Good Morning!
- The family of a Jewish collector claims a Cézanne watercolor on loan for a recent Fondation Beyeler exhibition was lost due to Nazi persecution.
- The online prediction platform Kalshi has launched a category for art auctions.
- Artists Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian to launch new residency program in Menorca.
The Headlines
RETURNING TO SENDER. An 1888 Paul Cézanne watercolor of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, featured in the Fondation Beyeler‘s recent exhibition dedicated to the artist, once belonged to a Jewish collector whose heirs are mounting a case to prove it was lost due to persecution during the Nazi era, reports the Art Newspaper. A provenance researcher for the family of Gustav Schweitzer has found documents in Swiss public archives backing their claim; however, it remains unclear how the work left the family’s possession. The researcher has demanded that the foundation withhold the painting from the unnamed private owners who loaned it to the exhibition, adding that it was the institution’s “historical obligation” to do so. But the foundation said that, “as a matter of principle, a Swiss museum has no authority to retain artworks without an appropriate legal basis.” The Schweitzer family’s researcher, Willi Korte, also insisted the museum should have been more diligent about its provenance research before accepting the loaned work, which he said “was either sold under duress after Schweitzer had fled Germany, or it was looted in Nazi-occupied territory.” Yet beyond investigating its own collection and checking international databases, the foundation explained it has far less leeway in researching the provenance of privately owned art. “The lender of the watercolor will be informed of the suspicion that has been raised,” the Swiss foundation stated.
MONET IN LA. What is being billed as the first permanent outdoor video installation by an artist in a public space, was revealed to the Los Angeles Times, during an early, recent test run. The piece, “Oo Fifi, Five Days In Claude Monet’s Garden, Part 3,” by Diana Thater, will soon light up the bridge over Wilshire Boulevard by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleries for about seven hours, every day of the year, from sundown to sunrise, starting in September. We can hardly expect more from Tinseltown! The installation is also the largest work of Thater’s career. “Oh, my goodness, it’s becoming more visible,” said the artist, 64. “The piece will look great at midnight, and it’s going to pop when it gets very dark,” she added. The video work includes footage Thater took in 2025 of Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, and in keeping with the gardening theme, it will be right across the street from Jeff Koons’ topiary sculpture Split-Rocker. Thater went to Giverny soon after losing her Altadena home to the 2025 fires, but had also spent time there on a residency in 1991. The final work includes footage from both visits. LACMA Director and CEO Michael Govan has long been an enthusiastic Thater supporter, and said that when he was asked about the future of art, he would say, “It’s already been made and it’s Diana Thater.”
The Digest
The online prediction platform Kalshihas launched a new category of predictions linked to art auction sales. [Artnet News]
Artists Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian are launching a new residency program for artists and writers on the island of Menorca. [ARTnews]
A 1911 Wassily Kandinsky painting that hasn’t been exhibited in a century, and was only known through the artist’s sketched notes, is heading to auction at Ketterer Kunst with a low, conservative estimate of just $2.3 million. [Puck]
Six finalists have been revealed for Canada’s 2026 Sobey Art Awardshortlist and will be featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in September. [Press Release]
Christie’s named François-Henri Pinault as the chairman and director, replacing Guillaume Cerutti, who left the position in April, while Hollywood talent agent Bryan Lourd is joining the board. [Press Release]
The Musée d’Orsay’s public restoration of Gustave Courbet’s masterpiece, A Burial at Ornans(1849-1850), has revealed important hidden details, which had been covered up by layers of decayed varnish. [The New York Times]
The Kicker
ART’S THE LIMIT. Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis talked to art critic Dean Kissick for Vice’s spring issue, and their conversation about “the future of everything you ought to care about” is worth reading. The two discuss whether society is blinded by a form of “monoculture” that involves over-self-expression. “We’re all on our phones, having lattes, taking pictures in cafés, expressing ourselves,” said Kissick. From asking whether it might be good for art if AI devalues some forms of creativity, to “the very idea of ‘realism,’” disappearing, their philosophizing turns to the time-honored practice of questioning what the word “art” even means nowadays. “It may be that what we call ‘art’ no longer has the ability to describe how most people experience the world today as they move through it. And we’re waiting for something else to capture and describe the now. While what we call ‘art’ will just give up on that idea of ‘realness’ and go into a world of total imagination,” says Curtis. The two don’t offer an alternative descriptor to “art,” and fail to mention how the Surrealists similarly rejected traditional realism as a philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. All told, Curtis expresses disappointment with artists today, who are failing at “their job … to jump ahead of us,” but still manages to leave us enthusiastic about what unknown creations are still to come. If art used to articulate how we experience the world, “it doesn’t do that any longer. And it’s exciting to imagine what might be the thing that will do that in the future,” he said.
