Arts news

• How an art work could literally save lives in Syria

  17-02-2017 13:13
  
  The Danish art collective SUPERFLEX will unveil today (17 February) a new installation called Hospital Equipment, which consists of functioning surgical equipment that will be shipped to a Syrian hospital once the exhibition is over. The collective describe the work as a ready-made upside down, since we not only take a ready-made object into an art context, but we bring it back into the world again.The surgeons table, surgical tools and mobile lamp that form the work at the Von Bartha gall
  
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• ‘The boy’s contented face, his red hair matching the pig’s – you couldn’t plan for it’: Kelli Radwanski’s best phone picture

  10-01-2026 12:00
  Remote photography didn’t dilute the intimacy of this blissful moment in the Nevada sunshineSara Weir’s five children had just woken up and were roaming their home in Nevada when this shot was taken. It was 7am and photographer Kelli Radwanski was after the morning light; Weir had another child on the way and had hired Radwanski to capture their family life. All the kids were feeling playful, ready to show off their talents, silly faces and prize possessions. As the eldest son wander
  
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• From Hamnet to Bridget Christie: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

  10-01-2026 07:00
  Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley play the Shakespeares in an emotional Maggie O’Farrell adaptation, while The Change creator returns to standupHamnet
  Out nowBring the tissues for this emotional Oscar hopeful which sees Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley star as none other than William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, whose son Hamnet died at the age of 11. It is based on the book by Maggie O’Farrell, and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) directs. Continue reading...
  
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• Recovered Picassos at Center of Art Theft Trial in Nice

  09-01-2026 23:08 via artnews.com
  Seven years after an undercover sting led police to a house packed with stolen art in the hills above Nice, the case has returned to court, with ten defendants now on trial over a cache that included several works by Pablo Picasso.The trial, which opened earlier this month in Nice, revisits a 2017 judicial police operation that recovered more than 20 stolen artworks, including at least seven works by Picasso, following a tip that major pieces were being quietly offered f
  
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• Delcy Morelos to Stage Major Public Art Commission at Barbican in London This Spring

  09-01-2026 22:23 via artnews.com
  As part of its upcoming spring program, the Barbican in London will stage a major commission by artist Delcy Morelos, her first in the United Kingdom.For the commission, on view May 15 to July 31, Morelos will construct her most ambitious sculptural installation to date. Measuring around 78 feet in circumference, the new work, to be sited in the Barbican’s outdoor sculpture courtyard, will take the form of an oval-shaped pavilion made of soil, clay, spices, and plant materials.Morelos&rsqu
  
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• 1,500-Year-Old Byzantine Monastery Discovered in Egypt                

  09-01-2026 22:20 via artnews.com
  The foundations of a building complex from the 5th–6th century CE were recently uncovered at Al-Qarya bi-Al-Duweir, an archaeological site in Sohag, a city along the Nile River in central Egypt. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities posted about the discovery on January 8 on X, noting that the mission was overseen by the Supreme Council of Antiquities.According to Ahram Online, Sherif Fathy, minister of tourism and antiquities, observed that the Byzantine-era residential complex “s
  
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• Columbia Museum of Art Opens Newly Configured Collection Galleries to Cap Year-Long Renovation

  09-01-2026 20:52 via artnews.com
  The Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina, is unveiling newly reconfigured collection galleries to cap its 75th anniversary and culminate a yearlong renovation. While the institution is currently hosting “Keith Haring: Radiant Vision”—a traveling exhibition that previously visited the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, and venues in Italy, Israel, and elsewhere—the museum will reopen its collection galleries followin
  
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• Belgian Dealer Paid $116,000 for Artwork Now Attributed to Peter Paul Rubens

  09-01-2026 20:27 via artnews.com
  Belgian art dealer Klaas Muller has identified a new study of a bearded man’s head by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, according to a lengthy report in the Dutch daily newspaper De Standaard.Muller bought the work, an oil on paper laid on panel that is now titled Bearded old man, looking down to his left (ca. 1609), at an auction three years ago from “lesser-known auction house in northern Europe,” declining to name it for fear of increased competition, he told the Guardian.Th
  
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• The Guardian view on living more creatively: a daily dose of art | Editorial

  09-01-2026 18:51
  It can make us healthier, happier and live longer. Engaging in culture should be encouraged like good diet and exerciseThe second Friday in January has been dubbed “Quitter’s Day”, when we are most likely to give up our new year resolutions. Instead of denying ourselves pleasures, suggests a new batch of books, a more successful route may be adding to them – nourishing our minds and souls by making creativity as much a daily habit as eating vegetables and exercising. Rath
  
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• Sandra Mujinga’s Shadowy Figures Hit the International Spotlight

  09-01-2026 18:17 via artnews.com
  About a decade ago, when Sandra Mujinga visited Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she relished her time people watching, as travelers are wont to do. But Mujinga was not exactly a foreigner—she was born in Goma, another Congolese city, and had returned to the country multiple times since leaving it as a child—and so her version of people watching entailed observing not just how locals acted but how they dressed.“I felt like there was this innate, un
  
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• London’s Natural History Museum Braces for Pokémon Pop-Up After Tickets Sell Out

  09-01-2026 18:09 via artnews.com
  The Natural History Museum in London is set to host a Pokémon pop-up shop later this month, an event that has already proved popular enough to sell out timed entry slots well ahead of its opening.According to Time Out London, the pop-up will run from January 26 through April 19 inside the museum’s Cranborne Boutique, following an extension prompted by demand. The collaboration, themed “Pokécology: An Illustrated Guide to Pokémon Ecology,” includes
  
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• Barnes Foundation’s New COO, Heritage Reports $2.2 Billion in Sales for 2025, and More: Industry Moves for January 9, 2026

  09-01-2026 17:36 via artnews.com
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.Happy Friday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week.Industry Moves
  Will Cary Promoted to EVP and COO of the Barnes Foundation: Cary will oversee new revenue initiatives, the Calder Gardens partnership, and a newly formed Brand department unifying commu
  
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• ‘Thoughtless and Malicious’: Trump Administration Withdraws from International Cultural Organizations, Saying They Are ‘Contrary to U.S. Interests’

  09-01-2026 17:20 via artnews.com
  While the world was dealing with horrific news about an ICE agent fatally shooting an American civilian in the streets of Minneapolis on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s administration was withdrawing the US from 66 international groups, conventions, and treaties, including 31 United Nations-affiliated organizations. Several of them are devoted to arts, culture, historic preservation, and freedom of expression.The withdrawal was announced in a presidential memorandum that stated that th
  
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• South Africa Cancels Gabrielle Goliath Gaza Artwork Planned for Venice Biennale Pavilion

  09-01-2026 17:03 via artnews.com
  South Africa selected a Gabrielle Goliath work about Gaza for its Venice Biennale pavilion, then rescinded the decision amid concerns that the work was “polarizing,” according to a report by the Daily Maverick, a South African publication.The decision to pull the pavilion was reportedly made by the culture ministry on January 2, just eight days before nations must finalize their Venice Biennale pavilions. In an unusual move, the South African Pavilion’s selection committee then
  
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• Did Leonardo da Vinci paint a nude Mona Lisa? I may have just solved this centuries-old mystery

  09-01-2026 16:43
  It is one of the most tantalising – and entertaining – puzzles in art, stretching from the Louvre to the Loire via, well, Norfolk. And our critic thinks he has just worked it outIncreased security after the recent heist has made the queues at the Louvre even slower, yet on this rainswept, very wintry morning, no one grumbles. After all, the Mona Lisa is waiting inside for all these tourists who have come from the world over. Leonardo da Vinci’s woman – swathed in dark clo
  
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• Mauritshuis Loaning ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ to Japan, US Withdrawing from International Arts and Cultural Heritage Groups: Morning Links for January 9, 2025

