Hail Hockney: The $90-Million Man

David Hockney is no stranger to the limelight, but lately the Los Angeles-based painter and photographer has had unprecedented exposure and the value of his work has risen exponentially, culminating in a canvas selling for more than $90 million.

A Modest Proposal for The Met: Make the Façade a Canvas for Public Art

From Rockefeller Center to Madison Square Park and the Park Avenue median, public art has become increasingly prominent around New York. Among the memorable projects in recent years were Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates winding through Central Park, Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls edging the lower harbor, and Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus, a living room constructed around the column-top statue of the explorer at Columbus Circle, a hot ticket earlier this year.

Marty Margulies pledges $5 million to the Metropolitan

Martin Z. Margulies, the Miami-based developer who has amassed one of the country’s top private collections of modern and contemporary art, has pledged a $5 million bequest to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His collection of modern and contemporary art is not part of the donation.

Roxy Paine’s Metal Trees Are Flourishing

Artist Roxy Paine will have an exhibition of a new Dendroid sculpture at James Cohan Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea district this fall, and other artworks from the series have been purchased for as much as $1 million by the Israel Museum, National Gallery of Canada, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Munich RE, and Sweden’s Wanås Foundation. His huge work seen at the Metropolitan Museum last year has not been sold.