The artist, musician, and educator Barbara Ess, a pioneer in the fields of experimental photography and film and a longtime professor of photography at Bard College in upstate New York, has died at age 72. The news was confirmed in an email announcement by Ess’s gallery, Magenta Plains in New York.

“Ess was a radical force and approached her life and work with enormous spirit, fearlessness, humor, and intellect,” Magenta Plains’s read. Ess became known for her photographs of daily life that are imbued with a disquieting, contemplative edge. The artist once said that the aim of her work was to “transform the ordinary into the symbolic and reveal meaning in the apparently mundane.”

Born in Brooklyn in 1948, Ess studied philosophy and English literature at the University of Michigan. After graduating in 1969, she worked as an editor at the political magazine War Peace Reporting. In 1971, she … Read the rest

Following a strong start to its spring season in London, Christie’s has announced the promotion of two executives in its New York chairman’s office. Bonnie Brennan has been appointed as the president of Christie’s Americas. She previously served as the chairman of business development reporting from the New York office. Brennan is filling the role previously held by Jennifer Zatorski, who has been appointed to the newly-created position of Global Managing Director of Strategic Initiatives reporting to the office of Christie’s CEO, Guillaume Cerutti.

The news follows a tumultuous year of staff restructuring and an overhaul of the traditional sales schedule at the house, bringing Christie’s, along with its competitors into a new era of live-streamed auctions and virtual channels that have blurred long existing boundaries between international sale centers.

In her new role, Brennan, who has worked at Christie’s for eight years, will head initiatives around strategic business development, … Read the rest

On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he would end the state’s mask mandate and allow businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity. Mandatory safety measures and restrictions are set to be lifted on March 10, raising questions for art institutions in the state adhering to protocols that require visitors and staff to wear face masks and practice social distancing within their galleries. Many museums in Texas, which reopened last summer, have also limited the number of visitors each day.

Reached by ARTnews, five major museums in Texas have said that the governor’s move to reopen the state will not change the safety measures that they’ve had in place for much of the last year. The Dallas Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Menil Collection in Houston said that their … Read the rest

In a strong start to its 20th century art sales launched at its London and New York headquarters on Monday, Christie’s sold a group of eight drawings from the family collection of London dealer Thomas Gibson for a collective $25.3 million, well above its estimate of $15.8 million.

Across the several sales held at the house’s New York and London salesrooms beginning on March 1, Christie’s reported a net total of $61 million, realizing a combined sell-through rate of 98 percent.

Leading the works on paper sale was a rare drawing of a French girl by Vincent van Gogh titled La Mousmé (1888). Executed near the end of the artist’s life, the Japonisme-inspired drawing of the young sitter went for £7.5 million ($10.4 million) with fees, against an estimate of $7 million. Acquired by Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in 1943, following the war-time persecution of its original Jewish owners Kurt and … Read the rest