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Art has long been a passion of mineever since my mother, who was an artist, took me to the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum, and of course the Museum of Modern Art, when I was young.

Over the years, my wife Janine and I have collected numerous works of artfrom post-war art, to Old Master paintings, to Renaissance and baroque bronzes, which you may have seen on exhibition at the Frick last year. And I currently sit on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But here I am writing as a student ofand an expert inmarkets. While I dont collect art for investment reasons, as the president and CEO of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, I look at every asset class around the world. I look at whats under-valued and over-valued and way over-valued. And its through this lens that Id like to look at art: about this market, what we value, and how we got to where we are today.

First, even though conversations about commerce and art sometimes feel like were throwing the money changers into the temple, my belief is that theres nothing untoward about talking about the art market.

For almost as long as theres been art, theres been a market for it. Patrons, such as Isabella DEste, the Medicis  and the Catholic Church, financed some of the greatest artists of the RenaissanceDonatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Bronzino. Emperor Charles V commissioned wonderful portraits by Titian, and Charles I of England recruited Van Dyck to be his court painter. And Alexander the Great loved buying artespecially when it was in his likeness. Look no further than the Pergamon show at the Met.

Fast forward a couple thousand yearsand there is still a massive market for art. Just last November, a Chinese billionaire bought a nude by Modigliani for $170m. Picassos Women of Algiers sold for $179m in May 2015. Those show-stopping transactions help comprise an art market that, last year, totaled $63.8bnthe equivalent of the GDP of a small country. And it feels like a new record is being broken every week.

But if were going to talk about this market and why people are buying art at these priceswe need to first talk about why we buy art at all. In his book The Value of Art, Michael Findlay describes three sources of arts value.

First, theres the commercial value of art. Put simply, some people are looking to art for a return on their investment, or to use as a currency hedge. And thats why more institutions, including banks and third party investors, are getting involved and providing leverage and guarantees.

Second, theres what Findlay calls the social value of art. Any artworks social value comes down to: Whats in fashion? What do you have hanging over your mantel? What can you brag about or show off to your friends?

Which leads us to the third, and most important value: the essential value of art. We see the beauty of a work and want it in our lives. And this is a question of quality.  Is it good? Is it great?  Will it last? By the way, Will it last is a literal question with some contemporary works. That Damien Hirst shark is eventually going to disintegrate. In fact, the original shark has already been replaced. Its also a metaphorical question when we think about what is enduring and timeless.

We can think of these three forms of valuethe commercial, the social, and the essentialas three of the main reasons people consider buying art, and why they pay for art. But when I look at todays market, I see too many people focusing on the commercial and the social, without (or before) considering the essential. People who buy with their ears, rather than with their eyes.

So why is that? Whats changed? I think its because were seeing a diminishedor sometimes supersededrole of expert mediators. In law and medicine, you need to go to graduate school and then train before you can practice your trade.  Not so for art.

Technology has, in many ways, made art more mainstream and accessible, and thats a very good thing. That has led to democratisation of taste-making where everyone feels free to express what they like or dont like, and thats probably not a bad thing either. But when that fashion component gets reflected in the marketplace by experts who have cleared no barrier to entry to become experts, thats when we can run into problems. And what do we get in the marketplace? Bubbles. Unsustainable pricing. Formulaic buying. Consensus thinking. Me too-ism.

Mediators play a very important role.  And credentialed individuals who can give expert advice are essential. These are the people who understand the history of art and what makes a particular piece good or not good. Historically, these are the people who recognise game changing artists such as Manet, Czanne, Bacon and Warhol. They have skills that make them better appreciators and evaluators of art. And traditionally, museums were the signature mediators. Today, the mediator role has broken down.  

Instead of looking at a piece of art and assessing its essential value, buyers and sellers are interested in commercial value. Its all about transactions. I can tell you, in my business, when investors make decisions without the advice of experts, it often does not end well.

Lets examine Jeff Koonss One Ball Total Equilibrium Tanka basketball in a tank of waterwhich just sold for $15.3m at Christies. It may be telling that it was sold at an auction entitled  Bound to Fail. Because while it might be a million-dollar idea, it is hard to get your head around this sculpture as a $15m object.

I look at what people are paying for certain works of art, and think, I wish I could short that, just as if it would have been advantageous to short the stock of certain Silicon Valley unicorns   summer when their valuations reached $10bn, $20bn, $30bn.

