If one were to go by the first-day sales results of last month’s Art Basel, one might come away with the impression that the fair was a relative success. For the megas, that might be true. David Zwirner started the fair by selling a Joan Mitchell diptych for $20 million, and Hauser & Wirth sold its most expensive offering, a $16 million Arshile Gorky work, despite noticing a slowed pace. By the end of the fair, Pace had sold its star Agnes Martin painting for a reported $14 million. 

But upstairs at the fair, where smaller and mid-size galleries typically reside, rumors were flying that delicate changes in the market weather were being more acutely felt. These dealers are facing thinner margins, rising shipping and material costs, inflation, and more cautious collectors. The risk, as dealer René-Julien Praz recently told Le Quotidien de l’Art, is “enormous.” Praz recently closed his gallery, the Paris- and Los Angeles–based Praz-Delavallade; he said the high total cost for exhibiting in the international fair circuit contributed to the decision. 

Transportation, insurance, on-site personnel, and booth fees all add up. “During one participation at Art Basel Miami, we left Florida with an $80,000 deficit,” he told Le Quotidien de l’Art. “It’s like playing Russian roulette every time.”

Now, a month on from the fair, with the art calendar’s summer respite in full swing, ARTnews spoke with several small and medium-size galleries, most of whom were at Art Basel, and one at Liste, to discuss the current market. 

None of the galleries found the most recent Art Basel to be a bust, with top-line impressions including “surprisingly well,” “relieved,” “better than expected,” and “good sales and a general positive sensation.” One gallery, Paris’s Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, went so far as to say it was “one of our best” fair outings. (However, that assessment by founder Jocelyn Wolff came with the caveat that the gallery has “never sold out an exhibition at the gallery or a booth at the fair.”)

And yet, there was a definite sense among dealers that the market is in a far different place from 2019, or even from the first fair after the start of the pandemic. As Alex Mor, cofounder of Mor Charpentier (of Paris and Bogotá), told ARTnews, “Art Basel remains the most prestigious fair, where we bring the best works, and where you have connections with people that you usually don’t connect with … But I think the level and the volume has decreased.”

Dealers said the sales activity at Basel and Liste was not uniform. Some reported making numerous sales on the first day, as has been typical, while others described a move further away from the “one-day fair,” where sales mostly happen during the opening, and offer a good indication of how the fair will go from there. It should be noted that smaller galleries tended to say they have traditionally made sales through the week at Art Basel, with the first day setting the tone. Now, collectors are putting down holds and dealers are selling unevenly through the weekend.

That slower atmosphere tracks, dealers said, with an “overall slowdown” in the market over the last six months to a year. “Collectors are being very discerning, which I think is a good thing, but it’s gone back to a slower pace that was very over-accelerated since Covid,” Chicago-based dealer Monique Meloche told ARTnews. “Covid happened and the market went crazy, but that wasn’t real. That pace can’t be maintained.”

To Wolff, the slowdown is less about a lack of collectors willing to buy, but rather comes down to a “pricing-trust issue.” 

Wolff traced this to a combination of high primary prices for some mid-career artists on fast tracks, while the value that institutions have typically lent to contemporary artists “is weaker than before.” Museums’ “stamp of approval is being challenged,” and is “less readable” today, he said, particularly for collectors less interested in certain identity-themed works popular in institutional exhibitions. 

“There was always a little gap between the values promoted by the art market and the values promoted by the museum,” said Wolff. “But it is a little more complex today and prices are higher.”

For these smaller and mid-size galleries, however, the slowdown makes the calculus around fairs trickier, particularly when you consider the overhead for a fair. As multiple dealers told ARTnews, shipping, framing, storage, and other overhead costs have risen dramatically, with Meloche suggesting that such costs are “at least 50 percent higher” than pre-Covid. Those costs are felt by collectors too, who Meloche said continue to gravitate toward paintings, due to the efficacy in those costs. 

“I don’t complain,” José Kuri, cofounder of Kurimanzutto (of Mexico City and New York), told ARTnews of Art Basel. “We did well, but it’s true that the shipping on average costs are way higher, than two, three years ago, and so the margins are way lower. So, you can feel that.”

Those issues are especially pronounced for galleries hailing from the Global South. As Catalina Casas, founder of Bogotá gallery Casas Riegner, told ARTnews, South American galleries need to do the fairs “because that activates our market, in a way,” but the costs make it difficult to compete. 

“But what I think the art world needs to think about, if they want us to survive, is: under what conditions are we going to compete?” Casas said. “We are basically participating under the same conditions of the galleries who occupy the upper side of the market, where I would have to sell my whole booth to amount to one work in a major gallery.”

At the fair, which she described as better than last year, the gallery presented works ranging from $7,000 to $95,000. But it’s hard to totally evaluate this year’s performance when deals started at the fair are still being negotiated.

Always looming above the market in recent years, and especially over the last 12 months, has been geopolitics, which all the dealers agreed have resulted in collectors being cautious and, in some cases, not traveling at all. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the turbulence in elections across the US and Europe, among other issues, have created “a climate of uncertainty,” according to Kuri.

“People are holding onto their assets, not spending in the way it used to be,” Kuri said. “Everyone’s waiting to see what will happen, so this might create a tighter market, so it’s not as liquid as it was in the last couple of years.”

While the tight market has led some to conclude that collectors are looking for “safer,” more established names, all the gallerists interviewed emphasized staying the course with their unique programs, and even taking on more risk. 

Mor Charpentier, for example, is set to open a new Paris space in the Marais district in October timed to Art Basel’s French fair that is double the size of their current location. The gallery is also investing in its residency program in Colombia. Jochen Meyer, cofounder of Berlin’s Meyer Riegger, has opened a new gallery in Seoul in lieu of participating in multiple Asian fairs each year, with the hope that a permanent space helps build long-term relationships in Korea and Asia more generally. Barcelona’s Bombon Projects has continued to develop its summer space opened in collaboration with Prats Nogueras Blanchard (in Barcelona and Madrid) in the Spanish countryside during Covid.

“It is true that fairs are necessary, they give you visibility and sales, especially if you come from a place like Barcelona that is not in the center of the art world, but this collaborative spirit that we experienced during Covid in which you could share energies, artists, collectors and costs is definitely something to continue bearing in mind,” the gallery told ARTnews in an email.

For Meloche, staying the course means continuing to move slowly and steadily with their artists, and working harder to meet collectors where they are at, whether visiting them in their homes, having more serious in-depth conversations about an artist’s work and practice, and collaborating with other galleries to sell together. 

“It’s the moment also that you have to insist on who you are,” Kuri of Kurimanzutto said. “You cannot change your face at this moment or just go with the market. I think that will be very harmful for the artists.”

The Danish painter (1864–1916) remains relatively obscure, though his inclusion in a number of international exhibitions at venues from the Royal Academy of Arts in London to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, has garnered him a growing, almost cultish following. And that following will likely only grow, especially in the United States, as the Art Institute of Chicago recently purchased his 1907 painting, Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30, for a record $9.1 million at Sotheby’s last year.

