Art Newz

Kong headquarters in 2024 where it will launch year-round auctions. The move, to the Zaha Hadid-designed luxury tower The Henderson, comes as Asian spending topped $1bn in the first half of 2021, accounting for a record 39% of all sales. Though the shift to Asia was in evidence long before the pandemic, buying in the region has certainly accelerated over the past year, with Asian buyers tripling versus the first half of 2020.

A crowd of demonstrators rallied in front of New York’s Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) yesterday. They were protesting what they see as the institution’s support of a jail expansion plan and to denounce the board’s co-chair Jonathan Chu, a landlord blamed for the gentrification of Chinatown and for the closure of two unionised restaurants in the neighbourhood.

Artmonte-carlo (15-17 July) opened in the glamorous, sun-drenched principality of Monaco with preview for collectors on Wednesday. The mood at the fair’s fifth edition was buoyant despite a decrease in exhibitors from 73 to just 27. Held in a different part of the Grimaldi Forum due to the downsizing, it retains its “salon d’art DNA” atmosphere, with a premier league level of exhibitors. And most galleries have brought over a broad offering to appeal to the collector base in Monaco, which is known as a tax haven for multi-millionaires.

Numerous artists have been inspired by ghosts and the paranormal over the centuries but rarely have these ghostly works been examined in a scholarly fashion. Robert Cozzolino, a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, brings together more than 150 works in an ambitious touring show covering more than two centuries of art linked to the supernatural. “We live in a haunted culture, and artists have always sought answers for why ghosts return, and spirits remain unsettled,” Cozzolino writes in the introduction to the accompanying catalogue, adding: “haunting is embodied through the formation and evolution of the modern United States.” Works featured include the painting When Frustrations Threaten Desire (1990) by Kerry James Marshall, Agnes Pelton’s White Fire (1930), and a series of works by the couple known as Wella P. Anderson and Lizzie (Pet) Anderson who claimed to sketch deceased family members.

The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo (São Paulo Biennale Foundation) is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Brazilian art festival—the second oldest international art exhibition after the Venice Biennale—with a series of digital projects that celebrate its rich history. The programme includes a podcast series, publications and testimonials from artists and curators like Mariana Ximenes, Linn da Quebrada and Anna Maria Maiolino.

By Art Matters, the long-awaited Hangzhou contemporary art museum backed by fashion brand JNBY cofounders Li Lin and Wu Jian and helmed by US-based Italian curator Francesco Bonami, has announced its November 2021 opening exhibition A Show About Nothing—a nod to American television show Seinfeld.

During the pandemic last December, the international fair Design Miami/, which normally runs concurrently with Art Basel in Miami Beach, was one of the few art events to host an in-person art event with the launch of its Podium programme, a themed exhibition bringing together work from galleries and independent design studios. The fair has now announced that later this year it will host a similar event in Shanghai, from 5 to 14 November, to coincide with Shanghai Art Week.

Twenty-six students who say their work went missing or was damaged at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London during lockdown are showing their “lost art” online. The Royal College of Lost Art interactive website allows visitors to browse a virtual gallery; a disclaimer at the beginning says that the “art in this exhibition [by former graduate students] no longer exists”.