  09-01-2026 16:14 via artnews.com
  The HeadlinesEXTRAORDINARY LOAN. The Mauritshuis in The Hague revealed on Thursday that it will send its most famous painting, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (circa 1665), to Japan this summer, the Japan Times wrote. The work will be loaned to the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka while the Dutch museum temporarily closes from August 24 to September 20 for building alterations. The decision is surprising because the painting, one of just 37 works attributed to Vermeer, was e
  
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• Anonymous painting bought at auction on ‘hunch’ identified as two-in-one Rubens

  09-01-2026 14:53
  Study of man often featured in works by the Flemish master reveals hidden painting of woman beneath model’s beardIs it a bald elderly man with a big bushy beard and a wine-addled stare? Or a friendly young woman with flowing locks and a crown of braids?To Belgian art dealer Klaas Muller, an answer to that question mattered less than the fact that this particular take on the duck-rabbit optical illusion was painted by one Peter Paul Rubens. Continue reading...
  
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• Hawaiian headwear, Beuys’ bathtub and Nan Goldin’s photo diaries – the week in art

  09-01-2026 13:00
  Jewels of island life go on display, Beuys introduces heroism to washtime and Nan Goldin’s classic The Ballad of Sexual Dependency reveals itself – all in your weekly dispatchHawai‘i
  Some of the most spectacular masterpieces in the British Museum, including feathered war helmets and glaring gods collected by Captain Cook, make this exhibition created in collaboration with Hawaii community leaders and artists entrancing.• The British Museum, London, from 15 January to 25 Ma
  
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• Sotheby’s to Offer the Most Valuable Single-Owner Whiskey Collection Ever Sold

  09-01-2026 12:21 via artnews.com
  Sotheby’s is binning any notion of “dry January” by betting big on whisky at the end of this month. At its new Breuer Building HQ on January 24, the house will host its first-ever live, single-owner sale devoted entirely to American whisky.Called The Great American Whisky Collection, it will be the most valuable collection of its kind to hit the market, with a high estimate of $1.7 million. A total of 360 bottles will hit the auction block, spread across 320 lots.  The auc
  
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• Marie Goodenough obituary

  09-01-2026 11:49
  My mother, Marie Goodenough, who has died aged 90, was a prolific painter but primarily considered herself a sculptor, mainly working in wood but also using papier-mache, fibreglass and metal. She had an original and humorous outlook; the sculpture Boris Godunov, purchased by the Andrew Duncan Clinic in Edinburgh, was a play on words, and Newspaperman, made from copies of the Scotsman, was a tribute to the art critic Edward Gage and exhibited in the Royal Glasgow Institute.Born in York, Marie wa
  
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• A Show About French Theory Boils Big Ideas Down to Wall Decor

  09-01-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  There is a danger in trying to say everything and it is not that you might say nothing. It is that you might say worse than nothing: You might say something that you didn’t intend.“Echo Delay Reverb: American Art, Francophile Thought,” an ambitious show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, aims to trace the effect of 20th-century French writers on American art since the 1970s. Works from 60 artists are set alongside quotations by, photographs of, and book covers from Jean-Paul Sart
  
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• Sperone Westwater Dissolution Fight Raises Questions Over Governance and Artist Payments

  08-01-2026 23:29 via artnews.com
  Sperone Westwater’s closure has exposed a deeper legal and financial dispute than first suggested by the gallery’s sudden shutdown at the end of 2025. Newly filed court documents allege governance failures, disputed payments to artists, and years of internal deadlock at the 50-year-old New York firm.As Artnet News reported earlier this week, the gallery closed amid a legal battle between its two principals, Gian Enzo Sperone and Angela Westwater, who each control 50 percent of t
  
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• MSCHF’s Latest Project Could See a Two-Year-Old Cow Slaughtered

