Art for Sale Page 2

Photo London 2026
Courtesy of Photo London
A hailstorm rattled against the 85 tonnes of glass that make up the vast curving roof of Olympia’s Grand Hall, while dark clouds cast shadows across the booths below. Yet the mood was light—giddy, even—as Photo London (until 17 May) opened for previews on Wednesday (13 May) at its new home in West Kensington. And that mood was reflected in some lively sales by Thursday afternoon, the first of four public days, by which time the weather had switched between late winter and early summer and back again, changing by the minute.
Paris-B Gallery reported a sale of three works to one buyer coming to £100,000, including two by Chinese artist Yang Yongliang. In Camera, also from Paris, sharing a booth with L Parker Stephenson Photographs from New York, had sold both the vintage and the modern print of Jane Everlyn Atwood’s Auto Portrait (Serpent)—the hero image used for the fair’s promotion—for £13,000 and £2000 respectively.
Robert Hershkowitz was having a strong fair, including sales of works by PH Emerson and Frederick Fiebig, just a couple of months after the eponymous dealer in early European photography had died. Radius Publishing had sold 40 percent of its stock by Thursday lunchtime. And there was anecdotal chatter that pointed to the beginnings of a good fair for many others too, where prices range from £100 to £400,000, but where the low-to-mid-thousands is the norm.
It’s not the location that has raised the cheer. This traffic-choked corner of the capital, described by the Evening Standard as “an unwelcome slab of London real estate to all but the lanyard-wearing classes”, is attempting a revival, including the £1.3bn refurbishment of Olympia’s exhibition halls, which is ongoing into 2027.
Somerset House, the fair’s home for the previous decade, was marmite to galleries and visitors alike. The Thames-side setting and its stunning courtyard, so often bathed in sunshine during previous fairs, are fondly remembered. But its warren of small rooms spread across various wings and floors of the historic neoclassical building complex was not. Photo London was maddeningly difficult to navigate.
Alfredo Jaar, Searching for Africa in Life
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery
This week, no one seems in any doubt that Olympia is the superior venue, providing a more business-like atmosphere, and the light and space to be seen. It’s such an obvious observation that it risks understatement, says Michael Benson, one half of the husband-and-wife team that founded the fair a decade ago. “We need to listen to what our galleries are saying to us, and they were beginning to say, quite seriously, ‘We can’t come back to Somerset House. It’s just too difficult for us to do business’…. We would get people saying, ‘I got missed. I saw [film producer and collector] Michael Wilson walking past my booth, and he never came in.’ It’s very difficult to miss anyone at Olympia. It’s a much more democratic way of doing a fair. There’s no part of it that feels like it’s not getting its fair share.”
It doesn’t do any harm either that London’s collector class tends to live West. But it is still a gamble. When the first iteration of Photo London (launched by dealer Daniel Newburg in 2004, before its takeover by Reed Exhibitions, owner of Paris Photo) relocated from the Royal Academy of Arts to Old Billingsgate three years later, it was a disaster. But the reason wasn’t the location alone. And a large part of the success of the current fair’s relocation in the other direction was the opportunity to inject new energy and, under the directorship of Sophie Parker, bring in some much-needed quality control.
In the past, the popular end of the market—music, fashion, celebrity portraiture—felt overrepresented, while more ‘serious’ work shown by institutions was absent, perhaps presumed unpalatable for market tastes. It resulted in a confusing rift for visitors, and the sense that Photo London was not the place to measure the pulse of the medium. The fair has done much to address this, with an expanded Discovery section devoted to young galleries, and much more space given over to the independent book publishers that are the beating heart of contemporary photography.
Notably, two of this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize shortlist are present at the fair—the aforementioned Atwood, and Weronika Gęsicka, shown by JEDNOSTKA from Warsaw, who were selling works from the Polish artist’s acclaimed Encyclopedia series for between €4800 and €10,000, although the winner, Rene Matić, announced Thursday evening at The Photographers’ Gallery, is not.
Both booths are part of a new initiative, titled Source, to encourage solo artist booths. Tristan Lund, an independent art advisor who had previously curated the fair’s Discovery section, and who has been on the curatorial committee since, pitched the idea after learning about the planned move to Olympia.“We have an increasingly art fair-literate crowd who are looking for something more substantial, and solo booths give you the best chance of getting under the skin of an artist’s practice,” he says. Lund hopes that it might eventually woo the blue-chip “mixed media galleries who represent some of the biggest names in photography, but don’t have enough of a reason to do a photography art fair”, such as Gagosian, Pace or David Zwirner. Perhaps they would, he says, if it was about taking one of their artists and curating a solo booth.
Goodman Gallery already has a sizeable presence with Alfredo Jaar’s Searching for Africa in Life [For Koyo Kouoh], which brings together all 2128 covers of Life magazine published between 1936 and 1996 as an enormous lightbox. It is presented in collaboration with the Prix Pictet, which was initiated by Photo London’s founders, Benson and Fariba Farshad, and which the Chilean artist won at its latest edition in September 2025.
Hélène Binet, Bruder Klaus Kapelle, Peter Zumthor (from the Zumthor series), (2009)
© The artist and Large Glass, London
These solo artist presentations, which have been given the space and some financial incentive to take the risk, were mentioned as highlights by many of the visitors that The Art Newspaper spoke to. Among them is a wonderful series of vintage prints by Ute and Werner Mahler presented by Frankfurt gallery Peter Sellem, priced between £5,000 to £8,000. They include a selection of their fashion photographs from behind the Berlin Wall in the days of the GDR, alongside their first collaborative project, Mona Lisas of the Suburbs, made up of adolescent portraits from Liverpool, Minsk, Berlin, Reykjavik and Florence. Other standouts include Galerie Julian Sander’s presentation of Rosalind Fox Solomon, who died last June, and London-based architectural photographer Hélène Binet, shown at Large Glass.
“Doing a solo booth is always a bigger risk,” says Charlotte Schepke, the owner of Large Glass, who has works ranging from £2000 to £15,000. However, she trusts Lund. “He got us to Photo London in the first place, when he was curating the Discovery section. We listened to him, because I feel he’s discerning, not just putting things together. Of course, you need to sell. But, at the same time, it helps when you can focus on one person. It gives people who are visiting a much better idea about an artist. It’s almost like an exhibition, but it is in this [fair] situation.”“I never did the fair before. I didn’t like the architecture,” says Sander, great-grandson of the photographer August Sander. “Tristan asked me to come, specifically with the work of Rosalind Fox Solomon, and I saw him in the space [Olympia], and I agreed to come do it.” His experience so far is positive, finding that most visitors are pretty knowledgeable about photography.
“It is a connoisseur field. It’s very much a willing buyer, willing seller market. People involved in photography are interested in all aspects of it: the camera, the situation, the process, the development. You go down a rabbit hole looking at how these objects are created. The people who don’t know a lot are happy to learn. They’re as interested in the story of the photograph and the person as they are in the object itself and the technology.”
This chimes with a trend identified by Parker, who took over as the fair’s director in 2024, having joined Photo London in 2018. I put it to her that there has been a loss of connoisseurship about photography in London – people with a deep appreciation of the object qualities of prints – in part with the absence of photography auctions in the capital, which is where the market first took off in the 1970s.“I feel like it’s actually swinging back,” she says. “During the pandemic and post-Covid, it was very bright stuff that translated very well onto a digital screen, because that’s how people were consuming art. But now, as people go back to seeing work physically, wanting to really understand photography as an object and not just an image that can be viewed anywhere, people are much more interested in the craft… When people start to look at the big names, they become interested in vintage processes and traditional techniques. And now emerging artists are starting to go back to those processes as well.
“There was big concern around AI a couple of years ago, and, as a result, young artists are wanting to hone these traditional techniques that have this human element to them; those little discrepancies, the little mistakes that show you that there’s been a human hand involved. And that’s brilliant to see.”
New fair director Sophie Parker’s plan to “reward galleries that take risks” was seen in action
The UK’s premier photography fair is still finding its identity, with strong curated sections and projects presented amid more vacuous work
Japanese galleries return in full force this year, while the percentage of women photographers shown has increased
Aipad’s annual fair brings nearly 80 exhibitors to the Park Avenue Armory, seeking to be both an approachable entrypoint for new collectors and a place of discovery for connoisseurs

