sara friedlander christies chairman post war contemporary art 1234760436

Sara Friedlander has been named chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Art for the Americas at Christie's. In an interview, she discusses her philosophy of prioritizing client relationships and the art itself over market speculation, criticizing the trend of 'wet paint' sales that inflate young artists' prices. She has overseen major private collection sales including the Edlis | Neeson Collection, which will anchor Christie's 21st Century Sale, and has set records for artists like Ernie Barnes and Joan Mitchell.

salvador dali necklace sea sothebys surrealism sale 1234759258

A Salvador Dalí-designed necklace, the Swirling Sea Necklace, sold for €736,600 ($858,500) at Sotheby's 'Surrealism and Its Legacy' auction on October 24, doubling its pre-sale estimate. The 18-karat gold piece, inlaid with diamonds, a cultured pearl, and sapphire and emerald beads, was conceived by Dalí in 1954 and first owned by São Schlumberger, a frequent patron of the artist. The necklace had previously sold at Sotheby's in 2014 for $665,000 to Anne Schlumberger, who died in April, prompting its return to auction.

chris levine rob munday queen portrait lawsuit 1234758805

British artist Rob Munday has filed a lawsuit against Chris Levine in the High Court, claiming he is the co-creator of two iconic holographic portraits of Queen Elizabeth II—Equanimity and Lightness of Being (2004). Munday alleges that Levine and his company Sphere 9 violated his moral rights by failing to credit him as a co-author, despite a 2005 agreement recognizing joint authorship. The works, commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust and held in London’s National Portrait Gallery, were created using holography technology. Levine denies the claims, calling Munday a "technical subcontractor," and says he will fiercely defend his sole authorship. The case follows a separate 2023 dispute between Levine and the trust over unauthorized copies, which was settled with a statement naming Levine as the sole artist commissioned.

chaim soutine biography celeste marcus 1234757163

A new biography titled *Chaïm Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art*, written by Celeste Marcus, explores the life and work of the early 20th-century painter Chaïm Soutine. Marcus argues that Soutine’s intensely visceral paintings—featuring dizzying landscapes, bloody carcasses, and penetrating portraits—are the key to understanding the artist, who left behind few personal records. The book challenges the tendency to read historical tragedy, particularly Soutine’s identity as an Eastern European Jew before WWII, into his turbulent brushwork, instead emphasizing the life force and internal logic of his compositions.

phillips london evening sale frieze results 1234757669

Phillips’s Frieze Week evening sale in London totaled £10.33 million ($13.88 million) across 22 lots, a 32% decline from last year’s £15.1 million on 31 lots. The sale was 82% sold by lot and 84% by value. Highlights included a new world auction record for Emma McIntyre, whose painting *Seven Types of Ambiguity* (2021) sold for £167,700, and strong results for Martha Jungwirth and Flora Yukhnovich. However, major lots by Banksy, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat underperformed or failed to sell, and four lots went unsold, including works by Andreas Gursky and Sigmar Polke.

diane keaton artist dead 79 1234756816

Diane Keaton, the acclaimed actress known for films like Annie Hall and The Godfather, died at age 79. Beyond her acting career, Keaton was a devoted visual artist who worked in photography and collage, publishing several art books including Saved: My Picture World (2022), Reservations (1980), and California Romantica (2019). She was also a passionate collector of photography books and frequently discussed her lifelong practice of collage-making.

robert wilson memorial silence 1234755995

A memorial for the late theater visionary Robert Wilson was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Harvey Theater, featuring a 30-minute period of silence as requested by Wilson before his death at age 83. The gathering drew luminaries including Philip Glass, Rufus Wainwright, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Christopher Knowles, Joan Jonas, and Paula Cooper, none of whom spoke during the main program. The silence was punctuated by shifting lighting and a recorded ringing telephone, followed by remarks from William Campbell, chairman of Wilson's Watermill Center, and Joseph Melillo, former BAM executive producer.

