Art fairs are nothing if not cutthroat. In March, just as the Armory Show opened its doors, Frieze Art Fair released details of its sinuous Randall’s Island pavilion. The sly move kept the looming competition on the art world’s mind as it strolled through the piers. With Frieze opening next week, the Armory Show has prepared news of its own, releasing the dates of its 2013 fair: March 7 to March 10, 2013. The dates in and of themselves mean little — but as fairs like Pulse and Red Dot, historically Armory Show satellites, have moved their dates to May to coincide with Frieze and new fairs like SEVEN and NADA spring up around the British export, the Armory Show’s announcement amounts to a statement: We’re not going anywhere.

The Armory Show was also careful to point out that it will not be losing any of its other satellite events to New York's Frieze Week next year. The fair will be joined by the Independent, ADAA’s The Art Show, Volta NY, Moving Image, and Scope, all of which will be held on the same dates as the Armory Show. (Take that, Frieze!)

“The fifteenth edition will build on the overwhelming success of this past year, and will again be a must-attend art world event and an engaging center for the artistic community of our great city,” Armory Show founding director Paul Morris said in a statement. “We look forward to celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show.”

If you are in the mood the reminisce, check out a time-lapse video released by the Armory Show, capturing the 2012 fair from start to finish, below:

Since its founding in 1859 the Cooper Union, a university in New York City's East Village, has given every student admitted to the super-competitive school of art, architecture, and engineering full scholarships. No more: Today its president, Jamshed Bharucha, announced that beginning in 2013 graduate students will have to pay tuition. The announcement confirms the fears of students and alumni of the prestigious university — some of whom have recently staged protests, released prank press announcements, and even staged an Orwellian musical parody of the school's financial woes — who see the decision as a brazen violation of the principles on which the school was founded.

"This hybrid model is exciting because it gives us a chance to do new things, and not just hunker down,” Bharucha told the New York Times. He admitted, however, that there "are risks for this strategy, and there are those who worry if it will work."

The price of tuition for graduate students enrolling for courses in the fall of 2013 has yet to be determined, but it will not be sufficient to cover the massive financial gap that the school is seeking to close. Bharucha said that while undergraduates who start classes in 2013 will not have to pay tuition at any time during their four year careers at Cooper, the school's administration isn't ruling out charging undergraduate tuition one day.

Accompanying the new tuition fees will be expanded degree programs debuting in 2013, including a combined design and technology graduate track, and online courses to boost enrollment. The school currently has 100 graduate students pursuing master's degrees in architecture and engineering.

Last year, shortly after taking office as the elite school's president, Bharucha announced that it would have to reduce its annual operating costs by some $20 million before 2018. The new graduate tuition fees will "gets us a good distance toward this target," he said. The university has instituted a hiring freeze and imposed major funding cuts, and next year it will slash its operating budget by another seven percent.

Meanwhile, the Times points out, a push in fundraising has increased alumni contributions by about one third, and current students have launched a donation drive of their own. The year by which Bharucha aims to reach his operating costs reduction goal coincides with a major funding boost: In 2018 the annual rent the school receives for the land it owns beneath the Chrysler Building will jump from $7 million to $32.5 million.

Nevertheless, Bharucha made no promises about the future of tuition-free undergraduate studies at the Cooper Union.

Magnificent results for magnificent jewels revealed a healthy mark...

Less than a month after the announcement of a movie about the feuding Kinks Ray and Dave Davies, Virgin Produced has tabled a drama that will focus on Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ squally relationship during the making of the Rolling Stones’ classic 1972 double album “Exile on Main Street” in the South of France. A movie about the Beatles’ ruckuses during the recording of “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road” can’t be far behind.

Richard Branson, whose Virgin Records released three studio albums and three live albums by the Stones between 1994 and 2005, has acquired the rights to Robert Greenfield’s 2006 book “Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell With the Rolling Stones.” The brothers Brandon and Phillip Murphy, who have day jobs as a graffiti artist and a standup comedian, respectively, have been assigned to adapt it. Their previous script, “The Last Drop,” about an alcoholic New Yorker writer who meets the girl of his dreams, was on the 2011 Hollywood Blacklist before being picked up for production.

In April 1971, tax exiles Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, and Mick Taylor, accompanied by a sizeable retinue, decamped to Richards’s leased mansion, Villa Nellcôte, at Villefrance-sur-mer on the Côte d’Azur. Built in the 1850s, the 16-room house had been a Gestapo headquarters during World War II; the heating vents in the damp basement, where the Stones hammered out the likes of “Tumbling Dice” and “Sweet Black Angel,” were reportedly decorated with gold swastikas.

