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The VIP opening of Frieze Los Angeles at Santa Monica Airport saw a surge of high-value transactions and heavy foot traffic from both local and international collectors. Major galleries reported multi-million dollar sales within the first few hours, including a $2.8 million work by Njideka Akunyili Crosby at David Zwirner and a sold-out booth of Conny Maier paintings at Hauser & Wirth. Dealers described the atmosphere as a "frenzy," noting that sales figures in some cases already tripled their performance at previous major fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach.

frieze los angeles city guide 2609795

Frieze Los Angeles returns to a city landscape significantly altered by both commercial development and recent environmental tragedy. While blue-chip galleries like David Zwirner, Marian Goodman, and Lisson have established new strongholds in districts like Melrose Hill and Hollywood, the local community is simultaneously reeling from devastating January wildfires that displaced numerous artists and collectors. This guide provides a strategic roadmap for navigating the sprawling city's geography, highlighting key exhibitions such as Bruce Nauman at Marian Goodman and a 90-artist benefit show for fire victims.

ADAA Art Show 2016 Review

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The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) kicked off Armory Week with its 2016 edition of The Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory. The fair is characterized by a high concentration of solo-artist presentations, featuring a diverse range of works including Milton Avery's paintings, Jasmin Sian's intricate paper deli bags, and Deborah Butterfield's bronze horse sculptures. Notable highlights include Maria Elena González’s player piano rolls based on birch bark patterns and a strong showing of female artists like Gillian Wearing and Mary Bauermeister.

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A nationwide general strike, called for Friday, January 30, 2026, in protest of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis, has prompted numerous art galleries and organizations to close their doors. Major commercial galleries like Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace Gallery, alongside institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Drawing Center, are participating in the shutdown.

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A significant number of New York art galleries, including major players like Pace Gallery, David Zwirner, and Marian Goodman, will close on January 30 to join a nationwide general strike protesting expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. The strike is a response to allegations of federal overreach, including the use of deadly force against protestors and the detention of Native Americans, which have fueled widespread outrage.

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The Asia-Pacific art scene saw significant activity across multiple sectors. Art SG reported increased attendance and sales, while the SAM Art SG Fund acquired works for the Singapore Art Museum. JD.com announced plans for a major new museum in Shenzhen, and several appointments and award winners were named across the region. Auction houses Bonhams Hong Kong and Sotheby's Singapore posted strong sales results, with the latter setting new artist records.

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Seyni Awa Camara, a Diola sculptor from Bignona, Senegal, known for her totemic clay sculptures of stacked human bodies, has died. Her work, steeped in spirituality and inspired by a ram's horn she called a 'genie,' gained international recognition after being discovered by anthropologist Michèle Odeyé-Finzi and introduced to Europe by gallerist André Magnin. Despite her global following—including fans like Pharrell Williams and Louise Bourgeois—Camara remained largely unknown in her home country, relying on foreign buyers to sustain her practice.

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This week's art industry roundup covers a postponement, financial losses, legal disputes, and leadership changes. New Jersey's Art Fair 14C has been postponed to May 2027, with organizers citing capacity issues unrelated to market conditions. Bonhams reported a 90% pre-tax loss jump to £213 million in 2024 due to impairment charges. A rediscovered Watteau drawing will be auctioned at Christie's Paris, and personal items of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are featured in Christie's 'American Collector' sales. In galleries, Amy Sillman left Gladstone for David Zwirner, Trevor Paglen joined Jessica Silverman, and Maya Hewitt joined Theta. The Louvre partially closed after a staff strike demanding director Laurence des Cars' resignation and reassessment of a renovation plan. Belgium's plan to dismantle Antwerp's M HKA museum has sparked resignations and backlash. New appointments include Will Cary as COO of the Barnes Foundation and Patton Hindle as director of arts at the Knight Foundation. MATHAF museum in Doha announced a campus expansion by architect Lina Ghotmeh. Legal disputes emerged between Gian Enzo Sperone and Angela Westwater over the shuttered Sperone Westwater gallery.