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With Is God Is, Aleshea Harris breaks from the cinematic tradition that has spent decades requiring Black women to forgive our way back to grace.
“You ever want to scrape your scars off and see what’s underneath?”
It’s a natural question for anyone who has carried trauma in their body and wants to know: What is left underneath all the harm that has been done to me? Who would I be without these scars?
In Is God Is, the first feature film from writer-director Aleshea Harris, this question hangs in the air between twin sisters, Racine and Anaia, who bear emotional and physical scars from a fire their father set during their early years while attempting to incinerate their mother.
The twins are now grown, and the movie brings us along with them to a home in the South, where their mother Ruby, who they believed had died in the fire their father set, is alive and near death. 
As the two young women prepare to come face to face with her on her deathbed, Racine asks her twin, “You ready to go see God?” 
“God?” answers Anaia, quizzically. 
To which Racine replies, “She made us, didn’t she?” 
As they make their way to her bedside, a curtain parts to reveal their mother propped up in a hospital bed. Most of her body is covered in bandages, and she is flanked by Black women on either side of her, carefully braiding her hair. 
Harris has physically arranged Ruby for us the way any god would be in her last days, on display, tended to, and watched over dutifully by her faithful. 
She is God, just like Racine said. 
As God begins to recount to the twins the night their father set her on fire, she intentionally layers in a maternal warning, “He does have a tender side,” she divulges. “Men like your Daddy always have a tender side.” God is folding this lesson into her testimony as a cautionary tale for her twins to carry forward as something likely to be true about every abusive man her daughters might encounter throughout the course of their lives.   
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God reveals she did not call her girls home for a reunion. She wants them to exact revenge on her behalf. The target? Their sometimes tender, and often charismatic father, Man. “Make your Daddy dead. Dead. Dead,” she instructs. “And everything around him, you can destroy it, too.” 
What would ordinarily play as an extreme deathbed wish arrives differently when the request comes from God. Ruby can no longer be cast aside as another Black woman the world has discarded. The change in name makes the violence done to her two decades ago cosmic in scale. To burn a god is sacrilege, and the retaliation has to match, leaving violent revenge the only proportional answer.
For Harris, leading with revenge is not a screenwriter’s flourish. Rather, it is a decision by an exceptional filmmaker who wants Black women in the audience to see their anger reflected back at them. 
“There might be something for someone who has suffered in these ways or has seen someone suffer in these ways, watching these women fully embrace their anger, be given space and a narrative for that rage,” Harris explained. “I’m not wagging my finger at Black women for their anger. The posture of the movie is that the anger is justified. That it is righteous rage.”
Harris pushes back against the expectation that Black women should bury our anger. “The dictates of respectability hold that for Black people, and certainly for Black women, there is no space for that Black rage,” she explained. “We earn our stripes as mothers by our ability, in part, to endure. I think that’s despicable and dehumanizing.”
Is God Is asks what happens when Black women stop waiting on systems that were never built to save them. The daughters of God have been tasked with delivering the justice the institutions, the community, and the church failed to. 
Their father, the man they call the Monster, has built a new life in the years since the fire. The twins’ first stop on their mission to find him is a woman named Divine, the Healer, a pastor played by Erika Alexander. Divine leads her own small storefront church and is one of the women the Monster fathered a child with, a son named Ezekiel. 
When the twins find her at the church, she is cloaked head to toe in white, waiting for the Monster’s return. Divine is not running an ordinary church. The pulpit she has built has given her unchecked authority over the people who sit in her pews. “You go in there, and she is literally throwing those people around with the power of the Holy Ghost,” Alexander told me. “She is actually casting the devil out of a child. [Saying] It is your turn again. It is ridiculous.”
True to her name, dressed head-to-toe in all white, Divine has positioned herself as a conduit for the holy, the channel through which God reaches her congregation. To the world in general, and to her parishioners in particular, she belongs to God. 
Divine has also constructed an altar dedicated to the Monster, replete with his clothes and personal effects. The altar reveals her fuller truth. Divine belongs to God. In her case, God is the Monster. 
For Alexander, playing Divine required digging into a character who was so blinded by her devotion to the Monster that she is not quite human. “She is still lusting for him. So to me, she’s not a real person anymore. She’s in purgatory. She’s not on earth, and she’s not in heaven nor hell. This woman doesn’t represent reality.”
In a brief encounter inside Divine’s church, the twin daughters represent a changing of the guard, a new generation of Black women refusing to honor the cycle of violence and silence that Black women traditionally have been asked to sustain. 
Divine reveals to the twins that the Monster left her when she was pregnant with their son, Ezekiel. Racine snaps. “Oh, uh uh. You’ve been sittin’ up waiting on a man who left you pregnant? A man who ain’t tell you where he was going? That’s the man you waiting on?”
Without skipping a beat, Ezekiel, now grown, comes to his mother’s defense the only way he knows how. “The Bible says…”
Divine cuts him off mid-sentence. Her voice drops as something shifts in her body. With the full weight of her pulpit behind her, she turns on Racine the way she might turn on a parishioner she is about to cast a demon out of, “I can see that you’re septic with anger, and the spirit of devilment.”
By attacking Racine, Divine is doing precisely what her faith has trained her to do. Black women watching the film will recognize a Divine in their own lives: the auntie who told her mother to stay, the first lady who blamed the single young lady for the pastor’s wandering hands, the woman who organized casserole deliveries for the abuser’s mother while her own daughter is hiding away in a domestic violence shelter, chastised for escaping the abuse.
I asked Alexander where Divine finds her power. “I think she built a wall. That church is a wall away from what really hurts her. That she’s not loved. That she was left pregnant. That she was left lusting, and that’s all she can remember,” Alexander shared. “There are so many women who are broken down like that. They cannot get over the man who has done them wrong because they feel that lusting, and what they really want is to be loved. Behind that lust is love. It’s what happens to a dream deferred. It turns in on you.”
Harris also wants people to see the parts of Divine that have been broken down. She shared her hope that “there’s some empathy for Divine. She’s not just a clown, especially as Erika portrays her. She is in a kind of limbo, this waiting in the white dress, and it’s sad that this stasis is caused by her complete and myopic devotion to the Monster.”
Harris was deliberate about what Sterling K. Brown’s acting credentials would bring up for the audience in his role as the Monster. “For Sterling, I have it in the script that when we finally see his face, he is like Obama,” she told me. “He is meant to be this guy who is very charming, very attractive, very unassuming. And so that is subverted, of course, when he makes the turn.”
Alexander goes a step further, pointing out how often people have given men a pass because of their charm, “Didn’t we do that for Cosby? And Diddy? We want to love these people. They are charismatic, by the way. There’s something to them.” 
There is something to them. 
The twins find the Monster’s most recent wife, Angie, played by Janelle Monáe, on the road. She is leaving him and has left their twin sons back at the house. All three women share a connection and have been harmed by the same dangerous man. None of that stops Angie from looking down on the twins from the moment they meet.
Angie is bougie, and her class performance is the only protection she has built for herself against the Monster. She has spent her marriage believing that the right house, the right clothes, the right surface life would eventually absorb the terror underneath. 
By the end of the film, all three of the Monster’s sons have shown the same violent tendencies as their father. We are reminded that no one is safe from the Monster, and that protecting an abuser helps produce abusive successors and future generations of victims.
The twin daughters have become agents of a heretical matrilineal religion doing the work the orthodox religion refuses. Harris makes a strong case that Black women’s salvation will not come from the Father. It will come as a final directive from the Mother whose daughters named her God and committed to fulfilling her dying wish.
“There’s an opportunity for folks to challenge patterns in a family,” Harris explained. “And that’s why it’s just very instinctive that we lay some of this at the young women’s feet and offer them the opportunity to choose a path, and at least I do that as a storyteller, and we see them sort of make their choices.”
The path the twins choose is one that generations of Black women have been counseled away from. Anger. Refusal. Revenge.
What does Harris want Black women to walk out of movie theaters believing they deserve?
“Everything,” she answered with equal parts enthusiasm and resolve. “That any desire for revenge is justified. That the way that we feel is to be honored because it’s so often dismissed. But I also hope that Black women and girls will sit with the cost of holding anger and remember that we get to be okay no matter what. That there’s something about bearing the wound and having the scar but continuing on.”
Harris and Is God Is leave us with what many of us as Black women know intuitively and from lived experience. When we are abused, we have a right to be angry – to want revenge. Harris doesn’t stop there. Neither can we. We have to be our own protectors. Our own gods. Because no one is coming to save us. No one ever was. 
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‘IS GOD IS’ Reimagines The Revenge Genre Through Black Women’s Eyes was originally published on newsone.com

