Loïc Gouzer’s Auction Platform Fair Warning to Sell Major Banksy at Tiffany’s Flagship Store

Loïc Gouzer's auction platform Fair Warning will sell Banksy's *Girl and Balloon on Found Landscape* from the 'Crude Oils' series in an invitation-only live auction at Tiffany & Co.'s Fifth Avenue flagship store on May 20. The work, which carries a $13 to $18 million estimate, modifies a thrifted landscape painting with the artist's signature red heart-shaped balloon. It will be publicly viewable in the store before the sale.

10 Shows Around Venice Not to Miss During the Biennale

ARTnews has published a guide to 10 exhibitions in Venice worth seeing during the 2026 Biennale, beyond the central show "In Minor Keys" curated by the late Koyo Kouoh and the national pavilions. Highlights include a major survey of Lee Ufan at the San Marco Art Centre (SMAC Venice), organized by the Dia Art Foundation and curated by Jessica Morgan; "Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince" at Fondazione Prada, curated by Nancy Spector; and "Strange Rules" at Palazzo Diedo, conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, introducing the concept of "Protocol Art." Other venues include the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Pinault Collection, Berggruen Arts & Culture, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and a three-night-only performance at Teatro Goldoni.

Philadelphia Is Rich With Museums and Galleries. ‘Elsewhere’ Aims to Find Out If It Can Support an Art Fair

Philadelphia gallerist Megan Galardi is launching a new art fair called Elsewhere, set to debut June 4–6 at the Yowie Hotel on South Street. The fair will feature 27 exhibitors from cities including London, New York, and Philadelphia, with seven local dealers such as Fleisher/Ollman, Blah Blah Gallery, and Fjord. Galardi, who founded Blah Blah Gallery in 2023 and has participated in small New York fairs like Spring/Break and Future Fair, designed Elsewhere as a boutique, hotel-based event that offers a lower-cost, more intimate alternative to large-scale art fairs.

Anna Zemánková Estate Joins Gladstone Gallery, Sándra Vasquez de la Horra Joins Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and More: Industry Moves for April 29, 2026

The article reports a series of industry moves in the art world as of April 29, 2026. Key developments include Gladstone Gallery taking on the estate of Anna Zemánková, Sándra Vasquez de la Horra joining Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Elijah Wheat Showroom opening a new location in Beacon, New York, and Mariane Ibrahim now representing Leasho Johnson. Additionally, Denniston Hill launches its 2026 residency season with 30 artists, the Minneapolis Institute of Art receives restoration funding from TEFAF, Charlie White is appointed dean of the Sam Fox School, and Jesús Hilario-Reyes and Tichacoco are named inaugural recipients of the Clemente Center’s Van Lier Fellowship. The article also notes a whistleblower claim of $3 million missing from the Palm Springs Art Museum’s investment account, and a New York Times essay by Robin Givhan on Derrick Adams.

Emails Suggest Venice Biennale Organizers Planned for Limited Russian Participation, SF Appoints First Arts and Culture Director, and More: Morning Links for April 28, 2026

Emails between Venice Biennale organizers and the Russian Pavilion commissioner reveal plans for limited Russian participation: the pavilion would open during the vernissage (May 5–8) with live performances, then close to the public after May 9, with multimedia documentation viewable from outside. The messages, dating to June 2025, also show Biennale staff helping Russian artists obtain visas. Organizers insist they complied with European sanctions, which prohibit financial support or direct collaboration with state-backed Russian entities. Separately, San Francisco has appointed Matthew Goudeau as its first executive director of arts and culture, a new role overseeing three public art agencies amid local arts closures.

Dealer Matthew Brown More Than Doubles His Los Angeles Space with Move to Hollywood Media District: ‘I Really Believe in LA’

Los Angeles art dealer Matthew Brown is relocating his gallery to a significantly larger, 13,000-square-foot former warehouse in the Hollywood Media District. The new space, designed by architect Markus Dochantschi, more than doubles his exhibition area and includes offices, viewing rooms, and storage. The inaugural exhibition will feature artist Mimi Lauter, marking her first Los Angeles show in eight years.

Strikes Damage UNESCO Sites in Israel and Iran; Cologne Cathedral to Charge Tourists Entry

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Escalating conflict in the Middle East has resulted in significant damage to UNESCO World Heritage sites in both Israel and Iran. In Tel Aviv, Iranian missile strikes damaged Bauhaus-style buildings in the White City district and the Habima National Theater, while Israeli and US bombings reportedly struck Tehran’s historic Golestan Palace. Meanwhile, the Cologne Cathedral announced it will begin charging tourists an entry fee in July to address a financial crisis, following a trend of European landmarks seeking new revenue streams for monument upkeep.

