Native of Vietnam Wins Hugo Boss Prize

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The Vietnamese-born Conceptual artist Danh Vo has won this year’s Hugo Boss Prize, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced on Thursday.

The $100,000 award, established in 1996 by the foundation and named for the German men’s wear and lifestyle company that sponsors it, is given every two years for significant achievement in contemporary art.

“Danh has a wide-ranging repertory of ideas and executes them with relevance and power,” said Richard Armstrong, director of the foundation.

Mr. Vo, 37, has become something of a darling in contemporary-art circles, where his work has been shown in exhibitions including two recent triennials, one at the New Museum in New York this year, and the other in Yokohama, Japan, in 2011. His work was also recently shown at the Art Institute of Chicago and is still on view at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

“This year’s list was particularly strong, so it was a difficult choice,” said Nancy Spector, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim. Ms. Spector led the six-person selection jury. “It was a combination of his transnational sensibility and the subtlety and sophistication with which he works that people were moved by.”

When Mr. Vo was 4, his family fled South Vietnam in a homemade boat and was rescued at sea by a Danish ship. The family members settled in Denmark, and their assimilation into European culture and the events that led up to their flight from Vietnam are reflected in Mr. Vo’s art, which juxtaposes the historical and the personal.

The choice of Mr. Vo is in keeping with the generation of artists that has usually won the prize. In 2010, however, the winner was Hans-Peter Feldmann, the German installation artist, who was then 69, making him the oldest artist to receive the award.

This year Mr. Vo emerged as the winner from a shortlist of artists in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s. They included Trisha Donnelly, an American artist living in New York and San Francisco, whose photographs, drawings, videos, sound and performance pieces often deal with the meaning of time and language; Rashid Johnson, a Brooklyn-based artist who creates sculptures, photographs and videos about memories, art historical sources, and notions of racial and cultural identity; Monika Sosnowska, who lives and works in Poland, where she was born, and whose installations explore notions of the built environment; Tris Vonna-Michell, a British artist living in Stockholm, whose work explores new modes of storytelling with documents and images; and Qiu Zhijie, a Chinese Conceptual artist who lives and works in Beijing and Hangzhou, and whose paintings, photographs, sculptures, and videos comment on political and social issues of contemporary art.

In addition to the monetary prize, an exhibition of Mr. Vo’s work will be on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York early next year.

OLD MASTERS RETURN

George Wachter, the worldwide co-chairman of old master paintings at Sotheby’s, keeps a close eye on tastes and trends. When he noticed that collectors of Impressionist and Modern art were now looking further back, he acted. This weekend Mr. Wachter will show examples from his coming auctions in London and New York at the viewing for next week’s Impressionist and Modern art sales. The hope is that potential buyers who visit Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters to see Picassos, Matisses and Mirós will develop a taste for Goyas or Turners or Raphaels.

“There’s no question we are seeing more collectors of 19th- and 20th-century art showing an interest in old masters,” Mr. Wachter said. “When you consider that a Richter recently sold for more than $34 million, old master paintings look like good value.”

By showing old master paintings alongside Impressionist and Modern ones, collectors can see how these older artists inspired figures like Picasso and Cézanne.

Among the highlights will be a Raphael drawing, “Head of Apostle,” from the well-known Chatsworth collection from North Derbyshire, England, up for sale at Sotheby’s in London on Dec. 5. There will also be Goya’s “Portrait of Mariano Goya,” from the estate of George Embiricos, the Greek shipping magnate who died last year. It will be for sale in New York on Jan. 31. Estimated to sell for $6 million to $8 million, the Goya depicts the artist’s favorite grandson, who was then just 21. An inscription on the back of the painting reads, “Goya for his Grandson, 1827, at the age of 81.”

“It is one of his last paintings and perhaps his last portrait,” Mr. Wachter said.

ISLAMIC ART IN HOUSTON

One of the greatest groupings of Islamic art in the world, the al-Sabah Collection, is lending some 60 objects to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as part of a five-year renewable agreement. On view beginning Jan. 26 will be an array of objects from the 8th to the 18th centuries, including carpets and architectural fragments, ceramics, rugs, metalwork, jewelry, scientific instruments and illuminated manuscripts.

Displays will be rotated every year. The initial installation, with art and objects made in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, will chronicle the development of Islamic visual culture. Among the highlights are sumptuous jewels, including an engraved emerald weighing more than 85 carats, an emerald and diamond turban ornament, and jade court daggers.

The Sabah Collection is owned jointly by Sheikha Hussah Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah, director of Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, a cultural organization based in Kuwait, and her husband, Sheikh Nasser al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, Minister of the Amir Diwan and a member of Kuwait’s ruling family.

This is not the first time works from the collection have been seen in the United States. The Met held a show called “Treasury of the World: Jeweled Arts of India in the Age of Mughals” in 2001-2. The show traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in 2003.

This newest arrangement was negotiated by Mahrukh Tarapor, who was the Met’s longtime associate director for exhibitions and director for international affairs before becoming a senior adviser for international initiatives at the Museum of Fine Arts.

“We have a very large Muslim community who are active supporters of the museum,” said Gary Tinterow, director of the Houston museum. “We are thrilled to have the art and objects that reflects their culture.”