Amid legendary chaos, the songs, forged from demos and incomplete tracks, were recorded by producer Jimmy Miller and engineer Andy Johns in a new £65,000 mobile studio parked outside. The session musicians included Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Price, Ian Stewart, and Bobby Keys. Wyman contributed less than usual. As well as groupies and drug dealers, the guests included William S. Burroughs and a troublemaking Gram Parsons, one of Richards’ best friends. Richard and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg were heroin addicts at the time. Jagger married Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias in Saint-Tropez that May.

The sessions ended in October, whereupon Jagger assumed responsibility for finishing the record in Los Angeles. While it is often considered Richards’s masterpiece, Jagger has said he is less proud of it than other Stones records. "This new album is fucking mad,” he said at the time of its release. “There's so many different tracks. It's very rock and roll, you know. I didn't want it to be like that. I'm the more experimental person in the group, you see I like to experiment. Not go over the same thing over and over ... I mean, I'm very bored with rock and roll. The revival. Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky, too."

There’s no word yet who play the Glimmer Twins, their bandmates, consorts, Parsons, or Burroughs. It’s either the eventual casting director’s dream or his or her worst nightmare. 

Gucci creative director Frida Giannini stormed into Shanghai this past weekend for the label’s historic first fashion show in the city, and in case you want to know every detail of her goings-on, she wrote a diary for the Daily Beast.

She doesn’t scrimp on the small stuff. The rugs on the runway were burgundy and the bouquets were gardenias and orchids — items lifted directly from the Gucci fall/winter show in Milan last February. Hilary Swank sat front row, and her dress from the 2011 Academy Awards was on display in a Gucci exhibition alongside other items from the company’s historical archives. Giannini goes on to speak breathlessly of China’s gleaming jade butterfly brooches, its no-nonsense starlets, and the blowout party they threw at the Gucci Club. This temporary venue, she writes, was “a 360-degree experience that melds Italian heritage with the vibrancy of Shanghai.”

But while the diary is entertaining, there’s more at stake than a creative director’s adventures in jewelry shopping and late-night partying.  

In today’s WWD, a report from Shanghai focuses on the brand’s current struggles with the changing style mores and spending habits of young Chinese women. The Gucci look known to the country for the past 10 years — over-sexed outfits and gaudy “G” emblems — is apparently no longer in tune with the times.

Patrizio di Marco, Gucci’s president and CEO, told WWD that he hoped the sophistication and elegance of the new collection will “stress the glamour side, the fashion side, our being modern and contemporary.” The scene at a Gucci party, however, suggested there’s a long way to go until the brand reaches that ideal. The report goes on to note: “There were lots of logocentric Gucci handbags and shoes, while young women wore mishmashes of animal prints and skintight dresses reminiscent of promwear from the Eighties ... A couple of women wore track suits paired with platform heels.” 

Not exactly Hilary Swank at the Oscars.

So, can Gucci alter its identity, push aside the mountains of knock-offs and become hip in Shanghai? It’s unclear, but maybe it’s chosen the right city to focus on. Rumor has it Andre Saraiva, the L’Officiel Hommes creative director with an inner eye for hot spots, is opening the next branch of his Le Baron nightclub in Shanghai. From New York’s Chinatown to China itself.

When Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. unceremoniously canceled the 30-year-old fair Art Chicago in February, the company seemed to be sending a message. “The majority of the art fair market in the United States has gravitated toward the coasts,” it said in a statement. But someone forgot to tell Tony Karman. The former director of Art Chicago left MMPI in 2010 to begin his own event, Expo Chicago, which runs September 20 to 23. Today, ARTINFO got an early peek at the exhibitor list for the Windy City's newest fair.

“Our institutions are collecting, our collectors are active and vocal, and the city is having a moment where we can show people what is happening here,” Karman said in an interview. The exhibitor list is a mix of blue-chip secondary market dealers (like James Goodman Gallery and Alexander Bonin of New York) and emerging powerhouses (Los Angeles’s Cherry and Martin, Chicago’s Kavi Gupta Gallery, New York’s Leo Koenig) with a healthy mix of design thrown in. Most pointedly, more major contemporary galleries from ourside Chicago have signed on for Expo than have participated in a fair there in years. Some, like Luhring Augustine, are exhibiting in the Second City for the first time in two decades. 

