St. Anne’s Anglican Church has the unique distinction of being a Byzantine revival style church containing more than 15 artworks by J.E.H. MacDonald, Frank Carmichael, Frederick H. Varley and other members of the Group of Seven. The rare works depict scenes from Jesus’ life, a departure from the group’s renowned scenes of nature. The church was designated a national historic site in 1997.

The four-alarm fire on Sunday, June 9, destroyed most of St. Anne’s, including all of the artistic works, The interior has been gutted and its central dome collapsed. Only the building’s front remains.

According to The Art Newspaper, there were no reports of injuries and police are still trying to determine the cause of the fire.

Alejandra Bravo, the Toronto city councillor for the ward where St. Anne’s is located, told reporters at a press conference on June 10 the works by the members of the Group of Seven were “something we cannot replace in Canada and in the world”.

Reverend Canon Lawrence Skey commissioned the church’s artworks in 1923. The Parks Canada website describes the artworks as “elaborate interior mural decorations” which “cover the walls and ceiling of the apse, the main arches, the pendentives and the central dome. The cycle combines narrative scenes, written texts, as well as decorative plasterwork and detailing accentuating the architectural lines of the building.”

The artistic project was led by MacDonald, a founding member of the Group of Seven. MacDonald brought in fellow members Carmichael and Varley as well as the artists Arthur N. Martin, S. Treviranus, H.S. Palmer, H.S. Stansfield, Neil McKechnie and his son, Thoreau MacDonald.

The result of the collaboration was St. Anne’s Anglican Church bestowed with more than a dozen large murals and paintings, as well as reliefs and medallions of the four apostles John, Peter, Mark and Paul by the sculptors Florence Wyle and Frances Loring.

The Parks Canada website also noted the church’s paintings belong “to the revival of mural decoration that emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century and is a manifestation of the Arts and Crafts movement which sought to ally architecture with the sister arts of painting and sculpture”

One of the church’s highlights was Varley’s Nativity, featuring a self-portrait of the artist as a young shepherd. The destruction of Nativity was even noted by Varley’s great-granddaughter, Emma Varley, through a post on X (formerly Twitter): “Such a loss.”

A spokesperson for Creo, which operates the contemporary art fair dedicated to photo-based works, digital art and new media, told ARTNews that market conditions and consultations with “our community of galleries and partners” led to the decision.

“Our priority is mounting a dynamic and high-quality event, so we feel it is best to hold the fair once market conditions improve,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In the meantime, we remain committed to PHOTOFAIRS and to its role as a vital platform and convenor for the photography and contemporary art community.”

The debut of Photofairs New York last year at the Javits Center included the participation of 56 galleries from over 20 cities around the world. VIP attendees included Whitney Museum curator Rujeko Hockley, Inditex chair Marta Ortega Pérez, actor Chris Rock, actress Jane Seymour, English artist Zoë Buckman, and photographer Joel Meyerowitz.

Photofairs New Yor was founded by Scott Gray, the founder and CEO of Creo Arts. Gray also founded Photofairs Shanghai and serves as CEO of exhibition consultancy firm Angus Montgomery Arts.

In a previous interview with ARTnews, Gray acknowledged that Covid-19 was one of the challenges to bringing a Photofair to New York, as well as finding the right venue in an increasingly packed international art fair calendar.

The spokesperson from Creo Arts confirmed to ARTnews that Photofairs Shanghai would still take place in 2025, after it held its most recent edition with 46 exhibitors at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre in April.

The election results among staff at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) were unanimously in favor on June 6. Voting with UAW Local 2110 occurred a month after workers at the institution announced their intention to organize for a variety of issues including fair wages and better benefits.

AFAM was created in 1961 and changed its name from the Museum of Early American Folk Arts in 2001. The institution’s public galleries are located near the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Manhattan, while its administrative offices, archives, and collections center are located in Long Island City, Queens. The museum’s collection of approximately 8,000 works of art from the United Stated and abroad, with the oldest examples from the turn of the eighteenth century. The union will include curatorial, retail, education, and information technology staff.

Other institutions located in New York City and across the Northeast that have unionized with UAW Local 2110 include the Dia Art Foundation, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

On June 6 and 7, hourly-wage employees at the Glenstone Museum held their own vote, joining Teamsters Local 639. A press statement said the group of 89 workers included all of the institution’s hourly guides, café workers, registration, grounds, engineering and maintenance, community engagement, and housekeeping staff. 

