Frank Gehry-designed Atherton home hits the market.
A residence regarded as one of Frank Gehry’s final major works has come to market in Atherton, California, with an asking price of $115 million. The home was commissioned by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and longtime architecture patron Massy Mehdipour and took roughly a decade to complete. Mehdipour asked Gehry to bring the scale of ambition typically reserved for his museums and cultural institutions to a private Northern California residence. Given the project’s complexity, she ultimately served as its general contractor. The design bears Gehry’s signature style, combining sculptural forms in glass and steel with exposed Douglas fir framing, stone, brick, and corrugated metal.
Art Basel Qatar returns in January with solo shows from 82 galleries.
Art Basel Qatar has unveiled the lineup for its second edition, set for January 28–30, 2027, at Msheireb Downtown in Doha. The fair will feature 82 galleries from 37 countries and territories, each staging a solo presentation conceived by Iraqi curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi with Art Basel chief artistic officer Vincenzo de Bellis. Roughly half the artists come from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, and more than 30 galleries are first-time participants. Regional names include Athr, Lawrie Shabibi, The Third Line, and Doha’s al markhiya gallery, alongside international heavyweights. Expected highlights include Gagosian showing Maurizio Cattelan, David Zwirner with Oscar Murillo, Acquavella with Andy Warhol, and White Cube with Park Seo-Bo.
Gustav Klimt’s Litzlbergkeller could fetch $80 million at Christie’s next month.
Christie’s will offer Gustav Klimt’s Litzlbergkeller (1915–16) at its New York sales in November, with an estimate of $60 million to $80 million. The painting, consigned by an unnamed seller, is all but guaranteed to sell. Should it achieve its estimate, the work would rank among the most expensive by the Austrian artist ever sold at auction. It last appeared on the market in 1997, when it set a record for Klimt at $14.7 million at Sotheby’s New York, approximately $30.9 million in today’s dollars. The artist’s current auction record stands at $236.4 million, achieved by Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer at Sotheby’s in November 2025. His highest-priced landscape remains Birch Forest (1903), which sold for $104.5 million at Christie’s in 2022. The canvas depicts a brewery and inn on the northern shore of Austria’s Lake Attersee, which Klimt frequented beginning in 1900. According to Christie’s, the artist composed the scene from his later residence on the lake’s southern shore, drawing on both a telescope view and contemporary postcards.
The Morgan Library & Museum announces “Ragtime: Cakewalk in Pianoland.”
The Morgan Library & Museum in New York will open “Ragtime: Cakewalk in Pianoland,” an exhibition examining the genre’s origins and its Black creators. The exhibition runs this November through June 13, 2027. It is organized into seven sections covering the genre’s roots, the artists who developed it, the segregation they faced, and its rise into the white mainstream through sheet music sales. Featured figures include Scott Joplin, composer of “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer,” and performer Ernest Hogan, who built his career in minstrelsy. Curator Jesse Erickson called the show “a story of reclamation.” The exhibition was curated by Erickson and Robinson McClellan of the Morgan with guest curator John Davis, a musician whose personal archive forms its core. Graphic novelist Chris Ware also lent objects, and a 2020 work honoring Joplin by Illinois artist Henry M. Fort II will be on view.
Study suggests Van Gogh painted The Starry Night a month later than believed.
A team of South Korean astronomers has proposed that Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night around July 22, 1889, roughly a month later than generally accepted, based on a reconstruction of the night sky he may have observed. The painting, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, is dated June 1889. Van Gogh described a new study of a starry sky in a June 18 letter to his brother Theo. The work depicts the view from his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy, France. The researchers, led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim of Kyung Hee University, matched a ridge southwest of the asylum to an earlier Van Gogh sketch and used astronomy software to recreate the dawn sky for each day in June and July 1889. Of three possible dates, July 22 most closely matched the positions of the moon, Venus, and the Hyades star cluster shown in the painting. The Van Gogh Museum and other experts dispute the finding, noting that Van Gogh sent Theo a drawing based on the painting on July 2 and was unable to paint for weeks after a breakdown that month.
Attractive Distractions:
Whippersnappers by Annebella Pollen spotlights a century of photographs taken by children.
Lamine Yamal’s pink Chanel brooch by Matthieu Blazy takes the spotlight at the Ballon d’Or.
The Denver Art Museum celebrates more than 90 divas in a new exhibition.
Fontfroide Abbey uncovers unknown Odilon Redon sketches.
