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White House Historical Association’s $7.2 M. Rockwells Are Finally on View

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Four panels of an interconnected painting by Norman Rockwell have gone on public view for the first time at the headquarters for the White House Historical Association, a “non-profit, non-partisan organization” a short walk from its namesake in Washington, D.C. The work ran under the headline “So You Want to See the President!” in the Saturday Evening Post after it had been commissioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s press secretary Stephen Early in 1943. As reported by Artnet News , “After publication, Rockwell gave the paintings to Early, but following the press officer’s untimely death in 1951, they went to his daughter and were later lent to the White House between 1978 and 2022, becoming an ever presence in the West Wing.” Last year, three years after the loan had ceased, the painting changed hands by way of Heritage Auctions for $7.25 million in a “sale [that] followed a bitter ownership dispute and cast the painting as an emblem of both Amer...
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British Artist Tess Jaray, Known for Her Hard-Edge Abstractions, Has Died at 88

British artist, printmaker, and educator Tess Jaray, known for her hard-edge abstractions, died on May 24 at age 88. The news was first reported by the Guardian in May. Jaray was born in 1937 in Vienna into a Jewish family with artistic connections: her father was an engineer and inventor, and her mother had studied fashion; her father’s aunt was collector and gallerist Lea Bondi Jaray, and his godfather was the noted Austrian art historian Ernst Gombrich, author of The Story of Art . After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Jaray fled with her parents to Britain, where they settled in rural Worcestershire. Her uncle Richard Jaray, a furniture designer and architect, was sent to the Łódź ghetto, where he and his mother were murdered. Other relatives were deported to the concentration camps Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Jaray studied at St Martin’s School of Art from 1954 to 1957, then enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 1960....
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A $5 M. Guston Leads the Zabludowicz Collection at Christie’s London in a $34 M. Postwar to Contemporary Art Sale

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Europe is seeing a historic heat wave, but things were a bit more lukewarm in Christie’s London salesroom on Thursday evening at a two-part sale featuring 56 contemporary artworks from the collection of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz followed by a 79-lot sale of postwar and contemporary art. A £4 million ($5.2 million) Philip Guston from the Zabludowicz’s holdings led the sale. The evening totaled £25.7 million ($34 million), with the first sale making £15.5 million ($20.5 million) and the second £10.2 million ($13.5 million). The Zabludowicz works were estimated to total between £12.6 million and £19.3 million ($16.6 million–$25.5 million); the hammer total was £12.3 million ($16.2 million), just below the low estimate; with the house’s fees, the sale totaled £15.4 million ($20.5 million). Seven lots were guaranteed; three were withdrawn; seven failed to find buyers, for a sell-through rate of 89 percent. Records were set for Anj Smith, Rose Wylie, and Jakub Julia...
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After Splashy Venice Debut, Florentina Holzinger’s ‘Sea World’ is Coming to Berlin, Brooklyn

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Ring an alarm bell—the buzziest performance of this year’s Venice Biennial is going on tour. An adapted version of Florentina Holzinger’s  Seaworld Venice , created for the Austrian Pavilion, will be presented at Gropius Bau in Berlin in spring 2027, followed by a stop at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna that fall, before concluding its run in March 2028 at Amant in Brooklyn. Nora‑Swantje Almes, Curator for Live Programs and Outreach at Gropius Bau, who organized its Venice presentation, will oversee this new iteration. In the unlikely event you haven’t heard (of) it, a refresher: Holzinger hung upside down inside a great bronze bell recovered from the Venetian lagoon and suspended above the pavilion. Assuming the role of a human clapper, Holzinger struck its lip again and again, sending a sonorous peal across the Biennial grounds. In an adjoining installation, nude collaborators floated inside a dunk tank flanked by port-a-potties; visitors were encouraged...
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Egyptian Archaeologists Unearth Two Tombs That Could Represent Early Development of Funerary Pyramids

Archaeologists working in Upper Egypt discovered two tombs dating to the Early Dynastic period, both of them at the fabled location known as Gabal El-Teir—or, as translated from Arabic, “Mountain of the Birds.” The tombs date from 3100 to 2686 B.C.E. and “will allow researchers to trace the development of funerary architecture,” according to Archaeology Magazine , which noted that thick walls at the bottom that taper toward the top of the structures could represent an early stage in the development of pyramids. As r eported by Ahram Online , “The first early Dynastic tomb represents a rare architectural model distinguished by its unique geometric design, while the second tomb closely mirrors it in layout and is notably better preserved.” The publication cited Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), describing the discovery as similar to the storied tomb of King Den in Abydos and pointing out that “this resemb...
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Masterpieces from the Reuben Collection to Go on View at the Courtauld Gallery in London

The Courtauld Gallery in London announced this week that it will put on view works from the Reuben Collection alongside works from its own holdings this fall. Opening September 18, the exhibition, titled “Modern Painting from the Courtauld and Reuben Collections,” will feature works by Paul Cezanne, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani, René Magritte, Man Ray, and Pablo Picasso. Cezanne’s Turning Road  (1905) and Modigliani’s Nude  (ca.1916), from the Courtauld’s collection, will “set the stage for works from the Reuben Collection by painters who built on such innovations to chart new artistic directions,” according to a release. The Reuben Collection will loan works such as Picasso’s canvases Marie-Thérèse Walter (1937), Dora Maar (1939), and  Still Life with Basket of Fruits and Flowers  (1942); Magritte’s The Dominion of Light (1949) and The Intimate Friend (1958); and Man Ray’s monumental 1915 painting Black ...
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Matchday Highlights: UH Rams (24) v Tawa (19) – first win over Tawa in a decade

Visitors the Upper Hutt Rams came screeching back over the final 15 minutes to beat Tawa 24-19 at  windy Lyndhurst Park on Saturday. Tawa were left ruing a number of missed opportunities and a pair of second half yellow cards which cost them the game. They had earlier sprung to life midway through the first...
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