David Rockefeller’s Former Manhattan Home Lists for $57.5 M., Hunter Biden Art Sales Revealed, and More: Morning Links for July 25, 2023

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The Headlines

THE POLITICAL PAGES. Some House Republicans are backing a bill to nix funding for the National Museum of the American Latino in Washington, D.C., the Art Newspaper reports. The proposed legislation comes as the two parties duel over spending plans and as some conservatives argue that a pop-up show from the  new institution has a left-wing bias. Meanwhile, documents from New York’s Georges Bergès Gallery indicate that one anonymous buyer spent $875,000 on 11 artworks by artist/presidential son Hunter Biden, Insider reports. The materials also show that real-estate investor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali at some point acquired his work. Last summer, she was appointed by President Biden to an unpaid position on the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. The young Biden’s art career has faced scrutiny from GOP politicians who argue that purchases of his art could influence White House policy.

A CONCLUSION. Last month, a German commission said that the bank BayernLB should return a 1907 Wassily Kandinsky painting in its collection for about 50 years to the descendants of the Jewish couple in the Netherlands that owned it before World War II, ARTnews reported. Now the bank has said it will do so, the New York Times reports. The work, Colorful Life, was part of a vast collection held by Emanuel Albert Lewenstein and his wife, Hedwig Lewenstein Weyermann. Both died before it was sent to auction along with many other works they owned in October of 1940, following Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands in May. Precisely how that sale came about is unclear; the panel argued that sales of work held by Jewish collectors in the country following the invasion “should be presumed involuntary unless there was clear evidence to the contrary,” according to the Times.

The Digest

Collector David Rockfeller’s Manhattan townhouse of nearly seven decades is on the market for a zesty $57.5 million. The sellers are Doug and Lily Band, who got the eight-bedroom abode in 2018 for $20 million and then did some major renovation work. [The Wall Street Journal via Robb Report]

With Frieze Seoul a little over a month away, Prada said that it will bring its multifarious Prada Mode social club to the city during the festivities. It will run September 5 and 6 at the Kote space in the city’s Insadong neighborhood. [WWD]

The leader of Fighting With Pride, an LGBTQ+ charity in the United Kingdom, has backed a proposal to create a statue of codebreaker Alan Turing, who was persecuted for being gay, on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square. [The Guardian]

Starting next fall, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit is planning to shutter for six to nine months for a $10 million renovation. It is also aiming to finish a $14 million capital campaign. [Crain’s Detroit Business]

In case you missed it, journalist Patrick Radden Keefe has an extensive profile of Larry Gagosian, which begins as the mega-dealer is prepping for a party at his Hamptons home. “I have a weakness for entertaining,” Gagosian said. The audio version of the story clocks in at just two hours. [The New Yorker]

Behold: A guide to five of the best restaurants at London museums, from Spring at the Courtauld Gallery to Townsend at the Whitechapel. [Financial Times]

The Kicker

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN. This year, the Austrian art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac is toasting the 40th anniversary of his gallery, which he started in Salzburg and has since expanded across Europe and Asia. In the Financial Times, he uncorked some stories from his long career, like the visit he made to the New York studio of Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980s. “He was in a basement, with loud music playing, and my English was patchy,” Ropac recalled. Basquiat apparently thought that Ropac said that his gallery was in Australia, and so “he wanted to incorporate kangaroos in his work for his first show with me,” the dealer explained. For better or worse, Ropac clarified matters, and Basquiat was also happy to show in the birthplace of Mozart. [FT]