The mystery provocateurs behind last week’s eight-foot-tall golden monument of President Donald Trump crushing Lady Liberty have returned to Washington, D.C.’s National Mall with another contribution to the genre of unauthorized presidential fan art—this time, video.

On Thursday morning, a life-sized, gold-painted television set appeared near Third Street NW, pointed squarely at the Capitol, the Washington Post reported. Its screen played a silent, 15-second loop of Donald Trump performing his now-infamous slow-motion dance moves—arms stiff, hips ambivalent, a slow-grinding shimmy—set against backdrops ranging from campaign rallies to a party with Jeffrey Epstein. The latter, for those who have forgotten, was the late financier and convicted sex offender who died while awaiting trial in 2019.

Above the TV sat a spray-painted gold eagle, wings spread in what might generously be described as majesty. Gold ivy trailed down the sides like a rejected Versace ad. At the base, a plaque read: In the United States of America you have the freedom to display your so-called ‘art,’ no matter how ugly it is. — The Trump White House, June 2025

The quote was pulled from a White House statement last week responding to the previous installation, Dictator Approved—a golden thumbs-up smashing the Statue of Liberty’s crown, accompanied by fawning quotes from Trump’s strongman fan club: Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, and Kim Jong Un.

According to its National Park Service permit, the purpose of the video work is to “demonstrate freedom of speech and artistic expression using political imagery.” Translation: trolling with a permit. The piece is allowed to remain on the Mall through Sunday at 8 p.m., barring executive orders to the contrary.

The White House, still nursing its bruised aesthetic sensibilities from last week, was again unamused.

“Wow, these liberal activists masquerading as ‘artists,’ are dumber than I thought!” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, in a statement presumably meant to be read aloud in all caps. “I’ve tricked them into taking down their ugly sculpture and replacing it with a beautiful video of the president’s legendary dance moves that will bring joy and inspiration to all tourists traversing our National Mall.”

She concluded: “Maybe they will put this on their next sculpture.”

As for who’s behind all this? Still a mystery. The materials and gallows humor are consistent with guerrilla works that popped up last fall in D.C., Portland, and Philadelphia: a bronze tiki torch, a replica of Nancy Pelosi’s desk topped with fake poop—part performance art, part lowbrow indictment of the January 6 insurrection.

Permit records list a “Mary Harris” as the applicant, though no contact details were provided. For those into clues: Mary Harris Jones was the real name of labor leader “Mother” Jones. Either the artist is playing a long game or moonlighting as a U.S. history teacher.

The art market isn’t broken, exactly, but in the eyes of art market veterans Ed Dolman, Alex Dolman, Brett Gorvy, Philip Hoffman, and Patti Wong, it doesn’t function the way it used to. The group aims to change that with a new collaborative consultancy, New Perspectives Art Partners (NPAP), announced Thursday.

The consultancy won’t operate like a normal firm: each partner is keeping their day job, and they’ll only assemble when there’s a high-level, specialized problem that needs solving. Think of it like the Avengers, but for the art world.

“We’re not just another advisory,” Gorvy told ARTnews over the phone earlier this week. “This is more like a McKinsey model—a team that comes together to dissect a problem and solve it.”

NPAP isn’t looking to simply broker sales. Instead, it will advise collectors, fiduciaries, and family offices on how to manage, grow, or disperse significant collections with global context and institutional muscle. A major selling point is the group’s deep experience across different segments of the market—from auction houses and top galleries to institutions and high-end advisory—and a geographical footprint that spans Hong Kong to Doha.

Gorvy and Dolman both acknowledged that the current art market is at an inflection point. “We’re not starting this in a boom,” Gorvy said. “We’re starting this in a market that’s becoming complex.”

Dolman pointed to the proliferation of third-party guarantees, declining resale premiums, and regional fragmentation as evidence of a “paradigm shift” in the auction market, with the biggest houses becoming “victims of their own success.”

“What used to be a straightforward business has gotten massively complicated,” Dolman said. “That auction model, once full of surprise and upside, now feels rigid—designed more to manage risk than to serve buyers.”

Gorvy suggested that the market’s fragmentation and increasing complexity have created an opening.

“The tried-and-tested platforms are all showing signs of failure—or at least exhaustion,” Gorvy said. “But that chaos creates opportunity. If you can help clients navigate it, you can add real value.”

NPAP, the partners say, draws strength not just from its flexible structure but from the chemistry behind it. Dolman and Hoffman have known each other since the early 1990s. Gorvy worked closely with Dolman in the early 2000s. And although Patti Wong was a longtime competitor—she led Sotheby’s Asia while Gorvy served as Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art—Gorvy always admired her from afar.

“I was jealous of her power in the marketplace,” he said.

Both Gorvy and Dolman stressed that discretion is baked into the consultancy’s model. There’s no brand-building exercise, no junior staff scrambling for consignment quotas.

“Relevancy is what we keep coming back to,” Gorvy said. “What’s relevant to collectors right now? What’s relevant to institutions? To fiduciaries?”

The Rijksmuseum’s latest acquisition—a nearly 200-year-old condom made from sheep intestine—has prompted outrage from a conservative Christian group in the Netherlands, which has called its display “a grotesque insult to God, the Catholic Church and the entire Dutch nation,” according to the Art Newspaper.

On view in the museum’s print room as part of a small exhibition on 19th-century sex work, it features an erotic illustration of a seated nun, her legs spread apart and her habit hiked up around her waist, and three very enthusiastic clergymen. Beneath the image, the caption reads Voilà mon choix—“This is my choice”—a lascivious parody of the Judgement of Paris myth, in which a mortal must choose the most beautiful goddess. In this version, the nun appears to have made her pick among three conspicuously aroused priests. She’s pointing right at him.

The artifact was likely a brothel souvenir and is believed to be one of only two known examples to have survived. Rijksmuseum co-curator Joyce Zelen told the Art Newspaper that the object was printed directly onto the sheep’s appendix—a method far less forgiving than paper. “Normally, an etching you can print a few thousand times, but paper is easier to print [on] than sheep’s appendix,” she said.

The protest, organized by Stichting Civitas Christiana and its youth wing TFP Student Action Europe, included 11 demonstrators outside the museum last week and a circulation of 5,000 flyers. The group claims the condom was originally created as anti-Catholic propaganda during the French Revolution.

In a separate op-ed, a Dutch right-wing outlet suggested that similar satire involving Mohammed would be “unthinkable” in the museum.

Zelen, however, sees the controversy as misplaced. “Mocking religion is as old as religion itself,” she said. “It’s meant to be funny.”

The Rijksmuseum show explores a period when prostitution was legal in the Netherlands and public health efforts were focused on curbing rampant syphilis. Condoms made from animal byproducts were discreetly sold in barbershops and seafront stalls. The museum’s print room, which houses more than 750,000 works on paper, acquired the object at auction earlier this year. It will remain on view through November.

A high-profile Hong Kong real estate family is learning that a hot corner of finance—art-backed lending—has its limits.

According to Bloomberg, the Parkview family’s property empire in Hong Kong—already strained by a near-default in March—explored an art-backed loan earlier this year with Sotheby’s. Their offer comprised over 200 works, including pieces by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Yue Minjun, Qi Baishi, and Zao Wou-Ki .

However, the deal collapsed amid concerns over logistics—specifically, the complexity of transporting and warehousing such a large collection at Sotheby’s facilities. According to Bloomberg, Parkview clarified that while preliminary discussions occurred, no agreement was reached and no loan is expected. Sotheby’s did not immediately return a request for comment.

The episode underscores both the allure and hurdles of art-secured financing: a method allowing collectors to leverage valuable works for liquidity without selling them. Many of these works were showcased at Parkview’s Hong Kong clubhouse and its Beijing Parkview Green mall.

Faced with persistent bankroll pressures from Hong Kong’s property downturn and tightened banking appetite, Parkview has pursued alternative capital. The firm secured a $38 million loan from PAG and has engaged private credit sources for at least HK$2.8 billion, backed by residential towers. Additionally, it’s negotiating refinancing on a $940 million loan tied to its Beijing mall, following avoidance of a technical default in March .

Meanwhile, Sotheby’s has bolstered its art-lending services in Hong Kong since late last year, joining institutions like HSBC and Citi in offering loans against alternative assets. Globally, its financial services division has grown its loan portfolio to approximately $1.6 billion by the end of 2023, and in 2024 launched a groundbreaking $700 million bond backed by art-secured loans.

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of Imet, a once-prominent city in Egypt’s Nile Delta, buried for centuries beneath a mound in the Sharqia governorate. The discovery, led by a British team from the University of Manchester, was announced this week by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

What they found wasn’t a buried temple or a single statue, but the bones of a functioning city: multi-story homes, storage areas, and animal enclosures. These remains provide an unusually intact glimpse of life from the early to mid-4th century BCE.

Imet wasn’t a backwater. It stood at the crossroads of Delta trade routes and was once the capital of the 19th province of Lower Egypt. At its heart was a temple devoted to the goddess Wadjet, patron of Lower Egypt, which likely drew pilgrims and travelers from across the Delta.

Much of the excavation focused on the site’s eastern edge, where satellite scans had suggested dense urban buildup. Below the surface, thick foundation walls hinted at tall, tower-like dwellings typical of late pharaonic urban planning. Their survival is remarkable, especially in a region where mudbrick rarely endures.

A fragment of green faience—a funerary ushabti from the 26th Dynasty—turned up near a stele showing Horus trampling crocodiles. Alongside Horus is Bes, the dwarf god associated with both doorways and childbirth.

Also found at the site were a limestone platform, the remains of two large mudbrick columns, and signs of a ceremonial road linking two shrines—one to Wadjet, the other built during the Late Period. Experts said the processional path seemed to have fallen out of use sometime in the mid-Ptolemaic era.

The temple had staying power. Ramses II rebuilt it, and Amasis II later restored it. That continuity likely shaped the dense sprawl of housing and infrastructure surrounding it.

