From ‘Game of Thrones’ to ‘Downton Abbey’—Iconic Costumes Go on View in Scotland

An exhibition titled "Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop" is opening at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, featuring over 80 iconic costumes from major film and television productions such as 'Game of Thrones,' 'Downton Abbey,' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean.' The show, which premiered last year in London, celebrates the six-decade legacy of the renowned costume house Cosprop, founded by Oscar-winning designer John Bright.

Michaelina Wautier Market Appraisal

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The 17th-century Flemish Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier is experiencing a significant rediscovery following centuries of obscurity and misattribution. Long overshadowed by her male contemporaries and her brother Charles, Wautier's diverse oeuvre—ranging from still lifes to monumental allegorical scenes—is being re-evaluated through major exhibitions at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This scholarly revival is correcting the historical record, as works previously attributed to artists like Artemisia Gentileschi are being rightfully returned to her catalog.

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John Phelan, a prominent art collector and the current U.S. Secretary of the Navy, flew on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane in 2006, according to newly released flight logs. The trip from London to New York occurred four months before Epstein's first indictment, and a friend of Phelan's confirmed the flight but stated it was his only interaction with the convicted sex offender.

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Gustav Klimt's final portrait, 'Dame mit Fächer (Lady With a Fan),' sold for £85.3 million ($108.4 million) at Sotheby's London, setting a new record for the most expensive work of art ever auctioned in Europe. The painting, which was still on Klimt's easel when he died in 1918, surpassed its pre-sale estimate of over £65 million after a ten-minute bidding war.

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A Nobilified, a start-up that lets customers insert themselves into classic paintings for about $140, has created a series of artworks depicting Super Bowl heroes from the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks in historical masterpieces. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady appears as Prometheus (1868) by Gustave Moreau, tight end Rob Gronkowski as Abduction of Ganymede by Jupiter (ca. 1644) by Eustache Le Sueur, while Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson is shown in Ideal portrait of a Spanish King (ca. 1643) by Alonso Cano, with other players featured in works by John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West.

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Newly uncovered documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s archives confirm that the Franco regime in Spain attempted to censor Robert Motherwell’s painting *Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 35* (1954–58) before its scheduled 1958 exhibition in Madrid. The painting was part of MoMA’s traveling show “The New American Painting,” which introduced Abstract Expressionism to Europe. Spanish authorities demanded Motherwell remove the phrase “Spanish Republic” from the title, but the artist refused, leading to the work’s exclusion from the exhibition. The documents, reviewed by *El País*, also reveal that Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies boycotted state-sanctioned shows, calling the regime’s cultural propaganda “scandalous.”

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On Public Domain Day 2026, works from 1930 entered the U.S. public domain, including art by Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, José Clemente Orozco, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Notable artworks now free to use include Mondrian's *Composition With Red, Blue, and Yellow*, Klee's *Tierfreundschaft*, Orozco's *Prometheus*, and Taeuber-Arp's *Composition of Circles and Overlapping Angles*, as well as pieces by Philip Guston, Marc Chagall, and Edward Hopper from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Literary works like Sigmund Freud's *Civilization and Its Discontents* and William Faulkner's *As I Lay Dying*, films such as *All Quiet on the Western Front*, and musical compositions including "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and "Georgia on My Mind" also entered the public domain, along with the original Betty Boop character and early *Blondie* comics.

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Artnet News revisits a podcast episode featuring editor-in-chief Naomi Rea, who examines the breakdown of traditional art pricing logic amid a cooling market. The episode explores how the rules that once governed art valuation have eroded, leaving dealers, advisors, and collectors struggling to navigate a market described as being in a "danger zone." Rea discusses how mega-galleries, emerging dealers, and advisors are quietly recalibrating their strategies as speculation dries up and confidence wanes.

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Artnet News asked several working artists—Manuel Mathieu, Hanna Salomonsson, Aki Sasamoto, Nigel Hall, Sharmistha Ray, and Miljohn Ruperto—to share the practical and philosophical lessons that sustain their creative practices. Topics include building trust with collaborators, navigating financial uncertainty, setting up shared studio spaces, using recycled materials, maintaining optimism at age 82, reframing rejection, and adapting to the expectation that artists must act as entrepreneurs before their first gallery show.

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The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has released a 50th-anniversary remake of its iconic 1976 television commercial, "You Gotta Have Art." The original spot, created by advertising agency W.B. Doner & Co., featured museum staff, volunteers, and local performers singing and dancing among masterpieces. The new version, directed by DIA's Director of Visual Media Adam Kosberg, recreates the original shot-for-shot, incorporating updated choreography, a Motown-influenced arrangement by Detroit musicians Marion Hayden and Alvin Waddles, and appearances by local artists including Carole Harris and Allie McGhee, who reprised their roles from the 1976 film. Over 200 museum employees and performers from Wayne State University participated in the production.

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Hundreds gathered on a cold Monday night in New York at Phillips auction house and the Metropolitan Club to celebrate the life and legacy of Walter Robinson, the beloved art-world figure who died in February 2025. The event, organized by the New York Academy of Art as part of its annual “Take Home a Nude” fundraiser, featured silent and live auctions, a posthumous honorary doctorate awarded to Robinson, and the announcement of the Walter Robinson Scholarship funded by auction proceeds. The evening raised over $800,000, with works by students and acclaimed artists like Richard Prince and Kiki Smith on offer, and Robinson’s painting *Blood on the Sun* (2018) selling for $35,000.

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David Zwirner gallery in New York hosted a four-day benefit exhibition titled “Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center,” which raised $950,000 for the Ali Forney Center, a nonprofit supporting queer youth with housing, education, job training, and medical care. Curated by art adviser Stephen Truax, the show featured 37 artists, including Ross Bleckner, Marlene Dumas, Jenna Gribbon, Julie Mehretu, and Wolfgang Tillmans, and generated $1.2 million in sales, with artists receiving $250,000 and the gallery waiving its commission. Truax, who previously co-organized smaller editions with Sotheby’s, shifted to a gallery partnership to gain more control over sales and pricing, more than doubling his initial $350,000 fundraising goal.

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Sotheby's sold a Tiffany Studios Magnolia floor lamp for $4.4 million at its Dreaming in Glass auction in New York, making it the most expensive leaded lamp by the decorative arts studio ever sold at auction. The lamp, manufactured around 1910, features a patinated bronze stand and a 28-inch colored glass dome depicting magnolias, and was crafted by Agnes Northrop, Tiffany's star designer, rather than Clara Driscoll. The bidding battle lasted 10 minutes, surpassing the $3 million high estimate.

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A week after wildfires erupted across Los Angeles, the city remains under critical threat as the Pacific Palisades, Eaton, Hollywood Hills, and San Fernando Valley fires have forced the evacuation of roughly 200,000 residents, destroyed about 12,000 buildings, and claimed at least 24 lives. Among the losses are culturally and architecturally significant structures, including the Bunny Museum in Altadena, the historic Will Rogers ranch, the Altadena Community Church (designed by Harry L. Pierce), the Andrew McNally House (a Queen Anne-style mansion by Frederick Roehrig), Richard Neutra's Benedict and Nancy Freedman House, and Gregory Ain's Park Planned Homes in Altadena. Adrian Scott Fine of the Los Angeles Conservancy described the destruction as "a mass erasure of heritage."

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Entrepreneur and art collector Jennifer Gilbert has founded Lumana, a new non-profit arts organization in Detroit's Little Village neighborhood. Housed in a repurposed 21,000-square-foot former shipbuilding and storage facility at Stanton Yards, the space is being adapted by SO–IL architectural firm with landscape design by OSD. Slated to open in Fall 2027, Lumana will feature two exhibition halls, a café, bookstore, auditorium, and educational spaces, and will house Gilbert's foundation. Gilbert plans to draw on her private art collection for exhibitions, including an inaugural show focused on Cranbrook Art Museum's Detroit collection, and is considering curatorial fellowships to commission new site-specific work.

