Among the blue-chip enterprises slated to participate are Victoria Miro, Jessica Silverman, Kavi Gupta, James Cohan, Templon, Roberts Projects, Nara Roesler, Kasmin, Sean Kelly, Almine Rech, Timothy Taylor, and Instituto de Visión. More than 30 galleries are returning to the fair after a hiatus, including Jenkins Johson Gallery, Galerie Lelong & Co., Pilar Corrias, Lehmann Maupin, and Clearing.

Last year, the fair had only one mega-gallery, David Zwirner, take part; this year, no mega-galleries have signed up. (Pace Prints, a graphics-focused affiliate of Pace Gallery, is, however, one of the exhibitors this time.) But the world’s four largest galleries—Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, David Zwirner—are among the 69 galleries taking part in Frieze New York later this month.

In addition to its main galleries section, the fair also mounts several focused sections, including its two curated sections: Focus (organized by Candice Hopkins) and Platform (Eva Respini).

Hopkins’s section this year will highlight “emerging and established voices that uncover hidden histories and little-known narratives” in single- or two-artist presentations. Bringing together a large swath of various artists, the section has a strong emphasis on Indigenous artists, who have rarely ever been given such a large showcase at a commercial art fair. Among those who will take part are Jeffrey Gibson, Beau Dick, Nicholas Galanin, Sara Flores, Matthew Kirk, G. Peter Jemison, Eric-Paul Riege, Abel Rodríguez, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, and others.

Additionally, the Armory Show also announced the winner of its Gramercy International Prize, which gives a New York–based gallery that has never shown at the fair a complimentary booth. This year’s winner is No Gallery, which will mount a solo presentation of Valentina Vaccarella.

In a statement, the fair’s executive director Nicole Berry said, “The 2023 edition of The Armory Show welcomes to New York an impressive array of exhibitors from around the United States and the world. The scope of international participation among both gallerists and artists reflects the rich diversity of the city itself, a place where art professionals of all backgrounds have historically come to push boundaries and join in a global conversation.”

The full exhibitor follows below.

Galleries

Solo

Focus

Presents

Platform

The creation of this position is one of the first major changes to the company’s leadership since Noah Horowitz returned to Art Basel as CEO last year. Shortly after he started, the fair announced that it would appoint Angelle Siyang-Le as director of the Hong Kong edition, with the fair’s longtime leader, Adeline Ooi, focusing more on its overall strategy in Asia. Horowitz’s former position, running Art Basel Miami Beach, still remains vacant, though Art Basel said that “a search is underway” to fill the role.

In a statement, Horowitz said, “Maike knows the art world intimately and has deep relationships with our global community of galleries, collectors, and institutional audiences, having been at the helm of art fairs and Gallery Weekend Berlin for many years.”

Tasked with overseeing the company’s Basel-based team and leading the realization of the fair, Cruse is returning to Art Basel, having previously worked as a communications manager for the fair in the mid-2000s. She will report directly to Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director for fairs and exhibition platforms and work closely with Andreas Bicker, head of business and management for Europe, as well as the fair directors for Hong Kong, Paris+, and Miami Beach.

“I have attended every edition of Art Basel in the last nearly 20 years and I have consistently been in active exchange with the fair as Director of Gallery Weekend Berlin,” Cruse said in a statement. “I am truly honored to lead this pre-eminent show in the art and culture city of Basel, to steer its next chapter and contribute to Art Basel remaining the most important platform for galleries worldwide.”

For over a decade, Cruse has been a major figure in Berlin’s art market, having run two iterations of the city’s fair: Art Berlin Contemporary (2012–16) and Art Berlin (2016–19); in 2013, she was also hired to run Gallery Weekend Berlin. She has also had positions at KW Institute of Contemporary Art and the Berlin Biennale.

“Maike is a proven leader in the field and an enthusiastic partner to galleries, artists, and collectors,” de Bellis said in a statement. “In Berlin she has created an annual showcase that is deeply embedded in the city and unites its diverse cultural actors. Her collaborative spirit means she is uniquely positioned to foster close ties to our many partners and stakeholders in Basel.”

In the upcoming New York sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips later this month, one of the priciest artworks won’t be on the walls, or even in New York. Rather, it will be sitting between Hole 10 and Hole 17 at Gillette Ridge, a public golf course in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

The Family by Isamu Noguchi is due to hit the auction block at the Sotheby’s New York Modern Evening Auction on May 16 with an estimate of $6 million to $8 million. It will almost certainly reset Noguchi’s current auction record of $4.73 million, set at Christie’s in 2017 by the sculpture Garden Elements.