It’s a well-worn truth by now—or maybe a tired cliché —to say that Art Basel is as much about what happens outside the Messe Basel as within it. Beyond the VIP days, the real action can be found at night over cocktails and private dinners, where collectors, dealers, artists, and advisors close deals, swap gossip, and forge relationships that ripple across the art world for months—sometimes years—to come.

So, in the name of journalistic rigor, ARTnews sent correspondents Daniel Cassady and George Nelson into the fray. Below, they recount their misadventures across three nights of sausage dinners, crypto-backed cocktail hours, and Basel’s ever-elusive velvet ropes.

Monday

Daniel Cassady: It’s impossible to write about my first night out in Basel without mentioning the completely vile time I had getting to the city. I chose to fly out of Newark (which I thought was a brave idea) and suffered for it. A delayed push-off was the first domino to fall, leading to an itinerary that, instead of comprising two flights, required four—stopping in Iceland, Norway, and Denmark—before finally arriving in Zurich.

After catching the train into town, I arrived in Basel six and a half hours late and walked directly to a dinner hosted by Austrian art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac at the elegantly rustic Safran Zunft. Think Game of Thrones-esque medieval church meets fine dining: 50-foot ceilings, stained glass, Toyota-sized chandeliers, with a side of white asparagus and silky béarnaise. Dubai- and London-based collector Selim Bouafsoun was in attendance, as were Sotheby’s senior vice president Bame Fierro March, Hamburger Bahnhof directors Sam Bardaouil and Tim Fellrath, and Laura Colnaghi.

George Nelson: I flew (smoothly and directly) into Basel too late on Monday evening to crash any dinners, so settled in for a midnight drink with Daniel near our Airbnb. He scrubs up well: chore jacket found in a Parisian thrift store, black polo shirt, chinos, and penny loafers (not sockless, I hasten to add). The look was completed with a Guinness. His readiness to drink the black stuff 738 miles from source was a little embarrassing (it doesn’t travel well), but I kept schtum as I sipped my lager. He is American, after all.

Note: Didn’t sleep well—street noise and the smell of boiled cabbage billowing up from the vent below to blame.

Tuesday, First VIP Day

DC: While some of the dealers I spoke to said the pace was slower this year than at previous Basels, the halls of the Messeplatz were still thrumming with collectors and curators swarming like spawning salmon. At around 8:30 p.m., I made my way to a charmingly civilized sausage-and-beer fête hosted by Pace dealer Georgie Rees and Max Lefort, a dealer at Almine Rech, on the patio at Henrietta, a local grill not far from the fair. Low-key vibe, solid DJ, and franks that put the Messeplatz offerings to shame—all art fair parties should be this good.

A few hours later, I met up with the graceful Dunja Gottweis, who earlier this year left the Basel team to become director of Art Dubai, and we headed to a dinner thrown by the galleries BLUM, Crèvecœur, Karma, Mendes Wood DM, and Taka Ishii. Given that it was just shy of midnight, food was nowhere to be found. The venue—on the ninth floor of what appeared to be a train station—was so hidden that our Uber driver asked three separate times if we actually knew where we were going. The party, all pink lighting and umbrellas, was just beginning to gather steam.

The bar, however, was a catastrophe: not enough staff, not enough glassware, not enough patience on either side of the counter. Booze-starved art worlders flailed for attention like toddlers in a petting zoo. The bartenders, in turn, threw up their hands. One poor soul—perhaps the most tortured of the bunch—became so vexed by the grumbling that he poured 10 vodka sodas, held them high—two at a time—and shouted, “Here, just take it. Just take it, it’s vodka.”

As the night wore on, the dance floor got vibier, the guests more lubricated, the staff less frazzled. Eventually, I realized it was long past my bedtime and made for the exit, weaving through a crowd that was still filing in as I left.

GN: With our fair sales report filed at 6:59 p.m. from the level-two calm of the Madam Sum restaurant in the fair’s Collectors Lounge, it was time to head to dinner. As usual during fair week, I swatted away any creeping fatigue and speed-walked to Space 25. There, the Tezos Foundation and ArtMeta were hosting a dinner to celebrate a new partnership and the headline exhibition of the Digital Art Mile, “Paintboxed.”

Before the food came out, digital art advisor and fair cofounder Georg Bak gave a tour of the show. Featuring works made with the Quantel Paintbox—a clunky yet pioneering computer from the ’80s—the exhibition included VCR covers for cult Schwarzenegger classics Total Recall, Predator, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

I also chewed the fat with Jean-Frédéric Mognetti, executive director of the Tezos Foundation’s executive committee. “Tezos trusts ArtMeta, and that is the most important thing,” he said. “They are disruptors, and they’re doing brilliant things in the digital art world.”

Meanwhile, Ian Charles Stewart—a cofounder of WIRED and the recently appointed director of TMA Labs at the Toledo Museum of Art—was also in attendance. “Toledo’s collection starts 20,000 years ago and comes forward—we consider ourselves a living museum,” he explained. “We are current, and we feel like we’re part of the digital art community.”

