The Two Sisters by Kehinde Wiley are exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Kehinde Wiley, The two sisters (2012)

Cincinnati Museum of Art

Kehinde Wiley is known for his photorealistic depictions of black subjects in the grand fashion of European grandmasters, including US President Barack Obama for his official White House portrait. This nearly 9-foot-tall portrait of two sisters, spotted by the artist on the streets of New York, is part of An economy of grace, Wiley’s first series dedicated to women. The characters’ poses and costumes are inspired by historical female portraits in the Louvre Museum in Paris, including Théodore Chassériau’s 1843 portrait of her sisters. Wiley visited the Parisian museum with fashion designer Riccardo Tisci, who was commissioned to create bespoke neoclassical dresses for each model. The two sisters are now on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum, which acquired the painting with support from the Ragland family, whose interests include The Gorilla Glue Company.

Photographs of the Pilara Foundation

Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland

A visit to a Diane Arbus retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2003 so moved philanthropists Andrew and Mary Pilara that they began collecting her work. The couple later acquired 4,000 photographs, but now the collection will be dispersed. The Pilara Foundation recently announced plans to close its nonprofit gallery, Pier 24 Photography, in 2025 after the San Francisco Harbor Commission announced plans to triple the rent for the gallery’s house below the bridge. of San Francisco Bay. Prior to two sales with Sotheby’s New York in May, and with the help of Jeffrey Fraenkel of the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, the Glenstone Museum in Maryland acquired 112 images from the foundation by ten renowned photographers. They include a rare 1970 edition of Arbus’ unfinished portfolio, a box of ten photographs, as well as Hiroshi Sugimoto’s 24-foot-wide print of a Leonardo wax diorama. The last supperwhich preserves the water damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 as an “act of God”.

At Harmen Halls A happy couple (1648)

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

This Dutch Golden Age flirtation scene entered the collection of Philadelphia transportation magnate Peter Arrell Browne Widener in the late 1800s, when American collectors’ love of Dutch art was at its height. . Bearing the monogram ‘H’, it was purchased as a work by Frans Hals from the Dutch art dealer Leonardus Nardus, son of a renowned Utrecht antique dealer, who also counted JP Morgan among his wealthy clients. In 1907 Widener suspected that Nardus had sold him dubious masterpieces – a suspicion confirmed by a range of experts. Counterfeits were returned to the dealer, while other photos were resold, including A happy couple. Eighty years later, the painting resurfaced on the market as the work of Harmen Hals, the eldest of Frans Hals’ five painter sons, trained with his father. The work now joins the Frans Hals Museum as an authentic Harmen Hals, acquired from the Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts dealership in New York.