Arts news

• Wadsworth Atheneum Museum Names New President and CEO

  11-11-2025 22:11 via artnews.com
  The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, named Allison Blais as its new president and CEO starting in January 2026. Blais, who will replace Jeffrey N. Brown after five years in the role, is currently executive vice president and chief strategy and operations officer of New York’s 9/11 Memorial & Museum, both of which she worked on from early planning stages, including a stint at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.In a statement, Duffield Ashmead IV MD, ch
  
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• An 18th-Century Painting of St. Francis Is Returned to a Mexican Church, 24 Years After a Nighttime Heist

  11-11-2025 20:28 via artnews.com
  A church in Mexico has been reunited with a painting of Saint Francis of Assisi, its namesake, that was stolen nearly a quarter-century ago. Thieves entered the Church of San Francisco de Asis in Teotihuacán, about 25 miles northeast of Mexico City, under cover of night on January 6, 2001, stealing some 18 works of art, including Saint Francis of Assisi (1747), which stands six feet high and had hung in the church for two centuries. Also stolen were seven 17th-century miniature paint
  
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• Onassis Foundation Doubles Down on Experimental Art and Tech With New Space in Tribeca

  11-11-2025 20:19 via artnews.com
  The Onassis Foundation’s experimental art and tech studio Onassis ONX is doubling its size at a new location in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. It is slated to open with the multimedia exhibition “TECHNE: Homecoming” in January.Founded in 2020, Onassis ONX has supported artists working between such mediums as extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and performance at its 645 Fifth Avenue space over the last five years. The art center has collaborated with a
  
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• Heist at National Museum of Damascus Spurs Search for Missing Artifacts

  11-11-2025 19:20 via artnews.com
  The National Museum of Damascus closed temporarily this week following the audacious theft of several artifacts from its classical department, Syrian cultural authorities confirmed on Tuesday. Established in 1919, the museum houses thousands of antiquities spanning from prehistory through the Roman and Byzantine eras, reflecting Syria’s deep cultural heritage. Security at the museum was reinforced at the onset of Syria’s 14-year civil war and the subsequent fall of the 54-year Assad
  
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• Life or death in Joseph Wright’s 1768 painting | Letter

  11-11-2025 18:31 via theguardian.com
  Harriet Monkhouse responds to a review of the National Gallery exhibition that includes An Experiment on a Bird in the Air PumpRe Jonathan Jones’s review of the Joseph Wright of Derby exhibition at the National Gallery, and his 1768 painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (Wright of Derby: From the Shadows review – science, skeletons and a suffocated cockatoo, 4 November), the good news is that the bird probably doesn’t die after all.An episode of Radio 4’s
  
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• JMW Turner’s mother deserves respect and understanding too | Brief letters

  11-11-2025 18:31 via theguardian.com
  Exploring neurodivergence | Volunteer plants | Frankie the flamingo | Thriving jazz | Young letter writersI’m glad we’re starting to look at historical figures through the lens of neurodivergence (Documentary explores whether JMW Turner may have been neurodivergent, 10 November). But why give JMW Turner the benefit of 21st-century advances in neuroscience and not afford the same courtesy to his mother, Mary, who was “believed to have had a psychiatric disorder and would fly int
  
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• First of Its Kind Painting by Dutch Golden Age Artist Headlines Christie’s London Old Masters Sale

  11-11-2025 18:28 via artnews.com
  Leading Christie’s “Old Masters Evening Sale” on December 2 in London is Gerrit Dou’s first depiction of a musician The Flute Player (ca. 1636). The work, one of the few produced by Dou, carries a pre-sale estimate of £2 million to £3 million ($2.6 million–$4 million). That estimate puts it around half of Dou’s auction record, set in 2023 when A young woman holding a hare with a boy at a window brought in $7.1 million at Christie’s again
  
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• A First Look at the 36 Ancient Artifacts the US Just Handed Over to Egypt

  11-11-2025 18:18 via artnews.com
  Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced last week that it had recieved 36 artifacts looted from the country and later recovered by US authorities. The pieces, the agency said, are set to be deposited with Egyptian Museum, though it did not specify if this was the older museum in Cairo, or the glitzy new Grand Egyptian Museum in nearby Giza, which finally had its grand opening earlier this month after two decades in construction and $1 billion in development costs.The collecti
  
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• Rare “Mellon Blue” Diamond Sells for $27.7M at Christie’s

