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Shanghai Auction Executives Sentenced in Major Fraud Case as Industry Scrutiny Intensifies

Two former managers of a prominent Shanghai auction house have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for orchestrating an extensive fraud scheme that led one collector to spend about RMB 500 million ($74 million) on counterfeit or grossly overpriced artifacts. Hong Kong media reported on Wednesday that the collector, from Shandong province, purchased more than 40 items from Shanghai Jiahe Auction Co., Ltd., only to discover that authentication documents revealed many were forgeries or had been assigned artificially inflated valuations. The two former managers were convicted in four cases and sentenced to 14 years and six months and 12 years in prison, respectively. According to the court judgment, the pair arranged for employees and associates to drive up bidding prices at auction, inducing the collector, identified under the pseudonym Li Pin, to purchase the items at inflated prices. The profits were then divided between the consignors according to a p...
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Manhattan District Attorney Repatriates Three Antiquities to Mexico

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., announced the repatriation of three antiquities valued at $160,000 to Mexico, including one seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The return of the objects is a result of multiple investigations into illegal trafficking networks, including one that led to the conviction of Eugene Alexander last summer. According to a press release announcing the news, “This marks this Office’s sixth repatriation to the People of Mexico totaling 52 antiquities valued at more than $13 million.” The object seized from the Met is a Standing Male Figure dating back to ca. 100-400 that had been sold by the New York-based Merrin Gallery and donated to the museum. An Xochipala Bowl from ca. 1200–900 B.C.E. had appeared at Merrin Gallery before it was seized in December. An Aztec Obsidian Micro-Blade Core dating to ca. 1000–1500 was seized from Alexander this past October. “The Government of Mexico exte...
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At Management Gallery, Grotesque Art Evolves for the Doomscroll Era

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The third episode of 2026’s breakout show on Apple TV,  Widow’s Bay , ends with the creature of the week—the perpetually sopping Sea Hag—astride her prey: cynical mayor Tom Loftis, played by Matthew Rhys. He’d been warned. Her preferred method of murder is asphyxiation (she sits on your face). Pinned beneath her rotting legs in his recliner chair, Loftis narrowly escapes by yanking its lever, catapulting the hag over his head. The spell breaks; dread collapses with a laugh.   Widow’s Bay was nominated for 19 Emmys last week, an unusual honor for a series committed to bodily indignity. Yet its success feels less like an anomaly than a symptom of the present, in which perpetual crisis has robbed the future of coherence. Cyclically, art history show...
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Superblue Teams Up With Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre to Bring Immersive Art to Mumbai

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Superblue, the experiential art venture cofounded in 2020 by Pace CEO Marc Glimcher and former Pace London president Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, has landed in India for the first time, with a sprawling nine-work exhibition of immersive installations at Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC). Titled “Second Nature,” the show opened at NMACC’s four-story Art House on July 3 and runs through January 10, 2027. Curated by Dent-Brocklehurst, the company’s cofounder and CEO, alongside head of curatorial Margot Mottaz, the show features large-scale installations by teamLab, A.A.Murakami, Simon Heijdens and Es Devlin, among others. The installations probe the increasingly porous boundaries between humans, technology, and the natural world, tackling digital identity, real-time data, and the passage of time. While Superblue built its reputation on permanent, ticketed venues of its own, like those in Miami and London, “Se...
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Frieze Seoul’s Public Programs Include a Hunt for Hidden Coins and a Place to Talk About Climate Change

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Art fairs may have started out as trade shows for dealers to sell each other their inventory, but they have long since become major events in the art world’s attention economy, zhuzhed up with public art commissions and intellectual dressings, including elaborate programs of public talks and film screenings, as well as plain old fun events like concerts. (As I wrote in 2020 , the Armory Show even once offered a museum-style audio guide.)  The public programming for the upcoming edition of Frieze Seoul this September includes a citywide hunt for thousands of custom-made artist’s coins, along with films, talks, music and special projects. The fair’s fifth edition (September 2–5) features more than 125 galleries from over 30 countries, and takes place at the COEX convention center in the posh Gangnam neighborhood. “The program we are presenting this year is built on the belief that a fair should be more than what happens inside its walls—it should be felt ac...
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Pioneers of Rugby in Wellington 134: Rod Heeps

Rod Heeps was a speed merchant and national sprint champion and a prolific try scoring wing or centre in Wellington club rugby and for Wellington and the All Blacks, whose career spanned the latter part of the 1950s and the early 1960s. Heeps’ topflight career wasn’t long, but it left a lasting impact. He still...
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Canada and Portugal Formalize Their North Atlantic Rescue Partnership

If you ever find yourself in serious trouble on a vessel in the middle of the North Atlantic, there’s a good chance Canada and Portugal would end up working together to rescue you. That partnership is now formal. On July 13, officials from Canada’s Department of National Defence and Portugal’s Ministry of National Defence signed a Memorandum of Understanding on search and rescue cooperation. The agreement itself is straightforward in purpose: Canada and Portugal are each responsible for search and rescue across vast, adjacent stretches of ocean. Canada’s zone is coordinated out of Halifax, Portugal’s out of the Azores. Those zones border one another in one of the most demanding maritime environments in the world. “Search and rescue in the North Atlantic depends on well trained people, good equipment, trust, interoperability and enduring relationships with allies and partners,” Lieutenant-General Steve Boivin, Commander, Canadian Joint Operati...
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