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- The Financial Times has argued that billionaire wealth, not artistic value, is driving modern art’s astronomical prices.
- Ex-Pussy Riot member Rita Flores said Russia’s FSB tried to recruit her as an informant in 2023.
- A Kehinde Wiley painting has been removed from the American Embassy in the Dominican Republic for being “too woke.”
The Headlines
MONEY OVER ART. The Financial Times has argued that the astronomical prices of top modernist paintings are less about intrinsic artistic value than wealth, scarcity, and the concentration of buying power among billionaires. Works once regarded as marginal or difficult have been transformed into ultra-expensive trophies as wealthy collectors compete for a limited supply of canonical art. The result is a market where price itself reinforces status: the more expensive a painting becomes, the more desirable it can be to the ultra-rich. The broader point is that extreme wealth has reshaped the art market, turning certain modernist works into financial and social assets as much as cultural objects. As Sotheby’s Europe chair Oliver Barker put it: “A billionaire class with deep, deep pockets is now pursuing names as if they are brands.”
RED SPARROW. In an interview with exiled Russian news channel that Port Media published on Monday, former Pussy Riot member Rita Flores, real name Margarita Konovalova, said Russia’s FSB tried to recruit her as an informant in 2023, threatening her family and pressuring her to report on other artists. Flores alleges she was ordered to target anti-Kremlin artists, including street artist Philippenzo and performance artist Pavel Krisevich, and claims she was offered 3 million rubles ($35,000) to lure Pussy Riot co-founder Pyotr Verzilov to Serbia, where Russian agents planned to abduct and kill him. Flores says she ultimately escaped Russia with help from her lawyer.
The Digest
Eight costumes spanning the career of the late Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury, are going on display at the V&A in London. [Guardian]
Taylor Swift was interviewed at the Grammy Museum in LA, and she opened up about her “country roots.” [Billboard]
V&A staff have voted overwhelmingly for strike action, with 95 percent backing walkouts over pay and working conditions. [Museum Association]
Newly appointed peer Ruth Mackenzie is reportedly set to oversee the UK culture ministry’s relationship with museums, libraries and Arts Council England. [The Art Newspaper]
The Kicker
TOO WOKE? The New York Times reported that the US State Department has removed Kehinde Wiley’s painting Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 (2013) from the American Embassy in the Dominican Republic, with officials branding it “woke” and “aesthetically terrifying.” They also indicated that they may sell it. Commissioned with public money in 2013, the painting depicts four Dominican art students. The move marks a dramatic reversal for the Art in Embassies program, which awarded Wiley its Medal of Arts in 2015 and commissioned the work as cultural diplomacy. Critics say its removal contradicts the program’s founding mission and longstanding curatorial principles.
