Art market

Jane Fonda to sell Outsider art trove at Christie’s, including major works by Thornton Dial

“I couldn’t believe the dynamism, the energy, the courage, the rawness of these works,” the actor and activist said

‘An absolute art market record’: Christie’s posts $8.4bn in sales for 2022

Single-owner collections and millennials boost auction house’s revenues despite “challenging macro environment”

Crime news

Following his arrest in Italy, Old Master forgery suspect Giuliano Ruffini is turned over to French authorities

After seven years of investigations, Ruffini has been handed over to French authorities, likely setting the stage for a trial in Paris

Is the Las Vegas art scene’s streak of bad luck finally over?

After decades of failed museum projects and short-lived gallery outposts, dealers are testing pop-up and retail models in the entertainment capital of the world

Black American women artists represent just 0.1% of auction sales, report shows

New data shows there has been little real progress in fighting sexism and racism between 2008 and 2022

Art marketcomment

The elephant in the booth: the environmental toll of art fairs

With a host of identikit international fairs showing works already viewed online and often already sold, is there a point to generating all those air miles?

Brexit woes contribute to slim Old Master sales in London

Nonetheless, buoyed by the Grasset collection, Sotheby's posted its best results in six seasons and Christie's sale was up 26% up on last December

First wooden sculpture by Die Brücke founder Erich Heckel offered at auction goes on sale in Munich for €600,000

It comes to the block alongside another wooden sculpture by Heckel's contemporary Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

London dealer cleared over negligent sale of a Chardin painting

A court has ruled that Simon Dickinson, who advised a British aristocrat to sell an 18th-century French masterpiece for a fraction of what it later sold for, did not deliberately undervalue the painting

Tefaf appoints Bart Drenth as global managing director

The organisation's fourth leader in three years, he will oversee both Maastricht and New York events alongside chairman Hidde van Seggelen

Gerhard Richter, giant of German painting, signs exclusively to David Zwirner gallery

Richter, a native of Dresden, will have his first solo show with the Cologne-born mega-dealer in March 2023

Old Mastersanalysis

Old Masters need reinventing to avoid being frozen out

Last year, European Old Masters represented just 4% of the world’s $26.3bn art auction sales. In our contemporary-obsessed world, we’re just not paying them enough attention

Marlene Dumas donates Mouth painting about women's rights for Amnesty International sale

Ai Weiwei and Richard Serra have also given works to the auction taking place at Sotheby's Paris

Foundation of Victor Vasarely accuses London gallery of selling works by the Op artist that it doesn't own

An exhibition at Mazzoleni Art is embroiled in a longstanding and torrid dispute between members of Vasarely's family

Can art actually help improve Saudi Arabia's abject human rights record?

Culture is being used by Saudi Arabia to project an image of a state that “enriches lives, celebrates national identity and builds understanding between people”

Poland says Kandinsky painting sold at Berlin auction house was stolen from the National Museum in Warsaw

Authorities are now taking legal steps to recover the work after it made €387,500 at Grisebach

Damaged Salvator Mundi copy by unknown artist sells for €1m at Christie's

Dated to a century after Leonardo's death, the work does not come from the artist's studio

The last hurrah? Art world excess at Art Basel Miami Beach

Plus, UK culture cuts and Ukrainian Modernism in Madrid

Hosted by Ben Luke and Aimee Dawson. With guest speaker Anny Shaw. Produced by David Clack and Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

Cheeky ATM installation that shows users' bank balances sells for $75,000 and will go on public display in Miami

Work that showed a public leaderboard of the richest people at Art Basel in Miami Beach will now stay in the city

Art Basel in Miami Beach sales report: dealers brace for gloomier times ahead

The fair saw healthy sales, particularly at the market’s top end, but many galleries are wary of a downturn

Anny Shaw. With additional reporting by Gareth Harris

Qatari sheikh wins £4.2m lawsuit against prominent London dealer John Eskenazi

While the judge decided the defendant sold the works in good faith, he ruled that all seven objects purchased by the sheikh are fakes

Be ultra-wary of the ultra-contemporary: a triumph of hot air over real value

An unquenchable thirst for a certain set of young artists—with the eye-popping price-tags to match—is creating a pressure they are inevitably unable to meet

Next year—for the first time—a Miami gallery is going to Art Basel in Switzerland

David Castillo Gallery will become the only local dealer to make the jump to the mothership in its more than 50-year history

Auctionspreview

From a Dutch Golden Age still-life to a Nobel Prize medal: our pick of the highlights from December's sales

Plus, a Modernist landscape by Ferdinand Hodler and a sumptuous Old Masters Madonna

'Art Basel has to keep changing': after 20 years, what is next for the fair juggernaut?

Noah Horowitz and Vincenzo de Bellis discuss their visions for the global fair brand and its flagship US fair in Miami

Miami—once touted as an NFT hub—suffers through enduring ‘crypto winter’

Amid high-profile bankruptcies of cryptocurrency companies and a dramatically shrinking NFT market, some art world players are pulling back while others double down

Undervalued photographers get exposure at Art Basel in Miami Beach

Fair will exhibit works by Jimmy DeSana and Barbara Ess, largely forgotten artists who were contemporaries of Robert Mapplethorpe

Why are so many African art fairs dominated by non-African dealers?

Comparing the homegrown Art X Lagos to more global events like 1-54 brings up tough questions about race that the art world still struggles to answer