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Artworks that are too large, too complicated, too noisy, in other words too ‘cumbersome’, all struggle to find buyers. There is an exception to this rule however and it takes place once a year at Art Basel. At the very top end, the offer at the 2017 edition is particularly impressive.

Every month, MetCollects introduces one work of art recently acquired by the Met. We invite you to have a first look with us.

The artist Frederic Remington (1861–1909)—chronicler par excellence of the American West—has long been celebrated for his achievements as an illustrator, a painter, a sculptor, and a writer.

Adrián Villar Rojas, the Argentinian artist who created this year’s site-specific installation for The Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, has collaborated with Restaurant Associates to craft a specialized, sustainable menu for the Cantor Roof Garden Bar.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s performance series, MetLiveArts, will present an eight-week summer series of timely, edgy, and pointedly political performances and films beginning Friday, June 23 at The Met Breuer. The series, titled Theater of the Resist, takes its name from a technique in art making—when an artist uses layers of opposing material to “resist” the medium, thus generating negative space in which the artist can create.

The brilliance of certain artists lies in their ability to force you to really look at what they have to show. It’s true of German-born, London-based artist Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968). Tillmans surprises, he disturbs, he touches. It’s no doubt why the market for his work has long been sluggish.

Imagine buying a painting for $19,000 in 1984 it being sold for $110.5 million in 2017. That’s what happened on Thursday 18 May at Sotheby’s when the hammer fell on the sale (with fees) of a Jean Michel Basquiat canvas from 1982. The buyer is Japanese collector Yusaka Maezawa. According to professional sources it seems that the rival bidder for the work was Frank Fertitta, owner of a string of casinos in Las Vegas.

A spectacular loan exhibition devoted to masterworks of Japanese bamboo art—including award-winning works by six artists who were designated as Living National Treasures—will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning June 13.

At the Venice Biennale preview, conversations in the narrow streets are always peppered with ‘Have you seen so-and-so?’, ‘What did you like?’ And in unison this year, everyone replied: ‘I loooved the German pavilion.’