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The Headlines
ARTISTS PROTEST SABSABI CANCELATION. Artists who represented Australia at the Venice Biennale have called for the reinstatement of Khaled Sabsabi as the country’s pick for the 2026 event after he was dropped, reports The Guardian. A host of artists signed an open letter to the board and chief executive of Creative Australia, which organizes the country’s Venice pavilion. Signatories include Imants Tillers, Mike Parr, Susan Norrie, Fiona Hall, Judy Watson, Patricia Piccinini, and Tracey Moffat. “We strongly protest the removal of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino as the artistic team for the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026,” states the letter. “To strip the chosen artistic team of this opportunity is unacceptable. Indeed it signals a fundamental disregard for the role of artists in our society – especially by the very institution meant to defend them.” On Tuesday, Creative Australis is set to appear before a Senate hearing.
PAINTINGS AS EVIDENCE IN ALLEGED CORRUPTION. Claude Guéant, an aide to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has been accused of attempting to cover up a €500,000 ($523,962) bribe from the late Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi through fake art sales, reports The Art Newspaper. Guéant has claimed the suspicious cash was simply raised from selling two landscape paintings by Flemish artist Andries van Eertvelt, but prosecutors have presented evidence allegedly showing Christie’s sold the two artworks for less than €20,000 back in 1990. Their findings come amid the ongoing trial of Sarkozy, over accusations he also benefited from as much as €50 million ($52 million) in illegal financing from the Libyan government to underwrite his 2007 electoral campaign. Guéant also served as Sarkozy’s interior minister and now faces accusations of negotiating an alleged bribery between Sarkozy and Qaddafi. He denies all wrongdoing.
The Digest
The Great Wall of China is 300 years older than once believed, according to the discovery of a new section of the monument, that also sheds new light on its construction and function. High tech dating methods have shown the previously unknown section of the wall dates from between 1046 BCE to 771 BCE, during the late Western Zhou Dynasty. [Artnet News]
The studio led by Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh was selected as the winner of an international competition to renovate the British Museum’s Western Range galleries in London. Lina Ghotmeh Architecture was the “unanimous favorite” from a shortlist of five contenders for the renovation project that is part of the museum’s wider “transformation masterplan.” [Dezeen]
Sexualized paintings of queer priests and nuns by Fabián Cháirez, on view in Mexico City, has sparked anger from religious and right-wing groups, who accuse the artist of “Christianophobia.” The exhibition, “La Venida del Señior” [The coming of the Lord], is on view at the Academia de San Carlos Centro Historico, which is part of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). [Hyperallergic]
An Egon Schiele watercolor titled Boy in a Sailor Suit, said to have been looted by Nazis, heads to auction at Christie’s in London with a low estimate of $1.3 million. The proceeds of any sale will be shared with the heirs of its former owner, the Viennese cabaret performer Fritz Grünbaum, who was killed in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. [The New York Times]
The legal heirs of the late American artist Dan Graham are vexed over the dismantling of two of his public artworks in the French towns of Nantes and La Rochelle. [Le Monde]
The Kicker
BLACK COLLECTORS STEPPED IN WHERE INSTITUTIONS DIDN’T. Architectural Digest is highlighting how 15 Black collectors are “changing the art world” in a piece coinciding with Black History Month — itself an event that has taken on new urgency amid a presidential attack on DEI programs. “For many Black art collectors, the home doubles as a gallery,” writes reporter Charlotte Collins. “Not just because our interiors are where we keep our most valued possessions, but, as artist and curator Jessica Gaynelle Moss explains, because ‘we didn’t have space otherwise.’ Historically, in the absence of institutional respect for Black artistry, domestic spaces were some of the only venues available for exhibition. ‘We weren’t allowed to show in museums or galleries as artists, let alone [exhibit the pieces of] collectors who wanted to support Black artists,’ she says. ‘The only spaces we could see and find each other were our homes.’”
