Has Britain finally lost its marbles? For the United Kingdom to continue trading with the European Union, London’s British Museum must return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. That’s the message embedded within a clause recently added to the E.U.’s negotiating mandate, which says the British government should “address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin.”

Officials involved with the deal on both sides say that the clause is widely interpreted as a direct reference to the ancient artifacts, which were taken from the Parthenon in Athens at the start of the 19th century. The clause was added into the mandate as early as last week at the request of Greece with support from Italy, Cyprus, and Spain. The revised draft was reportedly circulated by the European Council, which sets the E.U.’s policy agenda and is staffed by the leaders of each member state who make decisions by consensus.

The mandate’s restitution clause demonstrates how E.U. member countries are using the trade negotiation as a bargaining chip for other longstanding grievances. For example, Spain is asking that the U.K. forfeit the British territory of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, and France is demanding certain conditions on fishing rights.

Greece has demanded the return of the Parthenon marbles for centuries, questioning the legality of Lord Elgin’s possession of the antiquities during his visit to Athens, which was then under the Ottoman Empire’s rule. The British government has so far refused to budge on its position or negotiate terms of repatriation. The Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009 after a $175 million build, continues to hold space for the missing marbles in its third floor Parthenon gallery, exhibiting facsimiles of the absent antiquities.

Suzanne Jackson: Hers and His, 2018, acrylic, cotton, scenic bogus paper, wood, 86 by 67 inches; at Ortuzar Projects.

Suzanne Jackson’s exhibition at Ortuzar Projects was an autobiography in visual form. Her lush watercolors, like Wormsloe Woods (2004–07), evoke the natural surroundings of Alaska, where she was raised, and Georgia, where she has lived for the past two decades. In her large sculptural hangings—mixed-medium compositions suspended from the ceiling or mounted to the wall—moments of carefully rendered figuration and collaged found objects sit alongside each other, reflecting her early training with the master draftsman Charles White and her involvement in the Black Arts Movement, as both an artist and a gallerist. (From 1968 to 1970 Jackson ran a space called Gallery 32 in Los Angeles. David Hammons, Betye Saar, and Senga Nengudi—then known as Sue Irons—all showed there.) In the late 1970s Jackson applied her skills to a set of outdoor murals in Los Angeles, an experience reflected in a history drawing-cracked wall (2016–19), a large-scale horizontal painting that teems with pictorial incident: faces, hands, even a kitten, all floating in whorls of watery pigment. Her stint as a theater designer in the 1990s is conveyed in works like Blues Garden + Track/Back-Sea (2010), which employ crumpled furls of Bogus paper, a material typically used to protect set and costume elements. She acknowledges deep family ties by incorporating motifs that honor her mother’s quilt-making. One particularly effective example, Hers and His (2018), suggests a coverlet, though its sewn sunbursts and fan shapes float free of any larger pattern.

View of Suzanne Jackson’s exhibition “News!” 2020, at Ortuzar Projects.

Given her significant accomplishments, the title of Jackson’s exhibition had a fine irony. The show was called “News!”—note the exclamation point. For this was, amazingly enough, the artist’s first-ever solo presentation in New York. After five decades, she is suddenly getting a lot of attention: her first retrospective, for instance, was held last year at the Telfair Museum in Savannah. This isn’t just another belated “discovery” of an under-sung artist, however: Jackson is currently making the most impressive work of her long career.

Over the past four decades, artist James Turrell has worked to transform a dormant volcano in the Painted Desert of Arizona into his Land art masterwork: Roden Crater, a observatory that’s already been the site of media attention and a short film by Kanye West. Now the project, which has so far fundraised over $40 million, has received another major contribution towards its long-sought goal.

On Thursday night, Pace Gallery and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, both of whom are showing works by Turrell at Frieze Los Angeles, cohosted a star-studded party for the artist, attended by the likes of Museum of Contemporary Art director Klaus Biesenbach, noted collector and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and pop star Grimes, who staged a surprise performance. At the event, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Pincus, the founder of the online gaming firm Zynga, announced a $3 million pledge to Turrell’s newest creation, which will turn the volcano into a transcendent installation filled with colorful lights.

