The virtual hammer has gone down on one of the more unusual auctions of recent days.

The online sale saw two works by Jean-Michel Basquiat - including one formerly owned by Leonardo DiCaprio - sell for $30 million while a Picasso went for $5 million and a Diane Arbus photograph fetched $500,000.

What the works have in common is they were all seized by the US government during its investigation into the 1MDB scandal - a huge international fraud siphoning billions of dollars from Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund and whose alleged mastermind, financier Jho Low, is believed to be hiding out in China.

The online sale was run by Texan auction house Gaston & Sheehan which usually deals in impounded property seized by local law enforcement but also works for the US Marshals Service which retrieved the artworks. It previously sold a personalized satin Mets jacket belonging to disgraced financier Bernie Madoff who died in prison in 2021.

A Leonardo da Vinci portrait is one of 50 paintings being loaned by the Louvre for a Tokyo show next year.

The 15th-century work, previously owned by the French royal family and which has been in the Paris museum's collection since 1793, will be seen at Tokyo's National Art Center from September to December 2026. It was previously sent on loan for the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The show, which examines the ideas and influence of the Renaissance, comes three years after an earlier exhibition of work from the Louvre attracted around three-quarters of a million visitors.

The number of Mexican fan palm trees planted outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA) new David Geffen Galleries outraging local environmentalists. Opponents say the trees, often seen as emblematic of old Hollywood, do not provide shade and are highly flammable which is a sensitive issue in a city recovering from wildfires.

Keith Haring's last ever painting goes on show later this month in New York.

The untitled work from 1989 features in a show at Gladstone Gallery called Liberating the Soul: Keith Haring’s Paintings focusing on his late career work.

It also includes the painting A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat made in tribute to his fellow artist who died of an overdose in 1988.

Haring himself died only two years later, aged 31, from AIDS-related illnesses.

The show runs from September 18 to November 1 in the gallery's building on 24th Street.

1 - Philanthropist Hilary Weston, who brought the art of the East End of London to Florida, has died aged 83. She teamed up with Whitechapel Gallery director Iwona Blazwick to bring work by the likes of Gert and Uwe Tobias and Beatriz Milhazes to her gallery in the gated community of Windsor that was founded by her family.

2 - It is not just the newly appointed US ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens, who has moved into the official residence in central London - the pick of his art collection is there as well. Stephens and his wife Harriet, who are worth around $3.5 billion, have decorated the place with works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and a landscape of nearby Kensington Gardens by Camille Pissarro.

3 - Justine Ludwig has left public arts organization Creative Time to become the first ever creative director of Getty's PST Art. The project, which Getty has funded to the tune of around $50 million over the last 20 years, puts on sprawling exhibitions on the art history of Los Angeles and southern California.