Collector Donates 61 Artworks to National Gallery of Canada, Orange County Museum of Art Exploring Merger with UC: Irvine, and more

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The Headlines

NO STRINGS. Vancouver-based art collector Bob Rennie has donated 61 artworks to the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in Ottawa, valued at C$22.8 million ($16.8 million), reports the Globe and Mail. “I looked at them as the right custodian,” Rennie said. The donation includes works by Ai Weiwei, Mona Hatoum, Dan Graham, and Rodney Graham, and “is transformational for us,” said National Gallery director Jean-Francois Bélisle . “It has been a dialogue about what do we want to add to the collection. [Rennie’s] collection is a lot bigger than what he is donating to us right now. Not everything is on the table, but everything can be talked about: We really shaped this in terms of what would most benefit the national collection,” added Bélisle. The museum already named one space after the Rennie family, and will do so again for at least one more, as discussions continue about additional donations. As for how the institution chooses to display the works, Rennie has given no requirements. “You give one Monet; you want it displayed at all times. Everybody does that and you have no museum,” he said.

MUSEUM MERGER. The Orange County Museum of Art is “exploring” an agreement to merge with the University of California, Irvine, less than three years after opening a new $94 million building, according to a statement by the university last week. “A nonbinding, exploratory letter of intent has been signed, and the two organizations continue to develop a definitive agreement, pending approval of the University of California Board of Regents,” read the statement. Meanwhile, the museum’s director, Heidi Zickerman will be stepping down in December, after her contract expires, reports the Art Newspaper.

The Digest

Not everyone is pleased about the new, digital remake of Christo and Jeanne Claude’s Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin. In 1995, the artists wrapped the German parliament with silver fabric and rope in what became an historic achievement. But digitally projected images of their original wrapped artwork onto one of the building’s facades to mark the 30th  anniversary of the installation is “an aesthetic outrage and sends a questionable message about democracy,” writes critic Saskia Trebing in a Monopol piece that insists, “Christo doesn’t deserve this.” She is joined by Hanno Rauterberg in Die Zeit, with a piece titled “The art flop of the year.” [Monopol Magazine and Die Zeit]

Iván Argote’s monumental sculpture of a pigeon, titled Dinosaur, and installed in October on the High Line Plinth in New York City, inspired a Pigeon Fest – the first, and reportedly last event of its kind, held over the weekend. New Yorkers showed up dressed as pigeons, feathered and decorated with all things related to the city’s ubiquitous bird. The artist participated in the Saturday event, which included a pigeon pageant, said the gathering was “surreal.” “It goes way beyond the work. As a sculptor and as an artist, you try to create something, but as soon as it gets into the community it becomes more meaningful.” [The New York Times]

Rare copies of President Abraham Lincoln’s 13th Amendment ending slavery, and the Emancipation Proclamation are headed to auction at Sotheby’s on June 26 in New York. The copy of the 1863 proclamation declaring all enslaved people in Confederate states would be free was signed a year later and is expected to sell for at least $3 million. Lincoln’s handwritten amendment he signed in 1865 ending slavery in the US, could fetch $8 million. [The Wall Street Journal]

Japanese-American artist Carrie Yamaoka has received the Maria Lassnig Prize 2025, awarded every two years by the Maria Lassnig Foundation, and worth 50,000 euros ($57,800). The artist will also be featured in a solo exhibit at the Kunsthalle Hamburg next year. [dpa]

The Kicker

TIME APART. The tale of the artist couple Anna-Eva Bergman (1909 – 1987) and Hans Hartung (1904 – 1989) is a kind of artwork itself, if of a more literary genre than what the two abstract painters produced over the 20th century. The Guardian reports on a show at Prague’s Kunsthalle gallery dedicated to it, and how their art practices developed together and then apart, when Bergman left Hartung for a time, only to reunite in 1952. The Norwegian artist’s reason, above all, was to be able to focus on her art. “I must be completely free and alone, and above all with a lot of time—no housework and other worries—to focus just on my work while still having time to rest on the side,” she wrote him in 1937 in a letter sent from Italy. “May your art always come first, just as before. It has been your strength and perhaps also (on a human level) your weakness,” she concludes.