“The project itself feels, to me, like modern-day pyramids,” Pincus told the Los Angeles Times. “The ambition and scale and scope of it is something that has the potential to be something that people, many generations from now, will be able to experience and get something amazing from—maybe something beyond what we can imagine today.”

The long-delayed crater is currently closed to the public, as its opening has been contingent on fundraising. In 2019, West donated $10 million after shooting his film Jesus Is King inside the site. That same year, Arizona State University announced a partnership with Turrell and the non-profit Skystone Foundation, which oversees Roden Crater, to help him raise $200 million within two years. In return, the crater will be integrated into the university’s academic programming. Turrell also gives tours of the two-mile-wide crater’s tunnels and viewing chambers at $6,500 per person, to raise funds.

Just hours into the VIP preview day of Frieze Los Angeles at Paramount Studios on Thursday, model Kendall Jenner and WME executive Ari Emanuel had purchased artworks. Jenner picked up a piece by James Turrell at a both shared by Pace Gallery and Kayne Griffin Corcoran. Emanuel, whose company owns a portion of Frieze, bought a large painting by Jordan Casteel at Casey Kaplan gallery’s booth. At 1:30 p.m., Alex Israel, the quintessential Los Angeles artist who features the city in many of his artworks, could be found, standing just inside the entrance to the fair wearing a sweatshirt that said “California” on it, making him an unintentional mascot.

Like many annual events, an art fair’s sophomore edition is when it needs to prove itself. Frieze got lucky. Last year, when it had the novelty factor, there was torrential rain on VIP day. This year, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, temperatures hovered around 70 degrees, and collectors came out in droves.

There were Cindy and Howard Rachofsky from Dallas, the Rubells from Miami, the Horts, the Eisenbergs and Sascha Bauer from New York (and Maja Hoffman, from New York and Switzerland). And there were plenty of locals, including, Beth Rudin de Woody, who has a residence in Los Angeles as well as New York and Palm Beach.

Pace Gallery and Kayne Griffin Corcoran’s presentation at the fair featured works by James Turrell that were bought by the likes of Kendall Jenner.

Christie’s London Evening sale of Contemporary art had few star lots—but only one that failed to find a buyer—yet it managed to pull in a total £56.2 million ($72.8 million), down little more than a quarter from the previous year’s comparable sale. Two lots, one by Christopher Wool and one by Glenn Ligon, were withdrawn before the sale, leaving nevertheless an outsize number of lots—56—for the time and venue. Christie’s managed the sale exceptionally well, including convincing the consignor of a Gerhard Richter constellation painting to accept a price two-thirds of the low estimate.

Overall, the sale continues to reinforce the impression that the Contemporary art market has compressed toward works in the so-called middle market price band, below $5 million.

The night’s top lots were the late West Coast collector Richard L. Weisman’s commissioned portrait of Muhammad Ali by Andy Warhol, which made £4.97 million. It was the lead lot among the ten sports figures depicted by the artist at Mr. Weisman’s request. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jack Nicklaus, and O.J. Simpson were also legendary personalities from the series who sold better than their estimates. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Mosque sold for £3.9 million, falling below its low estimate but still ranking among the most valuable lots of the evening. The same was true of Sigmar Polke’s untitled work, which reached £3.13 million while also failing to reach the low estimate. David Hockney’s 2006 landscape Walnut Trees sold well at £3.25 million, to come fourth among the lots sold by value.

Albert Oehlen’s Mission Rohrfrei (Down Periscope) from 1996 continued the artist’s market run, being the first of the top ten lots to achieve its price through aggressive bidding. The final price of £3.19 million reflected a hammer price of £2.65 million that edged slightly above its £2.5 million high estimate.