Glenstone staffers have called for livable wages, better benefits, and safer working conditions. A press statement on the vote said that many of the hourly workers had second jobs, part-time employees did not receive health care benefits, and that staff had been forced to work outdoors “during extreme heat and cold”.

A private museum, Glenstone was founded by billionaires Mitchell and Emily Wei Rales for the couple’s personal collection in 2006. The couple live across a pond from the institution’s galleries and have appeared on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors List since 2010. A expansion of the museum, designed by architect Thomas Phifer, was completed in 2018 at an estimated cost of $219 million.

According to the Washington Post, staffers faced union-busting strategies from museum leadership, including an appeal signed by Mitchell and Emily Wei Rales delivered to the homes of workers on June 3. The letter stated, “It is our sincere hope that you give due consideration to voting NO and keeping the Teamsters out of this special place we’ve built together.”

“We have said from the beginning of this process that we respect the right of our associates to decide whether to join a union,” the museum said in a statement to The Washington Post, which first reported the news of the union election results. “We accept the results of this election and intend to negotiate in good faith with the goal of achieving an equitable contract for the members of this new bargaining unit.”

“These workers defeated a sophisticated union-busting assault personally waged by some of the wealthiest people in America,” Local 639 president Bill Davis said in a statement. “I want to welcome them to our local union, and I look forward to helping them negotiate a first Teamsters contract.” 

The weekly newsletter’s report, published on Friday, draws on “more than a dozen interviews” with former employees of the prestigious design firm cofounded by Julien Lombrail and Loïc Le Gaillard 18 years ago.

ARTnews’s attempts to reach Lombrail and Le Gaillard by phone were not successful. When ARTnews reached out to the gallery’s global marketing director Mary Agnew for an official comment, she wrote in an email, “We are of course deeply troubled by the content of the article. Right now, we are prioritising the welfare of our staff and artists and taking the time to consider our response with our internal teams.”

ARTnews sent further questions to Agnew by email in regards to the allegations about Carpenters Workshop Gallery, but did not receive a response by press time.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery works with high-profile artists and estates, including Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, the Dutch Atelier Van Lieshout, the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, and the American sculptor Wendell Castle, as well as fashion designers such as Rick Owens, Karl Lagerfeld, and Virgil Abloh.

The gallery reportedly has 120 employees across its four locations, in Paris, London, New York and London. Ladbroke Hall—a 43,000-square-foot, $37.5 million glitzy club and gallery space—was unveiled last April in the London neighborhood of North Kensington.

In 2022, the Art Newspaper called the enterprise the first design “mega-gallery”; the gallery was the subject of a New York Times profile published last month. It has attracted high-profile collectors such as actor Brad Pitt, designer Tom Ford, singer John Legend, model and television personality Chrissy Teigen, Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, and art collector Dasha Zhukova.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery has also exhibited at several fairs, including Design Miami, Design Basel, the Armory Show, and TEFAF.

Workers interviewed by Air Mail claimed that artists received less than the standard 50 percent commission for selling works on consignment, and alleged that the gallery failed to reimburse expenses for the production and shipment of works. The report also featured claims the gallery had manipulated sales invoices sent to artists.

One section of the Air Mail report focused specifically on the gallery’s 83,000-square-foot production facility located in the suburban French town of Mitry-Mory, 15 miles from the center of Paris. The facility, Roissy, was profiled by Vanity Fair in 2023. Allegedly poor conditions may have contributed to the death of one of the workers, Zbigniew Sokol, a Polish bricklayer who reportedly collapsed while working at Roissy and was later found unconscious in 2015.

The Air Mail report also featured allegations of sexual misconduct by Le Gaillard. Workers interviewed by the newsletter claimed that he was involved with a gallery director, that he selected female interns based on physical appearances, and that he led affairs with staff members, including “an intern in her early 20s,” per the report.

The incident, which Christie’s had previously referred to as a “technology security incident,” shut down its website for ten days before and during the house’s marquee New York sales.

The cyber-extortion group RansomHub claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on May 27. A dark-web message from the group also said it “attempted to come to a reasonable resolution,” but the auction house cut off communication halfway through negotiations. Christie’s emailed its clients on May 30 acknowledging the cyberattack, but said only identification data, not financial or transaction data, had been stolen.

