The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) will lay off approximately 30 unionized staff members, according to the Art Newspaper.

A spokesperson described the staff reductions in a statement as “the difficult but necessary process of reducing its operating budget to ensure long-term sustainability.”

Warren Williams, the president of CUPE 15—the local branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees which represents workers from a number of organizations and institutions in Vancouver, including the museum—said he was “deeply saddened by the employer’s recent decision” in a memo to VAG staff published on June 23. Williams also wrote: “Although the union has not yet completed its comprehensive evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to permit the employer to present voluntary severance package offers to individual employees.”

Williams told the Art Newspaper approximately 20 percent of VAG’s 150 unionized staff members represented by CUPE 15 will be laid off, and he was unsure of how many non-union staff would also be laid off due to the overall reductions in staff.

The news follows the recent departure of director and chief executive Anthony Kiendl in March, and the cancellation of plans for a new C$600 million ($420 million) building designed by Herzog & de Meuron last December after the budget rose from C$400 million to C$600 million. The cost for the cancelled project was C$60 million, according to the Art Newspaper.

In January, VAG announced the gallery would seek a simpler, less expensive new home through an invitation to 14 Canadian architectural firms to apply to design the new gallery.

The Art Newspaper reported that the mass layoffs “have raised doubts about the timeline for the new building project, which is already a decade and a half in the planning” and occurred after the city of Vancouver, one of the gallery’s funders, also announced budget cuts and hiring freezes across multiple sectors.

Williams added that CUPE 15 will continues to negotiate for “better severance packages—as our collective agreement allows for our members. Those who want to move on from the gallery need a financial incentive to do so as well as protection of benefits for a certain amount of time and career counselling.”

“Considering the financial status of the gallery and the new site being put on hold—they are in a bit of a pickle,” Williams noted.

A new EU law aimed at preventing the sale of looted antiquities is set to go into effect Saturday. While Regulation 2019/880 has a partial exemption for temporary exhibitions, the law may still hamper loans from private collectors, according to a new report from the Art Newspaper.

The new law, first introduced six years ago, stipulates that any party which imports cultural goods from outside the EU will have “heightened due diligence requirements.” Cultural goods refer to fine arts, antiquities, decorative arts, and collectible items.

An advisory note published by the insurance company Lockton said the law is “intended to tackle the illicit trade of goods from countries affected by armed conflict, and where those goods may have been traded by terrorist or other criminal organisations.”

The three categories of cultural goods are 1) ones that have been unlawfully exported from third countries, 2) products from archaeological excavations more than 250 years old, regardless of their value and 3) various types of goods greater than 200 years old with a value above €18,000.

Goods from the second category will require an import license prior to their entry into the EU, and importers need to supply evidence the items were not illegally exported. Goods from the third category require an importer statement with a signed declaration they were also not illegally exported as well as a standardized description of the items.

Implementation of the new law will depend on the actions of individual EU member states, but non-compliance with Regulation 2019/880 could result in seizures and other legal consequences for art dealers, collectors, and other art professionals.

“Where importers lack the required documentation for such items, the entire shipment may be compounded,” Will Ferrer, Lockton’s head of fine art, wrote. “Alternatively, where importers submit false evidence in the course of an import license application, or make a reckless or knowingly fraudulent declaration, there may be criminal consequences. With a greater risk of confiscation, private collectors may also show more caution when deciding where, and to which institutions, to loan their works. This may hinder the efforts of certain institutions to secure works for loan.”

Regulation 2019/880 does have an exemption for “the purpose of education, science, conservation, restoration, exhibition, digitisation, performing arts, research conducted by academic institutions or cooperation between museums or similar institutions.” But the Art Newspaper noted that implementing regulation 2021/1079 limits the exemption to temporary loans from museums outside the EU—meaning private non-EU lenders do not benefit from it.

The new law was designed in response to looting of cultural heritage and archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq. Regulation 2019/880 also mandates digital records to enhance transparency and traceability through a International Cultural Goods (ICG) database. Museums only benefit from the law’s exemptions by registering for the ICG database.

Several art professionals told the Art Newspaper they did not question the aim of the law, but it would add a level of administrative difficulty, especially for works with incomplete documentation or complex histories of ownership.

Eike Schmidt, the director of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, said there is “a complete lack of administrative infrastructure” for the proper implementation of Regulation 2019/880. “Just consider the thousands of administrative officials, archaeologists, art historians, and restorers who would need to be hired to cope with the avalanche of requests,” he told the Art Newspaper.

“For many museums, requirements for import licenses and provenance proof may hinder international loans and exhibitions,” Tone Hansen, the director of the Munch Museum in Oslo told the Art Newspaper.

Ferrer also wrote that the new EU legislation will likely to increase the need for private collectors to do provenance research before selling goods from their collections.

“Collectors may find themselves in a difficult position of conducting the appropriate provenance research on a given item, with the knowledge that such research could reveal gaps or inconsistencies in provenance that complicate their efforts to sell.”

He also noted that for art dealers and institutions, seizure is excluded from insurance coverage as standard, and when an artwork loses value due to uncertain provenance, it’s unlikely the owner would be compensated by insurers.

“As a result, policyholders will not be covered in the event that any works are seized upon entry into the EU. However, insurers may be able to grant exceptions on a case-by-case basis. For example, insurers may be more inclined to provide cover to borrowing institutions for a single loan for exhibitions in their home country, where that country has a clearly defined set of rules around seizure.”

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

Amid a sluggish art market and concerns about new tariffs, the design category keeps growing. Earlier this month, as much of the art world was in Basel, the major auction houses each held design sales that outperformed expectations.

Sotheby’s design sales in New York totaled $37.5 million, and Christie’s totaled $23.6 million; Phillips, which staged just one sale in this category this time, brought in $4 million. By comparison, last year, Sotheby’s reported $19.5 million in design sales, Christie’s reported $15.5 million, and Phillips reported $5.1 million across two sales with significantly more lots. Across all three houses, that’s a 62.3 percent year-on-year increase.

Experts told ARTnews there are multiple factors behind the category’s continued momentum for established names and a broad range of artists.

Lewis Wexler, who previously served as Christie’s assistant vice president of 20th-century decorative arts, told ARTnews there has been a “paradigm shift,” with collectors purchasing design in the same way they approach fine art.

“There’s always a demand for lighting, benches, sofas, and things along those lines,” said Wexler, who currently runs an eponymous gallery in New York and Philadelphia. “I think there has been a realization that you can obtain the same quality and caliber in the design world that you can find in the paintings hanging on your walls.”

That awareness has increased due to larger budgets for interior design, notable gallery exhibitions and institutional acquisitions, greater auction data about the investment value of collectible pieces, and the re-evaluation of artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Toshiko Takaezu, both of whom were the subject of major shows in New York last year.

Claire Warner, cofounder of Chicago’s Volume Gallery, which focuses on material-driven art practices and design, told ARTnews that the ongoing “technological revolution” has pushed collectors toward items that are “handmade” and “well-crafted.”

“People’s understanding of this work is becoming much more fluid and not as siloed,” said Warner, who previously worked as a design specialist at the Wright auction house in Chicago.

Betsy Beierle, a senior sales associate at the design gallery Carpenters Workshop, told ARTnews that collectible design has a “cross-market fluidity” that draws buyers from multiple sectors.

“It appeals to art collectors, institutions, people working in design, architecture, fashion, and industrial design,” Beierle said.

Global interest in the category, especially from younger buyers, has also helped many design items exceed high estimates at auction.

At Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, 76 percent of the lots sold above their high estimates. Christie’s and Phillips also noted that a significant number of lots in their sales surpassed high estimates, including the three-pane, six-foot-tall Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios, which sold for $4.29 million on a $2 million–$3 million estimate. That is the second-highest price at auction for a window from the artist’s studio. Those results are especially notable given the few house and third-party guarantees offered at the sales.

The houses also saw an expanded audience this month, with Sotheby’s and Phillips reporting that more than 20 percent of buyers at their major design sales were new to the houses. Sotheby’s reported a 64 percent increase in bidders compared to last year, and a 76 percent increase in buyers. Phillips noted that millennial and Gen Z collectors made up 20 percent of bidders at its design sales this year.

