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The article previews the upcoming May 2025 marquee art auctions in New York, led by Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips. Key consignors include the collection of late Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio and his wife Louise, along with works from Anne and Sid Bass, Tiqui Atencio, Daniella Luxembourg, the estate of Barbara Gladstone, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Notable lots include Dorothea Tanning's 'Endgame' (est. $1M–$1.5M), Robert Motherwell's 'Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160' (est. $3.5M–$5.5M), and Andy Warhol's 'Big Electric Chair' (est. $30M). The article also reveals undisclosed consignors through research, such as the family of Harold and Gertrud Parker for the Tanning work and the Hess Art Collection for the Motherwell.

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This week's art industry roundup covers major auction activity, including Christie's $250 million sale of Barnes and Noble founder Len Riggio's collection, and Sotheby's postponement of an ancient Buddhist gemstone auction after criticism from academics and India's Ministry of Culture. Frieze New York, recently sold to Ari Emanuel, reported strong sales with a $3 million Jeff Koons sculpture at Gagosian, while Gagosian's TEFAF New York booth featuring Anna Weyant's jewelry-themed paintings sold out. Other news includes Céline Assimon's appointment as chief commercial officer at Bonhams, the Spring Break Art Show's return, and gallery representation changes.

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The article reports on the upcoming May 2025 marquee auctions in New York at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, which carry a combined low estimate of about $1.2 billion—similar to last year. However, the market faces headwinds from U.S. trade wars, stock market volatility, high interest rates, and ongoing global conflicts. Major consignors include estates (Len Riggio, Anne Bass), living patrons (Tiqui Atencio, Norman Braman), dealers (Daniella Luxembourg, Barbara Gladstone, Enrico Navara), and institutions (SFMOMA, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Phillips Collection). Notable lots include Sheldon Solow’s $70 million Alberto Giacometti at Sotheby’s and Riggio’s $50 million Mondrian at Christie’s. Collector Peter M. Brant is revealed as the seller of Basquiat’s Baby Boom (1982) and a John Currin painting at Christie’s.

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A visitor at France's Pompidou-Metz ate a banana from Maurizio Cattelan's conceptual artwork "Comedian" (2019), which consists of a banana duct-taped to a wall. Security staff intervened calmly, and the work was reinstalled within minutes, as the fruit is regularly replaced per the artist's instructions. The incident occurred during the exhibition "The Endless Sunday," celebrating the museum's 15th anniversary, which features 30 works by Cattelan alongside over 400 others from the Musée National d'Art Moderne.

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Artnet Pro's 'The Asia Pivot' newsletter previews the 2026 Asian art market, highlighting a hopeful recovery after signs of improvement in late 2025. Key events include Art SG in Singapore (hosting S.E.A. Focus for the first time), the inaugural Art Basel Qatar in February, and Art Basel Hong Kong in March. Auction houses will align spring sales with these fairs. The article also notes regional shifts: South Korea's Art Asia partners with KINTEX for a new fair in India, Hong Kong's Kwai Fung Hin opens in Singapore, and Shanghai's Antenna Space expands to Hong Kong. Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi meets with artist Takashi Murakami to promote culture abroad, while geopolitical tensions with China threaten cultural exchanges.

Rare early photographs reveal lost sites featured in Van Gogh’s paintings

Two rare photographic albums taken by art critic Gustave Coquiot in 1922 have been acquired by the newly established Van Gogh Academy in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and are now on display. The images capture many of the sites in Arles that Vincent van Gogh painted in the late 1880s, including the Yellow House, the Langlois Bridge, and the Rhône riverbank. Several of these locations were later destroyed during World War II or by modernization, making Coquiot's photographs valuable historical records of Van Gogh's original subjects.

Hampshire College, Whose Alumni List Includes Many Well-Known Artists, to Close After 51 Years

Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has announced it will officially close following the fall 2026 semester, ending 51 years of operation. The decision follows a period of significant financial instability, including a reported $20 million debt and a failure to meet enrollment targets. The college has established agreements with regional institutions, such as Smith College and Bennington College, to allow current students to complete their degrees elsewhere.

A brush with... Sanya Kantarovsky—podcast

Artist Sanya Kantarovsky is the subject of a podcast interview. He discusses his artistic practice, influences, and the guiding principle of 'ostranenija' or 'making strange' in his figurative paintings, which blend bodies, animals, and plants in atmospheric, often threatening scenarios.

