Artist Foundations’ Net Worth Has Nearly Tripled to $9 B., Led by Cy Twombly Foundation’s $1.5 B. in Art and Assets

New research from the Aspen Institute’s Artist-Endowed Foundation Initiative (AEFI) reveals that artist-endowed foundations in the U.S. now control roughly $9 billion in assets, nearly triple the $3.5 billion reported in 2011 and up 17% from $7.7 billion in 2018. The Cy Twombly Foundation leads with $1.5 billion in art and assets, followed by foundations for Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Robert Rauschenberg, each holding over $500 million. The data, drawn from public tax forms, shows that just five of roughly 500 foundations account for more than half the total, with most established by postwar American artists born before 1931.

The 20 Most Expensive Artworks Hitting the Auction Block This Season

The May 2026 New York auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips will feature 20 high-value lots priced at $30 million or more, including works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, and others. The sales are staggered around the Venice Biennale and Frieze New York, with Sotheby’s holding its contemporary evening auction on May 14 and Christie’s its 20th-century sale on May 18. Notable consignments come from the estates of S.I. Newhouse, former MoMA board president Agnes Gund, and dealer Marian Goodman.

Picasso Painting That Cost S. I. Newhouse a MoMA Board Position Heads to Christie’s for $55 M.

Christie’s New York will auction 16 masterpieces from the collection of late Condé Nast magnate S. I. Newhouse on May 18, with an estimated total of $450 million. The highlight is Pablo Picasso’s Cubist painting *Homme à la guitare* (1913), estimated at $35–55 million, which Newhouse acquired in 2000 for $10 million after MoMA sold it from its collection. Newhouse, then a MoMA board member, violated museum policy by buying the work and subsequently resigned from the board.

Twombly Foundation to Exhibit Rare Rauschenberg Works at Gagosian

The Cy Twombly Foundation is presenting six rarely seen early works by Robert Rauschenberg at Gagosian's new Upper East Side gallery in New York. The exhibition includes a fragile 1950 assemblage of twigs and glass, a cyanotype made with his then-wife Susan Weil, a 'Black Painting' from around 1952, and a 1961 assemblage, offering a unique glimpse into a period of the artist's output that he largely destroyed.

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Larry Gagosian has opened a major exhibition of Jasper Johns's crosshatch paintings from 1973 to 1983 at his Upper East Side gallery in New York. In a forthcoming Gagosian Quarterly interview, Gagosian explains his motivation simply: he wanted to look at the works. The show features key pieces including all six versions of "Between the Clock and the Bed" (1981), borrowed from top-tier collectors and museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery of Art. Gagosian recounts first encountering the crosshatch paintings in 1976 at Leo Castelli's gallery, before he had met Johns, through his connections with Merce Cunningham and John Cage.

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Bob Monk, a longtime director at Gagosian who worked closely with artists such as Ed Ruscha and Richard Artschwager, died on December 15 at age 75 due to complications from a heart condition. Monk spent over two decades at Gagosian, and his career also included stints at Leo Castelli Gallery, his own SoHo gallery Lorence-Monk Gallery, and Sotheby's, where he headed the contemporary prints and contemporary art departments.

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Gagosian Gallery, in collaboration with Castelli Gallery, will present a landmark survey of Jasper Johns's crosshatched paintings at its 980 Madison Avenue flagship from January 22 to March 14, 2026. The exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of the series' debut in 1976 and includes rarely seen works from 1973 to 1983, lent by major museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Broad, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as well as from Johns's personal collection. Key works include pieces from the "Corpse and Mirror" series, "Weeping Women" (1975), "Dancers on a Plane" (1980–81), and all six "Between the Clock and the Bed" paintings (1981–83).

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A 14-foot-wide Yves Klein painting, *California (IKB 71)*, sold at Christie’s Paris for €18.4 million ($21.4 million), setting a new auction record for the artist in France. The work, the largest format Klein made in his signature International Klein Blue, was the cover lot of the house’s *Avant-garde(s) including Thinking Italian* sale and had been in the same New York collection since 2005. Christie’s recently uncovered that the painting stopped in New York en route from Paris to California, where it appeared in a show with dealer Leo Castelli.

