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your money, your life, your choice ・ the painting that did not sell

The painting that did not sell.

While there may be a well-established “cartel of taste” (see Anna Louie Sussman’s article “Why You Can’t Always Buy a Work of Art Just Because You Have the Cash,” @artsy, 12 December 2018), market stakeholders can and sometimes do display independent judgment.

Gerhard Richter’s “Schädel” (oil on canvas), the first of a series of eight skull paintings painted in 1983, was held in the same collection for 30 years after a last public exhibition in 1988.

Based on a photograph taken by Richter himself, the painting demonstrates a “dialogue between painterly abstraction and photo-realist representation that had been simmering across separate stands of Richter’s practice for nearly two decades.”

This painting led the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale held at Christie’s London on 4 October 2018.

With an unpublished estimate, the painting was expected to sell for between £12 and £18 million (US$15 – US$23 million).

Bidding reached £11.5 million. The painting was not allowed to change hands.

Note also the instance of Edward Hopper’s 1972 painting, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” that sold at Christie’s in New York on 15 November. It closed narrowly, at what may have been a precisely agreed threshold of $80 million – with what appeared to be Christie’s bidding against itself to reach the sales price.

See:

“Why You Can’t Always Buy a Work of Art Just Because You Have the Cash,” Anna Louie Sussman, Artsy, 12 December 2018

“Seen for the first time in 30 years: Gerhard Richter’s ‘Schädel’ (‘Skull’),” Christie’s

“Gerhard Richter ‘Skull’ to Headline Christie’s Sale in London,” Fang Block, Barron’s, 4 September 2018

“Rare Richter’s a Bust, but Christie’s Moves $25.9 M. Bacon, $21 M. Fontana at London Sales,” Judd Tully, Artnews, 4 October 2018

 

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your money, your life, your choice | fashion & CO2

“It’s really about bringing everyone together as an industry, and instead of having a few people talk about it, it’s having everyone talk about it and the leaders… actually taking responsibility, putting our money where our mouth is and making an amazing change together.”

– Stella McCartney, founder of eponymous fashion company and brand

Consumers, investors, and the fashion industry, when deciding how to spend and where to put their money, are demonstrating a commitment to changing lifestyle choices, changing behaviors, redefining value, reducing emissions of atmospheric CO2 and greenhouse gases, and mitigating human-induced climate change.

The broader textile, clothing and fashion industry have worked during 2018 to specify ways in which, drawing on methodologies from the Science-Based Targets Initiative, they can direct themselves towards a holistic commitment to climate action, achieving net-zero emissions of atmospheric CO2 and greenhouse gases by 2050, while expanding economic opportunity and driving economic competitiveness and innovation.

The apparel and footwear industries together accounted in 2016 for an estimated 8.1% of global climate impacts with emissions of 3,990 million metric tons CO2eq (including emissions generated by processes used for raw material extraction, raw material processing, manufacturing, assembly, packaging production, transportation/distribution, and end-of-life).

The Ellen Macarthur Foundation estimates that “if nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.”

“It’s really about bringing everyone together as an industry, and instead of having a few people talk about it, it’s having everyone talk about it and the leaders… actually taking responsibility, putting our money where our mouth is and making an amazing change together.”

So observes Stella McCartney while attending an 11 December gala dinner hosted in London by Bloomberg and Vanity Fair. The gala was held to highlight fashion, climate change, climate change mitigation, and the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change Action, signed in early December.

“There is no shortage of capital in the world that wants to go in this direction. The hearts and minds argument of the common man on the street, has been won. My feeling is that what the financial services business needs to do, is to be working with the real innovative companies of today,” said David Fass, Macquarie Group CEO for Europe the Middle East and Africa.

The founding signatories to the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change Action are: adidas, Aquitex, Arcteryx, Burberry Limited, Esprit, Guess, Gap Inc., H&M Group, Hakro Gmbh., Hugo Boss, Inditex, Kering Group, Lenzing AG, Levi Strauss & Co., Mammut Sports Group AG, Mantis World, Maersk, Otto Group, Pidigi S.P.A, PUMA SE, re:newcell, Schoeller Textiles AG, Peak Performance, PVH Corp., Salomon, Skunkfunk, SLN Textil, Stella McCartney, Sympatex Technologies, Target and Tropic Knits Group.

Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change Action, excerpts:

· the Paris Agreement represents a global response to the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global average temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates

· goals agreed in the Paris Agreement translate to reaching climate neutrality [read: reduced to zero emissions of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases from sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-life of materials and products; reduced to zero use of hydrocarbon-based sources of energy in operations, manufacturing, distribution, retail, transport, etc.] in the second half of the twenty-first century. The fashion industry, as a major global player, needs to take an active part in contributing to the realization of these goals

· all companies, within fashion, retail and textile global value chain, regardless of size and geography, have opportunities to take actions that will result in a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

· establish a closer dialogue with consumers to increase awareness about the GHG emissions caused in the use and end-of-life phases of products, building towards changed consumer behaviors that reduce environmental impacts and extend the useful life of products

· current solutions and business models will not be sufficient to deliver on the current climate agenda. Fashion industry needs to embrace a deeper, more systemic change and scale low-carbon solutions

· the fashion industry stakeholders have a role to play in reducing climate emissions resulting from their operations, with an awareness that the majority of climate impact within the industry lies in manufacturing of products and materials

· all companies, within fashion, retail and the textile global value chain, regardless of size and geography, have opportunities to take actions that will result in a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

· actions that reduce GHG emissions are consistent with, among other things, expanding economic opportunity, using resources more efficiently, driving economic competitiveness and innovation, and strengthening resilience

· responding to climate change requires action on both mitigation and adaptation

[Signatories agree to]

11. Establish a closer dialogue with consumers to increase awareness about the GHG emissions caused in the use and end-of-life phases of products, building towards changed consumer behaviors that reduce environmental impacts and extend the useful life of products;

12. Partner with the finance community and policymakers to catalyse scalable solutions for a low-carbon economy throughout the sector

“Stella McCartney and friends hit Bloomberg and Vanity Fair gala dinner,” Stephanie Takyi, The Standard, 13 December 2018

“Stella McCartney Slams Fast Fashion as a Threat to the Environment,” Lucca de Paoli, Bloomberg, 12 December 2018

“Inside the Bloomberg Vanity Fair Climate Exchange,” VF X Bloomberg, 11 December 2018

“Milestone Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action launched,” UNFCCC, 10 December 2018

“About the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action,” UNFCCC

“Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action,” UNFCC

“Measuring Fashion, Environmental Impact of the Global Apparel and Footwear Industries Study,” Quantis, 2018

“A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future,” November 2017, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation & Circular Fibers Initiative

“Report: A positive vision for a system that works, and summons the creative power of the fashion industry to build it,” Ellen MacArthur Foundation

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our daily bread (& rice) | wheat, rice, & CO2

Plants need carbon dioxide to live, but its effects on them are complicated.

As the level of carbon dioxide in the air continues to rise because of human activity, scientists are trying to understand how the plants we eat are being affected.

According to recent studies, rice, wheat, and other staple crops lose nutrients when exposed to levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere expected by 2050.

Samuel Myers, principal research scientist at Harvard’s School of Public Health and director of the Harvard-based Planetary Health Alliance and colleagues have conducted studies in which crops are grown bathed in air that simulates the predicted atmospheric conditions expected both by 2050 and by the end of the 21st century. The studies showed declines in protein, iron, and zinc in wheat, and declines in iron and zinc in soybeans and field peas.

The scientists compared nutrient levels in field crops grown in ambient CO2 levels, about 380-390 parts per milliion (ppm) at the time of the work, with those grown in the elevated CO2 levels expected by 2050. The latter level, 545-585ppm, is expected even if substantial curbs on emissions are put in place by the world’s governments. In order to take account of variable growing conditions, the researchers analysed 41 different strains grown in seven locations on three different continents.

Wheat grown in high CO2 levels had 9% less zinc and 5% less iron, as well as 6% less protein, while rice had 3% less iron, 5% less iron and 8% less protein. Maize saw similar falls while soybeans lost similar levels of zinc and iron but, being a legume not a grass, did not see lower protein.

The precise biological and physiological mechanisms that cause nutrient levels to fall when CO2 levels increase are not yet well understood.

