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Greetings,
A Jackson Pollock just sold for $181 million. Banksy just passed his first post-identification market test at $18 million. A father and daughter were running a forgery ring out of New Jersey. And AI is now telling us we've had the wrong Anne Boleyn for 500 years. If that doesn't capture the state of the art world right now, I'm not sure what does.
Issue 26 of Canvas has all of it — record-shattering auctions, an authorship dispute at the Met, a whistleblower standoff in Palm Springs, and data showing that the West Coast is quietly becoming the center of American collecting.
On the blog, Giulia Picci takes on the deaccessioning divide between U.S. and European museums, Martina Bosi makes a compelling case for impact investing in arts and health, and I share a dispatch from New York. From Indigenous artists commanding the stage at Frieze and Venice to the Louvre's $1 billion reinvention, the heritage stories are just as urgent. And our featured artist is Rinat Goren, whose encaustic paintings are unlike anything else you'll see this month.
I'm also counting down to next Thursday — our Fifth Annual Symposium at SFMOMA brings together Dean Chemerinsky, Sharon Cohen Levin of Sullivan & Cromwell, Anthony Pickles of The British Museum, Anthropic's Daniel Etcovitch, and many others. I'd love to see you there.
📅 Fifth Annual Berkeley Art, Law, and Finance Symposium at SFMOMA
Thursday, June 4, 2026. Learn more and register>
📅 Inaugural Berkeley Art, Law, and Finance Intensive Seminar
Monday, Nov 30 through Thursday, Dec 3, 2026. Learn more and apply>
Let's dive in!
Delia Violante
Founding Director of the Berkeley Art, Law, and Finance Project
Berkeley Center for Law and Business
| | Rinat Goren - A Crowd of Individuals - Encaustic (beeswax and pigment) on wood board, 48" x 30" (on two panels) | | |
From Origin to Future: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Provenance in Art Collections
ANTOINETTE MAGET DOMINICE | UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
Coauthoring with Schneider, Ludwig, and Vollmer, Antoinette Maget Dominicé examines the accessibility, transparency, and interconnectivity of provenance research in museum collections. Drawing on web-harvested data from Germany and the United States, the article proposes a systematic framework for evaluating provenance information. Read more>
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Deaccessioning Across the Atlantic: Between Autonomy and Constraint
GIULIA PICCI | BERKELEY ART, LAW, AND FINANCE PROJECT
While it is common in the U.S. for museums to sell of parts of their collections, the practice remains largely stigmatized in Europe. This article examines the origins of retentive collecting policies and considers whether the two systems might converge toward a more responsive, uniform approach. Read more>
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Impact Investing at the Intersection of Arts and Health: An Opportunity for Unlocking Public Benefit
MARTINA BOSI | PAVIA E ANSALDO
This article explores how impact investing can be structured to support the growing intersection of arts and health. It addresses the challenge of measuring social outcomes in the arts sector and advances policy recommendations for unlocking greater public benefit. Read more>
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What the Walls Were Saying (and the Stage, Too)
DELIA VIOLANTE | BERKELEY ART, LAW, AND FINANCE PROJECT
From the New Museum to Broadway, New York's art scene is wrestling with questions that law and finance haven't caught up with — AI, restitution, and the moral weight of creative expression. A dispatch from a city where the conversation never stays inside the museum. Read more>
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Met Gala Dress Credit Dispute
ARTNET NEWS
Textile artist Anouska Samms says a dress in the Met's 'Costume Art' exhibition — attributed solely to designer Yoav Hadari — is derived from a work the two created together, using a hair-based textile Samms developed and for which she holds the IP rights. Hadari maintains the exhibited piece is entirely his own. The Met has left it to the artists to resolve the dispute. Read more>
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Palm Springs Museum Denies Fraud
ARTNEWS
Following a whistleblower complaint alleging mismanagement, misappropriated funds, and a manipulated leadership search, the Palm Springs Art Museum says a six-month outside investigation found no wrongdoing — but declined to release the report. The museum acknowledged using art sale proceeds for operating costs and has instituted a series of governance reforms. Read more>
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$2M Fake Art Scheme Guilty Plea
ARTNET NEWS
A father-daughter duo in New Jersey pleaded guilty to selling over 200 counterfeit works attributed to Warhol, Banksy, Picasso, and others, using fabricated provenance and forged certificates of authenticity. The pair also face charges under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act for misrepresenting fakes as Native American-produced art. They face up to 20 years in prison. Read more>
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Report Alert: Art Market Rebounds
BANK OF AMERICA
