The Headlines

TROUBLE IN PARIS. On Sunday, a Miriam Cahn painting that has been the subject of right-wing vitriol was vandalized in her current show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Alex Greenberger reports in ARTnews. The alleged vandal sprayed purple paint onto the piece, which depicts a person with their hands tied performing a sex act on a taller person. Cahn, an acclaimed Swiss artist, has said she created the work after reading about human-rights abuses in Ukraine. Some conservative politicians and children’s-rights groups have claimed that the piece promotes pedophilia. The alleged culprit was apprehended by guards and turned over to police, the AFP reports. Per the artist’s wishes, the defaced work will remain in the show until it ends its run on Sunday.

ARTISTS CLOSE UP. In the Los Angeles Times, Carolina A. Miranda reports on infighting among members of the storied Chicano artist collective Asco over the authorship of some of their trailblazing pieces. The “disputes could now affect how Asco’s work is displayed and how its story is ultimately told,” she writes. ● Also in the L.A. Times, artist Max Hooper Schneider, who makes dense, frenetic, action-packed installations and sculptures, got the profile treatment from Leah Ollman. “I think of the studio as a gut, and I’m like a digestive enzyme, circulating through it,” said Hooper Schneider, who has a new show up at the François Ghebaly gallery in L.A.. ● And in the Financial Times, photographer Martin Parr discussed the work of six peers whom he admires, including Mohamed Bourouissa, Markéta Luskačová, and Rinko Kawauchi.

The Digest

Last year, material from Ann and Gordon Getty’s home in the S.F. neighborhood of Pacific Heights made more than $150 million at Christie’s. In June, art and design from their residence in nearby Berkeley, known as the Temple of Wings, will be offered by the auctioneer, with proceeds again going to charity. [Datebook]

Police in Greece arrested four on allegations of pursuing illegal construction projects on the islands of Mykonos and Rhodes. In March, a government archaeologist was beaten in an Athens suburb, an attack that authorities believe was related to his work evaluating projects near archaeological sites in those tourism hotspots. [AFP/Barron’s]

Artist Steve McQueen said that he has invited dozens of U.K. politicians to visit the Serpentine Gallery in London to view his new film about the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72, but that most have not replied. “Their silence says a lot about what is happening in this country,” he said. [The Guardian]

The illustrator Bruce McCall, whose richly detailed satirical visions of American life graced more than 80 covers of the New Yorker, died on Friday at the age of 87. Graphic designer Michael Bierutonce termed McCall “our country’s greatest unacknowledged design visionary,” William Grimes writes in his obituary. [The New York Times]

Theatrical producer Jenna Segal has been building a collection of work by all 31 artists featured in an all-women show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in 1943. She is still looking for a Gypsy Rose Lee piece, and is presenting her holdings at her Midtown Manhattan offices later the month. [The New York Times]

Allegations are flying in a battle over the wealth and art collection of billionaire Hubert Neumann and his family. His second daughter, Belinda Neumann-Donnelly, has filed suit against him, saying that he has taken funds from trusts and engaged in other improper behavior. His lawyer rebutted the claims. [New York Post]

The Kicker

THE KEY TO LONGEVITY. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, the philosopher and poet Paul Woodruff talked about undertaking meaningful projects as the end of his life nears. “As I think of dying, I make each day a time for living, for having something to live for,” he wrote. A reader responded with a letter to editor, noting that that worldview matched that of the great artist Harry Liebermann, who died at 106. According to the letter’s author, Liebermann said, when he was already past 100, “The reason I am living so long is before I go to bed, I imagine what I will be painting the next day.” [The Washington Post]

The Headlines

AUCTION ACTION. Christie’s will offer almost 1,500 works from the collection of philanthropists Ann and Gordon Getty in October in sales that could fetch up to $180 million, Datebook reports. The proceeds will go to a variety of arts and education charities. Among the pieces being sold are paintings by Henri Matisse and Mary Cassatt and furniture by William and John Linnell. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that New York City nixed regulations last year that govern how auction firms operate, but that reps at some houses said that they “had only learned in recent days of the changes.” Among the withdrawn rules is the requirement that a house disclose if it has a financial stake in a work on the block. Some market watchers worry that the deregulation—part of efforts to assist businesses in the city—may hurt the confidence of customers. Some firms said that they will continue to operate as if nothing has changed.

MET GALA WRAPUP. Monday night’s Met Gala hauled in a record $17.4 million, the Associated Press reports. Those funds will go toward the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Also, the Los Angeles Times reports that some fashion conservators and curators are not pleased that Kim Kardashian wore a dress to the event that Marilyn Monroe once donned. They fear that collections of historic clothing may face pressure to loan pieces, and that damage could result. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Orlando, Florida, loaned the garment, which it bought in 2016 for almost $5 million.

The Digest

“The NFT market is collapsing,” reporter Paul Vigna writes. The number of active wallets in the space has fallen almost 90 percent since a November high, and the number of daily sales is off a little more than 90 percent since a September high. NFT boosters maintain that the market is just enduring fluctuation. [The Wall Street Journal]

Architect Daniel Libeskind released renderings for his planned transformation of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the site of an anti-Semitic mass shooting in 2018, into a memorial and educational center. The 45,000-square-foot structure is set to include an expansive skylight that Libeskind that calls the “Path of Light.” [NEXT Pittsburgh and Architectural Digest]

The Smithsonian made changes to its collections management policies that will allow its 19 member museums to consider ethical issues—not just legal ones—when considering whether to return objects they hold. It was the institution’s first major revision to the rules since 2001, Peggy McGlone reports. [The Washington Post]

London will soon be home to two new LGBTQ+ institutions: Queer Britain, which describes itself as the “the U.K.’s first national LGBTQ+ museum,” and what the nonprofit Queercircle says will be “the first LGBTQ art space in the U.K.” The former opens tomorrow; the latter on June 9. [The Art Newspaper]

Speaking of London, at its shop in Burlington Arcade this week, Gagosian is hosting a show of photographs of women and girls afflicted by conflict around the world, a partnership with the International Rescue Committee. The display continues through Saturday. [International Rescue Committee/Press Release]

Columnist Carolina A. Miranda (making the first of two appearances in this Breakfast) filed on “Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche,” a show at the Denver Art Museum that considers the contested, and charged, legacy of La Malinche, the Indigenous girl who was Hernán Cortés’s interpreter during the invasion of Mexico. [Los Angeles Times]

The Kicker

‘YOUR BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND.’ The unforgettable 1989 Barbara Kruger work with those words across a woman’s face surfaced on social media on Monday night, following the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion that would gut abortion rights, columnist Carolina A. Miranda writes in the Los Angeles Times . “The graphic remains relevant artistically,” she argues. “It is the modern, feminist, second-person counterpoint to Uncle Sam insisting, ‘I Want You for U.S. Army.’” [LAT]