Art Basel’s Parent Company Plans New ‘Ideas Festival’—and More Art Industry News

MCH Group, the parent company of Art Basel, is launching a new global ideas festival called the Futurific Institute in Basel in 2028, backed by billionaires James and Kathryn Murdoch. Art Dubai has postponed its 20th edition due to regional conflict, while several galleries are opening, closing, or changing locations, including Brooke Benington in London and Timothy Taylor in New York. Additionally, Mexico is demanding eBay remove listings for pre-Columbian artifacts, and institutions like the Royal Academy of Arts and MCA Chicago are announcing key leadership changes.

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The Making Their Mark Forum recently convened 350 women in the arts—including artists, curators, and over 20 museum directors—at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. Organized by collector Komal Shah alongside Cecilia Alemani and Loring Randolph, the invitation-only conference coincided with a traveling exhibition of Shah’s collection at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The event featured high-profile speakers like Chelsea Clinton and Ava DuVernay, focusing on dismantling structural gender inequities and celebrating the foundational contributions of women to art history.

The rise and fall of ‘buy-one, give-one’ art sales

A once-common sales tactic in the contemporary art market, known as "buy-one, give-one" or "bogo," has significantly declined. Under this arrangement, collectors gained preferential access to in-demand artists' paintings by agreeing to purchase two works and donating one to a museum. The practice peaked from 2021 to 2023, with institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, acquiring works this way.

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British artist Thomas J Price has unveiled his largest sculpture to date, an 18-foot bronze titled 'A Place Beyond', outside the forthcoming V&A East in London. The monumental work depicts a fictional woman in everyday attire, continuing Price’s practice of using unidealized figures to critique the traditions of classical sculpture and challenge viewer biases. The installation serves as a public precursor to the museum's official opening on April 18, 2025.

Frida Kahlo: Making of an Icon

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has launched a major exhibition titled "Frida Kahlo: Making of an Icon," which explores the artist's transformation from a relatively unknown figure during her lifetime into a global cultural phenomenon. Curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez, the show features over 200 objects related to "Frida mania" alongside works by 80 contemporary artists who have been influenced by her legacy. The exhibition traces her life from her childhood in Mexico City and her tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera to her emergence as a symbol for various social movements.

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The Gochman Family Collection, a significant patron of Indigenous art, has announced plans to open two new exhibition spaces totaling 10,000 square feet in Katonah, New York. Scheduled to debut this fall, the venues will showcase selections from a rapidly growing collection of over 750 works by Native artists from the U.S. and Canada. To lead this expansion, the organization has appointed Laura Phipps, a former associate curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as its inaugural director.

Cosima von Bonin Loewe Paris

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German artist Cosima von Bonin collaborated with Loewe for its Fall/Winter 2026-2027 womenswear show at the Château de Vincennes during Paris Fashion Week. The artist’s signature plush sculptures, including oversized octopuses and bug-eyed scallops, occupied front-row seats and populated the runway set. Beyond the scenography, von Bonin’s zoomorphic motifs were integrated directly into the collection as jewelry, charms, and minaudières.

Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden

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Hiba Schahbaz is the subject of her first major museum retrospective, "The Garden," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. Curated by Jasmine Wahi, the exhibition features 80 works spanning 15 years, tracing the artist's evolution from traditional Indo-Persian miniature painting in Lahore to her current large-scale practice in Brooklyn. The show highlights her recurring use of the female nude—often a stylized self-portrait—navigating mystical landscapes filled with Sufi poetry, mythical creatures, and art historical references.

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At 92 years old, Puerto Rican artist Carmen De Monteflores has emerged as a breakout star of the 2026 Whitney Biennial. Her inclusion in the prestigious exhibition was facilitated by her daughter, renowned performance artist Andrea Fraser, who urged curators to view her mother's vibrant, shaped canvases that had been sitting in storage for decades. De Monteflores, who studied at the Art Students League and the École de Beaux-Arts, abandoned her painting career in 1969 due to the lack of opportunities for women, eventually becoming a psychologist and novelist.

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Actor Josh Brolin recently appeared on the Felix Podcast to discuss his extensive journey as an art collector, revealing the challenges even Hollywood stars face when navigating the gallery system. Brolin shared anecdotes about being placed at the back of waiting lists for high-demand artists like Danielle Mckinney and the humbling experience of having to prove his sincere passion for works to dealers like Jeffrey Deitch. The conversation highlighted his collection, which includes works by George Condo, Shara Hughes, and Jammie Holmes.

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The gallery Anthony Meier in San Francisco is hosting "Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Garden = Grid = City," the first exhibition of the late artist’s work since her estate began being co-represented by the gallery and von Bartha. The show highlights Solomon’s diverse eight-decade career, moving beyond her famous "supergraphics" to showcase rarely seen paintings and drawings from the 1980s that explore the intersection of city grids and landscape architecture.