“It’s really beautiful to show such a historical, well-known artist, who is still kind of an unexpected surprise,” said dealer Carlo Knoell, who recently closed his eponymous gallery to join Hauser & Wirth as a senior director.

Hammershøi was also an anomaly for his time. Influenced by 17th-century Dutch painting, particularly Johannes Vermeer, Hammershøi veered into his own way of making, which feels fresh even today. Described as a painter of “silence” and melancholy, Hammershøi renders stark gray interiors. Pared-down versions of what he observed in the rooms of his Copenhagen apartment, they lean toward the surreal.

Titled “Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence.” and featuring 16 works, the exhibition shows off Hammershøi’s signature stark restraint and  somber gray palette. On view are a few actual masterpieces that are a rare treat to see in person. Hammershøi’s paintings feel very much alive.

The air hangs thick in these foggy, blurred scenes, so much so that this stillness feels not dismal but hopeful. In their cold stillness, these paintings are heaving. Some works show nearly empty rooms, like Interior in London, Brunswick Square (1912), in which the London fog seeps in to the three paned windows, while others show a woman, usually Hammershøi’s wife from behind, the nape of her neck the only skin exposed. She often stands still, to the side of a table, as she does in Interior with a Writing Desk (1900), showing rays of light diffusing the tension of the scene as the woman appears to read a letter. The gallery space’s history as a 19th-century silk ribbon factory adds to the ease of the display here, a comfortable home in which to take it all in.

Below, a look at the best on offer at Liste, which runs through June 16 at the Messe Basel.

It is this unique perspective and approach to curating and institution building that has made Filipovic one of today’s most closely watched curators. After nearly 10 years of running the non-collecting, contemporary-focused Kunsthalle, she embarked on a new journey two months ago, becoming the director of the storied 17th-century Kunstmuseum Basel. A child of immigrants who grew up in Southern California’s Inland Empire, she is still somewhat an outsider in Basel; she is the first non-European and only the second woman to lead the Kunstmuseum, the holdings of which span the 15th century to today.

“I’d like to think I bring the best of both worlds with me,” Filipovic recently told ARTnews of her upbringing in the US and her adopted home of Europe, where she relocated in 1998. During her tenure at the Kunsthalle, she organized more than 60 exhibitions, including acclaimed ones for artists like Michael Armitage, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Yngve Holen, Anne Imhof, and Tiona Nekkia McClodden. In 2022, she organized the Croatian Pavilion at that year’s Venice Biennale, and, prior to moving to Basel, she was senior curator at Wiels in Brussels, from 2009 to 2014, and she cocurated, with Adam Szymczyk, the 2008 Berlin Biennale.

MoMA PS1 director Connie Butler once called Filipovic a “visionary,” adding that she had “one of the best curatorial programs anywhere.” When she was selected to lead the Kunstmuseum, the selection committee’s president Felix Uhlmann said that Filipovic’s “infectious enthusiasm for the entire spectrum of art history, and her ability to inspire people for art” is ultimately what made the committee choose her for the position.

Filipovic is a conciliatory figure, whose new mandate includes strengthening the museum’s global standing and ushering it into the future, at a time when art institutions around the world strive for more inclusivity, both in terms of their public and in the telling of art history. With the support of the institution, Filipovic said she is also “pushing to go further and faster.”

She added “it’s important that we all remember that this should not be a cemetery of beautiful dead things, but a spaceship. It should carry us into the future.”

A museum spaceship may seem like a concept out of step with a 17th-century institution, housing more than 300,000 works spanning seven centuries. But Filipovic argues the Kunstmuseum was radical for its day: it became the world’s first public museum in 1661.

She said the question that animates her vision for the Kunstmuseum, which will also undergo a renovation beginning in 2027, is “how can you run a very old museum that nevertheless has inscribed in its DNA the idea that it should still speak to generations in the future?”

One way Filipovic hopes to carry the institution forward is by exhibiting the work of underrepresented artists more frequently; a planned rehang beginning this summer in the museum’s newest building draws on an expansive acquisition strategy that she has already implemented, adding pieces by Helen Frankenthaler, Julie Mehretu, and Cameron Rowland. “Every acquisition becomes a manifesto of sorts, and a chance to rethink what legacy we leave for future generations,” she said.

Filipovic recently commissioned Louise Lawler to create a work for the new building’s foyer. Lawler’s photographs can seem to swipe across, distort, or blur canonic artworks, questioning the systems and institutions that have lionized and valued them. Lawler’s work “becomes a commentary on what has been glorified in the museum and how we are taking steps to actually look at that,” she said.

But Filipovic also wants to continue to activate works already in the collection, including some of the museum’s most famed ones, by pursuing and displaying new research, which is also already underway, about their historical contexts, subjects, and provenance. Part of her aim is to show how centuries-old work remains acutely relevant to the questions we face today. Take Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22), a life-size and somewhat jarring depiction of the deceased Jesus in the early stages of decay. The work, she said, “speaks to our present at a time of crisis and war and death. Our society has had some of the same problems and questions and yet resilience has carried us through.”

And in maintaining a permanent collection that dates back nearly 400 years, Filipovic will also have to navigate the Kunstmuseum through delicate situations like restitution claims, several of which have come up in the past few years. These include a 2020 settlement for an undisclosed sum for the museum’s purchase of 200 works once owned by a Jewish collector from a 1933 auction, and an ongoing claim over an Henri Rousseau painting a collector sold to support herself while in exile in Switzerland after fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany. (In a statement in January, the museum said it is negotiating a “just and fair solution” with the latter collector’s heirs.)

While Filipovic had not been involved in those restitution claims, she spoke more broadly about how she plans to address such claims going forward, including continuing to support extensive, proactive research into the provenance of artworks in the collection, begun by her predecessor Josef Helfenstein, and then finding ways to share that information with the public.

“Once that the research has been done, I think it is the responsibility of the museum—and it has already been committed to this before my time, and it will continue to during my time—to render this information accessible,” she said.

When it comes to the collection rehang, an exercise that has become something of a global trend of late, Filipovic said the initiative is less about following the lead of other institutions than it is a “feeling that there are so many stories that can be told,” she said. “By rehanging the collection, you’re demanding that the public notice. That every juxtaposition might provoke a new reading of each work.”

Her aim, she continued, is “not to give the public the feeling that [the collection] has been set up and is sleeping [nor] that these truths are inalienable. It is not so.”

On Tuesday, the first day of VIP previews for the bellwether Art Basel fair in Switzerland, several dealers admitted they had waited with bated breath for how the day would turn out amid the apparent market slowdown—or “correction,” as it has often been called.

“We were all waiting. We were watching the auctions very intently, and they did well. We didn’t know how this was going to go,” Samanthe Rubell, the president of Pace, told ARTnews.

Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz similarly noted the art market’s “period of recalibration” and the atmosphere of caution these days. However, he said in a press conference that the energy of the crowd on Art Basel’s first day was evidence that “the market is very much still here, and very strong.”