The Connecticut General Life Insurance Company commissioned the monumental sculpture in 1956 for its then new corporate campus in Bloomfield. The Stonehenge-like arrangement of three totemic forms—the tallest rising 16 feet—consists of granite from the Stony Brook quarry, around 50 miles south of Bloomfield. It was installed on the grounds in 1957, the year the headquarters opened. 

Named for Connecticut General former president, Frazar B. Wilde, the headquarters is an iconic building designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who is also responsible for such similarly iconic buildings as Lever House in Manhattan. Noguchi also designed a garden for the Wilde Building, as well as other sculptural elements. In 1982 Connecticut General merged with INA Corporation to become the health care company Cigna Insurance. (Cigna had plans to tear down the Wilde building in 2001, about which local architect Tyler Smith wrote in the Hartford Courant, “For Cigna to destroy this site is an act of barbarism.” Cigna ended up nixing the idea.)

Cigna is the seller of the Noguchi, which sits on a portion of the campus developed in the early 2000s into a company-owned public golf course, the only one in the Northeast designed by Arnold Palmer, of pro golf and half-iced-tea-half-lemonade fame. On a clear fall day, the Noguchi is visible from the clubhouse. At least one local art lover is sad to see it go. Jordan Stein, general manager of Gillette Ridge, told ARTnews earlier this week, “I’m going to miss it.”
 
This isn’t Cigna’s first venture on the auction block; the company sold some 200 pieces through Sotheby’s in 2004. At the same time, it donated 5,000 artworks and artifacts to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., among other institutions. A Cigna rep told the Courant at the time that the company would keep its contemporary art collection, which sat in employee offices and common areas, and that it would use proceeds from the auctioned works to buy works by emerging artists. Cigna did not return a request for comment on whether the Noguchi sale indicates that more art sales are in store.

But wait, there’s more! 

The Ellsworth Kelly painting Black White (1967) is due to sell at the Christie’s New York 20th Century Evening Auction on May 11 with an estimate of $3.5 million to $5.5 million. The painting had long been in the collection of Dallas-based philanthropist and ARTnews Top 200 Collector Marguerite Hoffman. However, it appears that it is not Hoffman selling the painting. According to the provenance, the current owner bought it from an unnamed collector who purchased it from New York’s Matthew Marks Gallery. It appears likely that Hoffman and her late husband, Robert, purchased the painting from Marks and then sold it to the current consignor. If that is the case, it would be a relatively quick turnaround: the painting appears in Amor Mundi, a book devoted to Hoffman’s collection published only last year. 

Hoffman’s collection, along with that of two other Dallas families—the Rachofskys and the Roses—was bequeathed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 2005, meaning the collection goes to the museum after the owner’s death. Black White appeared in Fast Forward, a 2006 exhibition and catalogue at the museum dedicated to those collections. It is understood that bequeathing families may sell works during their lifetime, and Howard Rachofsky has already done so, selling a Christina Quarles painting for $4.5 million at Sotheby’s last year. The Rachofskys and Hoffman continue to acquire artworks; Amor Mundi shows that Hoffman has been diversifying her collection.

“We are grateful that Marguerite continues to steward her collection in a way that allows it to grow, change, and stay relevant for the long-term benefit of the Dallas Museum of Art,” a spokesman for the museum told ARTnews. 

Christie’s declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

In other news, David Shuman, founder of Northwoods Capital Management and a Guggenheim trustee from 2015 to 2019, is listed in public documents as the owner of Matthew Wong’s 2017 canvas The Jungle, which is slated for the Sotheby’s New York May 18 Now Evening Auction, with an estimate of $1.2 million. The painting had been listed in a Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong last year, but was ultimately pulled. 

Sotheby’s is also selling Picasso’s Nu devant la glace (1932), depicting French model Marie-Thérèse Walter  and created in Boisgeloup, at its Modern Evening Auction on May 16, with an estimate of $12 million to $18 million. The work, which is guaranteed, comes from the collection of Bettina and Donald Bryant, who have appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list. It was last shown at Tate Modern in 2018 as part of the exhibition Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy. 

(A Sotheby’s spokesperson declined to comment on either sale citing reasons related to consignor confidentiality; Shuman could not be reached via a representative.) 

