“They came to me only about six months before it was due to open, saying, ‘Cecily, we’re doing this thing, and we would love, if there’s any chance, to get a painting for the restaurant,’” she said. “Well, I can’t make a painting specifically for you that you could hang. I don’t have anything that’s 30-feet long kicking around.”
But Brown had always wanted to paint a mural on a restaurant, and was just waiting for someone to ask.
“I did say, ‘Well, why don’t I just do something directly on the wall?’”
She had painted a mural in Buffalo a few years back, through Stefania Bortolami’s Artist/City program, and found it liberating to make public work freed from the shackles of the price tag.
“With the greedy, voracious art market, the minute you have a painting these days, the question of price starts swirling around, insurance, and all those unsexy things,” she said. “I don’t want people sitting there saying, ‘Oh, how much is it?’ So by doing it directly on the wall, it completely gets past all that. It can’t be moved. It’s not for sale. It’s never for sale. It actually belongs to me. It’s very freeing.”
It’s also very Cecily Brown, very much in the thrust of her practice as a painter drawn toward the existential question of excess—excess sex, yes, a theme present in her work, but also culinary excess, which crops up quite often. Take Lobsters, Oysters, Cherries, and Pearls (2020), seen at her solo show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023—heaping platters of seafood spread across a table, begging to be masticated and savored. At Paula Cooper, in 2020, were a series of bravura paintings that dealt directly with gustatory bigness. A lush buffet supper with a woman, partially nude, imbibing. The Splendid Table is a massive triptych showing caught game—geese, ducks, rabbits, deer—ready for slaughter, flame, and feast.
In 2019, Birmingham cafe owner Charlie Clarke was walking through a field in Warwickshire with a metal detector he’d purchased some six months earlier. His hobby walk resulted in the discovery of a heart-shaped pendant now called the Tudor Heart. A beep alerted Clarke to the presence of something near a drained pond, so he decided to start digging. He thought it would be the usual coins; instead he unearthed a chain and an ornate pendant, all made of solid gold. It’s a find that Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the British Museum where the heirloom is currently on display, called the piece “perhaps one of the most incredible pieces of English history to have ever been unearthed.”
There are many mysteries surrounding the Tudor Heart, including how that pendant got to that field, a question that may never be answered. After being painstakingly analyzed in every detail from a scientific as well as historical point of view, the relic has been confirmed as a genuine one of the era. It may have been created for the couple’s daughter, Princess Mary, with markings representing both her parents and their love for one another.
The heart-shaped locket pendant is attached to a 75-ring chain through a fist-shaped clasp. Everything was made with pure gold. On the front is an enameled decoration depicting a pomegranate bush, the emblem of Catherine’s family and a symbol of fertility, on which a red and white Tudor rose, Henry’s symbol, stands out while behind are the initials of the two, “H” and “K” (Katherine, Catherine in English).
Portrait of Catherine of Aragon by an anonymous person. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
It reads “tousjors” on the ribbon engraved on both sides. That means “always” in Old French, but Rachel King, the scholar who curates the European Renaissance section at the British Museum, suggested that it may also be meant as a pun between “tovs” and “iors,” which would be to say “all yours” in Old Franglais, a language melding French and Old English.
Many hypotheses have been made to contextualize the jewel, and not all of them are so romantic. The British Museum theorized that the heart-shaped pendant could have been created at a tournament held in 1518 to celebrate the betrothal between Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, who was just two years old, and the Dauphin of France Francis of Valois, only eight months old. The match would make Mary the first reigning queen, ruling England in her own right.
Their names hardly do them justice: Mother Dragon, Fish, Two-Headed Dragon, Starfish, Octopus and Tripod.
Six colorful, whimsical, playground sculptures surrounding Legg Lake within the expansive Whittier Narrows Recreation Area in South El Monte have become beloved park icons for kids and adults alike for more than six decades.
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
One of the crowd-sourced photos turned in to LA County Department of Arts and Culture by a county resident. (images courtesy of LA County Department of Arts and Culture
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Back in the 1960’s a sculptor named Benjamin Dominguez created several works of art inspired by fantasy sea creatures that were placed in playgrounds all around Whittier Narrows Recreation Area park on Oct. 24, 2025 in South El Monte, CA. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)
In order to find out more about them, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture is asking the public to send them their personal photos of themselves and their children or grandchildren playing on the sculptures, captioned with memories of a mid-century era when parks intertwined public art, interactivity and a child’s imagination.
“Depending on the response, how many photos we receive, we will have a phase two to determine creative ways to share them with the public,” wrote Laleña Vellanoweth, the county’s civic art conservation and collections manager in a statement released Thursday, Oct. 23.