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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will host a two-week screening series starting December 10, featuring 15 films that showcase the special effects work of the late mechatronics maestro Carlo Rambaldi. Co-curated with Rome's Cinecittà studios, the series spans Rambaldi's career from Italian arthouse and exploitation films to Hollywood blockbusters like *Alien* (1979), *E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial*, *King Kong* (1976), and *Dune* (1984). The screenings include films directed by Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dario Argento, and David Lynch, among others. Rambaldi, who would have turned 100 this autumn, was also honored earlier this year with an exhibition at Long Island City Culture Lab and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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Miami is expanding its free water taxi service and shuttle routes for Art Week 2024, which coincides with Art Basel Miami Beach. The city will increase the number of water taxis from four to seven, operating between Maurice Gibb Memorial Park and the Venetian Marina, with service running from December 1 to December 7. Shuttles will connect the convention center to the Design District, mid-beach, and South Beach, where fairs like SCOPE, Untitled Art, SATELLITE, and Aqua Art Miami are held. The Transit mobile app will track all services in real time.

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A rediscovered Renoir painting, *L'enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le fils de l'artiste, Jean* (created before 1910), sold for over €1.8 million ($2 million) at Hôtel Drouot in Paris on November 25. The intimate portrait of Renoir's young son Jean with his nursemaid Gabrielle had remained in the same private collection for over a century, never before published or exhibited. It was offered by auctioneer Christophe Joron-Derem in the "Tableaux Modernes" sale and purchased by an international buyer, with the hammer price of €1.45 million falling within the presale estimate.

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A Tiffany Studios stained-glass window, the Goddard Memorial Window, sold for $4.2 million at Christie's Design Sale on June 12, 2025, exceeding its high estimate of $3 million. Commissioned in 1909 by Mary Edith Jenckes Goddard for St. Luke's Episcopal Church in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, the window features a pastoral landscape with an apple blossom tree, symbolic of youth. The sale follows a surge in the Tiffany window market, including a record $12.4 million sale at Sotheby's in November 2024 and recent acquisitions by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum.

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A four-minute bidding war erupted at Christie’s 20th-century evening sale in New York on November 17 over John Singer Sargent’s watercolor *Gondolier’s Siesta* (1902–03). The work sold for $7.4 million with fees, more than double its $3 million high estimate, setting a new auction record for a work on paper by the artist. Another Sargent painting, *Capri* (1878), also performed strongly in the same sale, fetching $11.5 million with fees.

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New York's marquee auction week delivered strong results, with Sotheby's and Christie's posting combined sales of nearly $2 billion. Sotheby's achieved a record $706 million evening at its new Breuer Building headquarters, driven by the Leonard Lauder estate sale, while Christie's $690 million 20th-century sale was up 41.9% from last November. Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer* sold for $236.4 million, setting a new auction record for the artist and becoming the most expensive Modern artwork ever sold at auction. Frida Kahlo's *El Sueño (La Cama)* fetched $54.7 million, a record for a work by a woman artist at auction.

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Sotheby's three-part modern art evening auction in New York on Thursday night achieved a total of $304.6 million, a dramatic increase from the $93.1 million equivalent sale last year. The sale featured 69 lots, with three withdrawn and none bought in, resulting in a 95% sell-through rate. Top lots included Vincent van Gogh's still life "Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre" (1887), which sold for $62.7 million with premium to private advisor Patti Wong, and a work by Frida Kahlo. Third-party guarantees covered 55% of the presale low estimate, but bidding remained competitive throughout.

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A rare Rembrandt counterproof print, "The Goldweigher" (1639), was discovered in a Victorian chest in the Norfolk studio of the late theater designer Alan Barlow. His son, Edward Barlow, found the print while sorting through the studio and initially assumed it was a common reproduction. After examination by Cheffins auction house, it was identified as an original preparatory print, with reversed orientation, a Strasbourg lily watermark, and black chalk lines indicating Rembrandt's hand. It will be auctioned on December 3 with an estimate of £10,000–£20,000.

