LINKS

PARIS/ LOS ANGELES. Below are a number of links drawing attention to the growing importance of the contemporary art markets in Paris and LA which highlight how the competition between New York and London is slowly being replaced by an increasingly globalised art market (Asia, and Hong Kong in particular, being the other emerging hot spot).

• Sotheby's contemporary art sales in June of this year made "a total of €13.8m, flying past the €7.3-10m estimate." Six months earlier, Sotheby's impressionist and modern art sales had also exceeded high estimates by generating €10.8m.
• Larry Gagosian's ninth gallery will open later this month on the Right Bank with shows of Cy Twombly and Prouvé. 
• "I want Paris to be the capital of the art market," says one of France's leading antique dealers.
• "Endowment funds flourish in France."
• Dominique Levy of L&M Arts says they decided to expand the New York-based gallery west to LA rather than to London or Berlin because LA has “a creative energy comparable to what happened in the ‘50s in New York.” See also Artnet's coverage of the gallery's LA opening alongside an account of LACMA's new Renzo Piano pavilion.
• NY Armory Show operator, Merchandise Mart, plans to launch new LA art fair in late 2011.
• MOCA reached deep into the New York art market to find its newest director- Jeffrey Deitch- though not without controversy. Conflicts of interest dictated that Deitch at least divest himself of his commercial commitments (notably the two Lower Manhattan galleries housing Deitch Projects, critically acclaimed for broadening aesthetic horizons) leaving a not insignificant dent in the New York market.