“At least half the people I sold [Les Lalanne works] to last year are younger than me, which is extremely encouraging,” 56-year-old art dealer Ben Brown told ARTnews, noting his London gallery’s representation of Les Lalanne since 2007 and the ‘Planète Lalanne’ exhibition in Venice, Italy last year featuring more than 150 works. Brown added that he is frustrated that Lalanne works have been categorized as design.

The success of design objects at auction has been apparent even outside of dedicated sales, underscoring their crossover appeal. In May, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Double-Pedestal Lamp from the Susan Lawrence Dana House sold for $7.5 million at Sotheby’s modern evening sale, far exceeding its $3 million–$5 million estimate. But the spike in design interest has been most apparent in the market for works by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, as ARTnews reported in April. Four of the top 10 auction sales for works by François-Xavier took place last year, and at Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, Grand Rhinocéros II sold for $16.4 million—his second-highest price at auction.

Meanwhile, the result at Christie’s for the Tiffany Studios window was boosted by recent acquisitions of other large Tiffany windows by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Dealers told ARTnews that institutions have increasingly acquired design works by both established and emerging artists. For example, Carpenters’s Beierle placed Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell’s One-Seater Concrete Tree (2022) with the Cincinnati Art Museum for its outdoor sculpture garden in 2023, and Marcin Rusak’s Van Florum 23 (Hybridae Florales) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last year.

According to Volume’s Warner, when the gallery has worked with institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and LACMA in recent years, curators from multiple departments—including contemporary art, design, American art, fiber art and architecture—have collaborated to acquire design works, with the idea that they may be used across different exhibitions.

The strength of the design category was also reflected in works priced under $500,000, many of which exceeded their estimates and helped set new artist records at auction this year.

American artist and furniture designer Judy McKie is one who has seen that kind of market bump. At Phillips’ design sale in New York on June 10, the top lot was her Fish Bench, which sold for $406,400 with fees, on an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000—setting a new auction record. By comparison, another edition of the same patinated bronze sculpture sold for $327,600 on a high estimate of $100,000 at Rago Auctions in 2023. Other editions of the bench are in the collection of the Longhouse Reserve, at Eastport Park in Boston, and in a public park in Walnut Creek, California.

Despite institutional acquisitions at places like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, McKie’s prices at auction and in private sales remain relatively accessible.

“Even with the tariffs, the prices are still more easily digested than Les Lalanne,” said Wexler, who has represented McKie for years. “In fact, I literally just sold a monkey chair this week for $110,000.”

Other auction records in design have been set this year for Louis Cane, Maria Pergay, and Jean Puiforcat.

Expectations of even more growth in the future

Multiple dealers told ARTnews they expect prices in the design category to continue rising as buyers get priced out of works by top names; as design furniture, ceramics, and textiles continue their shift from craft to fine art; and as expectations for masterpieces recalibrate.

Aside from the Lalanne effect, Wexler said the prices for McKie’s bronzes are also likely to rise due to limited inventory. “I think that’s also increasing the desire for collectors to purchase the work,” he said.

Brown similarly believes auction estimates for Les Lalanne works remain too low, particularly when comparing limited-edition masterpieces like Grand Rhinocéros II to other works like the Mouton wool and concrete sheep sculptures.

“You can’t have a situation where a masterpiece is worth 10 times a perfectly nice medium-plus object by an artist,” Brown said, noting the sheep were in editions of 250 compared to the Grand Rhinocéros II, which exists in an edition of 8. “When you’ve got a discrepancy of 10 between a good and a great work, there’s something wrong.”

Brown said he expects more people to understand the appeal of Les Lalanne through his gallery’s upcoming exhibition on the French couple, René Magritte, and Surrealism, opening this fall in New York.

“When you’ve got Lalanne standing next to Magritte and standing up for themselves and looking strong, I don’t think anybody’s doubting that Magritte is a great artist,” Brown said.

Audemars Piguet Contemporary (APC) and the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) have co-commissioned a new sculpture by Adrián Villar Rojas that will be unveiled in November in the Jura Mountains before traveling to the latter institution for a multi-floor exhibition in 2026.

