strategic pause trend

A growing number of art fairs and galleries are publicly announcing a 'strategic pause'—a hiatus from their regular exhibition schedules to reassess their models. This week, Vienna's Spark Art Fair invoked the phrase to take a year off, following Berlin dealer Mehdi Chouakri's decision to suspend his gallery's exhibition program after 30 years. Last July, ADAA's Art Show coined the term when it announced a year-long break to reimagine the New York fair, and Taipei Dangdai in Taiwan followed suit days later. In December, an unprecedented number of galleries skipped Art Basel Miami Beach. The trend reflects a broader shift in the art world's willingness to openly acknowledge the need for rest and reinvention.

will the recent art market momentum continue into 2026

Artnet News columnist reflects on the fragile state of the art market as 2025 ends, noting that global instability and troubling news have dampened buyer psychology. Despite this, major auction houses reported strong annual sales—Sotheby's at $7 billion (up 17%) and Christie's at $6.2 billion (up 6%)—and a series of high-profile sales, including the Pauline Karpidas collection auction and Leonard Lauder's Gustav Klimt portrait fetching $236.4 million, have sparked renewed momentum. The article quotes advisors and dealers who sense a market bottom has passed, with buyers returning to auctions and fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach.

sperone westwater court filings

Sperone Westwater, a 50-year-old New York gallery, closed on January 1, 2026, amid a legal dispute between its co-founders Gian Enzo Sperone and Angela Westwater. Court filings reveal Sperone accuses Westwater of mismanagement, including using the gallery's Norman Foster-designed building on the Bowery to subsidize unprofitable operations, while Westwater counters that Sperone has been largely absent since 2016 and is attempting to extract maximum financial benefit. The corporation's two directors are deadlocked, and a receiver may be appointed to oversee dissolution, including sale of the building and distribution of assets.

work of the week basquiat onion gum

Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1983 painting *Onion Gum*, priced at $21.5 million, was one of the most expensive works for sale at the 23rd edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. The large square canvas, featuring a white head and handwritten text, has a long market history: it sold for $7.36 million at Sotheby's in 2012 to hedge fund manager Daniel Sundheim, then failed to meet its estimate at auction in 2016, fetching $6.6 million. Since 2017, Van de Weghe Gallery has used the work as collateral for bank loans, showing it at multiple Art Basel fairs with prices rising from $16.5 million in 2018 to the current $21.5 million.

warhol portrait muhammad ali art basel miami

A 1977 Andy Warhol portrait of Muhammad Ali, priced at $18 million, will be the centerpiece of Lévy Gorvy Dayan's booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. The 40-inch acrylic and silkscreen canvas, featuring a royal purple background, was previously purchased for $18.1 million at Christie's in 2021. The work is part of a series of 10 Warhol portraits of sports stars commissioned by collector Richard L. Weisman, and is autographed on the back by Ali.

hong kong fire arts groups asian art news

A devastating fire in Hong Kong's Tai Po neighborhood, which killed at least 151 people, has prompted a period of mourning and led several major cultural institutions to cancel or postpone public events. The Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust cancelled a press conference for the "No Limits" program, while M+ rescheduled its "Night: Festive Play" event. Meanwhile, art fairs and galleries continue to announce developments: Kiaf Seoul will run concurrently with Frieze Seoul in 2026, Contemporary Istanbul will introduce a new Focus Asia section, and Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 will feature new sectors Echoes and Zero 10. In the market, On Kawara's "NOV. 27, 1984" sold for HK$8.5 million at Bonhams Hong Kong, and standout results were seen at Sotheby's Hong Kong.

elephant sculptures migrate to art basel miami beach

A herd of 100 life-size elephant sculptures, handcrafted by 200 Indigenous artisans from South India, has arrived at Art Basel Miami Beach as part of "The Great Elephant Migration," a global public art and conservation project. The sculptures are made from lantana camara, an invasive plant, and are modeled after individual elephants from the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Organized by Ruth Ganesh and the Coexistence Collective, the installation aims to promote coexistence between humans and wildlife, with proceeds from sculpture sales funding 22 conservation NGOs. The elephants have toured the U.S., appearing in Newport, Rhode Island, Manhattan's Meatpacking District, and now Miami Beach, where they have drawn enthusiastic crowds—and even a reported incident of a couple having sex on one of the sculptures, prompting police patrols.

