Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 49 2022

Tempus fugit - is a saying from Latin lessons that you forget until you realise that Christmas will be over in three weeks. In a fortnight, however, the exhibition "worth fighting for" will end with a finissage on 14 December from 16:00. So there are still 10 days to judge for yourself what Bjorn Geldhof and Bart de Baere have curated in Cologne. Yilmaz Dziewior, the director of the Museum Ludwig, recommended the exhibition for a visit last week. Stadt-Anzeiger and Handelsblatt reported on it. Unfortunately, it is not very warm in the halls - or to put it positively, the heating system takes the environment into consideration.

This doesn't seem to play quite the big role in the planned new building of the Museum of the 20th Century in Berlin by Herzog & De Meuron, as Stefan Simon, among others, notes. In comparison with the Old Museum of 1830, which consumes only a quarter of the kilowatt hours per m² as the new building calculated at 420 million euros. Big-mindedness of all kinds seems to be the fashion in Berlin anyway, if one thinks of the out-of-place extension to the Chancellery. In the case of the museum building, the Federal Audit Office dares to point out that the planned construction is too expensive and unecological. Minister of State Claudia Roth has now ordered a revision of the planning - let's see if it helps the environment.

The various art fairs in Miami and Miami Beach ended yesterday. My impression from the beginning of the week was rather restrained as far as visitor numbers were concerned. The crowds were far less corona-inducing than last year - and there were hardly any masks to be seen anyway. I wonder if the desire to buy has improved by the weekend. - One saying I hadn't heard in recent years was that you need time in Miami, buyers don't make up their minds so quickly. Let's hope that all the galleries found enough buyers to at least cover the booth costs.

In a great auction week in Germany, among others with the highest hammer price in German auction history, the mood was nevertheless mixed. Top quality was not always hammered down in the room. Others landed far above the estimate. The art trade is also subject to moods.

And then there is the World Cup in Qatar, where the German national team did not exactly cover itself with glory, but all the more with moral conviction. In the whole discussion, people tend to forget that 50 years ago, the host country was roughly where our ancestors were 1000 years ago. What we have moved mentally and in other ways in just under 100 generations took place there in 4 generations, if you understand generation in more than just biological terms.

And then there is the Sunday newspaper, printed on Fridays, which is already publishing the annual review of 2022. Such an early closing date is only known to insurers who postpone the reserves in the claims area to the next year from the second week of December in order to be able to close their balance sheets more quickly. In the case of a weekly newspaper, this rather suggests that there will be fewer issues next year - what does the market want with an outdated newspaper?

In a few days, our intern will leave us to do her bachelor's degree in art history. At the exhibition "Worth Fighting For" she did a lot of the coordination and organisation and did a really great job. Now we are looking for someone to take over her tasks again - but it won't be an exhibition anymore. Please send your application by email to zilkens@zilkens.com . We can always use more help.

We wish you a reflective second week of Advent with stimulating experiences around art and other enjoyable things. Yours, Stephan Zilkens and the team of Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Cologne and Solothurn.