A press release stated that (Untitled) The Language of the Enemy “draws a parallel between paleontology and speculative memory” and “presents a fictionalised history in which an encounter with fossilized dinosaur remains might have sparked the earliest act of art-making.”

Rojas is an Argentinian sculptor represented by Marian Goodman Gallery who recently had work exhibited at the 21st Century Museum of Modern Art in Kanazawa, Japan and at the Pinault Collection in Paris.

The Jura Mountains are within the Vallée de Joux—a region which marks the French-Swiss border and contain limestone formations which housed the first-studied Jurassic fossils.

APC’s co-commission of Rojas’ (Untitled) The Language of the Enemy is the first time the dedicated art program for the luxury Swiss watch company has presented a commissioned artwork in that location—its hometown—and the first joint commission with Aspen Art Museum.

APC curator Audrey Teichmann told ARTnews that when the organization commissions work from an artist, they assist with inception, research, development, fabrication, press, other aspects of project management, and finding a partner institution, because it doesn’t have an exhibition space of its own.

“It can be legal advice when needed,” Teichmann said. “It’s a very custom-made process.”

APC said it also provides “continuous support” to the artists it commissions through its commitment to assist in a second exhibition. “We’ve got to realize that the one-shot support is not what is the most significant in terms of bringing a work to the attention of other curators, bringing a lot of audiences to broaden their horizons,” Teichmann said. “We need more exhibitions, and long-term, longer conversations.”

This support includes storage of the commissioned artwork between the first and the second exhibition. “When you support the production of the work, you can’t just bring something on the shoulders of the artist and not care about how they will sustain the condition [of the] work,” she said.

APC did not disclose to ARTnews a specific financial figure for the co-commission, but did say in a statement that there was a financial contribution, adding that both APC and the AAM “partake in financially and curatorially realizing the artwork.”

Design Miami recently announced its events for its 20th anniversary year, including a new initiative which aims to highlight local design communities.

Design Miami will hold a one-day event in Aspen in July, a new 14-day exhibition in Seoul in September, a third edition of its fair in Paris in October, and the 21st edition of its flagship fair in Miami Beach in December.

In an emailed statement to ARTnews, CEO Jen Roberts said the year’s programming marked the organization’s largest expansion of its global footprint and its “most ambitious program to date, with more destinations, diverse formats, and a deeper engagement with our community”.

The Design Miami.In Situ event in Aspen is curated by Ashlee Harrison and will take place alongside the Aspen Art Museum’s annual ArtCrush event.

The event in Seoul is a collaboration with the Seoul Design Foundation that will focus on Korean collectible design. The event will be curated by Hyeyoung Cho—the current chairperson of the Korea Association of Art & Design—and take place in the Dongdaemun Design Plaza.

When ARTnews asked how the concept for Design Miami.In Situ originated, Roberts wrote in an email that it “evolved organically” after the organization had “explored new modes for presenting our fairs” in recent years, and Paris offered “a compelling case study” for a “a deeply localized, context-sensitive approach”

“We found that presenting the fair in an architecturally meaningful setting created an intimate and culturally relevant experience,” Roberts wrote. “In Situ builds on this concept – it offers us an opportunity to have a presence in different localities, and the flexibility to present in new and experimental ways.”

Roberts noted the location of the Seoul exhibition at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, designed by Zaha Hadid, “is a major international landmark of architecture and culture, not only significant to Hadid’s renowned body of work, but also a symbol of Seoul’s fusion of transition and future.”

“So while we remain steadfast and confident in our traditional fair setting, In Situ offers an exciting next step for Design Miami to further cultivate design communities internationally, in ways that feel authentic and immersive to the respective surroundings,” Roberts wrote.

Over the last two decades, Roberts said attendance at Design Miami events has become more international, interdisciplinary and grown to reflect “the evolution of the collectible design market itself.”

In addition to emerging and seasoned collectors, new and renowned gallerists, and other professionals in the design world, Roberts also noted attendance from the fashion, architecture, and music industries. “For example, we’ve also seen a steady increase of luxury fashion houses engaging in the collectible design market, which as a result brings new audiences to Design Miami,” she wrote. “It will be interesting to experience how In Situ projects will allow us to connect with new audiences in their localized settings.”

