Strong sales were reported on the VIP opening day at Art Basel "defying" fears this year's fair would struggle.

Among the artists selling were Ruth Asawa, Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter with works changing hands for millions of dollars.

Art Basel veteran Larry Gagosian said sales across the board had been "very good... defying the broader international environment".

In his gallery’s 30th year at the Swiss fair, it sold work by Maurizio Cattelan, Nan Goldin and Ewa Juszkiewicz amongst others, while Thaddaeus Ropac sold a Baselitz oil painting for $2 million.

David Zwirner found a buyer for an untitled 1955 Asawa sculpture for $9.5 million among the dozens of works snapped up from its booth.

Hauser & Wirth said it sold two new paintings by Mark Bradford for $3.5 million and a Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture for $1.9 million.

Away from the sales, there was a surprise appearance by Korean boyband star RM from BTS who was promoting Samsung's Art TVs and less unexpectedly a visit from Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani preparing the ground for Art Basel's first fair in Qatar next year.

Details are still under wraps but we hears the plan is for the Doha fair to start small rather than expand too quickly.

The Mona Lisa will get its own 3,000 sq ft gallery in the Louvre but there is a price to pay - literally in the form of an extra ticket needed to see it.

Museum director Laurence des Cars told French newspaper Le Figaro the new home for Leonardo da Vinci's painting would be "on a par with the global masterpiece that will be present in it”.

Around 8.7 million people visited the museum last year, despite disruption during the Olympic Games and a 30% ticket-price hike, and the huge numbers flocking to see the Mona Lisa means galleries are overcrowded.

The new gallery is part of a planned $919 million revamp of the Paris institution with at least some of the cost being clawed back by the as yet unannounced price of the extra ticket needed to see the Mona Lisa on top of the standard entry fee.

Architects have been invited to submit designs for what has been dubbed the Nouveau Louvre with the architecture competition officially opening on Friday June 27.

The number of rooms open to the public at the vast Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The official full opening of the 120-acre complex, originally scheduled for July 3, has been put back to the last quarter of this year "in light of the current regional developments".

More than 120 works from one of America's most private art collections will be shown together in public for the first time as part of a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition celebrating the country's 250th anniversary.

A Nation of Artists at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will include work from both institutions as well as from the collection built up over the last 50 years by businessman John S. Middleton, the owner of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, and his wife Leigh.

The couple's collection includes landmark works by Jasper Johns, Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent which will share gallery space with the likes of Jaune-Quick-to-See-Smith and Rina Banerjee.

The show will be shared between both galleries from next April to September 2027.

1 - Swiss diplomat and pioneering collector of contemporary Chinese art, Uli Sigg, has spotted a new rising star: Chongyan Liu. Sigg told Whitewall he had just bought a video installation by the female artist which puts the viewer in the position of being "run over by an aircraft carrier and later by a tsunami wave".

2 - London's Somerset House has enlisted virtual Instagram influencer Lil Miquela for its new show about the impact of digital culture on ideas of human beauty. The show, called Virtual Beauty, features Arvida Byström and Filip Ćustić among other IRL artists and runs from July 23 to September 28.

3 - iPhone designer Jony Ive has joined the board of trustees at London's British Museum. A former chief design officer at Apple, he helped design the iPad and iMac.