A $60M ‘Magnum Opus’ Collection Heads to Auction

Market A $60M ‘Magnum Opus’ Collection Heads to Auction—and More Art Industry News Plus, MCH Group invests in new Miami media event. Plus, MCH Group invests in new Miami media event. Margaret Carrigan ShareShare This Article Our weekly news roundup is an extension of Paint Drippings, which drops first in The Back Room, a lively recap funneling only the week’s must-know art industry intel into a nimble read you’ll actually enjoy. Artnet News Pro members get exclusive access—subscribe now to receive this in your inbox every Friday. – Art Basel’s parent company MCH Group has acquired a 20 percent stake in Jupiter Festival, a new gathering for leaders in media, entertainment, and sports, set to launch in Miami this October. Speakers include Tribeca Enterprises CEO Rebecca Glashow and former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens. – Tokyo Gendai returns for its fourth edition to Pacifico Yokohama September 11–13 (with a VIP preview September 10). Pace Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, and Tokyo’s Taka Ishii Gallery are among the 63 exhibitors. – Untitled Art Fair returns to Houston for its second edition October 2–4 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, with a preview day on October 1. The fair has grown to 95 galleries, up 11 from its debut, and added several notable first-timers including Anton Kern Gallery, Nara Roesler, Night Gallery, and Richard Saltoun Gallery. – The inaugural Lumo Art & Tech Festival will be held in Oulu, Finland, from November 13–22. The 10-day international event explores the relationship between art and technology. Highlights include Josefina Nelimarkka‘s mist-and-climate-data installation at Cultural Centre Valve and Andrew Melchior‘s spatial audio work transforming 4,000 cosmic signals inside Oulu Cathedral. – Sotheby’s has announced “Magnum Opus,” a multi-part collection sale of more than 900 works from an anonymous collector, estimated at over $60 million. Spanning antiquity to the 20th century across 25 categories—from fine art to jewelry, books, and design—the sales will kick off in New York October 21–23 before continuing across Sotheby’s New York and Paris locations through 2027. A Canaletto painting of Venice, estimated at $6 million–$8 million, leads the collection; other artist represented include Edgar Degas, Picasso, Max Ernst, and Honoré Fragonard. – London’s summer auction season posted its strongest results in years, with the big three houses combining for around $560 million—roughly three times last year’s total. The headline was Sotheby’s sale of works from billionaire Joe Lewis‘s collection, which made nearly $393 million across 25 lots, almost double its presale estimate and the largest single-night haul ever recorded in Europe. Christie’s tripled its 2024 London total with a $34 million result, and Phillips added around $15 million with strong showings from South Asian artists. (Artnet News) – Connie Choi joins Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation as chief curator and vice president for art and education, bringing prior experience at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. – Courtenay Finn has been tapped as chief curator of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas. She assumes the role in August. – The arts charity Hypha Studios launched Hypha Gallery South Bank on June 25, converting a vacant office building near Tate Modern in London into a gallery and project space, a showroom for emerging artists, and free studios for 17 artists. The venue is expected to support around 600 artists over its first year. – New York’s Hispanic Society received a $7.2 million grant from the New York State Council on the Arts toward renovation of its historic North Building—one of the largest investments since its main museum reopened in 2023. – Misan Harriman said he will step down as chairman of the Southbank Centre, the U.K.’s largest arts center. The Charity Commission and Arts Council are investigating allegations that he shared antisemitic posts on social media, including a conspiracy theory tied to a stabbing of two Jewish men in April, although Harriman said his departure was planned before the investigation. (The Times) – Leon Black‘s testimony before a House committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein was cut short Friday after members from both parties said the billionaire collector refused to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements. The committee’s Republican chair James Comer issued two subpoenas on the spot—one demanding Black produce any NDAs, another requiring him to reappear next month. Black, who paid Epstein more than $170 million for alleged financial advice, has denied wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. (Guardian) – French police recovered a stolen Picasso painting during a drug trafficking raid in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. The authenticated work, from a series of portraits of the artist’s model and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, is valued at tens of millions of euros and belongs to a Singapore-based owner, according to French police union Alliance Police Nationale. (Artnet News) – The Box, a museum, gallery, and archive in Plymouth, England, took home the prestigious £120,000 ($158,500) Art Fund Museum of the Year prize. Since opening in 2020, it has attracted 1.3 million visitors and generated an estimated £244 million ($322 million) boost to the local economy. – Otobong Nkanga won the €75,000 ($85,500) Sikkens Prize for pioneering uses of color. The prize will be awarded on October 26 and an accompanying exhibition, “Humus Blues,” will open at the Singer Laren in Laren, Netherlands, immediately after. – Marc Dalessio took first prize and £35,000 ($46,200) in London’s National Portrait Gallery‘s Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award for his oil portrait Jean-Denis. – James Wagner, a beloved New York art collector and fixture in the city’s gallery world, has died at 85. (Hyperallergic) – Charles Hinman, the artist known as the “grand master of the shaped canvas” for his three-dimensional works that bridged painting and sculpture, has died at 93. (New York Times)