CHRISTIE’S TO OPEN IN DUBAI

The London-based auction house Christie’s announced that it will open a branch in Dubai next month, making it the first international auction house to have an office in the Middle East.

Lydia Limerick has been appointed Christie’s representative to the Middle East and will be responsible for developing the house’s presence and reputation in the region. Ms. Limerick, who has been based in Dubai since 2001, will be able to provide access to art experts, and information on buying and selling works of art and objects at auction, and will act as a local gateway to the international art market.

The office will allow Christie’s to make contacts with potential collectors and collections, but will not sell works of art. The announcement coincides with the unveiling of Christie’s largest public exhibition to date in the region. The exhibition, on view from April 4 to 8 in the Madinat Jumeirah Conference Centre in Dubai, will be led by a highly important collection of Kiswah curtains and Iznik pottery.

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Biographer Michael Holroyd has been awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature, worth $107,600, in recognition of his body of work, which includes biographies of George Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey. Holroyd, a biographer, joins previous recipients V.S. Naipaul, Harold Pinter, Muriel Spark, and Doris Lessing in accepting this prize for lifetime achievement in literature. … Croatian author Slavenka Drakulic, who grew up in Tito’s Yugoslavia, has won this year’s Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding for her latest book, “They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague” (Viking Books). The $13,375 prize honors people whose work increases tolerance in Europe, especially central and eastern European countries. … The College Art Association has announced the recipients of its annual awards. The Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism has been given to Garth Clark. A ceramics expert and art dealer, Mr. Clark has operated the Garth Clark Gallery (located on East 57th Street as well as in Long Island City) since 1981. Helen C. Evans has won the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for her catalog of the show “Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sarah Burns, author of “Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in 19th-Century America” (Berkeley), received the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. Sheila Barker was given the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize honoring an outstanding article in the CAA’s Art Bulletin, for “Poussin, Plague, and Early Modern Medicine,” published in December 2004. Curator Nato Thompson received the Art Journal Award for “Strategic Visuality: A project by Four Artist/Researchers” in the fall 2004 issue of the CAA Art Journal. Other CAA award-winners include Islamic scholar Oleg Grabar (Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art), artist Nancy Spero (Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement), artist Joan Jonas (Distinguished Body of Work), University of South Dakota professor Lloyd Menard (Distinguished Teaching of Art), University of Pittsburgh art historian David G. Wilkins (Distinguished Teaching of Art History), and Australian National Screen and Sound Archive director Cherchi Usai (CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation).