Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 9 2026

I was the only member of the international press trip to Maze Art Gstaad. Since the format is quite exciting, here is a little more than the usual link to Artmagazine: "The timing couldn't be better. Nor could it be worse. The Rosey Long Weekend brings the alumni of what is probably the most prestigious (and most expensive) boarding school in the world, the Institut Le Rosey, to Gstaad. It's hard to imagine a better audience for the small boutique fair Art Gstaad with its only around 40 exhibitors. On the other hand, this means fully booked hotels and exorbitant prices. However, this is not a tragedy, as additional collectors or even curators are not essential to the success of the event. The concentration of wealth at the vernissage on February 19 is likely to exceed that of Tefaf. The field of exhibitors is also quite exclusive.

Sotheby's is tightening the price screw, reports Carlie Porterfield in the Art Newspaper (possibly paywall): "Under the terms of Sotheby's new fee structure, the buyer's premium for sales in New York is increasing from 27% on lots priced at or above $1m to 28% for all works sold for hammer prices up to and including $2m (£1.5m in London). The medium-tier buyer's premium will remain 22% of the hammer price but will be applied to lots sold for $2m-$8m (£1.5m-£6m in London). Previously, the medium-tier rate applied to lots with hammer prices between $1m and $8m (or £800,000 and £6m). The buyer's fee for the most valuable works, which hammer at more than $8m (£6m), will remain 15%. A spokesperson for Sotheby's declined to comment on the changes to the house's fee structure.

George Nelson raises the intriguing question of what will become of auction houses when the luxury segment overtakes the art sector in Artnews: “Given that Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips trade heavily on their cultural authority in fine art, I asked [former Christie's CEO Guillaume] Cerutti if a luxury-led revenue model risks diluting that perception. ”A stronger contribution from luxury does not dilute cultural authority,“ he said. ”It reinforces the houses' role at the intersection of art, connoisseurship, heritage, and global wealth." [Former Sotheby's CEO Tad] Smith agreed, but said the houses should expand into the luxury market carefully to maintain their cultural prestige: “I think [the Big Three] are much too smart to abandon their position in the cultural zeitgeist... and so I would expect them to be judicious and clever in how they add luxury items.” Jo Vickery, the former head of Sotheby's Russian department, was more cautious. “The luxury pivot may be very profitable—the real question is at what cost,” she told ARTnews."

Kate Brown at Artnet believes that derivative betting on art could become a new trend on the Polymarket platform: "As the big auction houses chase similar single-sale auctions as the Leonard Lauder sale in 2026, I will keep refreshing the page at Polymarket. Will a bet emerge for the Venice Biennale Golden Lion this year? Probably not. But I do not think that the art world is beyond getting ensnared here. What’s more, there are signs that Polymarket is interested in expanding its remit into a more cultural realm of, well, so-called “culture.”

Its newest move is a partnership with Substack, a clear signal that the platform has ambitions to be scraping fees off of more intellectual and elite cultural arenas of the internet. For an art industry that spent at least a decade flirting with hyper-financialization, and where semi-affordable (let's call that art $1 million and under) paintings are now no longer working as speculative tools, the temptation will be real. We know betting energy works well in this space. What I wager, then, is that it will reenter in its purest form: total abstraction."

Ursula Scheer describes the role of art in the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and financial investor Leon Black for the FAZ (paywall): The ‘Black Art Foundation’ was to be located in the state of Delaware, a US tax haven. The documents do not reveal whether it ever came into being. However, they do show how intensively Epstein, who was well versed in tax avoidance, estate planning, and wealth accumulation—for which art deals are ideally suited—was involved in Black's collection business. In business terms, art was an asset for Epstein that allowed him to operate in the circles of the rich, powerful, and those who considered themselves untouchable but were susceptible to blackmail. It was part of the vast behind-the-scenes maneuvering that enabled his crimes to take place. What Black's collection looked like is therefore irrelevant. The focus must be on who knew what and who did what in Epstein's network."

Jonathan Guggenberger has meticulously researched for the Süddeutsche Zeitung how parts of the anti-Zionist art scene, which officially reject any cooperation with German institutions because of the state's solidarity with Israel, are very much willing to accept funding from that very same state: "Further cases from the movement show how little the freedom of Strike Germany supporters is actually threatened – it is even defended. [...] Similarly, in February 2025, the two curators supporting Strike Germany, Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung and Tobi Haslett, appeared at the Transmediale, with Cheung curating the program. The art festival is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation with €700,000 per edition and provided with venues by the Ministry of State for Culture and the Berlin Cultural Administration. [...] Haslett spoke on stage about the “climate of censorship” and promoted Strike Germany as the only way out. To formally comply with his boycott, he donated his fee to 3ezwa (formerly Berlin Legal Fund), a platform for Gaza fundraisers and legal aid against anti-Semitism lawsuits, whose co-founder Nomi Sladko uses Hamas symbolism online and celebrates the intifada, historically the murder of Israeli civilians, as resistance. Haslett does not respond to questions about his position. Los and Cheung also remain silent.

How quality and other media outlets can contribute to the miraculous proliferation of an oeuvre through inadequate, sloppy, or no research of their own is exemplified by several Austrian portals that apparently unquestioningly adopt an agency report, including ORF, der Standard and the Kleine Zeitung (brazenly behind a paywall, no less), which in turn is based on a somewhat flowery article in Rome's Messaggero. According to Valentina Salerno, Michelangelo's posthumous works were not burned after his death.

On the internet, Salerno describes herself as a “writer, actress, director, educator, and cultural historian.” She claims to have worked as an actress and choreographer on the two Sky Arte documentaries “Il Mistero dei capolavori perduti” (The Mystery of the Lost Masterpieces). The Centro Studi Michelangelo Buonarroti di Roma, which she co-founded, has so far left no trace on the internet, except for her website, which was set up just under a year ago, has no imprint, and consists only of a profile page. There, among other things, she promotes her new novel entitled “Virginia e il tesoro perduto di Michelangelo” (Virginia and Michelangelo's Lost Treasure). The private scholar, who comes from “an old Roman family,” has not yet named any previously unknown works. It will be interesting to see when the first of these works, believed to be lost, appear on the market. A simple Google search should have set off alarm bells in the editorial offices.

The Handelsblatt appears to have discontinued its online reporting on the art market. The last current text comes from the investment section, and the last regular text under the art market label dates from early January. A request for clarification as to whether this situation is permanent or temporary has been left unanswered by the Handelsblatt Media Group press office since February 11. If online reporting is indeed no longer accessible even to subscribers, a previously authoritative voice in the public sphere would be largely lost.

The change of ownership of The Art Newspaper from Inna Bazhenova to the Hong Kong-based AMTD Group does not seem to be going entirely smoothly, reports George Nelson in Artnews. The gist of the detailed article: there is a dispute over money and the parties are meeting in court.

There's alwys a bit of loss. That seems to be the Louvre's stance in connection with years of ticket sales fraud, according to a report by Tessa Solomon for Artnews.