To be clear, Im not saying that there isnt great contemporary art out there, or that no one is going to remember Jeff Koons in 100 years. In that same vein, Im sure for a long time well be crediting Uber for its innovative approach.  But what is its real value?

Now, throughout history, there have been collectors who did a very good job of focusing on the essential. That the artists they collected became fashionable was a consequence of their collecting, not the causeand thats an important distinction.    

Im thinking of Alfred Barnes, who put Czanne on the map long before The Card Players made headlines when Qatar paid over $250m for a version of it. Or Peggy Guggenheim, who took risks on artists like Picasso and Pollock before it was fashionable. Pioneers like John Quinn, who brought artists like Gauguin and Van Gogh to the American public at the historic 1913 Armory Show, and helped usher in a new era of Modern art in the United States. Or the prescient collector of minimalism, Giuseppe Panza. Or the inimitable Gertrude Stein.

The collectors who we most admire today did not collect for social value or commercial value. They believed they saw essential value. And today, we know that they did. Of course its easy to forget that these incredible collectors were also unbelievable risk-takers. And the risks they took in the name of essential value would be unheard of today, because the art market rarely rewards risk-taking. It rewards sameness, and the security that comes with known quantities. So we buy into the value of an artists brand, rather than the inherent brilliance of the work. And we all begin to think the same way.

I believe we can have a market that reflects the spirit of the artists we admire and hope to collect. That recaptures the spirit of our most revered collectors. I believe we can take risks and be inventive, rather than valuing sameness and safety. And we can do it all in pursuit of something truly valuable. Because today is no different than 150 years ago.

Just remember that Meissonier and the Paris Salon, as well as the London pre-Raphaelites were dominating the art scene from 1850 to 1890, whereas artists such as Manet, Czanne and Turner were largely ignored. Markets rise and markets fall. But essential truths do remain, and those essential truths are worth the risk.

To recommit to the essential, we have to recommit to the arbiters of the essential.  

J. Tomilson (Tom) Hill III is President and CEO of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), chairman of the Lincoln Center Theater and a member of board of directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a collector of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes and of contemporary art.


The text above is an edited transcript of Tom Hills presentation at The Art Newspapers 25th anniversary celebrations, hosted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last month and sponsored by Volkswagen. Hill was among those invited to investigate the subject What is Art For? Videos of the different speakersGlenn Lowry, director of MoMA, Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize-winning neuro-psychiatrist, James Davis of the Google Cultural Institute, J. Tomilson (Tom) Hill III, the collector and president and chief executive of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, and Lina Lazaar, the founder of Jeddah Artcan be viewed on our website.

The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) and Frieze London have announced they are partnering on a new acquisition fund to support museums in the UK regions. This years 50,000 fund has been awarded to Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima). The museum in the north-east of England plans to buy a work at Frieze London in October that addresses the migration crisis, according to Caroline Douglas, the director of CAS.

The public institution beat 70 other members in an open competition for the award. Mima made a fantastic case to acquire a work that focuses on the most urgent topic of our time, Douglas says, noting that Middlesbrough has the highest concentration of refugees in the country. They are doing some radical thinking about the role of the museum in the 21st century.

Mima describes itself as a useful museum after Cuban artist Tania Brugueras concept of Arte Util, a type of art with a social function. It means that the museum is not just a repository for beautiful things, but reaches out to the community and uses art as a means of social change, Douglas says.

Alistair Hudson, the director of Mima, says that the urgent issues facing the region have persuaded him to evolve a new institutional model. He adds: Ours is a vibrant, complex, post-industrial region that was created by migrants, and we view this story as an asset to inform and shape our culture and influence social change.

CAS set up its original collections fund in 2012acquiring works by Simon Fujiwara for Leeds Art Gallery and Hito Steyerl for GoMA Glasgow, among othersalthough the society has been quietly supporting UK museums since its foundation in 1910. Last year it placed 43 works of art and craft with 22 museums up and down the country.

Frieze London and CASs new collections fund is co-chaired by Beatrice Lupton with Cathy Wills and Anna Yang. The committee includes Nicola Blake, Hugo Brown, Theo Danjuma, Jill Hackel, Helen Janecek, Ken Rowe and Paul Smith.

Germanys leading art fair Art Cologne has moved its 2017 edition forward by a day to avoid a scheduling clash with the popular Berlin Gallery Weekend. Daniel Hug, the director of Art Cologne, says the decision will allow international visitors to visit both Art Cologne and Gallery Weekend comfortably in the same week.

In March, Hug announced that, due to scheduling issues at the fairs venue, the 2017 edition would take place between 28 April and 2 May, dates usually reserved for the Berlin event.

The proximity of the dates led to fears that visitors and participating galleries might have to choose between the two. At the time, the dealer Johann Knig told the German art magazine Monopol that he would pull out of the Cologne fair and try to persuade his Rhineland clientele to stay in Berlin too.

Now, Art Cologne has decided to hold its preview on Tuesday 25 April, rather than the usual Wednesday, and continue until Saturday 29 April. Berlin Gallery Weekend is scheduled to open on Friday 28 April and run until Sunday 30 April. A spokeswoman for Berlin Gallery Weekend says that while the move is a good compromise, smaller Berlin galleries with few staff may have difficulty participating in both events. If you are attending Art Cologne, you may still find the two-day overlap hard to manage, she says.  

Against gloomy media forecasts for the global art market and Britains impending EU referendum, yesterday's (21 June) Impressionist and Modern evening sale at Sothebys proved, once again, that the top end of the art market rarely reflects the state of the outside world.

The figures paint a happy picture for the auction house: a 90.7m hammer total (103.3m with fees) against an estimate of 81.8m-99m, with an 89% sell-through rate. Out of 27 lots, 11 hammered above the upper estimate and only three were bought in. Nevertheless, in June 2015, there were almost twice as many lots, and the sale fetched 178.6m with fees.

Conducting the auction was Helena Newman, Sothebys worldwide co-head of Impressionist and Modern art; this is only the second time ever that a woman has taken an evening auction, the first one being Melanie Clore, also at Sothebys, in 1990.

The sale was held together by two star portraits, both of which had been off the market for more than 30 years. Picassos portrait of his lover Fernande Olivier, Femme assise (1909), saw lengthy but slow bidding, until it sold for 38.5m (43.3 with fees), well above its estimate of more than 30m, on the phone to Adam Chinn of Art Agency Partners, the advisory firm recently bought by Sothebys. Amedeo Modiglianis Jeanne Hebuterne (au foulard) (1919) had been initially guaranteed by the house, though this was later changed to an irrevocable bid (a type of third-party guarantee). This proved unnecessary, however, as protracted bidding saw the work sell for 34.3m (38.5m with fees), again, well above its estimate of more than 28m. These two works accounted for just over 80% of the evenings total, and in fact are the two highest-selling lots in a London auction in more than five years.

We were very fortunate to be entrusted with these two works. We had no doubt that they would sell, but the question was how well. Brexit referendum or not, the market understands this kind of quality, Newman said after the sale. There were no other blockbusters up for sale, but buyers snapped almost everything up.

The only disappointment of the evening was a large, posthumous Rodin bronze, ve, grand modle - version sans rocher la base carre (conceived in 1881 and cast between 1925-1940), which failed to find a buyer. Bidding stopped at 6.2m, far below its lower estimate of 8m.

The Ruya Foundation, a Baghdad-based non-governmental body, will present an exhibition featuring both ancient and contemporary works in the Iraqi pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale next year (13 May-26 November 2017).

The show will be co-curated by Tamara Chalabi, the co-founder of Ruya, and Paolo Colombo, who organised the Istanbul Biennial in 1999. Entitled Archaic, the exhibition is the product of over two years of dialogue between Chalabi and Colombo and will feature ancient artefacts from the region alongside works of Iraqi Modernism and new commissions by Iraqi artists living both in Iraq and elsewhere, according to a project statement.

A spokeswoman for Ruya says that details of the works will be announced at a later date. The Ruya Foundation was the commissioner of the Iraqi pavilion in 2013 and 2015.
 

Thirty-five works drawn from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg are due to go on show at the 28th edition of the Biennale des Antiquaires this autumn at Pariss Grand Palais (10-18 September). The special, non-selling exhibition will include objects such as vases, clocks and candelabra in porcelain, silver and bronze dating from the 18th century. A portrait of Louis XV made by the Svres porcelain factory in 1761 is among the works.

