Arts

خلاصہ: The Gulf Art Scene Is Showing Its Global Force Competition is a Western concept,” said Qatar’s Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani during a panel discussion at Art Basel this past June. Sheikha Al Mayassa is chairperson of Qatar Museums, one of the largest buyers of contemporary art internationally, and she was responding to a question about the forthcoming launch of Art Basel Qatar in 2026 and the Gulf region’s increasingly crowded art-world calendar. In the cool months of November to March, headlining cultural events come almost week by week: Abu Dhabi Art, the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (or, every other year, the related Islamic Arts Biennale), Noor Riyadh, Desert X AlUla, Misk Art Week, Art Basel Qatar, Art Week Riyadh, Art Dubai, Culture Summit Abu Dhabi, Dubai Design Week, and the Sharjah Biennial. As the Gulf nations continue to build their contemporary art scenes, time—more than money—is becoming a finite resource. The number of collectors is also surging. In what locals refer to as the “Covid bounce,” from 2021 onward numerous high-net-worth individuals immigrated from Europe and India, trading inflation and red tape for the tax-efficient shores of Dubai and Doha. In 2024 alone, according to various reports, 6,700 millionaires relocated to the United Arab Emirates. The Gulf has also become an accessible gateway for artists and curators looking to the so-called Global South, with the preview days of the Sharjah Biennial this year crowded with both new and returning visitors. Institutional buying is on the rise as well, making this moment one of genuine potential as permanent collections are being built in real time. Abu Dhabi is preparing for the opening of its long-awaited Guggenheim (and still buying, sources say); Qatar Museums is acquiring work for its own contemporary museum, the Art Mill; and Saudi Arabia is buying for multiple planned museums across the country. With new art districts, free zones, residency programs, and educational initiatives also in the works, the Gulf’s starchitect-designed institutions are just the most visible assets in the huge state investments in the art sector at large. “There’s a growing interest in developing culture as a means of diversifying the economy,” said the Lebanese-French businessman Elie Khouri, one of Dubai’s most prominent collectors. “The focus used to be mostly on real estate. Now, culture is seen as a way to drive economic growth, attract tourism, and enhance overall quality of life.” LONG-TERM COLLECTING Though many museums, biennials, and art fairs in the Gulf arrived as franchises—the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Desert X AlUla, Art Basel Qatar—the Arab Gulf states maintain a small but deep-rooted independent market. Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed Al Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family, put together a superb collection of Arab modern work, which he donated to the country’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in 2004. In Jeddah, a group of 12 influential families, led by Princess Jawaher bint Majid Al Saud, formed the nonprofit Saudi Art Council in 2013, supporting the influential yearly festival 21,39 Jeddah Arts, and each individually forming major collections of both Saudi and international art. In Dubai, which has the most active market, many of the long-standing patrons are Arabs or Iranians who have lived in the city for decades, among them Farhad Farjam, Mohammed Afkhami, and Khouri. Other collectors in the UAE are Emiratis who buy not only contemporary art but traditional Islamic artifacts and manuscripts, including Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan, Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, the late Sultan bin Ali Al Owais, and the Palestinian Emirati Zaki Nusseibeh. For years, these and a handful of others (along with institutions such as Art Jameel and the Sharjah Art Foundation) were the main buyers, a static number that rarely grew, gallerists often grumbled, despite the vast wealth in the Gulf. Dana Awartani, an artist collected by Andreina Pérez-Cisneros, created the archaeologically inspired sculpture Where the Dwellers Lay (2022) for that year’s edition of Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia. Photo Lance Gerber/©Dana Awartani/Courtesy Desert X AlUla The influx of investors to Dubai has shifted the landscape. Many new residents, such as Andreina Pérez-Cisneros, had already collected art elsewhere, while others have started buying in the Arab region as a way to put down roots. Like Dubai itself, the group of recent collectors is profoundly international—from longtime Dubai residents Lindsey and Michael Fournie, who are originally from the United States, to Chinese buyers such as Snow Li—and they are buying art both globally and in the Arab region. “There is a traditional understanding that Indian collectors collect Indian art, and that is true to an extent,” said Benedetta Ghione, Art Dubai Group executive director. “But some of the top, top, top collectors who are Indian are moving here, and with that comes an international collection. These new collectors, and ones coming from Europe, also support home talent.” Another major change, many gallerists say, is not just in the number but in the tenor, as even casual buyers are thinking more seriously about the scope of what an art collection can be. Pérez-Cisneros, the granddaughter of Cuban-Venezuelan collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, moved to Dubai 12 years ago and began acquiring Middle Eastern art by artists such as Shaikha Al Mazrou from Dubai and Dana Awartani from Jeddah—both of whom work in geometric idioms. For Pérez-Cisneros, there was an obvious connection to the Latin American histories of abstract geometry that were already a part of her collection. “There’s a lot of common ground between Latin America and the Middle East, even though they seem far apart religiously and culturally,” Pérez-Cisneros said from her airy Dubai villa. “But historically, Arab culture had a huge influence on Portugal and Spain. When they went over and colonized Latin America, they brought many of those influences with them, which can be seen architecturally and through motifs used in Spanish cathedrals and churches in Mexico.” Ultimately, Pérez-Cisneros said she wants to support programming or possibly establish a foundation that could further explore these links. It’s a typical move for Dubai, where private...

