call the FBI’s Washington Field Office at (202) 278-2000.”)
The British Museum, short on space, has made a loan of 12 large Assyrian sculpted gypsum relief panels to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The loan includes the “Banquet Scene” — recognized as one of the most notable relief panels from Assyria. The pieces will be on view at the Getty as part of the exhibition Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq starting October 2.
A Christie’s sale of work by the sculptor Dylan Lewis, titled “Shapeshifting” and featuring depictions of lithe big cats in a variety of poses, came out to £1,790,750 (~$2,208,702). The top lot: “Sleeping Leopard” £156,250 (~$192,717), a bronze feline in repose.
The Sotheby’s sale of pieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Chinese collection, The Florence and Herbert Irving Gift, has netted $8,274,875, which will go to fund further acquisitions. The top lot was “A Finely Carved Large Spinach-Green Jade ‘Immortals’ Brushpot,” from the Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period, which sold for $375,000.
Sotheby’s sold $3,549,375 worth of Fine Classical Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy. The top lot of the bunch: Zhu Yunming’s “Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River in Cursive Script” (1525), realized in ink on paper across a handscroll.
The Sotheby’s sale of Important Chinese Art netted $10,345,750, with the top lot hitting $500,000 for “A Rare Lavender-Blue ‘Jun’ Narcissus Bowl” from the the early Ming Dynasty.
