THE HEADLINES

ABROMAVIĆ RESPONDS TO RESURFACED CONTROVERSY. As her curated performance opens today in Australia, the iconic artist Marina Abramović talks to The Guardian about past accusations of racism for her description of Indigenous Australians as “really strange and different” people who “look like dinosaurs,” in an unedited copy of a memoir that went public around 2016. The question came up as the artist’s four-day performance called “Marina Abramović Institute: Takeover” opens at the Adelaide Festival. Though she can’t attend, Abramović selected the eight participating artists, including Mike Parr, Collective Absentia, Li Binyuan, and First Nation artist Christian Thomspon. “I have apologized. It’s a complete misunderstanding,” Abramović said of the memoir excerpt. “Aborigines are the oldest race on the planet [and] they should be treated as living treasures.”

STOLEN KISS. The artist Julia Sinelnikova is suing New York’s Museum of Sex for plastering posters of her kissing her then-girlfriend on the city’s subways and bus stops without her consent. The ads promoted the museum’s “Superfunland” exhibition, including a “bouncy castle of breasts,” and the image was taken in a professional shooting at the museum in 2019, for which the artist wasn’t paid, reports The New York Times. When the institution refused to financially compensate Sinelnikova, she filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court seeking $250,000 in damages. “It was so egregious, and this was personal,” Sinelnikova said.

THE DIGEST

The Louvre has raised enough funds to acquire a coveted still life of a brimming basket of strawberries by 18^th-century painter Jean Siméon Chardin, following a public fundraising campaign that raised over $1.73 million. Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761) was sold to a US dealer in 2022 for a record $26.29 million (24.3 million euros) at Artcurial, but the Louvre blocked its export in the hopes of purchasing it instead. [Le Figaro and AFP]

A drawing by Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) must be restituted to the heirs of the Jewish painter Max Liebermann, ruled the German Advisory Commission on Nazi-Looted Art Thursday. The Liebermann’s large art collection was liquidated in the context of Nazi persecution. [Monopol]

A cherished Banksy mural in New York’s South Bronxon was shipped to Bridgeport, Connecticut as part of the structure’s demolition to make space for a charter school. But its removal left locals in tears, and some wondering if Banksy is none other than Kate Middleton. [ARTnews]

The numbers are in: Elton John’s collection of 900 items sold at Christie’s for a total of $20.5 million, surpassing its low estimate by more than double. [ARTnews]

British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen won the Volta Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dublin International Film Festival yesterday. The Turner Prize-winning artist is known for his politically charged dramatic works, including 12 years a Slave, which became the first film by a Black director to win an Academy Award for best picture. [Artforum]

Art historian and The Great Women Artists podcaster Katy Hessel is launching a new series of audio guides this month at museums around the US and the UK, called “Museums Without Men.” The guides, which debut at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and then move to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will spotlight underrepresented women artists. [The Guardian]

THE KICKER

GREATEST UNSOLVED ART HEIST. Richard Abath, the night guard who let two thieves into the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, where they pulled off what is considered the largest and still unsolved art heist in history, has died at age 57, reports The New York Times. Abath always maintained he made the fateful mistake of opening the museum door to two men dressed as Boston police officers at 1am on March 18, 1990, because he truly believed they were cops. That assessment soon proved all very wrong, when the men handcuffed, blindfolded and tied up Abath, along with a colleague, while they helped themselves to over a dozen artworks. The Degas, Rembrandt, Manet, Rubens, and other works were worth an estimated $500 million at the time, or $1.2 billion today.

THE HEADLINES

LA ART WEEK. Los Angeles’s art fair week, which includes Frieze and Felix, is fully underway, and reports are coming in on the can’t-miss gallery presentations and openings—and, of course, the parties, too. ARTnews’s Francesca Aton has picked the best booths that Felix L.A., a fair mounted at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, has to offer. Her list includes Sahana Ramakrishnan at Fridman Gallery and Talia Levitt at Rachel Uffner Gallery. Meanwhile,  Frieze, a more conventional commercial bazaar, has been praised in the New York Times for including dozens of Asian artists, dealers, curators who, despite being fixtures of the SoCal scene, are finally getting their due. Stay tuned for more Frieze coverage today in ARTnews.

