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Guggenheim Veteran Valerie Hillings Tapped as Inaugural Director of Abu Dhabi Branch

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi took another significant step toward its December 11 opening, naming Valerie Hillings as the institution’s inaugural director. In choosing Hillings, the Guggenheim tapped a trusted name for the high-profile appointment. She spent five years on the Guggenheim’s staff in New York before joining the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project in 2008 as curator and associate director of curatorial affairs. She worked alongside the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi through 2018, laying the groundwork for its acquisition strategy and curatorial focus on art from West Asia, North Africa, and South Asia from 1960 onward.  “I am honored to return to Abu Dhabi to complete the once-in-a-lifetime journey of founding and opening Guggenheim Abu Dhabi,” Hillings said in a statement . “I look forward to welcoming local and global audiences to the magnificent Frank Gehry-designed building and inviting them to explore points of interconnection and uniq...
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Gagosian Gives Up London and Basel Spaces as Mega-Galleries Rethink Their Footprints

Gagosian has closed its small space in London’s Burlington Arcade and will soon close up its space in Basel, Switzerland, the Art Newspaper reports . Both spaces started as pop-ups, and as long as the rents were good, it made sense for founder Larry Gagosian to keep up those spaces, a source familiar with the gallery’s thinking told ARTnews . “Larry’s thinking is, ‘If there’s opportunity there, great. If not, that’s okay too,’” the source said. Among the gallery’s London spaces, the Burlington Arcade location, which opened in 2023, was the smallest, with the downstairs featuring a store that sold books, editions, and other Gagosian merchandise. Upstairs was a tiny exhibition space that was closer to a private viewing room. Still, Gagosian managed to put on 16 shows there before closing up shop. But Gagosian isn’t abandoning London by any stretch. The gallery will continue to maintain its two Mayfair galleries, at Grosvenor Hill and Davies Stre...
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The World’s Largest Painting Sold for $62 M. in 2021 to Benefit Children’s Charities, But They Have Yet to Receive Any Funds

In 2021, British artist Sacha Jafri auctioned what was then the world’s largest canvas painting, The Journey of Humanity , for a total of £45 million ($62 million at the time) in support of children’s charities. The proceeds from the sale made in Dubai were supposed to be split between UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Global Gift Foundation. But the London Times reports that over five years later, the money has still yet to be disbursed to the selected charities. In 2022, the UAE-based organization, Dubai Cares, which was supposed to receive and distribute the funds to the different NGOs, filed an ongoing legal case against the winning buyer, French-Algerian crypto-businessman André Abdoune, for failing to deliver on his promised payment, as first reported by the Fence Magazine . Initially, Dubai Cares also accused Jafri of unlawfully seizing the painting and exploiting the charity, but a judge dismissed those claims. Abdoune, however, was reportedly ordered to pay t...
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NADA Miami Names 135 Exhibitors for Upcoming Edition in December

The New Art Dealers Alliance has named the 135 galleries that will take part in the upcoming 2026 edition of NADA Miami, scheduled to run December 1–5 at its longtime home, the Ice Palace Studios. The fair’s 24th edition will bring together exhibitors from 63 cities in 27 countries, with 45 of them participating for the first time. Galleries making their debut at NADA Miami including Pietro Alexander (of New York), Clauda (Prague), Forgotten Lands (Christiansted, St. Croix), Real Tinsel (Milwaukee), and Slip House (New York). NADA Miami will also feature 59 of the organization’s members, including April April, Chozick Family Art Gallery, Embajada, Gattoprado, Hesse Flatow, Kates-Ferri Projects, Misako & Rosen, Tyler Parker Presents, and Proxyco. Other galleries taking part include Ceysson & Bénétière, De Boer, Tara Downs, Gladwell Projects, and Pierdas. The NADA Projects section will feature 25 exhibitors, including Blah Blah Gallery (of Phi...
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At Venice’s Palazzo Cavanis, VCUarts Qatar Rethinks How Art and Tech Is Taught

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Earlier this month, Dr. Michael Rao, president of Virginia Commonwealth University, made a bold statement: it’s time to move “beyond” the educational model developed by Oxford University in the High Middle Ages. Rao was speaking at the opening of “أغرب إدراك: Aghrab Idrāk: Thresholds of Perception,” a an official Venice Biennale collateral exhibition presented by VCUarts at Palazzo Cavanis in Venice. Indeed, “Aghrab Idrāk” is a rare show for a university, a sort of proof of concept for a new way of teaching the arts. An interdisciplinary program, VCUarts Qatar organizes its offerings through creative research labs that mash up not just creative practices like graphic arts, textile design, audiovisual engineering, typography, and illustration, but also disciplines like anthropology, computer science, and engineering. The result is labs like Sonic Jeel, which focuses on sonic cultures; the Anthro-tech Atelier, whic...
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In New York Court, Dealer Yves Bouvier Seeks Sotheby’s Records as Part of New French Criminal Case

Yves Bouvier is back in federal court in New York. The Swiss art dealer has asked a judge in the Southern District of New York to compel Sotheby’s to turn over records relating to the private sale of a Pablo Picasso painting, saying the documents are needed for a criminal case he recently launched in France against French art dealer Antoine Peretti. According to court filings, Bouvier purchased Picasso’s  Intimité (Femmes et Enfants)  from Peretti in April 2024 for $7.25 million. Under the parties’ agreement, Bouvier says he bought the work with the expectation that it would eventually be resold, with any profit above the purchase price split evenly between the two men. But Bouvier alleges that just weeks later the painting was resold through Milocci Limited, doing business as de Sarthe Gallery, to Sotheby’s for a net seller price of $9 million. According to the filing, Peretti never told him the painting had been re...
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See the Trailer for the New Thomas Crown Affair Movie, Starring Michael B. Jordan as a Notorious Art Thief

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Amazon MGM Studios dropped this week the trailer for The Thomas Crown Affair , a remake of the acclaimed 1968 film that will open in theaters on March 5, 2027. Directed by and starring Academy Award–winning actor Michael B. Jordan, the trailer already hints at the art-related plot points for the film. About 12 seconds into the trailer, Jordan’s Thomas Crown faces some built-in bookshelves that slide apart to reveal a hidden room where he stores his stolen paintings. On a metal rack, resembling the sliding vertical racks often used in museum and gallery storage, are four paintings. Crown holds another canvas in his hands to add to his collection of looted masterpieces. By ARTnews ’s estimations, these paintings, from left to right, are Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (ca. 1820–23), owned by the Museo del Prado in Madrid; Henry Ossawa Tanner’s  The Banjo Lesson (1893), owned by the Hampton University Museum in Virginia; Kerry James Marshall’s Si...
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