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May 15, 2026
Officials say the move is aimed at curbing abuse, political patronage, and the growing misuse of honorary academic titles.
The Nigerian government is cracking down on the use of honorary academic titles after announcing that recipients of honorary degrees can no longer legally use the title “Dr.” before their names.
According to Citizen Digital, Nigeria’s National Universities Commission (NUC) issued the directive as part of a broader effort to combat fraud, political favoritism, and the misuse of honorary awards. The commission warned that honorary doctorate recipients who continue to publicly present themselves as medical doctors or as holders of academically earned doctorates could face sanctions.
In a statement, the NUC described the widespread use of honorary titles as “deceptive” and said the practice has increasingly blurred the line between earned academic qualifications and ceremonial recognitions. Officials argued that the abuse has undermined the integrity of Nigeria’s higher education system.
Universities traditionally award honorary degrees to recognize individuals for notable contributions to society, philanthropy, business, entertainment, or public service. However, the degrees do not require the years of academic coursework, research, or dissertation work typically associated with a Ph.D. or professional doctorate.
The controversy surrounding honorary titles has grown in Nigeria over the years as politicians, religious leaders, celebrities, and business executives increasingly adopt the “Dr.” prefix after receiving ceremonial honors.
Critics have accused some universities of turning honorary degrees into political favors or status symbols rather than preserving their intended purpose as symbolic recognitions of achievement.
The NUC said only individuals who have completed accredited academic doctorate programs or professional medical training should use the “Dr.” designation in formal and public settings.
The move arrives as several African nations intensify efforts to restore trust in academic institutions and combat credential fraud. Nigeria has faced repeated scrutiny over fake degree scandals in recent years, including investigations involving forged foreign university credentials among public officials, reports Fast Company.
While supporters say the policy will strengthen academic credibility and reduce public deception, critics argue that enforcement could prove difficult in a country where honorary titles often carry social prestige and political influence.
RELATED CONTENT: Tyrese, Rickey Smiley, Claudia Jordan, And More Receive Honorary Degrees

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Recent gerrymandering efforts in Louisiana and Tennessee, along with a Supreme Court decision that dealt another major blow to the Voting Rights Act, energized thousands to march in the same spaces that led to the VRA’s first passage.
Under the Alabama sun, shouts and chants could be heard for miles, all in the name of the power of the Black vote.
Weeks after the monumental Louisiana vs. Callais decision that gutted more parts of the Voting Rights Act, thousands descended upon Alabama’s state capitol, as well as Selma, for the “All Roads Lead To The South” rally to drum up awareness of the disenfranchisement of Black voters in neighboring southern states such as Tennessee and Florida.
Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana state legislatures seem poised to draw up new maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, while Mississippi has paused redistricting efforts, though Governor Tate Reeves will consider the position at a later date.
Among those in attendance were Montgomery mayor Steven L. Reed, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NY), Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL), Rep. Shomari Figures (D-AL) and thousands more who traveled to Montgomery via bus, car, or plane thanks to grassroots organizing by local orgs and national civil engagement groups.
“We’re here, Montgomery, not at a stopping point, but at a starting point,” Reed, the first Black person to hold the position of Mayor in Montgomery, said. “We’re here in this city because of the spirit, because of the courage and because of the commitment of our forefathers and foremothers who got us to this point.”
“When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation, what the faces of representation, look like, what the opportunities, legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country, then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way,” Figures said.
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A redrawn map in Alabama affects Figures, who was elected from the state’s second congressional district in 2024. If the current map is struck down and reverted to the 2023 map, Figures’ seat would be in the 1st District, widely considered a Republican stronghold in the state.
Booker called Montgomery “sacred soil,” saying that if they didn’t fight for voting rights now, then “we will lose the gains and the rights and the liberties that our ancestors afforded us.”
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For those in attendance, Saturday represented a call to arms. For Alabama residents with family members deeply involved in the fight for voting rights in the 1960s, the latest fight became even more personal.
“My grandmama, my momma, my mother-in-law – our ancestors did not cross that bridge, walk during the bus boycott, my cousins got locked in the First Baptist Church [in Montgomery], across from the police station in the 60s, my other cousin got beat up by a horse up on Jackson Street – we didn’t do all that for this,” Carole Burton, a Montgomery resident told The Guardian.