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The New York art scene is witnessing a shift in the Tribeca gallery landscape as 1969 Gallery, a fixture known for championing emerging painters, has shuttered its physical space at 39 White Street. Founder Quang Bao confirmed the closure following the building owner's decision to sell the property, noting that he is currently operating from Barcelona with plans to pivot toward collaborations and residencies rather than the traditional gallery model. Meanwhile, the itinerant Ward Gallery continues to gain traction by hosting pop-up symposia at institutions like the International Center for Photography, signaling a broader trend toward real-estate-free dealership.

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A significant trend is emerging in the New York art scene this winter, as a wave of gallery and museum exhibitions highlights contemporary artists engaging deeply with European Old Masters. While some critics dismiss art historical references as "reference-baiting" to boost market value, artists like Émile Brunet and Eleanor Johnson are demonstrating a profound technical and intellectual commitment to these lineages. Their work moves beyond mere pastiche, utilizing traditional materials, Northern Renaissance aesthetics, and Baroque glazing techniques to address modern themes of labor, humanism, and information overload.

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Austrian-born, Netherlands-based performance artist Florentina Holzinger has joined the roster of blue-chip gallery Thaddaeus Ropac. This move comes just months before she is set to unveil her project "Seaworld Venice" for the Austrian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, marking a significant shift of her boundary-pushing, interdisciplinary practice from the theater and dance worlds into the commercial art gallery system.

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The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University has opened a survey exhibition titled 'Photorealism in Focus.' The show brings together works by more than 30 artists, including early pioneers like Robert Cottingham and Ralph Ladell Goings, as well as artists such as Audrey Flack and Joyce Stillman-Myers, to trace the movement's history from the late 1960s to its contemporary expansions across painting and sculpture.

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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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Artnet News has compiled a list of the spookiest, bloodiest, and most gruesome works in art history to celebrate Halloween. The selection includes Francisco de Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son" (ca. 1820–23), Hermann Nitsch's blood-soaked "Schuttbild" (2013), Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's woodblock print of a samurai drinking from a severed head, and Théodore Géricault's macabre still lifes of body parts. Other entries feature Goya's "The Witches' Flight," Katsushika Hokusai's ghost story print "The Lantern Ghost, Oiwa-San," John Henry Fuseli's "The Nightmare," Vincent van Gogh's "Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette," and Utagawa Kuniyoshi's "Takiyasha The Witch and the Skeleton Spectre."

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Mnuchin Gallery, a blue-chip art gallery on Manhattan's Upper East Side, will close at the end of February after 34 years, following the death of its founder Robert Mnuchin in December at age 91. The gallery, known for museum-quality exhibitions of Modern and postwar art, concluded its final show—a survey of Julian Schnabel's plate paintings—on Saturday. Partner Michael McGinnis said the decision to close was made to end on a high note, honoring Mnuchin's passion and vision.

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The Flemish government in Belgium has reversed its controversial plan to dismantle Antwerp's Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA). The original proposal would have stripped the museum of its status and transferred its permanent collection to another institution in Ghent, but following significant opposition, authorities have agreed to preserve M HKA as a museum with its collection intact.

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Jeffrey Deitch's gallery has apologized for hosting a performance by rapper Lexa Gates that was deemed an unauthorized derivative of performance artist Miles Greenberg's work. Gates's 10-hour piece, 'The Wheel,' involved walking inside a spinning wheel at the gallery to promote her new album, closely echoing Greenberg's 24-hour 2020 work 'Oysterknife,' which was previously screened at the same location. The gallery stated it had rented the space to Gates's record company and was unaware of the event's content.

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Lower Manhattan is getting a new nonprofit art space called Times (styled in lowercase), founded by Summer Guthery and Francesca Sonara. Located on the fourth floor of 151 Lafayette Street above the Museum of Chinese in America, the 3,000-square-foot venue will operate for only three years. Its inaugural exhibition, featuring Danish artist Nina Beier, opens February 21 with a display of melting Cornetto ice cream cones. The space will officially open February 12 with a performance by Latvian choreographer Jana Jacuka. Guthery, previously founding artistic director of Canal Projects, and Sonara, former director of communications at Minnesota Street Project, met as graduate students at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies.

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Nicolas Party's exhibition "Dead Fish" at Karma gallery in Chelsea, New York, features approximately 40 postcard-sized oil-on-copper works and a mural of three dead fish, a departure from his usual large-scale pastel paintings. Only 10 of the works were for sale, priced between $165,000 and $205,000, and all sold quickly. The show includes replicas of his earlier compositions, described as a "retrospective in miniature," with many pieces drawn from his archive and not available for purchase.