And, last but not least, three abstract paintings by Morris Louis—all of which have been exhibited in connection with 91-year-old Washington, D.C., real estate developer Robert P. Kogod—are to be offered at the Christie’s New York 20th Century Evening Sale on May 11. They have a collective estimate of $5.8 million. Kogod, and his wife, Arlene, are noted philanthropists; a courtyard connecting the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery bears their name.

Nothing that “the art world is still notoriously opaque when it comes to disclosing details about pay, promotions, and opportunities,” the report compiles data, spanning January to December 2022, from the salary packages that the firm negotiated during that time frame as well as the budgets supplied to the firm during the recruitment process. The data was supplemented with a survey “to individuals across our core specialisms who were selected from an active database of over 15,000 candidates, as well as our growing network,” according to the report, which is accessible on the company’s website.

“We have used predominantly our professional data which marries employer budgets with candidate expectations. It is a smaller data set, but it means we were able to paint a real-life picture of the state of play regarding pay and salaries in both the UK and US,” Rosie Allan, SML’s managing director, said in an emailed interview. “We realized as a business we are sitting on a wealth of insights, most pressingly on salaries/remuneration, that would benefit a wider audience from current and prospective clients to candidates both inside and outside the industry.”

The report breaks down salary ranges for various job levels in nine different categories: auction houses (business functions and specialists), commercial galleries (sales and non-sales), art advisory firms, art fairs, artist studios, communications agencies, and “alternative art world & arts technology.”

The ranges reported are based on positions’ base salaries and don’t take into account commission percentages, bonuses, and other benefits that are common for sales directors at galleries, auction house specialists, art advisors, and art fair directors.

Across the board, in both the most senior and junior of roles, the top range of salaries in the US outrank those in the UK, even as the pound has regained its strength in the past several months.

Per the report’s data, the highest earners across the art market are senior sales directors and partners at commercial galleries. In the US, a senior sales director can make anywhere between $225,000 and $425,000, while in the UK, the range for the same position is £213,000–£250,000 (or about $265,000–$312,000). A partner at a US gallery can make in excess of $400,000; data for a partner in the UK was not provided.

An interesting comparison noted in the report’s “Commission & Bonus Structures” section are two case studies for sales directors, both identified as working at mid-size galleries. The London-based director had a base salary of £100,000 ($125,000) and an annual sales target of £5 million ($6.2 million), while a Los Angeles–based director had a base salary of $160,000 and a sales target of $5 million and a guaranteed first-year bonus of $40,000. Both directors would receive a 5-percent commission based on “net profit on primary market sales of artworks by artists represented by the gallery”; the London director, however, would get 10 percent for secondary market works consigned to the gallery, with the LA director still receiving 5 percent.

On the non-sales side, the report provided salary ranges for over a dozen positions in both the US and UK, with communications directors and finance directors being the most well-paid in both markets. In the US, an artist liaison or exhibitions director is typically better compensated ($103,000–$213,000) than their UK counterparts (£40,000–£85,000 or about $50,000–$106,000).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a gallery assistant, typically those sitting at the front desk when you enter a gallery, can make between £23,000–£30,000 ($28,700–$37,400) in the UK and $40,000–$70,000 in the US. A sales assistant, the lowest position on a sales team, makes slightly more: £28,000–£40,000 ($35,000–$50,000) in the UK and $43,000–$70,000 in the US.

The ranges at auction houses, however, were much closer in the US and the UK. For example, a UK business director can make anywhere between £50,000–£130,000 ($62,000–$162,000), while a US-based on could make between $90,000–$180,000. Similarly, an executive assistant based in the UK could potentially out-earn their counterparts in the US, with the salary ranges being £45,000–£60,000 ($56,000–$74,000) and $48,000–$70,000, respectively.

On the specialist side, the disparity was once again quite large: a senior vice president in the US (the highest title reported) can expect to make at least $350,000, while a senior director in the UK (the equivalent level, per the date reported) can make at least £130,000 ($162,000).

“Most ranges met our expectations,” Allan said. “We have, since release, found readers are interested in the parity between the UK and US at auction [houses]. We believe this is down to the fact that a lot of auction houses we work with are international.”

Allan also noted that the disparity in pay discrepancies between similar roles in the US and UK might be deceiving. “Where there are disparities like this, we have to consider that job title shifts and salary adjustments might happen at different times in the US vs the UK,” she said. “Where someone might have an effective promotion in terms of title in the US, someone in the UK may stay in one role/job title for longer, not necessarily moving up in terms of job title but with their salary increasing in step with seniority/remit.”

