Arts news

• 2,500-Year-Old Mesoamerican Observatory Discovered in Sierra Norte Mountains of Mexico

  27-10-2026 22:27 via ARTnews.com
  
  A team of researchers at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico recently announced the discovery of a 2,500-year-old structure that they believe functioned as a solar observatory.The structure is part of the pre-Hispanic Teteles de Ávila Castillo archaeological site in Sierra Norte de Puebla and has been under excavation by INAH since 2015. Alberto Diez Barroso Repizo, Teteles’s archaeological project director, told the Art Newspaper that Teteles “flourished dur
  
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• A Painting Owned by Dutch Jewish Collector Once Hung in Hitler’s Home, New Research Finds

  27-10-2026 22:26 via ARTnews.com
  
  A Nazi-looted painting that once belonged to a Dutch Jewish family, and at one point hung in Adolf Hitler’s home, has been traced in new research, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reports.The work in question is German painter Carl Gottlieb Peschel’s Joseph Sold by His Brothers (1831), which shows the biblical scene of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt.The painting belonged to Bob Nijkerk, whose family had made its fortune in the iron and scrap-metal business in the 19th century. Nijkerk
  
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• Even German Bidders Can Now Pitch In to Support US Public Television, with the Country’s First Auction of a Bob Ross Painting

  27-10-2026 21:26 via ARTnews.com
  
  For the first time, a Bob Ross painting will come to auction in Germany. The painting comes to the block on December 5 at auctioneer Ketterer Kunst in Munich, from the collection of American Public Television (APT). Proceeds will benefit the organization as part of a charitable initiative dreamed up by Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross, Inc., to support public television stations in the US following cuts of $9 billion to previously approved government funding by a Republican-dominated Congres
  
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• Researchers Trace Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ to a Specific Dark Sky in 1889

  27-10-2026 21:24 via ARTnews.com
  
  The storied Starry Night that has mesmerized countless eyes since Vincent van Gogh painted it may have been cribbed from an actual night sky over France in July 1889.As reported by the Associated Press, “A South Korean team reported Thursday that after years of forensic astronomy and research into the Dutch artist, they have matched his masterpiece to a predawn sky over France’s Saint-Remy de Provence right around July 22, 1889. That’s a month later than the long-accepted time frame for th
  
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• Christie’s First Abu Dhabi Art Auction to Be Accompanied by Exhibition of $60 M.–$80 M. Kandinsky

  27-10-2026 21:23 via ARTnews.com
  
  The competition in the art world for business in the Gulf is heating up. Next week Christie’s is set to host its first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi, featuring some 70 lots of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art.The sale, dubbed “MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art,” features works by Turkish abstractionist Fahrelnissa Zeid, one of the first women to attend art school in Turkey; Iraqi painter Faisel Laibi Sahi; Egyptian modernist painter Mahmoud Saïd; an
  
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• Auction of Nazi-Looted Torah Fragment Canceled After Outcry and Israeli Government Intervention

  27-10-2026 21:01 via ARTnews.com
  
  After an auction house in Norway attempted to sell a fragment of a Torah scroll looted by the Nazis, a public outcry ensued. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also intervened and, according to a ministry spokesperson, asked the Israeli embassy in Norway to prevent the sale, reports the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). “Thanks to the embassy’s efforts, the auction was canceled, and the parchment will be donated to a Holocaust remembrance organization in the United States,” a foreig
  
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• Dutch Art Historian and Curator Rudi Fuchs Dies at 84

  27-10-2026 19:24 via ARTnews.com
  
  Dutch art historian and curator Rudi Fuchs has died at the age of 84 in Amsterdam. His family announced his death on Sunday to the Amsterdam daily newspaper Het Parool.Born in 1942 in Eindhoven, Rudolf Herman “Rudi” Fuchs studied art history from 1967 to 1975 at Leiden University. In 1975, at the age of 32, he was appointed director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven; at the time he was the youngest museum director in the Netherlands. It was the beginning of a storied career as one of Europe
  
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• Pace Gallery Reports Losses of 35.5 Percent for 2024 With ‘Real Change’ Underway

  27-10-2026 19:21 via ARTnews.com
  
  It has been a summer of change for Pace Gallery, and its 2024 accounts that were filed 10 months late with Companies House, the British government’s business register, reflect that. The group’s turnover totaled $67.69 million in 2024, a 35.5 percent drop from 2023, which cashed in $104.95 million. A pre-tax loss of $2,429 was recorded for 2024 compared to a $6.8 million profit for 2023. (The mega-gallery’s UK registered company, The Pace Gallery Limited, serves as the umbrella company for
  
