Collector Ken Griffin Gives $300 M. to Harvard, $25 M. Gerhard Richter Heads to Auction, and More: Morning Links for April 13, 2023

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The Headlines

THE COLLECTING CLASS. Good news for collector Bernard Arnault (and those hoping to sell him art): There were robust sales at LVMH, the luxury firm he founded, in the first quarter, Bloomberg reports. Its fashion division reported an 18-percent climb in sales (twice what analysts expected), helped along by renewed demand from China. LVMH shares are up more than 20 percent this year, and Arnault’s wealth crossed into $200 billion territory last week. It was at about $198 billion on Wednesday. Across the Atlantic, another collecting titan, hedge-funder Ken Griffin (net worth: $35 billion, per Forbes), gave $300 million to Harvard, its magazine reports, and the university said that it will rename its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for him. Griffin attended the Ivy League institution in the 1980s, and famously had a satellite dish installed on the roof of his dorm so that he could get stock quotes to facilitate his early investing.

BLUEPRINTS. The family of the American architect Kevin Roche, who died in 2019, has donated his archives to the Yale University Library, the Architect’s Newspaper reports. Projects designed by his firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, include the Oakland Museum of California and parts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The family has also created a website documenting the history of KRJDA. Meanwhile, Milan’s Triennale is hosting a show about the architect Angelo Mangiarotti (1921–2012), who “has been undeservedly squeezed out of the crowded canon,” Edwin Heathcote writes in the Financial Times. It was partly designed by fellow Italian Renzo Piano, a fan of Mangiarotti, whose elegant work ranged from train stations to office chairs. And in Seoul, the department store Lotte AVENUEL will present an installation by Kengo Kuma for the next five months, Yonhap News reports.

The Digest

Artist Cy Gavin, whose luminous, expansive, and nuanced landscape paintings have helped redefine the genre, has joined Gagosian, Maximilíano Durón reports. Fresh off a solo outing at one of the gallery’s New York branches earlier this year, Gavin will show at its Rome outpost in the fall. [ARTnews]

A 1974 Gerhard Richter “Color Chart” painting, 4096 Farben, will be offered next month in New York by Sotheby’s. The piece has a top estimate of $25 million, and adorns the cover of Richter’s catalogue raisonné. [Penta/Barron’s]

Superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson’s latest restaurant, Hav & Mar, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, combines influences from Sweden and Ethiopia, features art depicting Black mermaids by Derrick Adams (also newly of Gagosian), and just received a solid two stars from critic Pete Wells. [The New York Times]

The South African artist Igshaan Adams has joined London’s Thomas Dane Gallery, Melanie Gerlis reports in her weekly column. Also in London, the dealer Alison Jacques is adding a 6,000-square-foot space in Mayfair to serve as her gallery’s headquarters; she will keep her current location. [Financial Times]

There is talk that the director of South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Youn Bum-mo, has offered to resign. Youn was appointed to a second three-year term a year ago, by the previous presidential administration; early this year, an audit found that he had not addressed bullying issues. [Yonhap News]

Don’t worry, folks. Kim Kardashian will reportedly be in attendance at the 2023 Met Gala, which is next month. Back in March, there were rumors that not a single Kardashian would be invited to the fête. [Page Six]

The Kicker

SINK YOUR TEETH INTO IT. The most famous dentistry-related art? That could be Marcel Duchamp’s Tzanck Check (1919), the handsome drawing of a check that the Dada king gave to his dentist as payment for some dental work about a century ago. But here is another notable entry in that canon: little sketches that Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret apparently made on Buckingham Palace stationery while awaiting dental appointments in 1938. The son of their dentist is now offering the sketches for sale, Dentistry reports. Cheffins Fine Art Auctioneers in Cambridge, England, is handling the material, which has a £1,500 (about $1,880) high estimate. Some dental bills have been known to run far higher than that! [Dentistry]