miami water taxis basel

Miami is expanding its free water taxi service and shuttle routes for Art Week 2024, which coincides with Art Basel Miami Beach. The city will increase the number of water taxis from four to seven, operating between Maurice Gibb Memorial Park and the Venetian Marina, with service running from December 1 to December 7. Shuttles will connect the convention center to the Design District, mid-beach, and South Beach, where fairs like SCOPE, Untitled Art, SATELLITE, and Aqua Art Miami are held. The Transit mobile app will track all services in real time.

issy wood charli xcx vanity fair cover

Issy Wood, a rising British artist known for her figurative paintings of luxury objects and body parts, created the cover for Vanity Fair's first art-themed issue in nearly two decades. The cover features a portrait of pop star Charli XCX titled *Charli 2* (2025), painted in oil on velvet with gauzy stars and white forms. Wood cited their shared Britishness and the singer's career longevity as inspiration, while the article draws parallels between Wood's subject matter and the 'Brat universe.'

white cube jessie washburne harris global director

White Cube has appointed Jessie Washburne-Harris as a global director, based in New York, effective October 2025. She joins from Pace Gallery, where she was senior vice president, and has previously worked at Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Petzel, and Sotheby’s, as well as cofounding Harris Lieberman gallery. The appointment coincides with the second anniversary of White Cube’s permanent New York space, which opened in 2023 in a former bank on the Upper East Side and has hosted exhibitions by Tracey Emin, Theaster Gates, Antony Gormley, and Ilana Savdie.

art basel paris loic prigent edward enninful

Art Basel has partnered with French journalist and filmmaker Loïc Prigent and British fashion editor Edward Enninful to curate public events at its upcoming Paris fair, running October 24–26 at the Grand Palais. Prigent will curate 'Oh La La!', an initiative inviting galleries to present new works during the fair's second half, while Enninful will oversee a day of talks under Art Basel's Conversations program, marking the launch of his media company EE72. The talks, held at the Petit Palais, will preview Enninful's exhibition 'The '90s' scheduled for Tate Britain next year.

design miami announces 2025 programming new event seoul

Design Miami has announced its 2025 programming for its 20th anniversary year, including a new initiative called Design Miami.In Situ. The schedule features a one-day event in Aspen in July, a 14-day exhibition in Seoul in September, the third edition of its Paris fair in October, and the 21st edition of its flagship fair in Miami Beach in December. The Seoul exhibition, curated by Hyeyoung Cho and held at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, is a collaboration with the Seoul Design Foundation focusing on Korean collectible design. CEO Jen Roberts described this as the organization's largest global expansion and most ambitious program to date.

leonard lauder mfa boston postcards

Leonard Lauder, the 85-year-old chairman emeritus of Estée Lauder Companies, has amassed a collection of approximately 130,000 postcards, many of which are a promised gift to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A selection of 350 propagandist postcards from the World War I and World War II eras is now featured in a new exhibition at the MFA titled “The Art of Influence: Propaganda Postcards from the Era of World Wars” (through January 21), accompanied by a publication. Lauder began collecting as a boarding school student in Miami Beach, drawn to the idealized images and vibrant colors of Art Deco hotel postcards, and later expanded to historical and propagandist cards that he describes as “living history.”

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.

alejandro pineiro bello neuendorf residency

Cuban-born, Miami-based artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello arrived at the Neuendorf Residency in Mallorca with plans to use art supplies shipped from mainland Spain, but they never arrived. Undeterred, he worked with only watercolors and paper he had packed, drawing inspiration from the surrounding cliffs, sea, and plant life. The residency, housed in a minimalist building designed by John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin and commissioned by Artnet founder Hans Neuendorf, offered him solitude to create memory-based paintings of swimmers and landscapes.

art miami art week gallery museum guide

Cultured magazine has published a guide to gallery and museum exhibitions taking place during Miami Art Week, spanning from December 2025 through early 2026. The roundup highlights solo shows by Studio Lenca at David Castillo Gallery, Aneta Grzeszykowska at Voloshyn Gallery, and Woody De Othello at Pérez Art Museum Miami, alongside a posthumous survey of Richard Hunt at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and a pop-up exhibition organized by Jeffrey Deitch in the Miami Design District. Other featured presentations include Shayla Marshall's installation at a Walgreens storefront, Lawrence Lek's "NOX Pavilion" at the Bass, and a show by Thomas Houseago.