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Dara Birnbaum, a pioneering video artist known for subverting mainstream media through her re-edited television clips, has died at age 78. Her longtime representative, Marian Goodman Gallery, confirmed her death but did not disclose a cause. Birnbaum rose to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s by pirating TV programs and resequencing their images to disrupt passive viewing. Her most famous work, *Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman* (1978–79), loops clips of Lynda Carter as the superhero, exposing hidden politics and questioning the show's brand of feminism. The piece is now regarded as a landmark in both feminist art and video art.

Two Growing London Galleries Launch Second Spaces—and More Art Industry News

The art world is seeing a wave of institutional shifts and physical expansions, headlined by the appointment of Melissa Chiu as the new director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In London, galleries Edel Assanti and Emalin are both expanding their footprints with new locations, while the National Gallery has selected Kengo Kuma for a massive £350 million extension project. Meanwhile, the European Commission has threatened to pull €2 million in funding from the Venice Biennale unless it reverses its stance on Russian participation.

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A small Berlin auction house sold a 1930 gouache by Suzanne Duchamp for just €1,500 in 2024, and a Chicago-area firm moved a 1940 painting for only $1,000 in 2004—prices far below those of unknown emerging artists today. These works are now featured in the first-ever retrospective devoted to Duchamp at the Kunsthaus Zurich, highlighting her long neglect in favor of her more famous siblings Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon. The exhibition traces her career from Cubist beginnings through superb Dadaist creations like "Arietta of Oblivion of the Dazed Chapel" (1920) to later, more decorative works that have divided critics.

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The article previews the 2025 Met Gala, which coincides with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style." The gala's dress code will celebrate Black dandyism, inspired by Monica L. Miller's 2009 book *Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity*. Co-chairs include actor Colman Domingo, Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton, rapper A$AP Rocky, and musician Pharrell Williams. The exhibition, guest-curated by Miller, will feature historical and contemporary clothing, artworks, and photographs organized into 12 sections such as "Respectability," "Disguise," and "Cool." The article also highlights five art historical examples of Black dandyism, including a 1772 portrait of Julius Soubise.

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This week's art industry roundup covers major developments across art fairs, auction houses, galleries, and museums. At Expo Chicago, emerging artist Auudi Dorsey sold her painting *Rumble* (2025) for $14,000 on opening day at Palo Gallery, while the fair featured 170 exhibitors including 20 from South Korea amid tariff concerns. Vienna Contemporary appointed Abaseh Mirvali as artistic advisor for 2025-2026. Sotheby's was selected by Barbara Gladstone's estate trustees to sell her collection, starting with a May 15 single-owner sale of 12 works estimated at over $12 million. Nine artworks from the Anne and Sid Bass collection head to Christie's New York, and Sotheby's secured a $70 million Alberto Giacometti sculpture for its May 13 evening sale. Philipp Kaiser departed Marian Goodman Gallery after six years. Customs backlogs from President Trump's import policy changes are causing shipping headaches, with DHL halting business-to-consumer shipments over $800 to the U.S. Air de Paris withdrew from Art Basel. Mexico City gallery OMR hired Agustina Ferreyra as director. Angelica Jopling is expanding her London gallery Incubator to New York. Alexander Gray Associates now represents Donald Moffett. In museums, the National Endowment for the Humanities, following DOGE staff cuts, is offering grants up to $600,000 for statues for Trump's National Garden of American Heroes. CCS Bard appointed Lauren Cornell as artistic director and Mariano Lopez Seoane as graduate program director. The New York Academy of Art named Paul R. Provost president. The Artists' Legacy Foundation appointed Daisy Murray Holman executive director. The Speed Art Museum named Diallo Simon-Ponte assistant curator. The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow appointed Daria Kotova director. The Nasher Sculpture Center named Carlos Basualdo director. The Cultural Infrastructure Index reported a 17% drop in completed cultural projects in 2024.

Notes from New York: The World in a Convex Mirror

The article reviews the sixth edition of MoMA PS1's quinquennial survey 'Greater New York 2026,' which coincides with the institution's 50th anniversary. It highlights works by artists such as Covey Gong, Win McCarthy, Mekko Harjo, and Sophie Friedman-Pappas, noting how the exhibition's themeless structure and use of reflective surfaces create a hall of distorted reflections. The show includes 53 emerging and midcareer artists, mostly millennials, and is accompanied by a block party and gala rather than a dedicated commemorative exhibition like FORTY (2016).