خلاصہ: Austin’s ‘Black Artists Matter’ Mural, Rainbow Crosswalk May Be Removed The “Black Artists Matter” street mural and a rainbow crosswalk in Austin, Texas, may be removed after governor Greg Abbott moved to enforce a larger directive from President Donald Trump to get rid of political and artistic road murals across the country. In a July 1 letter, transportation secretary Sean P. Duffy gave states 60 days to study crosswalks at intersections and develop a list of “compliance concerns” in their states, as part of his “Safe Roads” nationwide roadway initiative. Per the US transportation department, “intersections and crosswalks need to be kept free from distractions. This includes political messages of any nature, artwork, or anything else that detracts from the core mission of driver and pedestrian safety.” In response, on October 8, Texas governor Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to “remove any and all political ideologies” from the state’s streets in keeping with the July 1 federal directive. Abbott added, “Any city that refuses to comply with the federal road standards will face consequences including the withholding or denial of state and federal road funding and suspension of agreements with TxDOT.” The city is planning to comply, having identified about 16 locations that could be impacted, according to a post made by the city’s mayor Kirk Watson in the Austin City Council members’ public online message board. While the city outweighs the cost-benefit of having to cover over such displays, the mayor noted the $175 million in state and federal grant funding received by Austin Transportation and Public Works, along with additional upcoming grant opportunities that could be lost if the city doesn’t comply. “With all the needs we have in this state, it’s disappointing and a waste of time to be talking about this,” Watson wrote. “Austin will comply with state law and we’ll demonstrate our love for all Austinites in other ways. We have a lot of pride. We’ll live it and we’ll show it.” The mayor also outlines a plan for similar displays on city-owned property that, instead, would not violate state or federal requirements such as banners, painting of sidewalks, and permanent fixtures on city-owned sidewalks and utility poles “to represent our diverse community, show our love and pride, and allow Austinites to participate in expression.” The “Black Artists Matter” mural in question is situated in Austin’s historically Black, East side neighborhood and was painted by local Black artists in collaboration with the Austin Justice Coalition and nonprofit Capitol View Arts in June 2020. That year was a time of reckoning, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that partly sparked the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). In light of federal directives aimed at diminishing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, there have been a number of cities and institutions impacted nationwide. In Washington, DC, for example, construction crews began dismantling a BLM mural in March. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Two Kerry James Marshall Paintings on Offer at Frieze, Buoyed by Royal Academy Show With early chatter that the Royal Academy’s “Kerry James Marshall: The Histories” exhibition is a major hit, it’s notable that a couple of Marshall works have made it to the show floor of Frieze London. The first, at Alexander Gray Associates, is the 1992 painting A Woman with a Heart of Gold, on offer for $2.9 million. The painting centers on a dark-skinned figure rendered against a deep green field, their face half-obscured by radiating clock numerals and a halo-like lattice. Around them float four portraits of blonde women, each framed by thin white borders and smeared with paint. The collage—built from Harlequin romance novel covers—turns kitsch into critique, exposing the racial fantasies embedded in mass-market desire. The effect is both tender and unsettling. It’s Marshall at his sharpest—both playful and precise. David Zwirner, which has represented the artist with Jack Shainman since 1994, has a more restrained work on view, the 1990 painting A Little Romance. In the foreground is a reclining figure with his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes dreamily pointed toward the sky. Two disembodied heads float above his—perhaps they are his parents, or imaginary figures he has dreamt up. Yellow patches dot the rest of the painting, like floating lanterns, over a blue blackground topped with white-cloudlike formations. The paint reads as muddy in places, and the busyness seems to distract, more than focus the viewer. Kerry James Marshall, A Little Romance (1990) at David Zwirner As for that Royal Academy show, more than a few raved to me about it. “I’ve been four times in four consecutive days,” one dealer said. A Sotheby’s rainmaker told ARTnews he’d been three times already and was planning another visit. “It’s in the air… in the ether…” said Alexander Gray. “That show reinforces that fact London is a destination. Great shows go up during Frieze.” The show is starting to feel as buzzy as the fair for the internationals flying in.  The way Marshall paints history seems to pack an extra punch when it’s shown in London, the center of what was once the world’s largest empire. People just keep going back. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: A 16.58-Carat Kashmir Sapphire Ring Could Fetch $1.2 M. at Christie’s Those in the market for some fresh fall finery are in luck. Christie’s Jewels Online auction is taking place from now until October 23, giving collectors a chance to bid on more than 150 lots of fine jewelry and coveted pieces by Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels, and other top houses.  The star of the sale is a dazzling Kashmir sapphire. The 16.58-carat cabochon gem sits at the center of a platinum ring, with tapered, baguette-cut diamonds on either side. The showstopper is expected to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million. The sale also includes several other notable Kashmirs, including a 5.82-carat modified octagonal step-cut sapphire and diamond ring (estimate: $200,000–$300,000) and a 4.81-carat cushion mixed-cut sapphire and diamond ring (estimate: $150,000–$250,000). Kashmirs are considered the finest sapphires in the world, prized for their beauty, scarcity, and cultural significance. They were discovered in a remote part of the Himalayas after an avalanche in the Zanskar range in 1881 exposed a rich deposit of sapphires. From 1882 to 1887, miners extracted some of the largest and most beautiful stones from the Padar region of Kashmir, before the deposit was eventually exhausted. (Business dried up over the subsequent decades, though the Kashmiri government announced plans for new sapphire mining operations in May 2024.) The sapphires went on to become a favorite among aristocrats in 19th-century Europe and remain coveted among jewelry collectors. Some cultures even believe the Kashmirs calm the mind, relieve stress, and bring loyalty and wisdom. Sapphires aside, the auction includes some other beauties for the fingers, such as a 24.99-carat diamond ring (estimate: $400,000–$600,000) and another diamond ring featuring an emerald originally recovered from the Atocha shipwreck of 1622 (estimate: $30,000–$50,000).  Rarities from the collection of Max and Cecile Draime are also up for grabs. Highlights from the 38 lots include a Tiffany & Co. tanzanite and diamond pendant necklace (estimate: $30,000–$50,000) and a pair of Graff diamond cluster earrings (estimate: $20,000–$30,000). Select pieces from the auction will be on display at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries from October 17 to 22, meaning you can peruse the beauties in person before purchasing. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Frieze London’s Best 8 Booths, From a Solo Show of Samia Halaby to a Pharaonic Treasure Frieze London returns with 168 galleries reconfigured under a fresh layout. The fair’s organisers are doubling down on a bet: that the real energy now lies with the emerging spaces, not the marquee names.  Under its revamped floor plan, galleries younger than 12 years old are ushered into prime positions at the fair’s entrance—a gesture designed to recalibrate the power dynamics between the audacious upstarts and the blue-chip establishment heavyweights.  Across Regent’s Park, Frieze London’s sister fair Frieze Masters hosts more than 120 exhibitors from 26 countries. This year, the latter fair, which is dedicated to work from before the 20th century—sometimes going as far back as ancient Egyptian sarcophagi—will be run by a new director, Emanuela Tarizzo. Here are seven standout booths (and one offsite exhibition) that capture the fair’s janus-faced spirit: the spaces where freshness, vision, curation and risk meet with the cool gaze of the international collector class. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: New Trustees at Seattle Art Museum and More: Industry Moves for October 15, 2025 Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. Happy Wednesday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week. Industry Moves François Ghebaly Now Represents Xie Lei: The Paris-based French Chinese painter, known for ethereal oil paintings often created from memory, is currently one of four finalists for the 2025 Prix Marcel Duchamp. His work is on view in a show of the nominated artists at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris through February 22. Seattle Art Museum Elects Five New Trustees: Joanna Beitel, Martha Draves, Margaret Morris, and Jordon Voss have joined SAM’s board. Lyn Grinstein, a former trustee, has also rejoined the board alongside them. Gray Takes on Candida Alvarez: The Chicago- and New York–based gallery will open its first solo exhibition with the pioneering abstractionist in Fall 2027. Earlier this year, El Museo del Barrio staged the first full-scale survey for the artist, who will continue to be represented by Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery. Khadhok—Tibetan Artists’ Collective Wins 2025 Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize: The India-based group will receive the $30,000 unrestricted award, the largest international prize dedicated to contemporary Himalayan art. The Rubin also announced $200,000 in funding for 15 additional art and research projects through its annual grants program.  Big Number: $19 M. That’s how much Canadian collector François Odermatt paid for Peter Doig’s 1994 painting Ski Jacket at Christie’s London on Wednesday evening. The painting, completed the year Doig was nominated for the Turner Prize, was acquired in 1994 by Danish collector Ole Faarup, who died earlier this year. Faarup’s estate was the consignor at Christie’s. The result is a far cry from Doig’s auction record of $40 million, but the painting blasted past its presale estimate of $8 million to $10.75 million—not a bad performance in today’s art market. Read This Far be it from us to recommend our stories, but art journalistTom Seymour stepped in this week to offer his top picks for shows to see in London during Frieze, as well as his choices for best presentations at the fair. And, while the Royal Academy’s Kerry James Marshall exhibition is (rightfully) getting most of the buzz, Seymour writes that the show should be placed in dialogue with the Tate’s wide-ranging survey “Nigerian Modernism,” which explores a pivotal point in the country’s recent art history through 250 works by over 50 artists. And for those that can’t make it over to the Royal Academy, don’t worry—there are two stellar Marshall works on view in Regent’s Park. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Taylor Swift Fans Flock to Friedrich Heyser’s ‘Ophelia’ at the Wiesbaden State Museum in Germany Some of Taylor Swift’s most loyal fans have descended upon the art world in droves to catch a glimpse at a painting she references in her new music video for the song “The Fate of Ophelia”, which was released on her most recent album The Life of a Showgirl. While there was initially more attention paid to the better-known John Everett Millais painting Ophelia (1851–52) in London’s Tate collection, the singer highlights a different iteration of the famed tale directly at the beginning of her music video. In the opening scene, viewers can see Swift as Ophelia in a framed painting that more closely resembles Art Nouveau painter Friedrich Heyser’s Ophelia (ca. 1900), which hangs in the Wiesbaden State Museum in Germany. Her white dress, pose, and the background all mimic the original. As a result, the museum saw hundreds of additional visitors last weekend. “We’re surprised and happy that Taylor Swift chose this painting from the Museum Wiesbaden as a model for her video,” museum director Andreas Henning told Monopol. “This is, of course, a great opportunity to introduce people to the museum who don’t yet know us.”  It is unclear why Swift chose this specific version over other depictions. The video is filled with a number of other references throughout, including an end shot that recalls the album cover that previously drew comparisons with the Millais painting. The “The Fate of Ophelia” track refers to the character who meets a tragic end in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. In the play, Hamlet accidentally kills Ophelia’s father, causing her to break up with her lover. She becomes so consumed by grief that she ultimately drowns herself. For her part, Swift has attempted to reclaim that narrative in this song. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: San Francisco’s Altman Siegel Closes After 16 Years, Saying the Market Has Grown ‘Too Difficult’ Altman Siegel, one of the key galleries of San Francisco’s art scene, will close this November after 16 years in operation. In a statement issued on Wednesday, founder Claudia Altman-Siegel explicitly attributed the decision to the current market, which she described as being particularly challenging for mid-size galleries like her own. “As it has become too difficult for a gallery this size to scale in this climate, I have made the incredibly tough decision to close rather than diminish either the space or the commitment to exhibit conceptually uncompromising work,” she wrote. The gallery’s roster includes artists such as Simon Denny, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, Zarouhie Abdalian, Koak, Didier William, and Kiyan Williams. Its final show will be its current solo exhibition by Shinpei Kusanagi, a Japanese painter who has shown with the gallery since the year it was inaugurated. That show ends on November 22. Altman Siegel is merely the latest gallery in a string of others that have announced plans to close or significantly pare back their operations in the past year. Those galleries include several based in Los Angeles, including Blum and LA Louver, the latter of which had been open to the public for 50 years before it said it would pivot to private dealing in September. New York’s Clearing and Venus Over Manhattan galleries also closed over the summer. Though there have been fewer closures announced for San Francisco’s scene, the Kadist art foundation said earlier this year that it wind up operations in the city. In 2009, after having spent 10 years at New York’s Luhring Augustine gallery, Altman-Siegel opened her own operation in downtown San Francisco. “San Francisco is a smaller market, so local sales are fewer and foot traffic is slower than in New York, but there is a lot of creative freedom; I have no peer pressure, and there’s not much competition,” she told Art in America in 2011. That lack of pressure and competition allowed her to take a chance on work that did not conform to the dominant tastes of the market. One of the gallery’s first shows was by Paglen, a photographer who had had few exhibitions outside institutions at the time. He is now represented by Pace, one of the world’s biggest galleries. A range of other well-known artists have also had shows with the gallery, from Sanya Kantarovsky to Shannon Ebner, from Sara VanDerBeek to Richard Mosse, from Grant Mooney to Chris Johanson. The gallery has gradually expanded in size, relocating first to a new space in Dogpatch in 2016 before moving again to Presidio Heights last year. “Each chapter allowed the gallery to take risks, experiment, and keep pace with the evolving practices of our artists. Now, 213 exhibitions and art fairs later, the project is coming to a close,” Altman-Siegel wrote. Although she described greeting the impending closure with “pride and sadness,” she also wrote of connections made and artists fostered, which she said “underscores that while the art market can be relentless, the true heart of this project has always been ideas, community, and joy. My hope is that the gallery has brought you as much inspiration as it has brought me.” Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Peter Doig Painting Nets $19 M. in Christie’s Solid 20th/21st Century Evening Sale that Totals $142.9 M. When the hammer came down on Peter Doig’s 1994 painting Ski Jacket at Christie’s London on Wednesday evening after an extended bidding war, the room burst into applause at the £14 million ($19 million) result. That figure may be a far cry from Doig’s auction record of $40 million, but the painting blasted past its presale estimate of £6 million to £8 million and appeared to be a bright spot in an uneven market. The Doig, which went to Canadian collector François Odermatt seated in the saleroom, was not the only high point at Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London. The auction totaled $142.9 million across 61 lots, the highest total for an October Frieze Week sale since 2018. It was, in fact, a 33 percent jump from last year’s equivalent sale, which brought in about $107 million on 52 lots. And it bears mentioning that the 2024 sale was itself an 83 percent jump from 2023, owing in part to Christie’s having backed away from the other major London sales season in June that year. This year’s sale achieved a 90 percent sell-through rate by value, a notable increase from last year’s 82 percent. (All prices are in US dollars and include buyer’s premium unless otherwise noted.) Jussi Pylkannen, the former global president of Christie’s and the founder of London-based Art Pylkkänen art advisory, told ARTnews in London after the sale that the result is “the clearest possible indicator that the auction market is back on its feet as we approach the New York sales.” Pylkannen added, “The private market at the top end has been very healthy and this confidence is now filtering down into quality works of lesser value that are appearing at auction.” The biggest winner of the evening may have been Paula Rego, whose 1995 triptych Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s Fantasia—the largest work by the artist ever to come to auction—reset her record at £3.4 million ($4.6 million). Her previous record, $3.74 million, was for a diptych from the same series that sold in October 2023. Records were also set for Suzanne Valadon, as well as living artists Annie Morris and Esben Weile Kjær. Despite a fart machine going off in the back of the room during the Doig bidding—a prank that drew a few laughs from the audience—the auction had plenty of wind in its sails. The energy picked up with the second lot, René Magritte’s 1947 painting La voix du sang (Blood Will Tell). Multiple phone bidders battled with those in the room to push the result to £762,000 ($1.02 million), well above a presale estimate of £350,000 to £550,000. It’s not the first time the painting has outperformed expectations: the Christie’s consignor had purchased it at a Sotheby’s sale in 2010 for £163,250, on an estimate of just £25,000 to £35,000. That turned out to be a pretty good investment. Two of the three early Lucian Freud paintings on offer—all held in the same undisclosed private collection for decades and all carrying a presale guarantee from Christie’s—sold comfortably within their estimates. Woman with a Tulip (1944) went for $4.29 million, and Sleeping Head (1961–71) for $3.22 million. The catalog’s cover lot, Self-Portrait Fragment (circa 1956), sold for a just-below-estimate $10.2 million. Two results that came one after another toward the end of the sale underscored how tastes have shifted over the past decade or so. Mark Grotjahn’s 2011 face painting Untitled (Dropping Off and Falling Away Red and T Face 43.22) eked out bids to land within its estimate after little interest, selling for $2.15 million. The same went for an untitled 2015 painting by Joe Bradley, which sold for $289,000, below the low end of its estimate. Both works came from the collection of English photographer and art patron Hugo Rittson-Thomas, who founded the Silvie Fleming Collection (named for his mother) and acquired them around the time they were completed. Both markets have since softened. Bradley’s auction record was set in 2015, when a 2011 painting sold for $3 million at Christie’s. In 2017, a similarly sized Grotjahn face painting sold for $7 million, while his auction record of $17 million was achieved that same year, also at Christie’s. Only one lot—Nicolas Party’s Tree Trunks (2015), also part of the Fleming Collection and estimated at £800,000 to £1.2 million—was withdrawn. Five artworks failed to sell, among them Yoshitomo Nara’s large 1998 painting Haze Days, which carried a presale estimate of £6.5 million to £8.5 million ($8.7 million to $11.4 million). It stalled at £4.7 million, and auctioneer Adrien Meyer gave Christie’s Hong Kong’s Eric Chang ample time with his phone bidder—repeating the phrase “last chance” before finally acknowledging that the work had been bought in. Still, the sale was overall a success, especially by today’s somewhat bleak standards. The last word went to advisor and newsletter publisher Josh Baer, who was sitting among the press reporting on the sale. “The market ain’t dead,” he observed. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: A Trove of 20,000 Medieval Coins Discovered by Man Digging for Worms in Sweden A man digging for worms during a stay at his summer house near Stockholm unearthed something else instead: a cache of up to 20,000 silver coins from the Early Middle Ages, as well as pearls, pendants, and rings. The haul weighed around 13 pounds and was turned over to archaeologists now analyzing the treasures, most of which are thought to date back to the 12th century. As cited in a report by Live Science, Sofia Andersson, an antiquarian at the County Administrative Board in Stockholm, said in a statement, “This is probably one of the largest silver treasures from the Early Middle Ages that has been found in Sweden.” The artifacts, which were buried in a copper cauldron, include coins imprinted with “Kanutus,” a reference to Swedish king Knut Eriksson, who ruled from 1173 to about 1195. Some of them are so-called “bishop coins” minted by powerful bishops, as suggested by the presence of a shepherd’s staff design used by clergy at the time. “It is completely unique; we have no other medieval treasures from Stockholm,” Lin Annerbäck, director of the Medieval Museum in Stockholm, told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Stockholm didn’t yet exist at the time some of the coins derived from, having been founded in 1252 after what Archaeology Magazine described as “a turbulent end of the 12 century, when the Swedes were attempting to colonize areas of Finland.” “We believe that many hid treasures like this to keep them in the family’s possession,” Annerbäck told Dagens Nyheter. “The fact that the silver is mixed with pearls and other things makes it seem like it’s someone’s wealth that has been hidden away.” Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Gagosian First to Announce It Sold Out at Frieze London Mega-gallery Gagosian was the first exhibitor at Frieze London on Wednesday to announce that it had sold out its booth this year. The gallery brought a solo presentation of works by Los Angeles artist Lauren Halsey. Three walls of the booth were covered with pieces from Halsey’s 2025 untitled series of polymer-modified gypsum and stain on wood pieces. The works resemble an Egyptian-style frieze portraying “Afro-diasporic mythologies, funk music and aesthetics, personal memory, and collective history.” “Ultimately, she provides viewers with new ways of imagining and experiencing the plenitude and vibrancy of Black life,” the gallery said in a press release. In the center of the booth was the artist’s six-foot-tall plaza sign sculpture, titled LODA PLAZA (2025). Signs on the sculpture read “Bling Tax and Things” and “Affordable Black Art,” among other messages, and serve as “a reminder of the continued importance of nonwhite businesses and cultural institutions in communities navigating the realities of gentrification, skyrocketing rent, and economic displacement,” the gallery added. While the gallery did not release prices—it never does—an art advisor who asked not to be named told ARTnews the works were on offer for $250,000 each. (Few Halsey works have come to auction, though a 2017 gypsum-on-wood carving sold for $15,000 at an Artnet auction in July. A 2020 gypsum-on-wood work sold for $127,000 at Sotheby’s New York during a day sale in November 2023.) Antwaun Sargent, a director at Gagosian, told ARTnews, “The success we’ve had at Frieze really reflects the strength of the artist. These are conceptually rigorous but also beautiful works. What people connected to was Lauren’s ability to link architecture, color, and pop culture with community. At Frieze, we’ve made several institutional placements and others with serious, long-term collectors. I’m excited to see the work enter new contexts, both in major U.S. and European collections.” Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: 10 Key Works from “Renoir Drawings” at the Morgan Library & Museum, Selected by Curator Colin B. Bailey Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library & Museum, first got the idea to organize a show focused on Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s drawings in 2018, when the museum received as a gift from a trustee a large red-and-white chalk drawing that was a study for Renoir’s famous painting The Great Bathers (1884–87). “This, in a way, is the drawing that launched a show,” Bailey told Art in America. The exhibition, which opens on Friday and runs through February 8, 2026, includes all manner of works on paper from throughout the Impressionist master’s career, with more than 100 drawings, watercolors, pastels, and prints. There are even a few paintings, among them The Great Bathers, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Dance in the Country, from the Musée d’Orsay; and Gabrielle and Jean, from the Orangerie. Below, Bailey elaborates on the meaning and importance behind 10 selected drawings from the show, some standalone artworks and others related to Renoir’s most recognizable Impressionist paintings. After its stop at the Morgan, “Renoir Drawings” will travel to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in March of next year. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: The True Art Heist That Inspired Kelly Reichardt’s ‘The Mastermind,’ Starring Josh O’Connor Kelly Reichardt’s new film, The Mastermind, centers around an art heist, and while it does depict a high-stakes caper set at a museum, there’s generally little tension. Anyone who knows anything about Reichardt’s leisurely paced filmmaking understands that that’s not such a bad thing. Calling The Mastermind boring might not exactly be an insult. But the film’s slowness has already rankled quite a few people, including some who attended surprise screenings held at AMC movie theaters this week. In one viral post, an X user described the film as “a complete nothing burger” and “nothing but jazz music.” The Mastermind is, of course, about more than jazz music (though it does have a nice, jazzy score by Rob Mazurek). Releasing in the US on Friday, the film stars Josh O’Connor as the bumbling ringleader of a group of men who enter the Framingham Museum of Art and pilfer several paintings by Arthur Dove, an American modernist. It’s set in the early ’70s; protests over the Vietnam War can often be seen taking place all around. No such theft of Dove paintings ever occurred during the ’70s, however. In fact, the Framingham Museum of Art doesn’t exist at all. (As a set, Reichardt used the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library in Columbus, Indiana, which also has never been robbed in quite this way.) But Reichardt drew on a real heist from 1972 as her influence for The Mastermind, one of the few films about art crime that’s deliberately less exciting than the events that inspired it. That 1972 theft took place at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, where, on a late spring day in May, two robbers took four paintings—one by Rembrandt, one by Picasso, and two by Gauguin. The museum said at the time that the paintings were worth $1 million, or the equivalent of about $7.72 million today, putting this heist among the most high-profile ones of its time. Of these paintings, Gauguin’s The Brooding Woman (1891), featuring a Polynesian woman depicted deep in thought, was the most famous. Reichardt depicts two young women visiting the museum on an assignment from school and accidentally bearing witness to the heist. Something similar really did happen back in 1972 at Worcester Art Museum. In 2022, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette tracked down two alumnae of Doherty Memorial