STRANGE TIMES. Surrealism, the 20th-century art movement that married dream to reality, turns 100 this year. Where other creative manifestos have peaked and passed, Surrealism’s has stayed relevant, stubbornly strange in a world that grows beyond recognition. Museums around the world, from Paris to Munich to Shanghai, are have mounted exhibitions that meditate on the milestone, whether by elevating female Surrealists or by establishing links between other, more sensical, styles. What does Surrealism mean in the context of today’s art? Don’t expect a straight answer.

THE DIGEST

A rare Ethiopian shield from the 19th century has been withdrawn from an auction in Newcastle upon Tyne after the government of Ethiopia formally requested its restitution. The artifact was among the trophies taken by British force’s at the battle of Maqdala in 1868. [The Art Newspaper]

Lewis Tanner, a prolific architecture and landscape photographer who roamed California for subjects with a cowboy spirit, has died at 72. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Thousands of Native American historic and archaeological sites in the low-lying plains of Georgia are threatened by an approaching tropical storm surge, and experts warn that due to climate change, such severe weather will only grown more frequent. [Phys]

Three different museum projects in Fort Worth, Texas, are striving to make the city a destination for Black history. Among the planned institutions is a National Juneteenth Museum. [NBCFW]

Take a dive inside a sunken Spanish galleon described as the“holy grail” of shipwrecks being pulled from the seabed. According to legend, the ship sank with more than $20 billion worth of treasure aboard, fueling a frenzied race to reach it first. [Independent UK]

THE KICKER

A QUICK BITE. At least one review is in on the Whitney’s Frenchette Bakery outpost, and it is a rave. Matthew Schneier, chief restaurant critic of New York Magazine , hailed its “ambitious” pastas and unfussy atmosphere—not to mention the titular bakery, which purportedly boasts the longest eclair he’d ever seen (“éclair suprême, says the menu”). Read the piece on an empty stomach, I dare you: The “Paris-Brest is piped with pistachio cream, not the pallid, princessy pastel of the usual pastry palette, but a deep, boggy, almost khaki green that only a true glut of nuts can provide,” per Schneier. New York museum eateries with menus and ambience missing such panache (here’s looking at the Met cafeteria) must be quaking.

THE HEADLINES

ISRAEL TO STAY AT VENICE BIENNALE. Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said the Venice Biennale would not exclude Israel’s from participating in the upcoming exhibition, following recent calls for its ouster, which the minister called “shameful,” reports Alex Greenberger for ARTnews. The group Art Not Genocide Alliance penned an open letter signed by hundreds, calling Israel’s participation a “Genocidal Pavilion,” and claiming the festival was “platforming a genocidal apartheid state.” In a Tuesday statement, Sangiuliano said, “Israel not only has the right to express its art, but it has the duty to bear witness of its people precisely at a time like this when it has been attacked in cold blood by merciless terrorists.”

PERROTIN ON EBAY. Perrotin gallery is launching a partnership with eBay, and selling a selection of lithographs, posters, and artist editions via the Perrotin Store, a marketplace already up and running through eBay.fr. Items for sale include editions by the likes of Takashi Murakami, Sophie Calle, Claire Tabouret, Barry McGee, Mathilde Denize, JR, and Daniel Arsham, to name a few. In a press release today, the French gallery with international outposts stated that with this “historic” collaboration, both companies “hope to make art and beautiful objects accessible to all, for all budgets.” Founder Emmanuel Perrotin added that his family didn’t have the means to collect art when he grew up, but were always big fans of museum boutiques, and filled their home with posters. “That idea has always stayed with me in the development of the gallery. Art is for everyone!” he said.

THE DIGEST

German Minister of Culture Claudia Roth defended herself over calls for her resignation after she was seen applauding the controversial Berlinale film festival acceptance speeches of Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra, by saying on X (formerly Twitter) that her approval “was directed at the Jewish-Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who spoke out in favor of a political solution and peaceful coexistence in the region.” However, her hair-splitting response has unleashed a media storm, by implying she refused to applaud for the Abraham’s filming partner, the Palestinian Adra. [The Guardian]

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) recently issued an “amber alert” to the art storage industry about the risk of its facilities being used for money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorist financing through its “long-term storage and concealment of high value assets by sanctioned persons.” [ARTnews]

