Arts news

• Merry Christmas

  24-12-2025 23:25 via artsjournal.com
  Today’s highlights: The traditional art market is facing a reckoning as 2025 comes to a close. There was a flood of gallery closures and downsizings this year, marking a period of “endings more than beginnings” as the industry searches for a more sustainable model (ARTnews ). In the publishing world, the mass-market paperback is–shockingly– about to disappear from the U.S. market following a major distributor’s decision to halt operations (Publishers Weekly ).
  
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• Artist Diana Thater Partners with Conservation Lab to Save Work Destroyed by Altadena Fire

  07-01-2026 19:57 via artnews.com
  When the fire reached Diana Thater’s home in Altadena last January, there was no time for triage. As she and her husband, the artist T. Kelly Mason, evacuated ahead of the flames, Mason grabbed what he could carry: a server and several hard drives. Thater took the cats. Everything else—decades of raw footage, master tapes, installation manuals, ephemera, paintings—was left behind in a temperature-controlled garage that burned to the ground.“It’s hard to live to be 6
  
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• After a 2025 of Over-Performances, Li Hei Di’s Market Seems Poised to Take Another Jump This Year

  07-01-2026 19:55 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.There are artists whose auction markets feel like accidents—brief flare‑ups of appetite fueled by novelty, narrative, or a single well‑placed sale. And then there are artists whose markets feel, even early on, like the visible surface of something deeper and slower moving. Li Hei
  
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• Uffizi Workers Protest With Flags and Flares Against ‘Precarious Lives’

  07-01-2026 19:21 via artnews.com
  Workers waving flags and holding flares staged a protest at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence behind a banner reading “Basta Vite Precarie” (No Move Precarious Lives).As reported by the Art Newspaper, the protest in the Piazzale degli Uffizi was convened after some temporary workers at the museum—assigned to roles in security, reception, ticketing, the bookshop, and the coatroom—lost their jobs following a change in service providers at the institution last fall. That rais
  
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• Diriyah Biennale Announces Artists for 2026 Contemporary Art Edition

  07-01-2026 18:57 via artnews.com
  The Diriyah Biennale Foundation has announced the artists participating in the third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, opening on January 30, in the JAX District, an industrial zone that has been converted into an arts complex in Diriyah, near the capital city of Riyadh.Taking the title “In Interludes and Transitions,” this edition of the Biennale will be curated by Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed and feature more than 65 artists, alongside over 20 new commissions.Ra
  
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• US Artists Are Increasingly Self-Funding Institutional Projects, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale Names Artists: Morning Links for January 7, 2025

  07-01-2026 18:07 via artnews.com
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesPAY TO PLAY. As The Art Newspaper points out, Dominican American artist Lucia Hierro’s ambitious recent commission, a 7.5-foot chair installation, illustrates a growing crisis in the US art world: artists are increasingly expected to raise the funds for institutional projects. Fabrication costs for her work far exceeded the commissioni
  
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• Painter Amy Sillman Leaves Gladstone Gallery for David Zwirner

  07-01-2026 17:32 via artnews.com
  David Zwirner Gallery now represents New York–based artist Amy Sillman. Sillman, whose colorful paintings and drawings expertly straddle the line between figuration and abstraction. She previously worked with Gladstone Gallery. Her first show there, “Mostly Drawing” in 2018, offered viewers “a thrilling, rollercoaster-like experience,” as Phyllis Tuchman wrote in her review for ARTnews.Before that, Sillman showed with Capitain Petzel and carlier | gebauer in Berlin,
  
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• A Hit Book’s Cover, Featuring a Vermeer Painting, Can’t Stop ‘Ragebaiting’ People

  07-01-2026 17:25 via artnews.com
  Mona’s Eyes, a recently published novel by Thomas Schlesser, has drawn widespread praise, leading Barnes & Noble to name it the book of the year for 2025. But it is also gaining less positive notice for a reason that has nothing to do with the text itself: its cover.“I feel like I’m being ragebaited by this book cover,” reads the name of a viral Reddit thread devoted to Mona Eye’s, which is about a girl who journeys through Paris’s museums with her grandfa
  
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• Franco Regime Sought to Censor Robert Motherwell Painting in Spain, New Documents Confirm

  07-01-2026 17:09 via artnews.com
  Longstanding questions about an episode surrounding a Robert Motherwell painting in Spain have finally been answered: the Franco regime really did try to censor the Abstract Expressionist’s work, proposing an altered title for one work with a name that explicitly referred to the Spanish Republic.The drama centered around Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 35 (1954–58), one of more than one 150 paintings in a series of abstractions that obliquely refer to the Spanish Civil War via blac
  
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• NFT Paris and RWA Paris Shelved With One-Month Notice Due to ‘Crypto and NFT Market Collapse,’ Founder Says

  07-01-2026 13:11 via artnews.com
  NFT Paris, Europe’s biggest annual conference for the Web3, NFT, and digital ownership community, has been cancelled just a month before it was set to open at the Grande Halle de la Villette. The organizers said that current market conditions made the event financially impossible.“The [crypto and NFT] market collapse hit us hard,” NFT Paris’ founder, Alexandre Tsydenkov, wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday. “Despite drastic cost cuts and months of trying to make it work, w
  
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• NFT Paris and RWA Paris Canceled With One-Month Notice Due to ‘Crypto and NFT Market Collapse,’ Founder Says

  07-01-2026 13:11 via artnews.com
  NFT Paris—Europe’s biggest annual conference for the Web3, NFT, and digital ownership community—has been canceled just a month before it was set to open at the Grande Halle de la Villette in the French capital. The organizers said that current market conditions made the event financially impossible.“The [crypto and NFT] market collapse hit us hard,” NFT Paris’s founder, Alexandre Tsydenkov, wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday. “Despite drastic cost cuts and mon
  
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• Hard Truths: Can an Artist Dally With Dubious Funding and Come Out Clean on the Other Side?

  07-01-2026 13:00 via artnews.com
  With a world in crisis and an art market spinning out of control, ace art-world consultants Chen & Lampert deliver hard truths in response to questions sent by Art in America readers from far and wide.My artist talent agent has been working hard pursuing a brand collaboration that will take me to the next level, and he landed an offer from a top-tier fashion brand to do an athleisure line based on my painting. I’m totally psyched, but there are easy-to-Google articl
  
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• Art could save your life! Five creative ways to make 2026 happier, healthier and more hopeful

  07-01-2026 06:00
  Engaging in creativity can reduce depression, improve immunity and delay ageing – all while you’re having funFor some reason, we have collectively agreed that new year is the time to reinvent ourselves. The problem, for many people, is that we’ve tried all the usual health kicks – running, yoga, meditation, the latest diets – even if we haven’t really enjoyed them, in a bid to improve our minds and bodies. But have any of us given as much thought to creativity
  
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• Was Sid Caesar’s Cancellation a Media Parable for Today?

  07-01-2026 05:51 via artsjournal.com
  It must mean a lot that I can remember watching Sid Caesar’s “Show of Shows” on TV with my parents as a young child. For one thing, I don’t recall watching anything else as a family. For another, Caesar’s “Show of Shows” went off the air in 1954 and I
  
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• Bob Monk, Longtime Gagosian Director and Quiet Market Force, Dies at 75

  06-01-2026 22:41 via artnews.com
  Bob Monk, a Gagosian director who was with the gallery for more than 20 years, working closely with artists such as Ed Ruscha and Richard Artschwager, died on December 15 at 75. His ex-wife, Wendy Monk, said the cause was complications from a heart condition.Monk was a quiet force of the New York art market, with a CV that included working for dealer Leo Castelli and Sotheby’s, to say little of the gallery that Monk himself cofounded. Across several decades, he established himself as a qui
  
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• Jaqueline Humphries Survey Plays Hide-and-Seek

  06-01-2026 21:54 via artnews.com
  I was previously unfamiliar with the architecture of the Aspen Art Museum, having visited only before the current building, designed by Shigeru Ban, opened in 2014. My ignorance turned out to be helpful, enabling me to be properly confused by Jacqueline Humphries’s painting installation TSLA (2025). I first saw it, the night before the artist’s survey show opened, through the plate glass wall at the museum’s entrance: five large canvases (8 by 7 1/2 feet), her usual near-square
  
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• Jacqueline Humphries Survey Plays Hide-and-Seek

  06-01-2026 21:54 via artnews.com
  I was previously unfamiliar with the architecture of the Aspen Art Museum, having visited only before the current building, designed by Shigeru Ban, opened in 2014. My ignorance turned out to be helpful, enabling me to be properly confused by Jacqueline Humphries’s painting installation TSLA (2025). I first saw it, the night before the artist’s survey show opened, through the plate glass wall at the museum’s entrance: five large canvases (8 by 7 1/2 feet), her usual near-square
  
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• Paris Art Dealer Found Guilty of Harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron

  06-01-2026 21:21 via artnews.com
  A particularly bizarre strain of conspiracy theory holds that prominent female celebrities, including musicians, athletes, and political figures, are secretly transgender. In a Paris court on Monday, a French art dealer was among 10 people found guilty of online harassment for falsely claiming that France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron was born as a boy named Jean-Michel Trogneux, which is the name of her older brother. The upset caused by public assertions about her gender led to a &ld
  