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Gagosian's Le Bourget gallery in Paris will present "Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience," opening October 19 and running through April 18. The exhibition includes the artist's final sculpture, *Truck Trilogy* (2011–2017), featuring three vintage Chevrolet Advance Design 3100 pickups polished and fitted with stainless-steel rods, previously shown at Dia Beacon. Curated by Donna De Salvo, the show also features works like *13, 14, 15 Meter Rows* (1985), drawings, films, and archival materials highlighting De Maria's mathematical and musical interests, including his involvement with the Primitives and the Druds.

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Christie’s has secured a monumental Yves Klein painting, *California (IKB 71)*, for its October 23 sale in Paris. Measuring 14 feet wide, it is the largest format the artist ever made in his signature International Klein Blue (IKB) and carries an estimate of €16–25 million ($18–29 million). The work was created in 1961 and has a newly uncovered provenance: after being shown in Los Angeles at Virginia Dwan’s gallery, it stopped in New York for an exhibition with dealer Leo Castelli before returning to Paris. It has been in a New York collection since 2005 and was on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2005 to 2008.

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The article examines the revival of Yasmina Reza's play "Art" on Broadway, which centers on three men arguing over a seemingly blank canvas purchased for a high price. The new production updates the painting's cost from 200,000 francs (about $60,000) to $300,000, reflecting today's inflated art market. The play's themes of aesthetics versus market value resonate with current debates about speculative hype and irrational pricing in contemporary art.

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Christophe de Menil, a collector, designer, and patron who cultivated deep relationships with many of the 20th century's most influential artists, died in New York on August 5 at age 92. A member of the renowned Menil family, she was the daughter of John and Dominique de Menil, founders of the Menil Collection in Houston. Her close friends included Merce Cunningham, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and Jasper Johns. She married artist Enrique Castro-Cid and was the grandmother of artist Dash Snow. De Menil appeared three times on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list and built a collection featuring works by René Magritte, Barnett Newman, and others. She also worked as a fashion designer, creating garments for theater director Robert Wilson, and commissioned Frank Gehry and Doug Wheeler for her New York home renovation.

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Art Basel dealers recall the fair's early days, from its founding in 1970 by Swiss dealers Ernst Beyeler, Trudl Bruckner, and Balz Hilt to its evolution into a global powerhouse with editions in Hong Kong, Miami Beach, Paris, and soon Qatar. Veterans like David Fleiss of Galerie 1900-2000, Thaddaeus Ropac, Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth, and Dominique Lévy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan share personal anecdotes, including chaotic customs incidents, childhood memories, and the fair's shift from a Eurocentric gathering to the world's premier art fair.

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Raymond Saunders's first retrospective, a small but potent exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, surveys 35 of his bewitching paintings. The works, described as elusive and Rauschenbergian, feature messy scrawls, collected trinkets, and media clippings, with pieces like *Passages: East, West 1* (1987) layering chess boards, paint strokes, and appropriated still lifes. Saunders, who joined Andrew Kreps and David Zwirner last year, has never before received a retrospective, despite his influential 1967 essay "Black Is a Color" and steady institutional acquisitions.

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Phillips New York's modern and contemporary evening sale on Tuesday night generated $52 million, a 40 percent drop from the $86 million achieved in the same sale last year. The auction exactly met its pre-sale estimate, but five lots failed to sell and four were withdrawn. Despite the overall downturn, five new records were set for women artists, including Kiki Kogelnik, Ilana Savdie, Olga de Amaral, and Grace Hartigan. The top lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat's *Untitled* (1984) at $6.6 million, followed by works by Ed Ruscha and Donald Judd. Bidding was active for several works, with many going to US buyers, and a painting by Yu Nishimura, newly represented by David Zwirner, sold for more than double its estimate.