“Many dealers who had done a Chicago fair for years in the 1990s and early 2000s realized that a fair in Chicago can still touch on a Midwest and international collector base,” said Karman. “A blended contemporary and modern fair in Chicago has always been the magic formula in our city.”

The most marked difference between Expo Chicago and its predecessor is location: Rather than fill the Merchandise Mart, Karman’s fair will take place at Art Chicago’s former Navy Pier home. At 100 booths, Expo will also be a fraction of the size of Art Chicago, which by the end of its run had ballooned to over 400 exhibitors. Local names like Rhona Hoffman and Richard Gray, who had defected from Art Chicago in previous years, have thrown their support behind this new homegrown fair. 

Asked how Expo Chicago expects to stay afloat in an increasingly crowded sea of art fairs, Karman emphasized local support. A number of Chicago collectors are investors in the fair, he noted. “There is a concerted effort from all of our institutional leaders, our mayor, and our top collectors to make sure the art world visits our city to see what is happening here.” Indeed, two years ago, mayor Rahm Emanuel seemed to presage the arrival of the new fair before it was even announced, when he said in an interview with Time Out Chicago (speaking of Art Chicago and Art Basel Miami Beach respectively) that "we should restore the Chicago Art Expo’s rightful place next to the Basel Expo in Miami."

Below, we offer the full list of exhibitors who will show at Expo Chicago 2012:. 

1301PE  Los Angeles
Alexander and Bonin  New York
Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe  New York
Gallery Paule Anglim  San Francisco
John Berggruen Gallery  San Francisco
Galleri Bo Bjerggaard  Copenhagen
Daniel Blau  Munich
Russell Bowman Art Advisory  Chicago
Galerie Buchholz  Cologne
Valerie Carberry Gallery  Chicago
Cardi Black Box  Milan
Cernuda Arte  Coral Gables
Chambers Fine Art  New York, Beijing
Cherry and Martin  Los Angeles
James Cohan Gallery  New York, Shanghai
Corbett vs. Dempsey  Chicago
CRG Gallery  New York
D'Amelio Gallery  New York
Stephen Daiter Gallery  Chicago
Maxwell Davidson Gallery  New York
Douglas Dawson Gallery  Chicago
Catherine Edelman Gallery  Chicago
Fleisher/Ollman  Philadelphia
Galerie Forsblom  Helsinki
Forum Gallery  New York
Fredericks & Freiser  New York
Barry Friedman, Ltd.  New York
Friedman Benda  New York
The Suzanne Geiss Company  New York
Gering & López Gallery  New York
Galerie Gmurzynska  Zurich, St. Moritz
James Goodman Gallery  New York
Richard Gray Gallery  Chicago, New York
Galerie Karsten Greve AG  Cologne, Paris, St. Moritz
Carl Hammer Gallery  Chicago
Haunch of Venison  New York, London
Hill Gallery  Birmingham
Nancy Hoffman Gallery  New York
Rhona Hoffman Gallery  Chicago 
Honor Fraser  Los Angeles
Vivian Horan Fine Art  New York
Leonard Hutton Galleries  New York
Bernard Jacobson Gallery  London, New York
Annely Juda Fine Art  London
Paul Kasmin Gallery  New York
James Kelly Contemporary  Santa Fe
Sean Kelly Gallery  New York
Robert Koch Gallery  San Francisco
Michael Kohn Gallery Los Angeles
Leo Koenig, Inc.  New York
Alan Koppel Gallery Chicago
Yvon Lambert  Paris
Landau Fine Art  Montreal
Christian Larsen Stockholm
Galerie Lelong  New York, Paris, Zurich
Locks Gallery  Philadelphia
LOOCK Galerie  Berlin
Diana Lowenstein Gallery Miami
Luhring Augustine  New York
Robert Mann Gallery  New York
Lawrence Markey San Antonio
Matthew Marks Gallery  New York, Los Angeles
Barbara Mathes Gallery  New York
Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie  Paris
Galerie Hans Mayer Düsseldorf
The Mayor Gallery London
McCormick Gallery Chicago
Anthony Meier Fine Arts San Francisco
Nicholas Metivier Gallery Toronto
Mitchell-Innes & Nash New York
Galería Moisés Pérez de Albéniz Pamplona
Carolina Nitsch New York
David Nolan Gallery New York
Nyehaus  New York
P.P.O.W.  New York
Franklin Parrasch Gallery  New York
Ricco / Maresca Gallery New York
Yancey Richardson Gallery  New York
Roberts & Tilton  Los Angeles, New York
Rosenthal Fine Art  Chicago
Salon 94  New York
Marc Selwyn Fine Art  Los Angeles
William Shearburn Gallery  St. Louis
Manny Silverman Gallery  Los Angeles
Carl Solway Gallery  Cincinnati
Hollis Taggart Galleries  New York
Tandem Press  Madison
Galerie Daniel Templon  Paris
Paul Thiebaud Gallery  San Francisco
Cristin Tierney  New York
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects  New York
Van de Weghe  New York
Washburn Gallery  New York
Daniel Weinberg Gallery  Los Angeles
Weinstein Gallery  Minneapolis
Max Wigram  London
Stephen Wirtz Gallery  San Francisco
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery  New York
David Zwirner  New York 

