[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SOTHEBYS2026_0514_182642-2431_ALIVE.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tGood Morning!<\/p>\n
GOING, GOING\u2026PRETTY GOOD<\/strong>. \u201cSolid if unexciting\u201d is how\u00a0ARTnews\u2019<\/em>\u00a0Brian Boucher and Alex Greenberger\u00a0describe Thursday\u2019s kickoff\u00a0of the May auction season at Sotheby\u2019s in New York. A total of $433.1 million in sales from the modern and contemporary art auction, led by an $85.8 million Mark Rothko painting, is certainly nothing to scoff at. \u201cIt was a good sale,\u201d agreed advisor Jacob King. \u201cNot particularly exciting, but good.\u201d The late dealer Robert Mnuchin\u2019s estate opened the bidding with 11 works, all of which found buyers, for a total of $166.3 million, including fees. The headline-maker was Rothko\u2019s\u00a0Brown and Blacks in Reds<\/em>(1957), estimated at $70 million to $100 million, which Mnuchin purchased in 2003 for just $6.7 million. Thursday\u2019s sale fell just short of Rothko\u2019s auction record of $86.8 million, set in 2012, when\u00a0Orange, Red, Yellow\u00a0<\/em>(1961) sold at Christie\u2019s. The auction also signaled good news for works by women, like Joan Mitchell, as well as \u201cultra-contemporary\u201d artists such as Ding Shilun and Yu Nishimura. Read on to discover who else performed well, and who barely squeaked by with low estimates.<\/p>\n POLARIZING PAYOUT.<\/strong>\u00a0TheYindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation (YNAC)<\/strong>\u00a0is considering appealing a Tuesday verdict by the Australian Federal Court ordering the mining company\u00a0Fortescue<\/strong>\u00a0to pay a record AUD 150 million ($107 million) to the Yindjibarndi people, in compensation for cultural and heritage damage caused by mining their native land in north-western Australia without permission, reports the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>. The YNAC called the payout \u201cunsatisfactory\u201d because it won\u2019t cover their cultural or financial losses from the Solomon Hub iron ore mine, which has generated an estimated AUD 80 billion ($57 billion) in revenue for Fortescue since it began in 2012. The YNAC launched a native title compensation claim in 2022, seeking about AUD 1.8 billion ($1.3 billion) to cover cultural and economic loss. In Tuesday\u2019s ruling,\u00a0Justice Stephen Burley<\/strong>\u00a0agreed that \u201csignificant damage has been done to Yindjibarndi songlines and other areas of cultural heritage,\u201d according to\u00a0ArtAsiaPacific<\/em>. This has included the removal and remote storage of artifacts from 240 classified heritage sites, and the complete destruction of 124 of those sites. YNAC\u2019s chief executive officer,\u00a0Michael Woodley,<\/strong>\u00a0told reporters that in one sense, the Tuesday ruling was a \u201cwin\u201d for Indigenous people, because it showed understanding of their connection to the land, but he was adamant that the amount of compensation remains \u201cunsatisfactory in the context of what has been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDuring a ceremony in Lancaster on May 12, the\u00a0King\u2019s Own Royal Regiment Museum Trust<\/strong>\u00a0returned looted ancient artifacts to Ethiopia, which once belonged to\u00a0Emperor Tewodros II<\/strong>\u00a0of Abyssinia, including what is believed to be a lock of Tewodros\u2019 hair, and cloth stained with his blood following his 1868 death in battle. [Lancaster Guardian<\/strong>]\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBudget cuts to the\u00a0San Francisco Arts Commission<\/strong>have been followed by a \u201cchaotic\u201d downsizing process, despite\u00a0Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s<\/strong>creation of two new arts grants and his assertion that the arts \u201care driving our city\u2019s economic recovery.\u201d [KQED<\/strong>]<\/p>\n \n\tSeven billboards calling for peace, echoing\u00a0Yoko Ono<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0John Lennon<\/strong>\u2019s 1969 campaign, will appear across Los Angeles as part of Ono\u2019s exhibition at the\u00a0Broad<\/strong>museum, opening May 23. [The Los Angeles Times<\/strong>]<\/p>\n \n\tRecently renovated, \u201csodomized\u201d gargoyles on a historic building near the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in Spain have locals scratching their heads. [El Pais<\/strong>]<\/p>\n Frida Kahlo<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Diego Rivera<\/strong>are the stars of an \u201ceerie\u201d new production at the Metropolitan Opera. [The Financial Times<\/strong>]<\/p>\n THE COLOR OF WASHINGTON\u2019S WHITE HORSE.<\/strong>\u00a0A 1976 painting by\u00a0Arnold Friberg<\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0George Washington<\/strong>\u00a0kneeling by his horse in prayer at Valley Forge has become an increasingly prevalent image used by the US government ahead of the country\u2019s 250th anniversary, reports the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. The idealized image drawn from legend shows Washington praying as a golden light illuminates him and his white horse, during the winter of 1777-8, at a time of uncertainty for the American Revolution. While Washington was private about his Anglican beliefs and a supporter of religious freedom for all faiths, Christian nationalists have been reviving the image, and with it, the claim that the US is an inherently Christian nation at its origin. Lately, the painting has been posted online by the Department of Defense, and on federal and White House-organized material promoting the 250th anniversary. The shift, according to the\u00a0NYT<\/em>, signals the instrumentalization of the artwork for political propaganda and the spreading of evangelical viewpoints opposed to the separation of church and state. \u201cChristian nationalists are now in power,\u201d said historian\u00a0John Fea<\/strong>, from Messiah University in Pennsylvania. \u201cAnd that is why you are seeing it in different kinds of spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/uk-returns-artifacts-to-ethiopia-morning-links-may-15-2026-1234785748\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SOTHEBYS2026_0514_182642-2431_ALIVE.jpg?w=1024″] Good Morning! Sotheby\u2019s kicked off the May marquee auction season with a $433.1 million result at its modern and contemporary art evening sales. Australia\u2019s Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal people say a $107 million payout from a recent land title compensation ruling, which recognized damage to their cultural heritage sites, is not enough. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1937199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1937199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1937199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1937199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1937199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\t\tThe Digest\t<\/h2>\n
\n\t\tThe Kicker\t<\/h2>\n