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The Headlines




SURPRISES.  There were unexpected fireworks at an auction at  Osenat   near Paris, where a  tianqiuping -style Chinese vase flew beyond its €2,000 (about $1,970) estimate— and just kept going , the  Guardian  reports. Some 30 bidders vied for the porcelain, apparently believing it to be a rare example dating to the 18th century, and the winner agreed to spend €9.12 million ($9.01 million). After the sale, a director at the house said, “Our expert still thinks it’s not old.” In Israel, archaeologists working in a nature reserve  found 44 gold coins  from the Byzantine Empire that date to the seventh century,  BBC News  reports. And at a convent south of Mexico City,  wall paintings with Indigenous iconography  were uncovered beneath lime plaster in chapels, suggesting that “Spanish priests not only altered their church architecture to accommodate the large number of Indigenous converts, but also allowed masons to paint pre-Hispanic designs on the walls,” the  Associated Press  reports.




THE CURRENT EDITION OF SONSBEEK,  the storied outdoor sculpture survey in Arnhem, Netherlands, opened in 2020 and is scheduled to run until 2024, but its organizers said that  they will quit on November 1 , in response to working conditions that are “precarious and ultimately unbearable,”  Artforum  reports. A letter from the show’s artistic director,  Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung  , and its co-curators, to its board cites sexism, institutional racism, financing issues, and other matters. Expressing regret about the planned resignations, the board said that it would not reply to the letter in the press and would speak to the team privately.




The Digest




FRENCH DISPATCH.  There were a bounty of art connections in  Stella McCartney ’s Monday show for  Paris Fashion Week , the  Associated Press  reports:  Yoshitomo Nara collaborated on the clothes , it was staged outside the  Centre Pompidou , and  Jeff Koons  stopped by. Elsewhere in town, artist  Shuang Li created an installation and a video  for  Miu Miu  ’s display on Tuesday. This past weekend,  Santiago Sierra  offered  a muddy runway  for  Balenciaga ’s presentation,  Alex Greenberger  reports in  ARTnews .




King Charles  has loaned a 2001 portrait of his mother by painter  Lucian Freud  to the  National Gallery  in London. In other royal news: Ethiopia has renewed its call for the return of a holy tablet held at Westminster Abbey that was looted by British forces in 1868, a repatriation that may require the monarch’s approval.  [The Art Newspaper]




The  Orange County Museum of Art ’s new $94 million home in Costa Mesa, California, opens October 8, and this past weekend it hosted a gala to mark the occasion. The dress code was “utopian black tie”;  Michelle Groskopf  took vivid photos of the revelers.  [Los Angeles Times]




Architect  Nader Tehrani , whose firm,  NADAAA , is renovating the ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot art galleries at the  Metropolitan Museum of Art  in New York, answered “21 Questions” for  Curbed . What is the best view in the city? “From the left side of a plane as you’re going southbound over Central Park,” he said.    [Curbed]




Working in the Peloponnese in Greece, archaeologists have been unearthing  Iklaina , a 32-acre Bronze Age site of Mycenaean civilization more than 3,000 years ago. Their finds include elegant bowls and intriguing sculptures.  [The New York Times]




Mr. Doodle , aka  Sam Cox , the artist who has seen prices for his doodle-filled artwork soar at auction, has spent the past three years doodling all over a home he bought three years ago in Tenterden, England. Now he has invited the media inside, sharing this horror vacui with all of us.  [BBC News ,  People ,  The Times of London]




The Kicker




CHILD STAR. Anderson Cooper  is a  CNN  anchor, a  Vanderbilt , a  60 Minutes  correspondent, an art collector, and—wait for it!—the subject of a  Diane Arbus  photograph now on view in an Arbus show at  David Zwirner  in New York. Cooper recently  paid a visit to the gallery , and the  New Yorker ’s  Fred Kaplan  tagged along. When not shooting newborns, Arbus was of course famous for snapping unusual, marginal figures. “They’re all interesting characters,” Cooper told the magazine of his fellow models. “My goal is always to lead an interesting life. I got a good kick start. To be a small piece of it—it’s cool.  [The New Yorker]