Art News. Vasari Codex

article culture schedule May 19, 2025 visibility 19 link 13 artists

art bites marcel duchamp dentist check

Marcel Duchamp paid his dentist, Daniel Tzanck, with a hand-painted forged check in 1919, titled *Tzanck Check*. The work mimics a real bank check made out for $115, drawn on the fictitious “The Teeth’s Loan & Trust Company Consolidated.” Duchamp meticulously painted each letter to look printed, and the dentist—who was also a major art collector—never cashed it, recognizing its artistic value. The check is now a promised gift to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, with a 1938 reproduction held by M+ museum in Hong Kong.

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trending_up market schedule May 19, 2025 visibility 19 link 16 artists

are trophy lots losing their luster

New York's marquee spring auctions in May 2025 tested the theory that strong supply drives demand, but results were mixed. Alberto Giacometti's *Grande tête mince* (1955), estimated at $70 million, failed to sell at Sotheby's, while Christie's withdrew a $30 million Andy Warhol electric-chair painting. The top lot of the week was Piet Mondrian's *Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue* (1922), which fetched $47.6 million from the collection of late Barnes & Noble founder Len Riggio. However, Christie's pre-sold 93% of that collection's value to third-party backers, and the house fell $26 million short of its guaranteed amount. Sotheby's avoided financial risk on the Giacometti by not guaranteeing it, still earning $34.4 million in buyer's premiums. A new record for a living woman artist was set when Marlene Dumas's *Miss January* (1997) sold for $13.6 million at Christie's, though adjusted for inflation it fell short of Jenny Saville's 2018 record.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 18 link 7 artists

michelle grabner kohler independent

Michelle Grabner, a Milwaukee-based artist known for examining overlooked visual languages, has created a new series of porcelain sculptures at the Kohler Company's MakerSpace in Wisconsin. These works, which mimic janitorial supplies like sponges, sinks, and mop carts, are being shown at the Independent art fair this week with Cleveland's Abattoir Gallery. Grabner, who co-curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial and served as the inaugural artistic director of FRONT International, continues to expand her practice beyond painting into industrial materials, while also holding two concurrent museum retrospectives: "Underdone Potato" at the Schneider Museum of Art and "Under the Sink" at the Haggerty Museum.

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article news schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 11 link 8 artists

kids damage art

A child under the age of five recently scratched a Mark Rothko painting at a museum in the Netherlands, forcing its removal for restoration. The article compiles several notorious incidents of children accidentally damaging artworks, including a 12-year-old boy punching a hole through a $1.5 million Baroque painting by Paolo Porpora in Taipei, a 4-year-old shattering a 3,500-year-old vase at the Hecht Museum in Israel, a girl climbing a Donald Judd sculpture at Tate Modern, and kids breaking a glass artwork by Shelley Xue at the Shanghai Museum of Glass. In most cases, the damage was accidental, driven by curiosity or misinterpretation, and often involved lapses in adult supervision.

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article culture schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 19 link 13 artists

leonardo da vinci existing paintings ranked

Artnet News has published a ranking of Leonardo da Vinci's surviving paintings, focusing on completed, stand-alone works and excluding frescos like *The Last Supper* and unfinished pieces. The article evaluates paintings such as *Annunciation* (c. 1472–76), *Madonna of the Carnation* (1478–80), and *Ginevra de' Benci* (c. 1474–78), considering factors like attribution certainty, historical context, and unique traits—for instance, *Ginevra de' Benci* is the only Leonardo painting in a public collection in the Americas.

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gavel restitution schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 21 link 7 artists

botticelli virgin and child export bar

The United Kingdom has imposed a temporary export bar on Sandro Botticelli's painting "The Virgin and Child Enthroned" (c. 1470), valued at £10.2 million ($13.5 million). The work was sold to a foreign buyer at Sotheby's London last fall for £8.6 million, but the export license deferral—recommended by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art—gives British institutions until August 8 to express interest in acquiring it. The painting, previously attributed to Botticelli's workshop, was confirmed as an autograph work through new scientific analyses and has been in the private collection of Lady Wantage since 1904.