The complaint filed in the Southern District of New York on June 3 alleges that Christie’s was unable to protect the “personally identifiable information”, or PII, of its clients, of which is estimated to be at least half a million current and former buyers in its databases. The complaint describes the breach as “a direct result of [Christie’s] failure to implement adequate and reasonable cyber-security procedures and protocols necessary to protect consumers’ PII from a foreseeable and preventable cyberattack”. The complaint filed also alleges that “data thieves have already engaged in identity theft and fraud and can in the future commit a variety of crimes” using the stolen information, which it said includes full names, passport numbers, as well as other sensitive details from passport scans, including dates of birth, birth places, genders, and barcode-like “machine-readable zones” or MRZs.

The complaint alleges the breach of data resulted in multiple “concrete injuries,” including invasion of privacy; lost time and opportunity costs from “attempting to mitigate the actual consequences of the Data Breach.”

The lawsuit also states that Christie’s clients are also at risk of multiple forms of identity theft, including the possibility of bad actors opening fraudulent financial accounts and loans in the names of exposed individuals; illegally securing government benefits, or even acquiring identification with alternate photographs and “giving false information to police during an arrest”.

The only plaintiff currently named in the class-action lawsuit is Efstathios Maroulis, who is defined in the complaint as a resident and citizen of Dallas, Texas. Profiles on Instagram and LinkedIn matching Maroulis’ name and location said the individual was the founder and CEO of dental enterprise software company Jarvis Analytics, as well as the founder and CEO of digital marketing company Mesa Six. Jarvis Analytics was acquired by dental and medical supply company Henry Schein in 2021.

Messages from ARTnews to the Instagram and LinkedIn profiles believed to belong to Maroulis did not result in a response.

Maroulis’s complaint also argues that hackers with at least two forms of PII can use those illegally acquired details in combination with publicly available data found elsewhere to “assemble complete dossiers on individuals” with “an astonishingly complete scope and degree of accuracy”. The Art Newspaper, which first reported the lawsuit, noted that these dossiers, called “fullz” in hacker circles, “typically bring considerably higher prices on the dark web than partial records thanks to their considerably higher utility in perpetrating identity theft.”

The lawsuit’s definition of the scope of alleged harm as a result of the cyberattack also includes data brokers. Maroulis’ complaint alleges that clients affected by the data breach at Christie’s can no longer voluntarily sell their own personal data at full value as a result of its exposure from RansomHub, and that information “may also fall into the hands of companies that will use [it] for targeted marketing” without their consent or permission.

According to a document filed on June 5, United States District Court Judge Jesse M. Furman has ordered that counsel for all parties appear at a initial pre-trial conference at the court on September 10.

The auction house also filed a breach notification with the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta. The letter states that Christie’s discovered it was the victim of a cybersecurity incident on May 9, engaged external cybersecurity experts, and notified law enforcement. The letter also states the auction house is offering a “complimentary twelve-month subscription to CyEx Identity Defense Total,” an identity theft and fraud monitoring service which would notify any changes to Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion credit reports.

The letter is signed by Christie’s chief operating officer Ben Gore. CyEx’s website states the reference value of “Identity Defense Total” at $19.99 per month.

A Christie’s spokesperson declined to comment to ARTnews on the lawsuit. When asked whether other breach notifications had been filed, a spokesperson wrote in an email, “Breach notifications have been issued to the appropriate authorities in line with continued compliance with GDPR and other relevant national and state regulations.”

Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, the law firm representing Maroulis, also had not responded to a request for comment from ARTnews by publication.

Despite the cyberattack, the auction house was still able to generate $114.7 million for the Rosa de la Cruz and 21st Century sales and $413 million during its 20th Century Evening sale in New York through bids by phone, in-person, and its online platform Christie’s Live.

News of the class-action lawsuit was first reported by The Art Newspaper. Brett Callow, threat analyst for the New Zealand–based cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, first posted news of the breach notification with the California Attorney General’s office on X.

On June 6, David Voss plead guilty to one charge of forgery and one charge of uttering forged documents, in this case the fake provenance materials he used while operating an art fraud ring between 1996 and 2019. Based in the northern Ontario city of Thunder Bay, Voss oversaw the production of thousands of artworks falsely attributed to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau. Notably, it was a “paint by numbers” assembly process that helped investigators identify 26 out of 30 suspected works.

According to a statement of facts read in Ontario Superior Court, investigators had identified more than 1,500 forgeries from Voss’ fraud operation and seized nearly 500 so far. Additionally, Voss was stated to have “never met, acquired artwork from or otherwise interacted with, Norval Morrisseau.”