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• Scientists Figure Out How That Mysterious Ancient Roman Cup Changes Color

  27-10-2026 19:01 via ArtsJournal
  “Depending on where a light source is positioned, the Lycurgus Cup changes colour, from jade green under normal lighting to ruby red when lit from behind – a feat of optical engineering that has confounded historians and glassmakers for centuries. Now scientists from the University of Sheffield have replicated its optical behaviour.” – The Guardian
  
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• Christie’s Will Offer $8 M. in Works from Mickey Cartin’s Collection, from Netherlandish Painting to Contemporary Art to Rare Books

  27-10-2026 19:00 via ARTnews.com
  
  Widely respected Connecticut collector Mickey Cartin will offer selections from his collection, begun in 1988, at Christie’s. Upward of 80 objects, estimated to fetch as much as $8 million, will be spread over more than 10 auctions in London, Paris, and New York, from this November until July 2027.In 1971, Cartin began working at Connecticut’s Capitol Light and Supply Company, which had been started by his grandfather in 1918. He ultimately became the company’s president and grew it from a
  
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• Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Is A Juggernaut. So How Does It Work?

  27-10-2026 18:44 via ArtsJournal
  
  Things are going so well for the Trust that, in recent years, it has made some of the tinier theater spaces it owns and manages available free of charge to individual artists and small arts organizations. And yet, mentioning the Cultural Trust to some Pittsburgh artists can bring a wince. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  
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• Lincoln In Opera — A Different Portrait

  27-10-2026 18:31 via ArtsJournal
  The composer Missy Mazzoli and the librettist Royce Vavrek, one of the hottest creative teams in opera, conjure a darker, more conflicted president in “Lincoln in the Bardo,” which premiered on Oct. 19 at the Metropolitan Opera. – The New York Times
  
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• AI Will Upend Culture. How Should AI Companies Be Regulated?

  27-10-2026 18:31 via ArtsJournal
  What should the government do? We asked a panel of experts to assess the risks A.I. presents and the tools of governance that could be adopted to address them. – The New York Times
  
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• Study Upends Understanding Of How Language Works

  27-10-2026 18:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  A groundbreaking study challenges 70 years of assumptions about how human language works. By analyzing billions of word uses, scientists discovered that meaning is organized around power, danger, and order rather than emotion alone. – ScienceDaily
  
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• Layoffs At UK Newspaper The Telegraph As Owner Aims To Make It “AI-Powered Business”

  27-10-2026 18:04 via ArtsJournal
  “Staff were told the title would rely increasingly on technology, data and AI to ‘reinvent the reader experience’. Newsroom insiders said they expected as many as 100 people to lose their jobs.” The move comes four months after The Telegraph was acquired by German media conglomerate Axel Springer. – The Guardian
  
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• Soprano Martina Arroyo, 90

  27-10-2026 17:44 via ArtsJournal
  Arroyo, who has died aged 90, was one of the generation of black American opera singers – others were Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry – who in their early careers faced institutionalised racial prejudice before achieving international recognition. – The Guardian
  
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• The Elvis Estate Sues Anthropic For Copyright Violation

  27-10-2026 17:26 via ArtsJournal
  “The Elvis plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before,” the lawsuit said. – The New York Times
  
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• Why Has The Bayeux Tapestry Become A Pop Culture Hit?

  27-10-2026 17:15 via ArtsJournal
  In the first hour that the second round of tickets to view the tapestry were available last Wednesday, payments from Monzo cardholders to the British Museum reached £14,100 and were 48 times that of a normal Wednesday morning. More than half (55%) of those buyers were aged under 35. – The Guardian
  
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• A Civil War Inside Netflix

  27-10-2026 17:02 via ArtsJournal
  “Increasingly, tensions have flared between the L.A.-based executives dedicated to movies and TV shows and its engineers and technologists in Silicon Valley. Internal disputes have erupted over how best to expand the business and promote content on the platform to boost audience engagement.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• We’re Enhancing Real Life as a Cinematic Experience

  27-10-2026 16:44 via ArtsJournal
  The result is that cinematic, as a descriptor, now connotes not a break from regular life but an enhancement of it. – The Atlantic
  
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• Sotheby’s Dinosaur ‘Jodi’ Sells for $47.3 M., More Than Five Times Its High Estimate

  27-10-2026 16:38 via ARTnews.com
  
  The dinosaur market has produced another monster sale.“Jodi,” a 67-million-year-old Nanotyrannus skeleton, sold Tuesday at Sotheby’s New York for $47.3 million, including fees, more than five times its $9 million high estimate. The skeleton hammered at $40.5 million, making it one of the most expensive dinosaur fossils ever sold at auction.The result comes just three months after Sotheby’s sold “Gus,” a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, for a record $50.1 million. That July sale, which car
  
