Six months after selling a Leonardo da Vinci for half a billion dollars, New York art auction season is back, gearing up to break new records with a magnificent Rockefeller collection and a Modigliani. The collection was amassed by the late billionaire banker David Rockefeller, who died last year aged 101, and his wife Peggy. In all, Christie’s is selling 1,600 items over three days, with an expected take of $600 million. The proceeds are going to charity. The jewel in this collection’s crown is Picasso’s 1905 masterpiece “Fillette a la corbeille fleurie” (“Young Girl With a Flower Basket”). Its purchase by Gertrude and Leon Stein, along with two other Rose Period paintings, helped jumpstart the artist’s career. The Picasso alone is valued at $100 million, but the combined total is expected to smash the previous record for a collection set by that of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge, which fetched $484 million in 2009.

From April 29, 2018, the Fondation Beyeler is staging an exhibition devoted to Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon: two outstanding protagonists of modern art who were at once friends and rivals, and whose creative vision exerted a powerful influence that still persists today. This is the first-ever joint museum exhibition involving Giacometti and Bacon, illuminating the relationship between the two artistic personalities. Different as their art may at first appear, the dual presentation of their work reveals many striking similarities. The exhibition brings together well-known key works by both artists with other works that are rarely shown—including, in particular, a series of original plaster figures from Giacometti’s estate that have never been publicly displayed before, and four triptychs by Bacon. A multimedia room offers spectacular insights into the artists’

On 5 May 2018, KANAL – Centre Pompidou opens its doors in the former Citroën Yser garage in Brussels for a programme prefiguring the ‘Cultural city’ in the making, comprising among others the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art that is in development. During the 13 months preceding the start of the work, the public was able to discover this mythical building in its raw state through several art and architecture exhibitions, large installations and ten brand-new creations by Brussels-based artists. There will also be shows produced in collaboration with cultural organizations from Brussels. KANAL – Centre Pompidou, an ambitious project driven by the Brussels-Capital Region, provides Brussels with a multidisciplinary cultural hub worthy of the capital of Europe. In the context of a ten-year partnership with the Centre Pompidou, the site measuring 35,000 m2 is not only be home to a Museum of Modern and Contemporary Ar