Welcome to Midnight Art Club! I hope your back-to-work season wasn’t too brutal.

Right now, museums are making headlines. Not just for what they hang on the walls, but for everything around it: behind-the-scenes strikes, massive building projects, deliciously sticky controversies… and even artworks that reappear as if by magic, exactly where they weren’t supposed to end up.

OUR SELECTION OF THIS WEEK’S NEWS

• At the Louvre, opening was delayed last week
Teams met on the morning of January 5 to decide whether to resume the strike launched in December, over pay and working conditions. The museum eventually opened on Wednesday.

• And the “new Mona Lisa room” project isn’t exactly calming things down
The “Louvre–Nouvelle Renaissance” project aims to create a gallery dedicated to the Mona Lisa and a new entrance to absorb the crowds. Announced budget: €1.1 billion. Let’s hope that for that price, she’ll be better protected than the rest of the museum…

• Belgium: plans to “dismantle” Antwerp’s contemporary art museum
Flanders has dropped the new building planned for Antwerp’s contemporary art museum (M HKA), budgeted at €80 million, and is now proposing to move its collection (around 8,000 works) to S.M.A.K. in Ghent. The result: Antwerp could end up with an exhibition space… but without its collection, which the art world is calling a dismantling.

TO KNOW – From the Mona Lisa to the Salvator Mundi

The Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci’s superstar you can see at the Louvre, on a Monday at 3 p.m. otherwise it’ll be from far away, over shoulders, between two phones.

The Salvator Mundi is the other one: a “Leonardo” that became the most expensive painting in the world… and also one of the most political. Let me explain.

A little something in common ?

In 2005, the Salvator Mundi was bought in terrible condition for $1,175 by a New York art dealer, then handed to a conservator who, after two years of work, became convinced she had a Leonardo. Experts remain divided.

London’s National Gallery later exhibited it as a work by Leonardo da Vinci, giving it tremendous credibility. Which helped Christie’s sell it in 2017 for $450 million, presenting it as a “true Leonardo,” despite the controversy.

And that’s when it turned into a state affair.

According to an investigation relayed by France Culture, the owner is believed to be Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader.

The sensitive point: MBS reportedly requested that the painting be shown at the Louvre, hung right next to the Mona Lisa, with a label presenting it as a Leonardo “100%.” Emmanuel Macron is said to have refused those conditions at the end of 2019.

A secret assessment was reportedly carried out at the Louvre, but its exact conclusions are unknown: they were never made public, and that grey zone still fuels the mystery around the painting.

Moral of the story: people love to say “everything always comes out in the end,” but allow me to doubt it. Here we are, eight years after the 2017 sale, and despite technology and experts, the Salvator Mundi remains an enigma.

GOSSIP – The Mona Lisa made headlines… the day she vanished

The Mona Lisa pulled off her greatest PR stunt… by disappearing. Yes, really:

August 21, 1911. A Monday. The Louvre is closed to the public. A former employee, Vincenzo Peruggia, calmly takes the painting off the wall, slips it under his smock, and walks out. No chase. No red lasers, no alarms. Just a museum without the Mona Lisa.

For a while, no one notices. People assume it’s “with the photo department” or “out on loan”, everyone thinks someone else knows. When it finally sinks in, it’s national panic. And then comes a phenomenon as absurd as it is unexpected: visitors flock to the Louvre… to see the empty spot. The wall becomes the attraction…

And like any good series, suspects are found everywhere. Even Picasso and Apollinaire get dragged into the story. Time passes, and in 1913, Peruggia tries to sell the Mona Lisa in Italy. He’s arrested. The painting comes back, transformed: still a masterpiece, but now a global celebrity too.

THIS WEEK’S RECS

in New York:

• Museum: Monet and Venice, Brooklyn Museum,until February 1, 2026
  Venice as atmosphere. Monet as a manufacturer of light.

• Gallery: Ali Cherri, Last Watch Before Dawn, Almine Rech, January 16 to February 28, 2026
  Work about power and official narratives, but always concrete and sensitive, never theoretical.

in Paris:

• Museum: George Condo, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, until February 8, 2026.
  A gigantic show, with around 80 paintings, 110 drawings, and about 20 sculptures. You discover a Condo who blends Old Masters and cartoons into a language that’s entirely his. I loved recognizing a hint of Rembrandt inside a painting this contemporary. Highly recommended!

• Galerie : Precious Okoyomon: It’s important to have ur fangs out at the end of the world, Mendes Wood DM, until January 17, 2026
  First for their space right by Place des Vosges, with a street number “0” designed by one of their artists and a gorgeous courtyard. But also for the show itself, which spills onto the walls… and is ending this coming Saturday.

To watch:

• Film: The Lost Leonardo (2021).
  The full Salvator Mundi story, beautifully told: discovery, restoration, record sale, then disappearance.

See you next week… same day, same time!

Juliette,

To contact me: info.midnightartclub@gmail.com

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