Finally, when ARTnews asked about the impact of tariffs and ongoing litigation over an earlier decision by the US Court on International Trade, Roberts said Design Miami was “continuing to monitor the situation, and remain closely informed on these developments – working alongside our other fair colleagues to share resources. We recognize our role in supporting our galleries and collectors through providing a stable and connected marketplace; ultimately, our mission is to ensure that Design Miami remains a reliable space for global exchange.”

Back in 1970, when Art Basel was founded, there were just a handful of major fairs. Today, however, by some estimates, there are more than 300 art fairs. But even still, Art Basel remains the main fair for many of the dealers showing in Switzerland this week.

David Fleiss, the cofounder of Paris’s Galerie 1900-2000, participated in the 1970 and 1971 editions of the fair, before taking a long hiatus until the ’90s. He’s been going ever since. “The fair is the fair for us. We meet the best collectors and the best museum curators we can meet in any fair,” he said. “It is still the fair where you can see the best works galleries have to offer.”

Art Basel was founded in 1970 by Swiss art dealers Ernst Beyeler, Trudl Bruckner, and Balz Hilt, and has now turned into a global behemoth, with editions also held in Hong Kong, Miami Beach, Paris, and soon even Qatar. Yet the Swiss edition is the one people cannot miss, and dealers told ARTnews that it seems poised to remain that way.

Technically, Art Basel was not the first fair in the city: the Basel Gallery Association staged a fair in 1968, though it only featured local galleries. Bruckner pushed for a larger fair with international representation, eventually bringing on Beyeler and Hilt, who then partnered with the local trade fair Mustermesse.

The first Art Basel had 110 exhibitors—90 galleries and 20 publishers—hailing from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the US. There were both primary market and secondary market dealers at the fair, which cost 5 Swiss Francs (about $20 in 2025 US dollars) to attend.

Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac saw the fair in its early days, visiting for the first time in 1981 and making his debut as an exhibitor in 1985. As Ropac recalled to ARTnews, while Basel had already become the most important art fair at that point, it still faced strong competition from the Cologne Art Fair, due to Germany’s then-booming art market. He recalled Art Basel as a more “Eurocentric” gathering of “a small familiar group of people.”

Things used to be a bit more improvisational at Art Basel, according to Ropac, who remembered one year when he spotlit the work of Sturtevant, an artist known for copying others’ pieces. When Ropac was late with the transport for her work, Sturtevant insisted on bringing the work herself and found herself stuck at Swiss customs, which doubted that she was the maker of these objects.

“I had to rush over with catalogs and documentation to prove her identity and that she was the creator of the work,” Ropac said. “Only then did the customs officials become more forgiving. It was chaotic but very memorable.”

Art Basel has become intertwined with the lives of many dealers. Iwan Wirth, cofounder of mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth, first attended the fair in 1987 at just 17 years old—one year after he opened his first gallery. He visited the fair with Swiss painter Bruno Gasser, the first artist he ever showed, and Andy Jillien, his first collector. The gallery made its Art Basel debut a decade later, in the first year it was eligible.

For Wirth, one of his most cherished memories is watching his eldest son, Elias, then a young boy, playing in the gallery’s booth. “He was climbing and hiding inside aluminum barrels that were part of an artwork by Jason Rhoades,” he told ARTnews. “We have pictures of Elias sitting inside there and smiling like the happiest Art Basel visitor ever.”

Dominique Lévy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan was, like Elias, introduced to Basel as a child. She first attended Basel at around four years old, in the early ’70s, with her mother, who was close friends with Beyeler and lived in Lausanne. She did not attend the event as a professional until several decades later, when she was the director of Anthony D’Offay in London, managing American artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns. She has been a longtime exhibitor through the many iterations of her eponymous gallery and, in her estimation, has not missed a single edition.

“Off and on, I’ve been attending for most of my life,” she told ARTnews, saying that to show at the fair in the early days was to be “part of the inner circle. It was essential.”