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An engraving of A View of Fort George by William Burgis (around 1740) features in MCNY’s show, The Occupied City Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York
Americans are living through trying times—with destructive wars overseas, tens of thousands locked in detention centres at home, a surge in inflation and an unpopular president overseeing it all. But this spring and summer will nonetheless see an explosion of patriotic fanfare, as well as sober reflection, marking 250 years since the country established independence from its British overlords and became the US.
The celebrations and initiatives, which have been subject to their own ideological battles, feature everything from historical re-enactments to the rededication of the National Mall in Washington, DC. Two series of mobile exhibits aboard Freedom Trucks and a Freedom Plane are also making their way across the US with historical documents and interactive exhibits, including a quiz to determine whether you are Patriot or a Loyalist.
Weathervane by an unidentified artist (around 1865–75), at the American Folk Art Museum © American Folk Art Museum
New York, which played a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War and was an early capital of the US, is getting several serious and immersive explorations of the events surrounding the war and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This includes a chance to see three of the 26 surviving Declarations printed at John Dunlap’s press in Philadelphia on the night of 4 July 1776. One of these, bought by the billionaire insurance executive William R. Berkley in a private sale in the early 1990s and now held in the Berkley Collection, is on view at the Grey Art Museum at New York University (NYU) (until 10 July), alongside more than 100 other documents that give context to the Patriots’ desire for revolution. (Two other copies are on display at the Morgan Library and Museum and the New York Public Library.)
Berkley tells The Art Newspaper that he hopes the exhibition, The Declaration of Independence: Long Trail to Liberty, will be a source of optimism. He says a renewed focus on the country’s founding documents could offer “a reawakening of all the potential of America. We tend to get bogged down by the bad things that have happened, and there are plenty of bad things, but the structure of the country and its founding documents is so exciting and so wonderful.”
Berkley attributes his own personal successes in life to the opportunity he found in the US even as a child from a poor family—in particular, the full scholarship he received to study at NYU. “Our prospects are still bright if we remember what grounds America and its future,” he says.
Uptown at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), the ongoing exhibition The Occupied City also focuses on the revolutionary era. It transports visitors to a period when New York was an ideological and strategic battleground, when the British occupied the city for seven years and the Great Fire decimated parts of the city, linking the era to future events.
Among its interactive installations, the show includes a re-creation of a coffee house and a tavern (the main gathering points for debate); a simulated flythrough of the damage wrought by the Great Fire; and a chance to pull ropes and topple a digital effigy of King George III. This last activity re-creates the moment when the Sons of Liberty pulled down a statue of the British monarch from Manhattan’s Bowling Green in the days following the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
A 1774 postcard of a British commissioner, tarred and feathered, at MCNY Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York
Elisabeth Sherman, MCNY’s chief curator and deputy director, hopes that Occupied New York will give nuance to the popular understanding of the Revolutionary War as being primarily about taxation without representation. “The ideological contests that came before were much more about economic precarity,” she says, noting the exhibition’s exploration of revolutionary-era discourse around the agricultural and trade economies. Visitors may also “find grounding in the knowledge that others lived through really challenging times”, Sherman adds. “Others had to face forces that were out of their control and find agency in ways that they could. And out of that, they built something hopeful or idealistic.”
Across Central Park on the Upper West Side, the New York Historical is hosting at least four semiquincentennial-related exhibitions this year. One of these, Revolutionary Women (29 May-25 October) tells the stories of women who contributed to the war effort as both Patriots and Loyalists.
“If people are thinking about women during the revolutionary period at all, they’re thinking about those that were part of the households of the Founding Fathers—elites like Eliza Schuyler Hamilton and Abigail Adams,” says Anna Danziger Halperin, a curator of the exhibition and the director of the museum’s Center for Women’s History. Revolutionary Women does include Hamilton and Adams, but it also focuses on working-class women who took up arms, took over businesses and saw in the war an opportunity to pursue their own liberty.
Women of the Revolution
Among these women was Deborah Sampson, a cross-dressing soldier who enlisted under a male alias and fought for more than a year before her true identity was uncovered when she fell ill and was hospitalised. There is also Molly Brant, a Haudenosaunee woman who played an important diplomatic role as an ally of the British, and Deborah Squash, an enslaved Black woman who self-emancipated from George Washington’s plantation.
The British had urged enslaved Black men to self-emancipate to British lines in exchange for their freedom, Halperin explains. The message also reached Black women, who showed up offering their help as well. After the war, the British evacuated many of their Black and Native American allies, including Squash and Brant, to Canada to guarantee their freedom.
But not all semiquincentennial exhibitions in the city are focusing on the past. The Cooper Hewitt—a Smithsonian Institution museum, meaning that it has been at least adjacent to intense pressure and scrutiny from the Trump administration—is showing Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne (until 27 September). The show features an eerie, awe-inspiring and sometimes lightly romanticised tour through US factories over the past ten years. It “upends the notion that nothing is made here anymore”, says its curator, Susan Brown, who describes Payne as working in the tradition of photographers like Gordon Parks. She points to both Payne’s images of the 154-year-old Steinway piano factory in Astoria, Queens, and to photos of factories that make computer chips and robotics.
Brown’s personal favourite—and one that might have resonance with contemporary audiences amid the head-spinning ascension of automation in our lives—is an image of the new Hyundai factory in Georgia that opened last year. Brown calls it the most intimate photograph in the show. “It reminds me of a dad taking a splinter out of a child’s finger,” she says. “It has a parental quality.”
If Payne’s photographs capture something of US industriousness and an element of craft (the human hand) that still exists in the assembly lines of mass production, a tiny but impactful exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum reminds viewers that material culture has always been where Americans expressed themselves and searched for a national identity. According to the curator Emelie Gevalt, every 50 years—when the time comes to celebrate the US’s biggest birthdays—there is a renewed interest in collecting Americana and folk art. It is a category of objects that, to many, feels closest to an authentic version of the country.
In Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States (until 13 September), an exhibition drawn from the museum’s collections, a juxtaposition of objects could read like an elegant summation of the US’s current predicament. Here, visitors find Uncle Sam riding precarious and high on the winds of technological change in the form of a Gilded Age-era whirligig, featuring the figure flying overhead on a bicycle mounted to an airplane. Beneath him, easily overlooked, is a message Benjamin Franklin Perkins wrote on his 1990 painting of Lady Liberty: “Miss Liberty reaches out to welcome the persecuted, sick, hungry to the land of opportunity.”
Check out our top picks from the many exhibitions taking place across the city
The Neo Ancients festival in the small Gloucestershire town of Stroud featured artists whose works have a more “pastoral” approach towards art production
The 1980s art world was devastated by HIV/Aids, but artists made era-defining work even as their peers were dying from the disease. Now, US institutions are recognising the extent of their legacy, with numerous shows planned

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Drake surprised fans by dropping three albums at once, and one of the standout new names on the massive release is New York’s Stunna Sandy.
Drake’s Iceman was expected to drop May 15, but surprisingly, he dropped three albums: Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour.
Across those three albums, which contain more than 40 songs, he brought back some old friends and some new ones, including Stunna Sandy.
The 23-year-old Brooklyn-born rapper stars on his song “Outside Tweaking.”
She’s also seen riding shotgun and partying it up in the video for “Plot Twist.”
She’s also been confirmed as the woman on the cover of Drake’s Habibti album, which shows only her eyes, with the rest of her body covered in masking tape.
Drake’s always had an eye for young talent and usually hops on their songs, but the role has reversed heading into the Iceman era.
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Stunna Sandy first made noise in 2024 with her song “Make It Look Sexy,” which showcased her soft, monotone voice in a style that drew some comparisons to Ice Spice.
In 2025, she sat with Living Proof Magazine to talk about her come-up and love for music, which didn’t start when she picked up a mic.
“I’ve been into hip hop since I was a little kid. But really getting into making it? Around 18 or 19,” she revealed. “That’s when I decided I was gonna do music. I tried to be a DJ first, and that led me to what I’m doing now.”
Born to Egyptian parents, she explains that a lot of her music comes from her Big Apple roots.
She added, “A lot of my music is very New York-inspired. I rap about everything I’ve lived and seen in Brooklyn, especially Crown Heights.”
Already one of the new voices of the NYC rap scene, the Drake feature will undoubtedly give her that extra push.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s got a habit of posting thirst traps on Instagram. Check out some of them below.
Meet Stunna Sandy, The Woman On The Cover of Drake’s ‘Habibti’ & Featured On ‘Maid Of Honour’ was originally published on cassiuslife.com

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Copyright © 2026 Interactive One, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
In a recent chat, Pam Grier says that she was Stan Lee’s muse for Black Marvel characters Misty Knight and Amanda Waller.
Pam Grier is considered one of the most iconic beauties of her time, and in a new interview, she dropped a tidbit that makes all the sense in the world. As a guest on the Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus podcast, Pam Grier says she inspired Stan Lee and the Marvel Comics creative teams to create the characters, Misty Knight and Amanda Weller.
Complex reports that Pam Grier was a guest on Louis-Dreyfus’ program, where she discussed her inspirational career and the impact she continues to have on culture. Naturally, the talk ranged from Grier’s early days and her stint as a box-office draw in the Blaxploitation genre, before shifting to the Marvel portion of the interview.
“Stan Lee, who wrote about Misty Knight and Amanda Waller, he based his characters on me,” Grier claimed.
Misty Knight, who first appeared in the Marvel pages in 1975, was actually created by writer Jenny Blake Isabella and artist Arvell Jones. It appears that Grier may have misspoke, but she wasn’t off base in saying that she has inspired some of the superheroines of comic lore.
In the Netflix MCU television shows Luke Cage, The Defenders, and Iron Fist, Knight was played by Simone Missick.
Monica Rambeau, also known as Photon, was inspired by Grier, according to the character’s creators, writer Roger Stern and artist John Romita Jr.
In the case of Amanda Waller, that character was created by John Ostrander, Len Wein, and John Byrne for DC Comics, and Grier played the live-action version of the menacing character in Smallville.
Stan Lee did co-create King T’Challa, aka the Black Panther, with Jack Kirby, and he also co-created Sam “The Falcon” Wilson with Gene Colan, among others.
Check out the Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus podcast with Pam Grier below.
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Pam Grier Says Stan Lee Saw Her As A Muse For Marvel Characters was originally published on hiphopwired.com