The move marks the first year the historic jewellery, art and antiques fairwhich launched in 1962 as a biennial eventis held annually. Last summer, members of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA), the French association of antiques dealers that runs the fair, voted to make the Biennale a yearly event.

A total of 121 galleries from 13 countries will participate in the Biennale this September, with 78 dealers from France and 14 galleries from the UK. Another exhibition will include furniture and textiles drawn from Le Mobilier National, Frances national furniture collection, based in Paris.

Henri Loyrette, the former president of the Louvre, will be at the helm as fair chairman. The Old Master Fair, Paris Tableau, was folded into the Biennale des Antiquaires last autumn.

In April, I was on a panel about the 1980s East Village art scene and was asked for some images to project on the screen behind me. Instead of works of art, I took pictures of some of the reviews and reports I published in the East Village Eye newspaper, where I was art editor from 1983 to 1985. I had a great line-up of contributors then who produced some remarkable writing. None of it is remembered today. Occasional art criticism can be like that, gone as fast as a breeze on a summer day.

The texts I selected for the panel included Carlo McCormicks article about the police busting up a legendary guerrilla art show on the Hudson River piers, Yasmin Ramirezs interview with the singular oddball painter Martin Wong, and an acutely thoughtful piece by Jack Bankowsky, who, prior to his long tenure as editor of the super-hip art journal Artforum, was writing for me about the very emblem of art world anti-status, Mark Kostabi. I included a review I wrote, under the pen name Walter Windshield, of Spiritual America, that scandalous first-time-ever exhibition of Richard Princes rephotographed sexploitation picture of a prepubescent Brooke Shields posing stark naked in the bathtub.

Growing trend

My passing notion that writing deserves equal time with pictures, it turns out, is not that uncommon. Several writers are getting their moments at art venues this summer. Hilton Als, the multi-
talented theatre critic for the New

Yorker magazine, is having an exhibition at the Artists Institute in New York. Across the way, poets like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs are at the centre of an exhibiton called Beat Generation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. And last but not least, theres a show by Michel Houellebecqa scenario leading visitors through the writers obsessions, according to the museumat the Palais de Tokyo, also in Paris. (His book The Map and the Territory from 2010 includes a character who paints a picture called Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst Dividing Up the Art Market.)

The museum model has become so fantastically successful in our culture that it is now coveted by all the other disciplines. As the gateway to high art, it remains the ultimate arbiter of cosmopolitan influence. And the museum is more welcoming and open than ever before. Its been more than half a century since Allan Kaprow announced that anything could be art and everybody could be an artist. Museums have now extended that courtesy to writers.

Still, reading a book is fundamentally different from what typically happens when we go to museums. For one thing, looking at art is a companionable activity. You can talk to people while you look at art, but its not so easy to do that when you are reading. In fact, if you go to a reading and talk, someone is likely to shush you. And of course, we dont have museums of books. We have libraries.

The author returns

Whatever the case, the entry of the author into the museum will certainly bring back biography as a central subject after it was banished by Postmodern theory in the 1980s. So it seems all too appropriate that nearly 50 years after Roland Barthes declared the death of the author, he (no shes, so far) shows up to haunt art venues. Might not the author as artist paradoxically push the pendulum back the other way, towards abstraction, towards everything that is beyond language? Thats what art has always had going for it. Even though you can discuss art with words, it is not necessarily something you have to engage linguistically.


Walter Robinsons exhibition Paintings and Other Indulgences opens at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, in September

Hilton Als, Artists Institute, New York, until 7 August

Beat Generation, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 22 June-3 October

Michel Houellebecq: Stay Alive, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 23 June-11 September

If the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is any indication, a move downtown can do big things for a museums brand and audience. The International Center of Photography (ICP) is certainly betting on it. The centre, which has been closed for a year and a half, is due to reopen on the Bowery on 23 June in a ground-floor space it bought for $23.5m.

The new venue has roughly the same exhibition space as the museums former midtown site (where its photography school will stay until at least 2018). But it offers easier public access in a more art-friendly location. It is across the street from the New Museum (with which it will have joint ticketing) and near the Tenement Museum and dozens of galleries. Charlotte Cotton, the ICPs curator-in-residence, expects lots of cross-trafficking.

