Arts news

• Bard College Investigating Explosive Epstein Email

  23-10-2026 17:44 via ArtsJournal
  Someone writing from the Bard president’s email address asks Mr. Epstein whether a young woman was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.” The contention over the email is the latest, and perhaps most intense, dispute over the former Bard president’s ties to Mr. Epstein. – The New York Times
  
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• Jogen Chowdhury, ‘Towering Pillar’ of Indian Modern Art, Has Died at 87

  26-10-2026 23:04 via ARTnews.com
  
  Jogen Chowdhury, one India’s leading modern painters whose figurative oeuvre foregrounded humanity, died at a hospital in Kolkata on October 25. He was 87. Indian media reports that Chowdhury had been suffering from a rare blood cancer for more than a year.Condolences have poured in on social media in the wake of his death. Writing on X, West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari praised Chowdhury as a “a towering pillar of our cultural world,” whose artistic legacy would be “immortal t
  
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• Two Top Executives Leave National Gallery of Singapore Amid Staff Shakeup

  26-10-2026 22:50 via ARTnews.com
  
  Following the news last month that Chng Hak-Peng is taking over Eugene Tan’s role as CEO of the National Gallery of Singapore, English-language newspaper The Straits Times reports that two other top staffers are also leaving the museum. Chief curator Patrick Flores and assistant chief executive Chris Lee will leave in December, coinciding with Tan’s departure.Chng told The Straits Times that the National Gallery’s programming would continue as planned but did not confirm any details about
  
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• Bill Koch to Sell More Than $40 M. in Art at Christie’s, Led by Monet and Cezanne Paintings

  26-10-2026 22:18 via ARTnews.com
  
  Billionaire collector William “Bill” Koch is ready to sell more of his art. After parting ways with $84 million worth of American art at Christie’s in January, he’s putting another group of paintings up for sale this November, including works by Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne that could fetch as much as $18 million apiece.Christie’s said the collection, which also includes works by Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Diego Rivera, is expected to bring more than $40 million duri
  
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• V&A Union Suspend Planned Strikes after Management Delivers New Offers

  26-10-2026 21:29 via ARTnews.com
  
  A planned strike across all four Victoria and Albert Museum sites has been suspended as unionized staff return to the negotiating table following a new offer from management.Members of Prospect and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union had voted to strike on October 29 and 30 amid a dispute over wages and working conditions. The dispute includes allegations that workers at the museum’s newest location, V&A East Storehouse, had fainted due to insufficient hydration breaks. The stri
  
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• Friedel Dzubas Dreamed of Showing His Paintings in a Church—Now He Has His Wish

  26-10-2026 21:23 via ARTnews.com
  
  Friedel Dzubas spent most of his career making enormous, vibrant Color Field–esque abstract paintings. But for a brief stint in the early 1960s, he abandoned color altogether. He became so taken with the outcome of that period—a series of soft yet stark black-and-white paintings—that he dreamed of finding a Baroque chapel somewhere in Europe and covering its walls with them.He never got his chapel. But more than 30 years after his death, the German-born painter has come surprisingly close.
  
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• Milwaukee Art Museum Receives $10 M. Gift to Preserve Santiago Calatrava–Designed Building

  26-10-2026 21:22 via ARTnews.com
  
  Members of the Quadracci family have pledged $10 million to establish the Quadracci Pavilion Preservation Endowment Fund, which will support the long-term care and maintenance of one of the museum’s buildings.Named after donors Betty and Harry Quadracci, who provided $10 million in the 1990s to build it, the Quadracci Pavilion opened in 2001 and is the first building in the United States by Spanish Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava. Housing an exhibition space, reception hall, auditorium, and
  
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• Scientists Say They’ve Rediscovered How the Romans Made the British Museum’s Color-Shifting Lycurgus Cup

  26-10-2026 21:19 via ARTnews.com
  
  Solving a mystery that has puzzled experts for centuries, scientists at the University of Sheffield in England have recreated the color-changing properties of the British Museum’s storied 1,600-year-old Lycurgus Cup, which is green in typical lighting but turns red when lit from behind.“To me, it’s magic,” Lisa Hollands, a technician who worked on project, told the Guardian. She added that “people have tried it before with limited success” and called the undertaking a “labor of lov
  
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• ‘Desiring Machines’ Dares Us to Imagine a Healthy Relationship with Technology

