Nazi-Looted Painting Returned to Poland, Stock Exchange for Art to Launch, and More: Morning Links for June 1, 2023

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

THE GANG’S ALL HERE. Today Frieze announced the lineup for its second Seoul fair, which will be open to the public September 7–9, and Maximilíano Durón has a rundown in ARTnews. The big four—Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, and David Zwirner—will be among the more than 120 galleries convening at the COEX Convention & Exhibition Center. The event’s Focus section, for solo shows by emerging Asian galleries, will feature 10 outfits, including Capsule Shanghai, Singapore’s Yeo Workshop, and four Seoul ventures, including Cylinder and White Noise. Like last year, Frieze Seoul is partnering with the long-running Kiaf fair, which has grown from 164 exhibitors to 210 for this next outing (also at COEX). Head to ARTnews for more.

A HOMECOMING. A 16th-century Alessandro Turchi painting, Madonna with Child, which was looted in Poland by the Nazis amid the Second World War, was returned to the country at its Tokyo embassy yesterday, the Associated Press reports. Last year, Polish officials spotted the piece listed at an auction house in the Japanese capital, and its owner and the company agreed to return it. In the early 19th century, the work resided in the collection of the Polish aristo and art patron Henryk Lubomirski, and it is known to have traded at a New York auction house in the late 1990s, according to the AP.

The Digest

Over in London, a “stock exchange for art” named Artex is getting ready to offer shares in a 1963 Francis Bacon triptych (or 70 percent of a Francis Bacon triptych, to be exact), Melanie Gerlis reports. The consigner bought the work at Christie’s for $51.8 million. Shares will be priced at $100 a pop. [Financial Times]

The market for the Singaporean painter Georgette Chen (1906–93) is hot. A ca. 1965 still life by her just sold at Christie’s Hong Kong for $HK14.3 million (about US$1.82 million), a new auction record for the artist—the third time in less than a year that that has happened. [The Straits Times/Asia News Network/The Star]

The US Latinx Art Forum named the 15 artists it has tapped for its third annual Latinx Artist Fellowship, which is part of the Latinx Art Visibility Initiative backed by the Mellon and Ford Foundations. They include Beatriz Cortez, Postcommodity, and Diana Solís. Each will receive $50,000. [Press Release/Mellon Foundation]

More than 200 works by the storied experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs have been sold to the Museum of Modern Art, joining 14 more in its collection. Now 90, Jacobs said that when he visited MoMA in his teens, it “plunged me . . . into the unexpectedness of art.” [The Art Newspaper]

Painter Angel Otero currently has a show up at Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong, and writer Aaina Bhargava paid a visit to his Brooklyn studio before its opening. A wave figures in some of his recent works, which he sees as a “metaphor for bringing and taking, hiding and revealing,” he said. [Tatler Asia]

ARCHITECTURE ACTION.Shigeru Ban has unveiled a curvaceous design for a pavilion at the Expo 2025 Osaka, Dezeen reports, and Architectural Digest has handsome photos of David Adjaye’s newly completed Abrahamic Family House, an interfaith center in Abu Dhabi.

The Kicker

A PUBLIC SPECTACLE. In Buenos Aires, a newly installed statue of the celebrated soccer player and coach Marcelo Gallardo has been generating a fair amount of criticism, with some terming it “vulgar,” the Associated Press reports. One issue: In the 23-foot-tall piece, which was commissioned by his longtime club, River Plate, Gallardo has a rather sizable bulge at his crotch. Its creator, Mercedes Savall, described that as a symbol of courage, telling the AP, in part, that it “is a gesture toward the fans with a lot of respect. It is no joke.” The club’s director said that if “we can correct it, we will correct it.” [AP]