The Headlines
IN MEMORIAM. The legendary Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger has died at 86, reports ARTnews. Through his eponymous gallery, founded in 1963, he brought artists famed America to audiences in Europe—and befriended many of them along the way. “I have been involved with Andy Warhol for a large part of my life as an art dealer, collector and friend,” Bischofberger wrote in 2001. He produced Warhol’s film L’amour, is credited with the idea for Warhol to make portraits of people in his entourage, and even suggested that the Pop artist collaborate with Jean-Michel Basquiat for a 1984 series of apintings. Other artists he helped champion include Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Jean Tinguely, Gerhard Richter, Sol LeWitt, and Donald Judd. He also amassed a large collections of art and design objects, which he stored in a former factory in Zurich that was redesigned by his daughter, Nina Baier-Bischofberger, and her husband, Florian Baier. “My father is a hoarder,” his daughter told W in 2015. “He always wants more, more, more.”
SKELETONS OUT OF THE CLOSET. A Nazi-looted painting by Toon Kelder, from the famous collection of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, has been hanging in the family home of a Dutch SS collaborator Hendrik Seyffardt for decades, according to art detective Arthur Brand. Speaking to De Telegraaf, Brand said the circumstances around the discovery have amounted to “the most bizarre case of my entire career.” He was tipped off by a relative of Seyffardt, who told him they felt “ashamed” and wanted the artwork returned to its legal owners. When the relative saw the Kelder painting, titled Portrait of a Young Girl, hanging in the home of Seyffardt’s granddaughter, she told the relative it was “Jewish looted art, stolen from Goudstikker. It is unsellable. Don’t tell anyone.” Instead, that relative contacted Brand, who confirmed the painting was labeled Goudsticker on the back. However, with the statute of limitations passed, Dutch police reportedly have their hands tied; the Dutch Restitutions Committee does not deal with private art collections. As a result, the anonymous Seyffardt relative who came forward “sees public exposure as the only way to hopefully return the painting to the Goudstikker heirs, where it rightfully belongs,” Brand said.
The Digest
Nearly half of the artists in the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, as well as those represented in more than a dozen national pavilions, said they did not want to be considered for the show’s top honors in solidarity with the resignation of the Biennale jury. Those prizes, now known as the “Visitors’ Lions,” will be chosen by public vote. [ARTnews]
London’s first museum dedicated to the Beatles will open by next year. It will offer access to the 3 Savile Row building’s rooftop in Mayfair, the site of the band’s last public concert in 1969. [Times of London]
Scholars from Trinity College Dublin have discovered a previously unknown, long-lost copy of a Medieval manuscript containing the earliest surviving poem in English, Caedmon’s Hymn, in Rome’s National Central Library. [Artnet News]
Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said that, while he was foreign minister between 2002 and 2004, he should never have accepted as gifts two sculptures of Napoleon from the former president of Burkina Faso and an Italian businessman. He later returned both artworks. [Le Figaro]
A new book by curator Fiona Rogers looks at the history of women artists using the medium of collage in politically charged works, from María Magdalena Campos-Pons to Toshiko Okanoue. Here are some highlights. [The Financial Times]
The Kicker
LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES. “Cacao offers this connection between past and present,” Agustin Otegui told the New York Times. His family has been involved with building Mexico City’s new Museum of Cacao & Chocolate, located in a renovated 17th-century house and a new five-story addition. While building the institution, architects discovered that buried under it was one of the largest and best preserved tzompantli, or wooden rack, displaying over 650 human skulls thought to have been sacrificed in the 15th century, during Aztec rule. Eleven years after working on excavating the site while constructing the chocolate museum above ground, the public will soon be able to sip hot cocoa from a museum cafe, learn about the ancient history of cacao, and peer at the pre-Hispanic skulls rack visible through a window near the museum’s ticket office, all in a single visit. With chocolate, “you have this bean that was used by the Maya and Aztecs, and now it’s a daily delicacy. It’s a link to the past that keeps going,” said Otegui.