We think of remixes as skewing songs, sending them in different directions — typically toward the dance floor. “She’s 22” — a track off Norah Jones’s forthcoming album “Little Broken Hearts” that has already been remixed, for a Record Store Day release, by ace indie producer and TV on the Radio guy Dave Sitek — is a little skewed to begin with. Going on the title alone, you might think it was a groupie anthem by a hair metal band, or maybe a tender portrait of a young woman finding her way in the world. But Jones makes it a first-person heartbreaker — the 22-year-old in question has captured the fascination of the narrator’s lover.

And instead of recreating the song, Sitek — who does subtract the acoustic guitar in favor of a vibrant (though gentle) beat — shores it up, making it sexier, more confident, more of a challenge to the man, all while preserving its shivery center. White noise ripples across the top; it sounds like goosebumps feel. You could also look at it another way: The man answering the question that Jones poses — “Does she make you happy?” The remix sounds all the better when you realize that he’s not entirely sure.

The Remix

The Original

Using their signature mastery of space, light, and seamlessly connecting unlike things, Steven Holl Architects have designed a luminous Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) for Virginia Commonwealth University's art program, a hybrid exhibition space, performance venue, lab, and incubator for the visual arts, theater, music, dance, and film.

The structure of satin zinc-finished rectangular forms was designed to highlight the university's emphasis on connecting these disparate art forms. Likewise, the interior spaces — angled white cubes generously illuminated with skylights — flow fluidly into one another. "There’s a kind of open-endedness to the building that parallels the condition of contemporary art — different kinds of art and time happening simultaneously," Steven Holl explained to ARTINFO. The geometries inside follow the protruding blocks of the exterior, radiating like spokes from the 30-foot-tall vertical gallery, the glass façade of which faces the city of Richmond and connects it to the university.

There’s a seamlessness between the outside and inside as the glass walls flood the space with natural light while offering outsiders a glimpse of the goings-on inside, resulting in particularly striking effect during the evening, when the glowing institute resembles a lantern. Nestled in the negative space formed by the forking arms of the building is an open garden, and large pivoting doors would allow an installation to spill from the gallery into the outdoors. As an added bonus the glass deflects heat in the summer and retains it in the winter. These features, along with plans for geothermal wells and green roofs, mean the building will meet LEED platinum certification standards. The ICA also features a 240-plus seat performance space, outdoor plazas, classrooms, a café, and administrative offices.

While students enter the institute from the garden entrance, an outward-facing transparent façade sits on the corner of a burgeoning arts district, already home to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia Opera, Barksdale Theatre, Richmond Ballet, and the Richmond Symphony. The multi-use, discipline-blending center is scheduled to open in 2015. In the meantime, Holl’s scale models and concept watercolors will be on view in an exhibition opening tomorrow at New York’s Meulensteen Gallery that will trace the development of the ICA's final design.

To see more of Steven Holl's designs for VCU's ICA, click the slide show.

With "Intense Proximity," the Palais de Tokyo's new Triennial that opened April 20 and continues through August 26, France finally has a large-scale contemporary art exhibition that engages the full breadth of today's art world. Curator Okwui Enwezor, the Nigerian-born American art historian and director of Munich's Haus der Kunst, assisted by four French co-curators — Emilie Renard, Mélanie Bouteloup, Abdellah Karroum, and Claire Staebler — selected artists from every continent who are engaged in questioning the politics of representation. Now the French public has the chance to discover a whole segment of recent contemporary art that has been too rarely seen here.

The exhibition's political and poetic title engages in a radical questioning of places near and far, examining history, otherness, and post-colonialism. "There is a tendency to reject the involvement of art and curatorial practice in public debate," Enwezor told ARTINFO France. "I completely disagree with this tendency. I think that there is no taboo that can't be a concern for the curator. Ethnocentrism, ethnophilia, xenophobia, xenophilia: these themes reveal a paradoxical moment and my exhibition questions their junction today, by opening boundaries between disciplines."