A surprising data point, which is only hinted at in the final report, Allan said was “the increase in hiring activity in the US outside NYC,” which clocked in at a 200-percent increase with “much of this growth is focused in Los Angeles.” Since early 2022, just ahead the third edition of Frieze LA, numerous galleries have announced expansion plans to the city.

The firm said it plans to release a new salary report every two years, with the hope that future reports will include data for roles in markets outside the US and UK, as the firm continues to grow. Asia, with an emphasis on Seoul, Taipei, and Singapore (cities that now boast art fairs), is a major focus as “galleries and advisory firms [look] to expand and capitalize on opportunity,” as is mainland Europe, post-Brexit.   

Conversations around pay transparency in the art world came front and center in 2019, when a Google spreadsheet titled “Art/Museum Salary Transparency 2019” began circulating online. Though much of that data was self-reported and focused predominantly on salaries in the art world’s nonprofit side (as opposed to the market side in the SML report), it helped generate a major conversation around pay in the art world.

Similarly, SML said one reason that they compiled the report was because of the recent law that went into effect in New York City last year requiring that job postings list salary ranges.

Allan said, “With pay transparency front of mind, we saw this report as an excellent opportunity to set the ball rolling on sharing helpful information and 20 years of expert knowledge related to key issues in employment/talent development.”

This May, the work, titled Now’s the Time (1985), will be the star lot of Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction, where it is expected to fetch at least $30 million. Until now, it has resided in the collection of Peter Brant, who ranks on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list.

It’s one of the most stylistically uncharacteristic entries in Basquiat’s oeuvre, which is commonly thought of as being brightly colored, with abstract elements that recall the syncopated rhythms of jazz.

Now’s the Time seems austere in comparison. It’s a seven-foot-wide recreation of the vinyl pressing of the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker’s 1945 recording of the same name.

Basquiat was an avid jazz listener, and album collector; he had some 3,000 in his collection at the time of his death. He cited many of the genre’s greats in his paintings, but none as often, or with as much affection, as Parker. Known as “the Bird,” Parker pioneered the bebop movement, a rapid, virtuosic genre in which harmonies rose in a frenzy and miraculously converged, rather than collapsed. 

In deference to Parker, Basquiat left his ego at the doorstep, making a matte black disc with only a few white inscriptions. It’s not a perfect circle—the curves are irregular, like a depthless, rotating black hole. 

“In [Now’s the Time], we witness Basquiat radically simplify the explosive bravura of his street-art style to create a painting that ranks amongst the most important and visually striking masterworks in his oeuvre,” Grégoire Billault, Sotheby’s chairman of contemporary art, said in a statement. “As a final touch, he emblazons his signature copyright sign on the surface: both giving credit to Parker, and marking the painting, the declaration, and the moment as his own.”

It is, however, not even the most expensive Basquiat painting headed to auction this season. Also in May, Christie’s is set to sell a work that belongs to fashion designer Valentino Garavani for more than $45 million.

Salle will be represented by Gladstone in the US; Lehmann Maupin and Thaddaeus Ropac will continue to represent him in Asia and Europe, respectively. Yet the Gladstone move will mark a departure from Skarstedt, the blue-chip enterprise that has mounted seven solo shows by Salle in the past decade.

In an email to ARTnews, dealer Per Skarstedt said, “It has been a pleasure to work with David Salle these past ten years. Gladstone and David will be a good fit. Skarstedt will continue to be involved in the secondary market.”

His defection to Gladstone comes after that gallery staged a show of his work in Brussels last year. A New York exhibition with Gladstone will follow in the fall of next year.

In a statement, dealer Barbara Gladstone said, “We are delighted to formally welcome David to the gallery. I have always admired his work, both as a visual artist and as a writer. His unquestionable skill, wit, inquisitiveness, and psychological depth have helped distinguish him as one of the most unique and compelling painters of his generation. One of my very first coveted art acquisitions was a painting by David that I bought in 1979, a year before I opened my eponymous gallery on 57th Street, so I am very grateful to have this opportunity to work together.”

Salle has frequently been grouped in with the Pictures Generation, a group of artists, many of whom were based in New York, that used appropriation in his work during the late ’70s and early ’80s. For his well-known canvases from that era, Salle layered seemingly unlike images in ways that can variously recall Francis Picabia’s “Transparencies” and James Rosenquist’s Pop paintings.