Erica Rojas was in the park on Friday, Oct. 24 with her husband. They were training their dogs to walk and behave on the trails, when Rojas noticed the theme of ocean life after passing by the Octopus and Two-Headed Dragon sculptures.
“I love any artist that has inspiration from both land and sea,” she said.
The county’s project has two parts: conservation and historical research, Vellanoweth wrote.
The department is bringing on apprentices to comb through the photos, people’s comments and dig out letters and other records for clues on how the sculptures got here and why. They will also digitize and catalog the data. Conservation goals include: upkeep of the outdoor artworks that are subject to wear-and-tear, weather and seismic activity.
The outdoor, interactive artworks were designed by Mexican artist Benjamin Dominguez (1894-1974). He studied art at Academia de Artes Plasticas at the University of Mexico and graduated in 1925. He perfected a centuries-old faux-bois craft, known as “concrete wood” while at the university and used it to create these unique park sculptures.
Dominguez emigrated to the United States at age 62 and was commissioned to make tiger and lion enclosures at a zoo in El Paso, Texas. But he first began building his concrete-and-steel sea creatures at a park in Las Vegas, which was recently bulldozed to make room for a development. All the sculptures were destroyed.
In 1961, Dominguez was commissioned to make the six playground sea creatures for Whittier Narrows park by Frank G. Bonelli, the father of parks and recreation in LA County and a former county supervisor. A nature park in San Dimas bears his name.
“We noticed that the Dominguez sculptures at Vincent Lugo Park has tons of historical information and wanted to create that type of archive for our sculptures,” wrote Vellanoweth.
The county has consulted with Eloy Zarate, a history professor at Pasadena City College and co-founder of the San Gabriel-based Friends of La Laguna. The group raised $1.1 million to restore the La Laguna playground art, which includes a lighthouse with a slide kids love to go down. As a child, he played on the interactive sculptures in San Gabriel where he grew up, he said.
“We are the ones that brought Benjamin Dominguez to life. We said, ‘Hey, this guy was important,” said Zarate.
He said the six Whittier Narrows sculptures are similar to the ones Dominguez designed in Las Vegas, especially Mother Dragon, her yellow-orange body dotted with blue spikes and surrounded by red-and-white mushrooms.
Zarate has offered to write the nominating papers for the Whittier Narrows artworks so they can be accepted on the National Register of Historic Places.
“That is one of the last things we will do,” he said, noting the 20 years he and his group have given to preserving the artist’s unique playground artworks.
Besides San Gabriel and Whittier Narrows park, the third place where his work is preserved is Atlantis Play Center in a park in Garden Grove, at 13630 Atlantis Way, Zarate said. That park features Sandy Sea Serpent, with its tail winding up a hill that kids slide down. “All these structures are meant to be played on,” Zarate said.
His works in these parks represent “a rare example of handcrafted, mid-century playgrounds, when parks were designed to be creative and interactive rather than standardized,” wrote the Los Angeles Conservancy.
The works at Legg Lake were preserved in 2015 through the support of then L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, according to the inscription on the informational display in front of one of the sculptures. It concludes by saying Dominguez’s works are an example of the contributions made by immigrants to Southern California.
In today’s political climate, in which ICE raids are resulting in the arrest of hundreds of immigrants, including those undocumented who’ve made a living and raised a family in Southern California for decades, the recognition of Dominguez at an L.A. County park is made more meaningful, Zarate said.
He hopes the county in its crowd-sourcing effort will acquire many photos, letters and documents relating to the Whittier Narrows park artworks.
“It is important particularly in today’s environment to understand people who come to this country and work, who give a significant amount to the country they’ve settled in,” Zarate said.
One can’t go into Whittier Narrows park without noticing the iconic serpent, or the octopus, for example, which are closer to the entrance on Santa Anita Avenue and the Pomona (60) Freeway.
“I mean, they are part of the park, and you recognize it,” said Armando Salcido on Friday, Oct. 24. Salcido and a friend were heading to get a closer look at some of Dominguez’s other sculptures scattered within the vast county park. “It is the first time I’ve seen the dragon. It’s really nice.”
For questions or for help converting your physical images into digital images or submitting over 10 images, contact Danielle Galván Gomez, civic art registrar, at dgalvangomez@arts.lacounty.gov.
Submission deadline is Dec. 12 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
An increasingly popular solution is the inclusion of a solar panel to keep that battery topped up, enabling you to install and potentially never touch the camera again. Both Wyze and TP-Link just revealed interesting solar-powered cameras this week. Let’s talk about Wyze first.
