Magritte painting sells for $121m – highest sum ever for a Surrealist work

A painting by René Magritte has sold for $121m – the highest sum a work by any Surrealist artist has fetched. Empire of Light (1954), which was auctioned at Christie’s New York on 19 November, had been guaranteed to sell for $95m, reports the New York Times, and exceeded its estimate by more than $25m after a 10-minute bidding war. The painting shows a house that appears to be shrouded in darkness, illuminated only by the light from a lamppost, despite a pale blue sky that makes up the background. It belonged to the collector Mica Ertegun, an interior designer and the wife of Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records. The sale of Ertegun’s collection raised $157m ($184m with fees) against a high estimate of $157m.

UNESCO has placed 34 sites in Lebanon under ‘enhanced protection’ after sustained bombardment of the country by Israel. On 18 November, the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict held what it described as an ‘extraordinary session’ in Paris, at which it decided to implement these measures. This means that damage of the sites would, according to a UNESCO statement, constitute ‘“serious violations” of the 1954 Hague Convention’ and ‘potential grounds for prosecution’. The protected sites include Baalbek, which is home to some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in the world – including the Temple of Bacchus, which dates as far back as the late 2nd century – and the city of Tyre, as well as the National Museum of Beirut. According to Mohammad Mortada, the culture minister of Lebanon, air strikes by Israel damaged an Ottoman-era building near Baalbek earlier this month.

The city of Berlin is planning to cut its arts budget for 2025 by €130m, reports The Local Germany. The Berlin Senate, which is run by a coalition of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, announced earlier this week that it is aiming to save €3bn from a 2025 budget of nearly €40bn, in an attempt to stem the depletion of its reserves after the Covid-19 pandemic. Funding for artists’ studios will be halved, which is estimated to result in savings of €12m. Theatre, opera and music will have their funding cut significantly, and the Diversity Fund, which was established to promote diversity in the city’s arts scene, will be slashed by €500,000. The city’s culture budget for 2025 is now set to be €1.2bn, 12 per cent less than this year.

Armed robbers have stolen artefacts worth €1m from the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris. Le Monde reports that at 10:30am on 20 November, four men in hoods stole five 18th-century collectors’ boxes and snuff boxes from the museum by smashing the display cases containing them with axes and baseball bats. Two objects from the Royal Collection of the UK and one from the Gilbert Collection, stored at the Victoria and Albert Museum, were among the items stolen. All five objects, including one that was on loan from the Louvre, were on display as part of ‘Luxe de poche’, an exhibition that had been scheduled to end on 29 September but was extended to the end of November due to popular demand. The museum is closed until further notice as the police investigate.

Stephanie Stebich, the director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has been reassigned to another role after being accused of toxic management, reports the Washington Post. Employees at the museum had complained for years about what they alleged to be her inadequate management style, culminating in a letter sent by senior staff in July 2023 to the leaders of the Smithsonian. Earlier this year, the board of commissioners at the American Art Museum became aware of the extent of staff dissatisfaction and asked the Smithsonian to remove Stebich from her post, but was met with reluctance on the part of some of the Smithsonian leadership. Since joining the museum as director in 2017, Stebich had raised $100m. In July she told staff that she was taking medical leave, and rejoined in September as a senior advisor. In other US museum news, Glenn Phillips has been appointed chief curator at the Getty Research Institute. He is currently senior curator, head of exhibitions and head of modern and contemporary collections at the organisation, and specialises in the history of curating, of conceptual art, and of video and performance art in Europe and the Americas. Phillips has been with the Getty Research Institute since 2002. He will take up his new post on 24 November.