See:

“Major crops lose nutrients when grown in elevated carbon dioxide levels,” Harvard School of Public Health, 19 June 2018

“As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients,” Merrit Kennedy, NPR, 19 June 2018

“Climate change making food crops less nutritious, research finds,” Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 7 May 2014

“Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition,” Samuel S. Myers, Antonella Zanobetti, Itai Kloog, Peter Huybers, Andrew D. B. Leakey, Arnold J. Bloom, Eli Carlisle, Lee H. Dietterich, Glenn Fitzgerald, Toshihiro Hasegawa, N. Michele Holbrook, Randall L. Nels, Michael J. Ottman, Victor Raboy, Hidemitsu Sakai, Karla A. Sartor, Joel Schwartz, Saman Seneweera, Michael Tausz & Yasuhiro Usui, Nature, International Journal of Science, 7 May 2014

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your money, your life, your choice | California, cars, CO2

California, in so many ways, could learn from the US Northeast. 

To reduce CO2 and and greenhouse gas emissions from cars, a continuing and increasing issue in California and elsewhere, cities need data—ways to accurately measure emissions, pinpoint sources, and monitor change over time; cities need to know how much CO2 they are producing and reducing.

A tool called ACES (Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions System) was developed in response to the requirement for data by researchers at Boston University and Harvard. ACES offers finely-grained maps of CO2 emissions, with a resolution of 1km2, totaled hourly.

As we know, per our atmosphere – the air, its particular mix of gaseous elements, and its temperatures, together vital to life, inclusive of human, animal, and plant – CO2 and other greenhouse gases are an issue, in many ways.

California has “targets” to meet by the year 2020 for limiting the greenhouse gases associated with the driving that people do on a daily basis. The approach to greenhouse gases associated with the driving that people do on a daily basis has a heightened level of complexity in California. Driving a car, rather than availing oneself of public transportation such as a subway, metro, or bus, is a norm that people are highly unwilling and actually afraid to examine and rethink. The many localities within the state have made limited investment in public transportation in significant part because taking such modes of transportation is largely considered to be beneath the dignity – whether personal, social, or professional – of and compromising to anybody with a sense of self esteem.

While the “hope” has been that climate emissions might be curbed largely by promoting regional planning of denser development along transit lines ( S.B. 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, a landmark 2008 deal, with the California legislature recognizing the critical role of integrated transportation, land use, and housing decisions to meet state climate goals), the California Air Resources Board 2018 Progress Report released in November documents that driving of cars has skyrocketed statewide during the years following the recession of 2008 – 2009 through 2016.

A “key finding of this report is that California is not on track to meet the greenhouse gas reductions expected under SB 375 for 2020, with emissions from statewide passenger vehicle travel per capita increasing and going in the wrong direction” (page 4) and “emissions from the transportation sector continuing to rise despite increases in fuel efficiency and decreases in the carbon content of fuel” (page 5).

Top air quality officials in California state they currently have no way to fully assess whether regions from San Diego to Sacramento are on track to meet 2020 targets for reigning in greenhouse gases associated with daily driving. While “greenhouse gas emissions considered under the SB 375 program reflect carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions only from light-duty passenger vehicles” (page 21, footnote 22), the California Air Resources Board 2018 Progress Report states, “SB 375 passenger vehicle greenhouse gas emissions reductions cannot be directly measured because greenhouse gas emissions come from many sources” (page 21).

Air board officials said that while they tracked the key metric of vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, available statewide through fuel sales, that same information wasn’t available regionally. Without that, officials say there is no consistent way to extrapolate greenhouse gas emissions from driving for each region.

“There’s no unifying way to bring it all together and say ‘You’re at this particular performance metric,’” said Nicole Dolney, chief of the air board’s transportation planning branch. “Our hope was that we would have VMT data that we could rely on, but it wasn’t there.”

So what might California learn from ACES?

“For cities to cut down CO2, they need to know how much they are producing and reducing. Most cities get rough estimates with “carbon calculators” that account for the size and population of a city, electricity used, and an estimate of how many cars zip (or crawl) through the city streets.

“The calculation would be fine except for all those cars. Cars are the hardest part of the emissions equation to quantify. They are moving all the time at different speeds, and there are different cars on the road at different times of day.”

