The company bought the work from Christie’s London in 1987 for $39.9 million, a record at the time. The heirs of its previous owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had sought to get it back, claiming that it had been stolen during World War II.

According to the Art Newspaper, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s heirs claimed that Sompo Holdings ignored the work’s potential provenance issues. A judge in Illinois, however, dismissed the case due to lack of jurisdiction over the Tokyo-based holdings company. 

The lawsuit was filed in Illinois in part because Sompo has business dealings in the state and because the picture had been part of the 2001 exhibition “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” at the Art Institute of Chicago. During negotiations with Sompo’s museum in Tokyo, a museum official allegedly told the Art Institute that there was concern over the work’s provenance, and that that while they believed Sunflowers nothing to do with Nazi-looted art, they were “not 100% sure.”  

According to the complaint, filed in December 2022, the heirs claim that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy “never intended to transfer any of his paintings and that he was forced to transfer them only because of threats and economic pressures by the Nazi government.”

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy sold the painting in 1934, and died of natural causes the year afterward. He lost both his job and his bank under Hitler’s rule, and the lack of contemporaneous sales records makes it unclear if Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell the work for less than it was worth.

The plaintiffs, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning, and Florence von Kesselstatt, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of more than 30 additional beneficiaries, sought to reclaim the $250 million painting along with $750 million in punitive damages.

Sunflowers is part of a group of three such paintings Van Gogh made in 1888 and 1889. The other two are in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and London’s National Gallery. 

If one were to liken the marquee New York auctions in May to the homecoming game between rival high schools, then Art Basel is certainly the art world’s prom. Next week, 287 galleries from around the world, including the four biggest, will jet to Switzerland, closely followed by the traveling circus of collectors, art advisers, and, of course, journalists.

And, while rumors are flying that the newly christened Art Basel Paris may soon overshadow the Swiss flagship fair, plenty of dealers are pushing back. As one dealer told ARTnews, the fair in Basel is still where galleries show their best work, and the collectors—even if they prefer Paris—will follow. That sentiment was echoed by Tornabuoni gallery coordinator Ursula Casamonti, who told ARTnews the gallery saved its best—six works by proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico—for Art Basel.

“I hope all the galleries do the same,” she said. “I’m worried that the people around the world have the idea that Paris+ will be better than Basel.”

ARTnews reached out to art dealers with reputations for bringing the most select, choice, and rare secondary market works and asked: what’s on the menu? Bon appétit. Or perhaps, more appropriately, En Guete.

Hauser & Wirth

The Swiss gallery giant is bringing several big-ticket works to its home art fair, none perhaps more exciting than Philip Guston’s Orders, a defining late-era work completed two years before his death in 1980. Priced at $10 million and depicting a cluster of shoes silhouetted against a pink-and-blue sky that rises above a crimson horizon line, the work was included in Guston’s 1980 retrospective at SFMOMA. It continued to travel for the following year, before being sold at Sotheby’s in 1989 for $528,000 from the collection of art collector and Southern California real estate magnate Edwin Janss Jr. As the gallery told ARTnews in an email, “The forms in Orders are personal symbols of the broader historical and psychological trauma that reverberates powerfully throughout the artist’s late oeuvre.”

The gallery is also bringing the largest charcoal drawing by Arshile Gorky still in a private collection, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), from 1946-47 priced at $16 million. There is also the marble and wood Louise Bourgeois sculpture Woman with Packages (1987–93), consigned by her trust for $3.5 million. Other works include an oil-on-cardboard Francis Picabia painting titled Nu assis listed at $4.85 million, and the David Smith stainless steel and wood sculpture Aggressive Character (1947), being sold from Smith’s estate.

