Sotheby’s announces first auction in Saudi Arabia – and completes Breuer Building deal

In Sotheby’s news: the auction house will be holding its first commercial sale in Saudi Arabia in February 2025, reports ArtNews. The two-part evening event will be the first international auction to take place in the country. Titled ‘Origins’, it will feature art by international and Saudi artists, as well as cars, accessories and sports memorabilia. Last week, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ completed its acquisition of a minority stake in Sotheby’s as part of a $1bn cash infusion for the auction house, which is deep in debt; the deal came with three seats on the board. Sotheby’s has also completed its $100m purchase of the Breuer Building in New York, Artnet reports. Intended to be the company’s new global headquarters, the building will be renovated by the architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. Located at 945 Madison Avenue, it was home to the Whitney Museum of American Art for nearly 50 years. The Met took it over in 2016 (the ‘Met Breuer’) before the Frick Collection moved in from 2021 until earlier this year.

The Swiss-Romanian artist Daniel Spoerri, best known for his playful assemblages of leftover food, has died at the age of 94. Born in Galați in eastern Romania, Spoerri began making a name for himself in 1959 by experimenting with unfinished meals, gluing half-empty dishes to the surface of tables and sometimes hanging the tables on walls as though they were paintings. He dubbed these works tableaux pièges, or ‘snare paintings’, and would often interrupt diners mid-meal so that he could glue their dinners in situ. The art that resulted not only had a distinctive aesthetic but captured something of the spirit of dining with companions. Along with artists such as Arman and Jean Tinguely, Spoerri is often associated with the Nouveau Réalisme movement, with its creative use of readymades, though Spoerri took his interest in food to another level by opening an eatery, Restaurant Spoerri, in Düsseldorf in 1968. (Read Thomas Marks on Spoerri’s ‘snare pictures’ here.)

Art Basel is said to be in talks to run Abu Dhabi Art. Artnews reports that according to a number of sources, Art Basel – part of MCH group – has entered negotiations to receive a $20m investment in exchange for operating the Middle Eastern fair, which was established in 2009. When approached for comment, a spokesperson for Art Basel said, ‘As a general policy, we don’t comment on speculation.’

The Ashmolean Museum has acquired a 15th-century panel by Fra Angelico. The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Magdalen, painted in the 1420s, is the oldest known crucifixion scene by the artist, reports the Art Newspaper. In July 2023, the Marquess of Northampton, who owned the painting, sold it to an overseas buyer for £5m at Christie’s in London, but in January of this year the UK government placed an export bar on the work in order to give a British institution time to raise the funds to acquire it for the nation. In October, the Ashmolean Museum narrowly managed to finish raising the £4.5m required. The panel has been in the UK for at least two centuries, but was attributed to Fra Angelico only in the 1990s.

The City of London has paused plans to relocate Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, reports the Financial Times. According to documents made public by the City of London Corporation, the plans to move the markets to a shared site in Dagenham, east London, have been ‘put on hold… while affordability and other options are explored’. Smithfield, the largest wholesale meat market in the UK, is currently in the City of London; Billingsgate, in Canary Wharf, is one of the country’s largest fish markets. The current Smithfield site will become the new home of the London Museum, formerly known as the Museum of London, in 2026.