Horowitz may not be far off. By the end of Tuesday, it was apparent that not only had the worst been averted, but there was enough sales activity to consider the day successful. Dealers told ARTnews with some surprise that, unlike previous years, more purchases were made in-person, rather via presale PDFs, suggesting a real desire to experience artworks in person and all that the fair and its surroundings have to offer.

Perhaps the most direct, and colorful, message about the market’s resilience was sent to press by Hauser & Wirth cofounder Iwan Wirth. “In spite of the ‘doom porn’ currently circulating in the art press and along gossip grapevines, we are very confident in the art market’s resilience and the first day of Art Basel has confirmed our perspective,” Wirth said in a statement.

“The advantage of the market returning to a more humane pace is that the most discerning international collectors are committing here and now to the very best of the best,” he continued.

There were certainly collectors galore taking advantage of that “more humane pace”—in other words, a time for good deals—including mega-collector Steve Cohen, who made the rounds with a colleague dressed in paraphernalia from the New York Mets, the baseball team Cohen bought in 2020. Despite Cohen’s prodigious art collection, he is not a usual sight at the fair.

Other dealers too were seeing some excitement in the air. By afternoon, news spread through the crowded halls that David Zwirner gallery had sold a Joan Mitchell diptych titled Sunflowers (1990–91), for $20 million. (ARTnews has heard disputing reports from well-placed sources that the actual selling price was closer to $18 million.)

“I would call that a very strong fair,” Zwirner told ARTnews, before pointing to works throughout the booth repeatedly saying “sold.” 

He continued, “And it really happened today. People want to see [the works], experience, talk about them. So, it’s happening here, much more this year than last year.”

Zwirner noted that, in some cases, advisers came on behalf of collectors from all over the world and used FaceTime or messaging to close deals.

“There’s been a narrative out there that the art market is weak and I feel like, when we do well, other galleries do well,” he said. “I assume this will be a very successful fair for the galleries. If the art market is not performing well in the auction environment, that’s one problem, but it’s certainly performing well right here.”

Zwirner also sold Gerhard Richter’s 2016 Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) for $6 million, and Yayoi Kusama’s giant Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart (2023) for $5 million in the fair’s Unlimited section.

For what it’s worth, secondary market markups seemed more reasonable than usual. At Gagosian’s booth, an Ed Ruscha painting, Radio 1, which last sold at Sotheby’s in May of last year for $2.1 million, was on offer for $2.8 million. Also at Gagosian, Andy Warhol’s Hammer & Sickle (1976), which last sold at Sotheby’s in 2017 for $5.5 million, was on offer for $8.5 million.

“Overall, most galleries are better off today than they were in 2019,” Alex Forbes, the vice-president of galleries and fairs at Artsy, told ARTnews, referring to the last pre-pandemic fair. “It’s always important for folks to zoom out and take in the longer trend, rather than just focusing on year to year. In my view the art market in particular tends to respond to uncertainty more so than, necessarily, the ups and downs of the S& P 500.”

The European Central Bank’s decision to cut interest rates last week, offers some of that needed sense of stability, according to Forbes. ”I’m optimistic in the long run, particularly as we’re coming out of maybe the period of peak anxiety around possible runaway inflation,” he said.

Despite the top line successes, many dealers told ARTnews of a “slow down” in sales at the fair, with dealers taking longer to close sales and having to “work harder” with their clients to get pieces sold.

A New York–based art adviser who wished to remain anonymous told ARTnews that a market slump, and what she called “disastrous” auction sales, have given her access to excellent artworks that were out of reach a few years ago.

“They will call you up, and before they didn’t have the time, because they had like 50 people calling them,” she said. “They are doing a really good job. They are the only people in the art world who put their money where their mouth is, [and] they are working harder.” When asked, the adviser echoed others who said primary prices have not changed, or gone down, despite concerns they have gotten too high.

“We do the very best we can, and when things do get quieter, it’s always also a moment of opportunity of getting even closer to the relationships you have, and build more there,” Marc Payot, president and partner of Hauser & Wirth, told ARTnews, while nevertheless noting sales are taking more time at the fair.

Basel is the mega-gallery’s home turf, and it had one of the fair’s stronger presentations, including mostly works by women and two artists of color.

“We have always done well when the market was not as hot,” Payot said, because the slower pace allowed them to spend more time “building relationships” with clients and artists. Despite any market cooling, by day’s end, the gallery said it sold more works Tuesday than on the first day of the 2023 fair.

In terms of sales, Hauser & Wirth placed its most expensive work brought to the fair, Arshile Gorky’s, rare 1946–47 large work on paper, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), for $16 million. The gallery also sold Jenny Holzer’s red granite benches to an Asian museum for an undisclosed sum, Blinky Palermo’s Ohne Titel (Untitled), from 1975, for $4 million, and Louise Bourgeois’s Woman with Packages (1987–93) marble sculpture for $3.5 million. Coinciding with their museum-caliber Vilhelm Hammershøi show in their new gallery space in Basel, a 1906 painting by the Danish painter, depicting a woman pinning up her loose hair, was sold for an undisclosed amount.

On Wednesday, the gallery reported selling the large Philip Guston painting Orders for $10 million, and Georgia O’Keeffe‘s serene white moonscape Sky with Moon for $13.5 million. (The price for the O’Keeffe is notable, considering that it sold for $3.5 million at Christie’s in 2018.)

“Almost everything was sold in-person today,” said Pace’s Rubell, calling the gallery’s first day at Basel “fantastic.”

She continued, “In years prior, there has been a good amount of pre-sales from previews, but this time we’re really trying to capture new interest, and this moment of suddenly engaging, and having that feedback and response—it’s really worked. The energy is very good.”

A sprawling Jean Dubuffet bench sculpture titled Banc-Salon, overhung with suspended kites, was a welcoming attraction for visitors who stopped at Pace’s booth. By early afternoon, the gallery had sold three editions of a total of six of them, priced at €800,000 ($860,000) each, in collaboration with Galerie Lelong & Co. 

Pace also sold its star Agnes Martin painting, Untitled #20 (1974), which last sold at auction in 2012 for $2.43 million. Though Pace would not share the price, a source told ARTnews that it was $14 million. In 2021, a similar work sold for $17 million at auction. Pieces by First Nation artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, whom the gallery recently took on, also sold: one for $250,000 and the other for $220,000. Kngwarray had a retrospective at Australia’s National Gallery, and next summer will be featured at Tate Modern in London.

Thaddaeus Ropac, which historically does not presell its offers, was humming early in the fair, with fast-paced sales from the get-go. “Like the old days,” one spokesperson told ARTnews. The gallery sold a major Robert Rauschenberg work from 1985 for $3.85 million, several editions of a Georg Baselitz bronze sculpture for €2 million each, along with other works by the artist, priced between €1.2 million and €1.8 million.

