Good Morning!

The Headlines

GENE HACKMAN, THE PAINTER. Developments continue to unfold in the mysterious deaths of legendary actor Gene Hackman, his wife, classical musician Betsy Arakawa, and one of their dogs, who were all found dead in their home above downtown Santa Fe. In its coverage of the story, The New York Times has also taken a closer look at the Academy Award-winning star’s less famous art practice. “An enthusiastic painter who would use the surrounding [Santa Fe] mountains as inspiration,” Hackman was also a former board member at Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. He also spoke at its opening in 1997, and narrated a documentary about the artist, reports the NYT. Several of Hackman’s paintings of landscapes and portraits are also hanging in a Santa Fe Asian fusion restaurant in which he and his wife had invested, called Jinja. This would certainly be fitting time to go take a closer look at them.

2nd CANCELLED EXHIBITION AT D.C. MUSEUM. Another exhibition scheduled to open in the spring at Washington D.C.’s Art Museum of the Americas, organized this time by Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, was cancelled earlier this month, without explanation, reported The Washington Post. Gosine’s “solo show with many artists” was based on his 2021 book about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean per reports. Meanwhile, earlier this week Hyperallergic broke the news that the same museum had dropped an exhibit on artists of African descent, because the Trump administration allegedly withdrew the show’s funding, due to it being considered a “DEI program and event.” Gosine later told Hyperallergic the museum had viewed his exhibition as a “queer show,” though the artist said he would not characterize it as such. “This is an anticipatory move,” Gosine said, referring to the museum aligning with President Trump’s agenda. “I fear, at this moment, that means throwing queer people, queer artists, marginal people, under the bus.”

The Digest

Sotheby’s live Contemporary Curated auction in New York on Feb. 26 yielded $19.88 million, including fees, despite having 64 percent fewer lots than last year, in what assistant vice-president and head of sale Haleigh Stoddard described as an intentionally, “highly edited selection.” This year’s sale included 101 lots, 21 of which did not sell and six withdrawals for a 73.3 percent sell-through rate. Last year’s mid-season, March sale, which had 276 lots, and a 75.7 percent sell-through rate, yielded $25.7 million with fees. [ARTnews]

The Centre Pompidou’s famous public library in central Paris will close for renovations on March 2, and be temporarily moved to another location in the southeastern, Bercy neighborhood of the capital. The library has been open every day for nearly 50 years and hosts some 4,000 visitors per day. The 1970’s-designed museum by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers is progressively closing for major renovations that will last for five years, beginning in September 2025. [ Le Figaro]

Japanese Superflat artist Takashi Murakami has launched a new, limited-edition collaboration with Major League Baseball for the March 2025 MLB Tokyo Series between the Dodgers and the Cubs, and it is a home run. Items in the collab, to be released March 7, include caps with Murakami’s signature, colorful, smiling flowers, clothing, and—not to be forgotten—an all-American favorite collector’s item: baseball cards. [ Artnet News and Complex]

Can a sculpture convey power? Historically, sculpture has been one of the key ways to depict who is in charge and who is worth remembering. That has been the case in the United States where the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore recall the country’s most revered presidents. Sculpture as a tool of conveying power can be seen in the rise in monuments to leaders of the Confederacy both after the Civil War and in the early 20th century; for many these sculptures are alienating and oppressive. In the past five years, numerous protests have called for the removal of many of these statues, from Louisiana to Virginia to Georgia, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. By looking at the public monuments, primarily to white men, that celebrate this country’s history, we can see who is especially celebrated.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture” (on view through September 14) aims to upend that history, presenting a view of artists of diverse backgrounds whose sculptures take power head on. Here, everyone has power and import.

The exhibition offers a new gaze with which to look at American sculpture, which cocurator Karen Lemmey said has remained an understudied part of art history; the last major US publication dedicated to the medium was published more than half a century ago.  

“There’s been a real surge in interest about monuments, public art, and sculpture maybe more broadly,” Lemmey told ARTnews. “There haven’t been a lot of resources, and people would ask questions, and I would inevitably refer back to this last big survey that wasn’t really up to date.”

Featuring 82 artworks by 70 artists, made between 1792 and 2023, the exhibition is divided into nine themes, including “Family and Racial Identity,” “Solidarity and Resistance,” and “Classical and the Myth of the White Ideal.”

