Museums Under Fire, Markets Back in Vogue

The Victoria and Albert Museum network has announced its 2027 exhibition plans across three sites in London and at V&A Dundee. A major highlight at the new V&A East Museum in Stratford—opened in April 2026—will be South Asia Now: Fashion. Art. Design., opening 24 April next year and featuring more than 200 works rooted in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The museum names Sri Lankan designer Amesh Wijesekera, plus artists Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Gauri Gill, Aisha Khalid, and Munem Wasif, with more details to come. South Kensington will open Punk to Pop on 13 March 2027, plus exhibitions on British ceramics, and Chintz in September. Dundee will stage Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery, opening 26 March 2027.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s are reporting a sharp rebound in first-half 2026 sales, fueled by trophy lots and luxury categories. Christie’s says H1 revenue is four dollarsbn, with public auction sales up 71% year-on-year to three dollarsbn and a 91% sell-through rate by lot; private sales are just over one dollarsbn. Sotheby’s reports public auction sales of three dollarsbn, up 59%, with a 90% sell-through rate, and total turnover of four dollarsbn, including a record eight hundred twenty six dollarsm in private sales. Christie’s top collection so far was S.I. Newhouse at six hundred thirty dollarsm, led by Pollock’s Number 7A (1948) at one hundred eighty one dollarsm. Sotheby’s cites strong marquee weeks and record-setting European results, while both houses point to luxury—from watches to cars—as a key driver and a gateway for younger buyers.

Bavaria is restructuring how it handles claims involving Nazi-looted art, approving plans to move provenance research out of museums and into a separate, independent entity—alongside a new panel to evaluate claims. The changes come a year after Bernhard Maaz resigned as director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections following media accusations, which the authority rejected, but culture minister Markus Blume said more needed to be done to rebuild trust. Bavaria’s new provenance unit will be attached to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich and will employ eight researchers. A new panel led by Raphael Gross, president of the German Historical Museum, will make recommendations to the state. Blume also announced the restitution of a 1905 Picasso bronze bust, Fernande/Beatrice, to heirs of Alfred Flechtheim.

Tate Modern has opened a major Ana Mendieta retrospective that, as described, refuses to let biography swallow the work. The exhibition begins with the pieces she made after returning to Cuba in 1980, including “Esculturas Repuestras” (1981), carved into limestone caves and cliffs at La Escaleras de Jaruco. It also includes her final film, Ochún (1981), which loops footage of the Florida sea washing over an earth outline of her body. The show’s approach keeps life details minimal and foregrounds how Mendieta worked: earth, body, ritual, and time. Her “Silhuetas” (ca. 1973–80) appear as ephemeral body imprints recorded in photographs, and one installation is reconstructed with guidance from her niece, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta. Films like Silhueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece) (1976) expand the vocabulary with fire, violence, and spiritual charge.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has tested positive for traces of bacteria linked to a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, according to health officials. The bacteria had previously been detected at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where it was found during routine testing of its cooling tower. The Met, typically closed Wednesdays, said that day would be used for cleaning and follow-up testing. The Guggenheim said it immediately began remediating the tower, emphasized that it’s accessible only to facilities staff, and notified employees who work near it. The museum also briefed UAW Local 2110; union president Olga Brudastova said she was satisfied with the response and noted the tower has been treated and will be retested next week. The outbreak was first identified July 2, and inspectors have tested cooling towers at more than 100 buildings.

A new investigation digs into Phoenix Ancient Art and the long shadow it has cast across museum collections. The story opens with a Roman marble portrait bust at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that disappeared from its gallery—leaving behind only the label—after it was seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. A Met spokesperson confirmed the bust was repatriated to the Republic of Türkiye this February. The DA’s office list shows nine Phoenix artifacts taken from The Met since 2021, worth nearly five dollars million, including three loans. The piece traces Phoenix’s rise through Ali Aboutaam, born in 1965, who worked in his father’s Beirut antiquities business, later moved operations to Geneva, incorporated Phoenix in 1995, and faced repeated seizures tied to trafficking networks. It also recalls 251 artifacts surrendered to Italian authorities in 2009, and how provenance claims have repeatedly come under pressure.

A prominent Cape Town gallery is facing allegations from South African artist Kate Gottgens, who said her former gallery, SMAC, delayed payments and withheld artworks. In a now-deleted Instagram post, Gottgens alleged that SMAC failed to return her painting “Audible Doom” (2021) for four years after it didn’t sell at Miart in Milan in 2022. After nearly 13 years with the gallery, she left SMAC late last year and later went public about the work’s whereabouts. In email, she described a pattern of delayed payments, including one instance where she says she was paid “years later.” SMAC Exhibitions Coordinator and Operations Manager Jean Butler rejected the claims, saying Gottgens “was aware of the location of the work,” and attributed delays to import-export issues beyond the gallery’s control. After the post, Gottgens said she received R297,500 for three paintings the gallery exhibited at Miart in July.

A new exhibition at New York’s Management Gallery, “The New Grotesque,” looks at how horror and humor collide in a moment shaped by constant crisis and endless feeds. The show is curated by the gallery’s director, Anton Svyatsky, and mixes generations of artists sourced from private collections and other galleries. Among the works highlighted are Aleksandra Waliszewska’s gouache fairy-tale sequence, and David Altmejd’s Smoking with Oneself (2021–26), a bust featuring a decapitated fairy whose face seems to emerge from trachea and bone while still taking a drag. The exhibition also includes two untitled pencil drawings by Miriam Cahn, and Tim Brawner’s acrylic scene of mannequin heads and an uncanny figure. Jang Pa makes her U.S. debut with Gore Deco—Grinning Viscera #1 (2026), a large portrait with sentient guts spilling from the sitter’s back.

Jacolby Satterwhite has been named the inaugural recipient of the Artists Living With Cancer Grant, a new twenty five thousand dollars award co-presented by the Rema Hort Mann Fund and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He’ll be presented with the grant at RHMF’s 30th anniversary gala on October 28. The program provides unrestricted, direct financial support to New York City Metro Area–based visual artists undergoing active cancer treatment. Satterwhite—born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1986 and living in Brooklyn—works across immersive installation, virtual reality, and digital media. His work is held by institutions including MoMA and the Whitney, and his six-channel commission A Metta Prayer was on view in the Met’s Great Hall from October 2023 to January 2024. Satterwhite said he’s been a cancer patient since age 12, and described the grant as vital support during treatment and recovery.

New research on an iconic bronze from China’s Sanxingdui site suggests the celebrated object may be an assemblage—made from different parts produced in different places and at different times. The research, released by the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and reported by Heritage Daily, focuses on a well-known kneeling bronze figure with hands extended, buried together with an elaborate headpiece called a zong. Researchers say the kneeling figure shows significantly greater corrosion than the zong, and laboratory testing identified substantial differences in metal composition and the geological origins of the ores. The figure itself appears to be made from separate sections, including a copper base that differs from the rest. Taken together, the findings are presented as evidence that Sanxingdui had cultural and commercial connections—possibly including the Central Plains—and that materials and finished bronze objects likely moved across regions.

That’s today’s Daily Art Download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more news, more context, and fewer excuses for bad wall text. Chinga la migra

Today's Stories