Cash-Strapped Hong Kong Arts Hub Saved—Plus a Rundown of the Latest in Asia’s Art World
Hong Kong's financially struggling West Kowloon Cultural District, a major arts hub, has been rescued from its cash crisis. This development was part of a broader Asia art world update that also included leadership changes at Japan's Art Collaboration Kyoto and the announcement of a new art fair in Shenzhen.
Phillips’ modern and contemporary art evening sale on Tuesday achieved $115.2 million against a presale estimate of $84.2 million, its highest since 2022. All 40 lots sold, with standout results for works by living artists like Joseph Yaeger, whose painting fetched $477,300 against a $60,000 estimate, and Anna Weyant, whose work sold for $980,400. Works by 20th-century female artists including Lee Bontecou, Olga de Amaral, and Helen Frankenthaler also exceeded expectations, with Bontecou’s pastel setting a record for a two-dimensional work by the artist at $4.3 million.
Christie’s achieved $1.1 billion in sales during a single evening auction on Monday, marking a dramatic rebound from the previous year when the three major New York auction houses combined sold that amount over the entire May season. The sale featured trophy works from the collections of S.I. Newhouse and Agnes Gund, with Jackson Pollock’s *Number 7A (1948)* selling for $181.2 million and Mark Rothko’s *No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)* fetching $98.4 million. Despite the strong overall results, seven of the 16 works in the Newhouse sale hammered below their low estimates, and Constantin Brancusi’s *Danaïde* failed to reach its $100 million estimate, indicating price resistance even for top-tier art.
Christie's held back-to-back evening auctions in New York, featuring the esteemed S.I. Newhouse collection and a 20th-century evening sale, achieving a combined total of $950 million (or $1.1 billion with fees). The Newhouse sale was a white-glove affair, 100% sold, though entirely backed by third-party guarantees. Highlights included Constantin Brancusi's bronze 'Danaïde' (1913) selling for $107.5 million with fees, a record for the artist, and Pablo Picasso's 'Tête de femme (Fernande)' fetching $48.3 million. Other top lots included works by Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock, with many going to anonymous telephone bidders.
Christie’s held two evening sales on Monday—the S.I. Newhouse collection and a 20th-century art sale—that together generated $1.1 billion across 64 lots. The Newhouse tranche alone made $630.8 million, bringing the cumulative total of the collection to over $1 billion, making it likely the most expensive collection ever sold at auction after Paul Allen’s $1.7 billion blockbuster. Top lots included Jackson Pollock’s *Number 7A, 1948* at $181.2 million (the fourth most expensive painting ever sold at auction), Constantin Brâncuși’s *Danaïde* at $107.6 million, and a Mark Rothko work at $98.4 million.
France has passed a landmark restitution law for looted art, marking a significant shift in the country's approach to addressing Nazi-era confiscations and colonial-era acquisitions. The legislation establishes a legal framework for returning artworks and cultural objects to their rightful owners or heirs, streamlining a process that previously required case-by-case parliamentary approval. This law is expected to accelerate the return of thousands of items held in French museums and public collections.
New research from the Aspen Institute’s Artist-Endowed Foundation Initiative (AEFI) reveals that artist-endowed foundations in the U.S. now control roughly $9 billion in assets, nearly triple the $3.5 billion reported in 2011 and up 17% from $7.7 billion in 2018. The Cy Twombly Foundation leads with $1.5 billion in art and assets, followed by foundations for Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Robert Rauschenberg, each holding over $500 million. The data, drawn from public tax forms, shows that just five of roughly 500 foundations account for more than half the total, with most established by postwar American artists born before 1931.
The May 2026 New York auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips will feature 20 high-value lots priced at $30 million or more, including works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, and others. The sales are staggered around the Venice Biennale and Frieze New York, with Sotheby’s holding its contemporary evening auction on May 14 and Christie’s its 20th-century sale on May 18. Notable consignments come from the estates of S.I. Newhouse, former MoMA board president Agnes Gund, and dealer Marian Goodman.