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The Winter Show returns to New York's Park Avenue Armory from January 23 to February 1, 2026, blending blue-chip modernism with decorative arts, design, jewelry, and antiques. The fair features a special presentation titled 'Study of a Young Collector,' curated by Patrick Monahan in collaboration with executive director Helen Allen, which imagines the private study of a next-generation collector using works from 11 international dealers exhibiting for the first time. Notable highlights include Jonathan Boos's presentation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's early work 'Wrapped Toy Horse' (1963), priced at $450,000, and a rare copper and gilt mask by Harlem Renaissance artist Sargent Claude Johnson from 1933, priced at $245,000. Boccara Gallery also showcases modern and contemporary tapestries by artists like Man Ray and Alexander Calder.

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This week's art industry roundup covers a flurry of developments across art fairs, auction houses, galleries, and museums. A new boutique fair called Enzo will launch alongside Frieze Los Angeles in an Echo Park warehouse with 10 New York galleries, while Felix Los Angeles returns to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with 50 exhibitors. Art Cologne's revived Palma Mallorca fair announces 88 exhibitors for its April debut. At auction, Christie's London will offer the Vanthournout collection of modernist and Surrealist works, including a Magritte painting estimated at $4.7 million, while Bonhams sells rare Oscar Wilde materials and three Bob Ross paintings. In gallery news, Roland Augustine steps down at Luhring Augustine, Lehmann Maupin opens a London space, and several galleries announce new artist representations. Museums see leadership changes at the Park Avenue Armory and Wrightwood 659, and the Rijksmuseum plans a new sculpture garden.

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The article investigates the rising cost of art shipping, which has become a major issue for the art industry since the Covid-19 pandemic. Industry figures including Fritz Dietl of Dietl logistics, Belgian collector Alain Servais, art advisor Michaela Neumeister de Pury, New York collector Jonathan Travis, dealer Jack Shainman, and OCS Art Services owner Nicole Scuderi describe shipping as a 'necessary evil' and a 'major stumbling block' that affects galleries, collectors, fairs, auction houses, and museums. Costs surged during Covid due to inflation in labor, materials, and insurance, and have not come down, while complications from Brexit, U.S. trade policies, and New York State tax laws have added further layers of expense and confusion.

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The article examines the posthumous market resurgence of painter Robert Colescott, who died in 2009. After his commercial profile faded, Los Angeles dealer Tim Blum and his gallery Blum & Poe began working with the artist's estate in 2017, staging five solo shows and rescuing a disorganized estate with works stored in shipping containers in Arizona. Major auction prices followed, including a record $15.3 million for 'George Washington Carver Crossing The Delaware' in 2021. In 2024, after Blum & Poe closed, Gladstone Gallery took over representation. A current exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum, 'The One-Two Punch: 100 Years of Robert Colescott,' runs through March 29.

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Artnet News reports on the top five most expensive Helen Frankenthaler paintings sold at auction, all from the 1970s and all sold within the past five years. The list includes "Basin" (1979, $4.53M at Christie's New York in May 2025), "Carousel" (1979, $4.74M at Sotheby's New York in 2020), "Circe" (1974, $4.77M at Sotheby's New York in 2022), and "Dream Decision" (1976, $5.89M at Sotheby's New York in 2021), with the top lot yet to be fully detailed. The article highlights Frankenthaler's soak-stain technique, her influence on Color Field painting, and the role of Gagosian Gallery in elevating her market after her death in 2011.

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The article explores the challenge of articulating olfactory experiences in art, focusing on Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas, who has dedicated her career to scent as a medium. Tolaas has collected over 15,000 smell molecules for her SMELL RE_searchLab in Berlin and invented a language called NASALO to describe scents more precisely. The piece also highlights the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf's exhibition "The Secret Power of Scents," which integrates smell into its permanent collection display, and references historical and contemporary artists like Ernesto Neto, Mike Kelley, and Oswaldo Maciá who have used scent in their work.

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Robert Rauschenberg designed the cover for Talking Heads' 1983 album *Speaking in Tongues*, creating a limited-edition LP package with three plastic discs featuring cyan, magenta, and yellow designs that produced a full-color, kinetic composition when overlaid on the spinning record. The project stemmed from a friendship between Rauschenberg and frontman David Byrne, who met after Byrne saw Rauschenberg's photo collages in a New York gallery. Despite production challenges that limited the design to a special edition, the album won a Grammy for best album cover.

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Palm Beach is emerging as a major art destination, bolstered by Miami's growing art scene. The article highlights key cultural attractions including the Norton Museum of Art, which underwent a Norman Foster-designed expansion in 2019 and features Dutch Golden Age masterworks from the Leiden Collection, as well as a growing contemporary collection. Other notable sites include the Flagler Museum (Whitehall), a Gilded Age mansion showcasing historic interiors and a private railcar, and the Bunker Artspace, a private museum founded by collector Beth Rudin DeWoody in a converted toy factory, displaying over 600 works from her collection.