The first portion of the night during the Sotheby’s ‘Now’ evening that is dedicated to in-demand works made within the last five years brought in $37.2 million. The following segment, the Contemporary evening sale, generated a total of $167.5 million. That sale hammered at $145.8 million after five lots, each carrying estimates below $1 million, were withdrawn before the sale began. It was originally expected to bring in $154.9 million before the lots were pulled.

Some figures in the trade anticipated a correction to the market’s top end, a return to a period of lesser frenzy as the era of cheap money has come to an end. Other advisers in New York told ARTnews that the heat around some ultracontemporary artists had cooled, a signal that the category had become oversaturated in the past few years.

Still, there were positive signs for Sotheby’s on Thursday night, which saw records set for six artists in the opening ‘Now’ sale: Justin Caguiat, Henry Taylor, Nicole Eisenman, Simone Leigh, Steven Shearer, and Portia Zvavahera. Four additional artist records were set in the second portion of the night.

How economic headwinds amid multiple bank failures in the United States and Europe have affected the maneuvering of the market’s top players is a minor concern, sources told ARTnews. Though higher interest rates might deter a smaller group of finance types used to leveraging art collections against debt, it may have little effect on the results of the behind-the-scenes financing of sales.

A New York–based chairman at a competing auction house told ARTnews that business ahead of the sale was still fundamentally sound, explaining that compared to the fall, the houses have been “sensibly aggressive” in their negotiations with consignors to bring high-value lots to the May sales. Another adviser who runs a London-based art fund and wealth management firm, Philip Hoffman, said that despite the chillier financial climate, clients were still willing to take on financial risk in the form of guarantees ahead of the sale.

One major lot that was scheduled to go on the block was a painting by Yoshitomo Nara, featuring the doe-eyed protagonist that recurs throughout the Japanese artist’s work. The painting had an $18 million low estimate. Its withdrawal by the consignor before the sale’s start put a dent in Sotheby’s overall expected sales total.

The big-ticket item of the night was a massive bronze cast of Louise Bourgeois’s Spider, which hammered at its $30 million low estimate, going to a bidder on the phone with Sotheby’s Americas chairman Lisa Dennison. The final price was $32.8 million with fees. The evening’s second most valuable work was a 1985 painting by Jean Michel-Basquiat titled Now’s the Time, a disk-shaped canvas that pays homage to the musician Charlie Parker. Offered with a presale estimate in the region of $30 million, the work hammered for $25.5 million after opening at $23 million. It sold for a final price shy of its expectation at $28.6 million with fees.

Among the most anticipated lots of the night was Henry Taylor’s canvas From Congo to the Capital, and black again (2007), a riff on Picasso’s portrait of sex workers, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Taylor’s piece, which replaces Picasso’s figures with Black women, appeared in “B Side,” an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles dedicated to Taylor’s work. The painting’s sale caused a bidding spar, but eventually went to a telephone bidder for a record price of $2.5 million, hammering above its $1 million estimate.

Elsewhere, a Simone Leigh figurative sculpture set another record. Las Meninas II (2019), one of her signature raffia-skirted women, had changed hands three times in the last four years. It sold for $3 million at Sotheby’s; a previous record for Leigh was set at Phillips earlier in the week. Zimbabwe-based painter Portia Zvavahera’s 2016 canvas Vese Vakanddibata (They all gave me strength, 2016), depicting a group of four figures merged into one, sold for $355,600 with fees, also a record for the artist.

Another lot from a high-profile New York collection was Nicole Eisenman’s Night Studio, a view of two women embracing in bed, which sold for $2.4 million. According to previous museum catalogues, the work came from the collection of Joshua Gessel and Yoel Kremin. Matthew Wong’s 2017 landscape The Jungle, sold by a former Guggenheim trustee and private investor David Shuman, went for $1.8 million. It was offered in New York after being pulled from a Hong Kong sale in April.

Alex Greenberger contributed reporting.

On the opening day, sales were brisk, with mega-dealers disclosing seven-figure deals and smaller gallery’s seeing investments in newer names. Among the fair’s top sales, which are all self-reported, came from Pace, which sold out its solo booth of works by Brooklyn-based painter Robert Nava (for prices between $30,000 and 80,000) and David Zwirner, who sold multipled works by Suzan Frecon ($50,000–$500,000).

