Paint Drippings is excerpted from 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

–The top five most expensive works reported sold at Art Basel so far include: Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers ($20 million) at David Zwirner; Arshile Gorky’s Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)) ($16 million), Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sky With Moon ($13.5 million), and Philip Guston’s Orders ($10 million), all at Hauser and Wirth’s booth; and Agnes Martin’s Untitled #20 ($12.5 million) at Pace. (Artnet News)

–Take a look at some of the standout artworks from Art Basel’s Unlimited section, including a 1968 work by Mario Ceroli, Christo’s mustard-yellowWrapped 1961 Volkswagen Beetle Saloon, and Anna Uddenberg‘s performance piece PREMIUM ECONOMY. (Artnet News)

–Art Basel and the Hong Kong Tourism Board have inked a three-year global partnership to promote the Chinese city’s arts and culture at the firm’s fairs, starting with its Paris edition in October. (Artnet News)

–Nikola Dietrich has been tapped as the new director of Liste Art Fair Basel. (Artnet News)

–Speaking of Liste, Artnet News’s Vivienne Chow reports that at this year’s offering “the displays look very safe, suggesting that dealers are being cautious in a tough market.” (Artnet News)

Auction Houses

–Sotheby’s New York will offer rare contemporary printings of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on June 26. (Artnet News)

Galleries

–Andrew Fabricant, who served as the chief operating officer of Gagosian for the past five years, has left the gallery along with his wife, Laura Paulson, who had led the gallery’s art advisory business since 2019. (Artnet News)

–Carpenters Workshop Gallery is facing concerns over its business ethics and allegations of allowing sexual harassment to take place. (Artnet News)

–Zurich Art Weekend hosted its seventh edition last week, boasting around 100 exhibitions, events, and gallery collaborations in over 65 locations across the city, and brought in roughly 35,000 visitors. (Artnet News)

–Tom Anholt has joined BLUM, Mennour Gallery now represents the estate of Huguette Caland, David Kordansky Gallery has added Chico da Silva to its roster, and Sies + Höke now represents Xie Lei. (Press releases)

Rendering of the MOWAA Institute. Courtesy: Museum of West African Art.

Institutions

–The Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art announced that it will close its doors until October. The decision was made after students occupied the building for two weeks to protest the ongoing war in Gaza, shutting down its usual exhibition program. (Artnet News)

–The Joslyn Museum of Art in Omaha, Nebraska, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami have shelved or postponed exhibitions by Kehinde Wiley. These actions come in the wake of accusations of sexual assault against the artist first leveled by the artist-curator Joseph Awuah-Darko. (Artnet News)

–Pennsylvania’s attorney general has opened a review of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia after the institution abruptly closed its doors at the end of the spring semester last week and fired around 600 faculty members. (Artnet News)

–The MO.CO Montpellier is contesting the recent ruling that the death of celebrated French curator Vincent Honoré was a workplace accident. (Artnet News)

–The S.M.A.K. Museum in Ghent has announced a €90 million ($96 million) expansion that will add 215,000 sq. feet and will be spearheaded by David Kohn Architects in collaboration with noA Architecten and Asli Çiçek. (Press release)

–The Museum of West African Art will open the MOWAA Institute on November 4 in Benin City. (Press release)

–The Center for Italian Modern Art, an art museum and research center founded in 2013 in Manhattan, will close its doors permanently on June 22. (Press release)

Tech and Legal News

–A new directive aimed at aligning VAT rates in Europe will come into effect in 2025, and it is speculated that the tax break could have a positive financial impact on galleries in countries like France and Germany. (The Art Newspaper)

–A New York court has summoned art dealers Count Edmondo di Robilant and Marco Voena to answer a civil complaint filed by curator and former employee Virginia Brilliant that alleges repeated verbal harassment and other inappropriate behavior by them. (Artnet News)

–A former employee of the Vatican was arrested for trying to sell a stolen 17th-century manuscript by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. (ARTnews)

Awards

–Artists and Mothers, a newly established non-profit organization that supports artists who identify as mothers by providing grants for childcare, will award its inaugural $25,000 grant to Carissa Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s first institutional solo exhibition in Europe, “Imitation of Life,” opened at Kunstverein München in May. (Press release)