The seller of the 1957 work, “Brown and Blacks in Reds,” was the estate of former Goldman Sachs banker turned art dealer Robert Mnuchin, who paid $6.7 million for the work in 2003. The winning telephone bidder at Sotheby’s was anonymous. - The Wall Street Journal
"A Louvre employee was indicted and detained on Wednesday on charges including organized gang fraud as part of an investigation into a scheme to defraud the Paris museum of ticket fees for thousands of visitors. Six others had been placed in custody ‘because of the communications they may have had with the first defendants’.” - ARTnews
Beginning in 2028, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will own the Neue’s Fifth Avenue home and the prestige collection of 20th-century Austrian and German art built by Ronald S. Lauder. - The New York Times
Artists have been raiding the toolkits of the Old Masters with new urgency of late, borrowing and reworking Renaissance and Baroque compositional drama, symbolism, and increasingly, their labor-intensive methods. - Artnet
“What we landed on were those moments where individuals or communities had fought for recognition and advocated for their own sense of identity and self in their role in creating and becoming a part of the United States. But we also wanted to do the playful.” - The Guardian
“Security, the report revealed, had been ‘relegated to the background,’ despite two audits completed in 2017 and 2019, years before the jewel heist. The 2019 audit prompted a Security Equipment Master Plan, but it was apparently not implemented in a timely fashion by (then-director) Jean-Luc Martinez.” - ARTnews
Earlier this month, Biennale organizers announced that Iran had withdrawn from the event. But a high official in the country’s culture ministry just said in an interview, “(we) neither submitted a withdrawal letter nor stated that we would not attend. Rather, we said we would participate and requested more time.” - Artforum
Air de Paris, a leading French gallery, will close its doors and declare bankruptcy after 36 years in business, the gallery’s cofounders, Florence Bonnefous and Edouard Merino, tell Cultured. - ARTnews
“In a lawsuit filed Monday, The Cultural Landscape Foundation said the administration’s moves to repaint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool blue without undergoing relevant reviews ran afoul to federal preservation laws governing historic sites.” - AP
“The investigation began after the suspect was stopped by police in Paris on April 28; he was allegedly driving with a forged license. Officials said the man's phone was accessed after that traffic stop. … The Interior Ministry said … the man was arrested before details of the attack had been fully formulated.” - ABC News
Artificial intelligence has made its way into almost every corner of professional workflows, prompting the architectural industry to rethink how it works. To adapt to this shift, firms are now facing the limits of a model that has changed very little over the past few decades. - ArchDaily
The 10 paintings were done by the young Gustav Klimt and his brother at Vienna’s Burgtheater from 1886-1888. They’re currently getting a cleaning, and while the scaffolding is up, the theater is allowing some visitors to climb up and get a closer view. - AP
Three recently published books give us some perspective on the selling of art: a long-view history going back to the Middle Ages; a memoir by a successful contemporary maker; and a wistful biography of a relationship between two talented 20th-century artists who struggled to find their place commercially. - The New York Times
Roughly 85 percent of museums across the country are dealing with deferred maintenance or major repair needs. Even more concerning, about 77 percent say they have at least one structural issue that could put their collections at risk. - ARTnews
“Southwest Minnesota is dotted with these emerging multi-use art spaces that utilize older buildings, … challenging a common misconception that vibrant art scenes only exist in big cities.” - Minnesota Public Radio