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Three major artworks from the collection of the late philanthropist and collector Agnes Gund will be offered at Christie's marquee May sales in New York. The lots include Mark Rothko's 'No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)' (estimated around $80 million), Cy Twombly's 1961 'Untitled' (estimated $40-60 million), and Joseph Cornell's 'Untitled (Medici Princess)' (estimated $3-5 million), all being sold on the secondary market for the first time.

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The 2026 Winter Olympics are set to begin in Milan, Italy, with an opening ceremony featuring Mariah Carey at San Siro Stadium. While most events take place across northern Italy, the article provides a guide to Milan's top museums and galleries for art-loving visitors during the three-week games. Highlights include exhibitions at Fondazione Prada (with works by Mona Hatoum and Hito Steyerl), Pirelli HangarBicocca (Nan Goldin's "This Will Not End Well" and Benni Bosetto's "Rebecca"), Pinacoteca di Brera (Italian masterpieces plus Giorgio Armani garments), and Museo del Novecento (sports-themed posters by Armando Testa). Several commercial galleries also feature solo shows by artists such as Emily Sunblad, Claudia Losi, and Jonathan Lyndon Chase.

empress eugenies crown to be restored after louvre heist rembrandt drawing breaks auction record morning links for february 5 2026 1234772357

The Louvre has released images of Empress Eugénie's crown for the first time since it was stolen and crushed during a heist of French crown jewels. Thieves used an angle grinder to cut into a display case, jammed the crown through a narrow opening, and dropped it while fleeing. Restorers, overseen by an expert committee, will repair the mostly intact crown without needing to reconstitute it. In other news, a rare Rembrandt drawing of a lion sold for $17.9 million at Sotheby's, breaking the artist's record for a work on paper, with proceeds benefiting the nonprofit Panthera. Thaddaeus Ropac is expanding to New York with a project space, hiring Emilio Steinberger as senior director. Calls are growing for former French culture minister Jack Lang to resign from the Institut du Monde Arabe over ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The historic Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles reopened with a video art exhibition organized by collector Julia Stoschek and curator Udo Kittelmann.

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Tate Modern's upcoming exhibition "Frida: The Making of an Icon," opening in June, will feature only 36 works by Frida Kahlo, a significant drop from the 50-plus works shown in the museum's last major Kahlo exhibition in 2005. Curators cite the artist's soaring global popularity as a practical obstacle: her paintings have become scarcer, more valuable, and harder to borrow. A key example is Kahlo's 1940 painting "El sueño (La cama)," which sold at Sotheby's New York for $54.7 million last fall, setting a new auction record for a woman artist. Tate is still trying to secure that work for the show, but curator Tobias Ostrander says chances are slim. Notably, Madonna, who lent works in 2005, has declined to loan this time. The exhibition, which premieres at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston before traveling to London, will not be a traditional retrospective but will instead place Kahlo's work within a broader cultural context, including works by over 80 artists she influenced and a section examining "Fridamania" and the mass merchandising of her image.

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John P. Axelrod, a prominent art collector and retired lawyer, was killed in a hit-and-run incident on January 3 in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood while walking his dog. The suspect, William Haney, 42, allegedly drove onto a pedestrian mall and struck Axelrod before fleeing; he has been charged with murder and animal cruelty. Axelrod, 79, was a longtime collector of American painting, African American and Latin American art, and decorative arts, and was listed on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list from 1997 to 2000.

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The article reflects on the state of Latinx art in 2025, a year marked by devastating wildfires in Los Angeles and the start of the second Trump administration, which has intensified ICE raids and targeted communities of color. Amid this crisis, artists have created poignant responses, including AMBOS's ceramics project at Frieze Los Angeles benefiting migrants awaiting asylum hearings, and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's solo exhibition at Artpace in San Antonio, which explored borders both literal and cosmic. The piece also highlights a two-person show by Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza at the Americas Society, titled "Earth and Cosmos," featuring works that challenge time and space.

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Galerie 1900-2000, a Parisian gallery specializing in Dada and Surrealism, has closed its New York branch on Madison Avenue, which opened in February 2023 as a joint venture with Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois. The Manhattan outpost's last exhibition ended in September, with principal David Fleiss citing a slow market during difficult global times as the reason for the closure, though he did not rule out a future return to New York.