Ukrainian artist Mikhail Reva’s sculptures made by debris from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have gone on view in Paris. The artist gathered more than two tons of war remnants, including Kalashnikov cartridges and rocket fragments fired on his own house to make the works exhibited at the US Embassy’s Hotel de Talleyrand in Paris. [Euronews and The Associated Press]

The California College of the Arts (CCA) has appointed Daisy Nam as the next director and chief curator of its Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. [Artforum]

Laura Turcan is named the new director of Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris.[Le Quotidien de l’Art]

THE KICKER

LOUIS JOHNSON DISCOVERY. A rarely seen, two-part film featuring master choreographer Louis Johnson, who worked in New York city in the 1950s and 60s, is given new visibility and context in a New York Times feature that shouldn’t be missed. The story of Johnson, who described himself as the “first Black Black” student at the School of American Ballet in 1950, is one of struggling against segregation, including being told Black bodies were not meant for ballet, and being denied acceptance to the New York City Ballet because of race. He nevertheless went on to perform on Broadway and created his own dance project, early aspects of which can be seen in the film, which the NYT scanned and digitally restored from its original print, housed at Manhattan’s Film-Makers’ Cooperative. Titled “Two by Louis Johnson,” the film was directed and shot by Richard Preston, showing works choreographed by Johnson during the civil rights movement. Johnson ultimately found success and worked for the Metropolitan Opera and received a Tony.

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SILENCED ARTIST SPEAKS. The University of Houston (UH) has canceled an opening celebration and artist talk for the exhibition of two sculptures by Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander, after an anti-abortion group said the work, including a golden statue of a woman with ram horn-like braids, was a “satanic abortion idol” and threatened to protest. A few days after the Texas Right to Life group posted the petition to block the sculptures from showing in Texas, UH sent a newsletter announcing the opening events for the show titled “Havah…to breathe, air, life” were canceled, and issued a document about the controversy and the artist’s intention. Sikander responded to The Art Newspaper, saying: “Art should be about discourse and not censorship. Shame on those that silence artists.” She said she was told the planned talk would be pushed to the fall.

MOMA PSI PROTEST. Workers protested outside MoMA PS1 in New York late last week to demand better wages and health benefits, reported Hyperallergic. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 30, representing installation, maintenance, and visitor engagement workers, led the movement with signs depicting the museum’s new director, Connie Butler. Posters read: “Director Butler: Support your employees and settle a fair contract now!”

THE DIGEST

Jacob Rothschild, a British arts patron of the famous banking dynasty, who led London’s National Gallery, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, has died at 87. [The Art Newspaper]

The Ethiopian government has asked the UK auction house Anderson & Garland to cancel the sale of a 19^th-century Ethiopian battle shield and to restitute it. The Ethiopian Heritage Authority said the decorated metal trophy was taken in the context of the British battle of Magdala, fought against Ethiopian emperor Tewodros in 1868. [The Art Newspaper]

New details have emerged in a protracted legal battle between a former US Ambassador to France, Craig Stapleton, and the leader of France’s Tajan auction house, art collector Rodica Seward. The suit claims Seward failed to procure artworks for resale as agreed, and which Stapleton paid for, while refusing to return or disclose their location. [ARTnews]

London police seized 23 paintings belonging to Lebanese collector and businessman Nazem Ahmad, stored near Heathrow Airport, and 9 others set to auction at Phillips. For several years US authorities claim Ahmad is funding Hezbollah with the sale of artwork. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Nuria Enguita, the director of Spain’s Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), has resigned following allegations of conflict of interest. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

The Eiffel Tower was back open this week, after closing for six days due to strikes, but has lost between 1 and 2 million euros in ticket sales as a result of the closure. The workers’ strikes were in protest against the monument’s poor financial management. [Le Figaro]

Hackers infiltrated the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) Instagram account and posted messages decrying “Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” The festival deleted and disavowed the posts, amid controversy over pro-Palestinian statements by attendees during the festival’s closing ceremony. [Hyperallergic]

Italy’s privately run Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT announced plans to widen its European presence, with a new acquisition program at Arco Madrid, and expanding loans and acquisitions.  [Artnet News] 

THE KICKER

‘RUSSIAN CARTIER-BRESSON’ REMEMBERED. Since his death earlier this month at 41, Russian photographer Dmitry Markov is being celebrated as a “Russian Cartier-Bresson,” reports The Guardian. He died just prior to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but there has been no suggestion of foul play. Nevertheless, Markov was arrested in a 2021 Russian opposition protest and his photographs showed searing criticism of Vladimir Poutin’s regime, amassing a viral following for depicting its everyday brutality, as well as the lives Russia’s most vulnerable. “Viewers see some of my subjects as bleak, if not, let’s be honest, depressing. But I feel the opposite: peace,” Markov wrote in his book “Draft” (2018).