This May, Sotheby’s New York will hold an auction for a collection of Old Master paintings, assembled over decades by Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III. Estimated between $80 million and $120 million, the sale could set a new benchmark for Old Masters auctions.

The collection, consisting of 60 paintings spanning the 16th to early 19th centuries, includes works from across Europe, ranging from German Renaissance pieces to Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masterpieces. Among the highlights are exceptional still-life paintings by Jan Davidsz. De Heem and Luis Meléndez, portraiture by Sir Thomas Lawrence and Frans Hals, and a landscape by Francesco Guardi.

The Saunders began collecting Old Masters works in the late 1990s, guided by George Wachter, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master paintings. The couple approached their acquisitions with decisiveness, Wachter told ARTnews, often flying around the world to acquire a picture and frequently altering travel plans to seize fleeting opportunities. Parts of the collection have been exhibited in top institutions like the Art institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art Washington DC, the Royal Academy London, and the Prado in Madrid.

The works in the Saunders’ collection come, like many Old Masters works, packed with stories. In one instance, the couple trudged through a Canadian snowstorm in order to shop the famous Hornstein collection. They agreed within minutes of seeing the tranche of paintings to buy six works, on one condition: that Hornstein sell them a beautiful still life by Luis Egidio Meléndez that, at first, they weren’t even shown. That picture, Still life with Cauliflower, Basket of Fish, Eggs, and Leeks, and Kitchen Utensils will be offered at the sale with an estimate of between $5 million and $8 million and is in line to mark a record for the artist at auction.

Another painting set to make a record is a still life by Davidsz. De Heem. When Wachter and the Saunders took a last minute trip to Rome to see the painting, its owner carried the work into the room wrapped in a garbage bag because he didn’t want his wife to know he was selling it.

Following President Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the Art Museum of the Americas has cancelled two exhibitions.

The exhibition “Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine” was set to be installed this week at the Art Museum of the Americas, which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS), but it was canceled without a stated cause earlier this month.

The solo show was adapted from the artist’s 2021 book Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean. The volume brought together topics of art, activism, and homosexuality in religion. “Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine” was organized in collaboration with a dozen other artists and several writers.

“For three years, I have imagined every centimeter of the three galleries for this work,” artist Andil Gosine told Hyperallergic, which first reported the news. “The work was made for that space.”

It is unclear why the exhibition was canceled, but the General Secretariat of the OAS reportedly ordered the exhibition’s closure.

The best and worst of the Outsider Art Fair, which opened to the public Thursday night, seems to come down to clutter. There’s the material excess routinely spilling out of the booths, which sometimes feels captivating, like exposing the machinery of a live mind; and other times gratingly self-conscious, like those nouveau-old antique boutiques. This is a markedly subdued edition, at least compared to last year, but the issue stands. Since its start in 1993, the fair has become known for noise, but in this context, chaos can be equated with an outstanding imagination. It’s a consequence, I think, of the confusion over what constitutes authenticity in a market-first industry.

Can it be simple? An individual either without access to, or regard for, social convention, whose artistic expression is indivisible from those circumstances—an artwork that inspires a sense of discovery. There are 66 exhibitors set up in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Pavilion through Sunday, and more than enough meet the criteria.

Creativity Explored, a studio in San Francisco, and Progressive Artist Studio Collective (PASC), presenting with New York’s Shelter Gallery, both spotlight work by developmentally disabled artists. Keep an eye out for Nicole Appel’s pop art parodies at PASC, and Antonio Benjamin’s funky nudes, which took more than a hundred helpers to complete. Cell Solace’s booth (D17), a collective dedicated to object and design crafted by imprisoned people in the United States between 1940s and 1970s is another standout. The craftsmanship of the purses and wall hangings, all totally made of folded woven cigarette cartons and paper, are admirable. Each work, the collective’s founder, Antonio Inniss, explained was intended as a gift, like the bag his own father received from a friend jailed at Rikers Island in New York.

Read on for more highlights from the 2025 Outsider Art Fair.

Della Wells at Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art

On Friday, famed film director George Lucas and businesswoman Mellody Hobson, co-founders of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, announced that director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont will step down April 1.