At dinner, I sat next to a Prague-based collector of avant-garde Czech artists. At one point, he leaned over to tell me that many collectors at Art Basel don’t have time to dabble in the private market, so are prepared to pay the fair’s “inflated prices.” Ouch.

I considered meeting Daniel for a late-night drink, but with a panel to moderate at the Digital Art Mile the next morning, my better angels prevailed.

Wednesday, Second VIP Day 

DC: Sometimes the evening gets away from you. Usually that’s a bad thing, but on Wednesday—the second of Art Basel’s two VIP days—everything was coming up aces. I kicked things off with a low-key patio cocktail hour hosted by Independent Art Fair. We all but took over the outdoor space at Damatti Bar and Bistro, a short walk from the Messeplatz. It’s hard to say what was most impressive about the tiny Italian spot: the steady flow of Aperol and Select spritzes, or the massive fountain out front. Independent founder Elizabeth Dee floated around the patio, making introductions and connecting the right people, as any good fair founder should. It’s all about connections.

Later, I headed to the Tinguely Museum for a garden party celebrating the opening of Julian Charrière’s exhibition. Champagne, oysters, salmon tartare, and exceptionally green grass set the scene, along with a cheeky little table offering neat pours of Casa Dragones tequila. Not the usual beverage for chasing oysters—but it worked. After an hour of schmoozing and boozing, I took what I assumed would be a quick ride to the Vitra Design Museum to meet a friend. Vitra may be just a 12-minute drive from Tinguely, but it’s also across the border—in Germany.

As we passed through the checkpoint, I briefly wondered if I’d been duped and was about to be stranded in the Black Forest with a stomach full of shellfish. Thankfully, my friend isn’t evil, and Vitra was well worth the trip. The event had music festival vibes: smoke machines, thumping bass, and bean bag chairs scattered throughout the museum. If you got tired of dancing, you could recline among some of the best examples of furniture design known to man.

Then came the call every art reporter hopes for: an invite to Les Trois Rois, the famed Basel hotel where the art world’s upper echelon holds court. Kasmin gallery dealmaker Eric Gleason had a corner table. Did I want to join? Absolutely. Earlier that day, I’d made it to the Fondation Beyeler and floated down the Rhine—a classic Basel bucket list item. The hat trick was within reach, on my first trip to the city, no less.

There was a queue at the door—no surprise. I foolishly assumed that having an invite would allow me to skip it. So wrong. A bouncer, muscles bulging like a handful of walnuts in a balloon, looked me up and down and said flatly, “You can see your friend by waiting in the queue,” at which point I turned to dust and ceased to exist.

To the back of the line I went. Many others received the same icy treatment, including debonair dealer Emmanuel Di Donna, who specializes in Surrealist art, and at least 20 women dressed to the nines. (They weren’t together, but you’d be forgiven for thinking they were cast members of a new Real Housewives franchise.) I loathe waiting in lines, but luckily found a fellow New Yorker—art advisor Warren Winegar.

We whiled away the time chatting, and before we knew it, we were at the velvet rope. As I moved to pass, Walnuts dropped the rope and said, “Not yet, sir. Not yet.” Winegar, a true gentleman, stepped in: “Excuse me, he is with us. We are together and we’ll be going in together.” The big man crumbled, and in I went.

The hotel is as nice as you’ve heard. (Did you know they’ll charge your phone at the front desk?) All the rumors are true. It was Gatsby’s mansion on the Rhine. In the lobby, collectors clustered around tables showing each other pictures of their latest purchases. I slid into the corner booth. Hat trick achieved.

GN: The VIPs thinned quickly at the fair. After collecting second-day sales reports, I met American collector Jeff Magid in Art Basel’s sun-drenched courtyard. Magid is fond of comparing the art market to sports for his 41,700 Instagram followers. (With Hilde Lynn Helphenstein announcing her retirement as Jerry Gagosian, Magid has emerged as one of a few art world commentators angling to ascend the social media throne.)

Magid refused to entertain talk of slow sales being down to “global instability.” Instead, he argued, the real issue is that most dealers are still pricing both primary and secondary works far too high.

“People want good artworks at fair prices, and until that’s the norm—not the exception—many of the established buyers won’t buy as much, fewer new buyers will join, and sales will continue to be ‘slow,’” he said.

I skipped out for dinner at Zum Isaak, a restaurant overlooking the Rhine, with Amelia Redgrift, Pace’s chief communications and marketing officer; Artsy’s CEO, Jeff Yin; Brunswick Group’s art PR team; and Anna Maja Spiess, the founder of the cultural agency Upon Request. It was then a short hop to the anarchy of an overrun Basel Social Club—the upstart satellite fair held in a former bank in Grossbasel. I bumped into Politico reporter Carlo Martuscelli, who was working on a piece about Art Basel’s macroeconomics and the market’s geopolitical parallels. He’s a self-confessed numbers guy.

It was getting late. I was spent. But the night wasn’t over. Upon Request’s Spiess and Brunswick director Darrell Rocha kidnapped me and dragged me to the “Das Viertel” hot dogs and raclette techno party hosted by artist Julian Charrière on Strasse 81. I said hello to a merry Marc Spiegler, former head of Art Basel, as I slipped out not too much later.