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Making headlines: Anderson Cooper with art adviser Marisa Kayyem Photo: Steven Molina Contreras
There were famous faces at Frieze New York’s VIP preview on Wednesday. These included the CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper browsing the aisles, no doubt hoping to add to his burgeoning contemporary art collection. Other stars in attendance were the artist and REM singer Michael Stipe—who graced the cover of New York magazine’s Look Book—and the art-fair veteran Leonardo DiCaprio. We are told Leo was holding hands with his mother (bless), with the art adviser Ralph DeLuca by his side. Fellow actor (and visual artist) Sharon Stone also made an appearance, while our spies also spotted Julia Fox at the Shed.
Artistic director James McAnally gave partygoers the triennial lowdown on Wednesday Photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Counterpublic
Guests packed a party in Tribeca to celebrate the third Counterpublic Triennial, Coyote Time, launching in September in St. Louis. The event—presented in partnership with your favourite art publication (this one!) and Frieze New York—was filled with trendy people keen to hear about the Midwestern public art event, featuring works by 50-plus artists. Guests were impressed by the swag, with baseball caps and silk scarves on offer among the cocktails and canapés. Noses twitched when an eau de parfum created by the artist Emma McCormick Goodhart—Cave 0, developed by her scent studio, Ecdysis—was “diffused into space and on cocktail glassware”, providing a sweet odeur. “What a brilliant olfactory experience!” declared a delighted partygoer.
Sound move: Kite (far right) and her ensemble traverse Frieze Photo: Steven Molina Contreras
A new commission and performance by the Oglála Lakȟóta artist Kite at the Shed is turning heads. Kite’s all-encompassing musical interludes with a small ensemble are fast becoming a highlight of Frieze New York. As the composer and performance artist has described her project: “The walls feature the design of Lakȟóta symbols rendered from dream discussions with St. Louis community members… We travel through the fair as a group of musicians to play these symbols as a graphic score.” This journey through the fair, up and down the escalators and across the corridors, is beguiling but also a little challenging for some visitors. “I can’t follow that music up and down those stairways,” quipped one dedicated but drained follower.
The great and the good of the art world are being photographed for a special version of New York magazine’s Look Book—a compendium of the crème de la crème of luminaries gracing Frieze New York. The Look Book, a staple of local events like the New York Film Festival, hits the Frieze fair bins daily and features a selection of portraits snapped in a special photo studio on the fair’s top floor. Frieze London director Eva Langret lined up for a pic on the first day, as did the collector Beth Rudin DeWoody (the singer Michael Stipe and collector Christy Ferer were included in the first issue). How did Rudin DeWoody feel about having a possible starring role in the Look Book? “The problem is you can’t smile,” she told us, “but I threw a few smiles in.” What a rebel.

Plus Lucy’s Liu’s ‘Hard Feelings’
Famous faces fraternise at Frieze

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Trump is trying to hamstring states that want to show leadership and get ahead of the curve when it comes to protecting us from the worst effects of AI technology.
When does the federal government protect us, and when does it get in the way? Whatever the right balance is, the Trump administration and its yes-men in Congress and on the Supreme Court are doing the exact opposite. The proposal they are pushing on AI proves how far backward they want to take us. Federal policy should set a floor—not a ceiling—for accountability.
Over decades, we won strong federal laws that prevented state legislatures from taking away our freedoms: to vote, to have our votes counted, to get pregnancy health care, to get health care in general, to have clean water and air. Under Trump, the federal government is bowing out of those responsibilities and letting states run wild, doing their worst to us for profit and political gain. 
On the other hand, we often relied on states to protect us when the federal government wouldn’t: raising the bar for car emissions and education standards, granting same-sex marriage licenses, experimenting with social policies and regulations—all of which pushed the country forward as a whole. Under Trump, the federal government is now undermining its ability to do so. 
When states want to protect us, Trump attacks them. When states want to attack us, he protects them. It’s the opposite of how it’s supposed to be. And why we need to stop it.
This is exactly what’s happening with Big Tech right now: Trump is trying to hamstring states that want to show leadership and get ahead of the curve when it comes to protecting us from the worst effects of rapidly developing, largely unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. The White House’s new AI framework is being sold as common sense: a single national standard rather than a patchwork of state laws. 
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The argument is that 50 different approaches will slow innovation in AI and undermine America’s ability to compete. But their approach to regulation means only one thing: no regulation. Not only are they trying to prevent the development of any federal standards that would protect us, but the single goal of this policy is to prevent states from setting good standards in the face of the federal government failing to.
We have heard this story before. When social media companies were rising up in influence, politicians from both parties told us not to get in the way of innovation. “Don’t regulate too soon. Don’t slow things down. Trust the companies. Trust the market.” What followed didn’t free us, of course, it allowed those corporations to target us—for profit. 
Social media platforms and other tech corporations scaled far faster than any regulation or accountability. Disinformation spread faster than the truth. They preyed on children. They fueled right-wing violence. And Black communities were among the first to feel the consequences: targeted harassment, algorithmic bias, fraudulent services, voter suppression, and a system that too often treated harm as the cost of doing business. 
Now we are being asked to make the same mistake again with AI. Across the country, states with responsible leadership are beginning to respond to these real harms: putting up guardrails for young people interacting with AI systems that can influence their mental health, protecting against tenant screening tools that replicate bias and lock families out of housing, and halting discriminatory hiring systems that quietly screen people out of opportunity. Some are moving to protect people from the racial and other forms of discrimination that AI accelerates. Others are requiring transparency when political content is manipulated by AI, distorting elections and confusing voters, or when corporations use people’s private health care information to manipulate or scam them. The White House proposal would “preempt” the ability of states to take action when federal officials bought off by the tech corporations (or deeply invested in them) refuse to do anything. 
And when those harms show up, they do not land evenly. They follow existing fault lines — across race, income, access, and power. Black communities know what it means to be on the front edge of that impact. We have seen technologies amplify discrimination in hiring and lending. We have seen data used to target, exclude, and surveil. We have seen how narratives can be manipulated at scale to undermine our political power. AI does not erase those patterns. It accelerates them.
Innovation without accountability is not progress. It is merely shifting risk onto the people least able to absorb it, in favor of those who profit from it. We should be investing in innovation. We should be leading in AI. But leadership is not defined by how fast we move—it is defined by what we are willing to protect. States must retain the ability to act while federal policy catches up. 
Congress should not preempt state AI laws absent strong national protections. Instead, federal policy should set a floor—not a ceiling—for accountability. It should make clear that civil rights laws apply fully in the age of AI. It should ensure that companies are responsible not just for what they build but also for how AI is used and the harms it causes. 
Right now, we are witnessing elected officials (even some Democrats who need Black voters to retain their power) willing to compromise federal legislation of AI with Republicans without ensuring civil rights protections for our community. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down a significant portion of the Voting Rights Act, this administration and its supporters seem hellbent on returning the country to the Jim Crow era of its past. What is happening with AI feels like the same bad-faith actors are also determined to erase our future. 
What actions—if any—can the average person take to demand AI regulation as it continues to integrate itself into our lives? Tell your state officials—from governors to legislators to attorneys general—not to back down, to keep fighting, no matter the pushback. 
Tell your Congresspeople to challenge the Trump administration’s policy, for the sake of all the people whose lives it will ruin. And alert everyone around you: your coworkers, your family, the influencers you follow, the makers of the media you consume, to not bury this story or make light of the real threat AI poses, because it’s hard to understand or because its takeover seems inevitable. We must put up a real fight.
SEE ALSO:
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs Executive Order Regulating AI

Trump To Sign EO Preventing State-Level AI Regulation

Unregulated Artificial Intelligence Technology Hurts Black America More Than It Helps was originally published on newsone.com

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The UCL report is the latest in a string of recent studies that aim to prove a connection between art and improved health
Photo: Krakenimages.com
Engaging in arts and cultural activities has been linked with slowing biological aging, a new study has found. The results of the research from University College London (UCL), published in the journal Innovation in Aging on 11 May, shows that participating in arts—such as singing, dancing, painting and crafting, as well as attending art exhibitions and visiting heritage sites, museums and libraries—helps people stay biologically younger. It is the first study of its kind to demonstrate such a connection.
The study of 3,556 adults in the UK used blood samples to analyse epigenetic clocks—which measure changes in DNA as a person gets older—and ascertain people’s biological ages (rather than chronological ages). Survey responses, meanwhile, provided insight into the regularity of participation in cultural activities.
In one test, the biological ages of those who engaged in cultural activities monthly were 0.8 years lower than those who only participated once or twice a year, while those who engaged weekly had a biological age 1.02 years lower.
“Our study found that it’s not just about doing arts regularly, but also about doing a range of different arts activities,” says Daisy Fancourt, the lead author of the research and the head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at UCL. “Each type of arts activity—reading, making music, going to cultural performances, visiting heritage sites etc—has different effects on us cognitively, emotionally and physiologically. So engaging in a diverse range of activities—just like having lots of different plants in our diets—is most beneficial for our health.”
The research also found that the relationship between arts engagement and biological aging becomes larger and more important as we get older, Fancourt says.
The study—which suggests that participating in arts and culture is as, if not more, beneficial to biological aging as engaging in physical activities such as running, skiing and yoga—concludes that creative activities should be included in public health strategies. “This research highlights that arts engagement is a health-promoting behaviour. As such, it’s important that we don’t just treat it as a luxury in our lives but an essential,” Fancourt says. “Regular—ideally daily—creative engagement is important to promote, just like we promote 10,000 steps a day or five-a-day of fruits and vegetables.”
These results are the latest in a string of recent studies that aim to prove a connection between art and improved health, such as those undertaken by the Jameel Arts & Health Lab. The UCL’s recent research project is part of a new £3.5m seven-year programme of work funded by Wellcome, led by UCL, to understand the global and molecular impact of arts engagement as a health-promoting behaviour.

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Huge cohort studies prove it, says professor at University College London, but you have to actually engage with the art to see results

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May 13, 2026
If Black actors want long-term security and cultural power, the move isn’t just “get more visible.”
By Markice Moore
Visibility can change your life.
A strong run on television can bring better rooms, better reps, bigger auditions, and — on a good day — a little peace of mind.
But there’s a trap inside that progress: visibility is not the same thing as ownership.
For too many Black actors, the career arc looks like this: you grind, you break through, you get “seen,” and then you’re right back to waiting on the next greenlight that you don’t control. The checks may be larger, the meetings may be nicer, but the leverage is still fragile.
I’ve lived the difference.
I’m an actor, writer, and producer, and I’m signed to Daniel Hoff Agency. My credits include The Walking Dead, Snowfall, Tyler Perry’s The Paynes, Law & Order, and Chicago P.D. I’m also the founder of Both Sides of the Camera Studios and the writer/producer of the award-winning horror film, Spaghetti.
I’m not sharing that to flex. I’m sharing it because I’ve learned something the hard way: credits are a door, not a foundation. The foundation is a pipeline you own — a creator-run system that turns talent into repeatable outcomes.
If Black actors want long-term security and cultural power, the move isn’t just “get more visible.” The move is: build creator-owned pipelines that connect performance to production, IP, education, audience, and business infrastructure.
Visibility vs. ownership: a simple test
Here’s the question that clears the fog:
If the answer is “nothing until I book again,” you’re living on visibility.
If the answer is “my catalog, my community, my IP, my products, my productions, my systems,” you’re building ownership.
Ownership is the difference between a season and a career.
This matters for Black talent in particular because we already understand that access can be inconsistent. The power isn’t just in getting picked — it’s in building a platform where you don’t need permission to create.
A pipeline doesn’t have to start big. It has to start intentionally. Below is a practical framework any working actor can begin building, regardless of where they are on the call sheet.
The fastest way to move from “talent for hire” to “talent with leverage” is to have intellectual property you own or co-own.
That can be: a feature screenplay you can package; a series concept with a bible and pilot; a podcast with a defined format; a book or audiobook; a documentary concept rooted in community truth.
The key is to stop treating writing and development like a hobby you’ll “get to later.” If you’re waiting on permission to create your best work, you’re already behind. Start building a catalog.
Social media can be useful, but a creator-owned pipeline needs at least one channel you control: an email list, a membership community, a Patreon-style hub, or a text list.
An algorithm can disappear your reach overnight. A direct channel can’t.
When you build a real audience, you’re not begging for a meeting. You’re walking in with proof that people care.
A pipeline requires a production lane — not just “one big dream project,” but a consistent output rhythm.
Think in tiers: short-form proof (scenes, shorts, concept reels); micro-budget productions that can actually get finished; co-productions that expand your footprint.
The point is not to compete with studio resources. The point is to build your own track record of delivering.
A finished project creates more leverage than a perfect pitch deck.
One of the most overlooked leverage plays for actors is education — not as an ego move, but as a business move.
If you can teach acting technique, audition strategy, set professionalism, writing/producing fundamentals, you can build a revenue stream that strengthens your community and supports your creative output.
When you teach, you also build an ecosystem: students become collaborators, collaborators become crews, crews become companies.
That’s how pipelines form.
Infrastructure is clean branding and a professional home base (site, press kit, assets); an organized slate (what you’re making next and why); a consistent outreach system (press, festivals, partners); contracts, accounting, and a real process for deals.
It’s not sexy, but it’s what makes your work scalable.
If you treat your career as “art only,” you’ll keep being treated like labor.
The mindset shift: stop asking, start building
The industry will always have gatekeepers. That’s not cynicism — that’s math.
Networking matters, yes. But ownership is built through output and systems. When you produce consistently, you create reasons for decision-makers to attach themselves to you, not the other way around.
Black actors already have one of the strongest advantages in entertainment — cultural leadership. The issue is that cultural leadership doesn’t automatically translate into business ownership unless we build for it.
When you build a creator-owned pipeline, you unlock negotiation leverage (alternatives), creative leverage (you set the agenda), and legacy leverage (your work keeps producing even when you’re not on set).
That’s how you stop living on a highlight reel and start living on an engine.
The next era of Black acting success won’t be defined only by who gets seen. It will be defined by who builds.
Markice Moore is an actor, writer, and producer, signed to Daniel Hoff Agency. He is the founder of Both Sides of the Camera Studios and the writer/producer of the award-winning horror film, Spaghetti.
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Drake released his new album “Iceman” alongside two surprise projects, “Habibti” and “Maid Of Honour,” following months of anticipation.
Drake has officially returned with not one, but three new albums.
The rapper released his long-awaited project “Iceman” on Friday, May 15, while simultaneously surprising fans with two additional albums titled “Habibti” and “Maid Of Honour.”
The release followed weeks of speculation surrounding “Iceman,” which marks Drake’s first solo album since his highly publicized 2024 feud with Kendrick Lamar. The rollout culminated during a livestream in which Drake revealed three hard drives before the projects became available across streaming platforms.
The final episode (4) of the “Iceman” rollout livestream included appearances and contributions from comedian Shane Gillis and internet personality DJ Akademiks. The album features production from longtime collaborator Noah ’40’ Shebib, alongside producers including Overkst and OK. Guest appearances include Future and rising artist Molly Santana.
Several tracks on “Iceman” appear to address Drake’s rivalry with Kendrick Lamar, including references connected to Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track “Not Like Us.” Drake uses multiple songs to respond to criticisms and allegations that surfaced during the feud, revisiting themes from the rap battle that dominated headlines throughout 2024.
The albums arrive after months of teasers and unconventional promotion. Last month, Drake revealed the “Iceman” released date through a large ice sculpture installation in downtown Toronto that was later uncovered by streamer Kishka. In recent years, Drake has increasingly leaned into online streaming culture, appearing on platforms associated with creators like Adin Ross and xQc.
While fans are still unpacking the lyrics and themes across all three projects, “Iceman” immediately became one of the most talked-about releases of the year, reigniting conversations around Drake’s place in hip-hop after one of the genre’s most explosive public feuds in recent memory.
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The special, for which Hart will serve as an executive producer, will air in 2027.
Sheryl Underwood was one of the more-discussed comedians at Netflix’s recent “The Roast of Kevin Hart” event. Now the longtime comedian is set to have her very own Netflix special.
The streaming giant confirmed that Underwood would set the stage for a one-night-only event on the platform. Executive produced by Hart, the comedy special will air in 2027.
“I’m ready to go to work,” Underwood told Tudum, Netflix’s entertainment magazine. “That’s all I want to do — work, help people feed their families, spread joy and laughter, and make content. I thank Netflix and Kevin Hart and everybody who played a role in this.”
The Emmy Award winner has participated in many roasts over time. During Sunday’s telecast, comedians aimed at Underwood by mentioning the death of her husband, who committed suicide early on in their marriage. Despite the nature of the jokes, Underwood kept her cool and fired back with some hard-hitting barbs of her own.
“A lot of people felt bad for me because they were talking about my husband’s suicide,” Underwood said. “But those jokes were written so well that they made me laugh. I believe the line is the intention of the comedian and the construction of the joke.”
Following the roast, Underwood went on a brief media blitz, not only defending the jokes told but also defending herself and her agency. She told “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show” that the reactions the jokes got from the likes of Tony Hinchcliffe were exactly what comics looked for because a reaction at a roast means mission accomplished. You should be mad. That’s the reaction we want,” she said.
When stopped by TMZ shortly after the online backlash began to swell, she told the outlet, “Freedom of speech is alive and well at Netflix.”
A post shared by Netflix Is A Joke (@netflixisajoke)
Underwood is keeping busy to maintain the momentum of her roast appearance, one she says made fans “rediscover” her after her time as a daytime talk show host on “The Talk.” She has an upcoming memoir and more stand-up shows on the horizon, but everything will come with time.
Right now, she’s focused on the present and the new opportunities coming her way.
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Auctioneer Oliver Barker sells Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Reds from 1957
Courtesy Sotheby’s
Last night’s double-header evening at Sotheby’s, featuring the vaunted single owner Robert Mnuchin collection followed by a mixed vendor contemporary portion, raked in a solid and market reassuring $407.5m ($433.1m with fees), midway between pre-sale expectations of $325.6m to $444.m (estimates do not include fees.) Given the fraught geopolitical state of the world, such a resurgence of market confidence is all the more remarkable.
Mnuchin, a Wall Street titan turned eponymous art dealer who died last December at the age of 92, kicked off the evening. All eleven lots from his collection were backed by either house or third party guarantees, and garnered $140.7m ($166.3m with fees). Technically speaking, it was a risk free “white glove” sale.
Pablo Picasso’s petite, Neo-Classical period Deux femmes nues assises from 1921 led off the trove and sold for $1.2m ($1.5m with fees). Mnuchin had acquired it at Christie’s in London back in July 1998 for a hammer price of £330,000.
Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XLII (1983)
Courtesy Sotheby’s
Next, Willem de Kooning’s juicy abstraction, Untitled (1970)—an oil on paper mounted on canvas which measured a substantial 72in by 42½in and was formerly in the collection of the Swiss art dealer legend Thomas Ammann—attracted four bidders and tallied $8.8m ($10.8m with fees).
A second, bigger de Kooning, the wispy and minimal late painting Untitled XLII from 1983 and measuring 80in by 70in, sold for $10.2m ($12.4.m with fees). It was underbid by Morgan Long, founder of the eponymous London art advisory firm, who told The Art Newspaper as she walked out of the saleroom: “I almost got something amazing.”
Joan Miro’s quirkily figured Dormeurs réveillés par un oiseau, executed in gouache and watercolor on paper in 1939, sold to a telephone bidder for $5.2m ($6.4m with fees). Mnuchin had bought it at a Christie’s New York auction in November 2012 for $3.3m.
The big guns quickly followed with Mark Rothko’s magisterial abstraction, Brown and Blacks in Reds from 1957 (90.5in by 60.5in), climbing to $74m ($85.7m with fees). It came in just shy of the $86.8m record set by Orange, Red, Yellow (1961) at Christie’s New York in May 2012. Brown and Blacks in Reds formerly resided in the storied Seagram Collection which acquired the Rothko from the Sidney Janis Gallery in around 1957. Mnuchin bought it at Christie’s New York in May 2003 for $6,727,500 with fees. The pre-sale estimate this time around was $70m to $100m.
Helen Frankenthaler’s Cape Orange
Courtesy Sotheby’s
A second Rothko from Mnuchin, the early and colour-charged No. 1 from 1949, sold to another anonymous telephone bidder for $17.5m ($20.8m with fees). Mnuchin nabbed it at Christie’s London in March 2017 for £9.4m hammer.
It is rather ironic that much of what hit the block at Sotheby’s last night came back to market from its arch-rival Christie’s.
Another AB-EX trophy, Franz Kline’s jet black and jagged edged Harleman from 1960, went for $12m ($14.4m with fees). It was titled after the artist’s close friend Stanley Harleman and was last exhibited at the Mnuchin Gallery in April 2025.
The following lot, Jeff Koons’s stainless steel bust, Louis XIV (1986) sold to the private dealer Philippe Segalot for $8m ($8.5m with fees).
In terms of date, the youngest entry was David Hammon’s rope cinched tarp painting, Untitled (2017), an abstract partially hidden underneath its plastic shroud, brought $850,000 ($1m with fees).
Following the Mnuchin portion, the atmosphere in Sotheby’s crowded new headquarters The Breuer, formerly home to the Whitney Museum of American Art, shifted to a lower voltage with the onset of the 48-lot The Now and Contemporary section of the evening.
All in, the line-up realised $223m ($266.8m with fees), again healthily midway between pre-sale estimates of $200.7m to $266.8m. Though it was hardly a feeding frenzy, all but four works sold and four new artist records were set.
Ding Shilun’s Three Princes
Courtesy Sotheby’s
The first few lots of The Now section featured young but mostly unheralded upstarts, led off by the 28-year-old Ding Shilun’s fantastical Three Princes (2022) that made a record $280,000 ($358,400 with fees) against a pre-sale estimate of $50,000 to $70,000. The Shilun was followed by Yu Nishimura’s large-scale and dream-like landscape with a solitary figure, Leaves Carpet (2017) that also sold for a record $780,000 ($998,400 with fees) and a come hither pre-sale estimate of $120,000 to $180,000.
A more familiar and famous entry, one backed by a third-party guarantee, was Elizabeth Peyton’s page-sized rocker duo, Earl’s Court (Liam and Noel) from 1996, featuring Oasis frontman Liam Galagher kissing his brother Noel. It sold for $1.5m ($1.9m with fees).
Price points quickly escalated with Ed Ruscha’s text aided mountain-scape Me (1999) in acrylic on canvas that sold to the London private dealer Francis Outred for $5.6m ($6.9m with fees). It came to market naked, without a stitch of guarantee.
A number of illustrious women artists were part of the big mix, including Alma Thomas’s multi-coloured, concentric ringed abstraction, Pinks of Cherry Blossoms (1970) which bloomed at $3.1m ($3.9m with fees). Helen Frankenthaler’s huge radiant canvas Cape Orange (1964), standing 120in tall, sold to another telephone bidder for $5.8m ($7.2m with fees).
Agnes Martin’s Minimalist composition, Untitled #10 (1981), imbued with nearly invisible hand-drawn horizontal lines of cobalt coloured pencil markings, made $7.2m ($8.9m with fees) and Joan Mitchell’s lushly verdant Loom II (1976), possibly titled or inspired by a Van Gogh painting, brought $6.3m ($7.8m with fees).
Elizabeth Peyton’s Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel)
Courtesy Sotheby’s
Willem de Kooning made another bravado appearance with the rapturous and colour packed Untitled III (1975), considered part of a celebrated series after the artist left New York City for the calm greenery and ocean breezes of East Hampton. Making its auction debut, it went for $23.5m ($26m with fees), surprisingly shy of its $25m low estimate.
Of the few European interlopers, Lucio Fontana’s staccato punctured and sublime ode to a fabled city, Concetto Spaziale, Il Cielo di Venezia (1961) realised $13.7m ($16.4m with fees). The consignor couple Jean and Terry de Gunzburg bought it at Sotheby’s London in June 2002 for £500,000 (without fees).
The philanthropic minded Gunzburg’s also consigned Mark Rothko’s inky black over purple Untitled abstraction from 1969, an acrylic and ink on paper mounted on canvas which sold for $15m ($16.4m with fees). Both offerings, as well as a snow white Alexander Calder mobile that hammered at $7m, were backed by third party guarantees.
Onwards to the ever more rarified Pop Art front, Andy Warhol’s green-hued, red-lipped Brigitte Bardot (1974), formerly in the collection of the late playboy and photographer Gunter Sachs (who was briefly married to Bardot), shot skywards with the help of six bidders to $21m ($24.8m with fees). It also came to market bare of a guarantee. The head-shot silkscreen portrait was poached from Richard Avedon’s 1959 photograph of the French film star.
Roy Lichtenstein’s Benday dot patterned Half Face with Collar (1963), still vibrant with its Mad Men style fashion, rose to $10.7m ($12.9m with fees). It was included in the artist’s globe-trotting retrospective organised by the Guggenheim Museum in 1993.
In a posthumous league of his own, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown, 1983), 84in square and studded with cryptic texts and the artist’s hypnotic calligraphy, went to another telephone bidder for $45.2m ($52.7m with fees). It was backed by a third party guarantee. First owned by Kamran Diba, the founding director of the long-closed Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, it sold to the anonymous consignor at auction at Christie’s London in February 2013 for £9.3m ($14.6m with fees).
David Hockney’s rolling landscape, The Valley, Mountains in Var (near La Garde Freinet, 1970), squeaked by at $5.3m ($6.5m with fees). It’s the same poolside view from the Provence villa owned by film director Tony Richardson which famously served as the backdrop to Hockney’s record setting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) from 1972 that fetched $90.3m at Christie’s New York in November 2018. Those were the days.
The evening sale action resumes at Christie’s New York on Monday, chock a block with more trophy offerings.

Dana Schutz’s record broken twice in one night at Phillips then Sotheby’s, while the bidder behind the $91m Koons Rabbit buys Lee Krasner painting for $10m
Scattered seven-figure highlights failed to make up for dozens of passed lots and multiple key withdrawals
The firm’s Modern art evening sale and single-owner Mo Ostin auction brought in a below-estimate hammer total of $363.9m, or $427m with fees
A double-header night of The Now and contemporary art auctions set ten new artist records, boosting confidence after a lacklustre Christie’s sale of the Gerald Fineberg collection

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Can an orgasm really last three days? According to actress Pam Grier, the answer is yes, at least in her experience. , 76,
Can an orgasm really last three days? According to actress Pam Grier, the answer is yes, at least in her experience. During a May 13 appearance on Wiser Than Me with host Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the legendary Foxy Brown star opened up about aging, sexuality, and why she still feels youthful at the ripe age of 76.
“Yes, I do, because when you’re young, you can have three, four, five orgasms in an hour,” Grier said, according to Page Six. “But when you get my age, you have one orgasm, it’ll last three days.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus was stunned by the claim.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Like, what are you doing down there to get a three-day orgasm? I need details.”
Laughing, Grier replied, “You don’t have to do anything, but when it happens, I just wanna tell you, you just be prepared.”
Grier doubled down on the statement, adding, “It’s gonna be three whole days.”
RELATED CONTENT: 5 Orgasms Hacks That Will Leave You Breathless — In The Best Way
She joked that if she’d experienced that kind of pleasure earlier in life, things may have turned out differently romantically.
“If I could have had that when I was younger, I would have had a better life and better boyfriends, OK?” she quipped.
While Grier described the experience humorously, medical experts note that a true orgasm lasting continuously for several days is not considered a normal physiological response. However, there is a rare condition known as Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD), which can cause ongoing and unwanted sensations of genital arousal without sexual desire or stimulation, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Symptoms may include throbbing, tingling, or pressure that can persist for hours, days, or even weeks, and orgasm often does not relieve the condition. PGAD is considered distressing and can significantly affect mental health and quality of life.
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The iconic actress also made it clear she isn’t overly concerned with getting older, or even keeping track of her exact age. Though Grier turns 77 on May 26, she admitted she doesn’t focus much on the number.
“I don’t know, nor do I care,” she said while chatting with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the Wiser Than Me podcast. “If I wake up breathing, I’m gonna have a good day.”
Over the years, Grier has been linked to several high-profile relationships, including former Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, comedian Freddie Prinze, and comedy icon Richard Pryor. This isn’t the first time that she’s spoken openly about her sex life. 
In August 2025, Grier revealed on the Allison Interviews podcast that she was dating a mystery man she described as her “cosmic” partner. She also candidly admitted she was “horny as f—k” when discussing her sex life.
“You hear about when people find their person, that it’s a warm, fuzzy feeling,” she said. “I can’t believe it happened now, when I’ve got things to do. Don’t mess up my plans!”
What do you think of Pam Grier’s comment on Wiser Than Me? Thoughts?
RELATED CONTENT: Pam Grier Says Her Film With Cardi B May Hit Theaters In 2 Years, The Rapper’s Teaching Her To Pole Dance
The post Pam Grier Reveals She Has ‘Better’ Sex At 76 Than She Did In Her 30s — Says Orgasms Last For ‘3 Whole Days!’ appeared first on MadameNoire.
Pam Grier Reveals She Has ‘Better’ Sex At 76 Than She Did In Her 30s — Says Orgasms Last For ‘3 Whole Days!’ was originally published on madamenoire.com

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