george soros trump open society foundations investigation 1234753658

The Trump administration has escalated its attacks on billionaire philanthropist George Soros, with the Justice Department calling for an investigation into his Open Society Foundations. The foundations, which provide substantial grants to artists and human rights organizations globally, are accused of potential racketeering, wire fraud, and material support for terrorism, based on allegations from the conservative Capital Research Center. Soros, a major Democratic donor, has previously been targeted by Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who claim the foundations fund leftist protests. The Open Society Foundations have awarded $100,000 fellowships to numerous prominent artists, including Firelei Báez, Yto Barrada, and Nicholas Galanin, and provided $1.2 billion in funding in 2024 alone.

suzanne duchamp retrospective zurich kunsthall schirn frankfurt 1234753306

A new retrospective at Kunsthaus Zurich, soon traveling to Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, spotlights Suzanne Duchamp (1889–1963), a French artist often overshadowed by her brothers Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon. The exhibition, titled “Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective,” showcases her highly individual painterly practice rooted in Cubism and Dada, featuring works like *Radiation of Two Solitary Separates Apart* (1916–20) and *Marcel’s Unhappy Readymade* (1920), which reappropriates her brother’s readymade concept. The show includes a new catalog commission by painter Amy Sillman, who created digital drawings inspired by Duchamp’s formal dynamics.

unknown pablo picasso painting dora maar for sale 1234752879

A Pablo Picasso painting of Dora Maar, titled *Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar)*, has been consigned to the Paris auction house Lucien Paris after not being seen publicly for 80 years. Painted in 1943 and last exhibited in 1944, the work was inherited by the anonymous seller from a grandparent. It is currently on view at Hôtel Drouot and will be auctioned on October 24 with an estimate of approximately $9.5 million. Photographic evidence of the painting appears in 1944 photos by Brassaï of Picasso’s studio.

new yorker covers marilyn minter awol erizku 1234751997

The New Yorker has commissioned six contemporary photographers—Marilyn Minter, Awol Erizku, Ryan McGinley, Collier Schorr, Camila Falquez, and Alex Prager—to reimagine historical illustrated covers for the magazine’s centennial. Each photographer created a celebrity portrait inspired by a past cover, such as Erizku’s photo of Spike Lee as Eustace Tilley and Minter’s recreation of a 1925 cover featuring actress Sadie Sink. The project marks only the third time in the magazine’s history that photography has been used for its cover.

alexandria biennale returns 2026 1234749389

The Alexandria Biennale will return in September 2026 after a 12-year hiatus, with its 27th edition curated by Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr under the title “This Too Shall Pass.” The exhibition will feature 55 artists from across the Mediterranean, with a main program complemented by smaller shows in Alexandria museums focusing on emerging Egyptian artists. Venues include the Roman amphitheater, the Alexandria Library, and the Qaitbay Citadel. The biennale was originally established in 1955 under Gamal Abdel Nasser, suspended in 2011 amid the Egyptian revolution, briefly reopened in 2014, and then shuttered again due to financial and political instability.

sothebys van halen guitar grails week 1234749497

Sotheby’s will auction Eddie Van Halen’s custom-built 1982 Kramer guitar, estimated at $2–3 million, as the centerpiece of its inaugural “Grails Week” in New York this October. The instrument, unseen for over 40 years, was played on tour, later owned by Mötley Crüe’s Mick Mars, and features Van Halen’s iconic red, black, and white striped design. The week-long sales series will also include Bob Dylan lyrics, Rolling Stones album artwork, and a Beatles cymbal.

deleuze seminars painting 1234749008

A newly translated English edition of Gilles Deleuze's 1981 seminars on painting, originally published in French as 'Sur la peinture' in 2023, has been released by the University of Minnesota Press. Translated by Charles J. Stivale, the eight lectures explore what concepts painting can offer to philosophy, rather than the reverse. Deleuze discusses terms like catastrophe, the diagram, and figure, focusing on artists such as Titian, Turner, Cézanne, van Gogh, Klee, Mondrian, Pollock, and Bacon, offering a chaotic yet magnificent counterpoint to his more systematic book 'Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation'.

sam gilliam sculpture textile fiber dublin ireland imma 1234748631

The article reviews an exhibition of Sam Gilliam's work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, focusing on 23 works from the 1990s that highlight his use of sewing and stitching. Gilliam, a relentless experimenter who died in 2022, is known for moving from hard-edged stripe paintings to draped, unstretched canvases that blurred painting and sculpture. This show reveals a lesser-known aspect of his practice: patchwork-like assemblages of painted and printed canvas pieces held together by visible machine stitching, often incorporating photographic imagery of botanical forms. The works originated from a 1993 residency in Ballinglen, County Mayo, where Gilliam shipped pre-painted canvases from Washington, D.C., and had a seamstress sew them together.