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Days before a Louise Nevelson sculpture was to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in May 2022, Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher declared the work inauthentic, claiming it was assembled by the artist’s son, Mike, rather than by Nevelson herself. The consigner, the estate of collector Hardie Beloff, has now sued Pace Gallery in US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania, alleging that Glimcher deliberately sabotaged the sale to protect Pace’s control over Nevelson’s market. The lawsuit centers on Glimcher’s call to Sotheby’s, where he warned the work would not be included in a forthcoming catalogue raisonné, and on a 1993 appraisal in which he had valued the same sculpture at $85,000 without questioning its authenticity.

The Marcel Duchamps That Got Away: On Collecting His Work and the Sprawling MoMA Show

The article recounts the author's personal experience as a collector who passed up the opportunity to buy a complete set of Marcel Duchamp's readymades at a 2002 Phillips de Pury and Luxembourg auction. The set, editioned by dealer Arturo Schwartz in 1964, included iconic works like *Fountain* and *Bicycle Wheel*, but the sale was a financial failure, with many pieces bought-in or selling for far below expectations. The author later acquired some of the unsold works privately. The piece is framed around the concurrent Duchamp exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and Gagosian.

Go Time! Gagosian Christens New Madison Avenue Space With Duchamp Readymades

Larry Gagosian is set to inaugurate a newly overhauled ground-floor gallery at 980 Madison Avenue on April 25, marking a major expansion within his long-time New York headquarters. The debut exhibition features the iconic readymades of Marcel Duchamp, including a rare version of 'Bicycle Wheel' and 'Fountain.' This move follows a period of uncertainty for the dealer after Bloomberg Philanthropies acquired the building, prompting Gagosian to invest significant resources into securing and transforming the street-level space.

Blink and You’ll Miss It! 3 New York Shows With Painfully Short Runs

Blink and You’ll Miss It! 3 New York Shows With Painfully Short Runs

Three notable New York gallery exhibitions are operating on exceptionally short timelines, defying the current standard of month-long runs. These include "Ryan Foerster: Going Green" at Kerry Schuss Gallery, a presentation of Robert Mnuchin's collection at Mnuchin Gallery, and a show by the Japanese artist collective ME at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, each on view for only a matter of days.

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Gagosian will host a survey of Jasper Johns's "Crosshatch" paintings at its Madison Avenue gallery in New York from January 22 to March 14, 2026. Titled "Between The Clock and The Bed," the exhibition is organized in partnership with Castelli Gallery and marks the 50th anniversary of the series, focusing on works from 1973 to 1983. It includes loans from major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Broad, and the National Gallery of Art, as well as works from Johns's own collection. Highlights include pieces from his "Corpse and Mirror" series, "Weeping Women," and all six "Between the Clock and the Bed" paintings.

from artemisia gentileschi in paris to yoshitomo naras u k debut 9 must see european museum shows in 2025 2578017

Artnet News highlights nine must-see European museum exhibitions opening in 2025, spanning from Amsterdam to Zurich. Featured shows include Noah Davis's first U.K. museum survey at the Barbican in London, a dual Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Tracey Emin's first major Italian retrospective at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, and a dedicated Artemisia Gentileschi show at Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. Other notable exhibitions cover Marlene Dumas, Yayoi Kusama, and Yoshitomo Nara, among others.

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Sotheby's held a landmark evening auction on November 8 featuring 31 works from the collection of Emily Fisher Landau, a noted art patron who amassed around 1,200 works over 102 years. The sale achieved $406.4 million, surpassing its pre-sale estimate of $344.5–$430.1 million and becoming the most valuable auction dedicated to a female collector in history. Highlights included Pablo Picasso's *Femme à la montre* (1932), which sold for $139 million—the second-highest price for a Picasso at auction—and record-breaking results for Agnes Martin's *Grey Stone II* ($18.7 million), Mark Tansey's *Triumph Over Mastery II* ($11.8 million), and Jasper Johns's *Flags* (1986) ($41 million). Other notable sales included works by Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol's portrait of Landau.

