Arts news

• Edvard Munch gets novel treatment from Karl Ove Knausgård

  05-05-2017 23:00
  In his debut as a curator, the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgrdwho penned the six-volume autobiographical series Min Kamp (My Struggle)has collaborated with Kari Brandtzg, a curator of the Munch Museum in Oslo, to organise an exhibition of rarely seen works by Munch from the museums collection. Over the past years, the two worked through more than 1,000 objects and chose around 140 of them, including some of Munchs very few and fragile sculptures, Brandtzg says. The exhibition, titled Toward
  
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• Guggenheim and Brooklyn Museum Unions Ratify New Contracts, Averting Strikes

  02-10-2026 21:48 via artnews.com
  
  Unionized staff at four of New York’s prominent cultural institutions—the Brooklyn Museum, Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the American Folk Art Museum, and (AFAM)—have ratified new contracts, UAW Local 2110 announced today. The Brooklyn Museum and AFAM finalized four-year contracts this week, while the Guggenheim and Jewish Museum unions ratified their agreements in September.ARTnews has contacted the museums for comment.The Brooklyn Museum’s second contract gu
  
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• Swiss Government to Fund Research into Holdings of Cultural Artifacts

  02-10-2026 21:43 via artnews.com
  
  The Swiss government will provide $2.4 million in funding for research into the provenance of objects in its museums and collections, the Swiss Federal Office of Culture announced earlier this week. Funding for 26 projects from 2027–2028 was awarded following a public call for proposals.A core focus will be on items acquired by Swiss institutions in colonial, archaeological, and Nazi-era contexts. The winning projects range from initiatives involving several museums to collaborations with
  
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• British Museum Refunds Bayeux Tapestry Visitors After Closing Early for Reception Attended by Princess Anne

  02-10-2026 21:00 via artnews.com
  
  September has been a busy month for the British Museum with the opening of the sold out Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, which has attracted swarms of crowds, as well as complaints from visitors and lawsuits, too. Now, the museum now trying to rectify those missteps.On Wednesday, the museum turned away visitors halfway through the day to get ready for a gala dinner it was hosting with its long-term corporate sponsor Samsung to celebrate the “Korea” exhibition that opened on Thursday. The
  
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• Ingrid Wiener, Viennese Actionist Artist and Collaborator of Valie Export and Dieter Roth, Dies at 83

  02-10-2026 20:53 via artnews.com
  
  Viennese Actionist artist Ingrid Wiener died at the age of 83, just shy of her 84th birthday, Charim Gallery announced in an Instagram post. The gallery did not state a cause of death. For decades, Wiener shaped the Austrian art scene with her combined textile, photography, painting, and collage works, as well as through notable collaborations with the likes of Valie Export and Dieter Roth.Wiener’s tapestries integrate objects and fragments of her everyday life, among them, cutting boards,
  
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• Lucas Museum Will Erect Permanent Fences Around its Plaza, Undercutting its Rhetoric of Accessibility

  02-10-2026 20:33 via artnews.com
  
  An expansive public plaza surrounding Los Angeles’s recently opened Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be permanently fenced off, reports the Los Angeles Times. The plaza around the museum, founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, “was always meant to be a generous civic space,” the Times notes, adding that architect Ma Yansong called it “gateway” between the museum and the city.This past weekend, the first days the museum was open to the publi
  
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• Insufficient Public Funding Identified as Biggest Threat to Global Heritage Sites, New World Monuments Fund Study Finds

  02-10-2026 20:29 via artnews.com
  
  In a new study released by the World Monuments Fund (WMF) this week, the nonprofit found that insufficient public funding is the primary threat to heritage sites around the world. It continues to surpass climate hazards and expertise gaps.The research was conducted as part of the organization’s larger nomination process for its forthcoming 2027 World Monuments Watch list, slated to be announced in February. Since 1996, WMF has published the list every two years in an effort to address fund
  
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• As New York City Doubles Grants for Individual Artists to $10,000, Cultural Affairs Commissioner Diya Vij Discusses Vision for City Agency

  02-10-2026 20:00 via artnews.com
  
  New York will increase its direct support to artists, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Cultural Affairs commissioner Diya Vij announced today. Rising from $5,000 to up to $10,000, the increase doubles the funds given to artists and represents the first change in this funding stream in some 20 years.The funding comes from the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) and is distributed to each borough’s arts councils, which act as regrant partners and dole out grants to individual artists annuall
  
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• Buddhas and Dinosaur Bones Among Dozens of Smuggled Artifacts Repatriated to China