Photography has come a long way since Cornell Capa, the brother of the war photographer Robert Capa, founded the ICP in 1974 to bring attention to the kind of socially aware photography often overlooked by museums. The ICPs inaugural show, Public, Private, Secret (until January 2017), tackles sharing and surveillance in the digital age. The show includes historic works such as early mugshots and the 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truths carte de visite as well as videos by the contemporary artists Martine Syms and Jon Rafman and photos posted in real time on social media.

New Yorks Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has launched a three-part film series on the greats of post-war design and architecture. The programme kicked off on 16 June with the short digital projection Harry Bertoias Sculpture by Clifford West (1965), and a longer look at midcentury designs most dynamic duo, husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames in a 2011 documentary by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey. The two other treats in store are The World of Buckminster Fuller (23 June) and The New World of Lina Bo Bardi (30 June). The latter may only be four minutes long but it is "set to an original soundtrack arranged by DJ Total Freedom that repurposes parts of the architects 1951 essay on Bela Criana", says a press statement. For the full programme, visit http://madmuseum.org/series/midcentury-masters.

 


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Marie Lavandier has been appointed director of Louvre-Lens, the outpost of the Paris museum based in northern France which opened in December 2012. Lavandier replaces Xavier Dectot, who stepped down earlier this year to head the department of art and design at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Lavandier is a specialist in 20th-century art, while Dectot is a medieval art expert; her contract runs for five years and can be renewed thereafter for three-year periods.

In 2014, Lavandier was named director of Nice museums, a city-run network of 12 sites and organisations including the Muse des Beaux-Arts and the Muse dart moderne et dart contemporain.

From 2006 to 2010, she was the deputy director of heritage and collections at the ethnographic art museum, Muse du Quai Branly, in Paris. Since 2013, she has been president of the council at Iccrom (the Rome-based International centre for the study of the preservation and restoration of cultural property).

Located on a former mining site, Louvre-Lens has welcomed more than two million visitors since its launch. The satellite branch drew 900,000 visitors in its first year compared to 400,000 in 2015.

Jompet Kuswidananto (born 1976) is based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and for SCAF’s 32nd project he will create an immersive, multi-disciplinary installation within the SCAF gallery.

Jompet’s personal experience of social hysteria and trauma – following the 1998 fall of Suharto’s New Order – frames After Voices. After a long period of repression, political demonstrations became frequent, and long suppressed voices were finally heard.

This dramatic work presents a carnivalesque procession of life-size ‘ghost figures’ constructed from helmets, uniforms, mechanical hands, musical instruments and motorcycle headlights that parade through the gallery. The figures are surrounded by loudspeakers, flags, megaphones, television monitors, drums and empty shoes – symbolic of those wanting to be heard above the chaos.

Costume, kinetic movement, film and a layered soundscape transform the chaos and violence of these events into a complex sensory experience. After Voices dramatises this cacophonous period of Indonesian history, incorporating threads of personal narratives and conflicting historical accounts.

In Artists as Cartoonists, or Extended Black and White, Raquel Ormella contemplates a series of entries by art historian Joan Kerr (1938-2004) in the national database, the DAAO (Design and Art Australian Online), and in the exhibition catalogue, Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White: The Most Public Art (1999).

Linking a contemporary Sydney zine cartoonist “Vanessa” to a 1960s cartoonist with the same nom de plume, Ormella speculates as to why the earlier “Vanessa” is listed online as Mollie Horseman but is described as ‘unknown’ in the catalogue. This discrepancy becomes a question that Ormella tries to answer and restate through the form of a graphic novel. By conversing with her peers and by returning to Kerr’s original entries, Ormella posits a shared history from which we are able to consider the role of data and archives in shaping how we apprehend art and culture in general.

As Sydney’s obsession with all things burger continues, the Hard Rock Café have upped the local burger game by collecting the best burger recipes from around the world and delivering them directly to Sydney’s doorstep.

Hard Rock gave their chefs the freedom to create a unique burger that they believed captured the flavour and spirit of their city. More than 160 burgers were tasted by Hard Rock’s culinary team (tough gig, right?) and the winners were selected to headline the World Burger Tour for 2016.

Drum roll please…. The winning burgers to be featured at Hard Rock Café Sydney are:

1. Aloha Burger (Honolulu, United States) – a Certified Angus Beef patty topped with Portuguese sausage, Monterey Jack cheese, a grilled pineapple ring with sweet soy glaze, guacamole, pico de gallo, served with Furikake french fries.