Final note for future initiates: An invigorating early morning swim in the Rhine is a highly recommended hangover cure.

A universe away from the glitz and shine of the Messeplatz, the gritty and great Basel Social Club (BSC) has once again outmaneuvered the fair fatigue of Art Basel. It’s chaotic—and that’s not a bad thing. For its fourth edition, the rogue nonprofit exhibition platform has taken over a defunct private bank in Grossbasel, across the Rhine from Art Basel and around the corner from the Kunstmuseum. Here, more than 100 rooms have been reimagined as one living, breathing artwork. From blood banks to beauty salons, the former vaults now trade in irony and intimacy, blurring the line between luxury and necessity. What began as a one-off sideshow to the main fair is now Basel’s most vital counter-program. That it is free-entry (Art Basel charges a 69 CHF (around $70) admission fee for non-VIPs)—and unpredictable—makes it very much alive.

One thing that Basel Social Club shares with Art Basel is that they are both overwhelming. But this year’s BSC has gone the extra mile. The whole thing is very punk, and even at the main fair, where blue-chip works by Rothko, Picasso, and Baselitz are on offer, there are once again whispers that Basel Social Club is a must-see. There is art in every corner and every alcove. Sometimes, you have to walk over it, as is the case with a performance piece in which a dour-faced woman pushes a circa-1970s vacuum over carpets and rugs in every which room as she live streams from a phone perched on a selfie stick.

Three presentations are emblematic of the spirit of BSC. A joint effort by Harlesden High Street and Kendra Jayne Patrick, It’s a Whole Lotta Money (in this muf**er), is a fully functional Black hair salon redolent with the scent of shea butter; it highlights how spaces like these act as political forum, style hub, and cultural archive within various Black communities. Its juxtaposition with the buttoned-up architecture of Swiss discretion and generational wealth is striking.

The artists included in It’s a Whole Lotta Money deliver on the concept with wit and texture. Daniel Jasper’s hand-painted Ghanaian cinema posters face a smug 1978 Volksbank ad. Nearby, Africanus Okokon riffs on hairstyle posters with ghostly overlays of tribal scarification, while André Magaña offers a 3D-printed knockoff of a gold Cartier bracelet. Faisal Abdu’Allah anchors it all with his Barbershop: Live Salon performance where he is giving real haircuts and real talk in a vintage Swiss barber chair. While I was there a woman in her 80s was getting a trim while a younger man waited in line.

Another highlight is 1 ★ Review Tour by !mediengruppe bitnik, presented by Brussels-based gallery Super Dakota. It takes cheeky aim at the tyranny of online star-based review systems that increasingly dictate what’s worth seeing, eating, buying, or avoiding. Framed as a video essay, the work is viewed through either the headrest of a shiatsu massage chair or while sitting in a standard mechanical massage chair, inviting the viewer to relax while hearing about how “Building 1 of the Roche Tower in Basel is definitely the ugliest building in all of Switzerland.” At its best, 1 ★ Review Tour explores how platforms like Google and Yelp reduce complex places into numerical consensus, filtering the world through algorithmic value judgments that favor the measurable over the meaningful.

For its participation, Zurich-based gallery suns.works has chosen to make the most of the former bank by cracking open the vault—literally. Located in the building’s basement, Bijoux Solaires transforms this room made for hoarding and hiding away wealth into a glittering jewelry boutique where everything is for sale. Themed around the summer solstice, the offerings here come from seasoned jewelers as well as artists experimenting with adornment as medium. Among the antiques are jewelry once owned by Meret Oppenheim and Andy Warhol. The rings by artist Johanna Dahm are not to be missed. Each is made of one 20-gram gold bar from the former banking juggernaut Credit Suisse, expertly hollowed out with one round fired from a machine gun.

Basel Social Club isn’t the only alternative in Basel this week. Just a short walk from the Messeplatz is the June Art Fair, in a Herzog & de Meuron–renovated concrete bunker with a sharp, gallery-led program that’s as anti-spectacle as Basel gets. Founded in 2019 as a quieter counterpoint to the big fairs, June brings together an intergenerational roster of artists and dealers in a setting that favors conversation over commerce. The adjacent Landhof Community Garden adds a welcome dose of calm, making June a necessary breather—and one of the week’s most thoughtfully staged exhibitions.

This year, Clearing, which has gallery outposts in New York and Los Angeles, has decided to skip Art Basel and Liste altogether and opt for something more domestic with Maison Clearing, a sprawling takeover of a house at Bannwartweg 39, about 10 minutes from the Messeplatz. With works spread across interior rooms and a 10,000-square-foot garden, the gallery is staging its own satellite universe. Screenings in the attic, dinners on the lawn, and, like BSC, free admission make this one of the week’s smartest detours. Curated by Clearing’s newly appointed director of programming Olamiju Fajemisin, the project features more than 40 artists, including Sebastian Black, Violet Dennison, Tobias Kaspar, and Zak Kitnick. 