Gagosian

For Gagosian’s booth at Unlimited, the fair’s sector for monumental works, the gallery is bringing a work that may carry some sentimental value: an untitled 1970 masterwork by Minimalist Donald Judd that was first shown by Gagosian’s late mentor, Leo Castelli, in New York. A related work is in the Guggenheim in New York’s permanent collection. The sculpture consists of a band of five-foot-high galvanized iron panels standing end-to-end, eight inches from the surrounding walls. The gallery’s booth presentation will be supplemented by a show of works by Judd at their Basel location consisting of 11 single-unit, wall-mounted works made between 1987 and 1991 at the artist’s home and studio near Lake Lucerne. While the gallery did not provide an exact price for the 1970 work, ARTnews has learned that is priced in the region of $15 million to $20 million.

Pace

While Pace is bringing an extensive presentation anchored by historical 20th-century works from marquee names like Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Pablo Picasso, the gallery is betting that Jean Dubuffet’s Banc-Salon will be the showstopper. Anchoring the booth, the installation comprises a low swooping bench with three kites that hover above, encouraging tired fairgoers to sit and reflect.

But, for our money, Agnes Martin’s Untitled #20 (1974) will be the real star attraction. The painting last sold at auction in 2012, at Christie’s New York, where it made $2.43 million. But, as we wrote this past November, the artist’s market has been heating up in the intervening years—in November, Sotheby’s sold a 1961 painting by Martin, Grey Stone II , for $18.7 million. While Pace declined to provide current pricing, it is very likely that the Martin will be the gallery’s priciest offering at the fair.

Thaddaeus Ropac

Among the significant works heading to Basel courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac are Sigmar Polke’s 1994 canvas Lapis Lazuli. The picture, priced at $3.8 million, is a brilliantly blue abstraction from what Polke called his “alchemical” turn, during which the artist moved away from artistic takes on consumer culture and began exploring the use of forgotten pigments like lapis lazuli, a blue shade ground from stone that was prized in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Also notable is Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985), the inaugural work from Robert Rauschenberg’s 1984–91 Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) program. Not seen publicly since the final ROCI program exhibition in 1990 and never having been on the market, the work is priced at $3.85 million.

The gallery is also bringing Georg Baselitz’s roughly five-foot-tall sculpture of a female head in cadmium yellow, Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990/2023). The carving was roughly hewn with a chainsaw, an axe, and a chisel from a single tree trunk in 1990; it was cast in bronze in 2023. There are five “Frauen” in museum permanent collections, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. It is priced at $2.18 million.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan

An untitled David Hammons sculpture from 1990 anchors Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Basel presentation. Consisting primarily of a coat rack with hat stand, the five-and-a-half foot sculpture, priced at around $9 million, features rubber, plastic bags, paper bags, a tin can, and a baseball cap, all of which give it a very humanlike aspect. The work’s first appearance at an art fair, it has been exhibited publicly only once, at Tilton Gallery in 2006.

“It’s an incredibly powerful piece that is very political and it’s very much, I feel, a self-portrait of the artist,” Dominique Lévy told ARTnews. “It’s the heart of our presentation.”

The gallery is also bringing Übernagelter Hocker (1963) by German artist Günther Uecker. Basically a wooden stool, the seat and one leg of which are covered in painted nails, the sculpture was created the same year as Stuhl II (Chair II), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to fetch around $1.5 million.

Landau Fine Art

The Montreal gallery will be bringing Wassily Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II, 1910, a piece stolen by the Nazis in 1938. Gallery founder Robert Landau purchased it this past March at Sotheby’s London for 37.2 million GBP ($44.8 million), making it the 9th most expensive work sold at auction last year. Landau then promptly exhibited the painting at both TEFAF Maastricht and TEFAF New York. And though the painting may be at Art Basel, it won’t be for sale.

“It does not have a price on it and it’s going to be front and center at Art Basel and I’m sure there will be a lot of people looking at it,” Landau told ARTnews. “Why not? It’s of great interest to people.”

Landau said that he has spent the last year working on a book about Murnau and has invested millions additionally in the work, including a consultation with a museum curator. Landau claimed that an auction house evaluation put the work’s value at more than $100 million.