Meanwhile, smaller players also fared well. Los Angeles’s Château Shatto completely sold out their presentation of paintings by Julia Yerger ranging from $10,000 to $12,000, and New York’s 303 Gallery selling pieces by Doug Aitken, Cassi Namoda, Tanya Merril, Sam Falls, Alicia Kwade, Jeppe Heine, Rob Pruitt, and Sue Williams. 

Below, a look at some of the fair’s standout sales.

Of the 37 works offered, 33 lots sold with just one withdrawn before the sale’s start. Works by mid-career established artists like Simon Leigh and Caroline Walker were among the ten lots backed by the auction house with third-party guarantees. By the end of the hour-and-a-half long sale, led by Phillips London–based auctioneer Henry Highley, the evening’s lots hammered at a total of $56.4 million, a figure that landed well below the pre-sale estimate of $63.2 million to $91 million.

Anchoring the sale was a work by Banksy, a fixture at Phillips evening sales that typically brings in seven-figure prices, buoying them in the process. The Banksy was a smaller financial anchor than the 1982 painting Untitled (Devil) by Jean-Michel Basquiat that Phillips sold in last year’s May sale. That painting, which was being sold by prominent collector Yusaku Maezawa, went for $85 million, marking the most expensive lot ever secured by Phillips.

Wednesday night, paintings by Banksy, Pablo Picasso, and Roy Lichtenstein were among the top sellers. Despite relatively tame bidding, each sold for final prices within their estimates: $9.7 million, $7.3 million and $5.5 million, respectively.

Unlike past seasons, works by Warhol have largely been out of the limelight this season at sales across all three major auction houses, even with a recently opened show dedicated to the Pop artist at the Brant Foundation’s East Village space. The only one to appear in an evening sale is a 1973 silkscreened painting in which four Mona Lisas are rendered in a black-and-sepia-toned grid. It hammered at $1.9 million, below its $2 million low estimate, to a bidder on the phone with Phillips New York deputy chairman, Robert Manley.

Among the standout lots of the night was a figurative painting by Noah Davis that was offered as the first lot of the evening. Multiple bidders on the phone with New York–based specialists vied for Davis’s untitled painting from 2010 that depicts a half-dressed Black woman splayed out asleep on a life-sized stuffed animal. The painting sold for $990,600, more than nine times its $100,000 estimate. The result is the second highest price for the artist at auction, behind the $1.5 million record set at Christie’s last year, and served as a coup for Phillips, which competes against the much larger Sotheby’s and Christie’s for contemporary art consignments.

In an interview following the sale, New York advisor David Shapiro said the result for the Davis reflects pent up demand among collectors for works that are difficult to find by the late artist, who died at the age of 33 in 2019. “The works are so rare, especially to find one that good,” he said.

Interest in undervalued artists of color, a trend that has defined the auction circuit in the last three years, continued in this sale. A 2019 painting by the Los Angeles–based artist Henry Taylor, 65, titled Dakar, Senegal #3 was among the few works alongside Davis’s to elicit a bidding war. Taylor produced it while traveling to Senegal in 2019, the year he was featured in the Venice Biennale. The painting, a portrait of a seated security guard whose visage is slightly masked by a pair of sunglasses, hammered at a price of $460,000 to applause; the sum was more than five times the $80,000 low estimate. With fees, the final price was $584,200, going to a bidder on the phone with Phillips content administrator, Ferguson Amo. The figure was still under the standing record of $975,000 set for a work by Taylor at auction in 2018.

At other points, early and mid-career figurative painters like Anna Weyant and Caroline Walker, were among the artists to see attention among interested buyers. UK-based Walker has gained a following among European collectors and has recently been in a fixture in London evening sales.

Her 2010 painting, Conservation, which depicts a woman in her underwear stretching to reach a vase, surpassed expectations. The painting, which had a financial guarantee, hammered at a price of $370,000, well above the estimate of $150,000. It went to a bidder in the room, who competed against a client on the phone with Manley for it. The final price of the work was $469,900 with fees.

At another point, the emerging category saw more selective bidding. A canvas by Weyant, a rising painter now represented by Gagosian whose slick portraits of female figures have gained recent traction, was one of the evening’s few ultra-contemporary lots. Works of this kind, typically ones made in the past three years, have been a main focus for Phillips. Her 2021 painting Unconditional Love, a scene depicting two women with one seated on the other’s lap, sold for $609,600 (with fees), hammering in the middle of its estimate range.