The Wyze Solar Cam Pan ($80) is a 2K outdoor security camera that can pan 360 degrees and tilt 70 degrees. It is IP65-rated, easy to mount, and sports a small solar panel that Wyze reckons can keep the camera running on just one hour of sunlight a day (we shall see as I test through the gray depths of a Scottish winter). The Solar Cam Pan also features AI-powered person tracking, two-way audio, color night vision, a spotlight, and a siren, though you need a subscription, starting from $3 per month, to unlock smart features and get cloud video storage.
Meanwhile, TP-Link is the first manufacturer to combine solar power with floodlight capability in its new Tapo C615F Kit. The similar-looking but larger Tapo C615F is another 2K camera, but it pans 360 degrees, tilts 130 degrees, and, most importantly, has an adjustable 800-lumen floodlight.
TP-Link says its solar panel only needs 45 minutes of sun a day to keep the camera ticking, and it comes with a handy 13-foot cable, so you can install the solar panel in the best spot to catch those rays. The Tapo C615F ($100) is available now, and you can use the promo code 10TAPOFLDCAM to get $10 off if you’re quick. —Simon Hill
Fujifilm Updates Its X-T30 Line
Courtesy of Fujifilm
Fujifilm has released the X-T30 III, an update to the company’s entry-level, SLR-shaped mirrorless X-T30 line. The third iteration of the X-T30 pairs Fujifilm’s familiar 26-MP X-Trans APS-C sensor with the latest Fujifilm processor, the X-Processor 5. The latter means that the X-T30 III is now roughly the same as the X-M5 and X-T50 in terms of internal features. All of Fujifilm’s film simulations are available, as are the subject-recognition AF modes. Video specs also see a bump up to 6.2K 30 fps open gate, and 4K 60 fps with a 1.18X crop.
The body is nearly identical to the previous model; the size, weight, and button/dial layout are the same as on the X-T30 II. The one change is that the control dial is now a film simulation dial, with three options for custom film recipes. The X-T30 III goes on sale in November at $999 for the body, or $1,150 for the body and a new 13- to 33-mm F3.5-6.3 zoom lens (20 mm- to 50 mm-equivalent). —Scott Gilbertson
Intel’s AI Experience Stores
In time for the peak shopping season, Intel is launching a variety of “AI Experience Stores” at a few key locations around the world. We don’t know exactly what they’ll be like, but Intel says these pop-ups will include an “AI-powered shopping experience” of some kind and are based on the initial launch of the trial run store in London last year.
If it keeps that same design ethos intact, these stores will be fairly immersive experiences. There will be lots of AI-driven demos on devices from the wider Windows laptop ecosystem, presumably to help drive interest and curiosity in what PCs can do. Interestingly, it comes on the back of a significant marketing push by Microsoft with its new Windows 11 AI experiences, trying to convince buyers to upgrade and explain some of the new AI features.
Here are the dates and locations below for when Intel’s stores will be open. —Luke Larsen
New York City: 1251 6th Avenue (10/29 to 11/30)
London: 95 Oxford Street (10/30 to 11/30)
Munich: Viktualienmarkt 6 (10/30 to 12/9)
Paris: 14 Boulevard Poissonniere (11/4 to 11/30)
Seoul: OPUS 407, 1318-1 Seocho-dong (10/31 to 11/30)
PARIS (Reuters) -The Louvre has transferred some of its most precious jewels to the Bank of France, according to French radio RTL, after an audacious daylight heist last week exposed the famed museum’s security vulnerability.
The transfer of some precious items from the museum’s Apollo gallery, home to the French crown jewels, was carried out on Friday under secret police escort, RTL said, citing unnamed sources.
The Bank of France, which stores the country’s gold reserves in a massive vault 27 meters (88 feet) below ground, is just 500 meters away from the Louvre, on the Right Bank of the River Seine.
The Louvre and the Bank of France did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The thieves stole eight precious pieces worth an estimated $102 million from the Louvre’s collection on October 19, exposing security lapses as they broke into the world’s most-visited museum using a crane to smash an upstairs window during opening hours. They escaped on motorbikes.
News of the robbery reverberated around the world, prompting soul-searching in France over what some viewed as a national humiliation.
(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi; editing by Michel Rose and Mark Heinrich)
Just hours after the Louvre was targeted by thieves Sunday morning, news outlets were already calling it the heist of the century. But while it was immediately clear that the museum had been targeted by skilled professionals, it was also obvious that those criminals had made a few mistakes. As they were fleeing the museum, the thieves dropped one of their spoils—a crown that once belonged to Empress Eugénie. On Thursday, police told local news outlet Ouest-France that the thieves had also abandoned a helmet, angle grinders, gloves, and a vest, allowing law enforcement to take more than 150 different samples that might help them catch the crooks.