THE HEADLINES

SCHIELE RESTITUTION BATTLE. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has filed a 160-page motion accusing the Art Institute of Chicago of “willful blindness” in determining the provenance of a contested Egon Schiele drawing it has long-argued was looted by Nazis, reports The New York Times. New York investigators want the AIC to restitute Russian War Prisoner to the heirs of former owner, Fritz Grünbaum, who died in a Nazi concentration camp, however, until now, the institute has refused, winning two federal court battles over the question, partly due to restitution demands coming in too late, according to courts. But NYC investigators say the institute is ignoring forged provenance documents tied to the drawing and is urging it to follow other museums who recently returned Schiele paintings from the Grünbaum collection.

SCRUTINY OF FRENCH-SAUDI COLLAB. The French agency Afalula, contracted to help Saudi Arabia’s Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) build and develop the desert town of AlUla into a lavish cultural destination, is facing greater scrutiny and an audit, reports Le Monde. The news comes amidst the recent arrest on charges of corruption of Amr al-Madani, the former CEO of the RCU. Afalula’s July-appointed president, former French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, ordered an audit of Afalula “around the same time that Saudi Arabia was monitoring” Al-Madani, according to Le Monde’s investigation. Reporter Roxana Azimi reveals Afalula’s budget also doubled to about $65 million in 2023, and provides details of the French agency’s lobbying efforts to win development contracts in the region, which apparently irked Al-Madani. In a follow-up report today, Azimi reveals Saudi Arabia is nevertheless set to make good on a 2018 promise to finance the restoration of French monuments and museums.

THE DIGEST

Dahomey, a documentary by director Mati Diop about looted African art, has won the top Golden Bear prize at the Berlinale film festival. In the film, a statue narrates its own repatriation from France to the Dahomey Kingdom in Benin. “To rebuild we must first restitute,” Diop told reporters. [France 24 and AFP]

The new group Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) is petitioning to exclude Israel from this year’s Venice Biennale. The petition is titled “No Genocide Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” and has reportedly garnered over 4,000 signatures. [BNN Breaking]

The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) announced $52.2 million in awards to over 1,000 NYC nonprofit cultural organizations. Recipients include Red Hook Art Project Inc, and the Bronx Art Space, to name a few. [The Art Newspaper]

Marc Pachter, former director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, who helped diversify and modernize the institution, has died at 80. [The New York Times]

A rare, covered and forgotten early mural painted by Gerhard Richter has resurfaced in Dresden’s Hygiene Museum, Germany, and will be exhibited to the public. Richter painted the mural when he was a student in 1956, and it was covered in 1979. [The Art Newspaper France]

The rock salt mine about 754 feet underneath the Portuguese city of Loulé has become an art exhibition space. Campina de Cima inaugurated “Ocean: Sea is Life,” a group show featuring Portuguese artists from the David Melgueiro Association, on Feb. 17. [Artnet News]

The French town of Brest claims it has built the world’s longest “fresco” made of over 250,000 Legos, at 21 meters, or about 68.9 feet. Thousands of people participated in making the Lego landscape, which depicts the city’s historic Notre-Dame-de-Rumengol cargo ship, in the hopes of raising funds to restore it. [Le Figaro and AFP]

THE KICKER

REMBRANDT INTRIGUE. Is the 17^th-century painting The Adoration of the Kings really by Rembrandt? The New York Times delves into the recurring debate around the Holy Grail-like quest for Rembrandt attributions. The painting initially sold by Christie’s as a work by an associate of the master-painter, estimated to be worth $17,000. But when Rembrandt buffs began suspecting otherwise, the work sold for nearly $1 million. It was ultimately attributed to Rembrandt in a 62-page catalog by Sotheby’s, including seven expert opinions and X-ray analysis, though conclusions continue to diverge on the issue. Not enough, however, to dampen its sale for $13.8 million two months ago.