By the sale’s end, things were coming to a close on a high when a work the late American artist Elaine Sturtevant, known for her irreverent copying of canonical male artist came up on the block. Study for Marilyn, a riff on Warhol, hammered at $1.5 million, again with Manley’s bidder over its $1 million low estimate. The work went for a final price of $2.9 million with fees.

Fifteen works from the Ostin collection were offered, including pieces by blue-chip figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Joan Mitchell. Fourteen of those works sold, generating a sum of $123 million and outpacing the $103 million estimated for the sale by specialists. Four lots in the Ostin sale, among them works by Mark Tansey, Mitchell, and Pablo Picasso, were backed with third-party guarantees or irrevocable bids. In the second portion of the night, works by artists active during the 20th century, like Gustav Klimt and Picasso, were among the 40 lots sold. By the night’s end, that sale raked in $303 million with fees after a total of five lots were withdrawn.

The total hammer price for both sales (before fees were added) came to $362 million, which was below the pre-sale estimate of $375.4 million–$534 million.

Sotheby’s UK-based auctioneer Oliver Barker took to the podium on Tuesday night to lead the event from the house’s Manhattan headquarters. The sales were anchored by auction debuts for works by René Magritte from Ostin’s holdings, as well as new records for Vilhelm Hammershøi and Isamu Noguchi.

With a smaller grouping of lots than in last year’s equivalent May edition, Sotheby’s, like its competitors Christie’s and Phillips, confronted a more cautious bidding atmosphere this week. Abounding throughout the sales is evidence that the market has grown incrementally softer amid a chillier financial climate, something that market experts based between London and New York predicted ahead of the sale in interviews with ARTnews.

In the first portion of the night, the work that fetched the highest price was Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1951), which had been in Ostin’s collection since 1979. The painting, which shows the facade of a residential home that appears to be set in day and night simultaneously, sold for $42.3 million with fees, far surpassing its $35 million estimate. The result was the second-highest price paid for a work by the Belgian artist during a public sale. After a seven-minute bidding battle, another work by Magritte, titled Le domaine d’Arnheim, an image of a broken window that leads out to a landscape scene, achieved $18.9 million. The painting was estimated to sell for at least $15 million.

Elsewhere in the Ostin sale, five bidders vied for Cecily Brown’s vibrant abstraction from 2015 titled Free Games for May, driving up the final sale price with fees to $6.7 million. The work hammered at $5.5 million, above the low estimate of $3 million. The bidding attention comes amid Brown’s mid-career survey that recently opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work went to a bidder on the phone with Sotheby’s New York–based chairman Brooke Lampley.

At another point in the beginning portion of the night, Basquiat’s 1984 canvas Moon View also shot past expectations. It hammered at $9 million, above the estimate range of $7 million–$8 million. The final price for the work was $10.8 million.

But other lots with large estimates didn’t fare as well. An untitled 1962 canvas by Cy Twombly carried a low estimate of $14 million; it hammered at just $10 million, going to a bidder on the phone with Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s chairman, Americas, who is based in New York.

The second portion of the night was led by Gustav Klimt’s Insel im Attersee. Painted around 1901–02, the painting sold to a private Japanese collector for $53.2 million following a seven-minute-long bidding war. It was estimated to sell for a price around $45 million.

Two bidders incrementally rose the stakes for a work by Danish 20th-century painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. Eventually, the 1907 still life painting Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30 hammered at $7.5 million, going to a bidder in the room who beat another competing by phone with Sotheby’s New York-based contemporary art specialist Gregoire Billault. The final price was $9 million, three times the low estimate. The result was the highest price paid for a work by the artist. According to a statement from Sotheby’s following the sale, the work was purchased by a museum in the U.S, the location of which was not disclosed.

Works on canvas by Georgia O’Keeffe and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were among the lots that failed to find buyers.

