Christie’s Zabludowicz Sale Raises Questions, British Artist Tess Jaray Has Died: Morning Links for June 25, 2026

Good Morning!

• Sources say influential European collectors Anita and Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz are selling 100 works from their collection at Christie’s in London because of disillusionment with the art world.
• Vienna-born, British artist Tess Jaray has died at age 88.
• Mayor Mamdani and the Whitney Museum of American Art announced a citywide partnership that includes free admission to the Whitney for participants in an arts activity guide.

The Headlines

ZABLUDOWICZES ZIPPING OFF? Are the influential European collectors of emerging art, Anita and Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, selling 100 works from their collection at Christie’s in London because of disillusionment with the art world? That is what Artnet News’ Katya Kazakina posits. The sale this week from the Zabludowicz Collection is divided into a live auction today, with works by Philip Guston, Damien Hirst, among others, and a second sale closing June 30. The first sale is estimated to bring in about $17 million to $26 million, while the second is expected to fetch between about $385,000 and $574,200 and features artists whose markets “once burned white-hot but have since cooled dramatically,” writes Kazakina. Why sell during a market contraction for ultra-contemporary works? According to interviewees for the story, the reason involved “strain” between the couple and parts of the art world over their relationship to Israel. Artist and dealer Joel Mesler said they were “disheartened that they were being kind of abused by these people that they had supported.” He added, “It’s not revenge. It’s just, ‘We are getting out. Goodbye.’” The couple has been targeted by a group called Boycott Divest Zabludowicz, which criticizes them for supporting a pro-Israel lobby. The collectors, however, did not respond to Artnet’s request for comment about whether related criticism led to the decision to sell. Meanwhile, Katharine Arnold, vice chairman of the 20th-and 21st-century art department at Christie’s, said she was with the pair in Basel this week, “and they were looking at art and enjoying art.”

IN MEMORIAM. Vienna-born, British artist Tess Jaray has died at age 88, reports the Times of London. She is known for her many abstract, geometric public works around the world, notably embedded into the architecture of London’s leading museums. The Jaray family fled Nazi persecution in Austria and settled in London, where the artist built her career. She was also the first woman hired to teach at London’s Slade School of Fine Art, where she stayed for 31 years. Jaray reportedly died after a fall, and continued to work in her studio until the very end, where she never turned on the lights because she felt artificial light corrupted colors. “When the light faded, her day was finally over,” writes the Times. 

The Digest

In celebration of the World Cup, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Whitney Museum of American Artannounced a citywide partnership that invites New Yorkers and visitors who complete an art-activity guide to free admission to the Whitney through July 31, 2026. [press release]

The Trump administration has fenced off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after one man was accused of vandalism for reaching into the water to touch detached scraps of the newly painted covering, and after dead ducks were found in and near the pool. [Associated Press]

Citadel founder Ken Griffin’s trove of Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings, which cost him approximately $500 million, is on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). [The New York Times]

Part of a 2,500-year-old bronze votive, or ceremonial chariot, unlike anything ever found before, has been uncovered at the Turuñuelo site in Spain, where a 5th-century BCE monumental building once stood. [El País]

Activist and artist Xiangqi Chen has spearheaded the creation of a new Chinese LGBTQ+ art institution in San Francisco, called the OUT Museum, which opened at the end of May. [Associated Press]

The Kicker

LARI PITTMAN’S VISUAL PERFORMANCES. As part of a Pride Month series, and ahead of a fall show at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York, Los Angeles-based artist Lari Pittman talks to Hyperallergic about his new body work. But don’t ask the Colombian-American what it’s about. He does, however, offer that the show’s title, The Remedy of Analog Space and Time, refers to “endlessly languorous, sequential chunks of time that create boredom,” or “certain malaises that human beings are suffering for all sorts of reasons.” Pittman also discusses queerness in his practice: “One of the things that I always felt in my life, what could be seen as queer for me, is that homosexuals were fundamentally heterosocial and heterosexuals were fundamentally homosocial. And so that, I think, created a different way of looking at the world. Because of that, I’m able to maybe reach out to territories of visual performance that actually come quite naturally to me.”