ART
Condition Report: Nicholas Acquavella and Jean-Paul Engelen
As Engelen leaves Phillips and heads over to the Acquavella gallery in July, I checked in with him and Nick Acquavella about the century-old gallery, the rise of private dealers in the current market, and the “terrifying concept,” in Nick’s words, that “no one needs what we sell.”
Marion Maneker
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May 27, 2025
La Dasha Vita
Dasha Zhukova, the collector, philanthropist, and former society It Girl, has redefined herself by reimagining the role that art can play in working-class residential life. After a successful development in Philly, she just erected a new building in Harlem—with more to come in Phoenix and Nashville.
Julie Brener Davich
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May 25, 2025
Native Elements
Two new gallery shows in Manhattan exemplify the kind of boundary-pushing work that Native American artists started making after the Standing Rock protests in 2016. Institutions have embraced the movement, so why hasn’t the market?
Marion Maneker
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May 23, 2025
Merit at the Met
A wave of high-profile, years-in-the-making exhibitions offers a national counterpoint to MAGA efforts to delegitimize inclusion. As the Met’s Lorna Simpson exhibition proves, showing underrepresented artists has always been less about an artist’s identity and more about an artist’s work.
Auction Report: The Downturn Goes On
The May results were a disappointment after earlier signs of healing, with the market still shaking off the 2023 interest-rate hangover. Much of the grim news continues to concentrate at the top of the market.
Marion Maneker
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May 20, 2025
Dealers Do Doha
Art Basel’s entrée into the Gulf, which will occur in February, takes advantage of the balmy climate, the walkable downtown, and, above all, the money sloshing around Qatar, a petrostate-cum-financial center.
Julie Brener Davich
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May 18, 2025
Sotheby’s Master of Old Masters
George Wachter, a Sotheby’s lifer who has long led its Old Masters department, is overseeing the category’s most valuable single-owner sale ever this week. We spoke about dirty old paintings, Victoria Beckham, and how the art market has (and hasn’t) changed over the past 50 years.
Marion Maneker
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May 16, 2025
The Art Market’s Hard Ceiling
The big spring sales have come to a close, leaving in their wake a distinctly unremarkable impression: Good works are selling, but there’s a limit to how high prices will go—and how far anyone is willing to stick their neck out, even for something they believe in.
Rites of Spring
Bidders at the big houses drove works by Giacometti, Munch, Olga de Amaral, Basquiat, Cézanne, de Kooning, László Moholy-Nagy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Calder, and others above estimates. Plus, a Chagall boomlet.
Marion Maneker
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May 13, 2025
A Riggio Too Far
There were some pockets of spirited bidding at Christie’s for works from the Leonard and Louise Riggio collection and Anne Bass’s estate. And yet the well-managed and heavily guaranteed sale revealed the market’s cautious mood.
Julie Brener Davich
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May 11, 2025
Magritte Deal Heat
The surrealist moment goes on, for those who are not so keen on reality these days. There are several works at the auctions, but you can also catch a variety of both famous and lesser-known artists at galleries around the city.
Marion Maneker
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May 9, 2025
Zwirner Expands the Mothership
With a new 19th Street space and growing office imprint on 20th, David Zwirner is expanding his claim on Chelsea and offering a glimpse of his global ambitions. Two new shows—the elusive, devastating Michael Armitage, and a group exhibition of ’90s phenoms—mark the occasion.
Condition Report: Charles Moffett
The gallerist explains how he got started after his tenure at Sotheby’s, what it’s like dealing with tariffs, why art advisors are the unsung heroes of the art world, and what to make of the (slight) upside to the downturn.
Marion Maneker
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May 6, 2025
Don’t Mess With Textiles
Textiles are having a moment as a valid art form. A new Olga de Amaral retrospective in Miami is a festival of technical skill that puts her fabrics, in the words of ICA Miami’s director, “somewhere between painting and sculpture.”
Marion Maneker
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May 4, 2025
George Lucas’s Jedi Art Trick
For more than 15 years, George Lucas has been quietly building a museum of narrative art, whatever that is. What the museum seems to lack in cohesion and transparency, it makes up for in ego, with its founder’s ultimate mission being to put his movies on par with other art-historical masterpieces.
Marion Maneker
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May 2, 2025
Thursday Night Lights
What’s going down uptown? Plenty, including Basquiat, Picasso, Franz Kline, Ilana Savdie, Miquel Barceló, and more.
May Day
Tensions are building in the art market over tariffs and other uncertainties, right in time for the May auction sales. Will they set off a flight to quality—or a retreat from unnecessary expense?