There was another big-ticket item that saw minimal bidding attention despite hype around its institutional merits. Edward Hopper’s Cobb’s Barns, South Truro (1930–33), a disquieting still-life image of a red barn, was among a group of works the Whitney Museum of American Art deaccessioned to raise funds for future acquisitions. Backed with a guarantee, it hammered at $6 million, below the low $8 million estimate. going to a phone bidder with Sotheby’s Americas chairman, George Wachter,

Paintings tend to perform best at auction, but works in other mediums fared well here, too. Noguchi’s sculpture The Family sold to applause in the room after a six-minute bidding battle between specialists in New York and London that brought the hammer price to $10.4 million. The final price of the monumental sculpture was $12.3 million, minting a new auction record for the artist and doubling the $6 million low estimate. Thursday’s sale marked the first time the work had appeared on the market since Noguchi produced it 60 years ago. It was sold by the owners of its longtime home on a Connecticut golf course.

Twenty-seven lots were offered, including works by newcomers like Louis Fratino and pieces by artists were more established followings like Barbara Kruger. Twenty-five of those works sold, with one by Jeff Koons withdrawn by the sale’s end.

Just two lots, by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Yayoi Kusama, were backed with third-party guarantees. The total hammer price for the entire grouping (before fees were added) came to $75 million, which was within the pre-sale estimate of $68 million–$99 million.

Christie’s UK-based auctioneer Georgina Hilton returned to the podium on Monday to lead the event, which included the auction debut of the 42-year-old US-based painter Danielle Mckinney and new records for Peter Saul and Diane Arbus. With a smaller grouping of lots than in last year’s equivalent edition, Christie’s faced a cooling but still present demand for emerging artists, whose works have been the focal point of the evening sale’s opening slots in the past.

The first two lots surpassed their low estimates. As usual, those lots—figurative nudes by Robin F. Williams and Vojtech Kovarik, in this case—were put upfront to create bidding momentum. Both works more than quadrupled their low estimates, selling for $428,400 and $378,000 with fees, respectively.

But the hour-long sale finished without the room buzzing, as it has in recent editions of the sales. In interviews ahead of the evening sales last week, advisers based between New York and London told ARTnews that the market was poised for a correction as commerce has slowed in the British capital and Hong Kong.

Some said that the pandemic-era focus on organizing sales around rough time periods now feels less relevant. “We’re seeing the collapsing and expanding of categories around the 20th and 21st century art,” New York–based art adviser Erica Samuels told ARTnews during the sale. “The recalibration is happening in real-time.”

In the first portion of the night, the work that fetched the highest price was a 1983 painting by Basquiat titled El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile). The triptych work, depicting floating skulls and figures set against scrawled phrases referencing ancient mythological texts, came from the collection of fashion designer Valentino Garavani. It was offered in the sale with an estimate upon request around $45 million, which New York adviser David Shaprio described as “conservative” for the auction house.

Three bidders incrementally rose the stakes for the work. Eventually, it hammered at $58 million, going to a bidder on the phone with Christie’s New York specialist Vanessa Fusco for a final price of $67 million with fees. The result was the fourth-highest price paid for a work by the artist.

Mid- and late-career women artists were given a spotlight in this sale. Simon Leigh’s Stick (2019), another edition of which appeared in that year’s Whitney Biennial, hammered at around its low estimate of $2 million, going for a total of $2.7 million with fees. It went to a Hong Kong bidder on the phone with Jackie Ho, a specialist with Christie’s Asia office, and the result showed that the market remains stable for art by Leigh, who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, where she also won the Golden Lion for her participation in the main show. Leigh’s work can currently be seen at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, where she is the subject of a traveling survey.

Cecily Brown, who is having a mid-career survey at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was represented in the sale by a large abstraction. The work sold for $6.7 million with fees, landing within the painting’s $5 million–$7 million estimate and going to a bidder on the phone in New York.

Works by Kusama and Miriam Cahn sold at prices between $4 million and $170,00, respectively, and were among the few lots that saw bidding attention coming from Asia. The former is the subject of a major commercial collaboration with Louis Vuitton, and the latter appeared in the Venice Biennale last summer.

Etel Adnan’s California (2002), acquired directly from the late Lebanese American artist by an Italian collector, sold for $352,800, more than five times its $60,000 estimate. A set of black-and-white Diane Arbus photographs from 1970 broke an auction record. The portfolio of ten images, which Artnet reported was sold by Gagosian following a survey of her work at David Zwirner this past October, sold for $1 million with fees. The work hammered ay $800,000, below the low estimate of $900,000. Arbus’s previous auction record for a set of photographs was $792,500, set in 2018.