U.S. auction sales rose 23.1% in 2025 to $3.17 billion. Notably for the Bay Area, collecting is shifting west — the West's share of $1 million-plus transactions doubled from 15% to 31% since 2020, with California ranking #1 nationally in overall art spending. Women artists are outperforming men in resale returns nearly three to one. Full report>
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The Met to Merge With Neue Galerie
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will assume ownership of Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie in 2028, gaining a collection valued at over $1.5 billion that includes Klimt's iconic "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I." The merger echoes the Met's earlier absorption of the Cloisters and fills a major gap in its German and Austrian modern art holdings. Read more>
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Pollock and Brancusi Smash Records
ARTNET NEWS
Christie's sold over $1 billion in art in under three hours, setting records for Jackson Pollock ($181.2 million), Constantin Brancusi ($107.6 million), and Mark Rothko ($98.4 million). Sixteen works from the S.I. Newhouse estate alone brought $630.8 million, with every lot sold. Read more>
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Banksy's First Post-Identification Test
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Banksy's "Girl With Balloon on Found Landscape" sold for $18 million at Fair Warning's intimate auction inside Tiffany's Fifth Avenue flagship — the first major market test since Reuters confirmed the artist's identity earlier this spring. The result capped a strong New York auction season that saw at least $2.5 billion change hands, doubling last May's totals. Read more>
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AI Reidentifies a Tudor Sketch
BBC
Researchers at the University of Bradford used facial recognition technology on a collection of Hans Holbein sketches to search for the true likeness of Anne Boleyn. Their finding: a long-labeled sketch of the queen likely depicts her mother, while a previously unidentified drawing may be the real Boleyn. The methodology has drawn both excitement and sharp criticism from art historians. Read more>
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How Art Firms Are Using AI Now
ARTNET NEWS
From auction house analytics to collector intelligence platforms, AI tools tailored for the art market are moving from the fringes to the mainstream. Bonhams has partnered with ARTDAI for valuation insights, and former Art Basel chief Marc Spiegler predicts a "big shift" as AI puts high-performance technology within reach of small galleries and individual dealers for the first time. Read more>
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Indigenous Artists Take Center Stage
THE NEW YORK TIMES
At Frieze New York and the Venice Biennale, Indigenous artists are commanding major institutional and market attention — from Sara Flores, the first Indigenous artist to represent Peru at Venice, to Suzanne Kite, who merges Oglala Lakota traditions with AI. The commercial market is beginning to catch up with long-overdue institutional recognition. Read more>
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11 Most Endangered Historic Places
ARTNEWS
The National Trust has released its annual list of America's most endangered sites, including two targeted by the Trump administration: the Stonewall National Monument and Philadelphia's President's House Site, where placards acknowledging enslaved workers were removed. Read more>
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Campus Museums Worth the Trip
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Princeton, Yale, Cornell, and Skidmore are hosting standout exhibitions this spring — from a de Kooning breakthrough show at Princeton's acclaimed new Adjaye-designed museum to a climate-focused Alexis Rockman series at Cornell. A reminder that some of the best art experiences are free, accessible, and outside the city. Read more>
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Louvre Unveils $1B Expansion Plans
ARTNET NEWS
The Louvre has tapped Selldorf Architects and Studios Architecture Paris for its "Nouvelle Renaissance" overhaul, which includes a dedicated 33,000-square-foot Mona Lisa gallery and a new entrance to accommodate three million additional visitors annually. The project follows a turbulent year for the museum marked by a $102 million heist and a ticket fraud scandal. Read more>
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A Crowd of Individuals
RINAT GOREN
Rinat Goren's admiration for people who use their minds is expressed through her abstract and figurative paintings. Her work explores what it means to think — to form clear thoughts, make decisions, make choices, and act accordingly, an attribute she sees as uniquely human. Goren's paintings are an attempt at conveying how we "connect the dots," how we solve problems, and ultimately, how we connect with each other.
About the encaustic medium:
Encaustic is a mixture of beeswax and pigment. It is melted and then applied onto wood panels in multiple thin layers. The translucency of the medium allows light to travel through the layers creating depth as well as a soft glow. Learn more about Rinat>
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