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Artnet News highlights 11 must-see gallery shows during Armory Art Week in New York City, running from September 5 to October 26, 2024. Featured exhibitions include Gina Beavers' 'Divine Consumer' at Marianne Boesky Gallery, where she presents semi-sculptural relief paintings inspired by internet blankets and towels; Jenny Holzer's 'Words' at Sprüth Magers, showcasing her text-based works from the 1980s to present, including a new AI-generated LED installation; 'Radical Artists of the 1960s/1970s: Between Geometry and Gesture' at David Nolan, featuring works by Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman, and others; and Stephen Thorpe's 'Dream House' at Dimin, with oil paintings of interiors merging into dreamlike landscapes.

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This week's art industry roundup covers major sales and developments across art fairs, auction houses, and galleries. At Art Basel Miami Beach, strong sales were reported, including an $18 million Warhol at Lévy Gorvy Dayan's booth, while NADA Miami featured around 140 exhibitors. The Art Dealers Association of America announced a new ADAA Fair at the Park Avenue Armory for November 2025, and Design Miami will expand to Dubai in 2027 with Alserkal. In auctions, Fabergé's 'Winter Egg' sold for $30.2 million at Christie's London, becoming the most expensive Fabergé egg ever auctioned, and Rembrandt's etching 'Arnout Tholinx, Inspector' set a world record for an Old Master print at $4.1 million. A rare 15th-century triptych also sold at Sotheby's for $7.6 million. Gallery news includes the formation of Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries, Hauser and Wirth's acquisition of a Palermo palazzo, and several artist representation changes.

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NADA Miami 2025 opened at Ice Palace Studios with strong early sales and a buoyant mood, as crowds streamed through the aisles on Tuesday morning. Dealers reported brisk business, with Polina Berlin selling multiple works by artists including Tamo Jugeli, Parmen Daushvili, and Casey Bolding, while Charles Moffett sold ten paintings by Kenny Rivero. The fair, hosting around 140 exhibitors, saw participation from galleries like Deanna Evans Projects, Alice Amati, and Gladwell Projects, with many dealers expressing relief and confidence after a multi-year contraction in the art market.

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Southern Guild, the prominent Cape Town gallery co-founded by Trevyn and Julian McGowan, is opening a new outpost in a restored 19th-century Tribeca townhouse on Leonard Street in New York. The expansion comes as the gallery closes its Los Angeles space, a move the McGowans describe as instinctive rather than strategic. The new space, with its sixteen-foot ceilings and exposed brick, represents a leap of faith amid a challenging 2025 art market marked by gallery closures and industry retrenchment.

who was andrew crispo 2720889

Artnet News reports that David Hockney's 1968 double portrait *Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy* sold for $44.3 million at Christie's on November 17, becoming the artist's third-most expensive work at auction. The painting had previously failed to sell at Sotheby's in 1985, bought in at $570,000. Artnet's reporting revealed that the Christie's catalogue omitted the name of Andrew Crispo, a once-prominent New York dealer, from the painting's provenance. The article details Crispo's meteoric rise from a troubled youth in Philadelphia to a savvy art dealer who championed American Modernism, his important clients including Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, and his dramatic fall due to tax fraud, a prison sentence, and the IRS seizure of his inventory.

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Artnet Pro has published a roundup of nine artists whose markets it appraised in depth during 2025, including Dorothea Tanning, Gertrude Abercrombie, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Jack Whitten, and Olga de Amaral. The article highlights key market developments for each artist, such as record auction prices, growing international recognition, and shifts in collector interest, drawing on data and expert commentary from dealers, auction-house specialists, and advisors.

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The International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) is expanding its annual print fair to include drawings dealers, rebranding as the International Fine Prints & Drawings Association. The 2026 edition, running April 9–12 at New York's Park Avenue Armory, will feature 77 exhibitors, including new drawings-focused member Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art and returning dealers like Crown Point Press and Hauser & Wirth. The change follows a membership vote and legal restructuring, driven by record attendance of over 21,000 visitors at the 2025 fair and a 57% jump in VIP registrations, fueled by Gen Z and millennial collectors.

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Artnet News' Wet Paint column reports on a special auction held at Clemente Bar in New York, where Fair Warning—an app founded by former Christie's executive Loic Gouzer—sold an Andy Warhol portrait of Brigitte Bardot for $14.5 million ($16.7 million with fees). The event, hosted by Gouzer and curator-advisor Lolita Cros, featured former Christie's auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen and attracted a crowd of high-net-worth individuals, including Greek shipping magnate George Economou, dealer David Mugrabi, artist Tony Shafrazi, and other art-world figures. Bidding started at $7 million, and the winning bid came from an anonymous phone bidder.