At White Cube, a Julie Mehretu painting from 1999 went for $6.75 million; it was last seen at auction six years ago, when it sold for $2.5 million. A “monumental” Mark Bradford, titled Clowns Travel Through Wires (2013), also sold for $4.5 million. Jeff Wall’s The Storyteller (1986) sold for $2.85 million, along with works by David Hammons, Tracey Emin, Gabriel Orozco, Antony Gormley, Howardena Pindell, and others. At the time of writing, the $1.75 million Richard Hunt sculpture and the $1.35 million Frank Bowling were not listed as sold.

“It’s neither the end of the world nor is it speculation,” Belgian collector Alain Servais told ARTnews. But that can make for a lack of newsy buzz. In fact, Servais says presales and a broader commercialization of the fair have helped sap the fair of its urgency so that, “the froth (or the buzz) is down, so the excesses are down, but you’re still selling.” Now, “80 percent of the reason I go to Basel is for the networking,” he added.

Others felt differently. Wishing away the preselling model is “nostalgia,” Madrid-based art adviser and curator Eva Ruiz, a friend of Servais, told ARTnews. She said she sees excitement in the way people share what they’ve seen and talk about in the early moments of the fair. “I still see collectors excited to be there the first day,” despite having seen a PDF in advance. “They still want to rush to see the work, and to be the first to buy,” she said.

As to whether Art Basel Paris might soon eclipse the Swiss fair, Ruiz said other regional fairs remain limited to their geographic locations. Basel is the exception. “Art Basel, Basel is seen as the prized, first art fair to visit,” she said, before adding that there is “room” for two European fairs. Americans, in particular, she said, are happy to come back to Europe for the Paris fair.

On the fair’s upper floor, where midsize and smaller galleries have their booths, New York’s Canada gallery featured color- and material-rich abstractions by Joan Snyder, which have attracted a lot of attention. They sold and reserved her pieces for $180,000 and $190,000. The artist is enjoying some overdue attention in her 80s, selling above estimates at auction and set for her first solo exhibition with Thaddaeus Ropac in November. Canada gallery also placed a 2013 painting by Joe Bradley for an undisclosed sum. Cofounder Phil Grauer agreed collectors were calculating and taking their time.

“They’ve got time, it’s not a rush,” he said. “But there’s still desire and interest and enthusiasm.”

“They will go up to the artworks, and lick them, rub up against them. They are very curious,” said Roman Mathis, one of several farmer’s hosting the event. He said he had to work late into the nights leading up to opening day, repeatedly adjusting the fencing around the contemporary art installations, as weather conditions regularly shifted where and how works by over 150 artists, including performers, could be shown.

Following last-year’s widely acclaimed event in a former mayonnaise factory, BSC took a gamble this year in convening art and nature so literally in this outdoor venue, with works installed in fields, planted in forested nooks, or tucked inside barns, especially given Basel’s unpredictable weather. While severe storms have been averted thus far, the first day alone saw a mix of rain and shine, and by evening, as showers poured down on visitors, many were grumbling.

“The biggest challenge for us has been navigating with the changes in climate, and not knowing what fields we can use,” because of heavy rains, said Paris-based dealer Robbie Fitzpatrick, one of BSC’s co-founders. It has forced the team to play it by ear, and accept that “we don’t know, we’re flexible.”

In fact, two works that were to be displayed have been withdrawn due to rain, according to Fitzpatrick: Jean Tinguely’s tractor sculpture, Klamauk (1979), which can’t withstand “a drop of rain,” and another “high-value” work, Beni Bischof’s Made on Earth by Humans (2023), a souped-up DeLorean car (of Back to the Future fame).

But some artworks actually welcomed the inclement weather. The suspended circular drums in Margaret Raspé’s Regenrommein (Raindrums), 1988/2023, reverberate with sound them. It is one of the event’s poignant highlights. Since the 1960s, Raspé has addressed issues of climate and ecology through various mediums; a related film is also on view in the forest, along with videos by other artists.

Locating all the works on view is also part of the adventure for this year’s BSC, though daily tours are offered. An interactive map on the website informs visitors of where to wander. Though cell reception can be spotty, it’s a perfect excuse to get lost amid the undulating green fields and wildflowers.

As pieces were still being installed on opening day, part of the affair’s go-with-flow attitude, Fitzpatrick said, “People are asking me where the artworks are. The artworks are everywhere!”

It may not be an easy walk in the field, but it is an experience more than worth the journey that feels lightyears away from the commercial bustle of the Messeplatz, where Art Basel opens to VIPs on Tuesday morning. “This project is not an art fair, and it shouldn’t be confused with that, and the aim is really to present all of these different facets that comprise the ecosystem of our artistic community. The emphasis is really on the artists,” said Fitzpatrick.

Basel Social Club is technically a nonprofit event that is free to visit and includes participation from commercial galleries, artist-run projects, and foundations like the Pinault Collection and the Beyeler Foundation, who present a range of artistic practices and artists, from the very young to the historically established. Artists are given carte blanche, and commercial participants pay a flat fee of 2,500 Swiss Francs (around $2,788), while artist-run projects can participate for free. This year, the event has added a concert to its programming, headlined by Haddaway & Wolfram  on Wednesday night.

Young dealer Mischa Lustin of London’s Galerina said BSC “is a better fit for us because we have friendly relationships with the people organizing,” adding that the event is “a little more fun and a little less cringy” than a typical art fair. He described Galerina as “practically non-commercial,” with a marked rock ’n’ roll edge. On cue, he opened his leather jacket to show several “smuggled” artworks by Sarah Staton pinned to the garment’s inner lining. Jewel-like, mini sculptures made of gold-plated bronze, they are priced between 100 to 900 Swiss Francs ($111–$1,003).

Other memorable highlights include Himalayan artist Aqui Tami’s ephemeral, vulva-shaped sculpture made out of the muddy earth and titled Shrine for Boju. She said the work “honors our grandmother, the divine feminine presence” and later performed a ritual of thanks with the piece.

Cloud Canyons (1963/2016), the late artist David Medalla’s white, rain-proof sculpture of overflowing biodegradable soap columns was popular among the many visiting children who ran after the sudds as they blew away. Priced at about €250,000 ($268,000), the piece was brought by Berlin’s Mountains gallery. (The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles this week opens a major survey for Medalla, who died in 2020.)

On, Sunday, amid a sunny break in the clouds, Paulo Nazareth’s iconic performance Moinho de Vento/Windmill (2018) was re-enacted with 13 local immigrants come from Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, kicking off BSC’s live programming. Dressed in white, the performers solemnly walked through the green fields while holding Dutch ceramic coffee grinders, which they silently ground, leaving a trail of beans behind. We were told the grounds are not harmful to the surrounding environment.

One particularly intriguing example is the forthcoming show “Berthe Morisot à Nice, escales impressionnistes,” (“Berthe Morisot in Nice, an Impressionist Stopover”) at the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret in the seaside city, which runs June 7 through September 29. It will travel to Genoa’s Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cutura afterward. Morisot (1841–1895) was a central figure of Impressionism; she exhibited in seven out of eight of the movement’s shows, including the first one. Yet still today, when most think of the founders of the movement, few mention Morisot. The Nice exhibit attempts to correct the record by showing not only paintings she created there but also works by women in her Riviera circle.