The auction’s big star was arguably Danielle Mckinney, who recently had a solo show at New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery. Her 2020 painting We Need to Talk—a view of a despondent young woman laying across a bed—shot far past its initial estimate. The painting, which originally was estimated to sell for $20,000 went for ten times that price with fees. Its final price, to be paid by a phone bidder, was $201,600.

Elsewhere, two works by Louis Fratino, an artist whose explicitly queer subject matter has previously gained him attention on the block, outpaced estimates. Before coming up for sale tonight, his 2019 painting Euchre, in which a nude young man is seated on the floor around a deck of cards, featured in a solo exhibition at New York’s Thierry Goldberg Gallery. The work sold for $277,200 with fees, more than three times the $80,000 estimate.

In the early hours of the opening on Thursday, disgraced art dealer Mary Boone and journalist Anderson Cooper were among the attendees. Cooper stopped by London-based dealer Niru Ratnam’s booth to view works by painter Kimathi Donkor. Meanwhile, New York dealer Nicola Vassell told ARTnews that there had already been several museums vying to buy works by Elizabeth Schwaiger on view in her booth.

As with previous editions, Elizabeth Dee, the fair’s founder and director, said, “Every year we kind of grow this audience exponentially.” According to Dee, the fair expected around 2,000 VIP attendees to attend Thursday morning. “We really choreograph that first three hours carefully,” she said, explaining that giving collectors and dealers the time to have discussions in those opening hours is key.

Twenty-three of the 70-plus participating galleries were staging debut presentations for their artists. Dee told ARTnews that introducing new talent was a focus: “This should be a place that almost mimics a whole day in New York going to galleries.”

Below, a look at the standout showcases.

As part of the plan, which was first reported by the New York Times, the museum said it would appoint a team of researchers to look into artifacts with gaps in ownership records. According to the Times, the museum said that several hundred objects will be reviewed as part of the initiative.

The Met has been the subject of multiple seizures by Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which has a dedicated unit focused on seizures of cultural property believed to have been looted. The unit, which was formed in 2017, has been active in returning scores of antiquities from the New York institution to countries like Turkey, Egypt, Italy, and Greece.

The unit has in recent years targeted prominent New York philanthropists, among them being Shelby White and Michael Steinhardt, both of whom are collectors that have donated artworks to the Met. White is currently a Met trustee. White and Steinhardt were both active in the antiquities trade between the 1980s and 1990s, an era when standards for provenances were much laxer than they are now, according to many academics and lawyers.

Foreign officials have also called on the museum to re-examine its collection for works with ties to suspect dealers and sites vulnerable to looting. Cambodian officials have been in talks with the Met and US investigators over the last year in an effort to reclaim legal title of ancient artifacts from the museum’s collection. The country’s officials raised flags around objects donated to the Met by a disgraced British antiquities dealer are looted in 2022.

A recent investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in collaboration with the UK-based nonprofit Finance Uncovered found more than 1,000 relics in the Met’s collection with links to traffickers. The report said 309 of the objects reviewed as part of the investigation were on display. Another report, led by ProPublica, raised questions about the museum’s handling of objects linked to Native American tribes donated by New York manufacturer Charles Diker and his wife Valerie.

In a statement addressed to staff that has since been published on the museum’s website, director Max Hollein said, “We will broaden, expedite, and intensify our research into all works that came to the museum from art dealers who have been under investigation.”

Hollein added that artifacts under review were acquired mainly acquired over the course of two decades between 1970 and 1990, when the legal standards around acquiring antiquities and reviewing provenance were generally laxer. “There was less information available and less scrutiny on the provenance of many of these works,” he said, adding, “The emergence of new and additional information, along with the changing climate on cultural property, demands that we dedicate additional resources to this work.”

In the upcoming New York sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips later this month, one of the priciest artworks won’t be on the walls, or even in New York. Rather, it will be sitting between Hole 10 and Hole 17 at Gillette Ridge, a public golf course in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

The Family by Isamu Noguchi is due to hit the auction block at the Sotheby’s New York Modern Evening Auction on May 16 with an estimate of $6 million to $8 million. It will almost certainly reset Noguchi’s current auction record of $4.73 million, set at Christie’s in 2017 by the sculpture Garden Elements.

The Connecticut General Life Insurance Company commissioned the monumental sculpture in 1956 for its then new corporate campus in Bloomfield. The Stonehenge-like arrangement of three totemic forms—the tallest rising 16 feet—consists of granite from the Stony Brook quarry, around 50 miles south of Bloomfield. It was installed on the grounds in 1957, the year the headquarters opened. 

