In 2025, new ‘independent and nimble’ art fairs began redrawing the market map

Although gallery closures and tepid auction results loom largest, art fair casualties have been another signal of the market’s challenges in 2025. The Art Dealers Association of America postponed the 37th edition of its Manhattan fair, the Art Show, this summer, days before Taipei Dangdai’s 2026 iteration was called off. The forthcoming editions of Photofairs Hong Kong, the India Art Fair’s Mumbai expo and the Baltimore Fine Art Print & Photo Fair were all cancelled, too.

Amid these retrenchments, however, 2025 brought alternative fairs from Paris to the Berkshires. 

Via The Art Newspaper

After the Louvre Heist, Museums Look for Lessons to Help Stop Thieves

The brazen daylight heist at the Louvre has left many American museums reassessing their security measures, focusing on perimeter control, the adequacy of their security cameras and the timely availability of armed responders, security consultants and museum officials say.

Like all crimes, the Paris theft had its idiosyncratic factors, but all three of these elements played a crucial part at the Louvre, where thieves drove a stolen truck up to the museum on a quiet Sunday morning, extended an electric ladder to a second-floor window and broke in. They used disc grinders to extract jewelry valued at about 88 million euros, or $102 million, from cases in the gilded Apollo Gallery. None of the stolen material has been recovered.

“The biggest takeaway is, ‘Are your security people watching your perimeter aware of who is working at the museum?’”

Via NYTimes

The Theft That Made the Mona Lisa Famous

The robbery that took place at the Louvre on October 19, 2025—when thieves disguised as construction workers stole $102 million in French crown jewels—has already gone down as one of the most infamous art heists in recent history. However, it hardly holds a candle to the scandal that rocked Paris in 1911, when criminals took off with the museum’s most treasured possession: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Like the recent heist, the 1911 robbery was similarly cartoonish in its execution. The main culprit, an Italian handyman and museum employee named Vicenzo Peruggia, hid inside a supply closet until closing time. 

Via Artnet

Top photo: Courtesy of CGN

White House Intensifies Funding Threats Against Smithsonian

The Trump administration, which this past August announced that it would review current and forthcoming Smithsonian exhibitions “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals,” has reiterated its threat to pull funding if the Smithsonian does not comply. Although the Smithsonian provided the White House with documentation in September, Domestic Policy Council director Vince Haley and White House budget director Russell Vought on December 18 sent a letter to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III complaining that what was sent “fell far short of what was requested,” according to a Washington Post report. 

Via Art Forum