THE HEADLINES

MUSEUM WOES. Washington State’s Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM) is in “dire financial crisis,” and faces the prospect of having to shut down if it doesn’t raise $300,000, according to the art center’s newly appointed executive director, Kate Casprowiak Scher, speaking to The Seattle Times. “We’re at the place where the straw breaks the camel’s back,” added Scher, who attributes current troubles to a combo of insufficient long-term funding, the Covid-19 pandemic, changes to visitor habits, philanthropic priorities, and debt. Plus, the center, which doesn’t have a permanent collection and never set up a significant endowment, has to raise money every year to host exhibitions, spurring a “doom loop,” added Scher. Without the structural funding of an endowment, “it’s like having a great big modern home and not planning for its future,” she said.

WANTED: SWIFTIE MUSEUM WORKER. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is looking to hire a Swiftie – a Taylor Swift fan, for those not keeping up — before the Grammy-winning star begins her European tour later this year. The BBC reports the museum needs expert insights into the star’s fan culture, and specifically, the craft memorabilia that Swift enthusiasts collect, such as the eclectic friendship bracelets exchanged at concerts. The job is one of several niche “super fan advisor” roles the institution has been exploring, to diversify its “cultural knowledge” of design. Time to edit the old resume?

THE DIGEST

A group of parents are accusing a Montreal middle school teacher of printing their children’s homework drawings onto mugs and bags, and hawking them online. In a lawyer’s letter, parents are asking Montreal’s Lester B. Pearson School Board to suspend the teacher, Mario Perron, send an apology letter, and pay about $130,000 to $96,000 per impacted student “in accordance with the copyright act” and incurred damages. [Hyperallergic]

Two French organizations, art-cade and SINGA, are launching a fundraiser to bring 16 artists from Gaza and their families to France. The artists all participated in the 2023 exhibition, “What Palestine brings to the world,” at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, and some have died or lost loved ones, said IMA President Jack Lang. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

The Australian Indigenous artist Tony Albert was named the inaugural First Nations curator fellow at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, filling a new role in the foundation’s two-year-old partnership with the Sidney Biennale. [The Art Newspaper]

The West Bank’s Palestinian Museum in Birzeit has reopened after four months of closure with a show titled “This is Not an Exhibition,” featuring over 280 works by 100 Gazan artists. Held in three galleries, the “artistic demonstration” is meant to “raise our voices loudly against the massacres and systemic destruction of our beloved Gaza,” said a museum statement. [Artnet News]

American abstract artist Joan Snyder joins Thaddaeus Ropac. The gallery will represent the 83-year-old painter in Europe and Asia. [The Art Newspaper]

The Los Angeles City Council voted to spend nearly $4 million to clean and secure an abandoned, unfinished skyscraper development project known as Oceanwide Plaza, which made headlines in recent weeks when dozens of floors were found covered in graffiti. The city hopes to make Oceanwide Holdings, the project’s developer, cover costs, but the Beijing-based company halted construction in 2019 due to a lack of funds. [The Los Angeles Times]

The artists who created the Little Amal puppet, which spread awareness of the migrant crisis, are launching The Herd, a new project comprising a herd of animal puppets who will travers the globe. The aim is to spark a “visceral engagement with the issue” of climate crisis, said Palestinian artist Amir Nizar Zuabi. [The Guardian]

THE KICKER

JAMES TURRELL GETS AN A+. The internationally acclaimed, light-wielding artist James Turrell has gone back to school. More accurately, one of his light and color installations was installed in a 20-foot-by-22-foot room on the sixth floor of the K-12 Friends Seminary private Quaker school in Manhattan. The immersive piece, called Leading, is one of Turrell’s Skyspaces, which number over 85, and it gives the impression of a “slice of sky [that] appears to float inside the installation,” per a description by Hilarie M. Sheets of The New York Times. While the school’s lucky students will get to spend time learning inside the art installation, the artwork is also accessible to the public on select Fridays starting next month, and Friends Seminary wants to share the piece with other schools and institutions. “It’s an opportunity to expose kids to how art functions in space and in real time outside of textbooks and talking heads,” commented the admirative artist Rashid Johnson.