As Art Basel has become a global brand, with many iterations, the calculus has grown more complicated for galleries, Lévy said, as dealers have to increasingly weigh which edition is the best fit for their program. Still, she sees one major dividing line between pre- and post-Covid Basel.

Before the pandemic, she said, “I couldn’t imagine selling art unless I was wearing high heels. We kept ice packs in the back of the booth for our feet. Now? I live in sneakers. That little change says a lot about how the world—and the fair—has shifted.”

Basel has retained its allure over the decades arguably because so many dealers and artists have watched it change their careers. Such was the case for New York dealer David Nolan, who told ARTnews that he first exhibited at Basel in 1993 with works by American painter William N. Copley, who died three years later. On opening day, Nolan sold six paintings by Copley and called the artist in Key West. Copley told the dealer to get some champagne and they popped bottles simultaneously to celebrate. From that point on, the two repeated the ritual each night of the fair. From the jump, Nolan saw the influence a successful Basel could have, with Copley invited shortly after to mount a retrospective at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, with more museum exhibitions following.

For Mathieu Paris, a longtime director at White Cube and a participant of Art Basel for nearly 20 years, what has always stood out about the Basel fair is that influence, which told ARTnews stems from the cultural ecosystem in the Swiss city, from the Kunstmuseum and Fondation Beyeler to, especially, the Kunsthalle.

“When you look back at its exhibition history, it’s striking how many now-renowned artists had early, formative shows there,” Paris said of Kunsthalle Basel.

And there’s no doubt that Basel’s success over the years has meant a lot of change. To the eye of Marianne Boesky, who first participated in 2000 with a presentation of sculptor Rachel Feinstein in the Statements sector, the fair has become more global and diverse, particularly in recent years, in both its participants and exhibitors.

Paris, of White Cube, did have one gripe about the new Basel, however: “If I had to note one regret over the years, it would be a nostalgic one: I still miss the days when the old-town butcher was the only official supplier of the iconic Art Basel bratwurst.”

Archaeologists have discovered a group of 75 ancient tombs in eastern China, some of them 2,000-years-old from the Han Dynasty.

Between April and December 2024, research teams from the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, in cooperation with the Qianshan City Cultural Relics Protection Center and Qianshan City Museum, excavated a total of 75 tombs and 4 kiln sites within the project site, according to a news release published on June 6.

The finding has been dubbed the “Hupu Tomb Group” and it is located in Qili Village, Meicheng Town, Qianshan City, Anqing City, Anhui Province, in eastern China.

The news release noted the Hupu tombs “are mainly from the Warring States Period and the Han Dynasty, with a small number from the Six Dynasties and the Song Dynasty.” Decay has affected most of the burial objects and human bones in the tombs, “leaving only traces of coffins, grooves in sleepers and some burial objects.” And while most of the tombs were “seriously disturbed” by robbers, archaeologists were still able to unearth more than 300 relics, including bronze, iron, lacquer wood, jade, and pottery.

While most of the tomb owners were civilians, and a few may be low-ranking nobles of the scholar level, the news release noted the large size of some of the tombs, and the “exquisite burial objects”, possibly due to the owners being wealthy landlords.

The excavation also unearthed coffins with door leaves, lacquered wooden flat pots, and flat round box-shaped pottery irons, rare items compared to past excavations in this area, “and have added new physical materials for the study of the long-term funeral customs and cultural evolution, social changes and development in southwestern Anhui.”

The four kilns officially from the Sothern Song Dynasty are also the first ones from that time period formally excavated in the city of Anqing. “They are also of great value in studying the evolution of kiln technology in the region, the history of Anqing city building, and the official system of the Southern Song Dynasty,” the news release said.

A report about the excavation noted seven out of 37 tombs from the Warring States Period had “relatively well-preserved coffins” with many burial objects, with heads chambers and side chambers built with square wood. The burial objects included utensils, jade, lacquered wood, pottery, and a variety of pots, jars and washbasins made of copper.

The results of the excavation joins “hundreds of tombs” from the Warring States and Han dynasties that have been excavated in Qianshan over the years.

The news of the discovery was first reported by the Miami Herald.