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• Critics Pan Elon Musk’s AI Version Of “The Odyssey”

  27-10-2026 16:29 via ArtsJournal
  Xavier Collins, the co-founder of Wonder Studios, said the first episode was made in less than two weeks with a creative team of three, including the US-based director Dev Walker. It is understood to have cost tens of thousands of dollars.  – The Guardian
  
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• Ursula von Rydingsvard, Sculptor of Gigantic Cedar Forms, Dies at 84

  27-10-2026 16:24 via ARTnews.com
  
  Ursula von Rydingsvard, a sculptor who responded to the austerity of Minimalism with monumental cedar sculptures that had a distinctly human touch, died in New York on Tuesday following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 84, according to the New York Times.Frequently using 4×4 cedar beams, von Rydingsvard crafted towering forms that appear to undulate and shift. Made of organic material, they at times even looked as though they were alive, spinning through the air like mysterious anim
  
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• Why Does Music Feel So Fake Right Now?

  27-10-2026 16:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Is it real?” That’s the most pressing question in music right now, and it’s one that feels impossible to adequately answer, in almost any context. Mainstream pop, seemingly falling out of fashion though it still fills stadiums and streaming playlists, is riddled with stories of chicanery and poison artifice. – NPR
  
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• In a New Video, Mayor Mamdani Touts the Met Museum as an Early Voting Site

  27-10-2026 16:06 via ARTnews.com
  
  Ahead of a hotly contested group of midterm elections that include a heated gubernatorial race for New York State, New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani shared a new video on social media encouraging voters to vote early—with a twist.“Only in New York City can you vote in places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Mamdani says as he walks through the recently refurbished Rockefeller Wing, home to its holdings of art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.“I just voted here on the fi
  
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• Meet ABT’s Youngest-Ever Choreographer

  27-10-2026 16:01 via ArtsJournal
  Brady Farrar, now 21, is still recognized by some fans from his six-week appearance on Dance Moms when he was 14. He entered ABT as an apprentice in 2024 and joined the corps last year but began choreographing at age 15. His Trio Élégiaque, commissioned by ABT, debuts this week. – The New York Times
  
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• Fort Worth Symphony CEO Keith Cerny To Depart In January

  27-10-2026 15:33 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Cerny, who has led the orchestra for eight years, will depart after a tenure that included the hiring of Music Director Robert Spano, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic without cutting musicians’ and staff members’ pay or benefits, and a major push to expand the orchestra’s board and donor base.” – CultureMap Fort Worth
  
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• Former Stedelijk Museum Director Rudi Fuchs Has Died at 84, V&A Plans Cuts to Academy Program, 100 Years of Marisa Merz, and More: Morning Links for October 27, 2026

  27-10-2026 15:07 via ARTnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good morning!
  Acclaimed art historian and former director of the Stedelijk Museum, Rudi Fuchs has died at 84.The Victoria and Albert Museum is planning to downsize its adult-learning program, the V&A Academy, amid broader threats of staff cuts.A recently attributed 16th-century painting by Giorgio Vasari, Transport of Christ to the Tomb,will be put up for sale tomorrow in Milan.The Headlin
  
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• Tatiana Trouvé’s Art Is All About Getting Lost and Found and Lost Again

  27-10-2026 15:06 via ARTnews.com
  
  “I spend my time making maps,” Tatiana Trouvé told me as we ambled through her first exhibition with Brussels-based gallery Xavier Hufkens. Map-making is a rather curious obsession for Trouvé to have, given how keenly she wants to experience the feeling of being lost and “disoriented,” she explained.Contradictions like these are a hallmark across the artist’s oeuvre. Objects aren’t quite what they appear to be. Installations blur the line between archival documentation and fiction.
  
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• Shakespeare’s Globe Artistic Director Michelle Terry To Step Down Late Next Year

  27-10-2026 15:05 via ArtsJournal
  
  “During her (decade) in the role, more than 2,000 actors will have worked with the organisation across 77 productions, which are expected to have been seen by more than 2.3 million people from over 190 countries by the end of her tenure.” – WhatsOnStage (UK)
  
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• Gagosian to Sell Works from Mr. Chow’s Art Collection, Including Paintings by Warhol, Basquiat, Hockney, and More

  27-10-2026 15:00 via ARTnews.com
  
  Larry Gagosian has spent decades entertaining artists, collectors, and assorted celebrities at Mr. Chow. Now he’s returning the favor, helping his longtime friend Michael Chow sell a selection of artworks that have decorated the restaurateur’s famous dining rooms for years.The gallery will present “Friends and Legends: The Collection of Michael Chow,” an exhibition of 11 works from Chow’s collection, including portraits of the restaurateur by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, David Ho
  