“There are other factors to consider. There’s the make of the car, of course: a Toyota Prius gives off less CO2 than a Chevy Silverado. There’s also the speed; most cars give off the least CO2 when cruising in a “sweet spot” between 40 and 60 miles per hour.”

(Conor Gately, co-developer of ACES; PhD, Geography and Environment, Boston University, 2016; lead author on a study examining cities, traffic, and CO2, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in April 2015.)

ACES (Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions System) has been developed by Lucy Hutyra of Boston University and Conor Gately, now a postdoctoral associate working jointly at Boston University and Harvard. A tool for measuring and mapping CO2 emissions, ACES offers finely-grained maps of CO2 emissions, with a resolution of 1km2, totaled hourly, is relevant and could be helpful to the cities and the state of California.

“Cities have the political will to change emissions, and they have policy levers to pull,” says Lucy Hutyra, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) associate professor of Earth and environment. And because cities are responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the United Nations, their actions matter. But to take effective action, cities need data—ways to accurately measure emissions, pinpoint sources, and monitor change over time. And so Hutyra and her colleague Conor Gately have developed a tool called ACES, for Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions System, that offers the finest-grained maps of CO2 emissions in the Northeastern US to date, with a resolution of 1km2, totaled hourly. The tool, funded by NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System and detailed in the October 12, 2017, issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres, could provide valuable data to cities nationwide.

“‘The goal was to take the finest grained, most local data possible and build a ‘bottom-up’ inventory,” says Gately. The research team started by divvying up the sources of emissions on a giant whiteboard. “We did every sector of emissions of CO2,” he says. “Roads, residential buildings, commercial buildings, industrial facilities, power plants, airports, marine ports, shipping, and railway.” The group searched for data from 2011, scouring every source they could find: city and country records, household fuel estimates, EPA databases, hundreds of traffic sensors located around New England. All of these data, when combined with the amount of fossil fuels consumed in the region (gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, coal and natural gas for power generation), allowed the team to calculate CO2 emissions for all of the major sources. The team then calculated emissions for every hour of the year.

“Gately, working with a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is now expanding ACES to cover the entire continental United States and meeting with government, scientific, and policy stakeholders to help create a core set of methods and data products.”

DARTE might also be helpful. DARTE, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (Conor Gately, Lucy Hutyra, Ian Sue Wing) is available for free download from the Harvard Dataverse

Funded by grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE), Gately has developed a more precise way to tally CO2 emissions from vehicles. He used 33 years of traffic data to build the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which displays CO2 data for the contiguous US on a finer scale than ever before—a one-kilometer grid. (He hopes to add Alaska and Hawaii later.) Available for free download, DARTE could change the way cities and states measure greenhouse gas emissions.

“The science is coming together to bring us very fine measurements in a way never possible before,” says Lucy Hutyra, an assistant professor of earth and environment and a coauthor on the PNAS study. Hutyra says that DARTE complements NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, which is collecting global data on atmospheric carbon dioxide. “We need good bottom-up data to match what we’re measuring looking down from space. That’s what we need to really advance greenhouse gas policies.”

See:

“2018 Progress Report: California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act,” California Air Resources Board, November 2018

“Regions across California likely off the hook for 2020 caps on greenhouse-gas emissions from driving,” Joshua Emerson Smith, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 November 2018

“Poor forest management: Trump oversimplifies state’s fire problem,” Readers React, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 November 2018

“A Fine-Tuned Map for CO2,” Barbara Moran, Boston University Research, 26 October 2017

“A New Map for Greenhouse Gas,” Barbara Moran, Boston University Research, 10 April 2015

Gately, Conor, K.; Hutyra, Lucy, R.; Sue Wing, Ian, 2015, “Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multi-decadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships“, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/28999, Harvard Dataverse, V6

 

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the compounding costs of California’s year-after-year wildfires

The compounding costs of California’s year-after-year wildfires are making it increasingly difficult for any party to absorb the expenses.

So observes Mark Cooper, Yale PhD, former Yale University and Fulbright Fellow, and Senior Research Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment of Vermont Law School currently working on Energy Assessment.

PG&E electrical equipment, including power lines and poles, has been found to be responsible for at least 17 of 21 major Northern California fires of autumn 2017.