The artworks included in the Triennial demonstrate Enwezor's willingness to take on taboos. In "The War Treasures Frieze," Sarkis, a Turkish-born Armenian artist living in France, places photos of artworks that were stolen by colonial powers alongside unbearable images of corpses and the bodies of victims of sexual assault. Thomas Hirschhorn's video "Touching Reality" is just as difficult to watch, and features enlarging and shrinking images of people violently killed in warfare. In their horror and brutality, these two works speak to viewers' sense of responsibility.

Another significant and disturbing work is Carrie Mae Weems's "From Here I Saw What Happened And I Cried" (1995-96). The 34 sepia-toned photos under glass are archival images, including Louis Agassiz's daguerreotypes of African slaves, on which Weems has inscribed racial prejudices. It's a pointed critique of ethnology, which always risks being used to justify hateful actions. The Jamaican-American artist Lorraine O'Grady also takes on race in the 16 Cibachrome diptychs of "Miscegenated Family Album," which juxtapose photos of her family — especially of her sister Devonia Evangeline — with Egyptian bas-reliefs of Nefertiti. By focusing on the resemblance between the two women whose beauty and splendor immediately strike the viewer, the work affirms the existence of a culturally black and ethnically hybrid Egypt. "Because these personal images have been compared to images that were politically and historically contested, a space has been created to make visible a class that was previously invisible," O'Grady has written.

A full program of talks, films, and concerts is part of the Triennial. The French-Guyanese musician Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnec opened the exhibition last week with a work for four pianos blending jazz, minimalist, and pop genres, and based on a piece by African-American composer and dancer Julius Eastman.

A version of this article originally appeared on ARTINFO France.

What are they teaching the kids in art school these days? Two Berlin University of the Arts students are crowd-sourcing the final outcome of a grisly sculpture turned performance piece called “Die Guillotine,” which involves the potential sacrifice of a live sheep. For the work, Iman Rezai and Rouven Materne have created a guillotine, daubed it in neon colors that might be found in a children’s TV show, and filmed a YouTube video in which they threatened to use the decapitation machine on the helpless animal — unless, that is, the public chooses to save the animal in their online vote.

"The guillotine is the most compact reflection of our society," Materne says in the German-only video, which documents the creation of the 12-foot-high execution device, the procuring of the 90-pound blade, and a demonstration of its potential with the innocent sheep waiting close by. The duo’s minimalist Web site hosts a looped video of the artists testing and guillotine and asks a simple question: “Should this sheep be killed?” The online poll has 140,000 respondents answering yes and 255,000 no. Voters have the next 22 days to decide if the blade falls.

The macabre and deliberately provocative work is a “criticism of current morality,” according to Materne — but it looks more like an art-school prank pushed far past the threshold of good taste. In response, the Berlin University of the Arts has distanced themselves from the stunt. A university spokeswoman said the two artists had assured the school that their guillotine project was intended as an “artistic provocation” and that they had no plans to kill the animal, according to the Toronto Sun.

Recent history has seen no shortage of artworks that have gotten a rise out of the public through real or imagined acts of animal cruelty (in fact, we recently rounded up some of the finest examples), from the 2007 furor over online photos of the artist Habacuc's performance that supposedly had him starving a dog from the street in a Nicaraguan gallery, to the recent uproar caused by Kansas City artist Amber Hansen when she threatened to display and then slaughter five chickens for a community potluck. At least, however, Rezai and Materne offered their lamb more due process then artist Marco Evaristti offered the goldfish he put in blenders back in 2003, inviting the public to liquify them at will. 

To see the Iman Rezai and Rouven Materne's clip promoting “Die Guillotine,” click on the video below:

Months ahead of the start of the games, the London Design Museum is already showing symptoms of Olympics fever. Adding to the fanfare surrounding the upcoming global sports competition, the institution announced yesterday its Design of the Year Award winners: Hopkins Architects’ Olympic Velodrome for Architecture and the Olympic Torch for overall design.

Like the Jamaican bobsled team competing in Calgary's 1988 Olympics, the Olympic Torch design by London-based Barber Osgerby faced stiff competition. There was Zaha Hadid’s other-worldly Guangzhou Opera House and the fairy-tale-worthy Alexander McQueen Royal Wedding Dress by Sarah Burton. There was Ron Arad’s extra-terrestrially hip eyewear collection for PQ, and there was even a table made of moon rocks by Bethan Laura Wood.

