A gold toilet and the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction boost the New York market

Sotheby's New York held a landmark auction evening on November 18, 2025, featuring two headline-grabbing lots: Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' (1914-16), which sold for $236.4 million, becoming the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction, and Maurizio Cattelan's solid-gold toilet 'America', which sold for a disappointing $12.1 million after a single bid. The Klimt came from the collection of the late cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, whose two-night auction total reached $527.5 million. The toilet, previously owned by investor Steve Cohen, had been commissioned when gold prices were far lower, ensuring the seller a profit regardless of the modest bidding.

Gustav Klimt portrait sale breaks modern art record

Gustav Klimt's portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold for $236 million (£180 million) at Sotheby's in New York, setting a new record for the most expensive work of modern art ever sold at auction. The painting, completed between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of Klimt's most important patrons and was part of the collection of the late cosmetics billionaire Leonard Lauder, who had purchased it in 1985. The sale took place during Sotheby's first evening sale at its new Manhattan headquarters, with bidding starting at $130 million and narrowing to two contenders before the hammer fell at $236 million.

This month’s New York auctions could bring up to $2.3bn

New York's leading auction houses, including Sotheby's and Christie's, expect to generate between $1.7bn and $2.3bn during their November sales, driven by major consignments such as 55 works from the estate of Leonard Lauder and 37 works from the collection of Jay and Cindy Pritzker. Sotheby's, which has moved its headquarters into the former Whitney Museum's Breuer Building, leads the season with estimated sales of $863m to $1.175bn, featuring Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (estimated at $150m) and Frida Kahlo's El Sueño (La Cama) (estimated at $40m-$60m).

Cattelan's famous gold toilet goes up for auction: America for sale at Sotheby's

Maurizio Cattelan's iconic 2016 gold toilet sculpture, 'America,' will be auctioned at Sotheby's on November 18, 2025, during The Now and Contemporary evening auction. The starting bid will be tied to the fluctuating gold market price, currently around $10 million based on its 101.2 kg weight, and Sotheby's will accept cryptocurrency as payment. The work, a fully functional toilet made of 18-karat gold, was famously installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, where over 100,000 visitors used it, and was later stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019. This is the only surviving version of the two originally made.

Evelyn Lin to Lead Sotheby’s Asia Modern and Contemporary Art, After Pace Hong Kong Shutters

Evelyn Lin is returning to Sotheby’s as chairman of Modern and contemporary art, Asia, starting November 3, after a one-year stint at Pace gallery. She will help lead the inaugural marquee sale at Sotheby’s new global headquarters in New York’s Breuer Building. The appointment follows the departure of Elaine Holt and the closure of Pace’s Hong Kong space, which will not renew its lease at H Queen’s after its current exhibition closes on October 18.

Residencies, Exhibitions, and Events: Here are the Programs for the New Società delle Api Foundation in Rome

Residenze, mostre ed eventi. Ecco i programmi della nuova fondazione Società delle Api che ha aperto a Roma

The Società delle Api foundation, established by collector Silvia Fiorucci in 2018, has officially inaugurated its new permanent headquarters in Rome on Via Gregoriana. The move marks a strategic shift for the organization, which previously operated across a decentralized network of locations in Monaco, France, and Greece. The 2026-2027 program focuses on artistic production as a shared process, featuring residencies and exhibitions by artists such as Pol Taburet, Chiara Camoni, and Francis Offman, alongside multidisciplinary public programs covering poetry and architecture.

David Klein Gallery opens new Ferndale headquarters with grand opening celebration

David Klein Gallery, a prominent contemporary art space in Michigan, is relocating to a new 3,000-square-foot headquarters at 678 Livernois Ave. in Ferndale. The move consolidates its previous Birmingham and Detroit operations into a renovated warehouse with natural lighting and dedicated parking. A grand opening celebration is scheduled for July 11-12, 2025, featuring an evening reception with wine and music, followed by an open house and artist talk. The inaugural exhibition will showcase new works by Ferndale-based artist Susan Goethel Campbell and Detroit-based ceramicist Ebitenyefa Baralaye, with both shows running through August 23.