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Art Basel Hong Kong has announced its exhibitor list for the 2026 edition, featuring 240 galleries from 42 countries and territories, roughly the same size as last year's 242 galleries. The fair runs March 27–29 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, with preview days on March 25–26. New additions include 32 first-time exhibitors from Australia, Japan, Turkey, France, Germany, and the US, while 33 galleries from the previous edition are absent—some due to closures (Blum, Clearing, Kasmin) or acquisitions (Millan bought by Almeida & Dale). A new sector called Echoes will showcase works created in the last five years, and the Encounters sector will be curated by a team led by Mami Kataoka. Media artist Ellen Pau will oversee the film program for the first time, and Shahzia Sikander has been commissioned to create a public artwork for the M+ Museum facade.

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This week's art industry roundup covers major developments across auctions, galleries, and art fairs. Highlights include $1.6 billion in art heading to auction at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips in New York; the sale of the 'Mellon Blue' diamond for $25 million at Christie's Geneva; and the Vanderbilt jewels achieving $4.2 million at Phillips Geneva. In galleries, Sperone Westwater faces possible closure or transformation after 50 years, while Upsilon Gallery opens a new space in Milan. The IFPDA Print Fair expands to include drawings and rebrands, and Abu Dhabi Art will relaunch as Frieze Abu Dhabi next year. The Gallery Climate Coalition reports significant emissions reductions among its members.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute announced its spring 2026 blockbuster exhibition, "Costume Art," which will explore the relationship between fashion and the dressed body across visual art history. Curator Andrew Bolton explained that the show aims to correct the long-held belief that fashion must be disembodied to be considered art. The exhibition will inaugurate the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast galleries and will pair historical and contemporary garments with paintings, drawings, and objects spanning 5,000 years from the Met's other curatorial departments.

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Gagosian has partnered with filmmaker Wes Anderson to recreate the New York studio of Joseph Cornell at its Paris gallery space on 9 rue de Castiglione. The exhibition, curated by Jasper Sharp and titled “The House of Utopia Parkway,” will run from December 16 to March 14, 2026, transforming the gallery into a tableau that blends a time capsule with a life-size shadow box. It marks the first solo presentation of Cornell’s work in Paris in over four decades, featuring iconic glass-fronted “shadow boxes” such as *Pharmacy* (1943), *Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy)* (circa 1950), and *A Dressing Room for Gille* (1939).

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On Sunday at around 9:30 a.m., robbers broke into the Louvre's Apollo Gallery using a cherry picker and an angle grinder, stealing nine pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $102 million in less than eight minutes. ARTnews consulted security experts who noted that the theft exploited systemic vulnerabilities, pointing to a pattern of recent museum heists including the Natural History Museum in Paris, the Drents Museum in the Netherlands, and the Dresden crown jewels theft in Germany. The Louvre had previously faced staff walkouts over inadequate security staffing, and director Laurence des Cars has requested a police station be installed at the museum.

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On September 22, the Centre Pompidou in Paris closed for a five-year renovation, marking the occasion with a daytime fireworks display titled “The Last Carnival” by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. Organized with White Cube gallery and set during Art Basel Paris, the three-act gunpowder spectacle—The Banquet, The Dawn of AI, and The Last Carnival—was conceived using Cai’s custom AI model, cAI™, and turned the museum’s façade into a monumental painting.

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Artist Robert Longo presents a new exhibition at Pace Gallery, featuring his signature large-scale, hyperrealistic drawings that address themes of brutality, conflict, and protest. The show is a revised version of a 2023 exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, with works based on media images of events such as the war in Ukraine, Black Lives Matter protests, and migrant crises. The article critically examines several pieces, including "Untitled (Ferguson Police, August 13, 2014)" and "Untitled (Refugees at Mediterranean Sea, Sub-Saharan Migrants, July 25, 2017)," arguing that Longo's manipulations of source photographs result in melodramatic and dishonest representations.

