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Good Morning!
- A new study shows the UK art market remains the world’s second-largest in terms of sales, but its growth has slowed compared to top competitors.
- Outsider artist Josef Hofer, who was hidden from Nazi forces by his parents due to a speech and developmental disability, has died at 80.
- About 250 construction workers were evacuated on Monday from the Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels as a precaution after a major gas leak nearby.
The Headlines
MARKET MOOD. A new study by Arts Economics for the British Art Market Federation shows the UK art market remains the world’s second-largest in terms of sales, but its growth has slowed compared to top competitors, partly due to regulations, reports The Art Newspaper. The UK art market grew from £2.6 billion in 1996 to £8 billion in 2025, making it the largest art market in Europe, according to the report. But since the 2009 financial crisis, it has been slower to grow, at just 17 percent since that benchmark until 2025, versus 114 percent in the US and 51 percent globally. “Overcomplicated and excessive regulation continues to disproportionately impact the many small and micro businesses that form the backbone of the UK art market,” said Thomas Christopherson, Chairman of BAMF, in a press release.
IN MEMORIAM. Outsider artist Josef Hofer, who was hidden from Nazi forces by his parents due to a speech and developmental disability, has died at 80, reports Le Quotidien de l’Art. Christian Berst’s eponymous Paris gallery exhibited his last show this fall and told ARTnews via email: “He was one of those artists for whom creating was not a choice but a vital necessity. Drawing, for him, was a way of inhabiting the world, of making a mark in it and, perhaps, of inventing a place for himself there. His work, of rare intensity and humanity, will long continue to move us deeply.” In 1997, Hofer was discovered by art historian Elisabeth Telsnig, who gave a drawing class he attended in Austria. His drawings “represented a total break from anything I had been given to see until then,” she wrote in a catalog published alongside his last exhibition. Telsnig later helped connect him to institutions, and several exhibitions followed, beginning with the Collection de l’art brut in Lausanne (2003). The Centre Pompidou, as well as top collectors such as Antoine de Galbert, Bruno Decharme, and Arnulf Rainer, now own his work.
The Digest
About 250 construction workers were evacuated on Monday from the Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels as a precaution due to a major gas leak nearby, as the new modern and contemporary art museum prepares to open to the public on November 28. [Brussels Morning]
Did the Mona Lisa struggle with chronic thinning hair, or alopecia areata? That is what a dermatologist in Italy now claims in an academic journal. [New York Post]
Plans to light President Trump’s 250-foot-tall triumphal arch with floodlights on six 30-foot-tall poles around its base could disrupt the darkness that is meant to cover Arlington National Cemetery at night. [The Washington Post]
New York City design studio AD-WO has won the commission to redesign the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center in Pittsburgh. [Artforum]
Co-founder of MSCHF art and media collective, Lukas Bentel, announced he is breaking out on his own to “pursue solo work in art and design” and will collaborate with his brother, Nik Bentel. [press release]
The Kicker
NEW DEAD HEAD HOME? A new San Francisco Bay Area cultural center dedicated to Jerry Garcia, founder ofthe Grateful Dead rock band, is in the pipeline, his family announced, reports 24 Hip-Hop. The proposed center, organized through Jerry Garcia Music Arts entertainment services, would include a collection of archives, Garcia’s art and musical instruments. Exhibitions would focus on Garcia’s musical influence, his concern for the environment, ocean preservation, arts and music education. Though the project remains a proposal at this stage, Garcia’s family would also like the center to include an artist-in-residence program for visual and recording arts, a performance center and film-screening room. It is being planned in collaboration with the platform Starchive.