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art

With Jean-Michel Basquiat continuing to run hot with numerous auction sales in May, the Upper East Side gallery will be bringing Cash Crop, a 1984 acrylic-and-oilstick depicting a silhouetted figure in front of a sugar box. The $5 million to $6 million price tag is significantly higher than at its last appearance at auction, when it sold for £713,250, or around $1.11 million, at a 2010 Phillips evening sale in London. The estimate for the work then, when it was consigned by Gagosian, was £600,000 to £900,000.

Gallery director Stacie Khandros told ARTnews that the recent auction sales had prompted more conversations with potential consignors compared to last year. “I think we’re still optimistic that … what we have is still competitive pricing. And I think our works are spectacular. It’s just finding the right price to entice potential buyers,” Khandros said.

Editor’s Note, 6/11/2024: An earlier version of this story stated that the price of the 1970 work by Donald Judd offered by Gagosian was $10 million. It has been updated with a revised figure of $15 to $20 million.

The store, which marks the brand’s first push into the retail/lifestyle sector, will feature exclusive and special edition collectibles, clothing, design pieces, and published works curated by Sarah Andelman, founder of the Parisian concept store Colette. The store will be open to both visitors to the fair and the general public starting on June 11; the fair begins its VIP previews on June 10.

Andelman has built a reputation for her novel approach to retail and her recent collaborations with the French luxury perfume house Diptyque and another LVMH-owned brand, the French department store Le Bon Marche.

In a press release Art Basel’s chief growth officer Hayler Romer said that the brand’s audience “has a strong desire for products that bottle and preserve the unique experience of being at Art Basel long after the show closes” and noted that the Art Basel Store “is fully aligned” with the brand’s vision to engage its audience and “deliver more value to galleries, artists, and cultural partners.”

The store could be seen as the first step in broadening Art Basel’s appeal across the art and luxury sectors and a clever move from Romer, who joined Art Basel in last September. Romer came to the fair company after serving as publisher and chief revenue officer of Atlantic Media, where she was initially hired as the head of luxury advertising; she had previously worked at Forbes Media as head of luxury advertising and media giant Condé Nast as executive director of corporate sales.

Among the items available at the shop will be range of memorabilia and apparel under the brand name AB by Art Basel, a string of products in collaboration with artists from Christine Sun Kim, a wooden replica of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Ferris Wheel at the Luna Luna theme park, and solo, diptych, or triptych skateboard decks decorated with designs by Cindy Sherman.

The verdict, which was first published in the Los Angeles Times, marks the end of a tumultuous career for the 80-year-old contemporary art dealer, who now faces a statutory maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison.

Allegations of fraud and dirty dealing have followed Chrismas since the 1970s. But the dealer, who was once considered among the most powerful in the US, with a roster that held names as influential as Richard Serra and Ed Ruscha, was long able to avoid prosecution, despite accusations of fabricating works, withholding payments to his artists, and refusing to return works that hadn’t sold.

The first major lawsuit came in the mid-1970s when artist Robert Motherwell sued him for the disappearance of nine works. A decade later, Chrismas was accused of losing $1.2 million worth of art that collector Frederick Stimpson had given Ace Gallery for safekeeping; he spent three days in jail on felony grand theft charges.

His current situation stems from the latest in a string of bankruptcy filings. In 2013, unable to pay rent on his 30,000-square-foot flagship gallery on LA’s Miracle Mile, Chrismas filed for Chapter 11. During the bankruptcy proceedings, which took place between 2013 and 2016, Chrismas remained Ace Gallery’s president, trustee, and custodian.

It was during this time that prosecutors said Chrismas embezzled $264,595 from the bankruptcy estate by writing checks to the Ace Museum, a nonprofit corporation that Chrismas owned and controlled, and securing funds owed the gallery from previous sales, some of which was given to Ace Museum’s landlord for the space’s $225,000 monthly rent.

