Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
Happy Thursday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week.
- Thaddaeus Ropac to Open New York Project Space: The gallery also hired Emilio Steinberger as a senior director in the US. Steinberger was previously a senior partner at Lévy Gorvy Dayan.
- Hauser & Wirth Takes On Conny Maier: The German-born, Portugal-based artist joins the gallery in collaboration with Société in Berlin.
- Zippora Elders Tahalele Appointed Director of Nederlands Fotomuseum: The curator will lead the museum’s strategic and artistic direction starting April 13. She will join a dual-board leadership structure alongside a yet-to-be-appointed business director.
- Tulsa Artist Fellowship Announces 2026–28 Cohort: Ten artists and arts workers across disciplines will each receive over $230,000 in funding, housing, and resources to live and work in Tulsa as part of the program’s three-year residency.
- ADAA Appoints Four New Board Members: Elizabeth Feld, Bridget Moore, Yancey Richardson, and Melissa Timarchi join the board of the organization, which represents over 200 art galleries.
Big Number: $19.6 M.
That was the total with fees for Sotheby’s second-ever sale in Saudi Arabia. Held on Saturday, “Origins II” featured 61 lots, with a healthy mix of artists from the Kingdom, from the region, and from the West. The cumulative total was comfortably above the $11.7 million–$16.6 million presale estimate. The top result went to Pablo Picasso’s Paysage (1965), which sold for $1.6 million, well under its $2 million–$3 million estimate. The other works in the sale fared better, with Safeya Binzagr’s Coffee Shop in Madina Road selling for $2.1 million, more than ten times its $200,000 high estimate, and setting a new record for a Saudi artist
Read This
With Art Basel Qatar’s first edition fully underway, why not hear directly from the Gulf nation’s power players? In the Financial Times, Jan Dalley speaks with Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, chair of Qatar Museums and a major collector. Al-Thani notes that Art Basel was not the first fair to approach Qatar, but that the timing hadn’t been right until now. This week’s launch, she says, marks “the next phase of our cultural strategy”—though she urged galleries to keep prices in check. “I don’t want art that’s too expensive, that people won’t want to buy,” she said. “We want to gradually build the knowledge of art as an asset.” For a chaser, Puck’s Dan Duray interviews the fair’s artistic director, artist Wael Shawky, who says he was drawn to the role by Art Basel’s commitment to creating something unique to the Gulf rather than replicating its models in Paris or Miami. —Harrison Jacobs, Executive Digital Editor