2. Frito Crunch Burger (Hollywood, United States) – a Certified Angus Beef patty topped with chorizo, queso fresco cheese, Frito corn chips, arugula and a fried jalapeno

3. Greek Burger (Athens, Greece) – a Certified Angus Beef patty topped with arugula, feta cheese and a tomato slice

4. Whiskey Bacon Cheeseburger (Brussels, Belgium) – a Certified Angus Beef patty topped with melted Cheddar cheese, bacon, a whiskey marinade, red onions and garlic aioli.

Julia Peyton-Jones, the co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, has a reputation for making spectacular things happen. So nobody was surprised that, just before her farewell shindig in the Serpentines pavilion, yesterdays (20 June) monsoon-like deluge ceased and the evening was bathed in a balmy summer weather and later a rare, strawberry full moon.  

It was very much a family affair, as Serpentine-loving artistsAnish Kapoor, Wolfgang Tillmans, Lynette Yiadom Boakye, Yinka Shonibare, Gustav Metzger and Richard Wentworthto name but a few, were joined by museum directorsNicholas Serota and Ralph Rugoffand former Serpentine employeesthe Whitneys Donna De Salvo was flown in specially for the occasion. All gathered to salute the 25 years of JPJ's directorship, which saw the transformation of what was a potting shedas described by the gallerys co-vice chair Felicity Waley-Cohen in her celebratory speechto the formidable art venue it is today.

Other fond words were spoken by co-director Hans-Ulrich Obrist, who recalled the instant spark he felt when first introduced to Peyton-Jones by Richard Wentworth in 1991 and who also revealed that she was now going to be resuming her interrupted practice as a painter ofapparently very goodabstract paintings. The grand dame herself (her status made official in the Queens Birthday Honours) then bade a fond and dignified farewell to all, before everyone got stuck in to magnums of Laurent Perrier champagne and queued up to substitute their facesfairground stylefor that of Peyton-Joness beloved terrier Charlie in a life-sized cutout of a JPJ plus her pooch, taken by Wolfgang Tillmans. Later everyone, and especially Dame Julia, hit the dance floor with a vengeance, proving that, even on a Monday night, the art world can still party like its 1991: the year that ushered in the legendary JPJ era 

In a sign that the market for African art is going from strength to strength, Sothebys announced on Monday, 20 June, that it is launching sales dedicated to art from the continent in London early next year.

The auction house has appointed Hannah OLeary as its head of Modern and contemporary African art, a new department based in London. OLeary comes from Bonhams, where she held the same position as her new role since 2010. Her first auction as head of the department at Bonhams in March 2011 fetched more than 8.7m and remains the highest total ever for a sale of South African art. Before that, OLeary helped pioneer the early sales of African art at Bonhams, which began in 2008.

Maarten Ten Holder, the managing director of Sothebys Europe, describes the African art scene as thriving. He adds: As our sales develop in 2017, we anticipate that we will establish a significant profile in this field, while also looking to enhance our presence on the African continent. In an indication of the direction her first sales at Sothebys will take, OLeary will be holding appraisals in Cape Town and Johannesburg in June and July.

OLeary says the Sothebys auctions will provide an unprecedented platform for Modern and contemporary African art. Of the market, she says there is enormous untapped potential. Together we are perfectly poised to explore it to the full, she says.

Until now, Bonhams has been the only major auction house in the West to hold sales dedicated to Modern and contemporary African art. Last year, to coincide with Frieze London and 1:54 African art fair, Bonhams launched an October sale dedicated solely to contemporary art from Africa. Its May sale is now focused on Modern African art. There are plans to hold a contemporary sale again in October this year.

Whether to transport live snails from a Roman governor's estate in Campania to his residence in Egypt, or to move carved marble columns and pulpits to one of the many churches built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (reign AD527-AD565), in the ancient Mediterranean world, the sea was often the quickest route by which to move goods around. But disasters were part of the game, and not every ship reached its destination.

A selection of 200 objects plucked from the waters around Sicily, which is at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, forms the exhibition Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, which opens this month at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford.

Although it will complement the British Museums current show on Sicily (Sicily: culture and conquest, until 14 August), the Oxford exhibition differs in that it is all about underwater archaeology and looking at Sicilys history from the perspective of the sea", says its curator Alexandra Sofroniew.