In the joint statement, the couple, who are ARTnews Top 200 Collectors, said that Jackson-Dumont’s decision to “move on” from the role stemmed from a “new organizational design” that splits the position into two: one responsible for “content direction,” which will be filled by Lucas himself, and CEO, to be taken up on an interim basis by Jim Gianopulos, the former chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. A search for a permanent CEO is underway, though Gianopulos will stay on as a special advisor.

“Sandra’s transformative leadership over the past five years has been essential to preparing the museum for its opening,” the founders said in the statement. “Her dedication to advancing narrative art and realizing our vision has helped lay the groundwork to establish the museum as a vital cultural resource for Los Angeles and a future destination for those who will visit from around the world. Sandra has helped create an institution that will serve and inspire generations to come.”

Jackson-Dumont’s departure comes just months after the museum quietly delayed its opening from this year to 2026. The museum has now delayed its opening three times—once in response to Covid, then again in late 2022, which Jackson-Dumont said at the time was “to make sure the building goes through the proper readiness and remediation processes,” and lastly in December.

Jackson-Dumont joined the Lucas Museum in October 2019, after five years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In July 2020, Jackson-Dumont named named six women (five being people of color) as her first key hires to senior leadership positions.

Another round of layoffs has hit the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, as the institution struggles to balance its books in an era of dwindling tourism and rising costs, the New York Times reported Friday. The museum said it was cutting 20 jobs—7 percent of its staff—across multiple departments. Senior leadership, however, will remain untouched, and curators have been spared from the cuts.

The move comes despite efforts to steady the ship under Mariët Westermann, who took over as director and chief executive in 2024. Ticket prices have gone up, exhibition schedules have been trimmed down, and the museum’s endowment has grown—but not enough. “Our overall financial picture is not where it needs to be,” Westermann wrote in a staff letter, describing the layoffs as part of a broader “reorganization” meant to improve efficiency.

This marks the third round of job cuts at the Guggenheim in five years, following two previous waves that saw more than 30 staff members let go, including two deputy directors. The museum’s reliance on international tourism—a sector that has yet to recover fully from the pandemic—has been a key vulnerability. Meanwhile, its much-anticipated Guggenheim Abu Dhabi outpost remains in limbo, beset by delays and controversy, with no opening date in sight.

The museum’s union, which was not given prior notice of the layoffs, has filed a grievance and is demanding negotiations. “We will take whatever steps are necessary to protect our members’ jobs,” said Olga Brudastova, a union representative.

While the Guggenheim remains an architectural icon and a major cultural player, its recent track record suggests a deeper struggle to recapture the blockbuster success of its 2018 Hilma af Klint exhibition, which drew record crowds. Westermann, however, remains optimistic, telling the Times, “I remain steadfastly hopeful and enthusiastic about the opportunities before us.”

New York-based art research firm LMI International has come out fighting following backlash it faced last month after claiming a painting titled Elimar bought at a Minnesota garage sale for $50 was a long-lost work by Vincent van Gogh. After spending $30,000 on high-tech analysis, the company dated it to 1889 and said it’s worth $15 million.

However, several van Gogh specialists have argued that the work was painted by a little-known 20th-century Danish artist called Henning Elimar, who died in 1989. They include Wouter van der Veen, a scholar specializing in the Dutch Post-Impressionist art who previously worked for Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. He said the text “Elimar” in the bottom right-hand corner of Elimar is not its title (as LMI believes) but the artist’s signature.

But LMI has now doubled down, by buying and analyzing what it claims is one of only two surviving works by the late Danish artist, titled Bridge and Stream, in a bid to prove he did not also paint Elimar.

“Throughout the years-long research process of studying the painting [Elimar], LMI Group chased down any plausible lead or connection to ‘Elimar,’ part of the due diligence of the company’s approach to examining orphaned artworks,” A representative of LMI told ARTnews in an email. “Because Henning Elimar painted in the mid-20th century, and the LMI Group’s Elimar painting is late 19th century, the team decided it did not warrant further study. However, after the Henning Elimar theory emerged on social media, and was surprisingly embraced by several scholars, LMI decided to pursue it. In one day, LMI was able to track down Bridge and Stream in northern Denmark and brought it back to New York for study, with their findings released this week. To protect the privacy of the seller of the Henning Elimar, we won’t be sharing their name.”