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trending_up market schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 13 link 4 artists

len riggios mondrian christies auction

A 1922 painting by Piet Mondrian, *Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue*, sold at Christie’s New York for $47.6 million, falling short of its $50 million-plus estimate and the artist’s auction record of $51 million set in 2022. The work was the highlight of the “Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works” sale, a 39-lot trove from the late Barnes & Noble founder and Dia Art Foundation chairman, estimated at up to $326 million. The painting sold to a single phone bidder, likely the guarantor, with no room action.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 15 link 8 artists

masterpieces reunited

The article reports on several instances where fragmented masterpieces have been reunited in recent years. Examples include two halves of a medieval manuscript page from the Hours of Louis XII, Édouard Manet's split painting Au café and Corner of a Café-Concert, Giorgio Vasari's ceiling Allegories of Virtues, and two landscapes by Paul Cézanne cut from the same sheet of paper. These reunions were made possible through the work of art historians and curators, with exhibitions at institutions like the Getty Museum, London's National Gallery, and the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.

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candle obituary schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 21 link 10 artists

koyo kouoh remembered

Koyo Kouoh, the acclaimed Cameroonian-born curator and director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, has died at age 57 after a battle with cancer. Tributes pour in from artists Robin Rhode and Julie Mehretu, curator Azu Nwagbogu, and colleagues like Mandla Sibeko, who mourn the loss of a towering figure in African and global contemporary art. Kouoh was also set to serve as artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale, making her the first African woman to hold that role.

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article news schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 11 link 5 artists

last known painting gauguin authenticity

The Kunstmuseum Basel has launched a fresh scientific investigation into a painting long believed to be Paul Gauguin's final self-portrait, *Self-Portrait with Glasses* (1903), after amateur art sleuth Fabrice Fourmanoir raised doubts about its authenticity. Fourmanoir claims the work may have been painted not by Gauguin but by a Vietnamese revolutionary named Ky Dong, a close acquaintance of the artist, after Gauguin's death. The museum, which has owned the painting since 1945, confirmed it is re-examining the work using modern techniques like infrared reflectography and radiology, with results expected by June or July.

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article news schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 16 link 3 artists

valparaiso university sold brauer museum artworks

Valparaiso University in Indiana has finalized the sale of two valuable paintings from the Brauer Museum of Art—Childe Hassam's *The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate* (1914) and Georgia O'Keeffe's *Rust Red Hills* (1930)—and is in the process of selling a third, Frederic Edwin Church's *Mountain Landscape* (c. 1849). The sales, collectively valued at up to $20 million, are intended to fund renovations of freshman dormitories amid budget shortfalls. The decision has sparked vocal protests, a lawsuit, and a vote of no confidence from the faculty senate against university president José Padilla, who announced his retirement. Moody's Ratings downgraded the school's credit rating to junk status, partly due to the controversy.

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article culture schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 16 link 10 artists

michelangelo 550 birthday headlines

Artnet News rounds up recent headlines involving Renaissance master Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni as institutions prepare to celebrate his 550th birthday in 2025. The article highlights three stories: a scene in HBO's *The White Lotus* season three finale that echoes Michelangelo's *Pietà*; the ongoing scholarly debate over whether Michelangelo himself forged the ancient sculpture *Laocoön and His Sons*; and the restoration of Michelangelo's family tomb at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence ahead of his birthday.

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gavel restitution schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 19 link 3 artists

valparaiso university brauer museum can sell paintings

The Porter County Superior Court has approved Valparaiso University's plan to sell three valuable paintings from the Brauer Museum of Art—works by Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O'Keeffe valued at around $20 million—to fund renovations to freshman dormitories. The decision follows a year and a half of controversy, including a lawsuit from the museum's founding director Richard Brauer and condemnation from major museum professional organizations, who argue that deaccessioning art for non-collection purposes violates ethical standards.

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trending_up market schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 16 link 5 artists

marlene dumas miss january rubell family christies auction

A Marlene Dumas painting, *Miss January* (1997), sold for $13.6 million at a Christie’s auction, making the South African artist the most expensive living female artist at auction. The work, consigned from the Rubell Family collection, had an estimate of $12–18 million and was backed by a third-party guarantee. It was won by an anonymous telephone bidder represented by Sara Friedlander, Christie’s deputy chairman for postwar and contemporary art.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 17 link 14 artists

lupe fiasco ghotiing mit public art

Lupe Fiasco, the Grammy-winning rapper and MIT visiting scholar, has created "GHOTIING MIT," an audio tour featuring seven tracks improvised and recorded on-site at public artworks around the MIT List Visual Arts Center campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using an iPad, microphone, and solar panels, Fiasco responds to sculptures by Alexander Calder, Antony Gormley, Jacques Lipchitz, and Jaume Plensa, among others, blending rap with field recordings to capture the immediacy of each piece. He terms this spontaneous creative process "ghotiing" (pronounced "fishing"), likening it to the Impressionist practice of painting en plein air.

