Arts news

• L.A. Habitat: David Hockney

  26-02-2016 23:18 via artnews.com
  A visit with the artist as he paints new portraits. ‘I wasn’t planning on doing this many at first,’ he says, ‘but when I got to about 15 I realized I could probably going on forever.’ Read More
  
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• Christie’s Reports $4.5 B. in Sales, Strongest First Half in Five Years

  15-07-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  The global auction market is finding its footing again, at least according to Christie’s.Christie’s reported $4.5 billion in first-half revenue on Tuesday, including $3.5 billion in auction sales and more than $1 billion in private sales, marking the company’s strongest first six months since 2021. Auction sales rose a full 71 percent from the same period last year. The results were driven by blockbuster consignments, led by the $630.8 million sale of the collection of publishi
  
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• Director of the Flint School of Performing Arts working with Management Consultants for the Arts

  15-07-2026 00:59 via artsjournal.com
  Flint School of Performing Arts’ Director will lead this celebrated and impactful division of the Flint Institute of Music and be a voice for community performing arts education in the region. They will collaborate with FIM’s leadership around FSPA’s major organizational direction and directly supervise their administrative and educational direct reports in the day-to-day work of the School. A successful Director will nurture FSPA’s strong assets and traditions while brin
  
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• Artistic Director – Studio Theatre working with Management Consultants for the Arts

  15-07-2026 00:56 via artsjournal.com
  Studio Theatre is seeking its next Artistic Director, someone to cultivate and champion the artistic vision of Studio, planning seasons of stellar, thought-provoking contemporary theater written by significant playwrights and presented by a mix of local, national, and international artists. Studio Theatre has engaged Management Consultants for the Arts to lead the search, and interested candidates may apply for this position by visiting this link: https://www.mcaonline.com/searches/artistic-dir
  
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• Dancing in the Dark

  14-07-2026 23:54 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Aeon argues Silicon Valley has a science-fiction problem — an industry building the future from novels it read as blueprints when they were written as warnings. The writers, meanwhile, want their words back: US publishers and authors sued Google over the copying that trained its AI (Publishers Weekly). The Walrus profiles the Canadians who’d like to stop the machines altogether.The Trump administration is keeping Smithsonian board seats vacant, reshaping the institution
  
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• Lyndon J. Barrois Sr.’s Miniature Portraits of World Cup History Explore Moments of Joy and Political Controversy

  14-07-2026 23:03 via artnews.com
  
  There have been no shortage of controversies at this year’s World Cup, which enters its final leg this with the final match happening Sunday. The Iranian team was not able to stay in the US. Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry into the US and therefore unable to officiate any games. President Donald Trump intervened to have US player Folarin Balogun’s automatic match suspension from a red card being delayed a year so he could play in the USMNT’s match against Belgium. Th
  
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• Superblue Teams Up With Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre to Bring Immersive Art to Mumbai

  14-07-2026 22:44 via artnews.com
  
  Superblue, the experiential art venture cofounded in 2020 by Pace CEO Marc Glimcher and former Pace London president Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, has landed in India for the first time, with a sprawling nine-work exhibition of immersive installations at Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC).Titled “Second Nature,” the show opened at NMACC’s four-story Art House on July 3 and runs through January 10, 2027. Curated by Dent-Brocklehurst, the company’s cofoun
  
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• Zendaya Gets an Earful of ‘Orientalist’ Complaints for Wearing Ancient Iranian Earrings to ‘Odyssey’ Promo Amid US-Iran War

  14-07-2026 22:11 via artnews.com
  
  Actress Zendaya has been on the receiving end of some, ahem, piercing criticism after wearing ancient Iranian earrings to a London event promoting the new Christopher Nolan epic The Odyssey, in which she plays the Greek goddess Athena. The film hits US and UK theaters July 17 and has already been the subject of intense debate.Zendaya got the earrings, believed to date from the first millennium BCE, from London dealer Charlie Barron, and then had them remounted with diamonds and 18-karat yellow g
  
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• Frieze Seoul’s Public Programs Include a Hunt for Hidden Coins and a Place to Talk About Climate Change

  14-07-2026 21:47 via artnews.com
  
  Art fairs may have started out as trade shows for dealers to sell each other their inventory, but they have long since become major events in the art world’s attention economy, zhuzhed up with public art commissions and intellectual dressings, including elaborate programs of public talks and film screenings, as well as plain old fun events like concerts. (As I wrote in 2020, the Armory Show even once offered a museum-style audio guide.) The public programming for the upcoming edition
  
