Frank’s Files: Inside Star Auctioneer Phyllis Kao’s Ultimate Jewelry Wishlist | Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s senior auctioneer Phyllis Kao previews the house’s luxury jewelry lineup for June’s New York sales, highlighting a Harry Winston necklace chosen as the catalogue cover, a convertible 1938 Cartier necklace/tiara, rare natural-pearl pieces and a 1972 Van Cleef & Arpels emerald‑and‑ruby necklace from a private collection. Kao also spotlights several high‑value diamonds — including an 11.33 ct D‑color type 2A cushion, multiple fancy intense yellow stones and a vintage Bulgari Trombino — and discusses wearable styling and bespoke remounting opportunities. The preview ties Sotheby’s programming to America’s 250th anniversary and emphasizes design narratives and provenance behind each lot. The tone blends market positioning with collector appeal ahead of luxury week.
What Do Wrestling, Photography, and Acting Have in Common?
The video explores how professional wrestling, photography, and acting intersect through shared reliance on staged performance. The narrator recounts visiting his cousin, an entertainment wrestler in the Bronx, to photograph a show, discovering that the spectacle is meticulously choreographed rather...
The Greatest of All Dutch Still-Life Artists: Two Flower Paintings by Jan Van Huysum
Jan van Huysum, a leading Dutch still-life painter, developed a distinctive, highly refined technique in his Amsterdam studio that produced luminous, highly detailed floral arrangements unmatched in his era. Trained in a family workshop, he broke with traditional Dutch styles...
In the Gallery: Louise Neri on El Anatsui at White Cube Hong Kong and White Cube Seoul
White Cube has launched El Anatsui’s first solo exhibitions in Hong Kong and Seoul, titled “MivEvi” (Fragrant Harbour) and “LuwVor” (Soul City), respectively. The shows mark the Ghanaian‑born sculptor’s debut in the two Asian markets and underscore his lifelong engagement...
The Modigliani Nude That Shocked Paris | Sotheby’s
Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier, shown in Paris in 1917, caused immediate scandal and had its exhibition shut by police because its frank, unmediated depiction of the female nude broke with accepted conventions. While rooted in classical precedents —...
How Christie’s Made over $1 Billion in One Evening #auction #business
On May 18, Christie’s hauled in more than $1 billion in a single evening, underscoring a rebound in the auction market driven by fierce competition for a tiny pool of headline-making masterpieces. After years of sluggish sales, demand has resurged...
The Women Behind Tiffany's Most Celebrated Glassworks | Christie's
In the late 19th century, Tiffany Studios employed a pioneering cohort of women—notably Agnes Northrop and Clara Driscoll—in a dedicated glass cutting department where they selected, cut, and assembled glass by hand to create the studio’s most celebrated windows and...
BACKROOMS Director Kane Parsons on Using Generative AI for Creative Works of Art.
Kane Parsons, director of BACKROOMS, said he is personally opposed to using generative AI in the creative process, arguing it undermines intentionality in art. He explained that when generative tools are used to fill details, his impulse to closely examine...
George Lovett Kingsland Morris, Munition Factory
The video examines George Lovett Kingsland Morris’s 1943 painting “Munition Factory,” created amid World War II. Though a relatively small canvas, it epitomizes Morris’s decades‑long commitment to synthetic cubism, drawing on the visual vocabularies of Braque, Picasso, Léger, Delaunay, Arp, and...
Annual Distinguished Lecture: Gods at the Gate of Modernity—Religious Arts in Colonial Calcutta
The Metropolitan Museum’s Distinguished Lecture, titled “Gods at the Gate of Modernity,” examined the rise of mass‑produced Hindu devotional prints—often called “god prints”—in colonial Calcutta and their display in the new “Household Gods: Hindu Devotional Prints, 1860‑1930” exhibition. Professor Richard Davis...
From China to Canada Untold Stories of the Chinese Art Collection at ROM
Speakers at the Royal Ontario Museum outlined the century-long formation of the ROM’s Chinese art holdings, tracing key roles played by donor-dealers such as George Crofts and institutional figures like Charles T. Currelly and Sir Edmund Walker. The panel—comprising ROM...
Artist Rose Wylie: ”Contrast Gives Life. I Think a Painting Needs Life.”
British painter Rose Wylie, now 91, continues to work by instinct, embracing contrast and contradiction in every canvas. Her practice blends discarded materials, vivid colour, and typographic elements, treating words as visual shapes rather than narrative tools. Recent highlights include...
William Kentridge on Max Beckmann’s 1938 Painting ‘Death (Tod)’
William Kentridge examines Max Beckmann’s 1938 canvas “Death (Tod)”, painted as the German artist fled Nazi persecution and after the death of fellow expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. He notes Beckmann’s interest in Gnosticism but focuses on the painting’s visual puzzles. Kentridge...
Don't Look at These Paintings, Move Around Them
The video explores a series of paintings that change as the viewer moves, allowing shadows and blurs to intersect across the front and back surfaces. The artist emphasizes that the work’s dual sides expose early marks and erasures, creating a...
Leonora Carrington: Navigating a World Down Below
The second day of the "Leonora Carrington: Navigating a World Down Below" symposium was organized by four MA curating students from the Courtauld, in partnership with the Freud (Ford) Museum. The event built on the museum’s current exhibition, "The...