While the cause of California’s Camp Fire has not yet been determined, PG&E, one of California’s largest utilities, disclosed to the SEC on 9 November that an outage and damage to a transmission tower were reported in the area shortly before the fire started.

In the SEC Form 8-K of 9 November, PG&E declared that it may face billions of dollars in potential liabilities, far more than its insurance would cover, for the wildfires of 2018.

The Form 8-K reads, in pertinent part:

On November 8, 2018, a wildfire began near the city of Paradise, Butte County, California (the “Camp Fire”), located in the service territory of the Utility.  The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s (“Cal Fire”) Camp Fire Incident Report dated November 13, 2018, 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time (the “incident report”), indicated that the Camp Fire had consumed 125,000 acres and was 30% contained.  Cal Fire estimates in the incident report that the Camp Fire will be fully contained on November 30, 2018.  In the incident report, Cal Fire reported 42 fatalities.  The incident report also indicates the following: structures threatened, 15,500; single residences destroyed, 6,522; single residences damaged, 75; multiple residences destroyed, 85; commercial structures destroyed, 260; commercial structures damaged, 32; and other minor structures destroyed, 772.

The cause of the Camp Fire is under investigation. On November 8, 2018, the Utility submitted an electric incident report to the California Public Utilities Commission (the “CPUC”) indicating that “on November 8, 2018 at approximately 0615 hours, PG&E experienced an outage on the Caribou-Palermo 115 kV Transmission line in Butte County. In the afternoon of November 8, PG&E observed by aerial patrol damage to a transmission tower on the Caribou-Palermo 115 kV Transmission line, approximately one mile north-east of the town of Pulga, in the area of the Camp Fire. This information is preliminary.” Also on November 8, 2018, acting governor Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation for Butte County, due to the effect of the Camp Fire.

As previously reported, during the third quarter of 2018, PG&E Corporation and the Utility renewed their liability insurance coverage for wildfire events in an aggregate amount of approximately $1.4 billion for the period from August 1, 2018 through July 31, 2019. For more information about wildfire insurance and risks associated with wildfires, see PG&E Corporation and the Utility’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018.

While the cause of the Camp Fire is still under investigation, if the Utility’s equipment is determined to be the cause, the Utility could be subject to significant liability in excess of insurance coverage that would be expected to have a material impact on PG&E Corporation’s and the Utility’s financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, and cash flows.

United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 8-K, filed by PG&E on 9 November 2018

Citigroup estimates that PG&E’s exposure to liability for at least 17 of 21 major Norther California fires that took place in autumn 2017 is $15 billion. Citigroup estimates further that if it is found responsible for the Camp Fire, PG&E could face another $15 billion in claims. This number could rise, the fire is as yet only partially contained.

PG&E’s customers, both business and residential, may find themselves responsible for covering the bill for the company’s liabilities through higher costs.

California state  legislators took steps this year to shield PG&E and the state’s other investor-owned utilities from overwhelming legal claims, allowing them to pass the expense on to ratepayers.

California Senate Bill 901, signed into law on 21 September 2018, applies to fires beginning in 2019, and to some that occurred in 2017.

The bill enables utilities to sell bonds to cover liability costs and pay them off over time through higher rates.

(14) The existing restructuring of the electrical services industry provides for the issuance of rate reduction bonds by the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank for the recovery of transition costs, as defined, by electrical corporations. Existing law authorizes the PUC to issue financing orders, to support the issuance of recovery bonds, as defined, by the recovery corporation, as defined, secured by a dedicated rate component, to finance the unamortized balance of the regulatory asset awarded Pacific Gas and Electric Company in PUC Decision 03-12-035.

This bill would, under specific circumstances, authorize the PUC, upon application by an electrical corporation, to issue financing orders to support the issuance of recovery bonds to finance costs, in excess of insurance proceeds, incurred, or that are expected to be incurred, by an electrical corporation, excluding fines and penalties, related to wildfires, as provided.

SB 901, Dodd. Wildfires.

PG&E’s company shares dropped by more than 20 percent yesterday (Wednesday). More than half of its market value has been lost since late last week as the fires have spread.

Shares of other investor-owned utilities in California, Edison International (operated Southern California Edison) and Sempra Energy (owns San Diego Gas and Electric), dropped earlier this week.