The thieves also left behind one of their most important tools. They had entered the museum’s Apollo Gallery by parking their truck outside and simply raising an elevating platform and ladder on the truck to the window. They cut a hole, slipped in, and escaped—not bothering to take the truck with them. As it turns out, the lift on the truck is manufactured by Böcker, a German company that wasted no time seizing on its newfound infamy. The company quickly shared an image of the lift used in the theft on its Instagram, accompanying it with a jokey caption: “If you’re in a hurry,” it reads, “the Böcker Agilo carries your treasures up to 400 kg at 42 m/min—quiet as a whisper.”
Elaine Sciolino, former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, tells Vanity Fair that she thought the German company’s response was in “breathtakingly bad taste.” That said, she’s also fascinated by some of the robbery’s stranger details—and notes that the confusing nature of the building itself might have made it an ideal target for daring yet derelict thieves. “The problem of the Louvre is it was not built as a museum. It was built as a fortress in the Middle Ages,” she says. “It became a palace where kings restored and renovated it, and their egos were more important than engineering rationality. It makes no sense.”
Though the Louvre has become one of the most trafficked tourist destinations in the world, it still operates on an old-world logic. “It’s on 25 different levels, with different eras of construction—all different sizes and thicknesses of walls,” says Sciolino. “There are 4,000 keys, and they don’t even know if all of them work. There are doors that go nowhere.”
For her recent book, Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love With the World’s Greatest Museum, Sciolino went behind the scenes to learn about the security and fire-safety practices at the Louvre. Her research indicates that the museum could have been prepared for thieves wielding battery-powered angle grinders: “The glass display cases that contained the jewels had to be secure enough to deter thieves or tampering, but flexible,” she says. The Louvre has a permanent force of firefighters in the building around the clock, sapeurs-pompiers who serve in the French military. “They also have protocols for breaking into the glass cases and seizing any items, whether it’s a sculpture or whether it’s a crown jewel. They have to be trained on all the different tools that you have to be able to use to grab a painting or break a glass case.” On her Instagram account, Sciolino shared a photo of similar angle grinders as they appear in the Louvre firefighters’ own handbook.
MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish police said on Friday they had recovered a 1919 Pablo Picasso painting that went missing earlier this month ahead of its planned display at a temporary exhibition in southern Spain.
The small framed “Still Life with Guitar” was part of a larger shipment of artworks moved from Madrid to Granada. The exhibit’s organisers filed a police complaint on October 10 once they noticed it missing after the crates were unpacked.
In a post on X, police said the painting may not have been loaded onto the transport truck before the shipment left Madrid. The historical heritage brigade was continuing its investigation, the statement said, without indicating whether police believed any crime had been committed.
Police released pictures of forensic experts examining the painting while wearing full sterile bodysuits and masks.
The police had registered the painting, which is owned by a private collector, in Interpol’s global database of Stolen Works of Art containing nearly 57,000 items.
The CajaGranada Foundation holding the exhibition said its security camera footage showed only 57 works being unloaded from the vehicle when it arrived, instead of the 58 expected.
(Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Peter Graff)
BERLIN (Reuters) -German police said they broke up a painting forgery ring that allegedly asked millions for canvases they claimed were by masters including Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt, including a painting that had hung in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum for decades.
Police last week arrested and then conditionally released the alleged ringleader, a 77-year-old from southwestern Germany, they said on Friday. He and 10 accomplices face charges of organised conspiracy to commit fraud with forged artworks.
In synchronised dawn raids on Wednesday, October 15, police descended on premises across Germany and Switzerland and seized documents, mobile phones and multiple suspected art forgeries, police in Bavaria, who led the operation, said in a statement.
Police first caught on to the group’s activities when the main suspect offered for sale two supposedly original Picassos, including one purporting to be of photographer and activist Dora Maar, Picasso’s long-time muse and partner.
Further investigations found he was also asking 120 million Swiss francs ($151 million) for a forged copy of Rembrandt’s 1662 De Staalmeesters, or The Sampling Officials, a stern collective portrait that has hung in the Rijksmuseum since 1885, according to police.
The painting was in the possession of an 84-year-old Swiss woman, who was also under investigation, police said. The suspected fraudsters claimed that the canvas hanging in Amsterdam was a copy.
The group had offered at least 19 other forgeries for sale, including works purportedly by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Joan Miro, Amedeo Modigliani and Frida Kahlo, for which they were asking prices between 400,000 and 14 million euros, police said.
Police said they did not yet know if any painting was actually sold.