The Headlines

FRANKENTHALER LEGAL SAGA. The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has filed motions to dismiss legal accusations by its former board president and the nephew of the artist, Frederick Iseman. The motions filed Tuesday come following allegations by Iseman of “pay to pay” schemes and attempts by the board’s current directors, Lise Motherwell, Clifford Ross, and Michael Hecht, to exploit the foundation for their benefit, threatening to ruin Frankenthaler’s legacy, reports Daniel Cassady for ARTnews.

HIDDEN CÉZANNE UNCOVERED. Fragments of a previously unknown Paul Cézanne mural hidden in his childhood home were discovered during an ongoing, ambitious renovation of Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, the artist’s family home in Aix-en-Provence, France. The remaining parts of the mural were found in August under wallpaper and plaster in a large living room, and depict a landscape with architectural elements. “The discovery of this portion of a monumental landscape invites us to re-evaluate the way in which Cézanne saw himself as an artist,” said Denis Coutagne, president of the Paul Cézanne Society, speaking to Le Quotidien de l’Art.

The Digest

The Etches Collection, a museum in Kimmeridge, UK, is appealing to the public to help raise funds needed to excavate the fossil remains of a massive prehistoric sea creature before they get washed away in a rapidly eroding cliff. The well-preserved skull of the 150-million-year-old, 39-foot-long pliosaur was discovered in 2022, and the remainder is encrusted in a cliff above a beach in Dorset. [BBC]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) are facing off over the acquisition of a Romanesque ivory carving dating from 1190–1200. The Met bought the sculpture, Deposition from the Cross, from its owners for $2.5 million through a private Sotheby’s sale subject to it being exportable from the UK. However, an export license has been deferred a second time, so that the V&A can try raising the funds needed to buy the piece, which had been on loan to the institution from 1982 to 2022. [The Art Newspaper]

The Guangdong Times Museum will reopen in March with a group show organized by curator Qu Chang. The nonprofit private museum was forced to close in 2022, when its main financial backer, Times China, withdrew funding. [Artforum]

The French Resistance fighter Missak Manouchian, who was a Communist Party member and an Armenian immigrant to France, is being inducted into the Panthéon in Paris today, alongside his wife Mélinée Manouchian. He is the first foreign member of the Nazi Resistance to enter the Panthéon. An orphan of the Armenian genocide, he was executed by German soldiers along with 22 other foreign comrades, including Spaniards and Eastern European Jews. [France 24]

The UK’s Science Museum Group signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s ministry of culture to increase cooperation via a Museums Hub in Riyadh. The partnership expands on a Cultural Memorandum of Understanding signed by the UK’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. [Press Release]

Two colonial-era paintings of the Cuzco School, stolen form a church in Peru, were returned to Peruvian authorities in New York last week. The paintings by unidentified artists were taken over a decade ago and trafficked to Manhattan. [The Art Newspaper]

Archaeologists have discovered that the Saxon town of Lundenwic extended further than was previously thought, with its urban center thriving beneath where London’s National Gallery now stands. The discovery was made during recent excavations of the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, which revealed postholes, ditches, and other signs of urban life dating between 659 CE–774 CE. [Heritage Daily]

The UK’s tax authority, HMRC, has been cracking down on money laundering, issuing fines and closely checking the practices of art dealers following the UK’s Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. However, smaller galleries argue that some of the rigorous demands by authorities are burdensome. [The Art Newspaper]

The Kicker

MONUMENTS WOMEN, TOO. The so-called Monuments Men, a group of Allied-army art experts who found and returned millions of Nazi-looted cultural objects, were not all men. Now, the 27 women in the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section are getting overdue recognition in a new, permanent exhibition and a newly translated memoir by Rose Valland, the French art worker who spied on Nazi thefts of mostly Jewish art collections. In November, the new Monuments Men and Women Gallery was added to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, with attention paid to the story of Mary Regan Quessenberry , who investigated suspicious provenance and hunted down stolen art. “As our mission evolved and as our work developed, then it became really natural to focus more on the postwar efforts, and as a result on the women,” who were more involved with the section’s restitution efforts during that period, said Anna Bottinelli, president of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, speaking to the Associated Press. The foundation also reportedly updated its name to include women.

In the United States, meanwhile, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has made it its mission to seize looted artifacts and bring antiquities collectors and dealers to heel. And, after the US government adjusted regulations around Indigenous artifacts and remains, museums are scrambling to be compliant.

