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THE HEADLINES
CHRISTIE’S FALL CURTAIN RAISER. Christie’s opened New York’s fall marquee auctions on Monday with an energetic doubleheader that drew a full house of collectors and advisers, ARTnews reports. The evening took $690 million with fees across 79 lots, sailing past the pre-sale low estimate of $534.7 million and landing just slightly below the $731.5 million high estimate. At least a dozen works ignited intense bidding wars. The night began with the Robert and Patricia Ross Weiss sale, featuring 18 prime works from the late supermarket executive’s collection. Spanning Cubism through Abstract Expressionism, the selection included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Mark Rothko. This offering represented only a fraction of the Weiss material heading to auction, with more than 60 additional lots scheduled for later sales. A 62-lot 20th-century sale followed, showcasing further works by Matisse, Picasso, Alexander Calder, David Hockney, Marc Chagall, and Alberto Giacometti. Altogether, the evening total marked a 41 percent jump from May’s auctions. Christie’s reported a strong sell-through rate of 97 percent by value and 96 percent by lot. Only one lot was withdrawn and three failed to sell, despite active competition throughout.
SPERONE WESTWATER TO CLOSE. Christie’s strong showing gives hope that the market is on the road to recovery, but any resurgence looks like it arrived too late for one of New York’s stalwart galleries, Sperone Westwater. It is closing after 50 years, Artnet News reports. Known for propelling artists such as Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, and Francesco Clemente to international prominence, its final exhibition is the current show devoted to Long, the British sculptor who has exhibited with the gallery more than a dozen times. In a statement, the gallery said it will cease operations on December 31 as co-founders Angela Westwater and Gian Enzo Sperone will “pursue separate endeavors,” and thanked the many people who contributed to its success. It will still appear at Art Basel Miami Beach next month. Rumors of the closure surfaced last week and were confirmed on Monday. Founded in 1975 in SoHo as Sperone Westwater Fischer, the gallery debuted with a Carl Andre exhibition and soon presented shows by Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, and Brice Marden. In the 1980s, it became a hub for Neo-Expressionism and Italy’s transavanguardia, showing Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia, and Enzo Cucchi alongside Susan Rothenberg.
THE DIGEST
The 2026 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong will feature 240 galleries from 42 countries and territories, a slight change from last year’s 242. The fair will run from March 27 to 29 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, with previews on March 25 and 26. [ARTnews]
A bible considered a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance art and described as the “Mona Lisa of illuminated manuscripts” is now on show in Rome. [The Art NewspaperThe Art Newspaper]
Marina Abramović’s 2010 MoMA performance The Artist Is Present is often regarded as a pinnacle of her career, yet the artist recently disclosed that the museum initially doubted the project’s viability. Speaking on the Louis Theroux Podcast, Abramović said a MoMA curator warned her that “nobody has time” for the work, which ultimately became one of her most celebrated pieces. The performance involved Abramović sitting silently across from visitors each day for three months, drawing massive crowds and cementing its place in contemporary art history. [Artsy News]
On November 28, the Qatar Foundation will launch the Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum dedicated to the life and work of artist Maqbool Fida Husain. [Arch Daily]
The Kicker
A MUSEUM ON PLEASURE ISLAND? In 1958, developer Sol Atlas envisioned a radically different future for Ellis Island, one he hoped to rename Pleasure Island, the New York Times reports. His proposal aimed to convert the former immigration station into a leisure destination featuring a 600-room hotel, tennis courts, a museum, a language school for immigrants, and a marina complete with a “boat-in cinema.” An architect’s rendering by Raniero Corbelletti showed immaculate buildings surrounding a tree-lined harbor, with boats dotting the water and the skyline of Lower Manhattan rising in the distance. The image is one of several unrealized waterfront schemes preserved in The New York Times’s archives, highlighting how New York’s waterways offered the kind of expansiveness the city lacked on land. Atlas repeatedly raised his bid for the island, from $201,000 to more than $1 million, but the federal government rejected each offer. As architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable later noted, New York has a long history of “defaulted dreams.” Another example surfaced in 1966, when the City Planning Commission proposed a sweeping remake of Lower Manhattan, including pedestrianized corridors and waterfront plazas along the East and Hudson Rivers. A compromise plan under Mayor John Lindsay and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller introduced a multi-level mini-city with housing, offices, and retail, but the project collapsed after an office-space downturn undermined its financial viability.