Last March, investigators from the Thunder Bay Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police announced that they had charged eight people on a total of 40 charges for their involvement in the manufacture and distribution of fake paintings, prints, and other artworks attributed to Morrisseau.

Morrisseau, a prolific artist from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation, was known for his distinctive Woodland School of Art style. Morrisseau’s work was the subject of a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in 2006, the first staged at the institution for a contemporary Indigenous artist. He died in 2007 at the age of 75 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease.

However, even prior to Morrisseau’s passing, police said there were allegations of people making and selling unauthorized works of art under the Indigenous artist’s name.

The press announcement said the investigation spanned two and a half years, and some of the paintings had been sold for “tens of thousands of dollars”, generating millions in sales.

CBC News reported that an agreed statement of facts detailed how the production of forged artworks was included an assembly-line, “paint by numbers” process and multiple painters enlisted and paid by Voss.

The Globe and Mail reported that Voss “sketched out drawings meant to mimic Mr. Morrisseau’s distinctive style and then annotated each section with letters indicating their ideal colour – ‘G’ for green, ‘B’ for blue, ‘LR’ for light red and so on. He would pass the sketches to hired painters to lay on the prescribed colours, before the works were signed with the Cree syllabic autograph Mr. Morrisseau was known for and backdated, usually to the 1970s.”

Voss’ pencil outlines for these forgeries were later used by forensic analysts at the Canadian Conservation Institute to identify inauthentic works attributed to Morrisseau through digital infrared photography.

The forgeries were sold to auction houses, and distributors across the country but the majority were resold through two auction houses in the small Ontario town of Port Hope. A court statement said that Voss sold 1,500 to 2,000 works to the houses, giving owner Randy Potter a 30 percent cut of sales. During a previous civil court appearance, Potter testified the forgeries usually sold at auction for $1,200 to $7,000 Canadian dollars, but could also sell as much as $30,000 Canadian dollars. Potter died in 2018.

The sheer number of fraudulent Morrisseau works produced by Voss’ ring and the victims in their wake have also been the subject of a documentary called “There are No Fakes” featuring Barenaked Ladies member Kevin Hearn.

Prior reporting in The Globe and Mail also identified two works suspected to be Morrisseau forgeries at the Ontario Legislature and the National Capital Commission: Salmon Life Giving Spawn, removed and seized by police in January, and Circle of Four.

Voss is scheduled to be sentenced in September.

If one were to liken the marquee New York auctions in May to the homecoming game between rival high schools, then Art Basel is certainly the art world’s prom. Next week, 287 galleries from around the world, including the four biggest, will jet to Switzerland, closely followed by the traveling circus of collectors, art advisers, and, of course, journalists.

And, while rumors are flying that the newly christened Art Basel Paris may soon overshadow the Swiss flagship fair, plenty of dealers are pushing back. As one dealer told ARTnews, the fair in Basel is still where galleries show their best work, and the collectors—even if they prefer Paris—will follow. That sentiment was echoed by Tornabuoni gallery coordinator Ursula Casamonti, who told ARTnews the gallery saved its best—six works by proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico—for Art Basel.

“I hope all the galleries do the same,” she said. “I’m worried that the people around the world have the idea that Paris+ will be better than Basel.”

ARTnews reached out to art dealers with reputations for bringing the most select, choice, and rare secondary market works and asked: what’s on the menu? Bon appétit. Or perhaps, more appropriately, En Guete.

Hauser & Wirth

The Swiss gallery giant is bringing several big-ticket works to its home art fair, none perhaps more exciting than Philip Guston’s Orders, a defining late-era work completed two years before his death in 1980. Priced at $10 million and depicting a cluster of shoes silhouetted against a pink-and-blue sky that rises above a crimson horizon line, the work was included in Guston’s 1980 retrospective at SFMOMA. It continued to travel for the following year, before being sold at Sotheby’s in 1989 for $528,000 from the collection of art collector and Southern California real estate magnate Edwin Janss Jr. As the gallery told ARTnews in an email, “The forms in Orders are personal symbols of the broader historical and psychological trauma that reverberates powerfully throughout the artist’s late oeuvre.”