  02-10-2026 18:51 via artnews.com
  
  In advance of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to the White House last month, the United States quietly repatriated 58 cultural objects and artifacts to China in a ceremony that took place at the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. Homeland Security Investigations (HIS), a unit that is part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), announced the news on Wednesday. The following day, six additional bronze objects were also returned to China by the Manhattan District At
  
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• How Feral Dogs Marshaled a Defense Against Nuclear Weapons, and Other Animal Stories Erin Johnson’s Films Tell

  02-10-2026 16:16 via artnews.com
  
  Who was the first person to domesticate dogs, to dare to bring a wolf into their cave and tame it? “They could grow up to eat your children,” reminds a mustachioed man posing these and other canine questions in Erin Johnson’s two-channel film Heavy Water (2018).Then, the film cuts to show our protagonist’s hand hovering in front of a slide projector displaying a plot of cheap land in South Carolina where nuclear weapons were developed during the Cold War. You might start
  
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• After Selling Napoleon Memorabilia, Sotheby’s Turns to His Enemy, Horatio Nelson, for $8 M. Auction

  02-10-2026 16:00 via artnews.com
  
  After selling Napoleon Bonaparte’s worn stockings and other “deeply personal relics that reflected the inner world” of the French emperor last year, Sotheby’s is now laying bare the personal life of his great adversary, Admiral Horatio Nelson, on the auction block.The house will offer 415 letters, documents, and manuscripts connected to Nelson in a single-lot, sealed-bid sale with a high estimate of £6 million ($8 million). They include personal letters to his mistr
  
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• Mural of ‘Afrocentric’ Nefertiti Painted Over in Cairo Following Backlash, UK Collectors ‘Poised to Move’ if Assets Taxed, and More: Morning Links for October 2, 2026

  02-10-2026 15:13 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good morning!
  Cairo removed a mural of Pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Neferti following criticism that their skin looked too dark.UK dealers say local art collectors have “got their fingers poised to move on October 29” if the government announces a rise in capital gains tax rates.Nine Swiss museums are teaming up to research the provenance of over 6,300 objects from Cameroon.The He
  
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• After 30 Years, Fondation Beyeler Enters Its Next Chapter With a $144.9 M. Peter Zumthor–Designed Expansion

  02-10-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland is marking its transition from youth to adulthood after nearly three decades—or in astrological speak, it’s in Saturn return—with a $144.9 million expansion and a cosmologically minded exhibition to inaugurate the space.To mark the occasion, the museum tapped Basel-born architect Peter Zumthor, who recently completed a new building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to design three new structures: a 16,000-square-foot gallery building
  
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• Their architect knew they were collectors — so he took a risk

  02-10-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  Knocking out rooms and creating double-height spaces seemed a gamble in a bijou London home, but it put the art and design centre stage
  
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• Sam Taylor-Johnson talks taste

  02-10-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  The artist on handstands, Bernini and committing to the trench coat
  
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• George Lucas’s $1bn Museum of Narrative Art uses the force of storytelling

  02-10-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  The filmmaker’s vast Los Angeles edifice contains a fascinatingly eccentric mix of painting, illustration, film and fandom
  
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• After Resignation of Advisory Council, American Institute of Architects Weigh in on Trump’s Arch

  01-10-2026 22:04 via artnews.com
  
  On September 29, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) sent a letter to Jaime Loichinger, director of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), a federal agency responsible for preserving historic properties and sites in the United States, denouncing the council’s effective resignation from the controversial project. The letter is critical of ACHP’s September 24 decision to bypass Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act ending the Council’s involv
  
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• Free Entry to UK National Museums Will Continue, Government Says

  01-10-2026 21:57 via artnews.com
  
  On Monday, the UK government poured cold water on speculation that overseas visitors could soon be forced to pay entry fees to the country’s national museums. Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS), confirmed that institutions including the British Museum, Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, and National Museums Liverpool will continue to offer free admission. Nandy made the announcement at an event at Tate Liverpool organized by Art Fund and the C
  
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• A Late Baroque Master’s Lost Marble Turns Up in a UK Salvage Yard

  01-10-2026 21:09 via artnews.com
  
  Spotted at a Wiltshire reclamation yard and purchased for £300 ($395), a marble sculpture by Late Baroque master Pietro Bracci (1700–1773) is expected to bring between £ 5,000 and £10,000 ($6,600–$13,200) at auction. Research undertaken by a specialist at U.K. auction house Woolley & Wallis has identified the roughly two-foot-tall marble as the only surviving maquette for Bracci’s 1736 bronze statue of Pope Clement XII.The life-sized bronze once stood in t
  