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• Ultimately, NPR Will Be Okay, Says Ari Shapiro

  06-01-2026 21:03 via arishapiro.substack.com
  “While NPR may be staring down a tough couple of years ahead, I think public radio is better positioned in the long run than most American news organizations right now.” – Substack
  
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• Venetian Palazzo Painted by Monet Goes Up for Sale—See Pictures of a Lot for the Ages

  06-01-2026 20:34 via artnews.com
  A Venetian palazzo painted by Claude Monet—with a riderless gondola floating in a fog of coolish hues—is up for sale via Christie’s International Real Estate. The location is on a premier stretch of the Grand Canal, and the price is “available upon request” (which did not meet with a response by press time).  Features include a boat ramp/boat dock, courtyard, terrace, and garden, and the provenance is rich: Near the end of the 15th century, the so-called Palazz
  
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• Cut Paste Print A History of Political Photomontage in the 20th Century

  06-01-2026 20:25 via artsjournal.com
  <a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/01/cut-paste-print-a-history-of-political-photomontage-in-the-20th-century.html" title='Cut Paste Print
  A History of Political Photomontage in the 20th Century‘ rel=”nofollow”>This blogpost cannot adequately display the exhaustive content and brilliant design of “Couper, Coller, Imprimer,” the richly illustrated catalogue of an extraordinary photomontage exhibition at La Contemporaine in Nantes, France (running
  
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• How Sam Shepard Became The Star Playwright Of 1960s Off-Off-Broadway

  06-01-2026 20:01 via lithub.com
  “Shepard would astonishingly make his mark as an avant-garde playwright on the downtown scene with only a few months of networking and no production to his name. … ‘New York was like that in the Sixties,’ he said later. ‘You could write a one-act play and start doing it the next day.’” – Literary Hub
  
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• When Your Mind Goes Blank: What We’re Learning About Consciousness

  06-01-2026 19:44 via psyche.co
  Our consciousness roams, it can be focused on the here and now, or maybe the there and then, but it is always focused on something. Yet the experience of lulls in consciousness content challenges this assumption. – Psyche
  
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• France and Mexico Celebrate the 200th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relationship with Loan Exchange of Pre-Hispanic Manuscripts

  06-01-2026 19:43 via artnews.com
  In May 2025, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Mexico City. It was Macron’s first official visit to Mexico, and was an important step in Mexico’s recent attempts to bolster trade relations with Europe.While much of the meeting focused on economic relations between the countries, Sheinbaum also announced that France and Mexico agreed to temporarily exchange a pair of handwritten codices. The Codex Azcatitlán, housed in Paris’
  
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• Denyce Graves On The Challenges Of Retiring From The Stage

  06-01-2026 19:31 via nytimes.com
  For opera singers, the challenges are unique. I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with giving up a life’s work that has asked for my whole heart all the time. – The New York Times
  
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• 2026 Will See Major Copyright Rulings On AI

  06-01-2026 19:15 via reuters.com
  After a string of fresh lawsuits and a landmark settlement in 2025, the new year promises to bring a wave of rulings that could define how U.S. copyright law applies to generative AI.  – Reuters
  
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• Meet The Goth Godmother Of New American Opera

  06-01-2026 19:04 via nytimes.com
  “Twenty years ago, (Beth) Morrison had nothing in the bank. Just ambition, a belief in opera as theater and a high-flown goal to ‘change this art form.’ Still, she founded Beth Morrison Projects. Since then, she has worked nearly around the clock to shepherd dozens of new operas into existence.” – The New York Times
  
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• Fifteen Major Architectural Projects Opening This Year

  06-01-2026 18:44 via dezeen.com
  Here’s a look at 15 landmark architecture projects scheduled for completion in 2026, including museums, performing arts venues and a face-shaped tower. – Dezeen
  
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• 2025: Average American Read Fewer Than Four Books

  06-01-2026 18:31 via lithub.com
  According to a YouGov poll released at year’s end, American reading habits stay in the toilet. Four in ten Americans didn’t read a single book during our last spin around the sun. And of the 60% who did venture to a library, most were frugal. – LitHub
  
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• Artists decry dismantling of Belgium’s oldest contemporary art museum

  06-01-2026 18:30
  Cost-saving plan to transfer Antwerp museum’s entire collection to another city described as ‘simply insane’Prominent artists have spoken out against an “arbitrary reshaping” of Belgium’s museum landscape, as the Flanders region seeks to cut public spending by dismantling the country’s oldest contemporary art museum and transplanting its entire collection to another city.At a press conference in Antwerp on Tuesday, the directors of the city’s Museu
  
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