Billion-Dollar Museums, Billion-Dollar Bids

Paris is getting ready for a major museum rethink. The Louvre has revealed an international architecture team for its “Nouvelle Renaissance” expansion: New York’s Selldorf Architects, partnering with Studios Architecture Paris. The project is estimated to cost more than €1 billion, though the budget is still uncertain, with competing estimates ranging from around €270 million to as high as €1.1 billion. First announced by French president Emmanuel Macron at the start of 2025, the plan would add an additional entrance intended to increase visitors by three million each year, plus a dedicated thirty three thousand-square-foot gallery for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Director Christophe Leribault called it “crucial and necessary,” while acknowledging money-saving adjustments may be needed.

The art world is mourning VALIE EXPORT, the Austrian pioneer of feminist performance art who died 14 May, three days before her 86th birthday. Her death was confirmed by Thaddaeus Ropac, who represented her. Born in 1940 in Linz as Waltraud Lehner, she developed a radical artistic language centered on the female body. Tributes have come from writers and institutions alike, including Berlin’s Neuenationalgalerie, which noted documentation of her 1968 performance Tap and Touch Cinema in its current presentation Extreme Tension through 25 April 2027. EXPORT’s major works include TAPP und TASTKINO, staged across ten European cities from 1968 to 1971, and Body Configurations, made between 1972 and 1976, in which she positioned her body within Vienna’s urban landscape.

In Pittsburgh, the 59th Carnegie International is testing what “we” can mean inside a museum. Titled If the word we, the exhibition is curated by Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park, and framed through collaboration with “thought partners,” including Egyptian writer Haytham el-Wardany, whose text provided the title. Park described “we” as “a space of listening.” The show leans tactile and immersive, from Shala Miller’s Flight—where visitors lie on a sloped bean bag under video—to Jasleen Kaur’s Supra, a carpeted room with false windows that mimic daylight. It also extends beyond the museum with offsite programming at venues including the Mattress Factory and Thelma Lovette YMCA, running until 3 January 2027.

On the Bowery, the New Museum has a new counter-monument that’s already stopping passersby in their tracks. Sarah Lucas’s public sculpture VENUS VICTORIA (2026) is a nude, glossy figure with large pink breasts and flailing arms, perched atop a dusty washing machine in bright yellow high heels. Installed on the New Museum’s triangular entrance plaza, it will be on view for the next two years. Lucas and the museum unveiled it on Tuesday, May 12, launching a decade-long series of public commissions by women artists. Lucas said she conceived the work while developing her 2023 Tate Modern exhibition Happy Gas, adapting a figure from her Bunnies series for its “exuberance, optimism, and general good feeling,” and calling it a Pop gesture that “suits New York.”

Museum labor is making news in the Pacific Northwest. More than 100 Seattle Art Museum employees have announced their intention to unionize under Seattle Art Museum Workers United, affiliated with Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28. In a May 13 letter signed by 59 current employees across departments, workers urged Director and CEO Scott Stulen and the museum board to voluntarily recognize the union by Wednesday, May 27. The letter cites “unsustainable wages,” “subpar health benefits,” and “siloed, top-down decision-making,” and calls for “just-cause” job protections instead of at-will employment. It also asks SAM to respect organizing rights by refraining from anti-union literature, anti-union lawyers, and mandatory meetings. Stulen confirmed leadership received the letter and is reviewing it.

In the UK, a storm is swirling around photographer and arts trustee Misan Harriman, and the pushback has been massive. Over ninety seven thousand people have filed complaints with the United Kingdom’s Independent Press Standards Organisation after right-wing outlets published back-to-back articles characterizing Harriman’s recent social media posts as antisemitic. An open letter supporting Harriman initially had 245 signatories, including Tracey Emin, Greta Thunberg, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Doig, and Aimee Lou Wood, and it has since garnered over twenty thousand signatures. Harriman, appointed board chair of London’s Southbank Centre in 2021, rejected the characterization of his posts and said, “Truth itself is on the line.” Southbank did not respond to Hyperallergic, though a spokesperson told the Guardian board members can exercise freedom of expression within the law.

In Venice, Gabrielle Goliath is presenting Elegy in the baroque interior of the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, described as South Africa’s unofficial pavilion for the 61st Biennale Arte. The show follows a political dispute back home: in January, South Africa’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie overrode an independent committee’s decision on representation, objecting to Goliath’s proposed memorialization of those killed in what he called a “geopolitical message” about Israel in Gaza. Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo sued, but South African courts threw the case out. Inside the church, three Elegy works honor victims of violence, including Elegy—for a poet (2026), dedicated to Palestinian poet Heba Abunada, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis in October 2023. Elegy runs through July 31.

A rare Maya stone lintel has become the center of a cross-border claim after a fast-moving repatriation. The limestone lintel, dating to the Classic period (AD600–AD900), was returned to Mexico after an unnamed US businessman brought it to the Mexican consulate in New York. But hours after the official repatriation on 16 April, experts determined it had actually come from Guatemala. Guatemala’s cultural ministry has now formally requested its return from the Mexican government through diplomatic channels, saying technical analysis concluded it originated in the Petén Basin and is part of Guatemala’s cultural heritage. Archaeologist Stephen Houston identified it as the work of an elite artist named Mayuy, from Piedras Negras, whose signature remains visible more than one thousand two hundred years later.

Now to the market: Christie’s kicked off its marquee May evening auctions with a 16-lot sale from the collection of media magnate S. I. Newhouse, totaling six hundred thirty dollars million with fees. The group included works by Constantin Brâncuși, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso, and the result brings the cumulative total sold from Newhouse’s collection to over one dollars billion, following earlier sales in 2018, 2019, and 2023. The biggest battle was over Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948 (1948), described by Christie’s as the largest Pollock drip painting still in private hands. After more than 60 bids over 10 minutes, it sold to a buyer represented by Christie’s global president Alex Rotter for one hundred eighty one dollars million, shattering Pollock’s prior record.

And one major record within that same Newhouse sale belongs to Brâncuși. His bronze head Danaïde, dating to 1913, sold at Christie’s for a hammer price of ninety three dollars million, and one hundred seven dollars million with fees. The bidding opened at eighty two dollars million and included about half a dozen chandelier bids before selling to the guarantor represented by Maria Los, deputy chairman and head of client advisory Americas. Christie’s linked the title to the Greek myth of the Danaïdes and noted the work’s references to Egyptian sculpture and East Asian statues, with gold leaf and black patina. Six bronze casts exist, with four in institutions including the Centre Pompidou and Tate; Christie’s said this is the only gilded example still in private hands. Its provenance traces back to Eugene and Agnes Meyer, who bought it in 1914 at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news, and until then, Chinga la migra.

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