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• Terrified To Dance At A Party, Nightclub, Or Wedding? Now There’s An App For That

  14-07-2026 21:03 via npr.org
  
  Dance Guru is a virtual reality application in which a digital teacher, seen through your headset, walks you through the steps for salsa, waltzing, bachata or cha-cha — repeating as many times as you need, with no human there to make you self-conscious or to get impatient or bored. – NPR
  
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• Andrew Lloyd Webber Warns Of Broadway Crisis After “Cats” Closing

  14-07-2026 20:31 via broadwayworld.com
  Andrew Lloyd Webber has addressed the closing announcement of CATS: The Jellicle Ball, pleading for “theatre owners, unions and producers to come together urgently to address what is a crisis coming to a head.” – Broadway World
  
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• A Samuel Beckett Biennale Is Coming To Both Sides Of The Irish Sea

  14-07-2026 20:01 via theguardian.com
  “(The festival) promises experimental ‘performed readings’ of the playwright’s works in pockets of Ireland and Britain over the next 12 years. … Events will unfold at locations of significance to Beckett’s life and legacy – from Enniskillen, Belfast and Dublin to Folkestone, Reading and Snodland – tracing his footsteps across Britain and Ireland.” – The Guardian
  
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• Report: UK Humanities Programs Being Axed By Hard-Up Universities

  14-07-2026 19:44 via theguardian.com
  Analysis of the latest official data by the academy for the Guardian shows that nearly 4,000 academic posts in social sciences, humanities and the arts have been axed in one year alone.  – The Guardian
  
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• The Canadians Who Want To Stop AI In Its Tracks

  14-07-2026 19:31 via thewalrus.ca
  
  Canadians are hugely wary: a Leger poll found 85 percent of respondents want the government to regulate the technology. But that number doesn’t convey just how frightened many are. – The Walrus
  
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• Meet The Book Hoarder

  14-07-2026 19:15 via nytimes.com
  The stacks kept rising as Uminer added his hauls from thrift shops, book dealers and eBay deliveries. “I don’t think of myself as a hoarder,” he said, “but I guess my building did.” – The New York Times
  
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• Major Collection Of Mexican Art, Including Kahlos And Riveras, Is Going On Tour. Angry Mexicans Fear It Won’t Come Back.

  14-07-2026 19:04 via yahoo.com
  The privately-owned Gelman Santander Collection, whose 68 pieces include 10 paintings by Frida Kahlo along with works by Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and others, is scheduled to spend two years touring Europe. Some citizens, unconvinced that the art will come home, are suing to keep it in Mexico. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
  
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• Revisiting Mark Twain In The Age Of Trump

  14-07-2026 18:44 via adimagazine.com
  Satire makes fun of something to expose its truth in a way that can be notoriously difficult to decode. What is often misread in Twain’s most famous novel is this: he satirically uses racism to ridicule racism. – Adi Magazine
  
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• EU To Cancel Venice Biennale Grant Over Russia Participation

  14-07-2026 18:29 via artnews.com
  
  Over the weekend, a European Union commission followed up on its earlier threats to cancel a €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale, citing Russia’s participation in the event this year as its reasoning. – ARTnews
  
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• Dealer Dominique Lévy Says She Received Death Threats After Denouncing Post–October 7 Letter in Artforum

  14-07-2026 18:21 via artnews.com
  
  Dominique Lévy, one of the dealers behind the blue-chip New York gallery Lévy Gorvy Dayan, spoke at length in a new profile about her response to October 7, claiming that she received death threats after publicly denouncing a 2023 open letter in Artforum that called for a ceasefire in Gaza.Published on October 19, 2023, the letter that ran in Artforum described Israel’s war in Gaza as an “escalating genocide” and demanded “an immediate ceasefire and the open
  
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• Trump Admin’s Critique Of The Smithsonian Is Laughably Wrong

  14-07-2026 18:15 via newrepublic.com
  
  Even when judged by the standards of the form, the White House’s anti-woke polemic is a shoddy piece of workmanship not unlike the peeling blue sealant in the $15 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool. – The New Republic
  
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• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani Announces Citywide Mural Project to Commemorate Historic FIFA World Cup 