($1 = 0.7931 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Mrs. Prada’s table was even more stacked: Govan and his wife Katherine Ross, Francesco Vezzoli, and the dynamic duo of Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist, two of the great curators of their era, now two of the most important museum directors in Europe. Also present at her table: the great French actor Vincent Cassel, fellow actor Diane Kruger, Art Basel Paris director Clément Delépine.
As dinner in this town tends to do, things went late, and even as I slipped out close to midnight, trays of Negronis were still being held by Maxim’s waiters and all the principals were still in attendance.
“I can’t believe they’re still going,” said De Salvo, nodding toward Obrist and Biesenbach, deep in conversation with Mrs. Prada.
There was much discussion of whether the Avant-Première gambit worked in everyone’s favor. It was designed to address the issue of overcrowding: too many hangers-on, not enough buyers. But one dealer at dinner was slightly concerned about the possibility that some collectors would think that everything had already sold to those who got early access and wouldn’t show up.
But on Wednesday morning I dropped into the classic opening day of the fair, and it was just as crowded as any fair in recent memory. What’s more, stuff was moving. Rick Owens and his wife, Michèle Lamy, were on the scene, which was quite exciting to dealers in the booths. Zwirner had two editioned Richter prints, each in an edition of 12—by Wednesday it had sold 16 of them, netting $6.4 million. Pace had sold that Modigliani for just under $10 million, and by Wednesday White Cube had sold a Julie Mehretu for $11.5 million.
But there was something much bigger—I heard on the ground of the fair that Hauser & Wirth had sold a 1987 Richter painting that had an asking price of $23 million. Not only that, it was not presold; there was no guarantee a deep-pocketed Gerhard-head would waltz into the booth. But someone came up to the booth during the Avant-Première, saw the picture, liked the picture, and paid something around $23 million for the picture.
Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has doubled its reward to $10 million to help solve the biggest art heist in history. Thieves made off with 13 masterpieces 27 years ago, and the stolen artwork is valued at around half-a-billion dollars. Seth Doane spoke to the art investigator who claims he knows where the art is today.
PARIS (Reuters) -Thieves who staged a daring daylight heist at the Louvre museum in Paris made off with jewels worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102.63 million), Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Tuesday.
“It is important to remember that this damage is an economic damage, but it is nothing compared to the historical damage caused by this theft,” the prosecutor told RTL radio.
In what some politicians branded a national humiliation, four people broke into the Louvre on Sunday using a crane to smash an upstairs window. They took objects from a gallery for royal jewellery before escaping on motorbikes.
The eight items of stolen jewellery included a tiara and earrings from the set of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, of the early 19th century. The crown of Empress Eugenie was found outside the museum, apparently dropped during the getaway.
(Reporting by Zhifan Liu and Dominique Vidalon in Paris; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
On Monday night Vanity Fair hosted its second annual kickoff event with Art Basel at the Four Seasons George V, that hulking castle of a nearly century-old hotel that has some of the most expensive suites on earth. The night before the fair opens is typically a busy one, with small private dinners hosted by art dealers and museum directors dotting the town, but the cocktail party managed to get a nice cross section of folks who swung by before or after dinner obligations.
Naturally, those mentioned in the recent Art Issue managed to turn up. Over in one corner Shaun Caley Regen, the founder of one of LA’s most prominent galleries, Regen Projects, was talking to the influential collector and CAA agent Beth Swofford, with Château Shatto’s Olivia Barrett right nearby, along with Bridget Donahue and Hannah Hoffman of the newly formed Hoffman Donahue—a scene straight out of a feature in the issue mapping out the Art Galaxy, which has a special sector called Planet Hollywood.
And then there were the museum directors. Max Hollein, director of The Met, was there talking to Loïc Gouzer, the founder of the one-lot auction app Fair Warning. Dia director Jessica Morgan came in triumphant: She curated one of the hottest shows in town, “Minimal,” at the Bourse de Commerce, the private museum founded by François Pinault. Klaus Biesenbach, director of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, arrived a bit on the late end (he told me he had to go to a Patti Smith concert), and Scott Rothkopf of The Whitney was there on the late end too.
Also around was Naomi Beckwith, the Guggenheim chief creator who is also prepping the much anticipated Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 2027. To that end, she chatted with critic Jason Farago about the best places to eat in Kassel—Farago mentioned that the late Okwui Enwezor once took a New York Times reporter to an Italian spot in town called La Frasca, but he couldn’t verify its quality himself.
Mural Arts is searching for a Philadelphia artist to honor the city’s queer history in a new installation in the Gayborhood.
Applications to design the mural on the exterior of the Voyeur nightclub, at 1221 St. James St., open Wednesday. The mural will include four to six trailblazers in Philly’s LGBTQ+ community, such as Unity co-founder Tyrone Smith, activist Jaci Adams and Gloria Casarez, the city’s first LGBT Affairs director. It also will depict the work of the people honored.