  08-01-2026 22:56 via artnews.com
  In about two months, the fate of a cow named Angus will be decided. At present, the outlook is grim: Angus is slated to be turned into roughly 1,200 hamburger patties and four leather handbags. But MSCHF—the art collective behind viral artworks ranging from Big Red Boots to a branded ATM publicly displaying users’ account balances—appears to be hoping that might still change in the next 64 days.Angus, who lives on a farm in upstate New York, is the subject of MSCHF’s ongo
  
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• MSCHF’s Latest Project Could See a Two-Year Cow Slaughtered

  08-01-2026 22:56 via artnews.com
  In about two months, the fate of a cow named Angus will be decided. At present, the outlook is grim: Angus is slated to be turned into roughly 1,200 hamburger patties and four leather handbags. But MSCHF—the art collective behind viral artworks ranging from Big Red Boots to a branded ATM publicly displaying users’ account balances—appears to be hoping that might still change in the next 64 days.Angus, who lives on a farm in upstate New York, is the subject of MSCHF’s ongo
  
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• Scientists Extract DNA from Drawing That Could Connect to Leonardo da Vinci

  08-01-2026 22:34 via artnews.com
  Scientists extracted DNA from a possible Leonardo da Vinci drawing that may provide genetic links to one of the most storied humans to walk the Earth. In a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper posted Tuesday in a preprint database, researchers from the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project (LDVP) suggested that there may be connections between a chalk sketch titled Holy Child and materials thought to contain traces of members of the artist’s extended family.As reported in Science, “The preprint concl
  
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• Researchers Find 60,000-Year-Old Poisoned Arrowheads in Africa

  08-01-2026 22:34 via artnews.com
  Researchers from South Africa and Sweden have found traces of poison on 60,000-year-old arrowheads in South Africa. Their discovery, reported by Stockholm University in the journal Science Advances, is the earliest direct evidence of the use of poisoned hunting weapons in the world so far. The oldest poisoned arrowheads known prior to the present study date to approximately 6,700 years ago.The quartz arrowheads were collected from sediment at Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Afri
  
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• Smithsonian Reportedly Told Staffer to Remove ‘Unjust’ From Exhibition on Japanese American Internment

  08-01-2026 22:32 via artnews.com
  2025 was quite a year for the Smithsonian Institution, which found itself in the crosshairs of the second Trump administration early and often. Last year began with Trump calling for a purge of “anti-American ideology” from the institution’s 19 museums. 2026 appears to have brought more of the same.On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump Administration has redoubled its efforts to bring the Smithsonian to heel and has put forward a deadline of next Tuesday
  
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• France’s Top Art Award, the Prix Marcel Duchamp, Names 2026 Nominees

  08-01-2026 22:19 via artnews.com
  The Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s most esteemed art prize, has named the artists nominated for its 2026 award. While there are normally four nominees, this year there are technically five.Those nominees include Joël Andrianomearisoa, a Malagasy artist whose vibrant textiles have been exhibited widely, and Josèfa Ntjam, a participant in last year’s Bienal de São Paulo whose installations and sculptures address fluid identities, often by making reference to the Afric
  
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• Bonhams Saw Significant Revenue Drop in 2024, In Line With the Big Three

  08-01-2026 20:44 via artnews.com
  UK-based auction house Bonhams saw its pre-tax loss jump almost 90 percent to £213 million ($286.3 million) in 2024, as revenue fell 9 percent to £176 million ($236.6 million), according to its most recent filings with UK’s Companies House, as reported by the Financial Times.(Financial filings released through Companies House, the UK’s rough equivalent of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, typically trail by one year.)The house saw impairment charges of £1
  
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• Man Serving Life Sentence for Attacking Six-Year-Old at Tate Modern Faces New Assault Charges

  08-01-2026 20:25 via artnews.com
  Jonty Bravery, a 24-year-old man who was given a life sentence for throwing a six-year-old French boy from the 10th floor balcony at the Tate Modern in London, now faces an additional sentence for new charges.Bravery was charged for—and recently found guilty of—assaulting two nurses in September 2024 at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital in the UK. He has been held at Broadmoor since being sentenced for the Tate attack in 2020. That year, he was handed another 1
  
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