While the future may still be uncertain, it has become clear that we’ve entered a new era. Over the next week, ARTnews will explore all the facets of this new world and the power players that make it run.

Follow along here for the latest stories in The New Era of Restitution and Repatriation:

Pre-Fair Coffee and Nosh

In an alleyway near 26th and Broadway, GoodBoyBob Coffee Shop offers all kinds of specialty coffees, including one with with house-made vanilla syrup, as well as waffles, toast, and breakfast sandwiches like the “Client X Morning Sando” (brioche, egg, avocado, ham, cheese, red pepper aioli). There are fancy pour-overs like the “Sideshow Bob,” a two-course coffee extravaganza (“the same coffee, two different ways”) consisting of an espresso as well as a pour-over of the restaurant’s single origin Guatemala Rosendo Domingo.

Alternatively, you can head over to Layla Bagel, on Ocean Park Boulevard at 16th Street, where you’ll find what Eater recently referred to as “some of LA’s most coveted bagels.” Options include the usual lox with the works (“The Laika”), along with some more exotic combinations like “The Scarlett,” (heirloom tomato, lemon zest, and chili flakes), and a vegan option like “The Marli” (avocado, pickled onion, chili flakes, and sprouts).

A Morning Full of Art

Start your day at the fair by grabbing a floor plan to get the lay of the land. This year’s edition has a reconfigured layout, designed by WHY Architects, for the 95 exhibitors that are taking part. Make sure to check back for our “Best Booths” list once we’ve seen the fair on opening day.

A booth that is likely not to be missed—and sure to be crowded throughout the fair’s end—is Gagosian’s (D13), which will have a display curated by director Antwaun Sargent. Titled “Social Abstraction” and the first of three related presentations, the booth will have on view work by an intergenerational group of Black artists, including Theaster Gates, Rick Lowe, Lauren Halsey, and Cy Gavin.

Not faraway, Pace Gallery (D10) will feature a mix of historical works with recent pieces. Planned for the booth is a 1968 multicolored pour by Lynda Benglis, a 1970 Picasso drawing, an untitled all-black sculpture by Louise Nevelson from 1985, and a 1981 shaped canvas by Kenneth Noland, alongside a 2022 painting by Mary Corse, a 2023 sculpture by Alicja Kwade, a 2023 painting by Loie Hollowell, a 2024 mirror-and-paint tondo by Elmgreen & Dragset, and a pair of polychromed bronze Nike sneakers by Jeff Koons.

Hauser & Wirth (D12) will feature new and recent works by several artists from its roster, including Firelei Báez, Frank Bowling, Mark Bradford, Ed Clark, Charles Gaines, Henry Taylor, Mika Rottenberg, Pat Steir, and Uman. One aisle over, David Zwirner (E3) will present a selection of new paintings by Joe Bradley, ahead of his April solo show at the gallery’s New York space. Those will feature alongside works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Huma Bhabha, Noah Davis, Yayoi Kusama, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, and Robert Ryman.

And before you break for lunch, make sure to check out the fair’s Nonprofits section, which will feature five LA-based nonprofits and one bookshop. Returning to the fair is AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), founded by artist Tanya Aguiñiga, who curated a BIPOC exchange section at the fair’s 2022 edition. Other participants in this year’s Nonprofits section are Gallery 90220, which aims to provide a platform for emerging and underrepresented artists; People’s Pottery Project, which gives formerly incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary individuals paid job training; and Reparations Club, an independent Black-owned bookstore.

A Mid-Day Repast

After a couple hours of art viewing, you’ll be hungry for lunch. The easiest (and often the yummiest) option is to stick around at the fair, where Frieze’s food selections are carefully curated. This year’s grouping of LA restaurants has been selected by Regarding Her (RE:Her), a nonprofit founded by nine LA-based female restaurateurs in the wake of the pandemic’s impact on the restaurant industry. The line-up includes 1010 Wine, Inglewood’s first, and so far only, wine bar focusing on Black-owned wineries; Botanica, the famed Silver Lake institution; Clementine, the family-owned, comfort-food hot stop in Century City; Kismet Rotisserie, the rotisserie chicken–focused sister spot to rising Mediterranean restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, just off Vermont Avenue; and more.