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Artnet News and the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA) recently launched "Hardwiring Change," an inaugural survey investigating structural barriers for women in the art industry. The report, unveiled at Deutsche Bank’s London headquarters, reveals significant gender disparities in pay and leadership, particularly within larger organizations. Key industry figures, including gallerist Sadie Coles and Bonhams UK Managing Director India Phillips, discussed the data, which shows that over 93% of respondents feel family planning has impacted their professional decisions.

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Artist, designer, architect, and Olympian skateboarder Alexis Sablone has been inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame as part of its Class of 2026, announced on January 15. The 18 inductees were selected for shaping skateboarding culture and global impact, with the ceremony set for May 15 at Vans Headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. Sablone is known to the art world for skateboarding down the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's spiral ramp in 2023 to promote her first sneaker design for Converse, and for creating skateable public art like 'Lady in the Square' in Sweden and 'Candy Courts' in New Jersey.

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Christie's will auction a collection of Tiffany Studios glassworks on December 12 at its Rockefeller Center headquarters, led by works from the collection of literary agent Albert Zuckerman. The star lot is the landscape window "Birches and Irises" (estimate $400,000–$600,000), alongside a daffodil chandelier ($300,000–$500,000) and a tulip floor lamp ($100,000–$150,000). The sale also includes pieces from other private collections, such as a rare landscape floor lamp estimated at $500,000–$700,000.

cia kryptos sculpture code auction 2677451

An anonymous bidder has won the solution to the final unsolved puzzle of Kryptos, a famous encrypted sculpture at CIA headquarters in Virginia, for $962,500 in an online auction by R.R. Auction. The artist, Jim Sanborn, offered the handwritten code for the fourth message (K4) along with other unpublished items and a prototype, far exceeding the presale estimate of $300,000–$500,000. The sale came after the solution was accidentally leaked to journalists Jarett Kobek and Richard Byrne, who discovered the plaintext in Sanborn's papers at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, though they have agreed not to release it.

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A new documentary titled *Secret Mall Apartment*, directed by Jeremy Workman and produced by Jesse Eisenberg, tells the true story of eight artists who secretly built and lived in a hidden apartment inside the Providence Place mall in Providence, Rhode Island, for four years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Led by Michael Townsend, the group—including Adriana Valdez Young, Andrew Oesch, Jay Zehngebot, Colin Bliss, James Mercer, Greta Scheing, and Emily Ustach—transformed a forgotten dead zone of the corporate complex into a living space and art collective headquarters, calling the project "Malllife." The film features never-before-identified participants and footage of their discovery by mall authorities.

CARTIER FOUNDATION. A THIN LINE BETWEEN EXTRACTIVISM AND CULTURAL RECLAMATION

FUNDACIÓN CARTIER. UNA DELGADA LÍNEA ENTRE EXTRACTIVISMO Y REIVINDICACIÓN CULTURAL

The Cartier Foundation inaugurated its new Paris headquarters on October 25 with the exhibition "Exposition Générale." The curatorial approach and, most notably, the labyrinthine architectural design by Jean Nouvel have drawn criticism from the specialized press, described as disappointing and patchwork. The new space, a dense black cube in central Paris, represents a radical departure from the foundation's previous luminous, glass-walled hall, forcing a complete rethinking of how to present its 40-year collection.

art ruinart sam falls art basel miami beach

Champagne house Ruinart has commissioned Los Angeles-based artist Sam Falls to create a two-part installation for its Conversations with Nature series at Art Basel Miami Beach. Falls, who grew up in Vermont, used organic materials from Ruinart's Taissy vineyard in France's Champagne region as tools, pigments, and stencils on canvas, with the composition partly inspired by the stained-glass windows of Reims Cathedral. The installation transforms the Ruinart Plaza Bar and Collectors Lounge at the Miami Beach Convention Center, on view through December 7.

