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The Headlines
HONG KONG TEMP CHECK. Ahead of Art Basel Hong Kong opening this week, in a piece for ARTnews, Ilaria Maria Sala analyzes the factors impacting the region’s art market. Despite “shaky” confidence in light of moderate 2.6 percent GDP growth, China’s slowing economy, sluggish auction sales, and US tariffs on Chinese goods, hopes remain high that the Hong Kong art market will remain resilient this week. The offerings at museums, galleries, and more off-the-beaten path spaces seem strong, too. Also in ARTnews, Hok-hang Cheung spotlights eight under-the-radar shows to see this week in Hong Kong. Since the Covid-era lockdowns, “Hong Kong’s art scene has been through a crash course in survival,” Cheung writes. This year’s slate of events is poised to “dazzle collectors as they swoop into the city.”
Related Articles
LAUND(E)RY LIST. Nearly 50 UK art businesses were listed for failing to comply with new money laundering regulations, according to the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), reports the Art Newspaper. They include galleries such as Opera and Carl Kostyál, along with a fundraising campaign led by White Cube . As a result, the listed businesses were fined penalties averaging between about $3,000 and nearly $17,000. Speaking anonymously, one dealer said they felt “punished for being honest” with authorities. An HMRC spokesperson defended the policy, saying, “We’re here to support businesses to protect themselves from criminals who would exploit their services. That includes taking action against the minority who fail to fulfill their obligations under the money laundering regulations.”
The Digest
A newly announced British Museum trustee, historian Tiffany Jenkins, is vocally opposed to returning the institution’s Elgin Marbles to Greece. Her past work includes a book called Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums… and Why They Should Stay There. [The Guardian]
The Nordic Pavilion, the Venice Biennale presentation of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, has announced its artists to represent the region in 2026. They include Benjamin Orlow, Tori Wrånes, and Klara Kristalova. Anna Mustonen, of the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, will curate the exhibition. [Monopol Magazine]
Starting this month, in an effort to control crowds, Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art has placed a time limit of three hours on visits, starting this month. The measure has already proven controversial. [Le Journal des Arts]
An Italian art expert has changed the attribution of a painting he spotted in the Musée de la Chartreuse in northern France, saying that it is in fact a work by Renaissance painter Lavinia Fontana. The painting, titled Portrait of a Gentleman, his Daughter and Servant, was long attributed to Flemish painter Pieter Pourbus. [South China Morning Post and AFP]
Archaeologists have uncovered the existence of a large, circular stone ceremonial platform dating back 3,700 years, to the Bronze Age. Located in Farley Wood in Derbyshire, it only exists today as a single 6.6-foot-tall stone, but researchers were recently able to demonstrate that there once other stones alongside it. [BBC]
The Kicker
DECODING ART DECO. One hundred years after Art Deco’s birth, have we forgotten how the movement “unwittingly served to conceal the horrors of colonialism,” misusing the term in ways that obscures what it once meant? Edward Denison mulls the question in a Dezeen article about how Art Deco once meant something very different. Today, he argues, the style has benefited from a “romantic nostalgia” for architecture that appears modern. He writes that Art Deco is “inherently, fervently, and often violently entwined” with a less rosy past, and that to deny this “undermines our understanding of history.”