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    New Digital Comics Store Takes Aim at Amazon

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    Two veterans of Comixology, a site that the e-commerce colossus bought in 2014, are now starting a rival to compete with it.For decades, comic book fans have had only one option for getting digital editions of Spider-Man, Batman, the Transformers or many other colorful characters on the same day they hit comic book shops.That platform, Comixology, was acquired by Amazon in 2014 and eventually absorbed into its Kindle service. The takeover left some fans grumbling that comics shouldn’t get the same treatment as eBooks.Now, two industry veterans, David Steinberger and Chip Mosher, are betting they can beat Amazon at e-commerce by catering more intentionally to die-hard comic book fans. Next month, they plan to launch Neon Ichiban, a site they intend to be “a dedicated experience for comics,” Mr. Steinberger said, after raising more than $7 million from investors in the game and movie industries.“Understanding how comic book fans and people who should be fans want to shop and think about and browse doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “The Comixology app, where you can have all your comics in one place, does not exist anymore. It’s all just part of Kindle.”It is a head-turning statement from Mr. Steinberger, who also founded Comixology — and approved its sale to Amazon. Mr. Mosher was the head of content at Comixology.“At the time, it seemed like the right decision,” Mr. Steinberger said. “Our mission was to make everyone on the planet a comic fan, and Amazon clearly had the resources and the population connected to Kindle that we thought would carry that mission.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Leonard A. Lauder, Philanthropist and Cosmetics Heir, Dies at 92

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      He was best known for his success in business, notably the international beauty company he built with his mother, Estée Lauder. But he was also an influential art patron.Leonard A. Lauder, the art patron and philanthropist who with his mother, Estée Lauder, built a family cosmetics business into a worldwide juggernaut that supplied generations of women with the creams, colors and scents of eternal youth, died on Saturday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 92.The death was announced by the Estée Lauder Companies.While best known for his business enterprises, Mr. Lauder was also one of America’s most influential philanthropists and art patrons. He gave hundreds of millions to museums, medical institutions, and breast cancer and Alzheimer’s research, as well as to other cultural, scientific and social causes. His art collections ranged from postcards to Picassos.In 2013, he pledged the most significant gift in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a trove of nearly 80 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures by Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris. Scholars put the value of the gift at $1 billion and said its quality rivaled or surpassed that of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Pompidou Center in Paris.After the gift was announced, he added another dozen major Cubist works, The New York Times reported in a profile of Mr. Lauder last year.The eldest son of Estée Lauder, who in 1946 founded the company that bears her name, Mr. Lauder was for decades a senior executive and the marketing expert and corporate strategist behind his mother, the flamboyant public face of the Lauder empire, who pitched its lipsticks, bath oils, face powders and anti-wrinkle creams with almost messianic zeal.In a business reliant on imagery and mythmaking, his mother, the daughter of a Queens merchant, had created a genteel Hungarian aristocratic past for herself and a name to go with it. Josephine Esther Lauter, the wife of a luncheonette owner, thus became the glamorous Estée Lauder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Gala Celebrates the Met’s Reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

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      Round tables covered in white cloths surrounded the Temple of Dendur. Women wore fascinators, Nigerian geles and Hawaiian lei po’o, while men wore Yoruba agbadas, Hawaiian kāʻei and the occasional tuxedo, all in sartorial attempts to honor the lineage that brought them to the event.Curators, artists and archaeologists gathered for dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the culmination of four years of work — and the legacy of a historied American family — on Friday night. They were toasting the reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing and its collection of work from Africa, the ancient Americas and Oceania.Attendees got a chance to explore the wing’s 1,726 objects from Africa, the ancient Americas and Oceania.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesOver lobster, foie gras, wine and champagne, friends of the Met and members of the Rockefeller family mingled among the 1,726 objects in the new gallery, which cost $70 million to complete and has 40,000 square feet dedicated to the arts of those regions.The wing went through four years of work before its reopening.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times“It is a coming together of a very global community,” said Max Hollein, the chief executive and director of the Met. “And in this time, it’s so much about respecting cultural heritage in many different ways but also making sure that there’s a deep understanding, a deeper appreciation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Skulls of 19 Black Americans Return to New Orleans After 150 Years in Germany