Unlike the inspiration for "Cool Runnings," however, the torch beat the odds and took the grand prize. The torch itself is no real looker; when the Telegraph asked its readers what the torch most resembled in June, about 38 percent of them answered "Olympic torch," second to the most popular response, "cheese grater" (thanks in no small part to the 8,000 circular perforations on its surface). What the torch lacks in aesthetics, however, it makes up for in symbolism and ingenuity. Built from an aerospace-grade aluminum alloy, the lightest Olympic torch ever can withstand high altitudes, sub-zero temperatures, and high winds (all of which are likely weather scenarios during a summer in London). The laser-cut perforations represent the 8,000 Olympians who will descend upon the British capital this summer. They also render the torch transparent so the flame can be seen through its shell, while lending the design a lightness its bearers will appreciate. The trilateral shape represents London's third round as Olympic host city.

The other winners served as a walk down memory lane, reminding us of the gems that emerged from 2011's year in design. Issey Miyake's origami-inspired "132.5" collection took the award for fashion, beating out both Burton and the blockbuster Met McQueen exhibition "Savage Beauty." The Royal College of Art's ambulance redesign won for transport (likewise a compliment to Nissan’s Taxi Cab of Tomorrow, right?), and it was a big win for Hopkins' gracefully parabolic Velodrome, which beat out the likes of Hadid, Foster + Partners, and OMA. The stadium was a favorite for 2011's Sterling Prize, snubbed in favor of Hadid's Evelyn Grace Academy, which in turn won ARTINFO's 2011 prize of upset of the year.  

To see the winners of the London Design Museum’s Designs of the Year awards, click the slide show. 

SALE: Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie's and Sotheby's

LOCATION: New York

DATE: May 1-3

ABOUT: Gigabytes of server space have already been dedicated to writing about the two highest-valued works of art being sold next week, Cezanne's watercolor study for "Card Players" on Tuesday (est. $15-20 million) at Christie's and the much-anticipated auction of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" (est. in excess of $80 million) at Sotheby's on Tuesday. But there will be more to the sales than just those two works — expect millions to be spent on Pablo Picasso works and a general affinity in the room for early-20th century modern painting and sculpture.

There are no fewer than six Picasso canvases in the catalogue for the petite, 32-lot sale at Christie's. The offerings range from "Deux nus couchés" (1968) — estimated to fetch $8-12 million — to a watercolor entitled "Sur la terrasse" (1933) and valued at a relatively affordable $500,000-700,000. The top-estimated sculpture in the sale is Alberto Giacometti's "Buste de Diego," 1957, (est. $8-12 million). There is also a "Reclining figure" sculpture, 1956, by the star of the February auctions in London, Henry Moore (est. $4-6 million). At Wednesday's day sale, Chaïm Soutine's "Jeune homme obliquement étendu," 1921-22, from the artist's "Praying Man" series is expected to fetch the highest price of the day (est. $600,000-800,000).

Sotheby's has a much larger catalogue for the evening sale. In addition to the "Scream," three other works have low estimates in the eight-figure range: a Picasso (the colorful "Femme assise dans un fauteuil," 1941, which could hammer down between $20-30 million); Joan Miró's "Tête Humaine," 1931, estimated to bring $10-15 million; and Soutine's portrait of a Parisian waiter, "Le chasseur de Chez Maxim's," 1925, which is also estimated at $10-15 million. Thursday's day sale at Sotheby's will likely be topped by Picasso's "Tête de jeune garcon," 1965, which the auction house estimates will sell for $800,000-1.2 million.

OTHER INTERNATIONAL SALES:

Sale: Furniture and Decorative Art
Location: Leslie Hindman Chicago
Date: April 29-May 1

Sale: Collectors' Motor Cars and Automobilia
Location: Bonhams Hendon (RAF Museum)
Date: April 30, 11am

Sale: Historic U.S.S. Constitution Colors from the Collection of H. Richard Dietrich, Jr.
Location: Freemans Philadelphia
Date: April 30, 6pm

Sale: Vintage Sports Collectibles
Location: Heritage Dallas
Date: May 3-5

Sale: From the Private Collection of Prince and Princess Henry de la Tour D'Auvergne Lauraguais
Location: Sotheby's London
Date: May 3, 10:30am

It was easy to foresee the public outcry when architect Renzo Piano was taken up to develop Malta's City Gate, the ancient entrance to capital city Valleta. The site of the project is an architectural palimpsest sprinkled with Greek and Roman ruins and medieval flourishes. Meanwhile, Piano's extensive portfolio does little to hide his flair for homogenizing contemporary design. As usual, controversy begets more controversy, and as Piano's master plan, which includes a new parliament building, began to take form over the past few weeks, a heated debate ensued over the financial model to support the €80 million ($106 million) endeavor. Members of the opposition party claim that the finance company set up explicitly to fund the project, a "special purpose vehicle" called Malita, will sap revenue intended for the state in order to fund what they deemed to be a "narcissistic" venture, as the Times of Malta reports.

