Museums Under Siege, Auctions Breaking Records

France is starting today with a big, complicated handoff at its most famous museum. The Art Newspaper reports that Christophe Leribault arrived at the Musée du Louvre on 25 February, taking over a museum described as in deep trouble and “traumatised” after the theft of the crown jewels last October and the turmoil that followed. President Emmanuel Macron framed Leribault’s mission as one of “appeasement.” The article also details harsh findings after the heist, including Cour des Comptes criticism that the Louvre “accumulated considerable delays” in security equipment, with less than 0.3% of the budget dedicated to security and fire prevention. Staff strikes began in mid-December, and Leribault now faces infrastructure delays and major, expensive masterplans.

Also in France, The Art Newspaper reports that French Lebanese artist Ali Cherri has filed a war crimes complaint in France over an Israeli airstrike in Beirut that killed his parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, and five other civilians on 26 November 2024. The building was in the densely populated Noueiri neighbourhood of central Beirut, and the strike happened just hours before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was agreed after a 13-month conflict that killed more than four thousand people in Lebanon. Cherri filed the complaint to the French War Crimes Unit on 2 April, supported by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). The complaint cites Amnesty International’s “The Sky Rained Missiles” briefing and an investigation by Forensic Architecture.

Staying in Europe, another kind of institutional vulnerability is in the spotlight in Florence. ARTnews reports that the Uffizi Gallery is disputing a Corriere della Sera report about the severity of a cyber attack. Corriere said hackers infiltrated the museum complex’s IT network, demanded a ransom directly from director Simone Verde, and threatened to sell stolen information on the dark web—plus claims about security maps and personal data. Reuters, cited by ARTnews, reported that the museum acknowledged being targeted on Feb. 1 but said nothing was stolen and hackers did not acquire security maps or employees’ personal contact details. Corriere also linked the incident to a Feb. 3 closure at the Pitti Palace and the movement of jewels, which the museum said were tied to renovations.

From Italy to a cross-border restitution development: The Art Newspaper reports that Canada has returned 11 artefacts to Turkey in what Turkey’s minister of culture and tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, called the first official repatriation of cultural property from Canada to Türkiye. Ersoy announced on 31 March that seven manuscript pages, two printed work pages, and two modern calligraphy works were returned through a Canadian federal court ruling. Dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, the Ottoman-era items include Arabic and Turkish calligraphy on subjects like Islamic jurisprudence, Sufism, history, and literature. They were handed over on 30 March at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa after a process that began more than a year ago, following interception by the Canada Border Services Agency during transport from Istanbul to Vancouver.

Across the Channel of art-and-money drama, ARTnews reports that heirs to the Bic family fortune sued in March seeking the return of a Fra Angelico painting they allege was stolen by the family’s chauffeur and later sold at Christie’s for five dollars million in 2018. The lawsuit, filed March 19 in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, concerns Saint Sixtus (ca. 1453–55), which the suit says Bic founder Baron Marcel Bich bought in 1972. The heirs allege the chauffeur, Roy Morrow, stole it from Bruno Bich’s New York apartment. Defendants include executors of dealer Richard L. Feigen’s estate and collectors Álvaro Saieh and Ana Guzman, whom the suit says bought it. The New York Police Department told Gothamist no one reported the painting as stolen.

Heading east to Russia, the Associated Press reports that German sculptor and illustrator Jacques Tilly was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military and insulting religious feelings, tied to carnival displays mocking Russian President Vladimir Putin. Tilly, 62, has designed and built floats for Düsseldorf’s Carnival parade for nearly 40 years, in a tradition known for political satire. Among the floats cited were one depicting Putin in a bathtub filled with blood painted to resemble the Ukraine flag, and another showing him biting into a map of Ukraine with the words “Choke on it!” A Moscow court sentenced him to 8.5 years in prison earlier this week, in absentia, since Tilly is based in Germany. In an interview with dpa, he called the proceedings an “authoritarian regime’s proganda trial.”

Staying with human rights in the art world, ARTnews reports that the Human Rights Foundation has petitioned the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen, seeking a finding that his prolonged detention is arbitrary under international law. Gao, 69, was arrested in 2024 on suspicion of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs.” During a raid on his studio in Sanhe City, police seized more than 100 artworks, including pieces such as Miss Mao, Mao’s Guilt, and The Execution of Christ. The Human Rights Foundation noted these works were created at least nine years before China’s 2021 law. It also said his trial—delayed three times—took place in a single day on March 30, 2026, and he is still awaiting a verdict.

Now to the market, where records are falling. ARTnews reports that Raja Ravi Varma’s Yashoda and Krishna (ca. 1890s) sold for seventeen dollars million at Saffronart in Delhi on April 1, setting a new auction record for an Indian artist. The result surpassed the previous benchmark held by M.F. Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra), which sold for thirteen dollars million at Christie’s New York last year and was purchased by Kiran Nadar. It also eclipsed Varma’s prior record of four dollars million, set in 2023. According to Artsy, the buyer was pharmaceutical billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla, founder of the Serum Institute of India. Saffronart’s lot description called Varma “the most influential pioneer of early modern Indian art” and framed the painting around maternal love through Krishna and Yashoda.

From one headline name to another: ARTnews says Pérez Art Museum Miami will host “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols,” an exhibition bringing together about 10 Jean-Michel Basquiat works owned by Kenneth C. Griffin. The show will feature nine paintings and one sculpture, focusing on themes like portraiture and the figure, script and language, and Basquiat’s use of color, form, and composition. It’s curated by PAMM director Franklin Sirmans and collection curator Megan Kincaid, with support from Griffin via his Griffin Catalyst initiative. Opening June 25, it includes Untitled (1982), which sold for one hundred ten dollars million at Sotheby’s in May 2017 and later went from Yusaku Maezawa to Griffin in 2024, reportedly for two hundred dollars million, according to Artnet News.

Finally, the digital frontier gets a quick hit of painterly texture. Artnet News reports, under the headline “David Nott’s Textured Abstractions Go Digital With LG Gallery+,” that David Nott’s textured abstractions are going digital with LG Gallery+. Beyond that title and publication context, the key point is the pairing of Nott’s abstraction with LG Gallery+ as a digital presentation platform—bringing work associated with surface and texture into a screen-based format. It’s another example of how contemporary art distribution keeps expanding beyond traditional walls, as artists and platforms test how abstraction reads when it’s experienced through high-definition display rather than physical paint and canvas.

That’s the download for today. Links to all ten stories are in the show notes—meet me back here tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use. Chinga la migra

Today's Stories