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• A Late Baroque Master’s Lost Marble Turns Up in a U.K. Salvage Yard

  01-10-2026 21:09 via artnews.com
  
  Spotted at a Wiltshire reclamation yard and purchased for £300 ($395), a marble sculpture by Late Baroque master Pietro Bracci (1700–1773) is expected to bring between £ 5,000 and £10,000 ($6,600–$13,200) at auction. Research undertaken by a specialist at U.K. auction house Woolley & Wallis has identified the roughly two-foot-tall marble as the only surviving maquette for Bracci’s 1736 bronze statue of Pope Clement XII.The life-sized bronze once stood in t
  
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• Kavi Gupta Gallery Hit With Restraining Order Amid $2 M. Art Dispute

  01-10-2026 21:04 via artnews.com
  
  A New York judge has temporarily barred Chicago dealer Kavi Gupta and his gallery from selling or marketing a collection of artworks at the center of an increasingly messy dispute with a company that gave the struggling gallery more than $2 million in cash last year.The deal at the heart of the case is an unusual one, but its purpose was fairly straightforward.In May 2025, a company called Longcraft LLC paid Kavi Gupta Gallery $2.05 million for roughly 150 artworks. Rather than take possession o
  
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• How Haiku Became Hungarian

  01-10-2026 21:03 via asymptotejournal.com
  
  A foreign poetic form becomes local not when writers reproduce its original conventions faithfully, but when they discover what the form can do in a new language. In Hungary, Japanese short poetry encountered a literary environment already fluent in irony, epigrammatic compression, linguistic play, and knowing when to leave things out. – Asymptote
  
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• Sotheby’s To Sell Artworks from Collection of Bankrupt Hedge Funder George Allen Weiss

  01-10-2026 20:42 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s will offer a dozen works from the holdings of Miami hedge funder and art collector George Allen Weiss in the wake of his firm, Weiss, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. The proceeds will go to satisfy a $123 million debt to Bank of America that was secured by his artwork, reports Bloomberg. The auctioneer will sell 16 of Weiss’s works in the house’s marquee November sales, said Weiss’s lawyer, Paul Battista, in a court hearing on Wednesday, per Bloomber
  
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• Staying Human In The Age Of AI

  01-10-2026 20:31 via justingarydesign.substack.com
  
  The first step to building a better future is to acknowledge the reality of today. AI is not going away, and it is immensely capable across a wide range of domains. According to a recent Stanford study, 88% of organizations are using AI and the number is growing. – Think Like a Game Designer
  
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• The Real Achievement Of Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury”

  01-10-2026 20:04 via newrepublic.com
  
  “(It) hasn’t simply been individual story lines, or how they jived with the historical reality in which we read them, but also the depth and breadth of human experience they charted. … Trudeau held the powerful to account, (yet) kept his attention on everyday people our politicians and (celebrities) often neglected.” – The New Republic
  
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• The Conservatives’ Case For Mamdani’s Opera Ticket Giveaway (“Why Didn’t We Think Of It?”)

  01-10-2026 19:44 via unherd.com
  
  Realistically, Mamdani and his colleagues may convert a few thousand New Yorkers who would otherwise never have set foot in the Met. Even so, they will have achieved more than armies of arts administrators and music teachers, not to mention the conservative guardians of culture who deplore musical wokery. – Unherd
  
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• Why Coltrane Still Matters

  01-10-2026 19:31 via news.harvard.edu
  
  First and foremost, to him, the relationship between music and communicating with the divine was ultimately the most important thing. To him, music and doing it with excellence, was about communing with the divine, and his ultimate expression of that that everybody cites is, of course, the album “A Love Supreme.” – The Harvard Gazette
  
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• Ben Affleck Says He Used AI Extensively In His New Movie

  01-10-2026 19:15 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  “I used [AI] for lots of things in that movie. I’m a little bit hesitant to point out what they are — or even talk about it — because in my business, we’re trying to foster the illusion of reality, right?” – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Why Reddit Is Shutting Down Its RSS Feeds

  01-10-2026 19:01 via techcrunch.com
  
  In a word (well, two words), AI bots. – TechCrunch
  
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• Atlanta Symphony’s Nathalie Stutzmann On Working With Orchestras

  01-10-2026 18:44 via artsatl.org
  
  “I think musicians are artisanal people. Every morning we have to try to do better. We have to start again — to practice. Why do we practice every day? Why do we question every day a score? Why do we reread a score that we have known for 40 years?” – ArtsATL
  
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