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Christie’s postwar and contemporary art day sale in London on Thursday totaled £12.2 million ($16.4 million), with over 80% of lots sold and 90% of those achieving prices within or above their presale estimates. Standout results included a 2020 painting by Somaya Critchlow selling for £57,150 (est. £15,000–£20,000), a small Etel Adnan painting going for £107,950 (est. £30,000–£50,000), and a Michelangelo Pistoletto mirror piece fetching £234,950—seven times its estimate. However, a Toyin Ojih Odutola painting and a Gerhard Richter gray painting failed to sell, reflecting a selective market.

Digital Art Pioneer Nancy Burson Collapses the Border Between Mysticism and Quantum Physics

Nancy Burson, a pioneering digital artist, presents her latest solo exhibition "Light Matter" at Heft Gallery in New York, featuring "Quantum Entanglement" paintings that appear as white dots on black canvases but reveal jittering forms and depth when viewed through a phone camera. The 78-year-old artist, known for her 1980s composite portraits blending faces of businessmen and movie stars, continues her exploration of perception and technology, claiming a special gift to perceive the universe's emergent energy grid. The exhibition runs through May 2.

A new Istanbul gallery is offering an outlet for Iran’s artists

Shiva Zahed Gallery has opened in Istanbul’s Pera district, specifically dedicated to showcasing Iranian contemporary art. The gallery's inaugural exhibition, "Echoes," features works by the influential artist Fereydoun Ave and installation artist Shaqayeq Arabi. The opening was significantly delayed and reconfigured after civil unrest in Iran and a communication blackout prevented the founder from coordinating with the 20 emerging artists originally scheduled for the debut.

Senators Whitehouse and Schumer Call for ‘Proactive Measures’ to Protect Philip Guston and Ben Shahn Murals

Senators Whitehouse and Schumer Call for ‘Proactive Measures’ to Protect Philip Guston and Ben Shahn Murals

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Chuck Schumer have publicly called on the General Services Administration (GSA) to take immediate steps to protect significant New Deal-era murals by artists Philip Guston and Ben Shahn. Their letter expresses urgent concern over the potential sale or demolition of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C., which houses these artworks, and questions the GSA's ability to safeguard the pieces once the building transfers to private ownership.

Awards, Prussian Porcelain, Techno, Cabaret! Inside Berlin’s First-Ever Art Gala

Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof museum held its first-ever gala to celebrate its 30th anniversary. The event featured a curated program of performances, including a participatory installation by artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset titled "Performing Yourself" and a mirrored neon work by Monica Bonvicini. High-profile guests like Cate Blanchett, Matt Dillon, Wim Wenders, and Nina Hoss attended the evening, which blended traditional gala elements with Berlin-specific cultural touchstones like techno, cabaret, and performances by artists such as Ellen Allien and Alice Sara Ott.

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The Louvre has temporarily closed employee offices and the Campana Gallery in the southern Sully wing due to structural concerns identified in a November 14 building assessment report, which warned of fragile floor beams. The closure affects 65 staff members and a nine-room gallery of ancient Greek ceramics. The museum has launched an investigation and plans repairs, following a year of challenges including a staff walkout in June and a dramatic theft of imperial jewels from the Gallery of Apollo in October.

‘He sent someone to intimidate me’: Christopher Anderson, the photographer who shot Jeffrey Epstein

Photographer Christopher Anderson has revealed the details behind his 2015 encounter with Jeffrey Epstein, whom he photographed for a cancelled New York magazine profile. Anderson describes a series of unsettling interactions, including Epstein's attempts to buy the image rights for $20,000 and the eventual dispatch of a "mafia-esque" intimidator to Anderson's studio to seize a hard drive. The photographer's email exchanges with Epstein’s staff were recently made public as part of the Department of Justice's release of the Epstein files.

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The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced funding cuts to arts organizations across the U.S. as part of broader government spending reductions under the Trump administration. These cuts disproportionately affect Black-led art institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), Museum Hue, and the Billie Holiday Theatre, which rely heavily on federal grants for programming and operations. While some organizations received final payments or avoided returning funds, they face an uncertain future as critical funding streams are terminated or made ineligible for renewal.