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The Louvre was forced to close on Monday after staff launched strike action demanding urgent building renovations, improved security, increased staffing, and protesting a planned 45% ticket price increase for non-EU visitors. The strike follows a turbulent period for the museum, including a daylight theft of French crown jewels worth $102 million, a water leak damaging hundreds of documents, and safety concerns closing galleries. Meanwhile, Banksy's Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem has reopened for the first time since 2023, after closing following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war. The hotel, which opened in 2017, sits opposite the West Bank barrier and features original Banksy works, positioning itself as a cultural platform for peace and Palestinian artists.

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New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declared in a New York Times interview that the city's best museum is its subway system, citing the public artworks by artists like Vito Acconci, Nick Cave, Yoko Ono, Faith Ringgold, and Jeffrey Gibson that are accessible to all riders. He praised the MTA for making art available regardless of income, while also expressing interest in visiting the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, and crediting his wife, illustrator Rama Duwaji, for expanding his appreciation of art beyond formal settings.

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At Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, Los Angeles–based gallery Commonwealth and Council is distributing a stack of posters featuring Andrea Fraser's latest project, *Lexicon* (2025). The work reproduces a list of approximately 200 words that have been banned or censored under the Trump administration, originally published in the *New York Times* in March 2025. The list includes terms related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), such as “racial diversity,” “activism,” “women,” and “they/them.” Fraser, known for her institutional critique works like *Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk* (1989), created *Lexicon* as a direct response to executive orders terminating DEI programs and the subsequent preemptive censorship by federal agencies. She describes the project as an affirmation of art's role in fighting censorship, and it is linked to her ongoing research on museum boards and political donations.

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The estate of Robert Colescott, the influential American painter who died in 2009, has signed with Gladstone Gallery for representation. Gladstone will debut Colescott's work at Art Basel Miami Beach next month and mount its first solo exhibition for the artist in 2025. Colescott is best known for satirical, large-scale paintings like "George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook" (1975), which critiques the exclusion and caricaturing of Black figures in American history and art. The estate sought new representation after its longtime gallery, Blum, closed this summer. Gladstone senior partner Max Falkenstein said the gallery had long admired Colescott and that the partnership felt like a natural fit given the gallery's focus on identity and politics.

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The United States Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale faces an uncertain future after a proposal by artist Robert Lazzarini and independent curator John Ravenal collapsed. The proposal, selected by the US State Department in early September, fell through when the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum declined to sign the contract, citing a shortened timeline and financial obligations. Ravenal attributed the breakdown to bureaucratic misalignment rather than ideological disagreement, while the State Department declined to comment. The selection process also shifted this year, with the National Endowment for the Arts excluding itself due to staffing transitions, leaving the State Department to handle it alone.

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Raquelín Mendieta, the longtime administrator of the estate of her sister, artist Ana Mendieta, died on October 24 in Miami at age 79 due to a long illness. Raquelín took charge of Ana's legacy after the artist's death in 1985, organizing a retrospective at the New Museum in 1987 and partnering with Galerie Lelong in 1991 to establish a market for Ana's work. Under her stewardship, Ana's art was acquired by major museums like the Whitney Museum and included in over 600 group shows and 55 solo exhibitions, including 16 museum retrospectives.

celebs turn out in force for lacma gala climate activist who targeted degas works gets jail time and more morning links for november 3 2025 1234759857

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) held its 14th annual Art+Film Gala on November 1, drawing nearly 600 celebrities from art, film, fashion, and entertainment. The event honored artist Mary Corse and filmmaker Ryan Coogler, featured a performance by Doja Cat, and set a new fundraising record of nearly $6.5 million to support LACMA's integration of film into its curatorial programs. Separately, climate activist Timothy Martin received an 18-month prison sentence for smearing paint on a Degas sculpture case at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 2023—a punishment critics called disproportionate. Other news includes the permanent installation of Gaetano Pesce's final public artwork in Boston, Antony Gormley's new installation in South Korea, and a report on shifting fortunes in the Islamic art market, where a rare Safavid carpet failed to sell at Christie's London.

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Christie’s will sell over 70 works from the collection of Arnold and Joan Saltzman during its fall marquee sales in November, with a group estimate exceeding $70 million. The modern art collection includes pieces by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Edvard Munch, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore. The top lot is Léger’s 1914 painting *Composition (Nature Morte)*, estimated around $20 million, from his celebrated 'Contraste de formes' series. Other highlights include Henry Moore’s bronze sculpture *Reclining Woman: Elbow* (1981), estimated at $9–12 million, and Henri Matisse’s *Femme au chapeau fleuri* (1923), estimated around $10 million. The collection, built over 60 years, will be featured in Christie’s 20th century evening sale on November 17 and day sales on November 18.