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Last week's New York marquee auctions saw record-breaking sales and billions of dollars in transactions, providing a much-needed boost of confidence after nearly three years of market contraction. The article reviews top sales and notable flops from the week, analyzing how these results are shaping the current market outlook.

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Frida Kahlo's painting *El sueño (La cama)* (1940) sold at Sotheby's New York for $54.7 million on Thursday night, setting a new auction record for any artwork by a female artist. The sale, which lasted under five minutes, exceeded the previous record held by Georgia O'Keeffe's *Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1* ($44.4 million in 2014). The painting was backed by an irrevocable bid and came from the collection of Selma Ertegun, offered as part of a Surrealist group titled "Exquisite Corpus." Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby's head of Latin American art, placed the winning bid on behalf of a client.

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On Thursday night, Sotheby’s held a three-part sale of Impressionist, Modern, and Surrealist art at the Breuer Building in New York, generating $304.6 million against a cumulative estimate of $218.8 million to $301.2 million. The smallest sale, 13 lots from the collection of Cindy and Jay Pritzker, achieved a “white glove” result with $109.5 million, led by Vincent van Gogh’s *Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes)* (1887) which sold for $62.7 million. The Surrealist offering, “Exquisite Corpus,” from the collection of Nesuhi and Selma Ertegun, featured Frida Kahlo’s *El sueño (La cama)* (1940) which set a record for the artist at $54.7 million, becoming the most expensive work by a woman artist at auction (nominal price).

the push to preserve nina simones childhood home just got a 6 million boost thanks to venus williams and adam pendleton 2307161

The childhood home of legendary singer and activist Nina Simone in Tryon, North Carolina, has been fully restored after nine years of effort by an artist coalition led by Adam Pendleton, alongside Julie Mehretu, Rashid Johnson, and Ellen Gallagher. The restoration, completed with a $6 million boost from a charity auction and gala co-hosted by tennis star Venus Williams and Pace Gallery, preserved the 650-square-foot clapboard house to its 1933–1937 condition, including historically accurate materials, an ADA ramp, geothermal climate control, and a century-old magnolia tree named “Sweetie Mae.” The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announced the completion, and the property remains closed to the public while community programming and ethical cultural tourism are being planned.

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Phillips’s Modern and Contemporary art evening sale in New York on Wednesday achieved $67.3 million, a 24.4% increase over last year’s total but far below the $154.6 million record set in 2023. The 33-lot sale landed at the top end of its pre-sale estimate, with Francis Bacon’s *Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer* (1967) selling for $16 million as the top lot. Notably, the auction included dinosaur bones for the first time—a juvenile triceratops skeleton nicknamed Cera—which proved a lucrative draw, while a painting by rising British artist Jadé Fadojutimi and a gold nugget called “The Thunderbolt” both failed to sell. Only one new artist record was set, for Firelei Báez at $645,000.

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Christie’s fall auction season in New York opened with a robust evening sale of 20th-century art on Monday night at Rockefeller Center, achieving a total of $690 million after fees. The sale featured an 18-lot offering from the private collection of Robert and Patricia Weis, followed by the main 20th-century auction. The top lot was Mark Rothko’s *No. 31 (Yellow Stripe)* (1958), which sold for $62 million, while Claude Monet’s *Nymphéas* (1907) brought $45.5 million. The sale had a 95 percent sell-through rate, with 55 of 80 lots guaranteed, and strong in-person bidding provided a boost of market confidence after months of art fair cancellations and gallery closures.

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An early Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, *Crowns (Peso Neto)* (1981), sold for $48.3 million at Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale on Tuesday night, exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $35–45 million. The work, making its auction debut, was created when Basquiat was 21 and features his signature motifs of crowns, black faces, and cartographic lines. Bidding lasted five minutes, with Sotheby’s chairman for China Jen Hua winning on behalf of a phone client. The painting had been held in three private collections over four decades and was previously exhibited at Basquiat’s first solo show at Annina Nosei, documenta 7, the Whitney Museum, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton.