Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 10 2026

It's all sunshine and roses, reports Maximilíano Durón from Frieze LA in Artnews: "From the beginning, the fair was packed with visitors. There's a slightly new layout this year, which helped make the fair feel less cramped. The fresh layout also created the sense that the fair was well-attended. Certainly, the energy was buzzing. The 95 exhibitors at the fair brought an abundance of art with them. While many dealers opted for stands that show off a mix of artists in their programmes, some went with solo presentations. Painting and sculpture abound, as do textiles, but the most noticeable trend is an uptick in photography compared to past editions of the fair." Leigh Ann Miller captured the celebrities present in the tent in pictures. Brian Boucher summarises the galleries' success stories.

Daniel Cassady presents the alternative fair model of the Butter Art Fair at Artnews, which is now delighting Los Angeles after Indiana, in Artnews: "Unlike most commercial fairs, where galleries typically take a commission on works sold, Butter operates under an artist-first model in which participating artists retain 100 per cent of sale proceeds. Works at the Los Angeles edition will range in price from $200 to $25,000. The Los Angeles lineup includes former Los Angeles Dodgers player and painter Micah Johnson, Compton-based artist Mr. Wash, photographer Micaiah Carter, April Bey, Autumn Breon, and others representing the African diaspora. [...] Butter's expansion into Los Angeles comes as art fairs nationwide continue to face questions about rising booth costs, softening sales in parts of the market, and calls for more equitable structures. By eliminating commissions, the fair positions itself as an experiment in recalibrating how value circulates during fair week — particularly at a moment when attention and capital are concentrated in major coastal markets." The idea of completely leaving galleries out of the picture may be suitable for a certain market segment. The names of the artists mentioned give clues as to the target clientele. In a discursive art market that connects artists, collectors, institutions, and a larger audience, the business model is likely to behave in a rather parasitic manner.

Following the simultaneous collapse of both Vienna art fairs, a group of gallery owners has come together to remedy the situation, reports Werner Remm in Artmagazine: "At the same time, the group, which includes all the major players in the local gallery scene, aims to persuade politicians to participate in the solution to reestablish a large, international art fair in Vienna. In a recently released statement, the group advocates for the establishment of “a single, central, large-scale art event in Vienna that stands for quality, diversity, relevance, and internationality, while also responding to the dynamic changes and new circumstances in the art world.” It calls on politicians to support this project with appropriate funding."

Sensational solo presentations are becoming increasingly rare at art fairs. Tim Schneider analyses the reasons for this in the Art Newspaper (paywall may apply): "The prevailing sentiment is that the larger forces in the fair sector have reduced the statement stand to an endangered species. Although almost every aspect of running a commercial gallery has become (much) pricier since 2020, data and anecdotes have pegged art-fair participation among the worst offenders. Dealers surveyed in last year’s Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, for instance, ranked fairs as the third most concerning cost. If even the simplest stand is becoming prohibitively expensive, fewer dealers can afford to gamble on costlier build-outs or daring curation. “Fairs are a business. Galleries are there to make money, to recoup their costs, to sell art,” says New York-based adviser Candace Worth. “They are, I’m sure, weighing the upside of the marketing buzz a booth can provide versus the upside of selling work by ten or 20 artists.”

Elisa Carollo (herself an adviser) presents a new trading platform for collectors and their advisers in the Observer: "Today, on the open-to-all platform created by the Art Marketplace, only the artist's name, a short description (title, date and medium) and the asking price are listed. No images or identifying details are displayed; those are shared only when there is genuine interest. The Art Marketplace team oversees the entire process end-to-end, from vetting to shipping. When asked why such a seemingly basic demand-and-supply infrastructure had not been built earlier, Safra pushed back on the assumption that technology was the barrier. [...] Similar platforms have existed in the past, often with membership requirements or login gates. By contrast, the Art Marketplace was intentionally designed to be fully visible and easily accessible, without membership barriers to browsing. Safra recognised early on that such friction limited adoption and weakened loyalty. What he considers decisive is not technological sophistication but trust and direct engagement.‘

Daniel Grant discusses the cyber risks facing the art trade in The Observer: ’Every sector of the arts economy is vulnerable to hackers, of course. Security breaches have occurred at museums across the US, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Arlington, New York and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as at numerous for-profit companies. [...] Galleries are particularly vulnerable because “they don't have a dedicated IT person whose job it is to monitor the online systems,” said James Carroll, founder of Hacket Cyber, a Syracuse, New York-based firm hired by large and small businesses, including galleries and museums, to test the security of their databases and other software. “The people working in galleries want to talk about art and artists, not about the security of clients” information.'"

Brian Boucher reports on the closure of a renowned university museum in the USA in Artnews: "The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, founded in 1985 and part of DePaul University, will close at the end of its current fiscal year, on 30 June. The school, which faces considerable financial challenges, announced the closure in an announcement to the community on Thursday morning. In December, the school laid off 114 out of 1,493 staffers, a greater than 7 per cent cut, due to what it called a significant drop in international enrolment." One would like to know whether the closure of the museum is actually a direct consequence of the absence of foreign students, or whether the university is discreetly expressing its rejection of government policy with this statement.

