Good Morning!
- Christie’s double-header sale in London on Thursday hammered for just under its low estimate, a lukewarm result after Sotheby’s $520.7 million result on Wednesday.
- Norman Rockwell’s So You Want to See the President! finally goes on public view, after decades spent in the White House.
- Researchers have deciphered at least 20 columns of text from a papyrus scroll charred and carbonized by the Mount Vesuvius eruption nearly 2,000 years ago.
The Headlines
NOT SO HOT. Amid a heat wave in Europe and one day after Sotheby’s put together a double-header sale in London with a total ($520.7 million) more in line with a marquee sales week, Christie’s followed up Thursday with a more lukewarm result. The house staged its own double-header, also led by works from a prestigious collection — in this case, that of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz — followed by a 79-lot sale of postwar and contemporary art. The Zabludowicz works were estimated to total between £12.6 million and £19.3 million ($16.6 million–$25.5 million); the hammer total was £12.3 million ($16.2 million), just below the low estimate; with the house’s fees, the sale totaled £15.4 million ($20.5 million). The following sale was estimated to fetch between £8.6 million and £12.1 million ($11.4 million–$16 million) but fell short, achieving a hammer total of just £8.1 million ($10.7 million), or £10.2 million ($13.5 million) with the house’s fees. Better luck next time.
THE WAIT IS OVER. For decades, a large, four-panel Norman Rockwell painting depicting visitors waiting to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt hung in the West Wing of the White House. Now, it’s finally going on public display at the People’s House museum, along with new research into the World War II–era real people Rockwell observed and painted as they patiently waited in line, reports USA Today. The White House Historical Association snatched up the 21-by-28-inch painting titled So You Want to See the President! for $7.25 million at Heritage Auctions last year, and as part of the acquisition, uncovered the identities of the people depicted — from soldiers, lawmakers, and one of the first women to serve in the Navy’s women’s volunteer program, to the many people working in White House service jobs whom Rockwell observed in that waiting room. New AI features in the free exhibit, on view until June 2027, will also animate the figures so that they appear to interact with each other.
The Digest
In a major breakthrough, researchers announced that at least 20 columns of text from a papyrus scroll charred and carbonized by the Mount Vesuvius explosion nearly 2,000 years ago were successfully deciphered using machine-learning methods. [Washington Post]
A government-appointed committee has recommended that Ireland fund provenance research and enact new laws that will establish a national panel for evaluating claims for looted artworks in public collections, or a Restitution and Repatriation Advisory Panel. [Art Newspaper]
Andrew Farago, former curator at San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of recording 20 people in the bathroom without their consent. [SFGate]
The late, cult artist Paul Thek, who died of AIDS in 1988 at age 55, has two New York exhibitions on at the moment, at Pace Gallery and Galerie Buchholz. [Cultured]
The Kicker
VAN GOGH MEMORIES. For years, Klaus Kallmann, 98, has claimed that a painting by Vincent van Gogh, currently in the Musée d’Orsay, rightfully belongs to him, reports Le Monde. He is the grandson of Felix Kallmann (1853–1938), a Jewish victim of Nazi persecution in Berlin, and he vividly remembers the Dutch master’s painting Hôpital Saint-Paul à Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (1889) hanging in his grandfather’s sumptuous villa in Berlin before the Nazis came to power and his family fled. Kallmann asserts the collection had remained intact until his grandfather’s home and entire collection were looted by the Nazis. Felix Kallmann died in 1938 of a heart attack, two days after Kristallnacht, the November pogrom also known as the “Night of Broken Glass.” Yet France’s CIVS commission, charged with determining whether artworks in the country’s national collection were looted, has been unable to decide whether the painting should be restituted to Kallmann, due to gaps in its provenance. Now, the case is headed to a judge and a committee of government officials.
