Wet Paint: David Zwirner Goes Downtown, Dealer Flips Amy Sherald Work He Pledged to Donate, & More Juicy Art-World Gossip
Which Dia board member banned Succession from filming on site? What mega-collector partied late with the downtown crowd? Read on for answers.
April 9, 2021
David Zwirner at left; at right, the future site of the gallery s Tribeca outpost. Photo courtesy Getty; photo by Nate Freeman.
Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate at [email protected]
Regular
Manhattan neighborhood of
Tribeca, a place replete with wall-less lofts upstairs and tall-ceilinged storefronts downstairs. The appeal is obvious: As one neighborhood dealer said the other day, all the kids of the canonical contemporary art collectors on the
Frieze Week 2020.
Lisson Gallery (Cork St)
Photo by Linda Nylind for Frieze.
A version of this story first appeared in the spring 2021 Artnet Intelligence Report, which you can download in full for free here.
“Imagine a world where you could not fly around the globe anymore. How would you conduct business?”
That was the “thinking-out-of-the-box” assignment that a consultant gave Phillips executives at the auction house’s annual strategy meeting in January 2020. “We looked at each other, like, ‘What is he talking about?’” Cheyenne Westphal, the company’s chairman, recounted.
“Just imagine there might be a volcano erupting,” the consultant told the assembled honchos, many of whom had traveled to New York for the occasion.
Art Is Lost in This Town (1989). Photo courtesy of Postmasters Gallery.
The emphasis on business is poisonous. Everybody needs to survive, but one hopes there would be some other levels of operating that are not just 100 percent determined by economic success.
I have this idea of running a night school for collectors: re-education classes on curiosity replacing speculation. I could teach that for minimal compensation because, you know, “everybody needs to survive.” Magda Sawon, owner and director, Postmasters Gallery
School children enter the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.
Perhaps museums and galleries could be opened for special school visits. This might be extended to elderly people. There is a strong sense of being isolated and forgotten in the air.