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      The remains, used in the 19th century as part of now discredited racial science, are being laid to rest on Saturday in a traditional jazz funeral.Sometime before Jan. 10, 1872, a young Black laborer named William Roberts checked himself into Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Just 23 years old, he was from Georgia and had a strong build, according to hospital records. His only recorded sickness was diarrhea.He was one of 19 Black patients who died at the hospital in December 1871 and January 1872, and whose skulls were sent to Germany to be studied by a doctor researching a now wholly discredited science that purported a correlation between the shape and size of a skull and a person’s intellect and character.The skulls languished in Germany for about 150 years until Leipzig University contacted the city of New Orleans two years ago to repatriate them.They were returned to New Orleans this month, and on Saturday morning those 19 people who died in the 1800s are being honored with a jazz funeral before their skulls are interred.A staff member at Rhodes Funeral Home removes the remains of one person from the shipping crate that arrived from Germany.Jacob Cochran/Dillard UniversityWhile the return of human remains from museum collections has become more common, the repatriation of these 19 Black cranial remains to New Orleans is believed to be the first major international restitution of the remains of Black Americans from Europe, according to Paul Wolff Mitchell, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who studies the 19th century history of race and science in the United States and Europe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Gardener Stumbles Upon Hidden Treasure in a Vermont Park

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      Kelly Wakefield found a rock with a skull and crossbones in the same park last fall, but she didn’t realize that it was a clue to much more.Kelly Wakefield, a professional gardener, was doing her spring cleanup of a public park in St. Albans, Vt., when she stumbled upon a mysterious metal box under a pile of leaves.She shook the box and heard the telltale jangle of coins.“I didn’t really know what to do,” she said on Sunday, recalling the discovery.She opened the metal box and was floored by the bounty inside. She ran to her truck and drove straight to her mother’s house. What exactly had she found? Was any of it real? Did she need a lawyer?Ms. Wakefield, 46, soon learned that she had stumbled upon a treasure chest intentionally hidden by Michael Cloherty O’Connell, the author of two history books that led readers on scavenger hunts around the Northeast.Kelly Wakefield was shocked to find a treasure chest while gardening in St. Albans, Vt.via Kelly WakefieldThe box contained various coins, antiques, a Civil War-era bullet, a map and a note from the author himself. It is now in a safe deposit box, Ms. Wakefield said, and has yet to be appraised. (She’ll get to it eventually, she said.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gloves Lincoln Wore to Ford’s Theater Sell for $1.5 Million at Auction

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      More than 100 relics connected to President Abraham Lincoln brought in $7.9 million, auctioneers said. The proceeds will help a presidential foundation repay a loan.A pair of leather gloves worn by President Abraham Lincoln to Ford’s Theater on the night of his assassination fetched $1.5 million at auction this week, part of a trove of relics from his life and death that a debt-saddled presidential foundation had put on the block.One of two handkerchiefs that Lincoln had with him on that fateful date in American history, April 14, 1865, sold for $826,000, according to Freeman’s | Hindman in Chicago, the auction house that handled Wednesday’s sale.Like the gloves, which a friend of the Lincolns had framed for display on his dining room wall, the handkerchief was described in an auction catalog as having been potentially stained with the president’s blood.And a cufflink-style gold and onyx button with the letter “L” on it, which a doctor removed to check for Lincoln’s pulse as he lay on his deathbed, went for $445,000.The auction of the items from the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, which was conducted in person, online and by phone, raised nearly $7.9 million, the auctioneers said.The total included a 28 percent buyer’s premium, which auction houses tack onto the hammer price to help cover expenses from sales.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      TEFAF New York Keeps Its Focus on the Classics In a Turbulent Time