“Salle’s canvases are like bad parodies of the Freudian unconscious,” critic Janet Malcolm famously remarked. “They are full of images that don’t belong together: a woman taking off her clothes, the Spanish Armada, a kitschy fabric design, an eye.”

Initially, these paintings polarized critics, some of whom labeled Salle’s repeated images of nude women misogynistic. Since then, his paintings have found a loyal following.

In addition to his artistic practice, Salle has written prolifically on painting, with some of his essays appearing in ARTnews.

Salle said in a statement, “Barbara Gladstone and I have been friends for decades and Gladstone has long been a bastion of independence and integrity. I’m very pleased to join the company of many artists I admire most.”

Those artists include Carroll Dunham, Arthur Jafa, Joan Jonas, Alex Katz, Wangechi Mutu, Richard Prince, and Rosemarie Trockel. Gladstone’s roster has expanded rapidly since 2020, when dealer Gavin Brown was brought on as a partner.

Now celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, Expo Chicago made apparent this edition that it is still intent on bringing world-class art and leading curators to the Windy City for a fair experience unlike any other. The fair made good on its promise.

Below, a look at the best on offer during the 2023 edition of Expo Chicago, which runs until Sunday, April 16.

In that last Gagosian show, working in a primarily abstract mode, Gavin focused on the recent relocation of his studio to the Hudson Valley, where he moved permanently in 2016.

Gagosian director Antwaun Sargent said in an interview that this body of work raises “questions that come out of a pondering of nature, his own relationship and the historical relationship to land, but then also questions of re-wilding that land and working with that land, and people’s connections to a land.”

In these large-scale canvases, Gavin’s painterly marks meld, blur, and fade into each other, coalescing into radiant images that hint at real places.

“He’s an unbelievable painter. I don’t know someone who can make landscapes as interesting as Cy Gavin can in this contemporary moment,” said Sargent.

Gavin is the tenth artist to join Gagosian’s roster in the past 12 months, and one of several artists to join because of Sargent. Among the artists that Sargent has brought on are Rick Lowe, Deana Lawson, and Derrick Adams. (In late 2021, Gavin had a solo show in London at rival mega-gallery David Zwirner, which led to speculation that he might join that gallery’s roster.)

When it comes to fast-expanding mega-gallery rosters, Gagosian’s is eclipsed only by Pace, which has added a dozen artists in roughly the same time period.

“What we’re trying to do is build a roster that has great artists, no matter what they are doing,” said Sargent, who joined the gallery in 2021.

Because his career, both as a writer and curator, has always placed an emphasis on highlighting and supporting contemporary Black artists, Sargent said these additions are simply a matter of “bringing my area of expertise to the gallery. So I think that’s why things seem to be moving at a clip, but, as we know, these artists have been around, and they have been making compelling work.”

Gavin was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial and the 2018 exhibition “The Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night” at MASS MoCA. He had his first solo museum show in 2021 at Aspen Art Museum. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

Sargent said he was also interested in Gavin’s practice for the ways in which it “breaks from some of the contemporary conversation around what Black painters are, what they do, and how they’re supposed to respond in this moment. For me, the job at the gallery really has been about widening the conversation around what contemporary Black artistic production is and can be.”

He added, “These questions of Blackness, these questions of home, these questions of what it means to be in a space are all present in a Cy Gavin landscape.”

At the Rainbow Room Tuesday night, the once-and-future NFT community gathered to kick off the third edition of NFT.NYC, the premier Web3 conference that has served as a barometer for the crypto market since it began in 2019.

“Frank Sinatra used to sing here, but what matters most now is the people in this room!” Matt Medved, cofounder of Web3 media company, nft now, told the crowd at the company’s NFT100 Gala, projecting a confidence undercut by the scene at the top of the Rock.

Tables were pockmarked by empty seats, while the remaining attendees talked bleakly about tax season. Meanwhile, at the open bar, the signature cocktail this year was titled “Bear Market” (Tito’s, grenadine, a twist, sloshed into a coupe glass). The party line seemed to be: Sure, things look bad now, but actually, they had always looked bad.

“Over the last 24 months everyone here has been laughed at for their choices. It takes courage to say, ‘I see something nobody else does,’” Alejandro Navia, another nft now cofounder, said from the dais. “Web3 is not just an industry but an economy that changed people’s lives. How many of you can pay your bills because of NFTs?” His speech was met by a cruel silence, before a kind of heartsick laughter bubbled through the room.The sincerity and evangelism that propelled NFT value-making had finally reached its limit. Let’s call a spade a spade.

