Scandals, Stolen Jewels, and Art’s Lasting Power

A big institutional story out of the Netherlands: Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is tied up in an alleged bribery scandal involving city civil servants and inflated construction contracts, including work connected to asbestos treatment at the museum. In a briefing to Rotterdam city council last month, mayor Carola Schouten said the city concluded its own investigation after reports that contracts had been signed off for more than they should have cost. One of three accused employees retired, while two were suspended and have now been summarily dismissed. Schouten said the two unnamed employees breached the code of conduct by accepting gifts from business contacts in exchange for possible preferential treatment, and they’re also suspected of forgery and passive bribery. A criminal investigation is ongoing.

Staying in the United Kingdom, the government has placed an export bar on a Rembrandt portrait valued at £71m—described by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport as the most expensive object ever to be given national treasure status. The painting is Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1657), which has been in the UK since the mid-18th century and was sold at Christie’s in a private sale last year. The export bar initially runs until 26 December; after that, the owners have 15 business days to consider offers at the recommended price, followed by a second deferral period of nine months. Arts Minister Ruth Mackenzie said it has been part of the UK’s cultural life for centuries. It’s the second time the work has faced an export block.

Also in Europe, Madrid is hosting a major survey of Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the Museo Reina Sofía, titled Sweet Revenge, running until 12 October. The show takes its name from words Gonzalez-Torres wrote after returning to Madrid nearly 20 years after arriving there as a 13-year-old in 1971, sent from Cuba by his parents. The exhibition opens with “Untitled” (Revenge), his 1991 candy piece made of 325lb of blue candies in clear wrappers, installed here in a rectangular carpet format. The article connects these “manifestable” works—candy and paper stacks—to themes of change, interaction, and loss, especially around Ross Laycock, who died on 24 January 1991, two days after that Madrid show opened.

Continuing around the region, Stockholm’s Bonniers Konsthall has opened The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026, a show about antifascist art and the role of culture in today’s politics, running until 8 November. It features 19 international artists and draws its title from two books by Peter Weiss: The Defeated, published in Swedish in 1948, and The Aesthetics of Resistance, published in German in three volumes between 1975 and 1981. The exhibition is curated by Joanna Nordin with researcher Kim West and curator François Piron, and includes eight newly commissioned works. It opened two weeks before Sweden’s parliamentary election on 13 September. Nordin says, “We don't think it should be controversial to talk about these subjects.”

Shifting to Latin America via film, there’s a new documentary on the late Brazilian artist Amélia Toledo: Amelia Toledo: Lembrar de Não Esquecer (Don’t Forget to Remember). The film traces her five-decade career through testimonials, archival footage, and photographs, and explores her experimental practice merging geometric abstraction with the natural world—crystals, shells, and stones, sometimes mounted on concrete or steel, placed in water, or arranged like mosaics. Toledo was born in São Paulo in 1926 and died in Cotia in 2017. The film-maker and journalist Hélio Goldsztejn worked with Toledo’s son to complete it. It premiered at the 49th São Paulo International Film Festival last year and has now been theatrically released in cinemas throughout Brazil after a screening earlier this month in São Paulo.

Across the Pacific, a major leadership shake-up in Australia: Lisa Havilah has stepped down as chief executive of Powerhouse Parramatta just 10 weeks before its opening, amid ongoing “investigations into governance and procurement,” according to a statement from the office of Australia’s Minister for Arts John Graham. Havilah oversaw the nine hundred fifteen dollars million build after her appointment, and she joined Powerhouse—also known as the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS)—as CEO in 2019. An interim team is due to start September 1: Abbie Galvin, New South Wales government architect, as CEO, and former Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron as strategic adviser. The opening date, set for November 7, is not expected to be impacted. Powerhouse Trust president David Borger called it “not an ideal situation.”

From Austria, here’s a crime story with serious provenance: a diamond necklace worth four dollars million was stolen from Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) on Thursday. Two unidentified men entered during opening hours as ordinary visitors, smashed a display case with a hammer, grabbed the necklace, and fled, with no injuries reported. Police said Friday they had bought tickets, were not wearing masks, and were clearly captured on surveillance cameras. The necklace is a platinum Van Cleef & Arpels piece set with 673 stones totaling more than 200 carats, made for Egypt’s royal family and worn by Queen Nazli in 1939 at the wedding of Princess Fawzia to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The exhibition “Glanzstücke,” open since June, has been closed indefinitely.

In the art world’s obituary news, tributes have poured in following Yayoi Kusama’s death on August 14 at age 97. Artists, galleries, museums, and fashion houses shared homages to her legacy, from her dotted pumpkins to her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms. Among the reactions: Glenn Scott Wright of Victoria Miro Gallery wrote about decades of friendship and visits; artist Dean Sameshima recalled Kusama’s tense 1998 performance at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood; and British art historian Katy Hessel wrote about the cosmos implied by the dot. Museum Ludwig in Cologne had just concluded a major retrospective on August 2, which David Zwirner gallery said drew over four hundred eighty thousand visitors in five months, the museum’s most successful exhibition. David Zwirner, who represented Kusama since 2013, called her the most famous living artist at the time of her passing.

Now to the market and patronage world: ARTnews profiles Malagasy collector and entrepreneur Hasnaine Yavarhoussen and his push to bring Madagascar’s art scene to the rest of the world. In 2019, Madagascar mounted a debut pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and Yavarhoussen’s sponsorship was largely what made it possible, after a meeting with artist Joël Andrianomearisoa. Yavarhoussen went on to found Fonds Yavarhoussen in 2019 to support and promote Malagasy art and culture locally and globally. He and Andrianomearisoa then cofounded Hakanto Contemporary in February 2020 in Antananarivo, where it now occupies a nearly two thousand-square-foot renovated warehouse. Yavarhoussen, a member of Tate’s Africa Acquisitions Committee, describes a “relocalization” mission to acquire and bring modern Madagascar art back home.

Finally, ARTnews interviews Vuslat Doğan Sabancı—known professionally as Vuslat—who spent nearly two decades making art in private while leading a high-profile media career, including serving as chief executive of Hürriyet, Turkey’s largest newspaper. She drew, sculpted, worked in clay, and experimented with materials for years without exhibiting, sometimes working until six in the morning; her first exhibition opened in 2022. This summer her work appeared in New York at the Conductor art fair with a room-sized installation, House of Silence, and in Rhodes with clay sculptures installed in Our Lady of the Castle, a former Greek Orthodox church that later served as an Ottoman mosque, for the second Biennale of Contemporary Keramics. Her monograph, May We Meet in the Silence of Our Souls, was published by DISTANZ and the University of Chicago Press.

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

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