The gallery is also bringing the largest charcoal drawing by Arshile Gorky still in a private collection, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), from 1946-47 priced at $16 million. There is also the marble and wood Louise Bourgeois sculpture Woman with Packages (1987–93), consigned by her trust for $3.5 million. Other works include an oil-on-cardboard Francis Picabia painting titled Nu assis listed at $4.85 million, and the David Smith stainless steel and wood sculpture Aggressive Character (1947), being sold from Smith’s estate.

Gagosian

For Gagosian’s booth at Unlimited, the fair’s sector for monumental works, the gallery is bringing a work that may carry some sentimental value: an untitled 1970 masterwork by Minimalist Donald Judd that was first shown by Gagosian’s late mentor, Leo Castelli, in New York. A related work is in the Guggenheim in New York’s permanent collection. The sculpture consists of a band of five-foot-high galvanized iron panels standing end-to-end, eight inches from the surrounding walls. The gallery’s booth presentation will be supplemented by a show of works by Judd at their Basel location consisting of 11 single-unit, wall-mounted works made between 1987 and 1991 at the artist’s home and studio near Lake Lucerne. While the gallery did not provide an exact price for the 1970 work, ARTnews has learned that is priced in the region of $15 million to $20 million.

Pace

While Pace is bringing an extensive presentation anchored by historical 20th-century works from marquee names like Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Pablo Picasso, the gallery is betting that Jean Dubuffet’s Banc-Salon will be the showstopper. Anchoring the booth, the installation comprises a low swooping bench with three kites that hover above, encouraging tired fairgoers to sit and reflect.

But, for our money, Agnes Martin’s Untitled #20 (1974) will be the real star attraction. The painting last sold at auction in 2012, at Christie’s New York, where it made $2.43 million. But, as we wrote this past November, the artist’s market has been heating up in the intervening years—in November, Sotheby’s sold a 1961 painting by Martin, Grey Stone II , for $18.7 million. While Pace declined to provide current pricing, it is very likely that the Martin will be the gallery’s priciest offering at the fair.

Thaddaeus Ropac

Among the significant works heading to Basel courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac are Sigmar Polke’s 1994 canvas Lapis Lazuli. The picture, priced at $3.8 million, is a brilliantly blue abstraction from what Polke called his “alchemical” turn, during which the artist moved away from artistic takes on consumer culture and began exploring the use of forgotten pigments like lapis lazuli, a blue shade ground from stone that was prized in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Also notable is Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985), the inaugural work from Robert Rauschenberg’s 1984–91 Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) program. Not seen publicly since the final ROCI program exhibition in 1990 and never having been on the market, the work is priced at $3.85 million.

The gallery is also bringing Georg Baselitz’s roughly five-foot-tall sculpture of a female head in cadmium yellow, Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990/2023). The carving was roughly hewn with a chainsaw, an axe, and a chisel from a single tree trunk in 1990; it was cast in bronze in 2023. There are five “Frauen” in museum permanent collections, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. It is priced at $2.18 million.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan

An untitled David Hammons sculpture from 1990 anchors Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Basel presentation. Consisting primarily of a coat rack with hat stand, the five-and-a-half foot sculpture, priced at around $9 million, features rubber, plastic bags, paper bags, a tin can, and a baseball cap, all of which give it a very humanlike aspect. The work’s first appearance at an art fair, it has been exhibited publicly only once, at Tilton Gallery in 2006.

“It’s an incredibly powerful piece that is very political and it’s very much, I feel, a self-portrait of the artist,” Dominique Lévy told ARTnews. “It’s the heart of our presentation.”

The gallery is also bringing Übernagelter Hocker (1963) by German artist Günther Uecker. Basically a wooden stool, the seat and one leg of which are covered in painted nails, the sculpture was created the same year as Stuhl II (Chair II), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to fetch around $1.5 million.

Landau Fine Art

The Montreal gallery will be bringing Wassily Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II, 1910, a piece stolen by the Nazis in 1938. Gallery founder Robert Landau purchased it this past March at Sotheby’s London for 37.2 million GBP ($44.8 million), making it the 9th most expensive work sold at auction last year. Landau then promptly exhibited the painting at both TEFAF Maastricht and TEFAF New York. And though the painting may be at Art Basel, it won’t be for sale.

“It does not have a price on it and it’s going to be front and center at Art Basel and I’m sure there will be a lot of people looking at it,” Landau told ARTnews. “Why not? It’s of great interest to people.”

Landau said that he has spent the last year working on a book about Murnau and has invested millions additionally in the work, including a consultation with a museum curator. Landau claimed that an auction house evaluation put the work’s value at more than $100 million.