With about 60 artworks by Morisot related to the wintry periods she spent in Nice in 1881–82 and 1888–89, complemented by around 40 pieces by other women artists, the exhibit is among the first to recognize the breadth and wealth of the feminine art scene in Nice at the time. In fact, one of the show’s curators told ARTnews that in conducting new research into the museum’s own under-examined collection, they discovered that no fewer than about 650 women were making art professionally in the region during the Belle Epoque, between 1877 and 1914. These women came from all over, representing some 20 nationalities.

“While we were researching more about Berthe Morisot and her period, we realized hundreds of women exhibited in Nice’s salons, gave art classes, or simply worked on the French Riviera,” said Johanne Lindskog, director of the museum and cocurator of the show. “It’s crazy, actually, and a spectacular quantity, which has allowed us to reestablish a certain historical reality about the presence of women in [the] Riviera’s art scene.”

These artists included the better-known Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883), who studied under Édouard Manet, Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884), Louise Breslau (1856–1927), and Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), as well as artists whose names are less familiar: Thérèse Cotard-Dupré (1877–1920) and Alice Vasselon (1849–1893). “And, of course, they all knew each other and Berthe Morisot, either because they exhibited together or were in the same network,” Lindskog said.

Why were so many women making art around Nice and nearby environs like Cannes and Monaco? Perhaps following the example of Paris’s Académie Julian, which accepted women, art ateliers for women began to pop up, run by the likes of Jean-Jacques Henner, who encouraged his students to work and exhibit in Nice. In this cosmopolitan southern French city, women found a thriving art market and patrons who supported them. Moreover, the French Riviera, with its pictorial landscapes, was near Italy, where artists traditionally went to study classical and Renaissance art. Finally, many of these women painters themselves came from relative wealth and had second homes near the coast, an area prized for its warm weather and related health benefits. These women of means depended a little less on their husbands and fathers and were freer to explore their personal and artistic interests.

They also made work in a variety of styles that often dipped into, or was in dialogue with, the “new painting” that was Impressionism. Breslau, for instance, is known for her naturalistic realism but occasionally showed the influence of the Impressionists, whom she knew—notably Edgar Degas and the important Impressionist dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. “There’s a crisscrossing of painting that comes in contact with Impressionism, and hybrid works that are not entirely one or the other,” Lindskog noted.

The curators hope to underscore the hybridized aspect of the art made at the time, favoring a less rigid depiction of Impressionism and the context from which it sprang—an approach also seen in the blockbuster Impressionism exhibit currently at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, which emphasizes Morisot’s participation. “Museums have tended to favor a thematic, chronological approach, which has given the public the false impression that events occur[ed] in a segmented manner, one after the other,” said Lindskog. “Our wish is to reestablish a certain historical accuracy around what people saw at the time and what interested them. What are the points of contact and associations? It’s this complexity that is interesting.”

In their research, curators including art historian Marianne Mathieu also came across new evidence contradicting the belief that all Impressionist painting was executed swiftly. Mathieu and Lindskog found that Morisot would spend long periods in her studio preparing her final paintings, and that she made relatively few “final” works, suggesting she could take her time, given her financial security. In addition, Lindskog said colleagues discovered previously unknown artworks by Morisot’s husband, Eugène Manet, who was her informal dealer and production assistant, as well as by her daughter, Julie Manet. It would appear that the family painted together, often following Morisot’s lead and replicating her compositions.

As curators “begin to research Impressionism in alternative ways to simply lining up masterpieces along a wall,” Lindskog said, they continue to discover new information about the lives of the artists, which contributes to what we know of as Impressionism. “As we look closer at the real conditions in which these artworks were created, with a more social approach . . . we inevitably discover people and participants that we hadn’t noticed until now.”

With wide-reaching partners from Dior, Adidas, and Stella McCartney to the UN and the World Bank, Parley for the Oceans has an ambitious remit to end the world’s dependence on plastic, and its latest collaboration, with the mega art fair company Art Basel, is just the latest in these no-small plans. 

Launched at Art Basel Miami Beach in December, the organization bills its new “Art for the Oceans” collaboration as a “global fundraising initiative to protect oceans, climate, and life against plastic pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss,” and it will play a role at Art Basel Hong Kong this week.

Parley, as it is often called for short, entering the art world might seem like it’s come out of the blue, but since its launch in 2012, the organization has worked with over 30 artists, including the likes of Julian Schnabel, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Katharina Grosse, and Doug Aitken. It would seem, then, that its joining forces with the world’s most important art fair would be the logical next step. What’s more, Gutsch, who closed his design firm to create Parley, said the idea for the organization began at Art Basel in Switzerland, when he learned about the work of environmental activist Captain Paul Watson. Their meeting directly spurred “the epiphany that led me to dedicate my whole life to the oceans,” Gutsch has said.

At the Hong Kong fair, Parley will sell its limited-edition, artist-designed tote bags, made from plastic recuperated from nature. A single bag funds the removal of 20 pounds of plastic waste. They will also offer one-hour guided tours of the fair, highlighting artworks that share a connection to the environment and artists who have previously collaborated with Parley. (Tours cost $388HKD, around $49 USD, with proceeds going to the environmental cause.)

In an email, Art Basel Hong Kong director Angelle Siyang-Li told ARTnews that this collaboration with Parley is a way for the fair to develop both immediate and long-terms plans on how to reduce its carbon footprint. “Sustainability is a pressing issue for art fairs and the entire art world,” she said. “Art Basel is strongly committed to reducing its environmental impact as well as using its platform to encourage wider change across the art world.”

In Miami, Parley also featured artist-designed surfboards, which they chose not to ship to Hong Kong to limit carbon emissions, though they can be sent to any interested takers. For that launch, Schnabel, who has been an early Parley collaborator, exhibited three of his works as part of their partnership with Art Basel, and said at the time he had participated as a way to support “Parley’s work to change the destiny of our planet. Protecting the oceans goes far beyond protecting marine wildlife. Protecting the oceans means protecting humanity.”

Meanwhile, beyond its recent journey into art fairs, Parley also commissions artworks, both limited prints and larger installations, as a way to help fund its advocacy programs, including environmental education, plastic cleanups, recycling, and research into plastic-alternative materials, like the recuperated marine plastic that its bags are made from. Future plans include large, site-specific installations at the Art Basel fairs and beyond, as well as other programs like creating an artist residency.

But more than raising funds, Gutsch said he sees these first few art fairs as “introductions” into the larger art world, to spur both awareness and future collaborations. Beyond these art-related ventures, Parley also generates income from its commercial collaborations with brands like Adidas and Dior, as well as via direct donations and grants. However, Gutsch declined to answer questions about how much was raised at its Miami fundraiser in December, or about Parley’s budget, a nonprofit with 200 “core” employees. “We need a lot, into the 10’s of millions of dollars,” Gutsch said.

