Our weekly news roundup is an extension of Paint Drippings, which drops first in The Back Room, a 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
– Zero 10, a business initiative to support digital art launched by Art Basel in Miami Beach last year, will be curated by artist Trevor Paglen for the flagship edition of the fair in Switzerland, running June 17–21. Located in the Messeplatz’s Event Halle, the expanded format will feature 20 exhibitors, including major blue-chips Hauser & Wirth and Sprüth Magers, and specialized digital art galleries like bitforms and Gazelli Art House.
– CAN Art Fair Ibiza will return for its fifth edition from June 25–28 bringing together 30 exhibitors as part of the island’s growing Ibiza Art Week, including La Bibi (Palma de Mallorca), Gathering (London), and Verve (São Paulo). Alongside the fair, expanded programming will activate unconventional venues and spotlight local galleries and institutions.
– Art-o-rama will return to Marseille’s Friche la Belle de Mai from August 28–30 for its 20th edition, featuring 39 galleries from 18 countries across four continents. The fair continues its intimate, gallery-focused format, with nearly half the exhibitors participating for the first time and more than half founded within the last five years. Participating galleries include Good Weather (Chicago), House of Chappaz (Barcelona), and Dittrich & Schlechtriem (Berlin).
Opening night at Art-O-Rama 2024 in Marseille, France. Photo: Margot Montigny.
Galleries
– Leading French gallery Air de Paris is declaring bankruptcy and has closed after 36 years. (Cultured)
– New York nonprofit Blank Forms now represents the Catherine Christer Hennix estate.
– Carine Karam has been tapped as the director of Opera Gallery‘s New York outpost.
Auction Houses
– A rare 5.5-carat blue-green diamond known as the “Ocean Dream” sold for $17.3 million at Christie’s Geneva jewelry sale, setting a record for a fancy vivid blue-green diamond at auction. The last lot of the sale, it inspired a 20-minute bidding battle, far exceeding its presale estimate of roughly $9 million to $13 million.
– Sotheby’s New York sold over $433 million worth of art on Thursday evening across its contemporary art sales, which saw 11 prize pieces from the Robert Mnuchin collection go under the hammer. Get the stats behind the spin in Artnet’s “By the Numbers” breakdown of the sale. (Artnet News)
Museum and Institutions
– London’s Wellcome Collection has agreed to return around 2,000 sacred Jain manuscripts to the Jain religious community under a new restitution framework developed with the Institute of Jainology and the University of Birmingham. Dating from the 15th to the 19th century, the scripts were among the million-plus objects pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome donated to the Wellcome Trust upon his death in 1936. The institution acknowledged that many of the works were “bought at a low price and against the best interests of their original owners,” with more than half originally acquired from a Jain temple in what is now Pakistan. (The Times)
– Several museums have launched noteworthy partnerships in the last week. Hong Kong’s M+ and Paris’s Centre Pompidou have announced a multi-year strategic alliance that will see the two institutions collaborate on exhibition programs. New York’s Frick Collection is entering into a three-year partnership with Louis Vuitton. The fashion house will sponsor three upcoming exhibitions and a new, two-year curatorial research position for Yifu Liu.
Laurent Le Bon, President, Centre Pompidou, and Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, signed
the Memorandum of Understanding on May 15, 2026. Photo: Winnie Yeung @ Visual Voices. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong.
– A historic merger between New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Neue Galerie will see the latter rebranded as the Met Neue Galerie in 2028, in line with the wishes of its founder Ronald S. Lauder. The museum, dedicated to 20th-century German and Austrian art, will keep its Upper East Side venue. Lauder and his daughter will also help establish an estimated $200 million dollar endowment and donate 13 major works by artists including Gustav Klimt, Max Beckmann, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. (Artnet News)
– Mexican architecture studio LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, has designed the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion. It will be unveiled in London on June 6.
Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo of LANZA atelier. Photo: © Pia Riverola.
– Leading cultural figures, including Tracey Emin and Peter Doig, have signed a letter in support of Misan Harriman, chair of the board of governors for London’s Southbank Centre, after he was accused of antisemitism. (Guardian)
Legal
– The trial for an alleged murder of Brent Sikkema, the New York art dealer who was killed in Brazil in 2024, has begun at a Manhattan court. The defendant is Sikkema’s ex-husband. (Artnews)
Awards
– Japanese artist Gozo Yoshimasu has won the inaugural Serpentine X FLAG Art Foundation Prize, a biennial award that is the U.K.’s largest for contemporary art. He will receive £200,000 ($268,000) and a solo exhibition at Serpentine North in 2027.
– Korean ceramicist Jongjin Park has received the €50,000 ($58,000) Loewe Foundation Craft Prize.
Gozo Yoshimasu. Photo: Masashi Asada. Courtesy Take Ninagawa, Tokyo.
– Rene Matić, whose work explores British and queer identity, has been awarded the 2026 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize. They will receive £30,000 ($40,000).
RIP
– Avant-garde Austrian artist Valie Export, best known for radical, feminist films and performances, has died aged 85. (Artnet News)
– American abstract painter and teacher Mary Lovelace O’Neal has died aged 84. (Artnet News)
– Reginald Madison, best known for his association with Chicago’s Black Arts Movement, has died aged 84.