If, however, there is no seating, or you need a break from the art fair, there are a few terrific spots nearby. In nearby Venice, there’s Gjelina, which the Infatuation recently attributed with ushering in a “vegetable-forward California cuisine” that is “all cutting edge and decidedly very ‘LA.’” The lunch menu includes a raw bar, several salads and vegetable options, and wood-fired pizzas.

Just a few blocks from the beach also in Venice is Gjusta, from the same owners as Gjelina, which Bon Appétit has called a “never-miss spot,” mentioning the smoked brisket sandwich, the chicken báhn mì and the smoked fish plate.

Finally, a stone’s throw from the Brentwood Country Club, in the celebrity-favored Brentwood Country Mart, is Farmshop. Those who wish to splurge on more than art might choose the service of Italian caviar. Especially intriguing among the farm-fresh items on the menu is the Angry Crab Saffron Torchio Pasta: alle-pia ‘Nduja sausage, Pacific Dungeness crab, herbed walnuts, and Calabrian chili pesto.

An Art-Packed Afternoon

Back at the fair, after some much need refreshments, check out San Francisco’s Altman Siegel (C6), which will feature works by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, and Simon Denny, artists who have long thought through their relationships with technology. Meanwhile, New York’s Casey Kaplan (A10) will have a solo presentation dedicated to new paintings by Jordan Casteel, including portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. And Ortuzar Projects (B11), a week before inaugurating its new space in Tribeca, will feature work by three artists who played integral roles in LA’s queer Chicano scene in the 1970s and ’80s: Carlos Almaraz, Joey Terrill, and Roberto Gil de Montes.

The fair’s Focus section is not to be missed. This year, the section includes 12 galleries and is curated by Essence Harden, visual arts curator at the California African American Museum and a co-curator of the upcoming 2025 Made in L.A. biennial. For the section, Harden has said she wanted to focus on artist “ecologies as a vibrant framework for art making.”

LA’s Babst Gallery (F7) will focus on Harry Fonseca (Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians), who was based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1990 until his death in 2006. The booth will feature his paintings from the 1980s and ’90s, many of which feature anthropomorphized coyotes painting, performing La bohème, or dancing. Ochi (F5), another LA enterprise, will present a suite of paintings showing women at leisure by rising Mexican-American artist Lilian Martinez. And Shulamit Nazarian (F9) will highlight photographs by LA-based, Haiti-born artist Widline Cadet.

Cocktails and Conversation

There’s no better way to end a day at an art fair than at a buzzy spot where you can talk with your fellow-fairgoers about what you saw over cocktails and nibbles. Two places to see and be seen in the evening after a day at Frieze LA are the Georgian and the Proper. 

There is a lot of buzz around the Georgian this year—not surprisingly because it’s new. In April, BLVD Hospitality, in partnership with Esi Ventures, opened a restoration of this historic property that originally opened in 1933. It’s a jewel of the Art Deco period; guests of that era included Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin. (Full disclosure: ARTnews is hosting an intimate dinner at the Georgian after the VIP preview of Frieze LA.)

This elegant hotel, with 84 guest rooms, also features two dining options, both under the direction of Chef David Almany. The larger of the two is The Restaurant at The Georgian, which features Rigatoni Cacio e Pepe, Bucatini all’Amatriciana, and Grilled Branzino on its menu. Featured cocktails include “Shore Thing” (made with rosemary-infused tequila) and Geeze Louise (with an apricot-infused whiskey). Downstairs is The Georgian Room, a speakeasy of sorts—if you are opting for the more private setting. With reservations required, menu highlights include king crab cocktail, rigatoni alla vodka, and TGR dry-aged tomahawk ribeye.

With a serene but snazzy interior design by Kelly Wearstler, the Palma at the Proper is also a solid option. Pair a specialty cocktail like the Proper Martini (with blue cheese olives) or the El Mezconi (a mezcal take on a Negroni with an absinthe rinse) with snacks like the Parmesan or truffle fries or the beet (not beef) carpaccio. Or stay for dinner, where the offerings include a burger, a vegan burger, and the quintessentially California health conscious item, the herb-roasted cabbage (vegan pink peppercorn yogurt, toasted pine nut zhoug, puffed quinoa and herb crumble, and toasted chili flake).

Below, a look at the most important fairs taking place this year.