Parley relies on thousands of collaborations with other groups to work toward an “end to the plastic crisis,” which involves plans for building recycling and sorting hubs in three countries where the group has concentrated efforts: the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and the Dominican Republic. Once that goal is achieved there, Parley hopes to duplicate their “end-to-end solution” to plastic, built on a strategy that entails: Avoiding plastics/emissions, Intercepting plastic waste and pollutants, and Redesigning materials, methods, and mindset, or AIR. “It works. We’re very efficient… we just need to grow it now,” Gutsch said. The group’s 2023 report counted some 1 million participants in their education programs and cleanups in 57 countries, over 574,000 volunteers in global programs, and over 8.1 million kilograms of debris removed from nature and coastal areas.

“Parley,” in pirate lore, is a French word for a “conference or discussion, especially between opposing sides.” That notion seems to resonate in today’s divisive times, especially when it comes to the immediacy of climate change. Gutsch sees it as a way to describe the group’s method and challenge ahead, to parley—or talk—to art world elites, who aren’t exactly reputed for leading environmentally friendly lifestyles.

“The ecological footprint of the top end of the art market remains incredibly high, because of the almost incessant air travel,” Olav Velthuis, a sociologist focusing on the art market at the University of Amsterdam, told ARTnews in an email. Art fairs, too, are relatively high-polluting events, because they are often held in temporary venues, require shipping artwork, and attract jet-setting collectors who fly private—the bread and butter of major fairs.

The 2023 Art Basel and UBS survey of global collecting noted that while 57 percent of high net-worth collectors surveyed were willing to pay premiums for more sustainable purchases, 77 percent said they planned to travel to more fairs or overseas events than the previous year. “Although most collectors were aware of and concerned over the sustainability of the market, this has not fully filtered down to their actions or resulted in any significant reduction in their plans to travel,” the report concludes.

This lack of reduction in private air travel has already sparked protests, including one staged by the UK-founded environmental group Extinction Rebellion on March 9 that involved blocking the roads to Maastricht’s airport during TEFAF. “This segment of the art market is simply not sustainable,” Velthuis said, recommending a radical shift to a more local model. “Members of the art world, including Art Basel, urgently need to discuss on a more fundamental level how the contemporary art world and art market are organized. So far, I don’t see much willingness to engage in that discussion.”

For Gutsch, that is where Parley comes in. Asked if he sees any contradictions in working with a high-polluting milieu, Gutsch had a ready response. Far from the organization being “pure” itself (“we are no saints” and “we are all natural-born hypocrites at this point,” he said), Parley has already collaborated with major corporations and countries with particularly high carbon emissions. Eventually, he says the “ultimate potential” of the Art Basel collaboration, is to “drastically improve” the fair’s footprint.

“Our approach is to be in the room to collaborate,” he said. “Because if I would shy away from polluters or from events that are polluting, I would also have to shy away from governments that are polluting. … I’m actually doing the total opposite.”

He continued, “I am an innovator. We, as an organization, are change-makers. We go to the battlegrounds, where the most damage is being done, and in that sense, you can call Art Basel a battleground.”

While art fairs might be a key battleground when it comes to climate activism, Gutsch said Art Basel has already shown “courage” by choosing to collaborate with Parley, and his goal with this collaboration is to address the full-scope of the polluting, high-net-worth lifestyle that convenes around week-long art events like these, by converting collectors, both to reduce their emissions in their personal lifestyles, as well as in their wider social and professional circles.

“Somebody who can afford to buy an Andy Warhol, or a Basquiat, or a [Julian] Schnabel, usually has a lot of influence, so they can call up their leadership team, and say: ‘Let’s get out of plastic, let’s get out of fossil fuel,’” Gutsch explained. “We want to increase that group of high-net worth individuals that are exposed to us, because I don’t blame and shame anyone. I want to change them. I love sinners!”

Like many art fairs, Art Basel has begun to take steps toward greater sustainability in recent years, and Siyang-Li, ABHK’s director, said the event is “strongly committed to reducing its environmental impact.” One example is its active membership in the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), which requires certain commitments from participants, including developing a “Decarbonisation Action Plan,” a regularly updated, step-by-step carbon reduction strategy that includes setting a “near-zero waste target,” measuring emissions, and auditing waste, while guiding against “bad habits and social convention.”

Siyang-Li added, “We understand the immense value of collective effort. That’s why our collaboration with Parley for the Oceans and also with the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) are central to our strategy. Together, we aim to harness the collective expertise and commitment of the art world to drive meaningful change.”

The Decarbonisation Action Plan is part of the GCC-member goal of reaching a 50-percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030, which “is entirely possible” to do, a spokesperson for the group told ARTnews. The GCC has also witnessed positive change in the arts sector over the last four years, sighting over 1,150 new members, and “rapid progress in climate consciousness,” as well as a “readiness of many to begin to take action on the issues,” according to the spokesperson. The question remains whether that progress will be fast enough.

A key ingredient to these efforts are the artists, whom Gutsch said have a special “convening power.” He asked, “How do you make something like protecting the oceans, and our future, relevant to people that are otherwise so busy? I think the artist has the unique role in society to burst open these bubbles where everybody tends to hide.” Art can empower its viewers to feel a “readiness, an openness, which is something that we need, to create empathy for our cause,” he said. “Empathy is really what this is all about.” 

Most observers cite French president Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 speech in Burkina Faso—when he said he wanted “the conditions met for the temporary or definitive restitution of African heritage to Africa”—as the start of the new era in restitution. Similarly disruptive was a 2018 report on African cultural objects in French museums that Macron commissioned, authored by Bénédicte Savoy, head of modern art history at the Technical University of Berlin, and Senegalese academic Felwine Sarr. It estimated that 90 to 95 percent of the continent’s artistic heritage is located outside Africa, and urged repatriation of requested artifacts.

Since that time, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and recently, Switzerland have created national guidelines or panels to evaluate restitution claims and return artifacts acquired during the respective colonial periods. In addition, Belgium and France have adopted laws in recent years to facilitate the process and, in 2024, Austria and France are expected to propose new legislation along the same lines. Germany made waves in 2021 when it agreed unconditionally to transfer 1,100 so-called Benin Bronzes to Nigeria; it has so far delivered 22. 2023 saw renewed efforts, particularly around proactive provenance research and restitutions. Last May the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced a relatively large new unit dedicated to provenance research, following repeated seizures of antiquities by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. And, this past October, Germany and France’s culture ministries announced an agreement to launch a joint fund to research provenance of museum artifacts deriving from formerly colonized African regions.

“It’s as if we’ve changed eras,” Savoy told ARTnews recently. “It’s as though the Berlin Wall has fallen.”

In Europe, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Despite progress, some countries and institutional collections have stalled restitution efforts.

