To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
SORRY, NOT SORRY. Newly revealed text messages and emails shed more light on what happened before University of North Texas (UNT) leaders decided to cancel an anti-ICE exhibition by Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez. Adam Schrader reports for Urgent Matter that the communications, obtained through a public records request, show school president Harrison Keller and provost Michael McPherson initially believed they could manage “any barking from Austin” over the show’s cancellation and at first considered removing only a selection of works. Instead, they ultimately opted to pull the exhibition entirely from the university’s College of Visual Arts and Design (CVAD), a move that sparked student protests and accusations of censorship. ARTnews previously reported on leaked transcripts from a faculty meeting suggesting the decision was an “institutional directive,” driven by concerns the university could become a target for elected officials. In one particularly cold calculation, CVAD dean Karen Hutzel advised gallery director Stefanie Dlugosz-Action on how to break the news to the artist, recommending a “personalized greeting that does not express regret or an apology.”
BILLIONS IN MODEST SALES. The annual Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report is out, and the market appears to be clawing its way back, with signs of modest growth, reports ARTnews’ Daniel Cassady. Global sales in 2025 reached a not-so-modest $59.6 billion, according to figures compiled by economist Clare McAndrew of Art Economics. That marks a 4 percent increase from the previous year, though the market still hasn’t recovered to its 2022 peak. Auctions staged a strong rebound, while galleries continued to lag. Much of the growth was driven by a small number of trophy sales by historically established artists, particularly in New York. The news was less encouraging for living artists: the Postwar and Contemporary category fell 2 percent, while Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art jumped 47 percent and Old Masters rose 30 percent.
The Digest
A lost page of the medieval manuscript including the writings of Greek mathematician Archimedes has been discovered in France’s Museum of Fine Arts in Blois. [Scientific American]
MPs and scholars say it is unethical and sacrilegious for UK Museums to hold human remains in their collections. [ARTnews]
Artist Lauren Halsey hasopened a monumental sculpture park in South-Central LA, titled “sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles,” on the corner of Western Ave. and 76th Street. [The Los Angeles Times]
Vancouver real-estate developer and philanthropist Bob Rennie and his family have donated 24 works by four artists to the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). They include Kerry James Marshall, Christopher Williams, Brian Jungen, and Jin-me Yoon. [press release]
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden has won this year’s Tefaf Museum Restoration Fund (TMRF), for its work restoring The Boar Hunt (1616-18) by Peter Paul Rubens. [The Art Newspaper]
The Kicker
NEXT OF COIN. Who inherits an artist’s estate when there’s no will, an estranged family, or the institutions and advocates who helped shepherd the work into art history? The New York Times tells the story of American photographer Mike Disfarmer, who renounced his family during his lifetime (1884-1959). Decades later, beginning in the 1970s, his stark portraits drew critical acclaim, and with it, significant market value. That’s when distant relatives stepped in, suing the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts to reclaim much of his life’s work. The museum argued it had spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” restoring and preserving the fragile negatives, many of which were already deteriorating. In the end, the courts sided with Disfarmer’s cousins, awarding them rights to the archive, copyright, and the artist’s legacy. How they will care for it—and what Disfarmer himself might have thought—remains an open question.