According to the Los Angeles Times, prosecutors said during the trial that Ace Museum was meant to be “the culmination of [Chrismas’s] life’s work.”

“He wanted a legacy and he was willing to use other people’s money to buy that legacy,” David Williams, an assistant US attorney, said during the trial. “You can’t chase your dreams with somebody else’s money. That’s called stealing.”

Chrismas’s attorney, Jennifer Williams, disputed these claims during trial, saying “There’s no evidence, zero evidence that Mr. Chrismas as the owner of the gallery couldn’t make loans himself to other companies within his gallery universe.”

Chrismas was arrested by the FBI in July 2021 on three federal counts of embezzlement, and released the following day on $50,000 bail. In 2022, a federal court ordered Chrismas to pay $14.2 million in a bankruptcy case that dated back to 2013.

A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for September 9.

The article cites a study recently published by the international academic journal GeoJournal, which posits that the monument, along with its larger sister structure Holme II, located just 109 yards away, was built during a time when abnormally long and severe winters interfered with ritual practices.

The monuments consist of an upturned tree root surrounded by 55 small split oak trunks. Both structures were built during the early Bronze Age. 

“We know that the period in which [the monuments] were constructed 4,000 years ago was a prolonged period of decreased atmospheric temperatures and severe winters and late springs placing these early coastal societies under stress. It seems most likely that these monuments had the common intention to end this existential threat but they had different functions,” scholar David Alexander Nance wrote in the study.

Previous theories held that Seahenge and Holme II were constructed as burial markers or for sky burials, a ritual practice in which a dead body would be placed naked atop a high structure and covered by a net. Birds would consume the flesh of the deceased leaving only the bones.

Nance explained that the Seahenge’s alignment with the rising sun during a summer solstice suggests that it was a symbol that may have represented a cage for a young cuckoo bird.

According to Nance, the summer solstice was when the cuckoo, a folklore symbol of fertility, traditionally stopped singing. When the bird returned to the “Otherworld,” the summer went with it. The cage, then, was meant to keep the unfledged bird in a pen and therefore to prolong the summer. 

That record follows the sale of Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR), also from 1982, at Phillips’s modern and contemporary art evening sale in New York earlier this month for $46.5 million. That work was the most expensive lot of the New York sales.

“These outstanding results confirm our unwavering dedication to Basquiat’s legacy and truly showed all of which we are capable,” Meiling Lee, Phillips’s head of modern and contemporary art in Asia, said in a press release. 

This spring, Phillips sold three early works by Basquiat. Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer), from 1981, also sold at Phillips’s modern and contemporary art evening sale, bringing in $7.8 million. 

The Hong Kong sale brought in a total of $26.8 million with a sell-through rate of 96 percent, a 10 percent increase from the previous season, the house said. 

Additional highlights from the sale were Banksy’s Leopard and Lamb (2016), which sold for $4.7 million; Yayoi Kusama’s INFINITY NETS (ZGHEB) from 2007, which sold for $3.3 million; and another Kusama, Pumpkin (2000), which brought in $1.7 million.

The announcement was made on Wednesday by Ali Obaid Shalgam, the head of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, during a conference on Iraqi cultural heritage in the Mosul province.

A majority of the recovered works were stolen by the Islamic State beginning in 2014. During their control of Iraq and parts of Syria, ISIS destroyed, damaged, or looted artifacts and historical landmarks, including mosques, shrines, churches, ancient and medieval monuments, and libraries. 

Among their targets was the Mosul Cultural Museum, the second largest museum in Iraq. The museum, which lost a library of more than roughly 28,000 books and manuscripts, as well as objects in their holdings, is currently under renovation with assistance from the Smithsonian Institution, the Louvre, and the World Monuments Fund. It is expected to reopen in 2026. 

In his address, Shalgam said that the Iraqi government has been working with foreign governments and international bodies to recover missing artifacts, though he did not elaborate on which countries were participating. 