Named for Connecticut General former president, Frazar B. Wilde, the headquarters is an iconic building designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who is also responsible for such similarly iconic buildings as Lever House in Manhattan. Noguchi also designed a garden for the Wilde Building, as well as other sculptural elements. In 1982 Connecticut General merged with INA Corporation to become the health care company Cigna Insurance. (Cigna had plans to tear down the Wilde building in 2001, about which local architect Tyler Smith wrote in the Hartford Courant, “For Cigna to destroy this site is an act of barbarism.” Cigna ended up nixing the idea.)

Cigna is the seller of the Noguchi, which sits on a portion of the campus developed in the early 2000s into a company-owned public golf course, the only one in the Northeast designed by Arnold Palmer, of pro golf and half-iced-tea-half-lemonade fame. On a clear fall day, the Noguchi is visible from the clubhouse. At least one local art lover is sad to see it go. Jordan Stein, general manager of Gillette Ridge, told ARTnews earlier this week, “I’m going to miss it.”
 
This isn’t Cigna’s first venture on the auction block; the company sold some 200 pieces through Sotheby’s in 2004. At the same time, it donated 5,000 artworks and artifacts to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., among other institutions. A Cigna rep told the Courant at the time that the company would keep its contemporary art collection, which sat in employee offices and common areas, and that it would use proceeds from the auctioned works to buy works by emerging artists. Cigna did not return a request for comment on whether the Noguchi sale indicates that more art sales are in store.

But wait, there’s more! 

The Ellsworth Kelly painting Black White (1967) is due to sell at the Christie’s New York 20th Century Evening Auction on May 11 with an estimate of $3.5 million to $5.5 million. The painting had long been in the collection of Dallas-based philanthropist and ARTnews Top 200 Collector Marguerite Hoffman. However, it appears that it is not Hoffman selling the painting. According to the provenance, the current owner bought it from an unnamed collector who purchased it from New York’s Matthew Marks Gallery. It appears likely that Hoffman and her late husband, Robert, purchased the painting from Marks and then sold it to the current consignor. If that is the case, it would be a relatively quick turnaround: the painting appears in Amor Mundi, a book devoted to Hoffman’s collection published only last year. 

Hoffman’s collection, along with that of two other Dallas families—the Rachofskys and the Roses—was bequeathed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 2005, meaning the collection goes to the museum after the owner’s death. Black White appeared in Fast Forward, a 2006 exhibition and catalogue at the museum dedicated to those collections. It is understood that bequeathing families may sell works during their lifetime, and Howard Rachofsky has already done so, selling a Christina Quarles painting for $4.5 million at Sotheby’s last year. The Rachofskys and Hoffman continue to acquire artworks; Amor Mundi shows that Hoffman has been diversifying her collection.

“We are grateful that Marguerite continues to steward her collection in a way that allows it to grow, change, and stay relevant for the long-term benefit of the Dallas Museum of Art,” a spokesman for the museum told ARTnews. 

Christie’s declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

In other news, David Shuman, founder of Northwoods Capital Management and a Guggenheim trustee from 2015 to 2019, is listed in public documents as the owner of Matthew Wong’s 2017 canvas The Jungle, which is slated for the Sotheby’s New York May 18 Now Evening Auction, with an estimate of $1.2 million. The painting had been listed in a Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong last year, but was ultimately pulled. 

Sotheby’s is also selling Picasso’s Nu devant la glace (1932), depicting French model Marie-Thérèse Walter  and created in Boisgeloup, at its Modern Evening Auction on May 16, with an estimate of $12 million to $18 million. The work, which is guaranteed, comes from the collection of Bettina and Donald Bryant, who have appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list. It was last shown at Tate Modern in 2018 as part of the exhibition Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy. 

(A Sotheby’s spokesperson declined to comment on either sale citing reasons related to consignor confidentiality; Shuman could not be reached via a representative.) 

And, last but not least, three abstract paintings by Morris Louis—all of which have been exhibited in connection with 91-year-old Washington, D.C., real estate developer Robert P. Kogod—are to be offered at the Christie’s New York 20th Century Evening Sale on May 11. They have a collective estimate of $5.8 million. Kogod, and his wife, Arlene, are noted philanthropists; a courtyard connecting the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery bears their name.

