On Thursday, May 19, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum nabbed a rare painting by the artist for $3.3 million. The Barns, Lake George, which was offered at Christie’s in New York, depicts a group of structures on the New York property that O’Keeffe shared with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Teetering on the edge of abstraction, the 1926 canvas is a significant departure from the floral works and stark Southwestern landscapes typically associated with O’Keeffe.

1. Rock Hudson’s mid-century retreat offers total seclusion.

Between 1951 and 1955, Hollywood heartthrob Rock Hudson lived in this secluded post-and-beam retreat perched high above Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills. Designed around 1950 by Ralph Bowerman, the mid-century gem features wrap-around walls of glass, offering stunning views of the surrounding landscape. The residence’s celebrity provenance and architectural merit earned it a spot in Architectural Digest’s “Hollywood at Home” feature, which included photographs of Hudson in the light-filled abode.

Six months ago, members of Qatar’s royal family entered into a legal dispute with the billionaire collector Leon Black over Pablo Picasso’s 1931 work Bust of a Woman, which depicts the artist’s mistress and muse, Marie-Therese Walter. While Bloomberg has reported that the battle has finally been laid to rest, details of the settlement are being kept under wraps.

On Wednesday, May 25, Sotheby’s will auction a number of important anti-slavery documents, including a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment—both of which were signed by President Abraham Lincoln. The 13th Amendment being offered is one of the original fourteen copies signed by Lincoln, while the Emancipation Proclamation is part of a limited edition printed in 1864 to raise money for the organization that preceded the Red Cross and United Service Organization.

Christie’s and the British Museum recently teamed up to return a 17th century Safavid bowl to the National Museum of Afghanistan. The ornate tinned-copper vessel was lost during the country’s civil war of the 1990s. In 1994, the piece was bought in good faith from an antiques dealer in Saudi Arabia by a German couple, who later sold the bowl. While researching the object, Sara Plumbly, the head of Christie’s Islamic art department, realized that the bowl had once belonged to the Afghan museum—a revelation that was confirmed by experts at the British Museum.

A painting by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat—two of modern art’s most iconic figures—will be offered for sale on June 7 at Sotheby’s Paris. The work, which is expected to fetch in excess of $1 million, is being offered by Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish. The painting, created between 1984 and 1985, is signed by both artists.

Mark your calendars—the Palm Beach Show Group has added a brand new event to its ever-expanding roster of art, antiques, and jewelry fairs. The Florida-based company, which organizes a plethora of fairs stretching from coast to coast, including the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show, the Baltimore Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, and the LA Art Show, will debut the Miami Beach Jewelry & Antiques Show this winter.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will mount the exhibition On the Verge of Insanity this July. The show will examine Vincent van Gogh’s ongoing mental health issues and how his struggles affected his work. On the Verge of Insanity  will include a number of loans from international museums, including a portrait of Van Gogh’s doctor, Felix Rey, from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

On Wednesday, May 18, the Oppenheim Blue Diamond sold for $58.2 million—the highest price ever realized for a jewel at auction. The 14.62-carat stone, which was offered during Christie’s Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva, was once owned by Sir Philip Oppenheimer—a member of the family that controls the De Beers Mining Company. The gem exceeded its presale estimate of $38 million-$45 million.

The venerable Biennale des Antiquaires, which takes place this September, will feature a special exhibition dedicated to the art of watchmaking. Presented by the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie—an organization dedicated to promoting expertise and education in fine watchmaking—The Mastery of Time will chart the evolution of tools used to measure time, including sundials and more complicated mechanisms. The exhibition was previously on view at the Ambrosian Library in Milan.

The UK has launched a $14.46 million fundraising campaign in hopes of acquiring an important portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. The painting, which is one of three surviving Armada portraits made to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, is currently owned by descendants of the English explorer Sir Francis Drake. If the campaign goal is met, the life-size portrait will go on view at the Royal Museums of Greenwich.

Tom Stringer has been obsessed with design for as long as he can remember. A graduate of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State University, Stringer worked for a number of venerable designers, including Charles Pfister and Alessandra Branca, before founding his own Chicago-based firm, Tom Stringer Design Partners, in 1996.

On Friday, May 20, Phillips announced that it had facilitated a private sale of a Diego Rivera painting that netted $15.7 million—the highest price ever paid for a Latin American work of art. Dance in Tehuantepec was acquired by the Argentinian collector Eduardo Costantini, who tried to purchase the painting at an auction at Sotheby’s back in 1995. Costantini will exhibit the work in the museum he founded,  the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires.

Three German museums have jointly purchased the complete portfolio of Bauhaus photographer Otto Umbehr, who also went by the alias Umbo. Known for his innovative portraits of Berlin’s bohemian crowd, Umbo was also an accomplished photojournalist. In addition to Umbo’s estate, Berlin’s Berlinische Galerie, Hannover’s Sprengel Museum, and the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, acquired a number of works from private collections.

David Zwirner, who operates galleries in New York and London, has been selected to represent the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Established by Josef Albers in 1971, the not-for-profit organization is “dedicated to preserving and promoting the enduring achievements of both Josef and Anni Albers, and the aesthetic and philosophical principles by which they lived.” Zwirner, who beat out Pace Gallery, Hauser & Wirth and Dominique Levy to represent the foundation, will mount an exhibition dedicated to Josef Albers’ groundbreaking work this November.

Rebecca Rabinow, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s curator of modern art and curator-in-charge of the institution’s new Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, will head to the Menil Collection this July. Rabinow, who has been with the Met for twenty-six years, will replace Josef Helfenstein as the Menil’s director. The Menil Collection has a number of major happenings on the horizon, including its thirtieth anniversary celebration and the opening of its Drawing Institute in 2017.

Historic preservation means many things to many people—from structures and landscapes to surviving artifacts—all of which are integral to preserving and building on our past. There’s also a personal side to historic preservation that is just as significant, as demonstrated through one family’s collective journey and generosity. In August 1980, Stephen Wood was a young preservationist repairing Drayton Hall’s centuries-old main house as part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Restoration Workshop, when his scaffolding gave way.

Fifty-nine Italian Renaissance sculptures by such masters as Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Andrea del Verrocchio, Francesco Laurana, and Mino da Fiesole, have been found in Russia’s Pushkin Museum. The works, which have been missing from Berlin’s collections since World War II, had been stored in a flak tower in Germany to protect them from bombs during the war. After two fires ravaged the structure, the works were believed to have been destroyed.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual gala, which was attended by an array of art world luminaries, including Leonard Lauder, Chuck Close, and Cindy Sherman, raised $6 million for the institution. The glitzy event took place one year after the museum’s much-buzzed-about move to a new, Renzo Piano-designed building in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Since relocating, the Whitney has seen a significant increase in attendance numbers.

Weeks after the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that they would be taking cost-cutting measures to help quell growing deficits, the Brooklyn Museum is following suit. The institution, which is facing a $3 million deficit, is offering voluntary buyouts to staffers. The museum currently has around 300 full-time employees and an operating budget of $38.6 million.