Since 2008, the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project, a multinational initiative, has sought the return tens of thousands of historical artifacts that were smuggled out of the country following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

During the hearing the judge considered three motions in the lawsuit filed by Perelman, through a holding company called AGP Holdings, against a group of insurers that includes underwriters at Lloyd’s of London and AIG.

In court filings, Perelman claimed that the insurers have refused to honor his 2020 claim for coverage on five paintings—two by Andy Warhol, two by Ed Ruscha, and one by Cy Twombly—that were in his East Hampton home known as the Creeks during a 2018 fire that robbed the works of their “oomph.” “All of the pictures lost their luster, lost their depth, lost some of their definition and lost a lot of their character,” Perelman said in the complaint. The insurance companies, meanwhile, have argued in their filings that the works had “not sustained any detectable damages” as a result of the fire.

The most important summary judgment motion considered the question of whether or not the works were actually damaged in the fire. The lack of clarity over that question, Judge Cohen said, is what ultimately swayed him to move forward with a bench trial.

Perelman’s attorneys, and the experts he hired during the years-long insurance investigation, have long asserted that while damage might not be visible, the simple fact that they were in a fire means they were damaged. During the hearing, his attorneys presented testimony from Jennifer Mass, president of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, who was hired to scientifically analyze the works. In her testimony, she said all the works sustained fire-related damage despite being in protective cases. but she can’t exactly prove what that damage is. Instead, she claimed that “the conditions of the fire would necessarily have shortened the lifetime trajectory” of the paintings. When Judge Cohen asked how the paintings could be damaged if there was no visible damage, Perelman’s lawyers referenced Mass’s testimony that the fire and the water used to extinguish it would accelerate the formation of compounds that otherwise occur naturally, shortening the paintings’ lifespan by an as yet imperceptible and incalculable degree.

This is evidence, the judge said, that he wants to hear from expert witnesses from both the plaintiff and the defense themselves at trial before he can decide whether the works have been truly damaged. 

The remaining two motions dealt with the insurance investigation. The defendants have claimed in court filings that Perelman hid the fact that he was trying to sell a number of the paintings after the fire, but before he made filed an insurance claim, which, they argue would have nulled the policy because he was lying during the investigation. The insurers’ attorneys showed evidence that power collector Ken Griffin and dealer Larry Gagosian, who works with both collectors, paid a visit to the Creeks in 2020 before the claim was filed on the five works. That visit, the insurance companies have argued, is proof that Perelman lied during the investigation. After that visit, Griffin did in fact buy paintings from Perelman, one of which, Brice Marden’s Letter about Rocks #2, for $30 million, was in the same room as the Twombly and the two Warhols during the fire. That summary judgment motion was denied.

In the third motion, Perelman’s lawyers argued that the insurance companies showed bad faith during the investigation, prolonged the investigation well past the contractual 30 days it normally takes to approve a claim, and had predetermined the outcome of their investigation and ultimate denial of that claim. “But don’t you think, counselor, that this situation is complicated and warranted extra consideration?” the judge said to Perelman’s attorney. Judge Cohen then reminded him that Perelman waited two years before filing a claim on the five works in question. The judge ruled to grant the summary judgment, effectively ruling that the insurers did not act in bad faith.

The key to these proceedings is the bespoke nature of Perelman’s contract with the insurance companies. With most such contracts, a damaged painting is simply repaired by conservators at the expense of the insurance agency. If that repair affects the value of the painting, insurance pays the difference. Perelman’s agreement has an added clause stipulating that he can choose to hand a damaged painting over to the insurance company in exchange for the full amount of the insurance evaluation price, which can be four to five times more than the painting is worth. 