When Savoy and Sarr’s report was released in France, critics complained that it went too far in alleging that most artifacts from former African colonies were very likely acquired unethically. In April, a second government-commissioned report, written by onetime Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez, tightened restrictions on requirements for restitution. It was designed to guide lawmakers drafting legislation to enable the deaccession of plundered artworks, particularly from Africa. Currently, most objects in France’s national collection cannot be restituted without the vote of parliament. The bill is the most controversial of three so-called “framework” laws: The first was voted into law this summer, and concerns Nazi looting—as reported in last fall’s ARTnews Top 200 issue; the second, on human remains, was signed into law December 26. The last framework law, on colonial-era restitutions, is by far the most controversial and is already considered to be overdue. And while France has returned 26 artifacts to Benin and a sword to Senegal, the number of returned objects has fallen well short of vague initial promises.

Rima Abdul Malak, France’s minister of culture, told ARTnews that “case-by-case” restitutions of objects would become more feasible when the third law is adopted, giving professionals necessary criteria and a plan of action.

The United Kingdom parliament, meanwhile, passed the Charities Act in 2022, in which sections 15 and 16 “would allow national museums to return material in rare cases where there is an overwhelming moral obligation to do so,” Alexander Herman, director of the UK-based Institute of Art & Law (IAL), told ARTnews. However, enforcement of those sections has been temporarily blocked. And the Parthenon Marbles remain at the center of a seemingly endless series of negotiations between Greece and the UK, which has so far been reluctant to relinquish ownership.

In Germany, the return of some Benin bronzes to Nigeria faced backlash when it was revealed in March that the 16th-century artifacts would not go to a planned national museum of West African art, co-funded by Germany, but instead, to Ewuare II, the 40th oba, or ceremonial king, of the Kingdom of Benin (British forces ransacked the king’s palace in 1897). In response, some European institutions paused their plans to return items to Nigeria, while several important German lawmakers called the transfer “a disaster.” That some of the bronzes were made from melted-down brass manilla bracelets, which the Kingdom of Benin received in exchange for slaves, has only added to the controversy.

Others defended Nigeria’s right to do what it pleased with recovered property. “Do we really want to go back to the attitude of the 1970s, when we Europeans equated the return of cultural assets to Africa with loss, destruction, and selling out?” Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Berlin’s public museum body, asked in a May statement. While he did not “fear that the bronzes would now disappear,” Parzinger did call for “clarification,” adding, “it is important that the Benin bronzes are shown publicly, as was agreed.”

None of these developments seemed to shake Savoy. “In politics, you have to take a few steps back to take a large step forward,” she said, quoting received advice. In short, even if her approach is not widely adopted, Savoy’s more radical advocacy has helped nudge whole systems in ways that would have been considered impossible just six years ago.

Last year, Savoy and Cameroonian cultural historian Albert Gouaffo presented a new study on looted objects from Cameroon. It estimated that German public museums currently hold 40,000 artifacts from the country, taken during Germany’s short and violent occupation at the turn of the 19th century. None have been returned yet, but that is likely to change. The Cameroon government said it had created a restitution commission to work toward that end.

Public Awareness Is Shaping Restitution Efforts

As debate heats up in parliaments around the globe, so too have public conversations around restitution. For Savoy, rallying public opinion is critical, because national collections, where most objects are held, are the property of citizens. When well-informed citizens pressure governments and institutions, that’s when change is often made, she said.

In many formerly colonized countries, information about looted or stolen artifacts is also advancing.

“More communities [in Cameroon] are interested in restitution, but also in reparations for the people killed, sometimes in the hundreds,” Richard Tsogang Fossi, a fellow at the Technical University of Berlin, who worked on Savoy/Gouaffo’s Cameroon study, told ARTnews.

Meanwhile, Yrine Karitou Matchinda, a doctoral candidate at Cameroon’s University of Dschang, interviewed local residents, often deep in rural areas, where older generations could recall how religious relics were used. But that memory is dwindling.

“The first thing you notice, is that there is a great absence,” Matchinda told ARTnews. “We lost track and the transmission of this knowledge,” which is why, Matchinda said, most Cameroonians know little about the items taken from their region during German occupation.

“There is always an interest to know about the objects, and a wish to see them come back … It’s about wanting to show future generations how their parents lived, so they can reconnect to their ancestral past,” she said.

Indeed, contrary to common assumptions, local leaders have been requesting restitutions since many countries in the Global South achieved independence in the 1960s, according to Savoy’s 2022 book, Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat.

In Nigeria, “everybody is now aware, and curious,” about the looted Benin City palace treasure, Mark Olaitan, curator at the National Museum, Benin City, told ARTnews. He added that the Nigerian government has been working on a storage facility for the artifacts, which are currently “in safe hands.” He gave no further details about their whereabouts or plans for future display. The head of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments did not return requests for comment.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been working this year to create a system for handling restituted artifacts from European museums, after receiving an inventory of 84,000 Congolese objects in Belgium last year. Indonesia established a restitution team to work with the Netherlands and other European countries on returning artifacts, while activists in Nepal have agitated frequently since 2021 for the return of religious statues to the country.

In Europe and North America, wider public support for restitution is often traced to the racial justice movement ignited by the police killing of George Floyd, according to Leila Amineddoleh, a New York–based art lawyer who has advocated for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

“Part of this movement is a recognition that heritage is important to everyone. It should be accessible to everyone, and the people in the origin nations as well,” she told ARTnews.

Amineddoleh has received multiple calls asking what to do about artifacts in family collections that are now seen as a “liability.” Many believed they were showing support for a culture—and artwork—they hoped to promote as equal in relevance and value to Western art when the pieces were purchased decades ago. Now, some of Amineddoleh’s clients are simply returning items to their countries of origin, not to “burden their children” and to avoid bad publicity from later seizure. While a market still exists for works from looted areas, she added, it most often takes place privately.

The Fate of the ‘Encyclopedic’ Museum

The impulse to err on the side of returning objects is visibly spreading, particularly at large institutions.

Alex Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) told ARTnews that the museum’s trustees have consistently supported cases of possible restitution. Earlier this month, the VMFA repatriated 44 ancient artifacts from Italy, Egypt, and Turkey following a New York State and federal inquiry.

“Our philosophy is that we are merely guardians of our collections. If there is a question of title, we always do the right thing,” he said.

To that end, Nyerges said he felt museums should not shy from acquiring artifacts with insufficient provenance (as opposed to “questionable provenance,” which is a red flag), because there is a better likelihood of restituting items found in museums than in private collections. But not all museums are consistently cooperative. This fall the Cleveland Museum of Art sued the Manhattan District Attorney’s office over the seizure of a headless male bronze statue, citing a lack of “persuasive proof” for doing so.

Though a majority of the UK public has consistently favored restituting the Parthenon Marbles, according to recent polls, the government position has changed little since it rejected Greece’s claim in 1984, IAL director Herman writes in his new book, The Parthenon Marbles Dispute, published late last year. The government views the sculptures as a legal acquisition, which their laws prevent them from deaccessioning, and it insists on the importance of seeing the marbles within the global historic context provided by the British Museum, where they are housed.

