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Rumors have been swirling about London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery, especially after ARTnews reported on Tuesday that the gallery had pulled out at the last minute from a coveted spot at the inaugural Art Basel Qatar, which kicked off Tuesday in Doha.  Now, ARTnews can confirm that the gallery has entered administration—the UK equivalent to bankrupcy proceedings —and is closed to the public. The gallery was founded in London’s Mayfair neighborhood in 1995.  “Stephen Friedman Gallery commenced the administration process on 2 February 2026 to allow for an orderly review of its financial position,” the gallery told ARTnews in an emailed statement Wednesday. “FRP Advisory have been appointed as the administrator. All matters are now subject to the administrator’s consideration. The gallery is now closed to the public and is not presenting at Art Basel Qatar this week.” According to an anonymous source with knowledge of the gallery’s operations, about forty people are employ...

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has announced a new, large-scale partnership with the Art Bridges Foundation. The initiative, called 50 for 50, will bring key artworks by American artists from the Hirshhorn’s collection to smaller museums throughout the US’s 50 states and Puerto Rico. The loans will be long-term, lasting three to five years, and will typically include several artworks chosen by each participating museum that will complement their existing collection or programming. The project will allow for significant artworks that are typically in storage to be enjoyed by American museum-goers in places that don’t have collections nearly as robust as the Hirshhorn’s, which owns some 13,000 pieces across all mediums by giants of American art. “It’s Georgia O’Keeffe, Thomas Eakins, Joan Mitchell, Calder,” Melissa Chiu, the Hirshhorn’s director, told the New York Times . “We asked ourselves, how can we do more to make the Hirshhorn the national mu...

Just under a year ago, Sotheby’s made its biggest foray in the Gulf yet with its first-ever auction in Saudi Arabia. That sale, titled “Origins” and featuring 117 lots spanning art and luxury objects, brought in $17.3 million with fees—squarely within its $14 million–$20 million presale estimate. It wasn’t a spectacular result, but also wasn’t a disaster. Over the weekend, the house staged its second such sale, titled “Origins II,” to far stronger results. The auction netted $19.6 million with fees on just 61 lots, comfortably above its $11.7 million–$16.6 million presale estimate. The house even had an artist record to trumpet: Safeya Binzagr’s Coffee Shop in Madina Road sold for $2.1 million with fees, more than ten times its $200,000 high estimate. The result nearly doubled the previous auction record for a Saudi artist, set in 2023 at $1.2 million for a work by Mohammed Al Saleem. The sale featured nine works by Saudi artists, all of which sold, totaling $4.3 million against ...

Israeli authorities have announced plans to seize a sprawling archaeological site overlooking the Palestinian town of Sebastia in the West Bank, sparking outrage among the roughly 3,500 Palestinians who depend on tourism to the site and nearby olive groves for their livelihoods. Residents of Sebastia have denounced the planned seizure as a pretext for expanding illegal Jewish settlements and as a means of erasing Palestinian identity through the appropriation of heritage sites, the Guardian reported Monday. Sebastia’s mayor, Mahmud Azem, received notice from Israeli authorities in November, according to the Guardian . Talk of settlement expansion, however, has circulated for years, amid an escalating pattern of land seizures across the West Bank by Israeli settlers. The current development plan calls for a visitor center, a parking lot, and a fence that would separate the archaeological site from the town, cutting off Palestinian access to both the ruins and the surrounding olive t...

Celebrating community rugby 2016-25 in highlights. Over the break, Club Rugby collated and sorted all our video clip highlights that were recorded and saved in the decade between the 2016-2025 seasons. As we continue add to these clips to our library, it is intended that they will all be posted online – but this is...

The latest batch of documents released by the Department of Justice as part of the Epstein Files Transparency Act includes references to two leading art collectors, Steve Tisch and Jean Pigozzi. The DOJ’s library of documents have been added to over the past several days, with the latest update occurring on Saturday, January 31. The documents, primarily in the form of emails sent around 2013, appear to show convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein connecting Tisch, a film producer and co-owner of the New York Giants, with multiple women. The news was first reported on by the Athletic . In one email chain , from April 2013, which has the subject line “Ukrainian Girl,” Tisch asks Epstein if he knows any information about his “assistant’s friend,” who he recently had lunch with. Epstein replied that he “will get all the info,” with Tisch later saying “pro or civilian?” Epstein replies at one point, “civilian, but Russian, and rarely tells the full truth, but fun.” In a different set o...