georges seurat a sunday on la grande jatte why so important 2 1234747593

Georges Seurat's Post-Impressionist masterpiece, *A Sunday on La Grande Jatte* (1884–86), is analyzed in depth for its revolutionary technique and historical context. The painting depicts weekend day-trippers in a Parisian park, employing pointillism—which Seurat called divisionism or *peinture optique*—to fix modern life in a chromatic eternity. Influenced by his academic training under Henri Lehmann (a student of Ingres) and Michel Eugène Chevreul's color theory, Seurat used tiny dots of color that blend in the viewer's eye, merging science with art. The work was preceded by *Bathers at Asnières* (1884), which shares the same landscape and thematic concerns, together portraying both sides of the Seine.

global auction sales h1 2025 arttactic analysis 1234747389

Global auction sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips fell 6.2% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year, while the number of lots sold rose 1.3%. ArtTactic’s analysis reveals significant category shifts: post-war and contemporary art dropped 19.3% to $1.22 billion, impressionist and modern art fell 7.7% to $989.5 million, and luxury sales were nearly flat. In contrast, Old Masters surged 35.6% to $171.2 million, and design, decorative arts, and furniture rose 20.4% to $172 million. The decline in high-value trophy lots, including the withdrawal of Andy Warhol’s *Big Electric Chair* and Alberto Giacometti’s *Grande tête mince*, contributed to the slump in contemporary sales.

phillips pollock painting lawsuit david mimran 1234747383

Phillips auction house has filed a lawsuit against David Mimran, a film producer and son of billionaire Jean Claude Mimran, alleging he failed to pay $14.5 million for a Jackson Pollock drip painting (ca. 1948) that sold at a New York auction in November 2024. Mimran had agreed to a third-party guarantee for the work, which sold for $15.3 million with fees, but according to Phillips, he sought an extension and then claimed he could not pay. The auction house is seeking nearly $15 million including interest.

queen elizabeth ii memorial design london st jamess park 1234746024

The UK government has finalized design plans for a national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II in London’s St James’s Park. A team led by architect Norman Foster of Foster + Partners, including British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, will create a natural stone path connecting royal gardens, a translucent cast-glass balustrade on the Blue Bridge inspired by the Queen’s wedding tiara, and figurative sculptures of the Queen and Prince Philip. Landscape designer Michael Desvigne is also part of the team, working with the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee. The final design will be announced in April 2026, coinciding with what would have been the Queen’s 100th birthday, with a budget of £23 to £46 million from public funds.

graham gund architect art collector dead 1234745088

Graham Gund, an architect and prominent art collector, died on June 6 at age 84. With his wife Ann, he built a significant contemporary art collection featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Kenneth Noland, Kiki Smith, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Richard Serra. Gund designed and funded the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, his alma mater, and was a longtime patron of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, where a gallery and the directorship endowment bear his name. He appeared multiple times on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list.

2025 bienal de sao paulo artist list 1234744762

The Bienal de São Paulo has announced the 120 artists for its 2025 edition, titled “Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice,” opening September 6 at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. Curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the selection was inspired by bird migration patterns and rivers, aiming to avoid nation-state classifications. Notable participants include Isa Genzken, Firelei Báez, Wolfgang Tillmans, Forensic Architecture, and 19 Brazil-based artists, alongside 20 deceased figures such as Bertina Lopes and Ernest Cole.

new york sales underperform may 2025 1234743221

Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips collectively fell short of their spring auction expectations, bringing in just over $1 billion in evening sales against estimates of $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion. The hammer total of $837.5 million was down from $1.4 billion in the same week last year and $1.8 billion in 2022, with a notable drop in high-priced works and fading interest in emerging artists. The top ten lots generated $278.6 million, a 63 percent decline from 2022, and only a handful of artists under 45 appeared in evening sales, compared to previous years.

closed sfai campus casa artist residency center 1234744493

The former San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) campus has been transformed into a privately funded nonprofit arts center called the California Academy of Studio Arts (CASA). Backed by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, who purchased the Chester Street campus for $30 million last year, CASA will host 30 emerging artists annually in an unaccredited studio program. Artists will have access to private studios, shared workspaces, and professional mentors, with no tuition fees. The center is led by director Abbye Churchill and plans seminars for participants. SFAI, one of the oldest art schools in the U.S., suspended operations in 2022 and filed for bankruptcy after a failed merger with the University of San Francisco.

pennsylvania man pleads guilty fake picasso basquiat 1234744466

A 77-year-old Pennsylvania man, Carter Reese, pleaded guilty on May 29 to wire fraud and mail fraud for selling artworks falsely attributed to major modern and contemporary artists including Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Fernand Léger, and Francis Bacon. The scheme ran from February 2019 to March 2021, and was uncovered by the FBI's Art Crime Team in Philadelphia and Miami. Reese, a former teacher and admissions director at Pottstown's Hill School, also claimed a personal collection of 17,000 antiques valued at over $6 million.

collectors igor and mojca lah open contemporary art museum slovenian mountains 1234744346

Collectors and philanthropists Igor and Mojca Lah are opening a new contemporary art museum called Muzej Lah in Bled, Slovenia, set to debut next year. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects, the 55,000-square-foot museum will be built into a hillside beneath Bled Castle and will house the Fundacija Lah art collection of around 800 works, including pieces by Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, William Kentridge, Anne Imhof, and Theaster Gates, many never before publicly displayed.

may marquee auctions recap analysis christies sothebys 1234742284

Christie's marquee auctions in New York generated $489 million across two sales, led by the $272 million 'Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works' sale and a $217 million 20th century art evening auction. The house guaranteed all 39 lots in the Riggio sale and used third-party guarantees on many others to mitigate risk in a soft market. Top lots included Piet Mondrian's *Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black, and Blue* (1922) at $47.6 million, Claude Monet's *Peupliers au bord de l'Epte, crépuscule* (1891) at $49.2 million, and Mark Rothko's *No. 4 (Two Dominants) [Orange, Plum, Black]* (1950–51) at nearly $39 million. Two Warhols were pulled before the sale, highlighting ongoing challenges in selling high-value works at auction.

luka doncic vandalized kobe and gigi mural 1234740225

Luka Dončić, the newest star player for the Los Angeles Lakers, quietly funded the restoration of a mural depicting Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna (Gigi) Bryant after it was vandalized in downtown Los Angeles. Dončić donated $5,000 to a GoFundMe campaign organized by artist Louie Palsino, who created the mural titled "Mambas Forever" at 14th and Main Streets. The donation covered the full cost of restoring the defaced artwork, which honors the Lakers legend and his daughter who died in a 2020 helicopter crash.

Au Louvre, des directeurs de département entre responsabilités internes et rôle national

Maximilien Durand has been reappointed as head of the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Arts at the Louvre Museum, a role that carries both internal museum responsibilities and national duties on behalf of the French state. Two decrees signed by Culture Minister Catherine Pégard formalize his renewal: one as head of the museum department, and another as head of the corresponding major heritage department, a status held by only nine of the Louvre's departments.

Death of Artist Fabien Verschaere

Disparition de l’artiste Fabien Verschaere

The French contemporary art world is mourning the sudden death of artist Fabien Verschaere at the age of 50. Represented by Galerie Brugier-Rigail since 2012, Verschaere was known for a prolific and singular body of work that blended childhood imagery, fairy tales, and pop culture icons like Mickey Mouse and Batman into a complex personal mythology. His career was marked by significant exhibitions at major institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, and the Grand Palais.

Dartmouth Students Renew Efforts to Rename Leon Black–Funded Arts Center

Dartmouth College students have reignited a campaign to rename the Black Family Visual Arts Center, a campus facility funded by billionaire investor Leon Black. The movement, led by freshman Oscar Rempe-Hiam and supported by student government, criticizes the administration's lack of urgency in distancing the institution from Black, whose long-standing ties to Jeffrey Epstein and personal allegations of sexual misconduct have sparked years of controversy.