Viral Beeple robot dogs to go on display at Berlin museum.

Viral Beeple robot dogs to go on display at Berlin museum.

A set of robotic dog sculptures by digital artist Beeple, which became a viral sensation online, have been acquired by Berlin’s König Galerie for its permanent collection and will go on public display. The four lifelike, animatronic canines, titled "S.2122," are modeled on Boston Dynamics' "Spot" robots but are weathered and decaying, with exposed wires and organic growths. This marks Beeple's first major physical sculpture series to enter a prominent institutional collection, following his landmark $69 million NFT sale in 2021.

untitled art houston 2025 exhibitor list

Untitled Art has announced the 84 exhibitors for its inaugural Houston edition, taking place September 19–21, 2025, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, with a preview day on September 18. The fair, which has run in Miami Beach for 12 years, expands to Houston citing the city's $1.3 billion arts-related spending in 2022, making it the largest art market in Texas. The exhibitor list includes 17 Texas-based galleries (about 20% of participants), leading US galleries from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York, and international dealers from Canada, Spain, the UK, Peru, the Bahamas, and Latvia. A Nest section offers reduced booth prices for 20 galleries, and the fair will collaborate with Houston institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Menil Collection for special projects.

art cecilia vicuna poetry chile sculpture

Cecilia Vicuña, the 77-year-old Chilean artist known for her ecologically and politically engaged practice, is profiled in her Tribeca home. The article describes her daily rituals of corpse pose and walks, her decades-long exile since the Pinochet coup, and her recent international acclaim including the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale and the inaugural Icon Artist Gold Medal at Art Basel Miami Beach. A major solo show is on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and MOCA Los Angeles will unveil a new commission, “Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water,” following her selection as the first recipient of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize. The interview covers her studio practice, her focus on ecological collapse, and her work with Indigenous knotting traditions, poetry, and performance.

art collector javier martin austria ulloa florida

Miami-based collectors Javier Martin and Austria Ulloa discuss their 404 Art Collection, which spans works from mid-20th century Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré to contemporary pieces by Ryan Schneider, Augusta Lecaros, and others. The couple, who met through their respective art-world careers, acquire works through studio visits, gallery discoveries, and friend recommendations, and they are donating a Bouabré drawing to the Boca Raton Museum of Art for an upcoming exhibition. Their collection also includes pieces by Sadaharu Horio, Ami Yoshida, Lucas Pereira Elias, Katarina Weslien, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Elsa Mora, and Waichi Tsutaka.

art basel miami beach report viral moments

Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 generated viral moments with Beeple's 'Regular Animals' installation featuring robot dogs with billionaire faces, while Leandro Erlich's underwater sculpture garden 'Reefline' debuted concrete cars in Biscayne Bay. The fair's priciest work was Andy Warhol's $18 million 'Muhammad Ali' (1977), sold by Lévy Gorvy Dayan. Other highlights included Katie Stout's public commission 'Gargantua's Thumb' in the Miami Design District, Refik Anadol's AI screen, and the return of Sukeban, a Japanese women's wrestling league, as a crowd favorite.

parties miami art week social playbook fashion culture nightlife

Cultured's 'Parties Miami Art Week Social Playbook' provides a curated guide to the social and cultural events surrounding Miami Art Week 2024. It lists key art fairs including NADA (Dec. 2-6), Untitled Art (Dec. 3-7), Satellite Art Show (Dec. 4-7), and the Open Invitational (Dec. 1-6), alongside parties, fashion collaborations, and talks. Highlights include a Jimmy Choo installation with Harry Nuriev, a fireside chat with ECOLOGIES moderated by Julia Halperin, and a celebration at MOCA North Miami featuring artists Hiba Schahbaz, Diana Eusebio, and Magnus Sodamin.

london stephen friedman gallery abruptly closes insolvency

Stephen Friedman Gallery, a fixture of London’s Mayfair district since 1995, has abruptly entered administration and closed its doors to the public. The gallery confirmed the insolvency process following its last-minute withdrawal from the inaugural Art Basel Qatar. Approximately 25 employees are expected to be laid off, and represented artists have been advised to retrieve their works immediately as the firm undergoes a financial review by FRP Advisory.