The mural will be dedicated in June. In addition to being Pride Month, June also kicks off a busy summer in Philadelphia, including the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration on Independence.
“As people flock to Philadelphia in 2026, we want to make sure that even more of our LGBTQ+ histories are on the walls of our city,” said Conrad Benner, project manager and founder of street art organization Streets Dept. “In this, the ‘Mural Capital of the World,’ it’s important that our stories are told in our public space.”
Applicants must submit qualifications to Mural Arts, including general information and stylistic ideas. Once an artist has been selected, community members and the site owner will provide feedback on the design, which must be approved by an internal design review committee. The deadline to submit applications is Nov. 2.
Mural Arts said the mural will build on the success of the “Finally on 13th!” display at 306 S. 13th St. by Nilé Livingston. That piece, installed in November 2023, honors queer Black ballroom culture, the tradition of “walking” in competitions featuring dance, lip-syncing, modeling, voguing and other performances.
Community members can help paint the mural on two painting days ahead of the final installation. The mural is in partnership with the Washington Square West Civic Association and the office of Councilmember Rue Landau (D-At-Large).
Could the French TV series Lupin have been prophetic? The show envisioned a heist at the Louvre, an event that became reality on the morning of October 19, when a group of professional thieves managed to break into the world-famous Paris museum. In just seven minutes, they stole a host of priceless French crown jewels.
The heist took place at around 9:30 am local time, shortly after the museum opened to the public. Using a truck-mounted ladder, the thieves entered the Galerie d’Apollon—located in the Louvre’s Petite Galerie wing—through a second-floor window that they forced open with an angle grinder.
Upon entry, the robbers smashed open at least two display cases, took the precious artifacts, and then fled a few minutes later on two Yahama scooters, disappearing into traffic and soon turning onto the highway.
Included in the loot, according to French authorities, were eight crown jewels, almost all from the late Napoleonic era. A ninth item, Empress Eugénie’s diamond- and emerald-laden crown, was found damaged nearby, evidently dropped by the fleeing criminals. The thieves did get away with a tiara also belonging to Napoleon III’s wife, in full Empire style, decorated with 212 pearls, 1,998 diamonds, and another 992 rose-cut diamonds. They also took a bow brooch belonging to Empress Eugénie with 2,438 diamonds and 196 rose-cut stones. Also in the haul is a parure—a tiara with 24 Ceylon sapphires and 1,083 diamonds, accompanied by a necklace with eight impressive sapphires, more diamonds and gold work, and a pendant earring that belonged to Queen Maria Amalia.
It’s difficult to put a number on what this collection of jewels is worth; they are not mere luxury items with their own specific value, but rather priceless possessions. The literal value of the gems, stones, and gold is compounded by their historical value, not to mention the fact that they are part of the heritage of the French state, which in itself makes them likely impossible to sell on the traditional market. However, it is possible that, as often happens in this type of theft, the robbers will disassemble the artifacts, melt down the precious metals, recut the jewels to make them less traceable, and sell them on the gray or black market, potentially generating tens of millions of euros.
Regardless of its outcome, the Louvre heist was a skillful operation. Some analysts say the thieves exploited vulnerabilities in the museum’s security system, which has for years struggled with staffing problems, constant work in progress, and also increasing pressure from the exorbitant and growing number of visitors. A nationwide and international manhunt has now begun. At the moment there are no specific suspects, but all available images from the area (including a video that shows one of the thieves at work) are obviously being examined.
With all the surveillance footage and cameras now spread everywhere in the city, there should be plenty of material to identify possible leads. President Emmanuel Macron has strongly condemned the incident, and assured that those responsible will soon be brought to justice. Long gone, moreover, are the days when Italian decorator Vincenzo Peruggia committed what was until now considered the greatest theft in the history of the Louvre: the daring misappropriation of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, which took place on August 21, 1911.
That painting was returned two years later; Peruggia attempted to resell it to a Florentine art dealer who then raised the alarm. Maybe a similar stroke of luck could happen in this case as well.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
The Musée du Louvre is in a state of shock after a spectacular robbery took place on Sunday. At around 9:30 a.m., several individuals forced their way into the Galerie d’Apollon, attacking the display cases and making off with a number of priceless jewels. Most of these veritable treasures of French history date from the 19th century. (Another part of the Crown jewels were stolen during the French Revolution, and in 1887, the government of the Third Republic sold a large part of the royal jewel collection.) The jewels in the Musée du Louvre are all the more important: they are the last testimony to a fabulous story initiated by King François I in 1530, aimed at collecting the most beautiful gems available on behalf of the State,. Louis XIV took this collection even further, and the Crown jewels numbered up to several thousand stones, including the famous blue Hope diamond, and the Grand Mazarin, a pink diamond weighing almost 20 carats. Two diamonds, worn by the Sun King as leotard buttons, adorn the “Reliquary Brooch” stolen this weekend.
Most of the pieces, which were stolen from the Musée du Louvre in stolen in just seven minutes, tell the story of the First and Second Empire. The sapphire necklace of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, for example, tells the story of the Restoration, while Empress Eugénie’s corsage front evokes the end of French imperial splendor.
Empress Eugénie’s pearl and diamond diadem is one of the jewels stolen from the Louvre Museum.
Art Images/Getty Images
This extraordinary piece of jewelry originally formed the centerpiece of a belt adorned with more than 4,000 stones. It was was exhibited, among other finery, at the 1855 World’s Fair, and was worn at least twice by the last Empress of the French. Eugénie’s exceptional tiara, with its delicate diamond foliage bordered by a string of pearls, was among the other jewels targeted.
The Empress’s crown, created in 1855 by Lemonnier and recognizable by its chased gold eagle motifs, was miraculously found, damaged, outside the museum. In a press release issued on Sunday afternoon, the Ministry of Culture said, “Two high-security display cases were targeted, and eight objects of invaluable cultural heritage were stolen.” The Ministry also announced that an investigation into the theft as part of an organized gang and criminal conspiracy to commit a crime had been opened and entrusted to the Brigade de répression du banditisme (the Banditry Repression Brigade, or BRB) under the authority of the Paris public prosecutor’s office.
Here are the jewels stolen from the Louvre on Sunday, October 19.
PARIS (Reuters) -Thieves have broken into Paris’ Louvre museum through a window and have stolen pieces of jewellery with “inestimable heritage” before escaping on motorbikes, the French interior ministry said on Sunday.
“The investigation has begun, and a detailed list of the stolen items is being compiled. Beyond their market value, these items have inestimable heritage and historical value,” the ministry said in a statement.
No injuries were reported, either among the public or among Louvre staff or law enforcement officers, it said.
The museum said on X it would remain closed for the day for “exceptional reasons”.
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide and John CottonEditing by Tomasz Janowski and Alison Williams)
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“I think that when the time comes, she should do something that just comes to her and just enters her ear. Like, whatever feels best at that point,” said rapper Jack Harlow. The “Whats Poppin” artist revealed that he and Charli have connected on the film reviewing app Letterboxd. His handle? MissionaryJack. (We’ll let you guess why.) Another Jack echoed his words about Charli’s future: “I feel like I can’t decide that. For me, that’s up to her,” said Adults star Jack Innanen. (Is his FX sitcom returning, by the way? Innanen is not at liberty to say, though he did express some optimism: “Fingers crossed.”)
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Brourman departs from her contemporaries not only in style, but in her downtown-art-scene sensibility. She met the gallerist who hosted a solo show of her work from the Trump trials, Will Shott, at a Drunk Versus Stoned soccer game hosted in Montauk by the Tribeca dealer Max Levai and received her master’s from Pratt, where she was working on what she describes as “a lot of personal excavation stuff” that occupied a space between fantasy and diary. “I was coming out of a really long-term abusive situation, and I was using painting and mixed-media collage to find ways to retool traditional painting practice.” In 2022 Brourman was the first-named plaintiff among eight former students in a lawsuit against the University of Michigan and her undergraduate professor there, Bruce Conforth, who multiple former students alleged sexually assaulted and harassed them. The suit was filed outside Michigan’s statute of limitations and was dismissed, but it was amid the proceedings that she began watching coverage of Depp v. Heard. Feeling guilty for her voyeurism and in an effort to make something of her interest, she decamped to Fairfax County, Virginia, to paint the trial in real time. “I’ve always been a fan of gonzo journalism,” she says. About a year later, she brought her pencils and watercolors into Trump’s Manhattan criminal indictment, making a performance of her attendance in ’80s-esque outfits selected by the designer Mia Vesper, whose Lower East Side brick and mortar closed last year. Following the ear graze of an assassination attempt, she pitched herself to paint Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and he said yes. She’s still angling to do his presidential portrait—because, she says, all of her work is, essentially, an ongoing portrait of the president. “I got a lot of shit for drawing Trump, and I still get a lot of shit about what side I’m on, but I’m like, this is a big project and I don’t know where it’s going,” Brourman says. “Portraiture isn’t always valorous, scenes aren’t always valorous.” She notes Francisco Goya, who in his capacity as first court painter made what are now recognized as critical and satirical portraits of Spain’s monarchs and nobility. “It’s about following your own vision, which is the only way to slip through a broad-stroke, occupational, big-force thing.”
