Art-Collecting Exes Reach $1 Billion Divorce Settlement, $50 M. Chicago Collection to Auction, and More: Morning Links for March 30, 2023

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The Headlines

THE WORLD OF ACADEMIA. The next dean and deputy director of the International Center of Photography’s school in New York will be Colette Veasey-Cullors. She is presently the interim vice provost for undergraduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and will be the first BIPOC leader of ICP’s school, it said. Architect David Adjaye received an honorary degree from the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning, the Niagara Gazette reports. Adjaye was the lead designer on the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and his many current cultural projects include a new Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey. And in case you missed it: Art historian and curator Robert Storr is giving his archive to Bard College, ARTnews reports.

NUMBERS ON THE BOARD. In May, Christie’s will bring to auction the collection of the late Chicago couple Alan and Dorothy Press with a $50 million estimate, the Financial Times reports. One highlight: an Edward Ruscha, Burning Standard (1968), at $20 million. ● Are you a Shakespeare fan with $10.5 million to spend? For that sum, Bloomberg reports, you can acquire rare editions of the author’s four folios of plays and a first edition of his poems via London dealer Peter Harrington at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair next month. The items are also on offer individually. ● At a more modest price point, a first-generation 2007 iPhone is being offered with a floor price of $32,000 at an auction today at Wright, the New York Times reports. Its high estimate is $60,000. Regrettably, it cannot run Apple’s current mobile operating system.

The Digest

Art-collecting hedge-fund billionaire Israel Englander has reportedly agreed to pay “upwards of $1 billion” in a divorce settlement with his ex-wife, Caryl Englander. In a since-withdrawn suit filed last month, Caryl claimed that Israel “terrorized” her and her girlfriend, dealer Dominique Lévy, in an attempt to avoid paying a large divorce settlement. Per the agreement, the parties are not commenting. [Page Six]

The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston gave its James and Audrey Foster Prize, which honors artists in the Beantown area, to Cicely Carew, Venetia Dale, and Yu-Wen Wu. Their work will be presented in a show opening in late August. [WBUR]

Speaking of awards, the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney is about to play host to an exhibition for the AU$100,000 (US$67,000) Archibald Prize, Australia’s most prestigious honor for portrait painting, and prizes for landscape and genre painting. Fun facts: There are more than 2,000 entries in the mix, and employees in the packing room select their own winner, who receives AU$3,000 (US$2,010). [The Guardian]

The market for classic African art is strong, specialist dealers say, though they worry that about the perception that much of the material left the continent illegally or immorally. “The media speaks about it like it’s all stolen objects,” Brussels gallerist Serge Schoffel told James Tarmy. “It doesn’t help bring in new collectors.” [Bloomberg]

Actor Brian Cox, who plays the plotting patriarch on the hit HBO show Succession paid a visit to the Prado in Madrid and naturally stopped by Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (ca. 1819–23). [@MuseodelPrado/Twitter]

A painting by the American Impressionist Fra Dana that went missing from the Montana Museum of Art and Culture in Missoula more than 60 years ago has returned home. The person returning it said that he found it among the possessions of his late father, who bought it at a yard sale. It depicts a boy smoking a cigarette. [Missoula Current]

The Kicker

ROCK STAR. In New York in June, Sotheby’s will offer a 10.57-carat “flawless fancy vivid purplish pink diamond” with an estimate of $35 million, Barron’s reports. Running the numbers, that comes out to $3.3 million per carat, making it the highest per-carat estimate in history. The stone’s “immense presence and great rarity make it comparable to ultimate masterpieces of art—far rarer than a Magritte or a Warhol,” Quig Bruning, the head of jewelry for Sotheby’s Americas, said in a statement. The jewel also has a superb name: The Eternal Pink. [Barron’s]