SFAI, whose campus is host to a historic Diego Rivera mural from 1931, had been plagued by financial troubles in the years leading up to the pandemic. It wasn’t until 2020, however, that the school announced it would cease admissions and degree-granting programs due to decreased enrollment and mounting debts.

The school, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2021, is considered hugely important, not just to the Bay Area scene but nationally. Its alumni include Kehinde Wiley, Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, Enrique Chagoya, Annie Leibovitz, and many more.

This latest maneuver will require the school to liquidate its assets in order to repay hundreds to millions of dollars’ worth of debts. Creditors for the school include private companies and former faculty who were laid off during the pandemic and received severance.

In February 2022, SFAI announced that it had been in discussions to merge with the University of San Francisco. Meanwhile, the San Francisco school’s administration and board members made moves to fundraise in order to keep the institution afloat. A controversial sale of the Rivera mural was considered, drawing the condemnation of many.

The mural had been appraised at an estimated $50 million. In 2021, it was granted landmark status by the city, blocking the planned sale. Officials who designated the status made it so that the mural’s removal has to be approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Last year, SFAI received a $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation for its preservation.

The efforts led to $4 million in capital fundraising and the University of California’s Board of Regents purchasing the school’s $19.7 million debt, a deal that effectively made the institution the art school’s landlord. The school held its last graduation ceremony in July 2022 after a deal to merge with the University of San Francisco fell through.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Rivera mural could potentially be converted into a public gallery.

A representative for SFAI did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.

According to documents filed on Monday at the Porter County Superior Court in Indiana, the retired professors argue that the planned sale violates the museum’s agreement with Percy H. Sloan, who donated them to the school. The two plaintiffs in the case are Richard Brauer, the museum’s first director and its namesake, and Philipp Brockington, a former professor at Valparaiso’s law school who has an endowment in his name at the museum. The Chicago Tribune had first reported that the lawsuit would be filed last week.

The motion for the restraining order was withdrawn in a hearing on Wednesday, Patrick B. McEuen, an Indiana-based attorney representing the claimants, told ARTnews over email. McEuen said he received “assurances the proposed auction was ‘months away’ and likely would not occur before September. “(McEuen said that the defendants would file motions to dismiss the suit.)

Brauer and Brockington’s suit claims that the sale presents “immediate danger of suffering a direct injury to the reputation of the art museum” and that “any harm” to the museum “will frustrate the purposes and intents of the Brockington Reeve Endowment Fund.”

The dispute revolves around the controversial sale of three valuable works of art from the university’s museum’s permanent collection. The paintings—Georgia O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills (1930) and two others by Frederic E. Church and Childe Hassam—are estimated to be worth a collective $20 million.

The announcement drew pushback from professors at the school and museum advocates. The Association of American Museum Directors (AAMD), a prominent museum group that oversees rules related to deaccessioning, condemned the move in a letter addressed to the museum’s current director, Jonathan Canning, shortly after the plans were made public in February.

That month, Jose D. Padilla, the university’s president, announced that the funds generated from the sale would be allocated to refurbishing freshmen dormitories. The deaccession plan, Padilla has said, is part of a larger move by the administration to attract and retain full-time students to the Lutheran university. The move comes after a report from Moody’s earlier this year called into question the school’s financial position.

The lawsuit names Padilla, Valparaiso University, and Todd Rokita, Indiana’s attorney general, as defendants, and states that the sale “contravenes the donor’s intent.” Rokita oversees standards related to organizations with charitable status and the legal standards guiding the management of their financial assets.

“Mr. Brauer, who lent his name to the museum, and Mr. Brockington, who has endowed a fund to maintain and preserve the museum, are heartsick at the thought that Percy Sloan’s intent to build a permanent memorial to his parents in the form of an art museum would be ignored by Valparaiso University,” McEuen said.

Valparaiso University is among a group of other schools throughout the country that have made controversial attempts to sell works in order to fund campus operations. Fisk University in Tennessee and Rockford College in Illinois, alongside Randolph College in Virginia and Brandeis University in Massachusetts, have all been the subjects of similar debates around plans to deaccession gifted artwork.

“The University apparently believes that they accepted Percy Sloan’s donation to pay for capital improvements, not art education,” McEuen added.

Darron Farha, the unviversity’s general counsel, did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.