Georg Baselitz, the German painter and sculptor known for his provocative, expressionistic works and his iconic upside-down paintings, has died at the age of 88. The article traces his life from his childhood in war-torn Germany, through his early career as a rebellious artist in divided Berlin, to his rise as an international art star. It highlights his 1961 manifesto poster "Pandemonium I," his rejection of American abstraction, and his controversial 1963 exhibition that was raided by police for its explicit content.
The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has received a donation of 24 contemporary artworks from Vancouver-based collector and real estate tycoon Bob Rennie and his family. The gift includes works by American artists Kerry James Marshall and Christopher Williams, and Canadian artists Brian Jungen and Jin-me Yoon, bringing the total number of works donated by the Rennie family to the NGC since 2012 to 284.
The art market is gearing up for a high-stakes spring season with major estate collections from S.I. Newhouse and Robert Mnuchin slated for auction at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, collectively valued at over half a billion dollars. Meanwhile, London’s spring marquee sales showed strong momentum, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s reporting significant year-over-year increases in their evening sale totals, despite a more modest performance from Phillips.
Artist Tod Lippy is launching a mobile protest piece titled "All Of the Gang" during Frieze Los Angeles, featuring an LED truck that displays emails and documents linking prominent art world figures to Jeffrey Epstein. The project highlights correspondence and associations involving major industry names like Larry Gagosian, Leon Black, and David A. Ross, aiming to confront the public with the industry's perceived complicity and lack of accountability.
A series of significant developments occurred across the global art industry this week. Expo Chicago announced a scaled-back edition under new director Kate Sierzputowski, while the Outsider Art Fair revealed its exhibitor list. A long-lost Renaissance portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola resurfaced at the Winter Show. Christie's will sell the collection of the late MoMA trustee Barbara Jakobson, featuring works by Jeff Koons and others. Bonhams made a key hire, and Sotheby's priced a major art-backed securitization. In gallery news, Alissa Friedman returned to Salon 94, Mary Cork joined Lehmann Maupin London, and several artists gained new representation, while New York's Francis Irv gallery announced its closure.
Artnet News published a roundup of five rising artist profiles that defined 2025, highlighting interviews with Alexandra Metcalf and Chase Hall. Metcalf, a British-American artist, blends 1960s psychedelia, 2000s pop music, and Victorian literature in her multimedia works, and debuted at Art Basel with London's Ginny on Frederick. Chase Hall, a painter who uses hot coffee on cotton, explores race and fatherhood, with a solo exhibition "Momma's Baby, Daddy's Maybe" at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Vienna.
A centennial market analysis of Joan Mitchell reveals that an untitled 1979 abstract work by the artist was the most expensive artwork on offer at Art Basel Miami Beach, priced at $18.5 million by Gray gallery. The article examines Mitchell's auction performance, noting that her record stands at $29.2 million set in 2023, and that three paintings have sold for over $20 million since then. Despite these strong results, her auction highs still trail behind male Abstract Expressionist contemporaries like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.
Artnet News has published a list of the ten most expensive female artists at auction, based on data from the Artnet Price Database. The article highlights recent record-breaking sales, including Frida Kahlo's *El Sueño (La Cama)* (1940), which sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby's, and Marlene Dumas's *Miss January* (1997), which realized $13.6 million at Christie's, making Dumas the most expensive living woman artist. The list features artists such as Rosemarie Trockel, Bridget Riley, Cindy Sherman, Vija Celmins, and Cady Noland, with auction records ranging from $4.9 million to $9.7 million.
