Arts & Culture

NEW YORK — Christie's will offer Gustav Klimt's landscape 'Litzlbergkeller' (1915–16) at its 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on November 17. The estimate is $60 million to $80 million, and the house has guaranteed that it will sell. An unnamed seller has held it for nearly three decades. The family bought it at Sotheby's in 1997 for $14.7 million, then a Klimt record. The painting shows an inn and brewery on Austria's Lake Attersee. It was shown in Hong Kong October 27–29 and goes on view at Rockefeller Center from November 7. The same sale includes Wassily Kandinsky's 'Betonte Ecken' (1922–23), also estimated at $60–80 million. Artnet says it is poised to break the artist's record. Klimt's auction record is $236.4 million, set last November, and his top landscape, 'Birch Forest', made $104.5 million in 2022.

AMSTERDAM — The European Fine Art Foundation published a list of museum acquisitions made at TEFAF Maastricht, held March 14–19. Among them, the Art Institute of Chicago bought Lavinia Fontana's 'Christ Driving Out the Traders from the Temple', the first painting by the Renaissance artist in its collection. The Van Gogh Museum bought Virginie Demont-Breton's 'L'homme est en mer'. TEFAF says it is only the third painting by a woman to enter that museum's holdings. The Getty took works by Cuno Amiet and Georges Lemmen, and Yale University Art Gallery acquired the first-century 'Nero's Vase'. The Rijksmuseum, the Met and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts also bought. The Friends of the Uffizi purchased a Luca Giordano painting for the Uffizi Galleries. The list comes from the fair itself, not from the museums.

LONDON — Waterstones announced the 20 titles shortlisted for its 2026 Book of the Year, chosen by its booksellers. The Bookseller said the list mixes several debut authors with established names including Maggie O'Farrell, Elizabeth Strout, Douglas Stuart and Robert Macfarlane. Titles include Stuart's John of John (Pan Macmillan), O'Farrell's Land (Headline), Strout's The Things We Never Say (Viking), Macfarlane and Jackie Morris's The Book of Birds (Hamish Hamilton) and Yang Shuang-zi's Taiwan Travelogue (And Other Stories), translated by Lin King. That last book won this year's International Booker Prize. Several overlap with the Booker Prize shortlist, whose winner will be named November 9 at Old Billingsgate, London. The Booker carries £50,000 and is judged by a panel chaired by Mary Beard. At 81, shortlisted M. John Harrison would be the prize's oldest winner.

MUNICH — Shida Bazyar won the 2026 Bavarian Book Prize in fiction for her novel Die Lücken (Kiepenheuer & Witsch), the organisers announced Thursday night in Munich. Trade journal Börsenblatt reported it was her third major award this year, after the German Book Prize and the Wilhelm Raabe Prize. The jury called the book a portrait of a German small town over 90 years, tracing exclusion of Jewish residents and later migrants. Historian Susanne Heim won the nonfiction prize for Die Abschottung der Welt (C.H.Beck), about Jews facing closed borders in 1933-1945. Each winner receives 10,000 euros and a porcelain figure. Annette Dittert's Dear Britain, on the UK a decade after Brexit, took the Bayern 2 audience award, and journalist Stefan Aust received an honorary prize.

LOS ANGELES — Friday-night estimates point to a close fight for first place on a Halloween weekend with no major openers. Deadline reports A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary 'You Can See Everything' took about $3.2 million Friday and is on pace for $10 million to $11 million in its third weekend. That is below the $12 million to $17 million range forecasters set earlier in the week. Warner Bros. and DC's 'Clayface' took about $3.1 million Friday and is heading for $10 million or more in its second weekend. Deadline gives the documentary the edge. By Sunday its domestic total could reach about $63.7 million, against $43.7 million for 'Clayface.' Laika's 'Wildwood' is tracking to about $6.8 million, and 'Wicker' to about $3.5 million. Studio estimates come Sunday.

TOKYO — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences intends to add festivals to the list whose top prizes qualify films for the international feature Oscar, CEO Bill Kramer said at the Tokyo International Film Festival on Wednesday. A rule adopted in May lets a non-English-language film enter by winning a designated prize at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Busan, Sundance or Toronto. Such a film no longer needs its country's official selection, starting with the 99th Academy Awards. Kramer told Deadline the list began at six because the Academy wanted juried awards. He asked whether Tokyo might be added and answered only 'stay tuned.' No festivals or dates were named. He also said members outside the U.S. now make up about 25% of the Academy, and that the Oscars will stream free on YouTube from 2029.

Stephen Kovacevich's last recording has come to light days after his death at 86. In July 2026 the pianist recorded two works by Tōru Takemitsu with the violinist Sayaka Shoji. Alpha Classics plans to release the album in January. Shoji said she was deeply saddened by his passing. She said she was grateful the two had shared concert stages and had left this intimate, poetic repertoire on record. Slipped Disc's Norman Lebrecht reported the news. His earlier obituary described Kovacevich as a London-based American who regained his playing ability after a stroke about 20 years ago and kept performing. The album has not yet been independently previewed by other outlets.

BERLIN — The Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer is no longer set to lead the Berlin Philharmonic in Mahler's Fifth Symphony, according to Slipped Disc. Its editor, Norman Lebrecht, reports that Fischer asked for a change to the orchestra's seating, moving the double basses to the centre. The musicians declined, and the engagement was cancelled 'by mutual agreement'. Lebrecht argues that conductors have lost much of their authority over soloists and principals, and now over stage layout too. The account comes from a single trade-gossip outlet. The orchestra has not been quoted in the material reviewed, so the sequence of events is not independently confirmed. Readers should treat the characterisation of a power struggle as Lebrecht's reading, not an established fact.

TORONTO — Conductor Antonello Manacorda left the stage after the second movement of Brahms's Second Symphony at a Toronto concert, according to audience reviews collected by Slipped Disc. Listeners described a pause of about five minutes. The orchestra stayed seated and the audience was left unsure whether the concert would continue. A staff member then announced that the performance would resume. Manacorda came back, reportedly seated on a stool at the podium, to applause, and finished the symphony. One reviewer said the third movement began a little shakily before the players regained their footing. Reviewers speculated that he was unwell, but no official explanation appears in the reports. Another listener said an earlier performance of the same program went without incident.