EDITORIAL

Three cheers for art dealers

Damien Hirst's decision to sell new works at Sotheby's last month was amply justified in financial terms, but artists and collectors will always need dealers.

CONTEMPORARY ART

Cool Caledonia

Enterprising gallerists are turning Edinburgh into a major city for collectors, and London gets ready for Frieze.

ARCHITECTURE

Cartoon history

A new book and exhibition are celebrating the centenary of Osbert Lancaster – cartoonist, architectural writer and dandy.

Art Business

Last month Damien Hirst conducted a sale of his new work at Sotheby’s. Does this mark a change in the way the art market operates?

Collectors' Focus

New collectors from Russia, South America and India are driving up prices for the best 18th-century works in this formerly rather staid market, writes Claudia Herstatt.

Asian Art Market

Some astonishing discoveries come to the market in an action-packed month, writes Susan Moore.

Market Preview

The Frieze art fair draws the world’s élite collectors to London this month, but has to vie with a vast number of satellite events.

Market Review

Sotheby’s scored some spectacular successes in its major summer Old Master sale, largely thanks to several single-owner collections.

Around the Galleries

London’s dealers offer a wealth of shows to accompany Frieze, and Munich stages no fewer than three fairs.

Caro’s chapel

Later this month Anthony Caro will unveil his spectacular ‘Chapel of Light’ in a medieval church near Calais. It is an achievement that invites comparisons with chapels by Matisse and Rothko, writes Rose Aidin. Portrait by Derry Moore.

New acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago is undertaking a comprehensive redisplay of its collections in preparation for next year’s opening of its new Modern Wing. Among the highlights of the installations is a series of recent major acquisitions in western art spanning four centuries, from 1500 to 1900. As Gloria Groom explains, these works will help this great encyclopaedic museum to tell the story of art more fully than ever.

Picasso the sculptor

Picasso’s granddaughter Diana Widmaier Picasso has embarked on an ambitious catalogue raisonné of her grandfather’s sculpture. She talks to Clare Finn about the discoveries she has made, both professional and personal. Portrait by Gilles Bensimmon.

A wall for every work

Barney Ebsworth’s proposed bequest to the Seattle Art Museum of 65 great American Modernist paintings is the culmination of a collecting career driven by a businessman’s shrewd analysis of undervalued works as well as a deep emotional attachment to art, writes Rose Aidin. Photographs by Brian Smale.

Art for sharing

When her extraordinary collection of contemporary art outgrew the family home, Anita Zabludowicz opened her own gallery in north London. She talks to Louise Nicholson. Portrait by Brian Moody.

Hearst and the Antique

An exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art looks beyond the Citizen Kane caricature to portray the media mogul William Randolph Hearst as a serious connoisseur. At the heart of his collections at San Simeon and elsewhere was the art of antiquity, writes the exhibition’s curator, Mary Levkoff.

The Met after Montebello

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, since 1977, retires at the end of this year. As the museum prepares to mark the event with an exhibition of acquisitions made over the past 31 years, Jonathan Lopez assesses the de Montebello legacy and considers the museum’s future under its newly appointed director, Thomas P. Campbell.

French art the American way

The American collector Rodica Seward, owner of Tajan, France’s best-known private auction house, has a missionary passion for modern French art. She talks to Louise Nicholson.

Putting the fragments together

Montelupo’s magnificent new museum of ceramics confirms the town’s great importance as a centre of maiolica production from the 15th century onwards, writes Timothy Wilson.

King Arthur of Brittany

David Platzer visits Rennes for an exhibition exploring the legacy of the Arthurian legends in French art and literature.

A lonely old volcano

Wyndham Lewis’s masterful portraits suggest that his claim to despise humanity was true, writes Peyton Skipwith.

Echoes of the Orient

Philippa Glanville visits Brighton for the first exhibition in over 70 years to chart Britain’s fascination with Chinese art and design.

Marble made flesh

Two details provide reason enough to make every effort to see this exhibition, the first comprehensive look at Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpted portraits.

Bishops & barmaids

At last we have a study of Victorian architecture that does justice to its variety and quality, writes Tim Mowl.

Drawing conclusions

This catalogue of drawings from Wren’s office triumphs in its ‘seemingly impossible task’, writes Edward McParland.

Sentimental beasts

Whether conquering or befriending, humanity’s relationship to animals is reflected in its art, as Andrew Wilton discovers in an impressive study of animals in British painting.

On board the phantom ride

Nancy Ireson reviews Lynda Nead’s ambitious work on the links between art, film and theories of sight in fin-de-siècle culture.