  26-10-2026 20:30 via ARTnews.com
  
  Editor’s note: This story is an edition of Link Rot, a column by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei that explores the intersections of art, technology, and the internet. The column will appear every other Monday.A classic illustration of a world that has fallen to technology first appeared on Facebook in the 2010s and has been circulating online ever since. You likely know it: Rows of bent heads gazing at their phone screens; each face replaced by a ray of light sucked towards the screen. By 2026, the
  
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• Whitney Museum Hires Nolan Jimbo as Associate Curator

  26-10-2026 20:22 via ARTnews.com
  
  The Whitney Museum in New York has hired Nolan Jimbo as the Arnhold Associate Curator, a role most recently held by Rujeko Hockley. He will start in the role on November 16.Jimbo is currently an assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where he started in 2021 as a curatorial fellow. During his tenure at the MCA Chicago, he has organized solo exhibitions for Gregory Bae, which was on view in 2022, the year after the artist’s death; Kenzi Shiokava, the artist’s first inst
  
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• R.M. Schindler’s Modernist Beach House, Built for a California Health Nut, Hits the Market for a Breezy $18.8 Million

  26-10-2026 19:27 via ARTnews.com
  
  A century ago, California health fanatic Philip Lovell had some unusual ideas about how people ought to live. He believed in vegetarianism, plenty of exercise, fresh air, and nude sunbathing. All good there. He also thought sleeping outdoors was good for you, which is why, when he commissioned architect Rudolph Schindler to build a beach house in Newport Beach in 1926, he insisted on open-air sleeping porches instead of bedrooms.That particular experiment lasted about two years. It turns out the
  
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• Italian Carabinieri Are Training Professionals Across Africa to Stop Antiquities Trafficking

  26-10-2026 18:05 via ARTnews.com
  
  Earlier this month, Italy’s National School of Heritage and Cultural Activities (SNPAC) and the École du Patrimoine Africain (EPA) in Porto-Novo, Benin, launched a training course on combatting the illegal trafficking of antiquities. Launched on October 5, the course is the first of its kind, the result of a three-year agreement between the SNPAC and the EPA for training and research in the management of cultural heritage and museums. Professionals from Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Moroc
  
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• Indian Artist Jogen Chowdhury Has Died, $80 M. Klimt Heads to Christie’s, and More: Morning Links for October 26, 2026

  26-10-2026 14:35 via ARTnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good morning!
  A major work by Gustav Klimt will go under the hammer at Christie’s New York next month with a price tag of $60 to $80 million.Celebrated Indian artist Jogen Chowdhury died in Kolkata on October 25 at 87.The National Gallery Singapore’s chief curator Patrick Flores and assistant chief executiveChris Lee, are the latest to depart the institution in December amid a staff shake-
  
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• Former Presidents Obama, Clinton Mock Trump’s White House Interiors With Comparisons to ‘Saddam Hussein’ and ‘Liberace’s Bathroom’

  26-10-2026 14:14 via ARTnews.com
  
  Ahead of the US midterm elections on November 3, all eyes are on the White House, specifically its interiors.After White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino posted a video on X of the construction of President Donald Trump’s ballroom on Friday, former President Barack Obama told a crowd at an Ohio rally on Saturday gave his opinion on the video. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovation. He should be on HGTV,” Obama said, adding that Trump is bui
  
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• Sotheby’s Deepens Abu Dhabi Relationship With Inaugural Fine Art Auction in December

  26-10-2026 14:08 via ARTnews.com
  
  As the art market in the Middle East heats up with the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi taking place next month, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opening in December, and Art Basel Qatar expected to return for its second edition in 2027, Sotheby’s is deepening its activity in the region with the launch of the house’s first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi on December 10, a day before the Guggenheim opening.Part of Sotheby’s Collectors’ Week, which debuted last year, the upcoming second edition returns wi
  
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• An Abbey in France Discovered Previously Unknown Wall Sketches by Odilon Redon

  26-10-2026 13:45 via ARTnews.com
  
  For more than a century, a suite of murals by Symbolist painter Odilon Redon have decorated the library of the Abbaye de Fontfroide, an 11th-century former monastery in the South of France. When they were removed earlier this year for the first time since their installation to be loaned for a high-profile exhibition, a set of test drawings, until then unknown, by Redon were uncovered.“It was a great surprise—nobody imagined the existence of these sketches,” Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériè
  
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• How To Write About People, And Place, Beyond War

  26-10-2026 13:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Turning to fiction allowed for stories that would otherwise have disappeared into the chest of time, to live on, and slowly but surely they are educating, bringing forth that we all share this place together. The 24-hour news cycle leaves little room for reflection or deeper understanding.” – LitHub
  
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• Riots brought Art Basel Paris to a close — is it a sign of things to come?