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Christie's 21st century evening sale on May 14, 2025, generated $96.4 million against a presale low estimate of $79.5 million, with 39 lots offered and a sell-through rate of 90% before withdrawals. The top lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Baby Boom' (1982), which sold for $23.4 million with fees, consigned by collector Peter M. Brant. Marlene Dumas's 'Miss January' (1997) achieved $13.6 million, setting a new record for the most expensive living female artist, surpassing Jenny Saville's previous record. Other notable sales included Simone Leigh's 'Sentinel' (2020) at $5.7 million, while works by Ellsworth Kelly and Felix Gonzalez-Torres failed to sell.

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Former Sotheby's rainmaker Brooke Lampley, now a director at Gagosian, discusses the art market's loss of control over pricing, citing a failed $70 million Alberto Giacometti bust at auction as a symptom of deeper market confidence issues. The article traces the evolution of art pricing from opaque, dealer-driven norms to a data-rich system enabled by Artnet's Price Database in 1989, which fueled a price spiral and attracted speculators. Now, in 2025, the market faces a correction with auction sales down 27.3 percent to $10.2 billion, and buyers are pausing as traditional pricing signals become scrambled.

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A museum-goer ate Maurizio Cattelan's "The Comedian" (2019)—a banana duct-taped to a wall—on display at the Pompidou-Metz in France. The museum quickly replaced the fruit, noting it is regularly changed per the artist's instructions. Cattelan joked the eater should have consumed the tape and skin as well.

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At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun presented Maurizio Cattelan's artwork *Comedian* (2019)—a duct-taped banana that sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby's—to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road online marketplace. Ulbricht, recently pardoned by Donald Trump after receiving a life sentence, accepted the gift and joked about replacing the banana as it perishes. Sun had previously eaten the banana at a press conference in Hong Kong after purchasing it at auction.

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James Turrell's latest solo exhibition, "Reflections on Light," opened at Häusler Contemporary Zürich and runs through August 31, 2025. The show features a curated selection of recent and historic works, including the eight-part aquatint suite *Still Light* (1990–1991), a new glass and gold leaf sculpture *Roden Crater Along the Summer Solstice* (2024), and luminous glass pieces like *Tall Glass SINGULARITY* (2024) and *Small Elliptical Glass FIRST CAUSE* (2024). The exhibition traces Turrell's decades-long investigation of light as a malleable medium, from early projected light installations to his ongoing earthworks project at Roden Crater.

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President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and arts organizations across the U.S. are already feeling the impact. After a White House budget request in May that excluded the NEA, dozens of institutions received abrupt termination notices for their grant applications, with the NEA citing a shift in policy priorities to focus on projects reflecting the nation's artistic heritage as prioritized by the President. In protest, many senior NEA staff resigned or were asked to retire, leaving the agency in disarray. The cuts are part of broader federal efforts to defund cultural agencies, including the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has seen a 70-80 percent staff reduction and canceled over a thousand grants. Private foundations like the Mellon Foundation and the Helen Frankenthaler and Andy Warhol Foundations have launched emergency funding programs, but the consequences for artists, educators, and community organizations are immediate and destabilizing.

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Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has died at age 88. A Jesuit priest from Argentina, he was the first pope from the Americas and the first from outside Europe since the 8th century. During his papacy, he took progressive stances on social justice, migrants, the environment, and the LGBTQ community, and also engaged deeply with contemporary art. He oversaw the Vatican Museums, ordered the return of Parthenon marble fragments to Greece, restored Raphael frescoes, and became the first pope to visit the Venice Biennale, where the Vatican had its first-ever pavilion in 2013.

What’s Gone Wrong in the Glasgow Art Scene?

Rachel Ashenden surveys the precarious state of Glasgow's visual arts scene in March 2026, following the liquidation and closure of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) after years of mismanagement, a winter shutdown in 2024, and a protest by Arts Workers for Palestine Scotland that led to arrests. She visits artists and organizers across the city, including Rae-Yen Song's exhibition at Tramway, which evolved from a research show at the now-closed CCA, and speaks with Transmission co-founder Alastair Strachan about the city's artist-led legacy.