work of the week maria berrio la cena

María Berrío’s mixed-media masterpiece "La Cena" (2012) is returning to the auction block at Christie’s post-war and contemporary day sale on May 17. The work, which draws inspiration from Da Vinci’s "The Last Supper" and features Berrío’s signature intricate collage style, is being sold by New York collector Dow Kim. Kim acquired the piece just two years ago for $1.56 million, significantly exceeding its initial estimate.

rediscovering luis fernando zapata

Artnet News reports on the rediscovery of Colombian artist Luis Fernando Zapata (1951–1994), whose solo booth at Art Basel Miami Beach features works from 1988 to 1994 that resemble ancient artifacts. The booth, titled “The Immemorial: The Transcendence of Luis Fernando Zapata,” is presented by Bogotá’s Galería Elvira Moreno in the fair’s Survey sector, which highlights historically significant art made before 2000. Zapata’s pieces—including totemic shields, a mud-brown sarcophagus with cuneiform-like glyphs, barques, steles, and his “excavaciones”—are mostly hand-sculpted papier-mâché, evoking ritual and imagined cosmologies. Diagnosed HIV+ in the mid-1980s, Zapata died in 1994, leaving a body of work that has remained largely absent from the queer canon and art-world consciousness until now.

art words of the year

Artnet News critic Ben Davis presents his annual "art words of the year" for 2025, a curated list of terms that capture prevailing moods and ideas in the art world. The list includes "antimemetics" (from writer Nadia Asparhouva and internet fiction), "cyniserity" (coined by art writer David Colman to describe Anne Imhoff's work), "delightmare" (a horror-adjacent feeling linked to overconsumption and AI art, exemplified by Beeple's Art Basel installation), "elite capture" (from philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's book, now a tool for critiquing identity politics in art), and "K-shaped" (an economic term describing divergent recovery, applied to gallery closures versus record auction sales).

alex prager los angeles

Alex Prager has created "Mirage Factory," an immersive installation inside a former Miami Beach cinema that pays tribute to her hometown of Los Angeles while critiquing its illusions. The installation features meticulously crafted sets, a new photograph, and a dining experience by chef Dave Beran, alongside a live performance by Diana Ross. It opened with private events for Capital One cardholders and the Cultivist art club, and is now public through December 4, with proceeds benefiting Heal the Bay.

these galleries dropped out of art basel miami beach heres what happened next

Several galleries withdrew from Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 amid rising costs and a contracting art market, leaving some like San Francisco's Altman Siegel facing cancellation fees despite closing. Claudia Altman-Siegel, who shut her gallery, owed $22,000 after missing the free-cancellation deadline. Other dealers, including Miguel Abreu, Tilton Gallery, and Sperone Westwater, navigated the fair's strict payment terms for different reasons—some pulling out early to avoid penalties, others proceeding despite business challenges. The fair proceeded with 283 exhibitors and reported strong sales, including an $18.5 million Joan Mitchell painting, signaling a potential market upturn.

alex prager mirage factory miami beach

Los Angeles-based artist Alex Prager has opened "Mirage Factory," an immersive installation on Miami Beach's Lincoln Road, taking over the historic Beach Theatre. The project features three constructed set pieces that explore Los Angeles history, including a 1:12 scale model of Hollywood Boulevard with landmarks like Grauman's Chinese Theatre and Musso & Frank's, an orange grove with real trees and fake citrus, and a lush garden party set in Griffith Park. The installation is part of an ongoing collaboration between Capital One and the Cultivist, and includes an immersive dining experience by chef Dave Beran, with a performance by Diana Ross. The public can visit on December 4 and 5, 2025.

es devlin library miami

Es Devlin's *The Library of Us*, a 20-foot-tall rotating bookshelf containing 2,500 books, debuted as a major spectacle during Miami Art Week. Installed on Miami Beach within a circular pool of water, the sculpture invites visitors to step onto a rotating platform, creating shifting social encounters with strangers. By day it towers over the sand, and by night it glows like a beacon. The work also includes an audio track of quotes from the books, some of which have been banned by Florida schools, and Devlin plans to donate all volumes to Miami public schools and libraries after the installation ends.