Under the current model, all income from private lease payments and land concessions for Valletta's airport and cruise terminal will be channeled towards building Piano's vision. Finance Minister Tonio Fenech outlined the legality of these terms according to EU regulations and also defensively pointed to the €40 million ($53 million) loan issued from the European Investment Bank to Malita. According to the current plan, the investment will be entirely recouped by leasing City Gate's newly designed facilities back to the government for €5 million ($7 million) a year.

Undeterred, opposition party leader Joseph Muscat is pushing to bring the issue to a vote in Parliament as soon as possible. "While we are not against the concept of a special purpose vehicle to finance certain projects, the creation of one for the City Gate project did not make sense," he said in the Times. Though the general consensus is that large scale renovation is needed in the area, there is clearly concern that the imperative has become an excuse to leave an extortionate legacy for Malta's Prime Minister, an ancient Roman forum of sorts, disguised in Piano's banal touches.

In recent years, there has been a new star in the high-end auction world: fine wine. Wine sales at Christie's — mostly driven by demand in Hong Kong from Chinese buyers — grew a massive 70 percent from 2009 to 2010, making wine more important to Christie's bottom line than American paintings or Russian art. Bordeaux ruled, and Chateau Lafite was king. However, in the summer of 2011, the cracks began to show, and as the spring sales wrap up in China, the wine market is becoming much more multifarious than it once was.

For one thing, there's a new cool kid in town, he's from Burgundy, and his name is Romanée Conti. Lafite is a great wine for sure, but there is nothing more than personal taste that makes it the best wine in the world, worth more than other premier grand cru Bordeaux likes Latour or Margaux, or any top Burgundy, for that matter. This fact had commentators last year talking about a "Lafite Bubble." Now, it seems, the market has started to recognize that fact.

Preferences are changing. The Chinese are paying slightly less for wine — according to the Liv-Ex Fine Wine 100 Index, which tracks the prices of 100 of the most sought-after wines in the world, wine prices are down 18.2 percent from April of last year, and a hefty 23 percent if you only take the top 50 wines — and they are picking new favorites. So what's up with the wine market in Hong Kong lately? ARTINFO picked out three lessons that this Spring's wine market fluctuations have taught us.

CONTI IS KING

Lafite is out, and Conti is in, according to the last few major wine auctions in Hong Kong. That much was clear last year, when the Lafite market tanked at the November wine sales. The auction houses had gotten used to being almost 100 percent sold every sale, but in the fall of 2011 prices dropped precipitously and Christie's sold only 84 percent of the lots offered. Many of the failed cases were Lafite. The bright spots of those auctions, however, were wines from the Burgundy region of France as well as Italy.

Burgundy's dominance has continued into this spring. At Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 1 (which, for the record, was 100 percent sold), two lots of the 1988 vintage of Romanée Conti (12 bottles each) sold for HK$1.5 million each ($205,000), far above the HK$800,000-1.1 million ($103,000-155,000) estimates. The trend continued at Christie's wine sale in Hong Kong on April 21. The top lot was Burgundy — a La Tâche vertical (56 bottles from consecutive vintages, 1951-2008, except 1968), which went for HK$1.2 million ($156,000). But even its hammer price was below the HK$1.2 million low estimate (with the buyer's premium it inched above it). Burgundies accounted for the top five lots sold.

NO ONE WANTS YOUNG WINES

Top Bordeaux wines that did sell had one thing in common: age.

To say that Bordeaux is out is to simplify the picture. Sure, Burgundies have topped the last few sales, but that doesn't mean that first-growth Bordeaux wines aren't still in high demand. However, no one want to pay much for wine bottled in this century, which will have years before they reach their peek drinkability. The younger the wine, the less interest there is from bidders. At this week's Christie's sale, which was a dismal only 74 percent sold in total, an extremely rare 1900 vintage Château Latour sold for HK$423,500 ($54,820), quite a bit above its HK$250,000-350,000 ($32,000-45,000) estimate. Similarly, a number of 1982 Lafites were sold in the $50,000 per 12-bottle case range. But many of the wines made in the aughts were spurned. 

