Auction Fever, Museums in the Crossfire

New York’s spring auction week came in at around two dollars billion across the Big Three houses’ evening sales, more than double the comparable total from last May. Artnet breaks down who did best, and the headline is that each house had a strong season in its own lane. Phillips totaled one hundred fifteen dollars million across 41 lots in its modern and contemporary sale, a white-glove result if you exclude two withdrawn lots, led by Andy Warhol’s Sixteen Jackies (1964) at sixteen dollars million. Christie’s led with about one dollars billion from 105 lots across three evening sales, including the six hundred thirty dollars million S.I. Newhouse collection. Sotheby’s brought in around seven hundred thirty seven dollars million across 102 lots, with major bids for works by Mark Rothko and Henri Matisse.

Staying in New York, a Manhattan federal jury convicted Daniel Sikkema in the killing of New York dealer Brent Sikkema, according to the Wall Street Journal. Prosecutors said it was a murder-for-hire plot tied to an acrimonious divorce and custody dispute involving the couple’s son. They argued Daniel Sikkema hired Alejandro Triana Prevez, described as a Cuban former security officer living in Brazil, to kill Brent Sikkema at his vacation home in Rio de Janeiro. Court filings and trial testimony said Prevez entered the townhouse early on January 14, 2024, took a kitchen knife, and stabbed the dealer 18 times while he slept. Jurors convicted Daniel Sikkema on three counts connected to conspiring to hire and pay a hitman. Prosecutors said about nine thousand dollars was transferred before and after the killing.

Also in the United States, Hyperallergic reports that unionized staff at the Ohio State University Wexner Center for the Arts have formally called on the university to rename the institution and other campus buildings named after Les Wexner. In a statement to the university, Wex Workers United said the name “does a profound disservice” to artists and community members who want to engage with art without feeling complicit in supporting “human traffickers, rapists, and pedophiles,” referencing Wexner’s association with Jeffrey Epstein. A union representative said patron comments about the name were directly affecting staff. The push follows other campus actions, including an April 10 protest where students covered the center’s façade name with a black tarp. OSU spokesperson Chris Booker said about 500 naming-review requests have been filed under the University Naming Review Procedure.

From campus politics to monument politics: ARTnews says the Commission of Fine Arts approved President Donald Trump’s controversial plan for a triumphal arch modeled on Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. Trump floated the idea at a holiday party last December, saying planning and construction should be domestic policy chief Vince Haley’s “primary thing.” The architect, Nicolas Leo Charbonneau of Harrison Design, told the New York Times the arch is meant to celebrate “250 years of greatness, freedom, and posterity,” crediting “the wisdom of our founders and God’s providence.” The proposed 250-foot-tall structure would sit on Memorial Circle in Arlington, Virginia. The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s deputy general counsel, Elizabeth Merritt, testified that the Trust is “extremely concerned” about the location, height, scale, and design, warning it would dominate Arlington National Cemetery.

Across the Atlantic, The Art Newspaper reports that many museums in England oppose a UK government move to “explore options” for charging overseas visitors admission at national museums. The Royal Armouries in Leeds warned a two-tier system would undermine “universal access” and risk reputational damage. The discussion resurfaced in the government’s response to a review of Arts Council England by Labour peer Margaret Hodge. Hodge controversially suggested that if the Labour government’s proposed ID cards achieved universal coverage, digital ID checks could enable charging international visitors. She told a Parliamentary committee on 14 April she would oppose charging until that universal system exists, adding it would bring in “less than ten million” pounds and wouldn’t be worth the hassle or unfairness without a clear way to identify visitors. Critics also argue charging could cut shop and café spending and raise colonial-legacy concerns for institutions like the British Museum.

Still in Britain, The Art Newspaper’s podcast turns market headlines into a wider cultural scan. Ben Luke speaks to Judd Tully about New York’s auctions, where some results were record-setting and others more middling, with eye-popping prices mentioned for works by Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi, and Mark Rothko. The episode also heads to Tate Britain in London, where the largest James McNeill Whistler show in Europe in more than 30 years has opened. Ben Luke tours the exhibition with lead curator Carol Jacobi, and the show is set to travel later in the year to the Netherlands, splitting into two presentations at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and The Mesdag Collection in The Hague. The episode’s Work of the Week is a 1922 Edvard Munch frieze made for the women’s canteen at Oslo’s Freia Chocolate Factory, now on loan to Munch for an exhibition curated by Ana María Bresciani.

Now to Washington, where The Art Newspaper reports the US House of Representatives struck down a bill to build the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum on the National Mall. The bill failed 216 to 204 on Thursday, 21 May, after last-minute language changes in March pushed it into a partisan deadlock. The edits included directing the museum to include only “biological women,” banning “diversity,” and giving president Donald Trump the power to override its location on the Mall. Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said Republicans had “ruined it with your trans obsession and your culture wars,” according to Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro. House Speaker Mike Johnson argued Democrats were demanding the museum include “biological men.” Several Republicans joined Democrats in defeating the bill, including Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who questioned isolating groups.

Heading to Spain, The Art Newspaper reports that a 2022 law has quietly set restitution in motion for art seized during the Spanish Civil War, more than 50 years after Francisco Franco’s death. In 1936, the Republican government created the Board for the Seizure and Protection of Artistic Heritage to requisition and safeguard threatened art, but Franco’s victory led to tens of thousands of works being confiscated, misappropriated, lost, or never returned. The Museo del Prado has identified 166 confiscated artworks in its collection and has led efforts to catalogue and return pieces. Last month, two panel paintings confiscated in 1938 were restituted to the parishes of Yebes and Pareja in Castilla-La Mancha, including Christ before Pilate by Maestro de Lupiana (1450–60), which had hung in the Prado’s Spanish Gothic rooms. Research by Arturo Colorado Castellary has identified over twenty six thousand confiscated objects, with more than three thousand three hundred missing.

Across the Atlantic to Argentina, where The Art Newspaper reports a monumental painting vanished from view at the Casa Rosada just before a major policy shift. Days before Congress approved an amendment on 9 April to Argentina’s glacier law—an amendment that environmentalists say weakens protections in glacial regions—president Javier Milei’s government removed The Triumph of Nature (2006), a 1.3m-by-4m painting of the Perito Moreno Glacier by Argentina-born, Austria-based photorealist painter Helmut Ditsch. The work had been loaned to the government and displayed since 2012 across multiple administrations. A government communications spokesperson said it was removed for “maintenance reasons” tied to “structural damage,” without elaborating. Ditsch said he received no official notification about removal or whereabouts and has contacted lawyers. A 1948 copy portrait of Juan Domingo and Evita Perón by Numa Ayrinhac was removed from the same room the same day, also cited as “maintenance.”

Back to France for a final burst of public spectacle: Artnet News reports French artist JR has taken over Paris’s Pont Neuf with La Caverne du Pont Neuf (2026), an installation measuring 120 meters long, 20 meters wide, and up to 18 meters tall. Starting June 6, it will welcome guests inside, where sound and augmented reality are part of the experience, and more than 800 people would have helped realize it. The project nods to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris (1975–85) with the blessing of their foundation, and it was spearheaded by the L’Amicale des Ponts de Paris endowment fund, with contributions from Snap Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, Paris Aéroport, and Salesforce. JR worked with French inflatable firm Air Toiles Concept to fabricate it from eighteen thousand nine hundred square meters of fabric and twenty thousand cubic meters of pressurized air, using organic ink. Thomas Bangalter handled sound design.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for another tight scan of the art world’s power, politics, and plot twists.

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