That last argument, however, was weakened when the British Museum announced this past summer that it has been subject to systematic theft, allegedly by a staff member. More than 2,000 objects are said have been lost, stolen, or damaged over the course of three decades.

“The right to call itself ‘the museum of the world’ … is wearing thin,” UK lawmaker Sharmishta Chakrabarti said during a December House of Lords debate on the Marbles. “I fear the government is taking the concept of culture war to new and ever more literal levels … the government’s marbles are long since lost,” she said.

While restitution has been political from the get-go, to some, that can cloud judgment.

Art historian Bernard de Grunne, of the eponymous Belgian gallery, which deals in tribal fine arts, told ARTnews he believes restitution advocates are overlooking countless examples of fairly purchased items due to political aims.

“It’s not an objective, historical issue. It’s become a political issue and a pressure point,” he said. “I think the West did a great service to save what was left of these artistic heritages of Africa. I think a majority of it would have disappeared.”

At the heart of the debate is the concept of the Western encyclopedic museum, such as the British Museum or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Critics have long noted that citizens of the Global South cannot easily access these museums, whose collections comprise significant works from those cultures. Some have argued that such artifacts can be exhibited in their countries of origin without necessarily “emptying” the institutions that hold them, by organizing traveling exhibitions and long-term loans. A conference this past May in Dakar, Senegal, brought together 60 museum directors from Africa and Europe who pledged to cooperate on just such efforts. Others question whether the requesting country will exhibit restituted works to the public, and conserve them as national heritage.

“We are still stuck in what we call the ‘universal museum,’ and the sacralization of objects,” art lawyer Corinne Hershkovitch told ARTnews. “To say that another country is not capable of conserving [artworks]—those are our norms, which we are imposing … We are still far behind being able to discuss these questions in a dialogue between equals, on equal footing.”

“We better leave now if we’re going to catch the minister,” Vincent Krier, a member of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), France’s second largest union, told the crowd of about150. The plan was to march to the offices of Rima Abdul Malak, the minister of culture, and pressure her “face to face” to meet their demands for job security amid plans that the center will close for renovations for five years, starting in 2025. It will begin progressively closing after the Summer Olympics in 2024.

Pompidou workers went on strike in mid-October over those concerns, the latest in a series of strikes since plans for the arts complex’s renovations were first announced. Last month, negotiations between France’s five major trade unions and the culture ministry over the strike stalled.

Despite the length of the strike, it has only caused the institution to close for eleven days total so far, thanks to alternating groups of workers opting to picket. When security personnel, for instance, go on strike, the museum is forced to close. On Thursday, however, only the Kandinsky Library was closed, having just joined the movement the day before. But, in yet another sign of the strike’s expansion, the unions announced on the same day they decided to extend the strike to January 15.

Once at the ministry’s offices, located a half mile away near the Louvre, the crowd packed into the lobby, chanting “Pompidou en colère!” [The Pompidou is angry], as whistles blew, people clapped, and some drummed on a reception desk. After some time, Nathalie Ramos, a representative of the CGT-Culture union, and a leading figure of the protest movement, which is arguably the largest since the museum’s opening in 1977, addressed the crowd.

“We’ve just given the minister an end-of year gift — the extension of the strike notice at the Pompidou!” she said.

No one seems to contest that the Pompidou’s modernist edifice, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, is in a state of critical disrepair. The ministry of culture has promised to spend about $285 million on necessary renovations, including asbestos removal, fire safety measures, and improved access and energy efficiency. However, the long closure period, which many expect to last longer than the projected five years, came as a blow to workers who were initially told it would take only three. Plus, staff say they have been kept in the dark on what the project means for them.

“We don’t know why they can’t at least maintain part of the museum open – they have shown no proof justifying such a long closure,” Ramos told ARTnews. “The problem is there is a lot of opacity on how things are being done.”

In addition, workers have said they are increasingly upset about the center’s “cultural project,” or program for its re-opening, about which they also feel uninformed. That initiative involves a noted increase in loans from the museum’s collection to cultural sites around the globe, so as to help fund the approximately $200 million the program is expected to cost, in addition to the structural budget mentioned. While some of those lending contracts, recently brokered by Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon, promise over $30 million in income over the next seven years, according to Le Monde, workers say it’s not worth the damage it risks to a collection constantly on the move. Plus, they have expressed misgivings about the human rights record of places like Saudi Arabia and China, where the Pompidou just signed and renewed, respectively, contracts for future working relationships and lending.

“We know [Le Bon is signing these contracts] for the money, but it weighs on us. Right now, we get the sense we’re working for Saudi Arabia and China, and it’s a problem — an ethical problem,” Aurélie Gavelle, who is a conservationist at the Pompidou and a member of the UNSA union, told ARTnews. “No amount of money can justify it.”

In an email, a Pompidou representative said that the museum loans about 6,000 artworks annually. “We lend, and we benefit from loans — that is the life of museums and collections. Of course, this is all subject to very strict rules and protocols, which unfortunately don’t prevent a few accidents of various degrees, which remain limited,” they said.

Further, according to the museum, the number of striking employees has decreased from 200 at the start of the strike to figures varying between 46 and 8 employees in November.

However, new departments, such as the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information, a library inside the Pompidou, joined the strike last week, along with the Kandinsky Library. Additionally, it appears that the movement is spreading to other museums. Employees and skilled craftspeople from the Louvre and the national library, Bibliotheque nationale de France, and the National Ceramics Museum in Sèvres, among others, attended Thursday’s protest, sharing their concerns about declining numbers of jobs in areas such as renovation and skilled labor.

Gavelle, who spoke to ARTnews while walking towards the ministry of culture Thursday, noted all these concerns have amplified a general sense that staff “cannot work serenely and in good conditions.”

Pompidou staff have also objected to moving the collection twice in less than a year’s time, because a new storage facility to house them in the town of Massy, south of Paris, will not be ready until 2026. The dispersal of both their jobs and the collection, “will have a colossal impact on our working conditions,” said Gavelle, who wondered why renovations can’t wait until the new storage facility is ready.

In mid-November, Malak, the culture minister, attempted a response via open letter. She echoed the museum’s president, who also said they had tried, but were unable to find a single site for most of the the Pompidou’s activities and workers. The Grand Palais will host exhibitions and many of the 1,000 Pompidou employees, along with other museums in Paris, and the new site in Massy. Malak also ensured that no workers would be forced out of a job, and that they would be promised the same job or “an equivalent” one upon the museum’s reopening in 2030. She and the Pompidou would not, however, promise they would not resort to some subcontracted jobs, for employees in the private sector, once the museum opens – a major issue for workers, who want to keep the same number of public servant employees at the opening.

“It is too early to freeze the establishment’s organization structure, for what will be needed in 2030,” Malak wrote. “I’m aware of the long period of this closure, but it is necessary.” In the meantime, the center “will be more active than ever during these five years, with a rich program led by your president.”

On Thursday, Malak never did meet the protesters face-to-face, declining to come out and speak to the crowd. No doubt, however, she got the message.