Arts Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
MET NETS A DUCCIO
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will pay more than $45 million for a painting, “Madonna and Child,” by the early Renaissance master Duccio di Buoninsegna (1278-1319), according to a report in the New York Times. The painting would be the first in the museum’s collection by Duccio, whose works are exceedingly rare. The acquisition, made through Christie’s in London, would also be the most the museum has ever paid for a painting. The museum paid $20 million for Jasper Johns’s “White Flag” (1955) in 1998.
The only work that can certainly be attributed to the first great Sienese painter is the “Maesta,” portions of which are on display at the Frick Collection and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; other works are attributed to him on stylistic grounds. Christie’s was representing heirs of the painting’s former owner, Adolphe Stoclet.
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TIRAVANIJA WINS HUGO BOSS PRIZE
Rirkrit Tiravanija, creator of “interactive” art works, has been named the winner of the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize. Established in 1996 to recognize significant achievement in contemporary art, the prize is a biennial award administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Mr. Tiravanija will be awarded $50,000, and an exhibition of the artist’s work will be on view at the Guggenheim Museum in the spring of 2005.
This year’s other finalists included Franz Ackermann, Rivane Neuenschwander, Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij, Simon Starling, and Yang Fudong. The other winners of the Hugo Boss Prize since its inception in 1996 are Matthew Barney (1996), Douglas Gordon (1998), Marjetica Potrc (2000), and Pierre Huyghe (2002).
