A Self-Guided Tour for Members - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

An ancient fragment of a statue of a Roman emperor sold last night at Sotheby’s for $34.3 million, a sum that the house has deemed an auction record for a Roman antiquity. The three-and-a-half-foot-tall marble fragment depicts only the emperor’s torso, adorned in an elegant bronze cuirass. According to Sotheby’s, it once belonged to a larger statue of an emperor from the Julio-Claudinian dynasty and dates to the 1st century CE. Like many Roman statues, it is a copy of a Greek one.

Amid ongoing nationwide demonstrations for better living conditions in France, the fair said it will shutter over the weekend “in the interest of safeguarding our visitors.” A general view of the booths at Art Basel Paris 2026 during the preview opening (photo Luc Castel/Getty Images)

iris van herpen explores nature through cymaticsFor her collaboration with the champagne house Maison Perrier-Jouët, Iris van Herpen looks to the vineyards of Champagne, where she records sounds and explores their visual patterns through cymatics, a technique that makes sound visible by showing how vibrations create patterns in materials such as water, sand, or powder. The Dutch fashion designer uses these patterns to create a sculpture made from silk and recycled gold, as well as designs for champagne bottles, drawing on her interest in the forms and rhythms found in nature.

Ahead of planned protests, Art Basel Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and other museums and art events in the French capital are planning to close for part or all of Saturday. In the case of Art Basel, the fair is also shuttering on Sunday, meaning that the event will end midway through its expected run. The news came during the final weekend of a packed calendar of events around the Paris fair. In an email to exhibitors, Vincenzo de Bellis and Karim Crippa, respectively Art Basel’s chief artistic officer and Paris director, said the fair will close at the end of the day on Friday, at 7 p.m., “in light of potential demonstrations across Paris this weekend, and in the interest of safeguarding our visitors.”

It’s 20 years since Amy Winehouse released her masterpiece Back to Black and 15 since she died at a frighteningly young age. A good way to appreciate how special she was is to watch the Amy Winehouse Band trot through a few lesser songs and cover versions and spot what’s missing: her playfulness, bite, anarchic charisma and taste. Winehouse mixed soul, jazz, hip-hop, two-tone and 60s girl groups because she loved that music more than anything. Without her animating fandom, a cover of Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals is just a cover of Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals; for all her old band’s precision and gusto, it has no pressing reason to exist. The main event, in which Back to Black producers including Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi hand-pick singers such as Jorja Smith, Lianne La Havas and Corinne Bailey Rae to recreate the album, is stronger except that it’s primarily staged for a BBC TV show, which means the flow is broken by onstage interviews and hagiographical patter from Jo Whiley. It’s a little grating to be constantly told that a concert is amazing even as it unfolds, but that’s TV for you. Spectral, minimalist …

In Fustat, a historic district of Cairo that was once the ancient Islamic capital of Egypt and a major trading center, centuries-old pottery known as Fustat ware has been excavated throughout the area. Typically featuring a luster glaze in a wide range of hues to produce an iridescent effect, the surfaces were sometimes incised with designs. For artist Ibrahim Said, who was born in Old Cairo and grew up observing the ceramics industry in the dozens of workshops comprising the area’s Pottery Village, past meets present in richly ornamented sculptures. The artist’s new solo exhibition, Shaping Time at Yossi Milo, delves into traditional craft with a contemporary twist. Said recently completed the inaugural Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vacheron Constantin Artisan Residency, which granted the artist access to The Met’s collection over an 18-month period and influenced this new body of work.