Over the past year, NFT sales dropped 77 percent and the community has shrunk back to more or less its original composition: dedicated digital artists and true believers in crypto, with the occasional VC-type hype man present.

And, as ARTnews editor-in-chief Sarah Douglas often reminds, she knew the financial crisis had hit the art market when she got to the UBS dinner at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2008: There was no caviar.

During 2021’s edition of NFT.NYC, held in November, I spotted Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort, looking slightly haggard in the strobing lights of a party hosted by Sotheby’s and Serotonin, a Web3 marketing firm. I took his presence as validation that this oft-embarrassing beat was coalescing into something of historical importance. Perhaps, this could all be a movie someday. Rappers floated in the background at a different party, as indie-pop darling Caroline Polachek performed for the Web3ers. It was clear: the money was flowing. 

Just as quickly, it wasn’t. Last year’s edition in late June may have attracted 15,000 attendees, a jump of more than 5,000, but people were on edge. By then, bitcoin had tanked to below $20,000, a far cry from its previous peak of $69,000. Still, with over 1,500 speakers set to take the stage, crypto enthusiasts put on a brave face. Hadn’t so many troubling dips in the value of crypto presaged lines on the graph that were basically parallel? Hadn’t winter come before spring?  “We haven’t hit zero yet—it’s not over,” David Pakman, a crypto VC, assured the crowd during that year’s opening remarks.

In retrospect, we all should’ve known it was the end of that dazzling reign: the parties weren’t so good. 

A couple weeks later, the herald of death came. Devin Finzer, CEO of the behemoth NFT trading platform OpenSea, announced layoffs. Things weren’t going to get better anytime soon and OpenSea was preparing to wait out a long winter. Finzer calculated they had enough funds to get through five adverse years. 

Some places are still feeling the lost promise of crypto. During Art Basel Miami Beach this past December, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez metaphorically broke a bottle of champagne over the ship that was “The Gateway,” an NFT gallery held inside an old bank with Web3 pop-ups lining the street. He grinned into a phone that was pointed at his face, “You must come here!” Meanwhile, Web3 NYC Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, which advertised itself as the first physical Web3 store, is apparently closed.

Cynicism, irony, sarcasm––it had little place in the fraternal light of the NFT community of yore, whose motto was WAGMI–We’re All Gonna Make It. No longer. As Navia, the nft now cofounder, discovered with his ill-timed comment Tuesday night, it’s too grating to pretend that everyone is about to collectively catch a wave. 

“I’m just here to get a job,” one of my seatmates, a Web3 artist, told me. Time to squeeze a few more drops of blood from this rock. — Shanti Escalante-De Mattei, reporter

Meet the Gallery Bringing Ghana’s Art Scene Global

When Marwan Zakhem founded Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana, he probably didn’t expect it to have an outsize impact on the country where it’s based. In fact, Zakhem hadn’t planned to open a gallery at all—he got his start constructing oil and gas storage facilities. But since the gallery opened in 2016, it has become one of the forces aiding the growth of Ghana’s art scene and one of the most important commercial spaces on the continent writ large. ARTnews contributor Gameli Hamelo reports on Gallery 1957’s humble roots and its many functions, which include not just mounting exhibitions but also facilitating an art prize and a residency program. “We did all of this to make sure they knew that this country was great and that the artists coming out of it were even greater,” Zakhem told Hamelo.

The Big Number: $120 M.

More than 30 works from the collection of storied music executive Mo Ostin, who died in July 2022, are expected to sell collectively for that amount at Sotheby’s in May. Works by René Magritte, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell will be among the top works offered.

Industry Moves

Read This.

Poet and fiction writer Ben Lerner is no stranger to the art world. In 2016, he wrote an article for the New Yorker about how the Whitney Museum handles art conservation. Last week, Lerner again included a subject of museological interest in a piece for the magazine–this time a work of fiction called “The Ferry.” The narrator, a photo archivist, attends a panel discussion entitled “Criteria for Deaccession.” At the end he makes a comment, “People need to understand the relationship between preservation and destruction, I mean, how the former must entail the latter.” In an interview about the story with editor Cressida Leyshon, Lerner says, “A work of art or a library or museum collection or any significant form requires subtraction as much as addition, right? It requires omission, deaccession, etc., not just hoarding. Endless accumulation in an ever-expanding cloud flattens everything.” – Angelica Villa, reporter

Situated right behind Zakhem’s desk, the work is symbolic of his role in the growing global interest in Ghana’s artists and art scene—which in recent years has become a hotspot for international collectors and has also seen the launch of new galleries and artist-led spaces.