Art Basel Miami Beach opened its VIP preview on Wednesday with strong early sales, including multiple seven-figure deals. Major galleries like Hauser & Wirth, White Cube, Gladstone, and Pace reported significant sales, with a $3.9 million George Condo painting leading the pack. The fair introduced a new digital-art section called Zero 10, featuring works by Beeple, which drew large crowds. Collectors such as Craig Robins, Mera and Don Rubell, Norman Braman, and Beth Rudin DeWoody were among the early attendees, and the event featured high-profile works by Jeff Koons and Maurizio Cattelan.
The Affordable Art Fair opened its latest New York edition on March 30 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, featuring 72 galleries from six continents. The fair, now in its 15th year in New York, offers artwork priced between $100 and $10,000, with at least half of each booth's inventory under $5,000. Highlights include Lucy Sparrow's felt grocery items for $100, Orson Kartt's mixed media prints for $250, and Yann Guitton's oversized $20 bill artwork. The fair also offers themed tours such as “Female Voices” and “Finds Under $500.”
The article highlights eight standout art books recommended for gifting this season, covering a range of topics from architectural deep dives and contemporary art to fashion histories and experimental catalogs. Featured titles include "All of Us Stars: Bobby Busnach," a photo book capturing the gritty glamour of 1970s Upper West Side nightlife, and "Christopher Wool: See Stop Run," an exhibition catalog documenting Wool's unconventional 2024 show in a Manhattan office tower. Other books span monographs, boundary-pushing catalogs, and fashion histories, each offering unique perspectives on visual culture.
Frieze New York 2025 is set to take place at the Shed in Manhattan, bringing together over 65 contemporary art galleries from more than 25 countries. The fair coincides with major institutional shows at the Guggenheim, Whitney Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the recent reopening of the Frick Collection after a $220 million renovation. Notable galleries include Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, and David Zwirner, alongside international dealers like Goodman Gallery and Kurimanzutto. The Focus section, curated by Lumi Tan, features 12 young galleries. On the eve of the fair, Frieze itself was sold by Endeavor to former CEO Ari Emanuel for a reported $200 million.
Kerry James Marshall's paintings are being offered at Frieze London, with two major works on view at different galleries. Alexander Gray Associates presents Marshall's 1992 painting *A Woman with a Heart of Gold* for $2.9 million, a collage-like work that critiques racial fantasies in mass-market romance. David Zwirner shows the 1990 painting *A Little Romance* priced at $3.2 million, depicting a dreamy reclining figure. Meanwhile, the Royal Academy's exhibition “Kerry James Marshall: The Histories” has drawn enthusiastic repeat visits from dealers and auction-house figures, generating significant buzz during Frieze week.
Dan Nadel, a curator recently hired by the Whitney Museum as curator of prints and drawings, is opening a new exhibition titled "Sixties Surreal" that aims to rewrite the history of 1960s art. The show, co-curated with Laura Phipps, Scott Rothkopf, and Elisabeth Sussman, features a wide range of artists from Luis Jimenez to Shigeko Kubota, alongside canonical figures like Andy Warhol and Yayoi Kusama. Nadel, known for championing marginalized and alternative figures in American art, previously curated "What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present" at the Rhode Island School of Design and a Gertrude Abercrombie exhibition at Karma gallery. He is also the author of a recent biography of Robert Crumb.
Mathieu Borysevicz, founder of Shanghai's Bank gallery, launched a six-month pop-up on New York's Lower East Side earlier this year, aiming to introduce his program to new audiences amid growing Asian art interest in the city. By mid-summer, however, Borysevicz observed a sharp market downturn as collectors withdrew, reflecting a broader trend of gallery closures, lawsuits, and fair cancellations that have marked a turbulent period for the art world.
The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) launched with a party at Assembly in Kingston, New York, founded by Helen Toomer in 2020. The festival has grown from 23 participants to 158 across 6,000 square miles, reflecting the pandemic-era exodus of artists and collectors from New York City to the Hudson Valley region. The event featured a fundraiser for abortion-rights nonprofit Noise for Now and drew a diverse crowd of attendees.