THE VINEYARDS ARE PAYING ATTENTION

This move away from more recently made wines in favor of well-aged and ready-to-drink bottles is not something that has been lost on the wine industry. Last week, Chateau Latour, one of the first-growth Bordeaux vineyards, announced that 2012 would be the last time that it participated in the "en primeur" wine futures market — the ancient system where the vineyards sell the newest vintage of wine to "negociants," who will then eventually distribute it (often when it has aged more and will fetch a higher price). Instead, Latour will distribute its own wine once it is ready to drink — a move that is being read as a bet on the continued ascent in proces for read-to-drink bottles.

While many have debated the wisdom of this decision over the course of the week, the intention seems clear: eventually capture the Chinese demand for ready-to-drink wines. According to Agence France-Press, "this move would enhance the position of Latour in that market and capture the margin for the chateau." But, that's at least a decade if not more away.

By then, will the Chinese even want French wine anymore?

Jeremy Scott isn’t into subtlety. Take his fall/winter 2011 collection, for example. It featured lightning rods, giant stuffed animals, neons of every color, the Superman “S” made into a question mark, and a twisted take on the Coca-Cola logo that replaced the original slogan with “Enjoy God.”

But after seeing that show, little mattered apart from opening model, Charlotte Free. Before the lights went down at Milk Studios, Scott tweeted a picture of Free, her famous pink locks pulled back in pigtails, with the caption “Meet Charlotte Free my new muse!!!” Her first time on a runway, for Richard Chai, had been six days earlier. She was all anybody was talking about.

Free ran with the flash sensation, booking editorials in places like Jalouse and Interview, and posing for photographers of the Terry Richardson and Cobrasnake sort — not exactly Mario Testino for Vogue, but a specific kind of triumph nonetheless.

Now, she’s made the biggest leap yet. Yesterday it was announced that Free will be the new face of Maybelline, the largest cosmetics brand in the world.

She was discovered in late 2010 by photographer David Mushegain at a video game arcade in Los Angeles, where her family has lived for five generations. The resulting photo series was, well, free — Charlotte in a Los Angeles parking lot, Charlotte crouched in a bus terminal, Charlotte climbing over a graffiti-speckled wall. Mushegain started sending around the pictures to see if they attracted any attention. They did. “[Mushegain] told us he just found an amazing new face in a video game arcade in L.A.,” the California skatewear brand RVCA blogged on its Web site. “Charlotte Rvles. You will be seeing a lot of her around RVCA.” She was signed to IMG Models, home to Gemma, Lara, and Gisele, and hit the runway just a few months after.

Then came the photoshoot with Richardson, which resulted in a spread for Olivier Zahm’s Purple Magazine. She’s her usual rebellious self, wearing men’s clothes, flicking off the camera. More striking is the outtake that Richardson posted on his blog of Charlotte licking her own unshaved armpit. In a Guardian article, Free defended the pose as a feminist statement.

Today, she’s still an edgy choice, but she’s lost some of her shock value. The early pictures don’t exactly scream “maybe she’s born with it,” and they certainly don’t say “maybe it’s Maybelline.” They’re grainy, they’re punk rock. She’s knocking soup off the racks in grocery aisles, she’s going to bars in a Lakers T-shirt. Her hair is that fantastic pink, but it’s also scraggly and unwashed. Don’t tell her current employer, but back then, her face showed no trace of makeup. For a company that’s been represented in the past by Erin Wasson, Christy Turlington, and Julie Stegner, Maybelline’s choice of Free feels like a brave move. 

To reveal their new face, the brand made a video with P’Trique (real name: Patrick Pope), the filmmaker behind the “Shit Fashion Girls Say” viral videos. In it, the flamboyant would-be-fashionisto calls designers, socialites, and Twitter-famous fashion editors to say he has a secret — or in P’Trique-speak, a “chic-ret" — but he can’t tell unless they promise they won’t tweet it. Of course they do, and so did every person who watched the clip. The meta-social networking trick, works every time.

And then today, a blog on the Grazia Web site offered a peek at what Free’s first TV spots would look like. In the stills, she’s in a black form-fitting outfit that might be a leotard, with a black choker creeping up her neck. And there’s no sign of the foundation-free grunge kid: she’s got thick slashes of yellow eyeshadow, black eyeliner, and rose lipstick. But most shocking is her hair: black at the roots, blond through the middle, and finally, but only at the tip of the bun, pink.