Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
Happy Wednesday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week.
Cristin Tierney Adds Debbi Kenote to Roster: The Brooklyn-based abstract painter will have her first solo exhibition with the gallery in April. Inspired by nostalgia and childhood memories, Kenote’s paintings and sculptures blend craft traditions, such as woodworking and quilting.
Phoenix Art Museum Opens Call for Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards: Arizona-based artists can apply through April 27 for the museum’s juried $10,000 prize, with additional applicants automatically considered for the $5,000 Sette/Cohn Artist Award.
Roberts Projects Announces Representation of Esmaa Mohamoud: The Los Angeles gallery has taken on the artist, whose work transforms symbols from Black visual culture into large-scale sculptures that interrogate how Black people are perceived both inside and outside their community.
Watermill Center Names Charles Chemin as Artistic Director: The longtime Robert Wilson collaborator will lead the Water Mill, New York–based interdisciplinary arts center’s artistic vision. Wilson selected Chemin for the role prior to his death in 2025.
Bard Graduate Center Names Julia Siemon as Deputy Director: The New York institution has created the new leadership role as part of an expansion of its senior team. Siemon will continue serving as director of exhibitions and chief curator while taking on additional responsibility for day-to-day operations.
The Big Number: $7.6 M.
That was the sale price at Christie’s last week for Jeff Koons’s 1988 sculpture Winter Bears. That figure far exceeds the pre-sale estimate of $3.8 million–$5 million, which made the sculpture the highest-valued work ever to appear in a mid-season sale. As ARTnews editor-in-chief Sarah Douglas wrote earlier this week, this price point is more typical for a marquee evening sale, but in recent years, the auction houses have been quietly pushing up the price bracket for their mid-season series. At Sotheby’s, the top sale in a “Contemporary Curated” sale last week was for Alma Thomas’s 1970 painting Snoopy Sees Sunrise on Earth, which went for $3.8 million.
Read This
It’s Whitney Biennial week in the art world, which of course means plenty of reviews as well as a spotlight on some very deserving artists. While the Biennial is usually known for showcasing emerging ones, this year’s edition sheds light on a 92-year-old artist overlooked in her time, Carmen de Monteflores, who put her art career on hold in the ’60s to raise five children, one of whom happens to be Andrea Fraser. In the New York Times, Zachary Small talks with both de Monteflores and Fraser about the artists’ complicated feelings around motherhood and what it means to be a woman in the art world. It’s a touching story, made even more poignant by the fact that, as ARTnews editors Maximilíano Durón and Alex Greenberger note in their joint review, de Monteflores’s works are some of the strongest works in the show.