Clottey’s show “My Mother’s Wardrobe” was the first exhibition held at the art space that Zakhem founded, Gallery 1957, when it was officially opened on March 6, 2016, the 59th anniversary of the day that Ghana gained independence. Clottey is best known for stitching together pieces of yellow cans used for carrying water to create installations he calls “Afrogallonism.”

Zakhem, the gallery’s founder, has previously said that 1957’s “founding ethos is its commitment to supporting and promoting emerging and established artists across West Africa and the diaspora.”  

Three weeks after he welcomed ARTnews to his office, Zakhem hosted an artist talk at the Pearl Room of the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, the five-star hotel he built that houses some of his collection. He was there to speak with members of Artemartis, a Ghana-based art collective and agency, before the opening reception of their latest exhibition. Artemartis, despite being composed of nine Ghanaian artists, had not exhibited together in the country until “When The Birds Fly Home,” their show that opened in early February at Gallery 1957.

“I am passionate about what I do with the gallery,” Zakhem told ARTnews. “I am passionate about the artists that I represent. I am extremely passionate about Ghana’s cultural ecosystem and the part that it is playing in this revival of contemporary African arts.” 

Touria El Glaoui, the founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, credited Zakhem with being “very generous in building up his network and his community.”

Zakhem never planned to own a gallery and curate art. Born in 1972 in Beirut, he grew up in a house with paintings on its walls, but he didn’t take trips to museums or art fairs. Zakhem recalled he had no “inclination” to be an artist or to be involved in the art industry in any shape or form.

He trained as a civil engineer and later came to Ghana “to start a business of constructing—believe it or not—large oil and gas storage facilities, tanks and pipelines.”

During travels throughout the continent, he started buying art “as any tourist probably did,” for about 20 or 30 dollars a pop. He recalled purchasing works by “largely obscure painters,” and he has continued that practice in the years since. According to Zakhem, the two well-known Senegalese painters whose work he owns are Amadou M’Baye and Soly Cissé.

The works he bought ended up being hung in his house, offices, and restaurants in Senegal, and he later gave some out as gifts to people who visited him. The thought of others appreciating his love for the arts planted a seed in his mind to keep at it.

Although he had been buying art for years—“West African art only, nothing else, nothing more,” he said—it wasn’t until he moved to Ghana in 2003 that he really began his collecting journey. He proudly showed off one of the first paintings he bought by the late Krotei Tetteh, whose work he has around the Kempinski hotel and whom Zakhem later discovered was a relative of Clottey.

A visit to the studio of Tetteh changed everything for Zakhem. Tetteh “kind of took me under his wings a little bit [and] showed me what he was doing,” he recalled. Zakhem also met other artists like Kofi Agorsor, Owusu-Ankomah, and Ablade Glover, who became a mentor and whose work he later bought.

For a six-year period, he placed the 50-plus paintings he amassed in his offices, his restaurants, and wherever else he could put them. At the time, he mainly bought abstract modernism works.

And then “something happened, magical” as Zakhem put it. Around 2013, he met with artists including Clottey, Ibrahim Mahama, and the “whole KNUST [Kwame Nkrumah University of Science of Technology] establishment.”

“What these artists were doing was something I had never envisaged,” Zakhem recalled. They were producing “work made out of plastic, work made out of jute sacks, work that was not painted.”

When Zakhem visited Clottey’s studio in Labadi, a suburb of Accra, in 2015, he recalled that it jolted him into his trajectory.

Zakhem set out on a plan to start a gallery to support Ghanaian artists, ensuring they had the necessary resources and platforms to be successful without having to lose their identity or travel outside the country to find a following. “It was important to prove that these artists can have a sustainable career again based from here,” Zakhem said.

Friends thought it would be a better idea to launch a gallery in London or, better yet, to start a foundation if he had to have an art space in Ghana. However, the latter idea wasn’t appealing to Zakhem because even though he had a decent collection, he didn’t think it was one worthy of a foundation. What he did have was an eye for local talent.