LMI’s initial investigation into Elimar is detailed in a 458-page report that states it “yielded the evidence required to identify [the unknown painting] as an autograph work by [van Gogh].” LMI even went so far as to genetically test a hair that was embedded in the canvas in the hope it belonged to the Dutch Post-Impressionist. (The result was “inconclusive.”)

Among the experts who dismissed the report were those from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, who also wrote off the painting as not genuine in 2019. Van der Ween told ARTnews that LMI’s findings were “full of conjectures, weird assumptions, and useless information.”

LMI’s new report that analyzes Bridge and Stream says it “bears no similarities to Elimar in size, technique, style, or subject matter.”

“Infrared images of Bridge and Stream reveal more visible evidence of brushwork and pallet knife usage. When examining the infrared image of Elimar next to [Bridge and Stream], difference is composition, technique, and subject are evident,” the report reads.

Henning Elimar signed his surname in block letters in the bottom left-hand corner of Bridge and Stream. LMI argues that this inscription differs from the “Elimar” text in the bottom right-hand corner of Elimar in color, the “downward tilt” of the letters, and because it was “painted wet-on-dry” as opposed to “wet-on-wet” (as in Elimar).

The report also makes eight key arguments that it asserts rebut the theories that Henning Elimar painted Elimar.

One of them centers on the alleged literary inspiration for the artwork. In the initial 458-page report released in January, LMI argued that van Gogh had a “veracious appetite for reading” and that Danish author Hans Christian Andersen was one of his favorite writers. The firm said a character called “Elimar” appears in Andersen’s 1848 novel, The Two Baronesses, and served as the inspiration for van Gogh’s painting.

However, van der Veen, the Dutch scholar, rubbished this theory, telling ARTnews that he is “the leading scholar in the specific field of literary sources in van Gogh’s correspondence … As such, I’m in a good position to challenge their … argument.”

In LMI’s new report, it argues that The Two Baronesses “was published in Danish, English, and German in 1848 and in Dutch in 1849, 40 years before Elimar was painted. Claims that the novel could not have inspired Elimar based on the date of publication are therefore unsubstantiated.”

The Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library in South Florida claims that that state and federal anti-LGBTQ policies have siphoned off the institution’s operating budget and scared off corporate investors, leaving the museum in financial peril.

“This is stretching into places that we really have not seen before. Our future is threatened now,” Robert Kesten, the museum’s CEO, told Axios. The museum calculated that more than half of its $1 million operating budget could disappear.

The museum’s troubles began last year when Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis cut over $32 million in arts and culture grants from the 2025 budget. That financial hit was exacerbated by President’s Donald Trump’s executive orders that called for an end to federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and the federal grants that fund them. 

Last week, a federal judge blocked large parts of the President’s anti-DEI orders.

According to Kesten, the museum earlier this month received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for educational programs and exhibits. However, given the NEA’s recent emphasis on celebrating “the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring the semiquincentennial of the United States of America (America250)” Kesten has stated that the federal grant tap has, at least for the Stonewall, run dry.

Christie’s mid-season Post-War to Present auction in New York brought in $21.3 million, led by strong results for Helen Frankenthaler, Ed Ruscha, Richard Estes, and Diane Arbus.

The large live sale in New York on February 27 had 224 lots with 67 unsold and 12 withdrawals for a sell-through rate of 64.7 percent.

The top lot was Frankenthaler’s Concerto (1982), which sold for $2.1 million with fees, blasting past its estimate of $500,000 to $700,000; followed by Ed Ruscha’s Pressures (1967), which sold for just under $2 million with fees on an estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million.

Art advisor Dane Jensen was one of the underbidders for the Frankenthaler painting on behalf of a client but called the final result “a bit of a mystery” due to its small size and time period. “To me that’s a lot of money to pay for that artwork,” he told ARTnews. “The other ones that sold really high were huge paintings. It’s definitely a new benchmark.”

By comparison, last year’s spring mid-season auction for the category on March 13 had 248 lots—61 unsold and 10 withdrawals for a sell-through rate of 71.3 percent—and yielded $21.5 million with fees. That sale also only had two works which sold for seven figures.