It will contain a mix of beautiful and quirky objects such as four bronze battering rams from warships sunk at the decisive battle at Egadi Islands (241BC), off western Sicily, where the Romans trounced the mighty Carthaginians to bring an end to the First Punic War. They will be displayed alongside a scene from the video game Total War, which includes scenes based on the conflict.

The Roman victory is also represented by a life-size bronze relief of the foot of an elephantthe Carthaginians war animal of choice. Sofroniew says it was probably part of a victory monument. Legend has it that the rest of elephant is still down there, she says.

The show is a collaboration between the Sicilian Soprintendenza del Mare and a consortium of institutions in Copenhagen, Bonn and Amsterdam. The Oxford leg is sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute in London and a foundation named after Honor Frost (1917-2010), a pioneer in the field of underwater archeology.

Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford, 21 June-25 September

The Muse du Quai Branly, Pariss museum of non-Western arts and civilisations, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month. To mark the occasion, the museum has organised an exhibition opening today on the former French president Jacques Chirac, who was the driving force behind this ambitious institution on the south bank of the Seine (Jacques Chirac and the Dialogue of Cultures,  until 9 October). Chirac, who has a personal interest in Japanese and Pre-Columbian art, was deeply committed to establishing what has become the worlds greatest museum of non-Western art.

Origin story
Chiracs grand plan was to bring together two Parisian collections: those of the Muse National des Arts dAfrique et Ocanie and the ethnographic section of the Muse de lHomme. The highlights include African masks, Peruvian pottery figures and Asian textiles. At the time, some criticised the decision to take work from existing institutions to build a new one. But Steven Engelsman, the director of Viennas Weltmuseum, says that the Quai Branly has worked miracles to increase the public appreciation of ethnographic collections and museums.

The museum has held 97 showsalmost ten a year. Its ambitious exhibition programme focuses on specific non-Western cultures (such as Matahoata: Arts and Society in the Marquesas Islands, until 24 July) and cross-cultural themes (such as Persona, Strangely Human, until 13 November).    

Looking to the future, the museums founding president, Stphane Martin, feels that more emphasis should be placed on the permanent collection, which occupies just 60% of its display space, and slightly less on exhibitions. There could well be a redisplay during the coming decade to present the collection in a fresh way.

Spotlight on the display
Since the museum opened in 2006, the installation of its collection has been controversial. The objects are under spotlights in a darkened gallery, raising questions about whether they should be regarded as works of art or ethnography. The impact is certainly dramatic, but many visitors end up understanding little about the cultures that created these objects.

Moving forward, the Quai Branly must also consider how to deal with acquisitions. Nicholas Thomas, the director of Cambridges Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (and a member of the Quai Branlys council), believes that the Parisian museum should put more resources into collecting contemporary art. How to renew collections, and create collections for the future, is among the greatest challenges for museums of ethnography, he says.

Despite the controversies, the museums global ambition is even more important today than it was a decade ago. As Martin explains: In these troubled times, the Muse du Quai Branly must remain, more than ever, a place of dialogue and openness to others.

Inside the Muse du Quai Branly
The collection of the Quai Branly comprises around 300,000 items (plus photographs and documents), many of them from former French colonial territories. At the heart of the Jean Nouvel-designed building is a 200m-long gallery, raised above the ground on huge stilts. This meandering structure houses 3,500 objects from the permanent collection, with sections on Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The museum attracted 1.3 million visitors last year, making it the fourth most popular in Paris; 83% of its visitors are French, a high proportion for a major museum in a tourist capital. Most of its budget (a total of more than 50m a year) comes from the government.

Whats in a name?

The Muse du Quai Branly, which opened in June 2006, avoided the tricky issue of finding the right word for non-Western art by taking a street name for its title. It is on Quai Branly, named after Edouard Branly, an inventor of wireless telegraphy in the 1890s. As the museums tenth anniversary approaches, there has been speculation that Frances former president, Jacques Chirac, may be added to the museums name (Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac). But it seems curious to name a museum devoted to the non-Western world after two Frenchmenan inventor and a politician.

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After seven years of holding off the sea to keep the building site of the Louvre Abu Dhabi dry, the temporary sea protection walls have now been removed allowing water to surround the building. The museum is being built on Saadiyat Island and the return of the water fulfils the architect Jean Nouvels vision of the space as a "museum city on the sea". The opening date is yet to be announced.