Restitution Showdowns, Museums at Breaking Point

Art Basel is bringing its digital-art initiative Zero 10 onto Swiss ground for the first time, after launching in Miami Beach in 2025 and then running at Art Basel Hong Kong earlier this year. This Basel edition is co-curated by the US artist Trevor Paglen alongside Eli Scheinman, Art Basel’s senior adviser in digital art. Paglen’s pitch is that digital art isn’t some new category—it’s been shaping what we’ve seen for the last 20 years, even in painting and sculpture, because so many “traditional” practices rely on digital processes. Scheinman and Paglen also address scepticism left over from the NFT bubble and anxieties around AI, including Aziza Kadyri’s A Borrowed Hand (2026), shown with eastcontemporary.

Kunstmuseum Basel Gegenwart is presenting Cao Fei’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, titled Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future. It’s a journey through films and installations including Whose Utopia (2006), RMB City (2007-11), Asia One (2018), Nova (2019-), Oz (2022), and the Hip Hop series (2003-), tracing how technological capitalism has evolved alongside her practice. Cao says the title points to prophecy because “the scenarios in many of my works have come true later,” citing La Town (2014) and how it anticipated later epidemic isolation. She also discusses being named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2026, and a concurrent new project at Fondazione Prada in Milan about how agricultural drones are changing farmers’ lives.

A New York Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday, 16 June, gave dealer David Nahmad 30 days to return Amedeo Modigliani’s Seated Man With a Cane (1918) to Philippe Maestracci, the grandson of Jewish dealer Oscar Stettiner. The order follows Judge Joel M. Cohen’s April decision that the painting be restituted, now with a timeline attached. Nahmad’s lawyers say they will appeal, arguing the court ruled without live testimony from eyewitnesses and that the work taken from Stettiner was not Seated Man with a Cane. They point to sworn statements from photographer Frederic Allain and film producer Odile Carlotti-Allain, who describe a different, smaller, darker portrait. Maestracci’s lawyer Phillip C. Landrigran says appeals have been repeatedly denied and could just delay restitution.

Mexico’s government is urging Sotheby’s in New York to withdraw two pre-Columbian artefacts from its Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas sale on Thursday, 18 June. Mexico’s secretary of culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said INAH analysed the works and determined they are part of the nation’s cultural heritage, adding that “necessary actions” had already been taken to demand withdrawal and restitution. One lot is a Teotihuacán stone mask (around AD450-A650), estimated at thirty thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars tied in provenance to dealer Everett Rassiga and sold to a New York collector in 1968. The other is a small ceramic figure in ceremonial regalia (around AD550-AD950), estimated at five thousand dollars to seven thousand dollars from the south-central region of Veracruz, later linked to a New York gallery associated with Rassiga. Sotheby’s says it finds “no basis for the claim.”

In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday, 17 June, that “everything indicates” the 15 June murder of Russian dissident artist Robert Kuzovkov was political. Tusk added it would “constitute an act of state terrorism” if Russia were found to be behind it. Kuzovkov, who worked under the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was 44 and a father of five. He was shot three times in broad daylight while walking on a sidewalk in Biala Podlaska, where he had lived since moving to Poland in 2021. He was known for often-grotesque caricatures mocking figures including Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin, Ramzan Kadyrov, Alexander Lukashenko, Alexei Navalny, and Volodymyr Zelensky. He posted frequently on Telegram, and his last post on 15 June showed screenshots of threats against him. Two Belarusian men detained after the murder have been released, Polish authorities said.

In São Paulo, prosecutors dismissed a complaint targeting the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp) over the exhibition La Chola Poblete: Pop Andino. The complaint, filed 24 May by Danilo Balas of Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, alleged “religious offense” and asked prosecutors to investigate possible violations of religious freedom, also citing Christian and Mormon symbols and the possible use of public funds. A Change.org petition titled “Respect for Faith and Citizenship,” beginning “We, Christian citizens,” has surpassed twelve thousand signatures and called for reconsideration or warnings. But the Ministério Público do Estado de São Paulo said the complaint was based on “abstract conjecture,” and its 3 June decision noted it is not the prosecutor’s role to replace curatorial or artistic judgment. The show features 31 works by the Argentine artist, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Leandro Muniz, and remains on view until 2 August.

In Paris, the Louvre’s president-director Christophe Leribault told the French Senate the museum is “à bout de souffle,” or “at the end of its rope.” Speaking before the Senate’s Committee on Culture, Education, Communication and Sport, he described urgent building issues and a massive investment challenge, saying the Louvre is “running on fumes” as facilities and infrastructure reach the end of their lifespan. His remarks come after international headlines following an October 2025 heist in which thieves used a cherry picker to enter via an upper-floor window and stole one hundred two dollars million worth of crown jewels from the Galerie d’Apollon in eight minutes; the jewels have not been recovered. Leribault said additional cameras have already been installed and a new perimeter video surveillance system would begin installation in January 2027. He also emphasized fundraising needs for the Louvre’s Nouvelle Renaissance renovation expected to cost more than €1 billion.

Ai Weiwei is set to reenact his detention in a first-ever endurance performance titled Sewing a Button, staged over 24 hours alongside his forthcoming show at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, home of Factory International. Starting at 5 p.m. on July 3, Ai will enter a replica of his 25.92 square-meter cell, recreated by architecture firm Hawkins\Brown, where he will sleep, eat, exercise, write, wash, and face interrogation by four journalists and broadcasters: Nihal Arthanayake, Emma Dabiri, Lemn Sissay, and Zing Tsjeng. Nine additional actors will play military guards and doctors. Space Afrika will provide a soundscape and a live mixing session, and the venue will stay open all night. Tickets run from £28.50 for two hours to £69.50 for the full performance, with CCTV footage streaming online and screening in Melbourne, Buenos Aires, and London’s Piccadilly Circus via CIRCA.

The Menil Collection in Houston is launching a new commission program centered on its Fresco Building, which will reopen in late 2027 as a site for “semi-permanent, site-specific commissions.” Each project is planned to remain on view for around five years, and the inaugural artist will be New York–based Teresita Fernández. The building has been closed since 2018 and will reopen as part of the Menil’s 40th anniversary celebrations. Fernández, known for a multidisciplinary practice engaging land, landscape, and underknown histories of the Caribbean and the Indigenous Americas, was invited after a visit connected to the exhibition “What drawing can be: four responses.” Menil director Rebecca Rabinow said Fernández’s installation will join the Menil’s other single-artist buildings, and that, in recognition of the Fresco Building’s origins, the work will address themes of spirituality and the human condition.

In Washington, the US House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Republican Tom Cole of Oklahoma, advanced a budget proposal that could cut funding from the Department of Education’s Assistance for Arts Education program, the department’s only arts grant program. Erin Harkey, CEO of Americans for the Arts, said eliminating it would reduce support for teacher professional development, accessible arts education programming, community partnerships, and outreach. Established in 2015, the program partly supports initiatives for disadvantaged students and children with disabilities, and has awarded millions in grants to institutions serving families living below local poverty lines. The committee report argues funding “should be focused on core education such as reading, writing, and math.” Hyperallergic noted the program received thirty six dollars million in Congress’s final budget despite similar threats last year, and that a recent award cycle sought “patriotic education” applications. Next, the Senate’s proposals will shape what happens.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use. Chinga la migra

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