Our weekly news roundup is an extension of Paint Drippings, which drops first in The Back Room, our lively recap funneling only the week’s must-know art industry intel into a nimble read you’ll actually enjoy. Artnet News Pro members get exclusive access—subscribe now to receive this in your inbox every Friday. 

Art Fairs

– Sales on the opening day of Art Basel Paris were led by White Cube, which moved a Julie Mehretu painting with an asking price of $9.5 million, as the sunshine-drenched fair dispelled some of the clouds hovering over the art market of late. (Artnet News)   

– The 12th edition of the ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, to be held in November, will have 125 galleries from 42 cities across 20 countries and regions. David Zwirner, Galerie Chantal Crousel, and White Cube are among the international firms returning, and 30 exhibitors will be participating for the first time. (Press release) 

Auction Houses

– Get the stats without the spin with our by-the-numbers breakdown of last week’s evening sales in London, where two works by David Hockney proved to be top lots at both Sotheby’s, Phillips, and Christie’s. (Artnet News, Artnet News)  

– Christie’s will sell Ed Ruscha’s 1964 Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half at its marquee evening sales in New York next month. The work comes from the collection of the Texas billionaire investor Sid Bass and is estimated to fetch $50 million. (Wall Street Journal) 

Galleries

– Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella took a closer look at D’Lan Contemporary, which has been championing Australian First Nations artists for the better part of a decade, among them Paddy Bedford and Emily Kam Kngwarray. With spaces in Melbourne and New York, D’Lan will open a third outpost in Sydney. (Artnet News)

The former home of the Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz collection, now part of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Photo: Jill Peters, courtesy Miami Design District.

Museums and Institutions

– Darren Walker has been elected president of the National Gallery of Artin Washington, D.C. Walker has been president of the Ford Foundation for more than a decade and will step down next year. A trustee of the NGA since 2019, he succeeds Mitchell P. Rales. (Artnet News)

– The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, is expanding, with the $25 million purchase of the exhibition space formerly occupied by the Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz Collection. The building is next door to the ICA’s facility in the Design District. Rosa de la Cruz died earlier this year and highlights from her art collection headlined Christie’s spring auctions in New York. (Artnet News)  

– A group of U.K. museum directors, including the National Gallery’s Gabriele Finaldi and the V&A’s Tristram Hunt, published an open letter imploring climate protestors to stop targeting their art. The activist group Just Stop Oil, which was behind the recent soup attack on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery has called for a meeting with the directors. The group has said it is “unafraid to use the cultural power of their national institutions” to fight the climate crisis. (Artnet News)  

Tech & Legal News

– Here are our five key insights from the Art Market 2050 Conference, which was held in London last week, including A.I.’s “dirty secrets” and how to better harness data. (Artnet News) 

– Art advisor Lisa Schiff, who advised celebrities and ultra-wealthy clients, pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York to one count of wire fraud. In May 2023, she was hit with a lawsuit by two former clients, real-estate heiress Candace Barasch and lawyer Richard Grossman, alleging that Schiff owed them a total of $1.8 million, or $900,000 each, related to the sale of a painting by Adrian Ghenie. (Artnet News)