Gallery 1957 has its roots in the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, which Zakhem opened in 2015. The first gallery space is housed in a redesigned part of the building initially earmarked as a mechanical room where he showed and commissioned works from the likes of Clottey, Mahama, and Yaw Owusu. The reaction to selling a Clottey piece, for example, wasn’t encouraging—friends said they’d rather buy a Rolex than invest in an artwork.

But Zakhem continued onward, inviting curators, journalists, and collectors to see what was on view, even paying for their plane tickets and hotel rooms. The guests not only got to see Gallery 1957 and the artists it represented but were also immersed in the cultural scene of Ghana by attending music festivals and visiting other cultural institutions around the country, including Mahama’s Savannah Centre for Contemporary Arts in Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana.

“We did all of this to make sure they knew that this country was great and that the artists coming out of it were even greater,” Zakhem said.

Gallery 1957 has grown in stature since its founding. It has since inaugurated two more spaces on the premises of Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, in the Galleria Mall, and a third at Hyde Park Gate in London.

Along the way, the gallery has acted as a feeder for greater success for many of its artists. Gideon Appah, for example, had a solo show at Gallery 1957 in 2019, one year before his first New York exhibition, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, and three years before gaining representation with Pace, one of the world’s biggest galleries. The gallery’s roster has also grown and now includes artists such as Abdoulaye Konaté, a well-known Malian artist who makes abstractions from fabric, and Collin Sekajugo, one of two artists who showed at last year’s award-winning Ugandan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Importantly, Gallery 1957 is more than just a commercial gallery. It also facilitates many other initiatives that are intended to grow Ghana’s art scene.

One such initiative is the Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize, founded in 2021, which supports “female artists from Ghana and its diaspora.” Araba Opoku was its first recipient. (Awardees need not be represented by the gallery; Opoku is not on 1957’s roster.)

The gallery’s artist residency program is also coveted, with Amoako Boafo, Opoku, Rita Mawuena Benissan, Kwesi Botchway, Isshaq Ismail, Johannes Phokela, Cornelius Annor, Godfried Donkor, Tiffanie Delune, and Afia Prempeh among its current and past participants.

The program allows participants to focus on creating art for up to a year. The art is subsequently exhibited by the gallery. Gallery 1957 also pays for tickets, visas, and medical bills and provides accommodation for artists not from Ghana and also for those who don’t live there. The majority of these artists are invited by Zakhem personally.

Prempeh, who is based in Kumasi, first connected with Zakhem in 2015. In 2020, Prempeh had posted an in-progress painting in memory of her late mother on Instagram, and Zakhem reached out to her. Ultimately, Prempeh joined the gallery’s roster in 2021, the same year she started her residency and later had her debut solo exhibition.

During her residency, Prempeh only had to concentrate on creating a body of work for her exhibition. She was provided a fully furnished two-bedroom apartment, a monthly stipend, the service of caretakers, and any needed materials. In an interview, Prempeh said she had previously lived “hand to mouth,” making her art in her bedroom. Suddenly, she didn’t have to worry about paying for materials, getting a space for an exhibition, and sending out invites.

“It has made a whole lot of difference in my career,” Prempeh said, speaking by phone. “The moment [Marwan] recognizes your talent and then he picks you, he changes your life as an artist and your career.”

Gallery 1957 has also set its sights on reaching many beyond Ghana, and one way it’s done that is through participating in fairs. Two years after it first opened, in 2018, the gallery took part in Art X Lagos. It is now a regular there and at other international fairs, including the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (New York, London, and Paris), Art Paris, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, and Art Dubai.

“[The gallery] participating at many international art fairs as possible [provides] international visibility to a lot of artists from Ghana,” El Glaoui said, adding, “From a cultural perspective and international visibility, Gallery 1957 has been very instrumental.”

“I think that the job the gallery has done [at] Art Dubai by bringing a new generation of African artists, especially from Ghana and countries from West Africa, has been super important,” said Pablo del Val, the artistic director of Art Dubai, which has been billed as the leading international art fair in the Middle East. “Its presence in Dubai has been the first time that many collectors and institutions had the opportunity of getting in touch with their roster of artists.”

The international reach has helped artists such as Prempeh, who previously had only shown her art in Ghana before working with the gallery. Now, however, it has been seen in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. Still, Prempeh said that Gallery 1957 has also spurred her to consider how an art scene has grown closer to home.

“I was probably looking to have my exhibition outside because people kept telling me, ‘If you sell these works outside, the money you’d make,’” she said. “But then Gallery 1957 came in and made me realize that I can make it right here.”