California’s power supply is likely not to be at risk. PG&E could face bankruptcy if it cannot cover the liabilities it faces. Such a bankruptcy would eliminate shareholders’ equity and affect bondholder investments.

See:

“California Utility Customers May Be on the Hook for Billions in Wildfire Damage,” Ivan Penn and Peter Eavis, The New York Times, 14 November 2018

SEC Form 8-K filed by PG&E, dated 9 November 2018

California Senate Bill No. 901

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collections care & engineered resilience

As the markets for works of art, collections care, and engineered resilience in the built environment (private collections, museums – public and private, galleries, fairs, corporate and university collections, etc.) converge, renewable energy will be a factor.

“Underlying property increases in value by virtue of the fact that positive externalities associated with the performance of the resilience investments represents a superior outcome to the status quo – even when netted out by any costs.” (Keenan et.al.)

Companies have signed long-term contracts to purchase solar and wind energy in 28 markets.

Cost declines and efficiency improvements are making renewables cost-competitive with wholesale power prices of more traditional sources of electricity.

While larger corporations are entering into corporate power purchase agreements (PPA),

smaller companies are increasingly pooling electricity demand together to access economies of scale achieved through solar and wind projects.

This is called “aggregation.”

“Aggregation” might be a workable model for entities in the art market concerned about the long-term resilience of structures and care and value of works and collections.


See: 1) Jesse M. Keenan, Thomas Hill, Anurag Gumber, “Climate Gentrification: From Theory to Empiricism in Miami-Dade County,” IOPScience, 23 April 2018; 2) “Corporations Already Purchased Record Clean Energy Volumes in 2018, and It’s Not an Anomaly,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 9 August 2018

 

#art #artmarket #museum #privatemuseum #collection #contemporaryart #energy #co2 #wind #solar #renewableenergy #resilience #resilienceengineering #architecture #design #engineering #NewYork #Miami #LosAngeles #London #Paris #Amsterdam #Stockholm #Oslo #Berlin #Vienna #Dubai #HongKong #Shanghai #Beijing #Tokyo #Delhi #realestate

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Art Basel ・ Joan Mitchell

Reports from this year’s Art Basel indicate how well the works of artist Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) are performing.

Joan Mitchell’s “Composition” of 1968, is reported to have been sold by gallery and dealer Hauser & Wirth to a European collector for $14 million.

Marion Maneker of Art Market Monitor suggests the “sale was arranged before the fair and concluded upon viewing.”

Nate Freeman of Artsy reports the following market-oriented observations:

“‘It was obviously a time for a correction in perception, and in price, for her – as with a lot of women.'”

Iwan Wirth, co-owner, Hauser & Wirth

“‘When you have a strong market force, the prices change – shortly, we’re going to see $20 million to $30 million Mitchells.'”

Brett Gory, co-founder, Lévy Gorvy

Gorvy observes that Mitchell (who spent much of her life in France) has long been collected by the Germans and Swiss.

“‘The new interest is everywhere else – we’ve been showing her in the Basel art fair for years…. There’s a hunger in the market. She’s being recognized as one of the greatest Abstract Expressionists, and it helps that now there’s all this interest in art made by women.'”

Howard Read, gallery co-owner, Cheim & Reid 

“‘I think they could be $30 million or $50 million. If Franz Kline can be, why not Joan Mitchell?'”

John Cheim, gallery co-owner, Cheim & Reid

 

See:

“At Art BaselOpening, a Pair of $14 Million Joan Mitchell Sales Shows Surge in Market for Women Artists,” Nate Freeman, Artsy, 12 June 2018;

“Art Basel Sales Report,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 12 June 2018

 

#art #artmarket #artbasel #joanmitchell #abstractexpressionism #contemporaryart #postwarart #collection #collector #collectionsmanagement #newyork #london #zurich #vienna #oslo #amsterdam #dubai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #luxury #architecture #design #realestatedevelopment

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Christopher Wool: “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001, detail)

Detail of Christopher Wool’s “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001).

J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of the Blackstone Group who manages its hedge fund business, is the first American private collector to display his works of contemporary art in Asia.

