May 8 - The Andy Warholsilk-screen painting Sage Blue Shot Marilyn (1964) sells at Christie's in New York City for $195.04 million (with fees) shattering the record for a price paid at auction for a work by an American artist, besting the previous mark set by Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1982 painting Untitled which sold for $110,500,000 in 2017.[5][6] It also became the most expensive 20th century artwork sold in a public sale.[7] The buyer was the American art dealer Larry Gagosian.[8]
May 14 - An original print of Man Ray's Le Violon d'Ingres sells for $12.4 million US (with fees) at Christie's in New York City making it the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.[9][10]
May 31 - At the Louvre in Paris a male provocateur initially disguised as an elderly female art-goer in a wheelchair smears the bulletproof glass on top of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci with cake. He later reveals that he believes that he was engaged in some sort of makeshift climate protest. The still unidentified 36 year old man was subsequently placed in psychiatric care.[11][12]
July 4 - The Hay Wain (completed 1821) by the English landscape painterJohn Constable (1776-1837), and regarded as his most famous image, is subjected to two Just Stop Oil protestors attaching their own modified "apocalyptic vision of the future" version of the painting to the original and gluing themselves to the frame.[14] The National Gallery later reports that the surface varnish of the painting and its frame suffered minor damage.[15]
The Paul Allen collection is sold off at Christie's in New York City and shatters all previous records for proceeds from an auction of a singular art collection at more than $1.5 billion US. All funds are to be donated to Allen's philanthropic endeavors. Among the records set for prices for a work by an individual artist were $149.2 million US for Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) (1888) by the French PointillistGeorges Seurat, $138 million US for the painting La Montagne Sainte-Victoire by the French Post-ImpressionistPaul Cézanne setting a new mark for a price paid for his work at auction,[20] $104.6 million US for Birch Forest (1903) by the Austrian Symbolist Gustav Klimt setting an auction record for his work, and $11.5 million US for a 1905 print of a photograph by Edward Steichen, The Flatiron, a record for the photographer.[21][22]