Christie’s announces charity auctions for Rockefeller estate

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Christie’s announces charity auctions for Rockefeller estate | Around 2,000 items from the estate of David and Peggy Rockefeller are to be sold at auction by Christie’s, it was announced yesterday. Proceeds from the sales will go to several charities championed by David Rockefeller, including the Museum of Modern Art, which the late billionaire banker and philanthropist once chaired and his mother helped to found. Estimates suggest that the auctions, to take place next year, may bring in up to $700 million, which would break the record for the most valuable collection sold at auction, set by the sale of the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé for $484 million in 2009.

2017 South Bank Sky Arts Awards announced | The full list of nominees for the 2017 South Bank Sky Arts Awards has been released, with 30 nominations across 10 categories celebrating ‘the best of British culture’. Nominated in the Visual Art category are John Akomfrah and George Shaw for their respective exhibitions ‘Vertigo Sea’ at Turner Contemporary in Margate and ‘My Back to Nature’ at the National Gallery (Apollo’s coverage of both exhibitions can be found here and here), as well as Artangel’s multi-artist project ‘Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison’ (also covered in Apollo here).

Women dominate shortlist for $50k Sobey Art Award | The finalists for the 14th edition of the Sobey Art Award were announced yesterday by the Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada. For the first time in the Canadian contemporary art prize’s history, the majority of shortlisted artists are women, who hold four out of the five spots. The five artists contending for the $50,000 prize are all under the age of 50 and each selected from a different region of Canada. The full shortlist is available here.

Armory Show announces curators for 2018 fair | New York’s Armory Show has selected two curators to oversee special sections of the fair’s 2018 edition: Gabriel Ritter, a curator at Minneapolis Institute of Art and independent curator Jen Mergel, former senior curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Next year’s fair will also see the introduction of a new curatorial leadership summit, chaired by Naomi Beckwith, curator at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Two men charged over fatal fire at artists’ warehouse | Two men, Derick Almena and Max Harris, have been arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter over the fire which killed 36 people in the Ghost Ship artists’ warehouse in Oakland, California. The fire broke out on 2 December 2016, during a party organised by Almena – who rented and illegally sublet the space for artists to live and work – and Harris. Authorities have described the building, which was not licensed for entertainment or residency, as ‘a fire trap with inadequate means of escape.’

Peggy and David Rockefeller, May 1973. Photo: Arthur Lavine/Rockefeller Estate (See top story.)