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• A Women’s HBCU Will Sell a Record-Smashing Aaron Douglas Painting of Harriet Tubman to Support Women’s Health Programs

  27-10-2026 15:00 via ARTnews.com
  
  A monumental painting by a leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance, showing a legendary figure from the struggle for African American liberation, will come to auction at Sotheby’s New York next month. Aaron Douglas’s painting Harriet Tubman (1931) is expected to sell for between $2.5 million–$3.5 million, the highest estimate ever placed on a work by Douglas. The painting will go to the block as part of the house’s marquee modern art auction on November 18. The first example by the arti
  
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• Perot Museum Of Nature And Science Plans $185 Million Expansion

  27-10-2026 14:36 via ArtsJournal
  “Plans include a five-story parking garage, a new arrival pavilion, a dedicated area for school bus drop-offs, a pollinator garden and a paleontology garden. This will double the amount of square footage that the museum has dedicated to exhibits, but now outside the building.” – KERA (Dallas)
  
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• Center Theatre Group Partners With YMCA To Bring Theater All Over Los Angeles

  27-10-2026 14:04 via ArtsJournal
  The program, called “Every Age, Every Stage,” will include free workshops led by theater professionals at local Y branches, mentorship in stagecraft, design and production for young adult members, and free tickets to select mainstage performances. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• Staffers At V&A Museums In London Suspend Strike Plans

  27-10-2026 13:32 via ArtsJournal
  “The strike was suspended on Monday pending last-minute talks with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, after the V&A management made an improved offer.” – The Guardian
  
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• Hillary Clinton Visits Yayoi Kusama Sculptures on Naoshima Island Ahead of 37th Praemium Imperiale Awards Ceremony

  27-10-2026 13:08 via ARTnews.com
  
  As the US midterm elections loom closer, former First Lady Hillary Clinton is turning to art for peace of mind. She is in Japan for the 37th Praemium Imperiale awards ceremony taking place on Wednesday at Meiji Kinenkan in Tokyo.Clinton serves as US advisor to the prestigious global arts prize and on Monday posted photos on Instagram from a visit to Naoshima, one of Japan’s most well-known art islands. She posed with two of Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkin sculptures and observed that “in a sometime
  
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• When the People Who Deliver the Mission Start to Feel Like the Mission

  27-10-2026 13:00 via ArtsJournal
  This one is hard to write.
  Over dinner a while back, a colleague I affectionately call my “sister from another mother” and I kept circling a pattern that is difficult to name without sounding ungenerous. We kept starting sentences and abandoning them, because every version seemed to insult people we both admire. But the pattern is real, it is showing up in some of the best orchestras and opera companies in the country right now, and I think it explains why so many of this fall’s labor figh
  
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• Walter Koenig, Who Played Chekov On The Original “Star Trek,” Has Died At 90

  27-10-2026 13:00 via ArtsJournal
  “The son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Mr. Koenig was a journeyman on stage and TV who developed a specialty in ethnic parts. He was a Swedish businessman in the sitcom Gidget and a French resistance fighter on the drama series Jericho … before he joined Star Trek in 1967.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• Art Basel Qatar Returns for Second Edition With 82 Galleries Under Artistic Direction of Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Aims to ‘Deepen Collector Relationships’

  27-10-2026 12:00 via ARTnews.com
  
  Art Basel Qatar is returning for its sophomore edition from January 28 to 30 to three venues in Msheireb Downtown Doha: Barahat Msheireb, M7, and Doha Design District. The fair features 82 galleries from 37 countries, with 50 percent of the artists hailing from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, while more than a third of the participating galleries operate within these regions.The fair has teamed with Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), QC+, and Visit Qatar as official partners to “de
  
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• American History, the American Arts, and the Uses of Historical Fiction

  27-10-2026 03:16 via ArtsJournal
  
  — “Historical fiction” and “History” span an unbroken continuum
  Quite suddenly, the writing and teaching of American History are an
  
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• Vice President for Advancement, Aspen Music Festival and School

  27-10-2026 00:48 via ArtsJournal
  Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) welcomes applications and nominations for the position of Vice President for Advancement.About Aspen Music Festival and Schoolhttp://www.aspenmusicfestival.comThe Aspen Music Festival and School is widely recognized to be among the finest classical music centers for performance and education both nationally and internationally. Presenting more than 300 musical events during its eight-week summer season, AMFS draws leading classical musicians from across th
  
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