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The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2025 class of 22 MacArthur Fellows, each receiving an $800,000 no-strings-attached grant. Among the winners are several visual artists: Garrett Bradley, known for her Oscar-nominated documentary *Time* (2020) and works centering Black resistance; Gala Porras-Kim, whose practice questions how art institutions convey or conceal information about objects; Tuan Andrew Nguyen, whose films and installations explore trauma and colonization; and Jeremy Frey, a seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket maker whose midcareer survey is on view at the Bruce Museum. Photographers Matt Black and Tonika Lewis Johnson also received fellowships, along with archaeologist Kristina Douglass and non-artists such as novelist Tommy Orange and astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry.

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Actor Adrien Brody debuted a new exhibition titled "Made in America" at Eden Gallery in New York, featuring paintings that incorporate pop culture icons like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Marilyn Monroe alongside collage elements and text. The show has garnered significant media attention, including a profile in the New York Times and praise from Cultured and Interview magazine, partly fueled by the sale of one of Brody's paintings for $425,000 at the amfAR Cannes Gala. However, the art press, including Artnet News, has been highly critical, with ARTnews reviewer Alex Greenberger describing the works as ugly, derivative, and lacking nuance.

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ARTnews has announced the nominees for the 2025 ARTnews Awards, which honor excellence in art at US institutions and galleries. The awards, now in their second year, feature six categories: Emerging Artist, Established Artist, Lifetime Achievement, Best Thematic Museum Exhibition, Best Gallery Group Show, and a newly introduced Best Historical Artist category. The jury includes five top US curators and two ARTnews editors, with winners to be celebrated in November.

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Marina Abramović will celebrate her 80th birthday with a career-spanning exhibition titled "Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy" at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice from May 6 to October 19, 2026, coinciding with the 61st Venice Biennale. The show, previously staged at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in fall 2024, features 150 works including furniture-sculpture hybrids made from quartz, amethyst, and tourmaline. Abramović's "transitory objects" will be installed throughout the 14th-century building alongside the museum's permanent collection of Renaissance masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto, Giorgione, and Mantegna, with a notable pairing of her 1983 photograph *Pietà (with Ulay)* and Titian's *Pietà* (1575–76).

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Lisa Phillips, director of New York's New Museum, will retire after more than 25 years in the role, as reported by the New York Times. The museum is currently in the midst of a 62,000-square-foot expansion expected to open this fall, though no date has been set. Phillips, 71, oversaw the museum's relocation to the Bowery in 2007, launched the influential New Museum Triennial in 2010, and added initiatives like New Inc and Rhizome. Her tenure also included controversies, such as criticism over a 2010 show of works owned by a trustee, staff complaints about her $900,000 salary, and tensions around the museum's unionization in 2019.

artists resisted fascism comrades in art andy friend 1234752655

A group of British artists, frustrated by the Great Depression and inspired by socialist ideologies, founded the Artists International Association (AIA) in the early 1930s. Initially a Communist-inflected agit-prop group, it rebranded in 1935 to broaden its anti-fascist coalition, a move that sparked internal debates about ideological purity. The article, reviewing Andy Friend's book *Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism, 1933–1943*, highlights key episodes such as the AIA's 1940 exhibition 'The Face of Britain,' which opened amid the Blitz after bombs damaged the gallery.

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Glenn Lowry, the longtime director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), delivered a farewell speech in June 2025 at MoMA's Party in the Garden, implicitly addressing the Trump administration's attacks on cultural institutions. He urged the museum to defend values of pluralism, freedom of expression, and minority rights, warning that the coming years would present consequential choices not seen since World War II. The article notes that while Trump has not directly targeted MoMA, he has threatened the Smithsonian Institution, and artist Amy Sherald canceled a National Portrait Gallery survey alleging censorship. Under Lowry, MoMA mounted a 2017 exhibition critical of Trump's travel ban, but has otherwise avoided explicit political programming.

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Donald Moffett's latest exhibition, "Snowflake," opened at Alexander Gray Associates in New York, marking his first solo show in the city since 2019. The exhibition features extruded oil paintings created with cake-decorating tools, including works like "Lot 052525 (nature cult, melt 1)" and "Lot 061625 (nature cult, melt A)," which depict melting snow as a metaphor for the climate crisis. Moffett draws a parallel between this show and his 1989 exhibition "I Love It When You Call Me Names" at Wessel O’Connor Gallery, both titles reclaiming derogatory terms—"homo art" then, "snowflake" now—as acts of defiance. The palette is predominantly black and white, reflecting what Moffett describes as "dark times" and the stark choices of the current political climate.