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The Headlines
HAIRLESS DOGS, UNCERTAIN FUTURE. Mexico Metropolis’s Museo Dolores Olmedo, residence to the world’s largest assortment of works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is slated to reopen in 2026 after Covid shut it down in 2020, The Artwork Newspaper stories. The information ends years of hypothesis in regards to the museum’s future, though issues stay over the potential relocation of its assortment to the Parque Aztlán in Chapultepec—a transfer many argue defies founder Dolores Olmedo’s needs. Olmedo, a distinguished artwork collector and shut buddy of Rivera who died in 2002, established the museum in 1994 in La Noria, a Sixteenth-century hacienda in Xochimilco. The positioning grew to become a vibrant cultural hub, recognized for its artwork, beautiful gardens, hairless Xoloitzcuintli canine, and Day of the Useless altars. She purchased over 140 Rivera works and 25 Kahlo work, many instantly from the artists, and insisted that the gathering stay in Xochimilco “for the Mexican folks.” Earlier this month, a letter signed by nearly 100 distinguished cultural figures was despatched to Mexico’s tradition ministry expressing their concern over the gathering’s potential fragmentation.
FAUX JUDGEMENT ON BRITISH MUSEUM THEFTS. Regardless of intensive investigations and a BBC documentary sequence, Peter Higgs, the previous curator accused of stealing a trove of artifacts from the British Museum, has not been formally charged with any crime. Nonetheless, the British Museum dismissed him and is pursuing a civil case. The scandal additionally prompted the resignation of the museum’s director on the time, Hartwig Fischer. Higgs continues to disclaim any wrongdoing, and the standing of the investigation stays unclear. In response to the broader points raised by the case, Roger Michel—a former lawyer and founding father of the Institute for Digital Archaeology in Banbury—spent months organizing a mock trial. His purpose was to focus on the failure of many museums to undertake fashionable applied sciences that would assist them higher handle and monitor their collections. The mock trial introduced collectively a various forged, together with teachers, collectors, campaigners, working towards legal professionals, and a King’s Counsel. Individuals assumed fictional names impressed by Hollywood courtroom dramas and notable historic figures from the museum world. What verdict did the pseudo jury give? Discover out right here.
The Digest
Whereas a lot of the worldwide public sale market continues to be in a correction interval, total public sale gross sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips for the primary half of 2025 have fallen solely 6.2 p.c and the variety of heaps offered rose 1.3 p.c in comparison with the identical time final 12 months. [ARTnews].
Take a look at the Wellcome Pictures Prize’s 2025 choice, from microscopic pictures of a human kidney to self-portraits of epilepsy and endometriosis. [Guardian]
Christie’s is reportedly turning to provisions in Donald Trump’s “large, lovely” tax and spending invoice as a possible enhance for the struggling artwork market, which has confronted headwinds resulting from ongoing geopolitical instability and sluggish gross sales. [FT]
A 4,000-year-old historic metropolis known as Peñico has been found in Peru, and it opened to the general public earlier this week. [The Art Newspaper]
The Kicker
THE NEXT NEUENDORF? Because the mud settles from Artnet’s current sale, Swiss auctioneer and artwork vendor Simon de Pury weighs in on who may be the subsequent chief within the artwork market in his month-to-month Artnet column. However earlier than he revealed his two picks, he aired some grievances: “Covid compelled everybody to adapt however as quickly because the pandemic receded, most public sale homes, galleries, festivals, and sellers returned to doing enterprise the way in which they’d all the time accomplished earlier than,” he writes. De Pury in contrast these gamers to an ailing middle-aged man, who—having had a well being scare and subsequently swearing to vary his habits—reverts to sort as quickly as he feels higher. He factors to Peter Wilson, the chairman of Sotheby’s between 1958 and 1980, and Artnet’s founder, Hans Neuendorf, as “true visionaries.” De Pury writes how his employer, Artnet, “was a crown jewel—an excellent platform from which to disrupt the established order. For years infinite contenders have tried to accumulate it with none success [until Beowolff Capital snapped it up for $73.7 million earlier this year].” So, who would be the subsequent artwork world visionary? De Pury provides Pharrell Williams his vote. “[Williams] is completely good and personifies for me what modern tradition is all about at this time,” he wrote. “Whereas he does have just a few issues on his plate as males’s inventive director at Louis Vuitton, and as a high charting musician, he discovered the time to construct the net public sale platform, Joopiter. He put in the super-smart John Auerbach as CEO who had been for a number of years the top of digital and e-commerce at Christie’s.” Anybody else? “One other tremendous proficient protagonist to comply with is Hélène Nguyen-Ban who, with Docent, has created what might doubtlessly turn into the Spotify of artwork,” de Pury added.