One of the works, a Warhol “Campbell’s Soup Can” has a fair market value of $12.5 million, but is insured at $100 million. Another, Twombly’s Untitled (1971) was valued at $50 million on the fair market and is insured for $125 million. The remaining works are Warhol’s Elvis 21 Times (1962), insured for $75 million, and Ruscha’s Box Smashed Flat, Vicksburg (1960–61) and Standard Station (1966), insured for $50 million and $60 million, respectively.

The Covid pandemic significantly depreciated shares of Perelman’s company Revlon Inc. He bought the company for $1.74 billion in 1985 through a holding company. In 2023 Revlon went bankrupt. Since 2020 Perelman has sold 71 blue-chip works for $963 million through Sotheby’s auctions and private sales, works that he had been using as collateral for loans. 

According to a Bloomberg report from last June, “at least nine banks had claims against Perelman’s assets, including his art collection, house in the Hamptons and various aircraft.” Following sales in 2020 of a large number of works, a private jet, and stakes in several companies, a spokesperson for Perelman said the sales “weren’t forced.”

A Perelman biographer put it more bluntly to Bloomberg: “He needs cash.”

The email was posted to X by Belgian art collector Alain Servais. A Christie’s representative confirmed the authenticity of the email.

The May 9 attack was characterized by Christie’s as a “technology security issue” before being claimed as a hack by the cyber-extortionist group RansomHub in a message on the dark web this past Sunday. The hack forced Christie’s to shut down its website just days before the marquee auction sales in New York, which many hoped would lend clarity to a more than usually opaque art market. 

In the email posted by Servais, Christie’s described the hackers as “an unauthorized third party” and said that they accessed their IT network “for a limited period of time” and downloaded certain client data from Christie’s internal client verification system that houses information relating to client ID checks they are required to retain for compliance reasons. The data included personal information from photographic identification documents like passports and drivers licenses; it did not include photos, signatures, contact details, financial data, or transaction-related information, the email said.

Christie’s said further that it has taken steps to secure their systems, and have informed authorities. They have not yet found evidence of data misuse related to the attack. 

As a result of the attack, Christie’s is offering clients one year of free identity theft protection and has recommended vigilance against phishing and fraud. They also recommended that clients monitor their accounts for unusual activity, use strong passwords, and “be alert to the risk of phishing and any related fraud including any emails asking you to enter login credentials, provide financial information or give up any other personal data.”

Despite the attack and lack of a traditional website during the May auction week, Christie’s fared well, bringing in $114.7 million for the Rosa de la Cruz and 21st Century sales and $413 million during its 20th Century evening sale.

The INAH places the blame squarely in the hands of Guanajuato’s conservative government, which it says lacks the “knowledge about proper protocols and the lack of training of the personnel in charge of carrying out these tasks.”

The mummy was dug up in the 1860s after the families of the deceased were unable to keep up with burial fees. This one and others like it have for years been on display at a museum in Guanajuato; some have traveled internationally for shows, including one staged in the United States in 2009.

The dispute between the INAH and the Guanajuato city government centers on who has jurisdiction over the mummified corpses. The INAH claims authority over the mummies because they are part of the “national patrimony.” The city of Guanajuato and its eponymous state are governed by the conservative National Action Party, staunch rivals of the liberal Morena party, which holds power in Mexico’s federal government. 

Earlier this week, the INAH said it will demand information about the permits and procedures followed during the museum renovations.

“These events confirm that the way the museum’s collection was moved is not the correct one, and that, far from applying proper corrective and conservation strategies, the actions carried out resulted in damages, not only to this body,” the institute said in a statement.

Museum workers unaffiliated with the INAH appear to have been in charge of the approximately 100 mummies in the museum’s care. The bodies are under local control because they were unearthed before the INAH was founded in 1939.

The display of mummified remains, and even the descriptor “mummy,” has been called into question in recent years. In early 2023, the British Museum and other institutions in the UK announced they would reconsider using the term “mummy” and instead describe the preserved bodies as the “mummified remains of” or a “mummified person” when referring to Egyptian mummies.