Christie’s 2020 sale of a major dinosaur fossil helped drive high-profile fossil auctions and closer ties between fine art and archaeology. Commercial galleries have now joined, with Spazio Amanita showing three Maiasaura skeletons alongside a rare John Chamberlain sculpture at its Bowery location. The exhibition, titled “Land Before Time: Three Dinosaurs and a Gondola,” began after Amanita met Freddy Leiva, who connected the gallery to Tucson-based Granada Gallery. Granada aims to reset the dinosaur market after public auctions created an untenable market. The show also addresses debates about keeping relics private by presenting them publicly. Granada purchases land, excavates with its own scientific and excavation teams, mounts fossils, and sells them through its retail space. Amanita selected the Maisaura because they were available at the right time, and their formal qualities echo Chamberlain’s compressed, dynamic works.
"“This is the closest you can get to a dinosaur ever, I think,” Amanita director Lauren-Ashley Vandyke told me amid the display."
"“One of Granada's main intentions is to reset the market around dinosaurs, because there are all these public auctions that happened, and they created kind of an untenable market,” Vandyke said. Amanita's show addresses contentions about keeping such relics private by bringing them to the public. It also lends elegance and critical theory to the hype."
"Amanita co-founder Garrett Goldsmith said Granada has vertically integrated its business by purchasing land to dig into around dino hotbeds throughout the American West, since U.S. Federal Law says fossils found on private land belong to the landowner. “They have their own scientific team, they have their own excavation team, so they're doing the excavation, the mounting, and then they have a retail space,” Goldsmith explained."
"The formal similarities between these fossils and Chamberlain's compressed, dynamic works immediately called the sculptor to mind. Amanita sought one of his 14 lesser-known “Gondola” sculptures, tho"
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