Your weekly 5 art world updates:

Welcome back to the office! Luckily, not everybody is spending this week behind a desk. Whilst some of you are currently lying on a Mediterranean beach and sipping from a delicious cocktail, others have the pleasure of strolling around the streets of London, popping by some of the world’s most renowned galleries to enjoy exceptional art…

Because London Art Week kicked off last week Friday! Visit Colaghi gallery on Bury Street for the finest Spanish and Italian Old Masters, drop by Sam Fogg on Clifford Street to find the crème de la crème of the European Middle Ages and allow Rupert Wace Ancient Art at St. James’s to take you even further back in time. Find a list of all the exhibitors and events here.

 
_{Detail from a portrait of Sir William Campion of Combwell (1585 – 1640), ca. 1633, which will be on show at the Weiss Gallery as part of their exhibition of works by Cornelius Johnson (1593-1661).}

 Moving on to Paris where just last week it was announced that François Pinault, the founder of the luxury goods holding company Kering, has received permission to finally open a private museum in the former Bourse de Commerce building. The historic rotunda that was originally modeled on the Pantheon is going to be completely renovated by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, after which Mr. Pinault’s extremely fine collection of contemporary art will be given a permanent location there.


_{Bourse de Commerce, 2 Rue de Viarmes, Paris.}

Opening up a new museum to share your private collection with the world seems to be trending again these days, seeing as the city of Los Angeles just granted George Lucas, the mastermind behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones, permission to realize a brand new ‘Museum of Narrative Art’. Besides lightsabers and other Star Wars memorabilia, the spaceship building will also house paintings by famous French impressionists and photographs by the likes of Alfred Stieglitz. “Popular art is the glue that brings people together” according to Lucas.


_{Photo George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art/AP.}

On another note, "the once most expensive painting in the world" just turned out to be a lot cheaper than we thought, following the court ruling in the case of the art dealer Simon de Pury against the Swiss collector Rudolf Staechling. In 2015, Staechlin sold Paul Gaugin's Nafea Faa Ipoipo (1892) to the Royal family of Qatar for, supposedly, 300 million dollars. De Pury never received his ten million dollar commission after mediating the sale, leading up to a court case. However, court documents that were recently made public listed the price that was paid for the painting at 210 million dollars...which is still more than a small country's GDP. 


_{Paul Gaugin, Nafea Faa Ipopo, 1892.}

And to finish off on a slightly bizarre note, a Spanish court has just given orders to exhume the body of Salvador Dalí to prove whether or not Pilar Abel is his daughter. In the case of a positive match Abel, who has been claiming that she is Dalí’s daughter for over ten years, will receive an inheritance that includes all royalties and the legal rights to carry his name. Dalí is buried in Figueres, Catalonia.


_{Salvador Dalí}