Even in a sluggish auction market, the design category—in particular when boasting notable works by Tiffany Studios, Les Lalanne, and Alberto Giacometti—continues to be a bright spot at auction, with Christie’s two recent sales totaling $23.6 Million.

“You’re also appealing to such a broad range of collectors. You’re no longer just in this like, niche group of people,” Carpenters Workshop senior sales associate Betsy Beierle told ARTnews. “Even in a hesitant market, when something’s rare and when something’s scarce, that is definitely going to outweigh any kind of sluggish performing that’s going on.”

On June 12, the single-owner sale ‘American Avant-Garde: The James D. Zellerbach Residence by Frances Elkins’ totaled $8.1 million, while the auction house’s Design sale yielded $15.4 million.

The top lot for the day was the three-pane, six-foot-tall Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios with an estimate of $2 million to $3 million. After bids between a Christie’s specialist on the phones and an online bidder, the latter won with a hammer bid of $3.5 million, or $4.285 million with fees.

This was the second-highest price realized for a notable work from the artist’s studio, after the Danner Memorial Window sold for $12.5 million with fees at Sotheby’s Modern Art evening sale last November, smashing the old record of $3.4 million for a ‘Pond Lily’ lamp sold by Christie’s in 2018. The Goddard Memorial Window was sold to support the continued advancement of St. Luke’s Church’s missions and endowment.

The result for The Goddard Memorial Window also followed two recent acquisitions of monumental landscape works by Tiffany Studios at major art institutions. In 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the three-part, 10-foot-tall, 7-foot-wide Garden Landscape. Last month, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced it had acquired the monumental landscape stained glass window Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window).

Out of 34 lots, the vast majority of total for the single-owner sale came from its top two offerings: a pair of Important and Rare ‘Oiseau’, Curved Version, circa 1937 by Alberto Giacometti, both with estimates of $2 million to $3 million. The first of the five-foot-wide plaster bird sculptures realized $2.954 million, while the other sold for $2.833 million, both amounts including fees.

The other two lots from the design sale which surpassed seven figures were works by French sculptor Claude Lalanne. The bronze and copper chandelier Unique ‘Structure végétale aux papillons, souris et oiseaux’ Chandelier, 2000 hammered at $1.5 million, or $1.865 million including fees, on a high estimate of $1.8 million.

Other examples of Structure végétale chandeliers by Claude Lalanne with similar estimates had sold for $2.4 million to $4.4 million at design sales in Paris in 2021 and 2022. While demand for works by Claude Lalanne and her husband François-Xavier Lalanne continues to grow among new collectors, Bierele said the results on June 13 reflected a shift to a “more thoughtful” art market.

“We’re seeing it at art fairs,” she said, noting her decade of experience at Pace Gallery, as well as a director at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago and as a private consultant before joining Carpenters Workshop in 2022. “People are taking their time, and it’s refreshing. It’s a reset. That’s absolutely what’s happening.”

L’Enlèvement d’Europe, designed in 1990, depicts the Greek god of Zeus transformed into a bull with the princess Europa on his back. The first edition of 6.5 foot-tall, 6.5 foot-long bronze sculpture attracted bids from two specialists on the phones and an online bidder before it hammered at $900,000, or $1.134 million including fees, on a high estimate of $1 million.

When the same edition of L’Enlèvement d’Europe last appeared at auction at Sotheby’s New York on December 18, 2013, it sold for $485,000 with fees, on a high estimate of $350,000.

“It didn’t explode, but I think it’s still fair to say it’s a strong result,” Beierle said, noting the piece’s monumental size, and the first time the artist used the lost cast wax method on a singular sculpture. “A real Lalanne collector is going to want that piece to put a feather in their cap.”

After François-Xavier Lalanne’s Grand Rhinocéros II blasted past its high estimate of $5 million and sold for $16.4 million at Sotheby’s design sale the day before, there were bidding wars for two of the French sculptor’s smaller works at Christie’s, including one in a familiar shape.

Rhinocéros bleu, 1981 zoomed past its high estimate of $70,000 to hammer at $260,000, or $327,600 with fees. Le Métaphore (Canard-Bateau), circa 2002 did even better, surpassing its high estimate of $120,00 by more than 400% after hammering at $530,000 or $667,800 with fees.

