Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The art trade is weighing up the possible impact of Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the US. The result went against the art world’s majority support for the Democratic party, although its effect on the US stock market, which rallied, as well as the boost to bitcoin, will likely put many art buyers in a spending mood. “The art market doesn’t like elections, they create instability and uncertainty,” says the art adviser Hugo Nathan, co-founder of Beaumont Nathan, which has offices in London and New York. Now, he says, “regardless of the results, the elections [in the UK and US] are done, so we know where we are at least”.The art market, as well as other industries, could be negatively affected if Trump acts on his “America first” rhetoric of increased import tariffs. Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, notes that the global art market has historically “been based around a healthy flow across borders”, and says that restricting this would compound “a wave of economic fragmentation and protectionism between key economies over the last couple of years [including Brexit]”. Nathan says that the art market faces more pressing problems just now. “There are plenty of people who want to buy art, they just don’t want to overpay,” he says. Some of the works coming back to the auction block this season seem to reflect a recalibration of expectations: Richard Serra’s large, steel “Even Level” (1987) has an estimate of $700,000-$1mn at Sotheby’s, having sold for $1.5mn in 2007, while Daniel Richter’s painting “Tarifa” (2001), which sold for the artist’s public record of £1.2mn ($1.5mn) in 2020, comes back to Christie’s also at $700,000 to $1mn.Joining the New York sales this season are three works from the inventory of disgraced art adviser Lisa Schiff, who last month pleaded guilty to defrauding clients of about $6.5mn between 2018 and 2023. Under the terms of her plea agreement, Schiff agreed to forfeit $6.4mn, and the works at Phillips on November 20 are sold “to benefit the creditors of Lisa Schiff and Schiff Fine Art”. These are led, seemingly not ironically, by Richard Prince’s “Are You Kidding?” (1988), est $250,000-$350,000, bought from Barbara Gladstone Gallery in 2015. The other works are a Wolfgang Tillmans photograph, “Fire Island” (2015, est $15,000-$20,000), bought from David Zwirner, and a 2018 painting by the American artist Ivy Haldeman (est $40,000-$60,000), bought from New York’s since-shuttered Downs & Ross gallery.Schiff is believed to have a collection of about 200 works to sell and Phillips will offer more in the coming months, by order of the bankruptcy court. Described by US Attorney Damian Williams as “diverting millions of dollars her clients had entrusted to her . . . to fund a lavish lifestyle”, Schiff is due to be sentenced in January.An 18-month investigation has uncovered more than 2,000 fake works of art, imitating the likes of Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Claude Monet and Banksy, among many others, and made by an international network operating in continental Europe. The European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust), Italy’s Carabinieri cultural squad and Pisa’s chief prosecutor this week confirmed 38 suspects were indicted, among the network of forgers and workshops in Italy, Spain, France and Belgium, and said the works involved could have been sold for a total €200mn.The forgers were found to have worked with “several complicit auction houses in Italy to sell the pieces”, Eurojust says, adding that “catching the forgers made it possible to avoid the works being auctioned off” as genuine. It is likely though that some have already been sold “as these people have been in business for some time,” Lt Colonel Diego Polio, a senior officer in the Carabinieri, told the FT.The seized items have been handed to the Italian authorities for further analysis, Eurojust confirmed.A painting that features in a late second world war photograph of the Allied experts known as “The Monuments Men” comes for sale at Christie’s Paris on November 21. The half-length portrait of an unknown woman, by the Restoration painter Nicolas de Largillierre (1656-1746), was in the collection of the French Jewish Rothschild family, seized by the Nazis in 1940 and taken to the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris. It was then transferred to Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle where, in 1945, it was recovered, with thousands of other paintings and objects, by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives force. Restituted to the Rothschilds, they later sold the work at auction in 1978. It comes back for sale this month for between €50,000 and €80,000. Meanwhile, Christie’s is sponsoring the English translation of Le front de l’art (The Art Front), a book that charts the transit of looted work from the Jeu de Paume repository, written in 1961 by the museum’s curator and member of the French resistance Rose Valland, who eavesdropped on German conversations and secretly kept meticulous notes on the destinations of train car shipments filled with looted art. “We have to remember there were ‘Monuments Women’ as well as men,” says Richard Aronowitz, Christie’s global head of restitution. Cyprus will get its first art fair, called Vima, to run in a former wine-processing building overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Limassol, May 15-18, 2025. The event is organised by three Russian art and marketing professionals — Edgar Gadzhiev, Lara Kotreleva and Nadezhda Zinovskaya — who have all moved to Cyprus within the past three years. The boutique fair will lean on the country’s position “at the crossroads of the Mediterranean”, Gadzhiev says, and is aiming for about 20 commercial galleries and 10 non-profit spaces that specialise in contemporary art. “There is a density of community dedicated art, which deserves a fair,” Kotreleva says. Galleries who have already committed include Limassol’s Eins, Hot Wheels (Athens and London) and Beirut’s Marfa’. “We’ve heard very good things about the local scene there . . . Cyprus is also 40 minutes away from Beirut [by plane] and it is always great to exhibit under the same sun,” says Marfa’ founder Joumana Asseily.Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