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art

With Jean-Michel Basquiat continuing to run hot with numerous auction sales in May, the Upper East Side gallery will be bringing Cash Crop, a 1984 acrylic-and-oilstick depicting a silhouetted figure in front of a sugar box. The $5 million to $6 million price tag is significantly higher than at its last appearance at auction, when it sold for £713,250, or around $1.11 million, at a 2010 Phillips evening sale in London. The estimate for the work then, when it was consigned by Gagosian, was £600,000 to £900,000.

Gallery director Stacie Khandros told ARTnews that the recent auction sales had prompted more conversations with potential consignors compared to last year. “I think we’re still optimistic that … what we have is still competitive pricing. And I think our works are spectacular. It’s just finding the right price to entice potential buyers,” Khandros said.

Editor’s Note, 6/11/2024: An earlier version of this story stated that the price of the 1970 work by Donald Judd offered by Gagosian was $10 million. It has been updated with a revised figure of $15 to $20 million.

Floris van Schooten’s Still-Life with Ham and Peter Binoit’s Food, Fruit and Glass on a Table had been part of the Louvre’s Nordic collection for several decades and held under the “National Museum Recuperation” programme for stolen works whose owners are unknown, according to France 24. The two paintings had also been on display at the institution since the 1950s.

In 1944, the two paintings were looted by Nazis from a mansion in central Paris owned by Mathilde Javal. After the end of World War II, Javal had officially requested the restitution of her family’s works of art. According to the Louvre museum, evidence of Javal’s request was found in a letter, but the paintings could not be returned due to lack of information about their rightful ownership. The museum also said errors for Javal’s name and their address also added confusion.

After the the van Schooten and Binoit paintings were returned to 48 descendants of Javal, many of the rights holders, as well as their children and grandchildren, gathered at the museum on June 4 before the opening of a public exhibition detailing the family’s experience under the Nazis.

The research necessary to identify the descendants of the rightful owners of six works from the National Museum Recuperation programme, including the paintings by van Schooten and Binoit, was done through a 2015 agreement made by the French ministry of culture and a national organization of genealogy professionals. The research work was done free of charge, according to Le Figaro, which first reported the news.

The Louvre has 1,610 works in its National Museum Recuperation programme, including 791 paintings. They are part of the legacy of approximately 100,000 items that were looted in France mainly from Jewish families during the Second World War. After the war’s conclusion, approximately 60,000 items were returned to the country, with 45,000 returned to their owners. The majority of the 15,000 remaining items, were sold by the state, with national museums like the Louvre trusted with custody of 2,200.

Louvre director Laurence Des Cars told the AFP the case was “a commitment to transmitting memory and a constant reminder to action”.

“Once again, a cultural institution and a work of art are targeted by iconoclasts: the painting “Les Coquelicots” by Claude Monet at @MuseeOrsay!” Dati wrote on Saturday. “This destruction of art by delinquents cannot be justified in any way. It must stop! I contacted the [Justice Minister], for the implementation of a penal policy adapted to this new form of delinquency which attacks the most noble aspect of our cohesion: culture!”

The Monet painting Coquelicots (Poppies at Argenteuill) is one of the artist’s most recognizable works, and is currently featured in the museum’s exhibition “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism” on view until July 14.

The protest group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) posted a thread on X that said the image represented a “nightmarish” version of the same painting of a field of poppies in 2100 if “no radical measures are taken to stop climate change by then.”

The group of environmental activists advocates for sustainable food production in response to the climate crisis through protests at high-profile artworks at European museums, including one at the Louvre last month.

The Riposte Alimentaire climate activist who protested at the Musée D’Orsay wore a white t-shirt that said “+4° L’Enfer”, a reference to the significantly higher likelihood of severe heatwaves described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2023 report if there is a 4 degree Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in global temperature.

A spokesperson for the Musée d’Orsay told The Art Newspaper the painting was rehung and the exhibition was reopened on June 1 after the work was examined and treated by a restorer. “The activist was arrested and kept in police custody until yesterday, when she was temporary released; she’ll be judged by the court on July 2.”

The comment from Dati about the protest Musée d’Orsay came soon after the indictment of performance artist Deborah De Robertis on June 3. A French prosecutor announced that the artist and two others were charged with damage and theft of “cultural property” after five artworks, including Gustav Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde, were tagged with the slogan #MeToo in early May while on display at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

The news of Dati’s tweet was first reported by The Art Newspaper.

