Market Experiments, Mega-Prices, and Color Alchemy

Welcome to The Daily Art Download—your daily update on all of the art world news you need to know… I'm your host Percival Doodlethorpe.
It is Monday, May fourth, two thousand twenty-six. Let’s dive in.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan is launching LGD Hammer, a new live-bidding platform aimed at merging the exclusivity of private sales with the competitive heat of auctions. The first sale is set for May 16, led by a 1984 Willem de Kooning painting estimated at ten dollars million to fifteen dollars million. Co-founder Brett Gorvy said the gallery is “the only major gallery whose founding partners are auction veterans,” and that they’re using their experience and outreach to engage collectors in what he called a “fun and rewarding buying experience.” The move lands in a week of wider market churn: artists including Alexandre Diop, Deborah Roberts, and Kehinde Wiley are cited as major unsecured creditors in newly filed insolvency documents tied to the collapse of Stephen Friedman Gallery.

ARTnews is out with a look at who’s selling the top works in the May sales, framed against a market that returned to modest growth of 4 percent last year, according to the Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report, reaching fifty nine dollars billion. Christie’s will offer 16 lots from the estate of S. I. Newhouse, including Constantin Brâncuși’s Danaïde (ca. 1913) and Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948, each estimated at one hundred dollars million, plus works from Agnes Gund and a group of Gerhard Richter paintings from Marian Goodman’s collection. Sotheby’s counters with Mark Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957), estimated at one hundred dollars million, from Robert Mnuchin’s collection, along with other major consignments.

Artnet’s Gallery Network highlights “Mel Kendrick: Tilt,” now on view at David Nolan Gallery in New York through June 6, 2026—his ninth solo show with the gallery. The exhibition brings together new and recent work alongside older pieces, with the gallery describing it as “as immediately familiar as it is startlingly novel.” Kendrick’s practice is defined by an economy of materials and techniques, with wood playing a central role; he doesn’t plan the final piece in advance, working in dialogue with the material, where mistakes in cutting or carving can’t be undone. On view are works including Walnut Shelf (2026) and Gemstone (2026), plus color-driven pieces like Yellow Drum (2025) and Withstand (2026), alongside cast paper works from the 2010s.

That’s the download for today. Links to all three stories are in the show notes—come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use.