Basel has no shortage of offerings this week, from the main fair to the exhibitions at its top-tier institutions. But it’s the alternative venues, Basel Social Club in particular, that make the week that much livelier.

For decades, Art Basel in Switzerland was the only fair that mattered—the undisputed apex of the art market calendar. But in 2025, that certainty has splintered. With a bloated and chaotic global fair circuit and new contenders arriving every year (oh, hello Art Basel Qatar), even loyalists have started to ask: is Basel still top dog?

For the galleries that brought the right material, it would seem so. David Zwirner sold a sculpture by Ruth Asawa for $9.5 million and a Gerhard Richter painting for $6.8 million. Gladstone sold an untitled Keith Haring from 1983 for $3.5 million, while White Cube moved a Georg Baselitz for €2.2 million. Thaddaeus Ropac also did especially well, with a Baselitz going for over $2 million.

The top selling work, however, came not from a mega but London’s Annely Juda Fine Art, which reported selling David Hockney’s Mid November Tunnel (2006) for a price in the range of $13 million-$17 million.

This year, Art Basel, now in its 55th edition, opened under clear skies and heat—80 degrees Fahrenheit and climbing. For the 289 exhibitors participating, it’s the last chance to reframe a summer season defined by tepid auctions and cautious collecting.

In a soft, unpredictable market, the smart dealers have realized that the most effective strategy is to hedge their bets by casting a wide range of price points, periods of art history, and artistic styles. As art adviser Gabriela Palmieri put it, “Uncertainty in the world is mirrored by the uncertainty over what will motivate even the most discerning collectors. The response has turned Art Basel into a place where more really is more.”

Galleries that have previously relied on previews and multiple reserves (they still do) are now betting on volume and visibility as well. Robert Diamant, a partner at Carl Freedman Gallery in Kent, England, which isn’t showing at the fair this year, told ARTnews on the sidelines that collectors are increasingly snubbing more “academic works” rooted in art history in favor of “colorful things.”

Moody Rothko Steals the Show

Talk of the conflicts raging in Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, and Iran is hot on fair-goers’ lips, but that hasn’t deterred wealthy collectors from lounging in the fair’s sunbaked courtyard while sipping champagne and slurping back oysters. Art Basel is a bubble.

Was the heat making buyers lethargic? David Nolan, founder of his eponymous New York gallery, thought so. “It was a little slower than usual, however, business remains healthy overall,” he told ARTnews. “We’ve made some sales to new clients, though the majority have been to clients known to us.”

Hauser & Wirth, Switzerland being their home turf, naturally came out with force by headlining its booth with a hypnotic, moody Mark Rothko from the early 1960s. The painting wasn’t on any of the PDFs circulated by the gallery ahead of the fair. “There’s only so much you can see on a screen—nothing replaces the moment you stand in front of a work in real life,” Iwan Wirth, the gallery’s cofounder, told ARTnews.

The work, No. 6/Sienna, Orange on Wine (1962), was first shown in the 1964 exhibition that introduced Abstract Expressionism to Switzerland, “Bilanz Internationale Malerei seit 1950” at the Kunsthalle Basel, just on the other side of the Rhine from the Messeplatz. While the gallery wouldn’t share the price, works from this same year have sold for between $30 million and $50 million at auction in the last 20 years, including at Christie’s in 2022.

When asked if Basel’s Art Basel still has the sway it once did, Wirth gave a confident “yes,” adding that “a lot of people start collecting here because it’s a great introduction to the art world. It always has been.”

Many of the gallery’s mid-career stars—such as Rashid Johnson and Mark Bradford—are presenting new work that looks backward, toward early influences, modernist touchstones, and overlooked figures in art history. One of Johnson’s new “Quiet Paintings” revisits the material-heavy techniques of his earlier career—scraping and layering into thick surfaces, while tilting its hat to influences from art brut and Sigmar Polke. Titled Spectrum (2025), it sold for $1 million on Tuesday. The gallery also sold two works by Bradford for $3.5 million each, two George Condo’s for $2.45 million each, and a Louise Bourgeois for $1.9 million.

Hedging Bets, Alleviating Risk

Pace’s booth at Art Basel is organized with a deliberate split: fresh contemporary works are shown along the outer walls, while the gallery’s historical masterworks anchor the interior. The presentation spans a wide price range—from under $30,000 to a $30 million Picasso—making clear that the gallery is covering all corners of the market.

Among the contemporary highlights are Pam Evelyn’s Focal Length (2025), which sold for $85,000, and Kylie Manning’s Jetty (2025), bought for $115,000. Inside the booth, near the $30 million Picasso is a major Joan Mitchell, both works on reserve at the close of Art Basel’s first preview day.

Pace reported over strong first-day results, including Agnes Martin’s Untitled #5 (2002), which sold for over $4 million, and Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Anooralya – Yam Story (1994), which went for $450,000. Other key sales included Arlene Shechet’s Fictional First Person (2025), snapped up for $150,000 and Elmgreen & Dragset’s The Visitor (2025), sold to Leipzig’s G2 Kunsthalle for $300,000.