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article culture schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 22 link 19 artists

7 art history facts

Frieze Week in New York has arrived, drawing tens of thousands of visitors to The Shed for displays from over 65 international galleries. The article offers a collection of art historical trivia to help attendees impress peers, including tales of a potentially fake Picasso gifted to Robin Williams by Disney, Piet Mondrian's fondness for Disney's *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, and a legend that Raphael's pupil Giulio Romano created erotic frescos in the Vatican's Sala di Constantino out of anger over delayed payment from Pope Clement VII.

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candle obituary schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 19 link 10 artists

koyo kouoh dead zeitz mocaa venice biennale

Koyo Kouoh, the celebrated Cameroonian-born curator known for championing African contemporary art, has died unexpectedly at age 57. She passed away in a hospital in Basel, Switzerland, due to cancer, just months after being appointed curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale—making her only the second African-born curator to lead the prestigious exhibition, following Okwui Enwezor in 2015. Kouoh was executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town since 2019, where she organized landmark shows like "When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting" (2022), and founded RAW Material Company in Dakar in 2008, an independent art center now considered a top space in West Africa.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 19 link 5 artists

moma curator jodi hoptman hilma af klint botanical drawings

MoMA has acquired a rare portfolio of 46 botanical drawings by Hilma af Klint, created between 1919 and 1920, and will present them in an exhibition titled “What Stands Behind the Flowers” from May 11 to September 27. Curator Jodi Hauptman discusses how the drawings reveal af Klint’s dual approach—traditional figuration alongside abstract diagrams—and her deep engagement with the natural world, including newly discovered evidence that she worked as a professional scientific illustrator for a mushroom specialist.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 24 link 21 artists

superfine met museum costume institute black dandy

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" on May 10, an exhibition tracing over 300 years of Black dandyism. The show features around a dozen paintings, fashions, works on paper, photography, sculpture, and decorative objects, including a 1758 portrait of Roch Aza, a ten-year-old enslaved boy from Martinique, depicted in elegant livery alongside his enslaver. The exhibition examines how well-dressed Black figures appeared in European art as symbols of their owners' wealth and status during the transatlantic slave trade, and how subsequent generations have reappropriated and subverted that imagery.

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article news schedule May 10, 2025 visibility 18 link 16 artists

kim kardashian art world

Kim Kardashian, the media personality and billionaire entrepreneur, has increasingly intersected with the art world through high-profile purchases, legal disputes, and controversial photo shoots. She bought Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting "Both Poles" (1982) for $5 million at Christie's in 2017, later confirmed in 2024. She faced a lawsuit from the Donald Judd Foundation in 2024 for falsely claiming two tables were authentic Judd works. She also sparked outrage with a Tesla Cybertruck photoshoot for Perfect magazine during the "Tesla Takedown" protests, and engaged in a bidding war with Tom Brady over a George Condo artwork.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 10, 2025 visibility 22 link 22 artists

national gallery sainsburg wing reopening gabriele finaldi

London's National Gallery has reopened its Sainsbury Wing after a three-year, $113 million renovation, timed to the museum's 200th anniversary. Director Gabriele Finaldi, who was knighted this year, oversaw the project, which was designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf and faced criticism from original architect Denise Scott Brown. The revamped wing features a light-filled foyer, 17 galleries with no prescribed route, and a rehang titled “The Wonder of Art.” The museum also acquired a mysterious painting by an unknown artist, The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels (1500–10), for $20 million through Sotheby's.

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article news schedule May 9, 2025 visibility 18 link 3 artists

britain royal coronation portraits charles iii camilla

The United Kingdom unveiled official coronation portraits of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, painted by artists Peter Kuhfeld and Paul Benney respectively, to commemorate the 2023 coronation. Charles is depicted in a red room wearing coronation regalia beside the Imperial State Crown, while Camilla is shown in photorealistic detail in a powder blue silk dress. The portraits are on view at the National Gallery in London.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 8, 2025 visibility 15 link 2 artists

aia new talent event 2025

Art in America hosted a launch event for its 2025 "New Talent" issue at PMC's headquarters in New York, bringing together 20 emerging artists and two established luminaries—Carroll Dunham and Rochelle Feinstein—for a panel discussion moderated by senior editor Emily Watlington. The conversation explored the art world's current shift from figuration to abstraction, with Dunham and Feinstein reflecting on their own careers and the evolving dynamics of painting.