That was years ago, before Guggenheim and Asher’s professional love story exploded in the worst kind of divorce—with dueling legal complaints, personal attacks, and scandalous claims about sex and corruption. Guggenheim is alleging that Asher stole from their company to fund her lifestyle and that she launched her own competing advisory in secret. Asher is countering that it’s Guggenheim who dipped into the business, and that she had been “bullying, threatening, and gaslighting” Asher for the better part of her career. Both women are aghast at the other’s claims. Art world colleagues, still reeling from the conviction of top art advisor Lisa Schiff for defrauding clients out of millions, are in fresh states of shock. After all, the two women were a bedrock of the industry and seemed to be the perfect match. Guggenheim was the high-flying, glamorous face of the firm, giving lectures around the country, pairing masterpieces with masters of the universe. Asher was the younger, serious Brit working out of New York, bringing in a new generation of moneyed clients and nurturing them with care and fastidiousness. “It really did seem at the time like a match made in heaven,” says LA art adviser Patricia Peyser, who has worked closely with them for 20 years, and admires them both.
Now, big-league names on both sides are jumping to each woman’s defense. “Abigail’s as honest as the day is long, an absolute stickler for form,” says longtime friend Adam Chinn, former COO of Sotheby’s, who’s done multiple deals with her. “She’s professional to the point of being beyond meticulous.” As for Guggenheim, her close friend Michael Ovitz, CAA cofounder and a major collector, says, “She’s one of the most trustworthy people that I know. I’ve never ever in 45 years caught her in anything duplicitous, any fibs, any storytelling, any lack of integrity. And Abigail’s trying to destroy her at this time is just crazy.”
Indeed, Asher’s complaint is the more personal of the two. And today Guggenheim is stung. It was filled, Guggenheim says, “with vindictive, crazy lies, and exaggerations that were very dismaying to see, very upsetting from someone I had had a relationship with for three decades…. There’s only personal allegations and character assassination.” As Guggenheim continues talking back in the Park Avenue apartment, the iciness melts—her voice shakes at times and her blue eyes evince vulnerability. The impression of her shifts to lioness in winter, doing her best to keep her head high and hold on to her name and reputation as the woman who put her industry on the map.
Guggenheim is not related to the Guggenheim museum family—though having that name couldn’t have hurt. She didn’t come from wealth. Her father was the owner of dress shops in Woodbury, New Jersey. In 1968, when she moved to New York to start on her master’s in art history at Columbia, there was just one major gallery in SoHo, the Paula Cooper Gallery. She worked her way through graduate school by giving talks at the Whitney Museum every Saturday and Sunday about whatever art was up. One day in the mid-1970s, one of the women in the group asked if Guggenheim would take her to SoHo to visit some galleries; by now more were popping up in the increasingly exotic neighborhood, filled with the world’s most avant-garde characters—think SoHo circa Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. As uptown’s guide through this exciting demimonde, Guggenheim could see that she was on to something. In 1975 she started her own business, Art Tours of Manhattan, taking locals and tourists to museums, galleries, and artists’ studios, like those of Bernar Venet and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. “I had to really understand what that artist was doing, and be able to explain it to people who didn’t have an art vocabulary but had the sensitivity and wanted to learn,” she says. There were plenty of rich people among the crowd. As Guggenheim tells it, a certain woman had just bought an apartment in UN Plaza, hired Angelo Donghia, the famous designer of the day, to decorate it, and now she wanted paintings—could Guggenheim help her? “I advised them to buy a Lichtenstein painting, a Donald Judd sculpture, and several other things. And at the end of the year, I looked at my balance sheet and I saw I had made a lot more money helping this woman buy art for her apartment than I did on many, many, many tours. But I’d never met anyone who could afford to have a painting before.”
When she turned this into a business in 1981—Barbara Guggenheim Associates (BGA)—she was the only one doing work of that kind; there were other advisers out there, but they worked for museums. New galleries were exploding—“the Lower East Side became the hot spot,” recalls Guggenheim, who’d feed their business with a growing stream of clients. “Dealers, gallerists, and auction houses were delighted to see me bringing new clients to their businesses.” Uptown meanwhile, Impressionism was all the rage. “If you went into an apartment on Fifth Avenue, it would have French 18th-century furniture, puddling drapery, and French Impressionist paintings.” She recalls the couple trying to replicate the look, telling her, “‘We like Renoir, but we can’t afford it. What do we do?’ So I introduced them to American Impressionism, and they went on and created one of the best collections of American Impressionism in the world.”