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      With the art market outlook uncertain, the New York fair aims to keep collectors coming, with a wide array of art and (relatively) less expensive prices.When the European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) held its very first New York fair at the historic Park Avenue Armory in 2016, the global art market was in robust health: Art sales had marked a near-record of $64 billion worldwide in the preceding year, and were at a peak in the United States, according to an art market report by the cultural economist Clare McAndrew.As TEFAF New York prepares to welcome visitors again — running from May 9 through 13, and coinciding with the closely watched May auctions — the outlook is downright cloudy. Global art sales tumbled for the second year in a row in 2024, totaling an estimated $57.5 billion, and the U.S. market was down 9 percent from the previous year, according to the recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. More recently, stock markets have been jittery since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on countries around the world on April 2, then said he would back down on tariffs on goods from most countries, except China, for 90 days. Economic turbulence has an immediate impact on the net worth — and the collecting appetite — of those who buy art.“The volatility that you see in the markets writ large is reflected in the art market,” said Alex Logsdail, chief executive of the Lisson Gallery, an international art dealership. He said business had “slowed significantly,” though it was “still happening” and “has not fallen off a cliff” as it did at the time of the 2008 global financial crisis.“This is a funny thing for me to say out loud, but it’s true: Nobody needs any of the things we are selling,” he said. Collecting art is “a question of want and desire and passion and confidence. It is up to us to create those conditions,” regardless of the economic context, he added.Lisson has exhibited at TEFAF New York’s spring fair from its first iteration in 2017, and Logsdail served for a time on its selection committee (which decides which galleries will get booths). He said TEFAF New York was well positioned for the current circumstances, because in unstable economic conditions, the focus turns to quality and value, and to “well-tested” and affordably priced objects. And right now, he said, “people are taking a very active interest in artists whose prices are quite low.”Among the works showing at Lisson’s TEFAF booth this spring are works by Sean Scully, including “Wall Tappan Deep Red” (2025).Sean Scully / Courtesy Lisson GalleryWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lego Black Market Fetches Big Prices for Little Plastic Bricks

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      Some Lego sets have skyrocketed in value but behind the eye-popping price tags is a dark side: an underground market that fuels brazen thefts.It’s one Lego kit, a collection of small plastic bricks and related accessories. What could it cost? The answer, it turns out, could be thousands of dollars.Lego kits and minifigures, figurines that are a little over 1.5 inches tall, are commanding high prices on the secondary market, with some, like the LEGO San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Spider-Man, valued as high as $16,846.The children’s toys have even become something of an investing opportunity for those savvy enough to know what to look for.But with the eye-popping price tags comes a dark side: Lego kits have become a hot commodity on the black market and the target of brazen thieves.Last year, burglars hit Bricks & Minifigs outlets in California. Thieves made off with at least $100,000 worth of Lego kits and accessories.Last month, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California recovered nearly 200 Lego sets after arresting a person in connection with a burglary at Crush Comics, a comic book store in Castro Valley, Calif.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rare Beatles Audition Tape Surfaces in a Vancouver Record Shop

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      The recording appears to be from the band’s 1962 audition for Decca Records, which notably rejected the group.The tape sat unremarkably on a shelf behind the counter, collecting dust for five, maybe 10 years — so much time that Rob Frith says he lost track.Frith, 69, could not seem to recall how it had found its way to Neptoon Records, his store in Vancouver, British Columbia, which in its 44 years has become a repository for tens of thousands of vinyl records and other musical relics.The label on the cardboard box said it was a Beatles demo tape, but, having heard enough bootleg recordings over the decades, Frith was skeptical until he enlisted a disc jockey friend, Larry Hennessey, to load it onto his vintage tape player a few weeks ago.It was just before midnight on March 11 when they pushed play on the mystery tape. From the opening guitar riff and the intonation of a 21-year-old John Lennon, Frith said he could not believe his ears as he listened to the Beatles performing a cover of the Motown hit “Money (That’s What I Want).”“Right away, we’re all kind of looking at each other,” Frith said. “It seems like the Beatles are in the room. That’s how clear it is.”Frith said the tape appeared to be a professionally edited recording of the Beatles’ New Year’s Day 1962 audition for Decca Records in London, a session that notably ended with the band’s rejection.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More