High School, who were there that day to do their homework. Kathy Kartiganer, who was 17 at the time, told the publication that she had been musing on a Hubert Robert painting when she took a break to find her friend. Turning a corner, she noticed the men tearing paintings off a wall and stuffing them into bags. Once the men noticed her, one of them drew a gun. “I remember shaking, feeling like I was just gonna wet my pants,” Kartiganer said. “I’m surprised that I didn’t.” The two girls made it out unscathed, but an unarmed guard at the museum was less lucky. When he tried to question the men, one of them shot him in the right hip. (Reichardt also depicts this, albeit in typically understated fashion.) The New York Times reported later that day that the guard had been hospitalized and was already in “good condition.” The police quickly got to work. Not long after the heist, a getaway car was recovered and the FBI got involved. And not long after that, three men and one woman were arrested. By the end of June 1972, the paintings were all recovered and returned to the museum, without any official explanation from the FBI about how the canvases were located. Most heisted museums are not so lucky: witness the case of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which is still on the hunt for a Rembrandt, a Vermeer, and more that were stolen in 1990. By comparison, the Worcester Art Museum robbery is a non-event revolving around lower-valued works. The theft didn’t even make it onto a 2021 ARTnews list of the greatest art heists of all time. So why bother making a movie about it? For one, the Worcester Art Museum is considered a first. “It was the first time that art was stolen at gunpoint in history,” Anthony Amore, co-author of a book on stolen Rembrandts, told Artnet News in 2016, the year that the film that would eventually become The Mastermind was first put into development. “It’s very ugly, it’s almost comedic, and it’s dramatic. It has a lot of good elements for the big screen.” Dramatic, yes, but not exactly successful, since the thieves didn’t get far with their stolen art, which they didn’t manage to sell or even hold onto for very long. That may be the true reason why Reichardt made this movie: to explore why these robbers committed such a flashy flop. Years later, Florian “Al” Monday, the true mastermind behind the heist, would offer an explanation for why he did it. “To an art lover, possessing a Rembrandt can be likened to winning the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Stanley Cup all at once,” he told Amore and Tom Mashberg for their book Stealing Rembrandts. But Monday can’t count any of those victories. He doesn’t even have a Rembrandt, or much recognition to speak of, and neither can Reichardt’s protagonist. Her film never quite says why he committed his crime, which is in part the point—it was a futile protest of a sort. Quickly, that protagonist gets forgotten by everyone else around him, and the heist recedes into the background of most people’s lives. Tellingly, Reichardt has even changed Monday’s name. The suggestion: Monday isn’t even famous enough to be remembered. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: How William Monk and Pace Are Betting on the Slow Burn at Frieze London When I arrived at William Monk’s cavernous Brooklyn studio last month, the British painter was putting the finishing touches on a series of paintings soon to be crated up and shipped for Pace’s solo presentation of his work at Frieze London. Formerly the studio of painter Dana Schutz, the space feels like a cross between a warehouse and a chapel. Monk’s large-scale paintings hung on each wall, which stretched two stories to the ceiling, like a psychedelic Stations of the Cross. “I’d been with these paintings for a year,” Monk said, standing before a half-finished canvas. “And this morning there were just these tiny gaps of raw canvas, little white dots. I had to kill them.” He laughed at his own choice of words. “If your eye stops there because of something I didn’t intend, that’s bad. You kill it. The eye should move where you want it to go.” That instinct—to control what’s seen and what’s left hovering—has always defined Monk’s paintings. His new body of work, now on view at Frieze, began during a residency at the Neuendorf House in Mallorca, a 1970s modernist compound designed by John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin. Alone for a month, Monk found himself caught in a kind of luxurious purgatory. “It was like Waiting for Godot with one character,” he said. “Time stood still.” Out the back of the house was a patchy cactus garden. “I photographed one cactus bush and collaged it over and over again until it became this all-over field, like a Jackson Pollock pattern,” he said. Those cacti now populate his new paintings—vivid, obsessive forms, alternately serene and foreboding. The works extend the mythology of his 2023 Ferryman series, in which he reimagined the figure of death through the lens of his own memories. As a child, he watched the Beatles film Yellow Submarine on repeat; its surreal colors and floating architecture became part of his internal landscape. “Before my real memories started, that film was already there,” he said. “So when I imagined death, I thought of that world—the way it makes the unknown seem almost playful.” In the new paintings, the ferryman evolves into a sentinel: a solitary figure stationed on an undefined Mediterranean island, surrounded by cactus, water, and rock. “He’s waiting,” Monk said. “Living small, contained, and waiting.” Monk, who moved from London to New York a decade ago, has built a career on slow, methodical vision. His brushwork—dense, rhythmic, almost musical—recalls both Seurat’s pointillism and the rolling textures of late Bonnard. “My surfaces are always active,” he said. “It’s about rhythm—changing steps.” The solo booth at Frieze is, in a way, a homecoming for an artist who made his bones across the Atlantic. Marc Glimcher, Pace’s CEO, told ARTnews that he sees