Pace’s least pricey offering was Li Hei Di’s artwork Triple Flood (2025), which sold for $28,000. Over at Marianne Boesky’s booth, prices started at a similar point. Boesky told ARTnews that she is “insulating” her booth from the “challenges impacting the secondary market” by offering “primary market material at attractive price points between $30,000 and $1.8 million.”

Gagosian, too, is casting a wide price net with a selection of works from roughly $30,000 to over $30 million. Its booth, curated by the Venice Biennale and MCA Chicago veteran Francesco Bonami, straddles secondary market gems and new works by Jadé Fadojutimi, John Currin, and Sarah Sze. These are hung next to notable pieces by Christo, Picasso, and a grisly Richard Avedon image of Andy Warhol’s mangled torso.

It would be absurd not to mention that the entrance to Gagosian’s booth has a retooled version of Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous Him (originally a kneeling Hitler effigy). For the reworked version, dated 2021, titled No, Cattelan has covered the dictator’s face with a paper bag, keeping his piously interlaced digits and infamous herringbone suit.

Brisk Sales and ‘Less Americans’

Thaddaeus Ropac reported brisk sales by early afternoon including James Rosenquist’s Playmate (1966), which sold for $1.8 million to a European institution; 1981’s Lipstick (Spread) by Robert Rauschenberg for $1.5 million; and Claire McCardell 9 (2022) by Alex Katz for $800,000. The gallery also sold three works by Baselitz including Hier jetzt hell, dort dunkel dunkel (2012) for €1.8 million, or about $2.07 million. (Baselitz, along with Lucio Fontana, will be the first two artists shown at Ropac’s new Milan gallery when it opens in September.)

David Zwirner had sold 68 works from its stand by 5 p.m. The most notable ones were a $9.5 million Asawa and a $6.8 million Richter, as well as two new works by Dana Schutz, which sold for $1.2 million and $850,000. Zwirner also has on offer a Richter that, according to a well-informed adviser, is priced at $28 million. (A Zwirner rep said the gallery is not disclosing the price of that artwork.)

Over at White Cube’s booth, shortly after the first groups of collectors had entered the Messe, a stern Jay Jopling, the gallery’s founder, told ARTnews it was “a bit early to reveal any prices, but we’ve already sold loads of stuff.” They included David Hammons’s Untitled (2012) and Red Birds (2022) by Cai Guo-Qiang. Jopling declined to disclose prices.

The gallery’s global sales director, Daniela Gareh, later told ARTnews that “it’s been a strong first day—we’re particularly pleased with the institutional placement of several key works.” They include three editions of Danh Vo’s In God We Trust (2025) that went for $250,000 each. Two were sold before the fair kicked off and another on Tuesday. Guo-Qiang’s Red Birds went to an unnamed European institution for $1.2 million.

Mathieu Paris, the gallery’s global sales director, told ARTnews that “there are definitely less Americans at the fair this year.”

White Cube also sold a Baselitz portrait of the artist’s wife made in 2023 for 2.2 million euros, a large-scale work by Tracey Emin for over $1 million, and an acrylic on canvas painting by the late Sam Gilliam for $975,000.

‘Great Atmosphere’

Art Basel’s CEO Noah Horowitz said this year’s edition felt more focused—less party chatter, more serious engagement with the art itself. He pointed to a broader generational and geographic mix on the fair floor, and noted that for younger collectors, Basel remains “a rite of passage” regardless of what anyone says. Basel’s bid to stay culturally relevant while navigating a market in flux can be seen clearly in the Unlimited sector. Once dominated by older European men, now reflects a wider range of perspectives, Horowitz said, from American artists like Diane Arbus, Lorna Simpson, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres to artists from Lebanon, Greece, and Russia.

Andreas Gegner, a senior director at Sprüth Magers, told ARTnews that “we are having a fantastic first day at the fair—the atmosphere is great.” The gallery’s sales included Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (WAR TIME, WAR CRIME), from 2025, for $650,000; HORIZON. Shortness of Breath (2025) by Sterling Ruby for $350,000; and Rosemarie Trockel’s Golden Brown (2005) for $850,000.  

Not all works were flying off the shelves, though. It was tougher going for Mazzoleni Gallery, with spaces in London and Turin, which was struggling to find a buyer for a shredded Lucio Fontana made out of copper titled Concetto spaziale (1962). In fact, the gallery, which is displaying a selection of Italian masters, was still waiting to confirm a deal, but said there had been “lots of interest.”

(Mazzoleni later confirmed that it sold two neon works by Marinella Senatore for $65,000 each on Wednesday, and another of her works for $80,000 plus three Salvo paintings ranging from $100,000 to $350,000 each on Thursday.)

Ashkan Baghestani, Sotheby’s vice president and head of sale, told ARTnews that “if you look around the fair, there’s obviously still a lot of wealth in the world, despite what’s going on.”