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Y.Z. Kami's painting *Messenger (The Forrest)*, priced around $300,000, is currently on offer at Gagosian's Beverly Hills gallery. The work is part of a series the artist began in 2022 based on photographs taken during travels in India. Kami, born in Tehran in 1956 and based in the U.S. since 1984, is known for large-scale portraits in oil on linen. The painting is featured in Kami's exhibition 'The Domes' at Gagosian, which runs through August 8 and includes three Messenger paintings, one already sold. The show marks his first West Coast solo exhibition since 2016–17 at LACMA.

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Sotheby's Asia faces another leadership shake-up as Elaine Holt departs her role as chairman of modern and contemporary art in Asia after just one year. Jasmine Prasetio, Sotheby's managing director for Southeast Asia, will relocate to Hong Kong to serve as interim chair. Meanwhile, European galleries Meyer Riegger and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff are partnering to open a new space in Seoul called Meyer Riegger Wolff, led by Gala Musi, with an inaugural show during Frieze Seoul. Design Miami will make its Asian debut in Seoul, and London-based artist Firenze Lai has joined White Cube's roster. In Taiwan, the Taichung Green Museumbrary, designed by SANAA, is set to open in December, and the Gwangju Biennale Foundation has appointed Youn Bummo as its new president.

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Artnet News published part two of a two-part series featuring advice from 11 experienced collectors. Among them are comedian Cheech Marin, who began collecting Chicano art in the 1980s and opened the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California in 2022, and Kiran Nadar, founder of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in India, who with her husband has amassed over 15,000 works. Marin emphasizes trusting instincts, building relationships with artists, seeing art in person, and warns about storage space becoming an addiction. Nadar advises staying open and curious, and not hesitating to explore the unfamiliar.

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This week's art industry news covers major auction results, gallery changes, and restitution developments. At Christie's Old Masters evening sale in London, Canaletto's "The Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day" set a new auction record for the artist at £31.9 million ($43.9 million), leading the sale to a total of £60.8 million. Sotheby's Old Masters evening sale brought in £14.5 million, with three new records including Diana de Rosa's "Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist" selling for £317,500. A rare early watercolor by Man Ray, "Nude Playing Musical Instrument" (1913), resurfaced after decades and will be auctioned at Dreweatts. In gallery news, Blum gallery laid off most of its staff and plans to cease brick-and-mortar operations, while Waddington Custot announced a new Paris space, and Company Gallery hired Subhas Kim Kandasamy as executive director. White Cube now represents Firenze Lai, and JD Malat Gallery launched a new initiative for UAE artists. In restitution, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, transferred two Benin works to the Oba of Benin.

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ARTnews sent correspondents Daniel Cassady and George Nelson to cover the social scene at Art Basel, documenting their experiences across three nights of parties, dinners, and cocktail hours. Cassady's journey was marred by travel delays, but he eventually attended a dinner hosted by Thaddaeus Ropac at Safran Zunft, a garden party by Sean Kelly Gallery, and a late-night gathering organized by multiple galleries. Nelson arrived smoothly and joined Cassady for drinks, noting the challenges of street noise and cabbage smells near their Airbnb.

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Artnet News' Wet Paint gossip column presents a selective summer guide for the art world, highlighting key exhibitions and social hotspots. In Manhattan, the Upper East Side offers the Park Avenue Armory's Diane Arbus photo exhibition, the Met's John Singer Sargent show, and the newly opened Frick with its Westmoreland café. Downtown, Bar Oliver in Two Bridges has become an art world haunt, co-created by Olmo and Cy Schnabel. The column also previews themed group shows: "Hope is a dangerous thing" at P.P.O.W. and "CAKE" at Olympia Gallery, featuring edible artworks. Exclusive news reveals the engagement of Lucas Zwirner to Charlotte Lindemann, merging two powerful art-dealing families. Additionally, Sky High Farm in Germantown, New York, is launching a new biennial with works by Anne Imhof, Rudolf Stingel, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

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The largest-ever exhibition of Diane Arbus's work, titled "Constellation," opens today at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Featuring over 450 prints—many previously unpublished—the immersive show debuted at LUMA Arles in 2023 and arrives in the U.S. with its original labyrinthine format. Curated by Matthieu Humery, the exhibition presents Arbus's iconic photographs of marginalized figures, celebrities, and everyday people without chronological or narrative order, emphasizing her equalizing gaze. The prints come from the collection of Maja Hoffmann, who acquired the complete set of printer's proofs from Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized by the Diane Arbus Estate to print from her negatives.