Restitution Reckonings and a Market on the Move

The Art Institute of Chicago has agreed to restitute Jean Metzinger’s 1913 painting Woman With a Fan to the heirs of Emanuel Lewenstein, a Jewish collector whose family was persecuted in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The painting was auctioned in Amsterdam in October 1940, months after the Nazi invasion. Jacques Schuhmacher, the museum’s head of provenance research, says that even though the exact circumstances and consignor aren’t known, the institute concluded it was sold as a result of Nazi persecution—either confiscated or sold under pressure. The museum traced a key connection by examining faint pencil marks on the back using infrared photography, which revealed the name of dealer Paul Citroen, Lewenstein’s main supplier.

The Mauritshuis in The Hague will restitute a 17th-century Dutch oil painting on paper, Fishermen by the Lakeshore by Jan van Goyen (1651), after provenance research linked it to the collection of the Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The museum bought the work in 1967 for fifty eight thousand guilders. Goudstikker died in 1940 while fleeing on a ship to England, and his dealership and its one thousand one hundred thirteen works were taken over without the agreement of his widow. The painting was among works transported to Germany and sold into the collection of Hermann Göring. Dutch culture minister Rianne Letschert agreed to follow advice from the Dutch Restitutions Committee to return it to Marei von Saher.

The BBC has a new reality-style art-dealing game show, The Big Deal, and it’s sparking a bigger conversation about what happens when art is treated chiefly as a profit engine. Hosted by Steph McGovern, the series puts seven pairs of novice contestants through challenges meant to turn contemporary art into “big profits,” with a knockout format and a £fifty thousand prize of “brilliant British art” for the winning pair. The contestants try selling recent graduates’ work at a small London auction, decorating luxury executive homes, moving prints at a specialist fair in Margate, and marketing works by two Berlin-based artists at an online auction. One Berlin duo, 44flavours, sums up the tension: “The focus should be more on the work, not selling it.”

In London, Santiago Sierra is launching a durational performance that is, quite literally, a relentless act of naming. Organized by the London-based arts group A/POLITICAL, the work consists of Arabic speakers continuously reading the names of Palestinians killed “by the Israeli state, its forces and settlers since the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948,” according to the group’s statement. It begins at 6pm UK time on 22 September and runs 24 hours a day until complete, with in-person hours at A/POLITICAL’s headquarters in Kennington and a 24/7 global livestream. The list draws on sources including the Gaza Ministry of Health via Iraq Body Count, B’Tselem, and the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre; unidentified victims are read as majhul, or “unknown.”

Photographer Tyler Mitchell is the sixth winner of the Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, receiving two hundred fifty thousand dollars in unrestricted funds. The award began in 2016 under the Tyson Scholars of America program, endowed by Tyson Foods and housed at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville. It previously awarded two hundred thousand dollars biannually, but starting this year it shifts to two hundred fifty thousand dollars annually. Mitchell is an Atlanta-born, New York–based photographer and video artist known for images and installations featuring African American subjects. He photographed Beyoncé for Vogue’s September 2018 issue cover, an image later acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery; in 2021, his photograph of Vice President Kamala Harris also appeared on Vogue’s cover. Olivia Tyson called his work “bold, generous, forward-looking, and culturally consequential.”

Outside the Museum of Modern Art on September 22, two protesters called for billionaire Leon Black to be removed from MoMA’s board. Hyperallergic reports the action was led by Katie Fuller, founder of the research initiative Time & Memory Project, alongside her sister, who wished to remain anonymous. They handed out zines detailing Black’s links to Jeffrey Epstein and several sexual assault allegations brought against him; Hyperallergic notes that none have resulted in a conviction. Fuller staged the protest in costume, wearing a Ghostface mask from the Scream franchise and a pastel blue jumpsuit, and told Hyperallergic she acted after learning Black was still a trustee. The action came six days after the US House of Representatives unanimously voted to hold Black in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas in an Epstein investigation. MoMA did not respond to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.

Inside MoMA, Sarah Michelson’s nowhere is unfolding daily through October 11 as what performer Juli Brandano called “essentially a 25-day dance.” The piece is packed with recurring objects, projections, and movement that resurface in shifting variations, including white duffel bags reading “Dance | Debt.” The project acknowledgments thank Maison Margiela. Viewers sit on stools wrapped in tape branded with the names of two theaters associated with Michelson’s work, and parts of the marbled floor are taken from her work 4 from the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Projected images include a cartoon of Nicole Mannarino doing split jumps and squats, echoing Michelson’s Devotion, Study #3 (2012) in the same atrium. Two performers wheel large silver sculptures of women dancers—one wearing a necklace spelling “cunt,” the other marked “RIP Steve Paxton.”

Christie’s is marking 20 years in the United Arab Emirates by moving its gavel to Abu Dhabi. On November 1, the auction house will hold its first fine art auction in the city at the Abu Dhabi Edition hotel, offering more than 70 works in a sale titled “MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art.” The lineup includes artists such as Paul Guiragossian, Samia Halaby, Mohamed Melehi, Marwan Kassab-Bachi, Inji Efflatoun, and Nabil Nahas. The move comes as Abu Dhabi’s commercial scene grows alongside its cultural infrastructure: Sotheby’s has established a presence in the city, and Frieze Abu Dhabi will debut November 19–22 at Manarat Al Saadiyat with 84 galleries. Christie’s notes this moment as a “20-year arc” coming full circle.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is entering a 25-year loan partnership with Nigeria that will place three major artworks on long-term display in its recently remodeled Michael C. Rockefeller wing. The works—ranging from the 12th to 18th century—were formerly in the collection of artist and philanthropist Ceil Pulitzer. Rather than entering the Met’s collection, the objects were given to the Friends of Nigeria’s Cultural Heritage, established by Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM). The works include a Yoruba terracotta, Head of a Horse (12th–15th century), linked to Ile-Ife; an Edo terracotta, Commemorative Portrait from the Benin Kingdom (ca. 16th century); and an Edo copper alloy, Figure Representing a Queen Mother from the Benin Kingdom (ca. 18th century). Met director Max Hollein called it an “innovative collaboration.”

In Mexico City, the Codex Azcatitlan has gone on view at the National Museum of Anthropology, arriving on loan from the National Library of France as part of celebrations marking the bicentennial of diplomatic relations between France and Mexico. Created between the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the illustrated manuscript spans 20 folios and, per exhibition text, combines Mesoamerican pictographic traditions with European writing while narrating Mexica migration, rulers, and events including the arrival of the Spanish, conquest, and evangelization. It’s on view until December 6 and is returning to Mexico for the first time since 1840. The loan is reciprocal: Mexico sent the Boturini Codex to France, and both will return to current owners by year’s end. Mexican foreign affairs secretary Roberto Velasco said, “Codices do not belong to institutions; they belong to the people.”

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