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s New Art Island Made a Sunny Splash in a Rainy Venice Vernissage Week

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, an ARTnews Top 200 collector, inaugurated a new art site on the island of San Giacomo in Venice’s Northern Lagoon during the rainy preview week of the Biennale. The island, purchased in 2018, features two Napoleonic-era powder magazines transformed into exhibition spaces: one hosting the group show “Don’t have hope, be hope!” from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, and the other presenting “Fanfare/Lament,” a solo exhibition by Matt Copson curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. The site also includes permanent installations by artists such as Claire Fontaine, Mario Garcia Torres, Hugh Hayden, Goshka Macuga, Pamela Rosenkranz, and Thomas Schütte, and will serve as a venue for exhibitions, performances, and residencies.

Malaysia Showcases Recovered 1MDB Artworks, From Picasso to Miró

Four artworks recovered from the 1MDB scandal—by Picasso, Miró, Balthus, and Maurice Utrillo—have gone on public display for the first time at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission headquarters in Putrajaya. The paintings were repatriated from New York after being traced through Sotheby’s and shipped back to Malaysia on April 14. They are part of a broader art trail linked to the massive financial fraud, with Malaysian officials framing the display as an act of restitution rather than an art event.

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Christie’s has unveiled a new auctioneer’s rostrum designed by Jony Ive and his design collective, LoveFrom. The sleek, oak-wood platform replaces the traditional design originally created by Thomas Chippendale in the 18th century, which had been the standard for the auction house for over 260 years. Crafted from French oak, the new rostrum features a contemporary rounded aesthetic and was engineered specifically to enhance the acoustic resonance of the auctioneer's gavel.

rediscovered harry bertoia sculpture gm global headquarters 1234768788

A long-lost 1970 Harry Bertoia hanging sculpture, commissioned for a mall in Flint, Michigan, has been restored and installed in the atrium of General Motors’ new global headquarters in Detroit. The 26-foot-tall work, made of brazed steel rods in Bertoia's signature "sunlit straw" technique, was discovered in 2017 in the basement of a demolished mall, damaged and covered in dust. The city of Southfield purchased it, and after extensive restoration, it now hangs in GM’s Hudson’s Detroit building.

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Sotheby's will hold its second auction in Saudi Arabia, titled "Origins II," on January 31 in Diriyah, following its first auction in the kingdom in February 2024. The inaugural sale, also called "Origins," achieved $17.3 million within pre-sale estimates but had a 65.8% sell-through rate, with 40 of 117 lots unsold, particularly jewelry and handbags. The upcoming auction will focus exclusively on fine art, featuring over 70 works by international and Middle Eastern artists, including Anish Kapoor, Andy Warhol, Mohammed Al Saleem, Mahmoud Sabri, and Samia Halaby. The sale is scheduled just before the inaugural Art Basel Qatar.

lalanne hippopotame bar 31m sothebys record 1234766082

François-Xavier Lalanne’s copper sculpture-bar 'Hippopotame Bar' sold for $31.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York, more than tripling its $7–10 million estimate after a 26-minute bidding war among seven bidders. The work, commissioned in 1976 by patron Anne Schlumberger and unique in its copper execution, set a new auction record for the artist and became the most expensive work of design ever sold at auction. The sale capped a year of strong performance for Lalanne’s hybrid animal-furniture works, which have consistently outperformed expectations even in a tougher art market.

triceratops gros delettrez dinosaur sale 2718137

Parisian auction house Gros and Delettrez is offering a 66 million-year-old Triceratops prorsus skull on December 11, with an estimate of €300,000–€500,000 ($345,615–$576,025). The specimen, which surfaced from Wyoming's Lance Formation, is exceptionally complete with over 70 percent of its original bones and all three original horns intact. This marks the auction house's first dinosaur offering and will christen its new Rive Gauche headquarters, with the skull going on view on December 9 alongside works by Pablo Picasso and Pierre Soulages.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto)To Star in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1981 painting *Crowns (Peso Neto)* will headline Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale this November, carrying an estimate of $35–45 million—the highest ever for a Basquiat work from that year. The painting, never before offered at auction, debuted at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1982 and was later shown at documenta 7. It will be publicly exhibited in London, Paris, and New York before the sale, which coincides with the opening of Sotheby's new global headquarters in the former Whitney Museum's Breuer Building.