Monk as “a mix of Kubrick, the Beatles, Seurat, and Bonnard—the bastard child of those four.” When he first visited Monk’s studio, Glimcher said, he was struck by the combination of professorial awkwardness and absolute virtuosity. “Each painting nearly kills him,” Glimcher said. “You look at them and think, how did he survive that?” William Monk, House of Nowhere III (2024-2025) © William Monk, courtesy Pace Gallery For Pace, Monk’s show at Frieze London marks more than just the debut of new work; it’s a quiet manifesto about how the gallery believes primary-market art should be valued. “We had a rule,” Marc Glimcher said. “Ten percent every two years. That was how it used to be done. Prices rose slowly, by percentage—not by auction results.” Glimcher said he sees Monk as a case study in resisting the boom-and-bust logic that has gripped much of the market and led some artists to ruin. “Will makes very few paintings. We escalate the prices gently. He hasn’t even entered the auction cycle yet. We place the works with people who love them, not who flip them.” Monk is careful when talk turns to value. “My paintings have gone up, sure,” he said, “but New York finds a way to take it all back.” He smiled, half self-deprecating, half sincere. “When I was younger, my work was worth nothing, and I felt rich. Now it’s worth something, and I feel broke.” Still, he’s grateful for Pace’s deliberate pace. “It keeps me out of the noise,” he said. For Glimcher, that patience is the point. “We’re back to the real thing,” he told me on the balcony outside his office. “Enough of artists who skyrocket and flame out. Monk’s the opposite: slow, steady, serious. After the last two years, people’s attention has reset. They’re ready for nuance again.” In that sense, Monk’s return to London—his first show there since 2019—feels like a homecoming in more ways than one. The Sentinel paintings, with their glowing cacti and long shadows, are meditations on solitude and endurance but also on the act of seeing itself: what the eye notices, what it misses, what it kills. In the quiet of his studio, surrounded by his guitars and the faint hum of Yellow Submarine, Monk seems to have found a rhythm that resists the speed of everything around him. “I just want the work to last,” he said, looking at a canvas propped against the wall. “If I can keep it alive—if it can keep me alive a bit longer too—that’s enough.” Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Dara Birnbaum Talked Back to Media and Imagined New Transmissions for the Future Experiencing Dara Birnbaum’s work for the first time was so profound that it took my breath away and left me speechless for hours. When my voice returned, without realizing it, I went on to describe Dara’s practice to friends in the hushed tones reserved for sacred matters. Dara was audacious in her explorations, and among the most influential and pioneering artists of my generation. She was one of the first artists to realize and directly confront the fact that single frames within a video could be manipulated, and that color bars could be used within her work itself. Her art was unworldly and spectral. Dara was fearless when creating electronically based installations and often expanded the language of what was in her early years considered a nascent format. She also used it as a means to describe the underpinnings of the human condition. Her work was provocative and transcendent. Over the past four decades Dara engaged not only the aesthetics of mass media but also the subtle implications of imagery itself. The opportunity to meet Dara in person occurred by accident decades after I became entranced by her work. We happened to be sitting at the same table in the café at the Museum of Modern Art, both waiting for our order. We began to chat about the slow service and then about art, and I mentioned that she should look up the work of Dara Birnbaum. That’s when she laughed and told me her name. Had I known I was talking to the actual Dara, I would probably have been too much in awe to chat. Now, I remain grateful for that extraordinary encounter, as it marked the start of my getting to know Dara over time. Appropriately, we continued our conversations using video and media to overcome the distance between us. Dara’s vision predicted and helped cause the way media would reshape the future. For instance, her subversive early video Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) looped fragmented video excerpts that had been extracted from their original context in a popular TV show. Her probing, resequencing, and deconstruction brought a deeper relevance to how information is assimilated; it also underscored how remixed television information could be manipulated and transformed. Other works of Dara’s such as Local TV News Analysis (1980) and MTV: Artbreak (1987), a 30-second animation piece she made for broadcast on the widely followed music-video cable channel, deconstructed the mass media and cultural attitudes toward female protagonists, and ultimately revealed how women working in mediated environments are too often invisible, disregarded, or left to display their work outside the mainstream. Her work incorporated repeating excerpts drawn from media ranging from game shows to soap operas, and was fundamental to the eventual inclusion of women in media history. She was also unique in the way she established her “talk back” installations that invited others to participate in their completion. Through these works she pioneered interactive media. Dara has been a major influence for generations of artists, writers, and curators—and her influence will continue in the future. I’ll miss running into her and messaging with her and seeing what she would do next. She challenged the possibilities that existed in her time, and changed them for the better. Because of her vision and the art she created and shared, Dara remains ever-present and continues to reshape the world in which she lived and worked. Source InformationPublisher: ARTnews.comOriginal Source: Read more