Beierle said the results reflected the cheeky, charming, surrealist and fun themes appealing to a growing number of collectors, while being “a little bit easier to live with” compared to Grand Rhinocéros II.

“I think you can very much easily say that you have a rhino, but you can clearly pack that one up and move it to another home, rather than the desk, which obviously is going to be a quite a different lift,” she said with a laugh.

French gallerist Kamel Mennour has announced a donation of 180 artworks to the Musée d’Art Moderne (MAM) in Paris.

The donation from the gallerist and his namesake gallery includes works from more than 45 artists who “reflect the richness and diversity of the gallery’s history since its creation in 1999, as well as the quality of its unique vision,” according to a statement.

The high-profile artist list includes Alicja Kwade, Zineb Sedira, Anish Kapoor, Daniel Buren, Ugo Rondinone, Lee Ufan, Douglas Gordon, Camille Henrot, Huang Yong Ping, Tadashi Kawamata, and Philippe Parreno. The statement added that the collection “will officially join the MAM’s permanent collections once the acquisition and validation processes have been completed by Paris Musées, as well as the French government.

After those processes have been completed, the donation will be exhibited on the top floor of the French institution in the ARC rooms in 2027, accompanied by an “extensive” catalogue.

Speaking to the Art Newspaper, Mennour said the breadth of his gift was inspired by New York-based German dealer Michael Werner, who donated 127 paintings and sculptures to the same French institution in 2012.

“I am 59, and I thought: ‘What will I do with all this stock we have got from the artists we loved,’” he said, adding that “it would make sense to give something back to the museum, which has offered me and my city such great joys.”

The institution reportedly offered a 1,700 square meter (18,300 square feet) space for an exhibition about the donation in two years. The donation list, which includes works from both the gallery’s holdings and Mennour’s personal collection, is not yet complete and may be subject to changes before being submitted to the official commissions at the French government.

An antiques expert and a cabinet maker were recently found guilty for forging and selling nine imitations of historic 18th-century armchairs they claimed belonged to members of French royalty like Marie Antoinette.

The judgment for the case applied to nine chairs and armchairs that were purportedly commissioned by relatives of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Antiques expert Georges “Bill” Pallot and cabinet maker Bruno Desnoues then sold the items through galleries in Paris and Sotheby’s to the Château of Versailles and to private collectors including Qatari Prince Tamim ibn Hamad Al Thani and an heir to the Hermès family, according to the Art Newspaper.

The court also underlined flaws in the procedures of the National Museum of Versailles, which employs leading scholars of royal furniture.

Pallot is one of the most prominent 18th-century furniture experts in Paris and a global authority on royal chairs; while Desnoues used his skills from his employment as a furniture restorer for Versailles to create the forgeries. Pallot also ran the furniture division at the Didier Aaron Gallery, which was not prosecuted in the nine-year investigation.

Pallot and Desnoues confessed to the crimes when they were arrested in 2016.

On June 11, Pallot was sentenced to four years in prison, including a 44-month suspended sentence; fined €200,000 and banned from working as an expert for five years. Desnoues was sentenced to three years in prison, including a 32-month suspended sentence, and a €100,000 fine.

Both Pallot and Desnoues have already served four months in pretrial detention, and the suspended sentences mean they will not return to prison.

Pallot and Desnoues will also have to pay a type of security, called an indemnity, of €1.6 million to their victims, reports The Art Newspaper.

Laurent Kraemer and his prestigious namesake gallery were also accused of deception by gross negligence after selling two fake Marie-Antoinette chairs to Prince Hamad Al Thani for €2 million. While the prosecutor had sought a fine of €700,000 for the gallery, Kraemer and his gallery were acquitted.

The court concluded that Kraemer was also a victim of Pallot and Desnoues, after the gallerist said he was convinced the items were genuine and had refunded the member of the Qatari royal family.

However, Kraemer has still been charged in another case “for a series of allegedly fake Boulle pieces and other Louis XIV furniture,” reported The Art Newspaper.