Venice, the island of San Giacomo becomes the new home of the Sandretto Foundation

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opens a new headquarters on the island of San Giacomo in the northern lagoon of Venice on May 7, 2026. The project combines contemporary art, historic rehabilitation, environmental sustainability, and research, featuring exhibitions, permanent installations, and public programs. The island was purchased in 2018 by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Agostino Re Rebaudengo from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and transformed into a center for cultural production and ecological experimentation, with free admission and universal accessibility.

‘The pictures are evil!’ The great art-quake of 1910

The article reviews David Boyd Haycock's slim new book 'Art-Quake, 1910,' which examines the explosive 1910 exhibition 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists' at London's Grafton Galleries. The show introduced British audiences to revolutionary artists like Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Picasso, provoking outrage from critics and the public, who called the works 'evil,' 'hysterical,' and a threat to civilization. The book is part of a series from Old Street publishing that also includes titles on the Degenerate Art exhibition and the Cultural Revolution.

Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space Art and Science Symposium

A symposium titled "Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space Art and Science Symposium" will take place at the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) headquarters in Burlington House, London, celebrating the major exhibition "Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space" at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in Bristol (24 January–19 April 2026). Curated by visual artist Ione Parkin RWA, the exhibition features over 30 contemporary artists alongside loan items from public collections, all inspired by astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics, and space exploration. The symposium includes talks by astronomers, archivists, and exhibiting artists, with a catalogue published by Sansom & Company featuring contributions from Professor Chris Lintott, Professor Amaury Triaud, Dr Sian Prosser, and Ione Parkin RWA.

Two more mega museums open in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi has opened two new mega museums on Saadiyat Island: the Zayed National Museum (ZNM) and the Natural History Museum, coinciding with the country's 54th National Day. The ZNM, one of five original institutions planned for the Saadiyat Cultural District in 2007, tells the story of the UAE from ancient civilizations to the present, featuring a reconstructed Bronze Age sailing ship and over 1,500 archaeological objects. The openings follow news that Frieze Abu Dhabi will launch next year and that Sotheby's will hold its first auctions in the emirate, with Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund ADQ now holding a minority stake in the auction house.

Adrián Villar Rojas's new sculpture explores 'existential anxieties'

Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas unveiled a new untitled sculpture in Le Brassus, Switzerland, co-commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary and the Aspen Art Museum. The bronze Triceratops skull, part of his series *The Language of the Enemy*, features a rendering of the Venus of Lespugue emerging from one horn and explores themes of communication, conflict, and prehistoric art. The work will travel to the Aspen Art Museum next spring for a solo exhibition.

The Top 10 Exhibitions to See Around the World This November

This article presents a curated list of the top 10 exhibitions to see around the world in November, highlighting key shows such as 'Project a Black Planet' at MACBA, which explores Pan-Africanism through art and culture, Sylvie Fleury's installation 'She-Devils On Wheels Headquarters' in New York, and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's survey at Jameel Arts Centre. Other featured exhibitions include Karolina Jabłońska's paintings of pickled beets and severed limbs, among others, each offering unique perspectives on identity, gender, and mortality.

$45 million Basquiat painting heads to auction for the first time.

Sotheby's will auction Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting *Crowns (Peso Neto)* (1981) in its contemporary evening sale in New York this November, with an estimate of $35–$45 million—the highest ever for a Basquiat work from 1981. The painting, making its auction debut, was featured in Basquiat's breakthrough solo show at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1982 and later exhibited at documenta 7 in 1983 and the artist's retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2018. It will tour London and Paris before being presented at Sotheby's new New York headquarters in the historic Breuer building.

Sotheby’s to sell painting from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first solo show

Sotheby's will offer Jean-Michel Basquiat's early painting *Crowns (Peso Neto)* (1981) as the top lot in its Contemporary Evening Sale on 18 November, held at the auction house's new headquarters in the Breuer Building. The work, estimated at $35–40 million, was created in the basement of dealer Annina Nosei's gallery and featured in Basquiat's first solo show in 1982, marking a pivotal moment in his rise from street artist to market star. It comes from a European private collection and has never been auctioned before.