Filmmaker Joel Coen Curates Lee Friedlander Shows, Man Ray’s Fashion Work Gets Exhibition, and More: Morning Links for May 2, 2023

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The Headlines

THE BIG NIGHT. As you might have heard, the Met Gala took place last night in New York. For ARTnews, Shanti Escalante-De Matteimuch offered up the best and worst outfits—many of them created by Karl Lagerfeld, the focus of the evening’s festivities. One highlight: Doja Cat, who sported Oscar de le Renta and prosthetics “to become the human-ish avatar of Lagerfeld’s cat Choupette,” she writes. Jared Leto wore a full Choupette costume, Page Six notes, but the actual feline was not, alas, in attendance, the Associated Press reports, despite rumors that she might grace the red carpet. Rihanna arrived well after the event got underway, at around 10 p.m., in a grand Valentino ensemble, all white, with a sprawling train. “She said on the red carpet she felt ‘good, very expensive,’ ” Rachel Tashjian writes in the Washington Post.

ACQUISITION ACTION. The Art Institute of Chicago has added to its holdings 1,440—yes, 1,000, 400, and 40—Dutch Mannerist prints, dating from the 1530s to about 1650, from the Hearn Family Foundation and Charles Hack collection. The haul includes a significant number of prints by the Dutch master Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), as well as his students. Some of the pieces will go on view at the museum in November, and a dedicated show (and catalogue) has been penciled in for 2027.

The Digest

While we are on the subject of art-fashion crossovers: An exhibition at MoMu in Antwerp, Belgium, looks at the photos that the Surrealist artist Man Ray shot for fashion magazines and advertisements. “Financially it absolutely helped his career, but also with fame, and he knew that,” the show’s curator, Romy Cockx, said. [The Guardian]

The annual Herb Alpert Award in the Arts has been given to 11 recipients this year, including American Artist and Park McArthur, who will each receive $75,000 and a residence at CalArts in beautiful Santa Clarita, California. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Online art sales increased just six percent in 2022, according to a report from the Hiscox insurance company and the art-data firm ArtTactic, to $15.9 billion. The study’s thesis: “The astronomical growth in the online market between 2019 and 2021 was because it was the only way to buy and sell art. Now there is a choice.” [Penta]

A townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that artist and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt called home in the 1980s and ’90s is on the market for $11 million. It is being sold by photographer Priscilla Rattazzi, who bought the place from Vanderbilt. [Dirt via Architectural Digest]

Artist Harold Ancart is about to open his debut show at Gagosian in New York, and got the profile treatment from Arthur Lubow. When Larry Gagosian came by his workplace, “it was one of the best studio visits I ever had,” Ancart said. [W]

When sleep becomes form: Julia Halperin writes that “artists and institutions like MoMA have turned to rest as a revolutionary act in a moment when the very idea of productivity is being rethought.” It is a trend with deep art-historical roots. [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]

The Kicker

THE DIRECTOR’S CUT. Filmmaker and Coen brother Joel Coen (Fargo, Barton Fink) has put together a book of photographs by the great Lee Friedlander and curated two accompanying shows, at Luhring Augustine in New York and Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, the New York Times reports. The two artists have gotten to know each other, and it sounds like they have a fruitful dialogue going. Friedlander told the Times, “He says all kinds of nice things that I don’t recognize. Splitting, splintering. Evidently my pictures are that way, but I didn’t think, ‘I want to take a splintering picture.’ If you’ve done the same thing for 60 years, you don’t think of motive very much.” [NYT]