A canal in Venice.

COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

News

At Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern evening sale in New York last night, Claude Monet’s Meules (Haystacks), 1890, sold for a record-breaking $110.7 million. The auction concluded with a $349.9 million tally. [ARTnews]

Banksy seems to have made his own, unofficial contribution to the Venice Biennale in the form of a mural depicting a child wearing a lifejacket. The work may be responding to Christoph Büchel’s presentation of a ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015, killing over 800 migrants. [The Art Newspaper]

Accolades

See a slide show of work by some of the 33 finalists for the Hadley’s Art Prize for Australian landscape art, which comes with $100,000. [The Guardian]

Exhibitions

“Weighty terms like ‘identity,’ ‘history,’ ‘gender,’ and ‘race’ are often trotted out to discuss Simpson’s work—and often they have the effect of distancing us from the formal mysteries and atmospheric eeriness of the work,” writes Doreen St. Félix in her piece on Lorna Simpson’s career and her latest exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in New York, titled “Darkening.” [The New Yorker]

The Economist weighs in on “Anish Kapoor’s menstrual art and the vexed question of appropriation.” [The Economist]

Lauren McCarthy’s video work in a new show at the Barbican in London presents “an investigation into what it means to be human in the digital era.” [The Guardian]

Museums

The Pérez Art Museum Miami has acquired works by 11 artists—including Maria Berrio, Abbas Kiarostami, Barthélémy Toguo, and Cecilia Vicuña. [ARTnews]

In an article detailing the shortcomings of Belgium’s newly renovated Royal Museum of Central Africa, Cole Louison writes, “There’s basically nothing in the museum that honestly confronts what went on in Central Africa.” [The Outline]

Musicians

An ode to French composer and pianist Cécile Chaminade, who had a significant following in the U.S. at the turn of the century. [Vulture]

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey wore a pin touting the far-right For Britain political party during a musical performance on TV. [Pitchfork]