Click the image below for a video tour of the inaugural show, The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art, at the new Saatchi Gallery, set to open in London on Thursday. Given the weak results of Sotheby’s Chinese contemporary art sales last week in Hong Kong, has collector Charles Saatchi lost his uncanny talent for market timing?
The London Telegraph‘s veteran art critic, Richard Dorment, provides the upbeat voice-over for this video. (But Adrian Searle, in today’s Guardian, gives a mostly negative review of the new facility. The always entertaining of the London Times comes out somewhere in between.)
Here’s the video (with more CultureGrrl comments below):
Just yesterday, Phillips de Pury & Company, which had entered into a corporate partnership with the Saatchi Gallery to underwrite free admission there, announced that Mercury Group, a Russian luxury goods company, had bought control of the London-based contemporary art auction house. Veteran auctioneer Simon de Pury will remain as the company’s chairman and a major shareholder. John Varoli of Bloomberg has the story.
Will the new owners continue de Pury’s arrangement with Saatchi?