  11-11-2025 16:36 via artnews.com
  Art collector Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon’s blue diamond pendant, known as the Mellon Blue, has sold for $27.7M at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction Nov. 11 at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva.That’s 18 percent less than the diamond sold for 11 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, it’s a drop of nearly 50 percent in value.The 9.51-carat fancy vivid blue, internally flawless pear-shaped diamond, which Christie’s had given a pre-sale estima
  
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• Rare ‘Mellon Blue’ Diamond Sells for $27.7 M. at Christie’s

  11-11-2025 16:36 via artnews.com
  Art collector Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon’s blue diamond pendant, known as the Mellon Blue, has sold for $27.7 million on Tuesday at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction, held at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva.The price achieved today is 18 percent less than what the diamond sold for 11 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, it’s a drop of nearly 50 percent in value.The 9.51-carat fancy vivid blue, internally flawless pear-shaped diamond, which Christie
  
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• Rare ‘Mellon Blue’ Diamond Sells for $25.5 M. at Christie’s

  11-11-2025 16:36 via artnews.com
  Art collector Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon’s blue diamond pendant, known as the Mellon Blue, has sold for $25.5 million on Tuesday at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction, held at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva.The price achieved today is 22 percent less than what the diamond sold for 11 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, it’s a drop of nearly 60 percent in value.The 9.51-carat fancy vivid blue, internally flawless pear-shaped diamond, which Christie
  
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• Sarah Hoover’s Memoir ‘The Motherlode’ Is Being Turned Into a Television Series

  11-11-2025 16:12 via artnews.com
  Sarah Hoover’s bestselling memoir The Motherload: Episodes From the Brink of Motherhood is in development as a drama series at 20th Television, sources tell Variety.Stuart Zicherman is attached as the showrunner, and Hoover will co-write the pilot with Sas Goldberg (“Only Murders in the Building,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”).“The Motherload” series will follow Jennifer, a millennial art dealer who finds motherhood to be nothing what she expected. &
  
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• Carnegie International Names 14 Artist Commissions for 2026 Edition

  11-11-2025 16:00 via artnews.com
  The curators of the 59th Carnegie International have announced the first batch of the artists who will participate in the upcoming exhibition.These 14 artists and one foundation will present 14 new commissions as part of the exhibition. They include Torkwase Dyson, G. Peter Jemison, Arturo Kameya and Claudia Martínez Garay, Alia Farid, Brooke O’Harra, and Ginger Brooks Takahashi.The Carnegie International is staged every four years at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg, Pennsyl
  
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• Scientific Art Analysis Firm Launches ‘World’s First Insured Authenticity Guarantee for Artworks’

  11-11-2025 15:14 via artnews.com
  Collectors, artists, galleries, and museums typically insure art against theft, fire, and flood. However, insuring against misattribution or forgery, which can quickly tank a work’s value, has proven stickier due to the inherent subjectivity involved in art authentication. ArtDiscovery, a scientific art analysis firm with offices in London and New York, however, says it has solved the problem.The firm recently launched what it called “the world’s first insured authenticity guar
  
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• Hard Truths: How Can a Curator at a Big Museum Evade Invisibility?

  11-11-2025 13:00 via artnews.com
  With a world in crisis and an art market spinning out of control, ace art-world consultants Chen & Lampert deliver hard truths in response to questions sent by Art in America readers from far and wide.I’m a curator at one of the world’s biggest museums, which may sound glamorous—but the truth is quite different. I am poorly paid considering my degree, and I often feel invisible. An ethics policy forbids me from working on shows or writing for other entit
  
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• ‘Harlem has always been evolving’: inside the Studio Museum’s $160m new home

  11-11-2025 11:03 via theguardian.com
  The iconic museum, which was founded in 1968, has been rehoused in 82,000-sq-ft building providing a new destination for Black art in New York CityCall it the second Harlem renaissance. On Manhattan’s 125th Street, where a statue of Adam Clayton Powell Jr strides onwards and upwards, and a sign marks the spot where a freed Nelson Mandela dropped by, there is bustle and buzz.The celebrated Apollo Theater is in the midst of a major renovation. The National Black Theatre is preparing to move
  
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• Border Patrol Agents Use Anish Kapoor’s ‘Bean’ for a Chicago Photo Op Amid Aggressive Crackdowns

  11-11-2025 00:30 via artnews.com
  British artist Anish Kapoor’s shiny sculpture Cloud Gate (2006), sited in Chicago’s Millennium Park, is one of the world’s most popular works of public art. Often called “the Bean” in reference to its elliptical shape, the 110-ton piece has served as the setting for countless photo shoots by everyday visitors and celebrities alike.Now, a more controversial visitor has exploited the work for a Windy City photo op. Just after dawn on Monday, dozens of U.S. Border Patr
  
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