Adam Lindemann announces the closure of Venus Over Manhattan, the gallery he founded in 2012 after a career as a contemporary art collector and writer. The gallery opened with a show titled "À Rebours," inspired by a novel about a decadent aristocrat, and featured works by Warhol, Hammons, and others—a show that famously saw a Dalí stolen from the wall. Over its 14-year run, Venus Over Manhattan mounted exhibitions including a Maurizio Cattelan show during a market lull, a Calder installation with spotlights and fans, and a show mixing African masterpieces with works by Koons, Prince, and Hirst. Lindemann reflects on the challenges of opening a gallery against advice, the theft that made international news, and the quiet validation he received from artists like David Hammons.
Frieze has announced over 280 exhibitors for its October fairs in London, with around 160 galleries at Frieze London and 120 at Frieze Masters, running concurrently in Regent's Park from October 15 to 19. In auction news, the original Hermès Birkin bag prototype will be sold at Sotheby's Paris on July 10, and Bonhams has appointed Celine Assimon as chief commercial officer. Galleries saw significant moves: Christian Deydier in Paris is closing due to new EU regulations on imported cultural objects, while Carroll Dunham joined Matthew Brown, Cristina Iglesias signed with Hauser and Wirth, and several other artists changed representation. Meanwhile, Tate Liverpool received £12 million in UK government funding plus philanthropic support for its redevelopment, the Royal Academy of Arts named Simon Wallis as its new secretary and chief executive, and the Whitney Museum suspended its Independent Study Program for a year after controversy over censorship of a pro-Palestine performance. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation made three new appointments, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris faces eviction.
This article from Artnet News recaps a series of holiday parties and galas in the New York art world during December 2016. Highlights include the New York Botanical Garden's 18th Annual Winter Wonderland Ball, attended by Anne Hathaway, Tinsley Mortimer, and Andrew Warren; artnet's own holiday party featuring the Bumbys and a magician; ACRIA's 21st Annual Holiday Dinner honoring the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and actress Judith Light; and Project for Empty Space's Winter Bacchanal Benefit, which presented the first Badass Art Woman Awards to curators Rujeko Hockley, Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, and Deana Haggag.
The article reports on the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," which runs through August 2 and features 175 works including paintings, sculpture, and archival materials. Curator Michelle Kuo describes Whitten's "endless innovation," noting that art handlers were astonished by his pioneering techniques. Whitten, who died in 2018 at age 78, moved from Alabama to New York in 1960, attended Cooper Union, and was influenced by jazz and figures like Willem de Kooning and Romare Bearden. The article also examines Whitten's art market, highlighting his auction record of $2.66 million for "Special Checking" (1974) at Sotheby's in 2019, and noting that while prices are rising, his work remains undervalued compared to peers like Gerhard Richter.
10 practical reasons need fund defend national endowment arts
President Donald Trump's administration has renewed efforts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), proposing for the fourth consecutive year a budget that would zero out the agency. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has staffed the current administration, continues to promote its 1997 report 'Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts' as a key reference in debates. This article, originally published in 2020 and republished in response to these developments, systematically rebuts each of the Heritage Foundation's arguments against the NEA, beginning with the claim that private support alone is sufficient.
At the VIP opening of Frieze New York on Wednesday, dealers reported strong sales despite economic uncertainty from Trump administration policies and trade war threats. The fair, recently sold to Hollywood powerhouse Ari Emanuel, returned to the Shed in Hudson Yards with 67 exhibitors. Gagosian Gallery generated the most buzz, selling one of three Jeff Koons Incredible Hulk sculptures—polychromed steel works priced around $3 million each—and placing a hold on another. Other notable sales included works by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Tomie Ohtake, Sheila Hicks, Liza Lou, and Gertrude Abercrombie, with galleries like James Cohan, Galeria Nara Roesler, Thaddaeus Ropac, Karma, and Hauser & Wirth reporting brisk business.