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gavel restitution schedule May 8, 2025 visibility 13 link 7 artists

32 million klimt sale falls through

The record-setting $32 million sale of Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Fräulein Lieser" (1917) has fallen through after a restitution settlement failed to resolve gaps in its provenance. The painting, discovered in early 2024 and sold at Im Kinsky auction house in Vienna to an anonymous Hong Kong buyer in April, was mired in controversy over its history during the Nazi era. The work's whereabouts between 1925 and 1961 were unknown, a period including Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany. The auction house proposed the work was commissioned by Henriette Lieser, who was deported and murdered at Auschwitz, but conflicting theories about the sitter's identity and the painting's path through a Nazi party member's family complicated restitution efforts. A new potential legal heir emerged after the sale, and the buyer ultimately pulled out.

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article news schedule May 7, 2025 visibility 12 link 3 artists

femen stage protest musee dorsay

The feminist activist group FEMEN staged a topless protest at Paris's Musée d'Orsay on Saturday, September 12, 2020, after the museum barred a woman named Jeanne from entering the galleries unless she covered up her low-cut dress. About 20 activists gathered in the sculpture gallery, removed their shirts, and painted slogans such as "obscenity is in your eyes" and "this is not obscene" on their torsos, standing alongside classical nude statues. They chanted in protest and later moved outside the museum. The museum issued an apology to Jeanne but did not address accusations of sexism or discrimination.

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gavel restitution schedule May 6, 2025 visibility 16 link 6 artists

nazi looted egon schiele art return

A Manhattan judge has blocked London-based art dealer Richard Nagy from selling or transporting two watercolors by Egon Schiele, which were on display at his booth during the Salon of Art + Design fair at the Park Avenue Armory. The works—Woman in a Black Pinafore and Woman Hiding Her Face—are claimed by the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish Holocaust victim and cabaret performer who died at Dachau. The heirs, Timothy Reif and David Fraenkel, filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleging the paintings were among 400 artworks surrendered to the Nazis by Grünbaum's wife. Nagy disputes the claim, arguing the works were sold legally by Grünbaum's sister-in-law in 1956 and that previous arbitration boards found no evidence of Nazi looting.

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article culture schedule May 5, 2025 visibility 16 link 7 artists

art bites jan van eyck oil paint

The article debunks the long-held myth that Flemish painter Jan van Eyck invented oil painting, tracing the origin of the technique back to 7th-century Afghanistan. It recounts how Giorgio Vasari's 1550 biography "Lives of the Artists" falsely credited van Eyck with the invention after a story about the artist seeking a sun-proof medium. In reality, oil-based paints were used by Buddhist artists in the Bamiyan valley caves centuries earlier, and ancient Egyptians also combined oils with pigments for cosmetics.

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trending_up market schedule May 5, 2025 visibility 17 link 10 artists

sfmoma gift pamela joyner alfred giuffrida

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has received a landmark gift of 31 paintings, sculptures, and drawings from the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection, which focuses on abstract works by artists of the African diaspora. The donated pieces, created by 20 American artists born before 1930—including Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis, and Richard Mayhew—are intended to fill historical gaps in the museum's collection. Joyner, who became an SFMOMA trustee in 2020, selected works that represent the earliest generation of artists in her collection, aiming to support a more inclusive art-historical narrative.

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article news schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 11 link 1 artist

the ashes tudor lodge wall paintings

Rare 16th-century wall paintings depicting fantastical beasts, heraldic rabbits, and Grotesque heads have been uncovered at the Ashes, a Tudor hunting lodge in Inglewood Forest, Cumbria, U.K. Built in the 1560s during Elizabeth I's reign, the two-story building originally housed William Simpson, a bailiff of Castle Sowerby Manor. The paintings, created using the secco technique on dry plaster, were found in stages—first on the second story in the 1970s, then on the ground floor during excavations in the 2010s and 2020s. The most recent discoveries, made by owners Jen and Richard Arkell, reveal elaborate decorative panels likely inspired by textile designs, reflecting the cosmopolitan tastes of the period.

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person people schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 22 link 17 artists

collector reinhard ernst on championing the legacy of helen frankenthaler

German collector Reinhard Ernst, 79, opened Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden last year to house his collection of nearly 1,000 abstract works. The museum recently launched “Helen Frankenthaler. Move and Make,” the first major solo show of the Abstract Expressionist painter in Germany in two decades, featuring works from Ernst’s extensive Frankenthaler holdings. Ernst, who built his wealth through high-precision gear manufacturing, discusses his collecting journey, noting that 80% of his purchases come from auctions.

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