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 cooling market kept sales sluggish—but not totally absent—at Frieze Seoul and the Armory Show, which kicked off the art world’s fall season last week. Find out more about what sold in Art Market Minute, our new micro-podcast that delivers a crisp, weekly overview of the art market’s top stories, dropping every Monday morning. (Artnet News)
– Why did the ART021 Group decide to open a government-backed fair during the off season in Hong Kong? Artnet’s Cathy Fan investigates and finds that artworks flew off the walls. (Artnet News)
– Untitled Art Miami Beach has announced its largest edition to date with 171 exhibitors participating this December, featuring more galleries from Eastern regions than ever before, including Hong Kong’s MOU and Ho Chi Minh’s Vin Gallery. (Press Release)
– Dominique Savelkoul has been tapped to be the managing director of TEFAF and has added two new members to its board of trustees: London dealer Adrian Sassoon and Valentina Vico, director and company shareholder of Benappi Fine Art. (Artnet News)
Auctions
– According to Artnet’s Art Detective Katya Kazakina, two big-name estates have been locked in for bellwether November auctions in New York: Christie’s won the trove of the late interior designer Mica Ertegun, led by Rene Magritte’s masterpiece The Empire of Light, while Sotheby’s got the collection of the late Palm Beach beauty mogul Sydell Miller, with its large, late water lilies by Claude Monet. (Artnet News)
– Christie’s will auction a Van Gogh riverscape painting from a royal collection in Hong Kong at its first marquee sale in its new Asia headquarters on September 26. Estimated to fetch HK$230 million to HK$380 million ($30 million to $50 million) and offered with a guarantee, Les canots amarrés (1887) will become the most expensive work from Van Gogh’s Paris period and one of the most important works of Western art to go under the hammer in Asia. (Press release)
Vincent van Gogh’s Les canots amarrés is estimated to fetch between $30 million and $50 million in Hong Kong.
Galleries
– Evelyn Lin has been appointed president of Greater China at Pace. Well-known in Asia’s auction scene, she previously held top positions at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. (Artnet News)
– Thaddeus Ropac has announced international representation of Korean painter and sculptor Lee Kang-So, Lisson Gallery has taken on the estate of Brazilian artist Tunga in collaboration with Rio’s Instituto Tunga, Kenjiro Okazaki has joined Pace Gallery, and Sasha Gordon is now jointly represented by David Zwirner as well as Matthew Brown. (Press releases)
– Nicoletti Contemporary has moved to a larger space in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood after five years on Hackney’s Vyner Street. (Press Release)
Museums and Institutions
– A group of predominantly French researchers and scientists have published an open letter alleging that two French museums, Musée du quai Branly and the Musée Guimet, were pressured by China into changing wall texts and other collection terminology related to Tibet. (Artnet News)
– There have been two recent shake-ups in the museum director world: Alexie Glass-Kantor will step down from her roles as executive director of Sydney’s Artspace and curator of Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters, and London’s National Portrait Gallery has tapped former Frieze bossVictoria Siddall as its new director—she is the first woman to ever be appointed to the role. (Artnet News, Artnet News)
– Jacques Schuhmacher, who had been a key player in restitution cases while at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, has taken up the role of executive director of provenance research at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Press Release)
– The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. has appointed José Roca as the inaugural Estrellita B. Brodsky curator-at-large of Latin American and Latin Diasporic Art. (Press release)
José Roca. Photo: Federico- Bottia.
Biennials
– The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation has announced that the inaugural Bukhara Biennial will debut in the ancient Uzbekistan city on September 5, 2025. The first edition, titled “Recipes for Broken Hearts,” will be curated by artistic director Diana Campbell and will feature artists such as Antony Gormley and Wael Shawky. (Artnet News)
– The 15th edition of the Gwangju Biennial opens this weekend with an expanded line up of pavilions and events this year. Among them is the inaugural Qatar Pavilion, which is the first and only Arab country to have a standalone pavilion. In July, the Venice Biennale announced a proposal for a Qatar pavilion in the Giardini. (Artnet News)
Tech and Legal News
– David John Voss, one of the central figures in a years-long forgery ring creating paintings that were passed off as being by Anishinaabe Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau, has been sentenced in an Ontario court to five years in prison. Voss pleaded guilty to forgery and intentionally using forged documents in operating a fraud ring from 1996 to 2019; more than 1,000 fake artworks have been seized of more than 1,600 that were created. (Artnet News)
– NFT marketplace OpenSea has received a Wells notice from the SEC, a type of warning that the agency issues to alert the recipient to charges it intends to bring against them. According to OpenSea’s founder Devin Finzer: “This is a move into uncharted territory. We should not regulate digital art in the same way we regulate collateralized debt obligations.” (Artnet News)
– The U.K. government is hoping to save a Rococo painting by the 18th century artist Jean-Antoine Watteau for the nation by barring it from leaving the country until November 29, buying time for a domestic collection to acquire it. The piece is valued at just over £6 million ($7.9 million). (Artnet News)
Jean-Antoine Watteau, Le Rêve has been placed under a temporary export ban by the U.K. government. Image courtesy of DCMS.
– An open letter is demanding the release of the Chinese artist Gao Zhen, who was reportedly arrested near Beijing in connection to a series of sculptures he had made in the early 2000s criticizing Mao Zedong. The elder of the well-known contemporary artist duo the Gao Brothers, Gao Zhen, who is based in New York, was visiting relatives in China when he was detained. (Artnet News)
– California collector Aaron Mendelsohn has filed a lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg contesting his office’s claims that an ancient Roman statue the collector purchased in 2007 was looted from Turkey in the 1960s. The bronze sculpture is one of a number of works believed to have been illegally imported from an ancient shrine known as Bubon. (Artnet News)
Prizes
– The U.K.’s Arts Foundation has announced it will double its fellowship award to support independent artists in response to the cost of living crisis. The winning fellow in each category—dance, design, film, theater, and visual art—will now receive £20,000 ($26,000) from February 2025. (Press release)
– Greg Allen, Siddhartha Mitter, TK Smith, and Cassie Packard are among the eight art writers and critics awarded $50,000 by the Rabkin Foundation this year. (Artnet News)