The sales included plenty of guarantees and several works by artists whose momentum has cooled amid higher interest rates, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and concerns over the upcoming US national election.

While Phillips’ spring evening sale in Hong Kong had only 24 lots, the auction house managed to ride the ongoing wave of demand for Jean-Michel Basquiat by selling Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari for HK$99 million or U$12.6 million, the highest amount for the season across all the auction houses and categories in Hong Kong. The work carried an estimate of HK$90 million to HK$120 million.

Phillips was also the only auction house to consign a work by Banksy. The popular street artist was absent from this past New York spring auction season but The Leopard and Lamb sold at Phillips Hong Kong on May 31 for HK$36.8 million or $4.7 million on an estimate of HK$18 million to $28 million.

Phillips said its Modern and Contemporary art spring sales in Hong were 22 percent higher compared to last season, with works by Zao Wou-Ki, Yoshitomo Nara, Yayoi Kusama, and Andy Warhol accounting for six out of the top ten lots.

Christie’s said in a press release that its Asia Spring auctions on May 28 and 29 generated a total of HK$963 million ($124 million), with “close to 90% sold by lot and by value and over 40% of lots sold over high estimate.” However, last year Christie’s spring auctions in Hong Kong generated HK$1.24 billion ($159 million), indicating a drop of 22 percent in sales including fees.

Other declines included the number of works which sold for above HK$10 million ($1.3 million) compared to last year (22 for 2024, versus 36 for 2023). There were also fewer lots (81 in 2024; 88 in 2023) in this year’s 20th and 21st Century evening sales compared to the 20th/21st Century and Post-Millennium evening sales, as well as more works that did not sell (14 in 2024; 12 in 2023).

A bright yellow acrylic and silkscreen Flowers painting from 1965 by Andy Warhol was the top lot, at HK$66.625 million with fees ($8.5million USD), on an estimate of (HK $62.8 million – HK $92.8 million). Other top sellers included Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.01.68 for HK $63.175 million, or approximately $8.13 million (estimate of HK$68 million to HK$ 98 million), Yayoi Kusama’s 83-inch tall sculpture Pumpkin (2012) for HK $48.775 million, or $6.28 million (estimate of HK$40 million to HK$60 million), and Rene Magritte’s 1944 painting of a rose L’Invitation au voyage for HK $42.725 million or just under $5.5 million (estimate of HK$28 million to HK$38 million).

Eight of the top ten lots across Christie’s four sales on May 28 and May 29 had guarantees, with the exception of Yoshitomo Nara’s Portrait of AE (2009) and Rock You! (2006).

It’s worth noting that Paul Cezanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves (circa 1902-1906) sold for HK$22.16 million or $4.5 million, on an estimate of HK$20 million to HK$30 million. That figure was a drop from when the consignor purchased the work in June 2014 from Christie’s in London for £3.55 million or about $6 million.

The selling price for Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.01.68 was also lower than when it previously appeared at auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in November 2018, when it sold for HK$68.9 million or $8.8 million, as the lead lot for a sale of Abstract artworks in the house’s Brushwork series.

Breakout results included a Salvo for HK$3.2 million (estimate HK$1 million to HK$1.5 million), a Marina Perez Simao painting for HK$2.1 million (estimate of HK$700,000 to HK$1.2 million), and a Ben Sledsen work for HK$1.6 million (estimate of HK$200,000 to HK$400,000). Works by Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Miriam Cahn, Lee Bae, Xia Yu, Katherine Bernhardt, and Sholto Blissett also sold above high estimates.

Christie’s said world auctions records were also set for Rhee Seundja, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Skygolpe, Ay-o, Sholto Blissett, Jeong Young-do, Son Dong-Hyun, Daniel Correa Mejia, Jeon Hyun-Sun and Kim Su-Yeon.

Notably, two works by Nicholas Party did not sell (one had an estimate of HK$22 million to HK$28 million, or $2.8 million to $3.6 million), as well as a Wayne Thiebaud (estimate of HK$30 million to HK$40 million, or $3.8 million to $5.1 million), which had the third highest estimate of the house’s 21st Century sale.

Christie’s also officially announced at the end of its sales that it would hold its inaugural auctions at its new Asia Pacific headquarters at The Henderson building in Central district on September 26 and September 27, starting with sales of 20th and 21st Century art.