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Top 200 Collector Steven A. Cohen has been revealed as the consignor of Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet sculpture, *America* (2016), which will be auctioned at Sotheby's on November 18. The work, made of 18-karat gold and weighing over 100 kilograms, was purchased from Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017. It will be displayed in a bathroom at Sotheby's Breuer Building before the sale, with a starting bid expected around $10 million based on the price of its weight in gold. The piece has a notable history: one version was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, offered to the Trump White House as a loan alternative to a van Gogh painting, and another was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019, making Cohen's the only extant version.

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Miami Art Week 2025 is set to be a major destination for collectors and art enthusiasts, featuring a packed schedule of fairs, gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and public art installations across Miami Beach. Key highlights include the Pop Art survey at the Margulies Warehouse showcasing works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Johns; the Rubell Museum's first solo survey of Thomas Houseago; a site-specific installation by Igshaan Adams at the ICA Miami; and Jack Pierson's exploration of Miami's influence on his work at the Bass.

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Carroll Dunham, a leading painter known for his psychologically charged works, has joined the fast-rising Matthew Brown gallery, which has locations in Los Angeles and New York. Dunham, 75, left Gladstone Gallery after nearly 20 years, citing a desire for change. His first solo show with Brown is scheduled for September 2026 in Tribeca. Dunham will continue to be represented by several established dealers including Galerie Max Hetzler, Blum, Eva Presenhuber, and Gerhardsen Gerner.

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Sotheby's will auction the collection of Emily Fisher Landau, a prominent Whitney Museum board member and avid art collector who died in March at age 102. The sale, comprising about 120 works from her estate, is led by Pablo Picasso's "Femme à la montre" (1932), estimated at over $120 million, alongside major pieces by Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, and Glenn Ligon. Fisher Landau amassed roughly 1,200 works over decades, displayed at her private Fisher Landau Center for Art from 1991 to 2017, and donated 417 works to the Whitney in 2010 alone.

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Rana Begum’s solo exhibition, "Reflection," is currently on view at the Gallery at Windsor in Vero Beach, Florida, following its debut at the SCAD Museum of Art. The exhibition showcases Begum’s signature style, which utilizes industrial materials like metal bars and reflectors to create elegant abstractions influenced by American Minimalism and Islamic architecture. The show traces her journey from a young immigrant in the UK to a Royal Academician, highlighting her ability to manipulate light and color through geometric forms.

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Gagosian has partnered with filmmaker Wes Anderson to recreate the New York studio of Joseph Cornell at its Paris gallery space on 9 rue de Castiglione. The exhibition, curated by Jasper Sharp and titled “The House of Utopia Parkway,” will run from December 16 to March 14, 2026, transforming the gallery into a tableau that blends a time capsule with a life-size shadow box. It marks the first solo presentation of Cornell’s work in Paris in over four decades, featuring iconic glass-fronted “shadow boxes” such as *Pharmacy* (1943), *Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy)* (circa 1950), and *A Dressing Room for Gille* (1939).

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Gagosian has announced representation of the late American painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), marking the artist's return to the gallery more than thirty years after his final solo exhibition there during his lifetime. To celebrate, the gallery will mount a career-spanning exhibition at its Madison Avenue flagship opening November 8, curated by Jasper Sharp in collaboration with the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. The show will feature works from every period of Diebenkorn's six-decade career, including early California landscapes, wartime watercolors, and the celebrated Ocean Park abstractions, with highlights such as a 1943 watercolor, a monumental 1960 canvas, and late works on paper.

Frank Stella’s Personal Collection of Navajo Textiles Goes on View for the First Time

A selection of Navajo textiles from the personal collection of minimalist artist Frank Stella is being exhibited and sold for the first time. The 55 textiles, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, will be on view at Arader Galleries in New York from May 15 to June 10, then travel to Peter Pap Rugs in New Hampshire in June. Priced between $6,500 and $25,000, the collection includes a large 19th-century blanket that Stella lent to a seminal 1972 exhibition at LACMA. Stella began collecting these works in the mid-1960s after being introduced to Navajo art by Donald Judd and Tony Berlant.