  14-07-2026 18:11 via artnews.com
  
  The fever for the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, the largest, most expansive in the competition’s 96-year history, has swept North America. Star players like Norway’s Erling Haaland, England’s Harry Kane, France’s Kylian Mbappe, and Argentina’s Lionel Messi have turned in dramatic performances. Americans have fallen in love with visiting teams and foreign visitors have become enamored, of all things, with American-size food portions and ranch dressing. No
  
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• Hieroglyphs Inscribed on Wall of Ancient Building Reveal Name of Mayan Astronomer for the First Time

  14-07-2026 18:10 via artnews.com
  
  Archaeologists excavating Xultun, a large Mayan site in northeast Guatemala, have identified the name of an 8th-century Mayan astronomer-mathematician who wrote a calendrical formula on an interior wall of a small masonry building.The individual’s name, Sak Tahn Waax, translates to “White-chested Fox,” and the formula (either written by him, or by someone else and attributed to him) calculates the orbital cycles of Mars and Venus. According to a paper published by Antiquity, th
  
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• Man Charged in Theft of More Than 600 Artifacts from UK’s Bristol Museum

  14-07-2026 18:08 via artnews.com
  
  A suspect has been charged in the wake of what British authorities described as a “high-value burglary” at the Bristol Museum in the UK last September.As reported by the BBC, “Dean Hall, 41, from Redcliffe, Bristol, has been charged with handling stolen goods. He was given unconditional bail and he is next due at Bristol Crown Court on 17 August.”The police said the investigation into the burglary—which involved more than 600 objects from the Bristol Museum’s
  
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• US Publishers And Authors Sue Google Over Its Training Of AI

  14-07-2026 18:02 via publishersweekly.com
  “Publisher Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, as well as author Scott Turow, are the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, … contending that the tech giant has engaged in widespread copyright infringement in developing its Gemini AI models.” – Publishers Weekly
  
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• Sotheby’s Reports Record $4.4 B. First Half as Private Sales and Luxury Fuel Growth

  14-07-2026 17:57 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s reported record first-half consolidated sales of $4.4 billion on Tuesday, up 58 percent from the same period last year, fueled by gains across auctions, private sales, and its growing luxury businesses. Auction sales rose 59 percent to $3.4 billion, while private sales climbed 52 percent to a record $826 million. The company also posted its highest sell-through rate since at least 2010 and a record 4.9 bidders per lot sold.The numbers are undeniably strong. But the more interesti
  
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• The Van Cliburn Competition Expanded. Should It Have?

  14-07-2026 17:44 via nightingalessonata.com
  A focus on how well individuals conduct a specific orchestra with limited repertoire at a given moment in time makes little sense to me when I think about what makes a great conductor and how one judges such greatness. – Nightingale’s Sonata
  
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• Silicon Valley’s Science Fiction Problem

  14-07-2026 17:31 via aeon.co
  Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, gave expression to this ethos in 2017 when he said: ‘We are the people who make fantasies real.’ It sounds inspiring, but it is important to know which parts of those fantasies they’re choosing, and which parts they’re leaving out. – Aeon
  
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• Sotheby’s $50.1 M. T. Rex Sale Sets New Record as Scientists Scowl

  14-07-2026 17:22 via artnews.com
  
  The Tyrannosaurus rex known as “Gus” has become the most expensive dinosaur ever sold at auction after fetching $50.1 million at Sotheby’s on Tuesday, extending a remarkable run that has transformed prehistoric fossils from natural history curiosities into one of the hottest corners of the luxury collectibles market. The 67-million-year-old skeleton sold after 19 bids, hammering at $43 million before premiums, comfortably stomping on the previous auction record of&nbs
  
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• Dinosaur Dealer Sal Aaron Discusses the Fossil Market as Sotheby’s Sells T. Rex for Record $50 M.

  14-07-2026 17:17 via artnews.com
  
  When Sotheby’s sold “Sue,” a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, for $8.4 million in 1997, the house changed the way the art world looked at dinosaur fossils. Nearly three decades later, the market has grown dramatically. In 2020, Christie’s sold another T. rex, named “Stan,” for $31.8 million. And then, in 2024, Sotheby’s set a new record with “Apex,” a nearly complete stegosaurus that sold for $44.6 million.On Tuesday, Sotheby&r
  
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• A Punctuational Divide (We Need To Evolve)

  14-07-2026 17:15 via theatlantic.com
  
  Now that we can react to a friend’s needy text or an enemy’s infuriating post in real time and with minimal reflection, we need reliable substitutes for extraverbal cues more than ever.  – The Atlantic
  
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