Robin Pogrebin describes the increasingly important role of female collectors in the New York Times (paywall may apply): "And they are collecting differently, art experts say, with a more cooperative, activist spirit of nurturing artists historically excluded from the canon and an emphasis on giving back by loaning or donating their holdings. Some serve on museum boards, where they help institutions acquire work. ‘Women care about the ecosystem as a whole, and individual artists,’ said Arison, the MoMA president. "So many of the women I know buying art know the artists — they've spent time in their studios, it's very personal. These women are not buying something to flip in three years and make money on it. They're not buying it to stick it in storage. We want to nurture and grow things."

In Weltkunst Insider (ten weeks free of charge), lawyer and Lempertz legal advisor Zacharias Marwick takes a close look at the composition of the new arbitration tribunal for Nazi-looted art: “The list of 36 appointees shows remarkable breadth: federal judges, social judges, administrative lawyers, provenance researchers, historians from Munich, Washington and Vienna, local politicians, mediators, lawyers with international networks. The panel is thus less a homogeneous team of experts than a reflection of the social discourse on Nazi-looted art. Whether it will succeed in transforming the conflicts that have been smouldering for decades into a new phase of reliability and trust cannot be measured by individual decisions alone. The decisive factor will be whether the parties involved – claimants and public authorities alike – feel that they have been heard. For restitution is not just a question of property rights. It is a question of historical recognition.”

Sophia Kishkovsky describes Ukraine's efforts to save and rebuild its cultural assets as the war instigated by Russia enters its fifth year in The Art Newspaper (paywall may apply): ‘And while Ukraine continues to focus its resources on the war, the government has nonetheless found 16.145 billion hryvnias ($380m) for culture in the 2026 national budget, an increase of nearly 50% from 2025. The war, the culture ministry said, ’has made one thing unmistakably clear: culture is an integral component of national security. Cultural heritage is not only about buildings or collections—it is about identity, memory, values, and the resilience of a democratic society.‘

The days of free admission to British museums could soon be a thing of the past, fears Nadia Khomami in The Guardian: ’For a quarter of a century, visitors to the UK's national museums and galleries have enjoyed universal free entry to see permanent collections. The policy, introduced by the New Labour government in 2001, has been widely credited with improving access to culture and significantly increasing footfall to some of the country's best-known attractions. But as funding pressures deepen across the sector, and running costs increase, a policy once treated as untouchable is now under renewed scrutiny." At the latest when it becomes apparent that, apart from the crowd pullers, the vast majority of exhibition venues are not better off financially even with admission fees, their existence is likely to be completely threatened.

Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer could and should stumble over his own oversized shoes, writes Sebastian Frenzel in Monopol: "The office of culture minister confers power and authority, and its primary responsibility is to guarantee the freedom of the arts and the autonomy of institutions. “To broaden the corridors of what can be said, explored and represented as much as possible, rather than narrowing them,” as Weimer himself put it when he took office. “The state can therefore act as a patron, but should refrain from interfering in content. Otherwise, it degrades the arts to the role of usher for the political correctness of the day.” Words that sound like pure mockery today. Wolfram Weimer's attack on the Berlinale is the most serious proof to date that he is not up to the job. It is not Tricia Tuttle who must go, but the minister of cultural dismantling.‘ Tim Casper Boehme takes a different view in the taz: ’Israel, which was represented by only one film, was also mentioned by speakers that evening with purely critical intent. Throughout all this, Tuttle remained silent on stage. A week earlier, she had posed for a photo at the premiere of Alkhatib's film, surrounded by his crew wearing kufiyas and standing next to a Palestinian flag. Her presence at the event may have been part of her job. However, her failure to comment on Alkhatib's words can hardly be described as balanced mediation. Such political bias, which was already evident during the Berlinale, does not reflect well on the festival. For once, Weimer is to be agreed with."

According to research by Boris Pofalla for WeLT, the Hamburger Bahnhof is relying on a sponsorship concept apparently borrowed from the USA: "One thing is clear: if the Hamburger Bahnhof is to be the contemporary museum that the nation deserves, it needs more money. The charity event in March sets the tone. The management speaks of a “completely new format”. But this model is also causing discontent in the art scene. Berlin gallery owners report that they are being specifically offered tables at the gala on 14 March – for £50,000 or £100,000, depending on size and number of participants. Not all Berlin galleries, but only a few. Both the very high price and the procedure itself are causing irritation, and commitments are expected to be limited."

According to its website, the Thomas Salis gallery in Salzburg has been permanently closed since the end of last year. Brita Sachs was the first to notice this for the FAZ (paywall).

I report the closure of the Sakhile & Me gallery in Frankfurt to Artmagazine.