He continued, “The May sales were really positive for us, all the small collections we had did well, anything under $2 million did super well. There was depth of bidding, records for artists, quality of property, so I think this brings positivity going into Art Basel.” He added that he’s looking forward to seeing how Art Basel’s new fair in Doha plays out in February. “I’m excited. It’s smaller, very well curated, it will be interesting.”

Louise Hayward, a London-based partner at Lisson Gallery, told ARTnews that Art Basel “still represents the climax of the year for us.” By midday, the gallery’s confirmed sales included Dalton Paula’s Xica Manicongo (2025) for $200,000, Lee Ufan’s Response (2025) for $850,000, and Olga de Amaral’s Lienzos C y D (2015) for an undisclosed sum.

ARTnews asked a despondent Kenny Schachter, the artist and Artnet News columnist, if he thought the fair had lost any gravitas over the last few years. “I measure my life by how many Art Basels I have left, so if I go by the ‘Gagosian scale,’ I’d say I have about 17 remaining, and it’s not getting any better—it needs more vitality,” he said, noting that Basel Social Club, a startup fair a 20-minute walk from the Messeplatz, had “invigorated me. You want to see new ways of thinking. The art world is the most staunchly conservative industry, nothing prepared me for how backward-looking it is. It’s so resistant to change, and that’s disappointing.”

So, did Basel’s first VIP day mark a rebound, a reprieve, or a launch of a new maximalist strategy? Depends on who you ask—and how much they sold.

For two years, Adam Chinn, former chief operating officer at Sotheby’s, has been quietly building the boutique art lending firm, International Art Finance with funding and support from members of the Nahmad family. In a recent interview with ARTnews, Chinn revealed that firm has now disbursed nearly $400 million in loans and it is on track to reach $500 million before the end of 2025.

Chinn is the latest art industry veteran to take a stab at art loans. Last fall, half a dozen similarly sized art lenders told ARTnews that business was booming despite high interest rates.

IAF claims an edge over competitors in scale and speed: Chinn said loans can be disbursed in 10 days and its typical loan-to-value ratio is around 50 percent, though he says they’ve gone higher in cases involving exceptional collateral. The firm offers short-term loans—usually six to twelve months—designed to bridge liquidity needs around sales, estate planning, or business operations.

The firm’s average loan size is around $8 million, with a few deals exceeding $40 million. Clients range from blue-chip collectors to artist estates and mid-sized galleries. Chinn said the split between private collectors and trade clients is roughly even.

But IAF’s real differentiator may be its funding source—the billionaire Nahmad family, prolific collectors and dealers of ultra blue-chip art.

The Nahmads are not only backing the firm but also conducting valuations on the artworks internally—a fact that has drawn some scrutiny, given their deep involvement in the market. Still, Chinn insists IAF operates as a separate entity: “Separate legal entities, separate processes,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on in their other business.” Additionally, Chinn said IAF had recently secured a credit facility with a major European bank, increasing the firm’s lending power.

Asked whether IAF’s in-house connection to the Nahmad family might present a conflict in the case of a loan default, Chinn responded: “As a creditor we owe a duty of good faith and fair dealing to the borrower. As a result, we have so far taken works to auction when there has been an issue with payment.”

IAF’s loans are non-recourse, meaning the artwork itself—not the borrower’s balance sheet—is the collateral. The firm conducts standard Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks, but does not evaluate a client’s broader financial standing. “If it turns out you’re not a sanctioned individual and the artwork checks out, we’ll lend,” said Chinn.

In the firm’s press release, Joe Nahmad positioned IAF as a natural extension of the family’s decades-long role in building collections for top clients. “International Art Finance is the final piece of the puzzle,” he said, describing the platform as one that supports collectors, dealers, and estates “at every stage of the collecting journey.”

IAF did announce on Tuesday that it has secured an additional $125 million in financing from a unspecified but “leading” European bank.

It’s clear that the Nahmads’ involvement has helped the firm scale up quickly. By contrast, it has taken The Fine Art Group—a longtime player in the field—nine years to disburse roughly $400 million in loans. However, Philip Hoffman, TFAG’s founder, told ARTnews that it expects to reach the $1 billion mark within three years. He added that his firm is funded by a pool of investors, whereas IAF is “linked to one family who can pull [funding] at any time,”

“We’re neutral,” he added. “We don’t have conflicts. We sell through whoever will do the best job for the client.”

Other players in the art finance space include Sotheby’s Financial Services, which since its launch in 1988 has originated more than $10 billion in loans across 70 categories, including fine art, automobiles, jewelry, whisky, and wine. In April, the auction house announced a $700 million securitization deal known as the Sotheby’s ArtFi Master Trust, aimed at scaling its lending operations. Major financial institutions such as Bank of America also offer art-backed loans, though terms vary widely depending on the borrower’s overall profile and broader banking relationship.

Like many art lenders, Chinn sees the sector as one primed for growth. Such lending has become a more prominent part of the financialization of the market, with institutions and individuals increasingly treating art less as a sacred object and more as an asset—often a highly illiquid one.

“There’s over a trillion dollars in art in private hands, and only a sliver of that is leveraged,” Chinn said. “People borrow against houses every day. Why not art?”

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.”