  26-10-2026 13:00 via Visual Arts
  Gallerists are bracing themselves for operating in a world of escalating tensions — and collectors are increasingly attuned to the risks
  
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• Bristol Is Booming With New Spaces For Black Music

  26-10-2026 13:00 via ArtsJournal
  
  “We don’t need to pretend to be nobody else, we’re just us. It just took a while to get there.” – BBC
  
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• Helping ‘Benjamin Button’ Grow Up, Into A Musical

  26-10-2026 12:45 via ArtsJournal
  “In rehearsals, they tightened the structure, fine-tuned the music and lyrics, tamping down the sentimentality. Still, the show is plenty sentimental.” – The New York Times
  
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• What Makes For A Good Scary Story?

  26-10-2026 12:30 via ArtsJournal
  
  The end, says Stephen Graham Jones.”The story is running along the top of a flat mesa, and it’s nighttime and 95% of it is even-footing. But then at the very end, you jump off into the night, into the darkness, and you trust.” – NPR
  
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• The Owners Of Elvis’s Music Catalogue Are Suing Anthropic

  26-10-2026 12:15 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,” according to the lawsuit. – The New York Times
  
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• It’s Spooky Season, And Time To Acknowledge The Most Influential American Writer Ever

  26-10-2026 12:00 via ArtsJournal
  Edgar Allan Poe “seems in deliberate, even flagrant, contrast with what were once regarded as the great themes of American literature: the freedom of self-reinvention promised by a new society and its frontier, exploration, rugged individualism, and the struggle to conquer nature.” – Slate
  
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• Christie’s Brings a Blockbuster Klimt Landscape to Auction, Tagged at $80 M. and Guaranteed to Sell

  26-10-2026 11:00 via ARTnews.com
  
  A major work by a market titan will go under the hammer at Christie’s New York next moth. Gustav Klimt’s landscape Litzlbergkeller (1915–1916) is estimated at $60–80 million, which, if achieved, would put it among the Austrian artist’s top prices at public sale. The piece is guaranteed to sell, the house confirmed to ARTnews. It has been in the same private collection for nearly three decades; the seller is unnamed. It goes to auction at the house’s marquee November 17 evening sale o
  
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• 50 Artworks by Artists Who Lived and Worked in India Gifted to the Tate

  26-10-2026 09:00 via ARTnews.com
  
  50 artworks from the collection of Charles Greig, a British academic and expert in Indian art, have been donated to the Tate. The collection includes oil paintings, watercolors and miniatures by artists who lived and worked in India during the 18th and 19th centuries.The museum described the gift as an “entirely philanthropic act,” with Greig donating the works outright and without the use of tax incentives. Greig built the collection over four decades and features artists such as Sita Ram a
  
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• Six makers ‘challenging what’s possible’ at Design Doha

  26-10-2026 06:00 via Visual Arts
  Not just a pretty vase: designers from Morocco, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine among others bring new energy, symbolism and material heritage into contemporary living
  
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• Our Playlists Are Filled With ‘Old’ Music

  25-10-2026 21:00 via ArtsJournal
  
  Is nostalgia – and not just A.I. – ruining popular music right now, when more than 100,000 songs are released to streamers every single day? – BBC
  
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• Noise Laws, Drugs, And Cellphones Are Harming Dance Clubs In Britain

  25-10-2026 20:30 via ArtsJournal
  Or so lovers of (ridiculously) loud dance music claim. “At Gaffe, a DIY space in northeast London, a sign shows two arrows pointing in different directions. One says ‘Dancing,’ the other ‘Yapping.'” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• The Queer, Tattooed Colombian Author Who’s A National Book Award Finalist

  25-10-2026 20:00 via ArtsJournal
  
  Júlian Delgado Lopera: “‘Most of the catastrophic violence in our history can be traced back to a man who hasn’t allowed himself to feel tenderness,’ he affirms. … He’s referring to a kind of violence that goes beyond the long-running armed conflict.” – El País English
  
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• The Film Director Whose Impossible Class Struggle Movie Won At Venice

  25-10-2026 19:30 via ArtsJournal
  Lee Chang-Dong: “I constantly asked myself: am I worthy of telling this story? And if I am, how do I tell it? Do I stand close to the workers, or keep my distance?” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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