“Christopher Wool: Highlights from the Hill Art Collection” opened during Art Basel Hong Kong in Central District’s H Queens, the new skyscraper designed by William Lim’s Hong Kong-based CL3 architectural practice and custom-built to house art galleries.

The exhibition, on view from March 27 through April 8, was produced by Hong Kong-based advisor Alexandre Errera.

While Mr. Hill ordinarily does not attend art fairs (dealers call him with works of interest instead), he did make it to Art Basel Hong Kong this spring for the opening of his exhibition of the works of Christoper Hill.

Following Hong Kong, Mr. Hill and his daughter left for Beijing to visit the studios of the about 15 artists there whose works he collects. Mr. Hill collects, for instance, works of Liu Wei. (See my post of yesterday regarding Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” of 2008).

Asked about the attraction of Chinese art now, Mr. Hill observes:

“Let’s go back to the different collections that we have,

“which is Renaissance bronzes, old master paintings, a dozen post-World War II artists, and now emerging artists.

“They all have one thing in common: At the moment that the art was created, the country of origin was going through a massive series of changes.

“China, in my mind, is going through the same thing now.

“And so I said, ‘I want to be educated.'”

 

See: 1) “J. Tomilson Hill on the Attraction of Contemporary Art,” Ted Lois, The New York Times, 26 March 2018; 2) “J. Tomilson Hill is Giving Asia Its First Christopher Wool Show in Over a Decade,” Nate Freeman, Artsy, 27 March 2018

 

#christopherwool #art #artmarket #arthistory #contemporaryart #jtomilsonhill #collection #portfolio #collectionsmanagement #alexandreerrera #artadvisory #blackstone #blackstonegroup #finance #hedgefund #hongkong #beijing #seoul #tokyo #newyork #london #paris #berlin #vienna #zurich #oslo #dubai #luxury #realestatedevelopment #architecture #design

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R8 Property’s energy positive Powerhouse Telemark

Powerhouse Telemark, an energy positive (producing more energy than it consumes) 6,500-square-meter (70,000-square-foot), 11-story office building, has been commissioned by real estate developer Emil Eriksrød for the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn.

Eriksrød has commissioned the American-Norwegian architecture and design firm Snøhetta to design the building. Powerhouse Telemark is set to be completed in February of 2019.

 “The future is all about thinking big, bold, and long term,” says Snøhetta founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorson, “and we need someone to pave the way. With its innovative solutions and design, we believe this building will inspire commercial real estate developers worldwide to push the limits of what buildings can accomplish”.

“The world needs a lot of energy-positive buildings,” observes the developer, Emil Eriksrød, CEO of R8 Property. “I hope we will be plagiarized and copied, replicated in all seven continents.”

“This building should do wonders in lowering the bar for daring to do both spectacular and environmentally forward buildings, hopefully in a combination”.


See:

“Snøhetta Designs World’s Northernmost Energy Positive Building in Norway,” Patrick Lynch, ArchDaily, 18 January 2017

“Snøhetta designs ‘potentially world-changing office building’ for small Norwegian town,” Amy Frearson, Dezeen, 19 January 2017

 

#powerhousetelemark #emileriksrød #r8property # snøhetta #porsgrunn #norway #design #architecture #engineering #realestatedevelopment #realestate #commercialrealestate #energy #energypositive #solar #solarenergy #co2 #resilience #luxury #art #artmarket #collections #collectionsmanagement #museums #newyork #berlin #milan #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #taipei #jakarta #singapore

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art, real estate, luxury, & global risks

“Humanity has become remarkably adept at understanding how to mitigate conventional risks that can be relatively easily isolated and managed with standard risk-management approaches. But we are much less competent when it comes to dealing with complex risks in the interconnected systems that underpin our world, such as organizations, economies, societies and the environment.

“There are signs of strain in many of these systems: our accelerating pace of change is testing the absorptive capacities of institutions, communities and individuals.

“When risk cascades through a complex system, the danger is not of incremental damage but of “runaway collapse” or an abrupt transition to a new, suboptimal status quo.”

See: “The Global Risks Report 2018, 13th Edition” | World Economic Forum (WEF); Strategic Partners: Marsh & McLennan Companies, Zurich Insurance Company; Academic Advisors: National University of Singapore, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, University of Pennsylvania

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