Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 18 2026

Since 1968 (initially as a biennial, and annually since 1997), Art Brussels has established itself as a contemporary art fair with its ups and downs. This year, it has been significantly scaled back. Nicole Büsing and Heiko Klaas express their delight in the Tagesspiegel: “[Discovery] features just as many exhibitors as last year. The main Prime section, by contrast, has suffered a significant blow, with the number of participants falling from 108 to 83. As a result, all the galleries are now clustered in Hall 5. Fair director Nele Verhaeren has taken the crisis-induced exodus as an opportunity to redesign the vacated spaces in Hall 6 with a different concept: In the newly created Horizons section, seven galleries are now exhibiting monumental works. […] Even though Art Brussels appears somewhat smaller and more manageable in this (crisis) year, there is likely no need to worry about the fair’s future.” Alexandra Wach describes “Horizons” in Monopol: “The light-flooded white chapel, which dispenses with any doctrine and dissolves the boundaries between sculpture, architecture and the traditional exhibition stand format, is one of six projects selected for ‘Horizons’ by Devrim Bayar, senior curator at the Centre Pompidou in Brussels. The fact that these large-scale works, including Oswald Oberhuber’s €380,000 panoramic painting ‘Paradiesgarten’, can share an entire hall this time as a mini-version of Basel’s ‘Unlimited’ alongside the catering area is a boon, for even this spacious and airy agora resembles a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the fair next door.” I was in Brussels for Artmagazine.

Stockholm’s Market Art Fair confidently positions itself as a regional fair, reports Gareth Harris in the Art Newspaper (possibly Paywall): “Asked about the fair’s aspirations—does it want to be the main Nordic regional fair?—Sara Berner Bengtsson, the fair director and chief executive, says: “It is the periphery that now feels essential. Regional fairs are not second-tier—they can be high-quality, focused, and business-like. We will never be as big as Frieze but I think, as this year’s edition proves, international galleries can show artists here whom they would otherwise present at those larger fairs. They should feel able to do that in Stockholm.”

Vienna will at least have one international art fair next year in the form of the Spark Art Fair, reports Werner Remm of Artmagazine: “The art fair is now set to take place again at the Marx Halle from 18 to 21 March. The concept of solo exhibitions will be retained for the upcoming edition, and the scale of the fair, with around 90 participating galleries, is expected to be roughly on a par with previous editions. “It is launching a new initiative that is as charming as it is risky: “Galleries will be able to put works by the artists they are exhibiting at the fair up for auction. Interested parties can place bids for the works on a dedicated online platform even before SPARK, with the works then being auctioned off during a live event directly at the fair.”

At last, Art Basel is taking action! In a press release, it announces “Basel Exclusive”: “Participating exhibitors from Art Basel’s main sector – Galleries – will reserve at least one major work, a focused selection of works, or in some cases an entire presentation from all pre-fair previews, online viewing rooms, and pre-sales activity, unveiling them publicly for the first time at the fair’s VIP opening on Tuesday, 16 June, during the First Choice Preview hour”. In Artnews, Maximilíano Durón explains: “Art Basel Paris, with the draw of the French capital, has slowly been taking over as the company’s best-attended fair and as such it needs to do a certain amount of crowd control to reward the VIPs who will actually buy. Basel, on the other hand, appears to be waning in its ability to draw top collectors, especially Americans, to the Swiss city. Introducing a new form of scarcity that requires in-person attendance might be just what the fair needs to pull them back in.” The flood of sales reports from the major galleries, which reliably start coming in from 3 pm on this day, is unlikely to put a stop to this.

Elisa Carollo reports for the Observer on a highly successful design auction in New York: “Heralded as the most valuable single-owner design sale in Sotheby’s history, the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg lived up to expectations. The 22 April Collection of Jean & Terry de Gunzburg – Design Masters sale at the auction house’s Breuer headquarters closed white glove with a total of $96 million across 107 lots against an initial estimate of $28.5–42. 5 million to become the most valuable design collection ever sold in the US. With 94 per cent of lots selling above their pre-sale high estimates, the results not only confirmed the ongoing Lalanne momentum but also the sustained demand for Art Deco and late 20th-century design more broadly.”

Private sales are becoming increasingly important for the major auction houses, reports George Nelson in Artnews: “The exhibition was just the latest invitation-only private sale hosted by Sotheby’s; competitor Christie’s has been holding its own two in recent years, too. Fox, who has since left Sotheby’s, said that private sales are ‘flourishing’ at the house, and that it sees such events as ‘a new way to engage collectors.’ In 2020, Sotheby’s announced that it generated a record $1.5 billion in private sales. Whilst that figure was no doubt boosted by pandemic-related closures, the auction house said it has generated between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion in private sales each year since, accounting for roughly a quarter of the house’s total annual sales.”

Loïc Gouzer has found a new twist for his private auctions, as reported by Daniel Cassady in Artnews: “It’s untested, but for him that’s part of the appeal. On 23 April, his auction app Fair Warning will roll out a new format called ‘No Warning’.” [...] To start, a work will appear for sale (with a price). You can either hit “purchase now” or submit a single offer. Then you wait. There is no bidding war, no incremental raises, and definitely no call from a specialist nudging you higher. [...] That uncertainty is part of the pitch. Offers are binding for 72 hours. The highest offer goes to the seller, who decides whether to accept it or not. Buyers are not told if they have been outbid, Gouzer said, as that kind of feedback would turn the whole thing back into an auction, exactly what he is trying to avoid. “To be successful, you have to put your best foot forward,” Gouzer said. If the work sells, it disappears. If it doesn’t, it will disappear anyway.”

The French auction house Millon is buying out its struggling rival Pierre Bergé, reports Artdaily.

The war between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other could have a surprisingly limited impact on the art market beyond the Gulf states, speculates Scott Reyburn in the Art Newspaper (possibly behind a paywall): “In October 2023, the surprise Hamas attack on Israel proved a serious shock to the international art market system and business was subdued during the two following years. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is still claiming plenty of lives, but this no longer seems to diminish wealthy individuals’ appetites for buying and selling art. [...] Sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips increased by 64% to $1.7bn, the strongest first quarter since 2016, according to ArtTactic. The New York-based art adviser Wendy Cromwell is optimistic about the forthcoming May marquee week of modern and contemporary auctions in Manhattan.”

“I’m not selling an investment, but a feeling,” says Odilo Lamprecht of Bucherer Certified Pre-owned (CPO) on the trade in pre-owned luxury watches in an interview with Kim Dang for the NZZ: “Yes, but an investment is also a feeling. Nevertheless, I try not to talk about watches as an investment. I say: buy the watch you like – that’s the best investment. After the pandemic, we saw that values can also fall. That’s why we deliberately make no promises regarding value appreciation.” The parallel with the art market is obvious. And in passing, he mentions that the global market for pre-owned luxury watches has now reached an annual turnover of 16.73 billion dollars. That is around a quarter of the entire art market or just under half of the secondary market. One is slowly beginning to get an idea of where the next generation of collectors has gone.

Using the Frankfurt-based Anita Beckers Gallery as an example, Christiane Fricke explains in Weltkunst Insider (60 days free) how a business handover can work in the industry: “BVDG Managing Director Birgit Maria Sturm reports that over the past 15 years, she has been aware of 18 successful handover cases within families – mostly in the form of a smooth transition to daughters or sons who remained in the business. In other cases, a handover or the establishment of a separate business has taken place. It has rarely happened that a parent followed their offspring to a new location, as in the case of Thomas Levy, who moved from Hamburg to Berlin. Many members of the BVDG are now ‘getting on in years’. Often, there is no son or daughter who could or would take over, adds Sturm. This trend was recently evident, for example, in the closure of Werner Hillmann’s legendary Der Spiegel gallery, as well as at Galerie Neher in Essen, which is being closed by its owner’s wife, Christa Neher, following his death at the end of the year.”

The Marian Goodman Gallery is ‘taking a break’ in Los Angeles, reports Maximilíano Durón in Artnews.: “The gallery avoided saying that it would definitely cease operations in LA, stating instead that the partners would ‘evaluate the next phase for the space’ and ‘maintain our presence in Los Angeles and in cities internationally through special projects, art fairs, and museum exhibitions in support of our artists and clients.’” At some point, there will be the first master’s thesis on the prose of gallery closures.

AI in the art market—an area where Artnet and Artsy themselves aim to make a big splash following their takeover and merger—is the subject of an article by Jo Lawson-Tancred on Artnet: “Speaking at the Art Market Minds event, Alan Lau, a collector and tech investor, asked attendees ‘are you even visible in the world of AI?’” Everyone should be optimising content to be readable and citable by the AI chatbots that have become go-to research tools, he said. Or, asked Lau, could you use AI as your own “Emily”, the all-knowing [human] assistant in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) who remembers the context of every client relationship: when you last met, what they bought, what they liked. This is the logic behind First Thursday, a “collector intelligence” platform that uses algorithms to pull together data that can later be queried for context on new clients or the longer-term buying patterns of loyal customers. This is how early adopters are already using A.I. in sales. “This is not futuristic, it’s not two years from now,” Lau stressed. It’s now.”

Under new management, the Albertina continues to act as an aura generator for the art market and is setting the stage for KAWS. Veronika Metzger puts it bluntly in Artmagazine: “What good is a low threshold if crossing it offers no added value? Staging such a sham for an old white man and calling him ‘radically questioning boundaries’ on the website comes across as calculated and commercial, just like the art itself. [...] I am absolutely always in favour of art meeting people on equal terms. Unfortunately, in this case, that bar is a few metres too high up in terms of the price and size of the sculptures.”

Hubertus Butin reports on the abuse often perpetrated with posthumous editions, using the examples of Basquiat and Bacon in the FAZ of 25 April: “Is it ignorance, naivety or indifference on the part of the customers – one wouldn’t even want to call them collectors here – when they pounce on the prints at auctions and are prepared to spend vast sums on them? [...] Speculation on appreciation in value seems to be a driving force for the buyers. Nevertheless, it is merely an expensive poster that possesses neither original status nor artistic value.”

The scapegoat was not enough. Now Berlin’s Senator for Culture has herself stumbled over the funding scandal, reports the Tagesspiegel. Anna Thewalt, Alexander Fröhlich, Dominik Mai and Marius Gerards are also presenting State Secretary Cerstin Richter-Kotowski as a potential successor who appears to be ideally qualified for the post. Alexander Fröhlich has further details on the appointment. Until 2021, she was district mayor in the CDU stronghold of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The entertainment value of Berlin’s cultural policy is therefore likely to remain high.

According to a press release, the Julia Stoschek Foundation is leaving Berlin.

dpa reports the surprising death of Jenny Falckenberg. And BILD wouldn’t be BILD if it didn’t let Stefan Schneider and Thomas Koop dig up a bit more dirt.