Venus Williams and a group of artists rally to save Nina Simone’s home

Tennis legend Venus Williams has joined forces with the artist Adam Pendleton to pull together a charity auction of 11 works to preserve the childhood home of musician and civil rights activist Nina Simone (1933-2003). Pendleton, together with fellow artists Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Julie Mehretu, bought the house where Simone was born in the town of Tryon, North Carolina, for $95,000 in 2017. They are, Pendleton says, in “phase one and a half” of its restoration and preservation, through the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

He hopes that the auction, estimated to make between $3.9mn and $4.5mn, “can give the house an endowment to protect it longer-term”. The eventual plan is to open it up to the public. Williams, an arts patron and collector, says that “Nina Simone’s legacy is what has put people like me on the map today”.

All of the works have been donated by the artists with many, including Pendleton’s silkscreened “Untitled (Days for Nina)” (2023, est $260,000-$280,000), made specifically for the benefit sale, a relatively rare gesture. Two works — by Cecily Brown and Mehretu — are sold on condition that their galleries (Paula Cooper and Marian Goodman, respectively) get first refusal should they be resold within five years. Bidding opens this week and until May 22 through Sotheby’s online. Pace will host a benefit gala in its West 25th Street gallery on May 20, where the works will be on show.

Artificial intelligence has caused controversy in the world of photography since Boris Eldagsen won (then turned down) the Sony World Photography Awards with an AI-generated image in March. But Kamiar Maleki, the new director of Photo London, says that “experimentation with science and technology is an essential part of photography’s DNA”. His fair, which opens its eighth edition this week, has a few AI works on offer. These include a Dutch-still-life-inspired work by Ori Gersht, captured with a low- resolution camera and then enlarged with AI software filling in the gaps (Michael Hoppen Gallery, £18,000). Works that incorporate AI by Maisie Cousins (TJ Boulting, from £400), Evelyn Bencicova and kennedy+swan (Artemis Gallery, from £2,020) also feature.

The fair’s organisers point out that such works are still a tiny percentage of those on offer through its 125 exhibitors in Somerset House this week. Real-life highlights include no less experimental images from 1928 by the photographer and film-maker William Klein, who died last year. His work is offered through Grob Gallery (from $5,625 for smaller, open-edition works).

It’s been a week for hellos and goodbyes in London and New York. The London contemporary art specialist Pilar Corrias is moving to bigger premises, joining a handful of the city’s influential gallerists opening new headquarters in Mayfair this autumn. Corrias moves a mile south, from Eastcastle Street in Fitzrovia to the corner of Conduit Street and Savile Row, and opens with a show of new work by the in-demand LA artist Christina Quarles.

“It’s really the next step for the gallery; I need to develop alongside my artists,” Corrias says of the decision to take on the new 5,000 sq ft, high-ceilinged space. Fitzrovia, where she opened in 2008, has “lost its edge a bit, there are empty spaces around now,” she says. Corrias will keep the smaller (1,200 sq ft) ground-floor gallery that she opened in a historic building on the other end of Savile Row in 2021. Her new space opens on October 9 and she joins Stephen Friedman and Alison Jacques galleries who move to new galleries in Mayfair, all set to coincide with this year’s Frieze fairs in London.

Friedman is keeping busy. As well his new London gallery, he is opening his first overseas space in New York later this year. The 5,000 square foot gallery is at 54 Franklin in Tribeca, a growing gallery district that Friedman describes as “the epitome of New York”. Of both moves, Friedman says he is “as much committed to my team as I am to our artists and these new galleries are intended to give us more space to flourish.” Alissa Friedman — no relation — has joined the gallery as a senior director in New York, from Salon 94 (now LGDR gallery). Stephen Friedman shows in New York’s Independent and Frieze fairs this month with solo booths of Pam Glick at both.

After nearly 20 years in King’s Cross, Gagosian gallery has decided to close its vast space on Britannia Street this summer. There are no associated redundancies: the gallery is taking on more offices around its Grosvenor Hill space in Mayfair. At the same time, the gallery launches what it is dubbing Gagosian Open, a programme that will install ambitious art in public sites around London. Exact locations are still under wraps — the first project lands in October — but expect the unexpected, says director Stefan Ratibor. “We are really excited to shift the way people experience art. We want to engage a broader public and new communities,” he says.

Under-represented female Old Masters continue to attract attention around the world as institutions and private collectors try to address gender imbalances. On May 3, Vienna’s Dorotheum auctioneers scored a hit with “Judith with the head of Holofernes” (c1610-15) by Fede Galizia, a Lombard painter better known for her still lifes. Estimated between €200,000 and €300,000, this sold for €480,000 (€624,000 with fees).

Mark MacDonnell, Dorotheum’s Old Masters specialist, says that Galizia’s biblical subject matter of a powerful woman who lured and beheaded her city’s enemy was popular not just with her but with other female Renaissance painters, notably Artemisia Gentileschi. He notes that the Dorotheum work also has a small painting of Diana and Actaeon, another tale of female empowerment, on the sword that Judith wields.

The work is signed by Galizia but was unrecorded — “hiding in plain sight”, MacDonnell says. It was rediscovered when its owner, whose father had bought the painting in the UK around 1995, contacted the auction house. It was confirmed as a significant Galizia painting by the Lombard School expert Filippo Maria Ferro.

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