Arts news

• New Discoveries at Egypt’s Saqqara Necropolis Show Its Use Over Time

  31-08-2026 22:15 via artnews.com
  
  An Egyptian archaeological mission working at Saqqara has uncovered the tomb of Sekhentiu-Ptah, a high-ranking official of Egypt’s Old Kingdom (ca. 2700–ca. 2200 BCE). In a separate discovery, the archaeologists also found a network of burial shafts containing human remains and funerary objects from later periods.Heritage Daily reported the news following an announcement by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.The finds were made during the mission’s first excavati
  
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• Venice Biennale President Stands by Decision to Host Russian Pavilion: ‘I’d Do It All Over Again’

  02-09-2026 17:29 via artnews.com
  
  Venice Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said this week that he had no qualms about hosting the Russian Pavilion for the first time since the onset of the country’s invasion of Ukraine.“The Biennale is independent; I’d do it all over again for the Russian pavilion,” Buttafuoco told the Italian publication Corriere della Sera in a candid interview that touched on his politics and his views on how the Biennale should function with regard to geopolitics. “With
  
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• David Nolan Gallery Moves from Upper East Side to Bigger Space in Tribeca

  02-09-2026 16:32 via artnews.com
  
  Striking a defiant tone at a time when the future of the gallery ecosystem remains unknown, David Nolan announced a move for his namesake gallery from New York’s Upper East Side to a bigger space in Tribeca.“At a time when the art world is contracting, in my usual subversive fashion, I wanted to place a bet on the industry and show my confidence in my artists and long-time collectors, along with expanding our collaborations with other galleries outside the U.S.,” Nolan said in
  
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• Serpentine’s Inaugural Fellowship Bridges the Gap Between Art and AI

  02-09-2026 15:23 via artnews.com
  
  The Serpentine’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist called 2024 the “Year of AI” in an interview with ARTnews. Now, the gallery is diving further into technology by launching the Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellowship.The program picked four international applicants out of nearly 1,000 for a six-month fellowship commencing this month in London along with a cash prize of £10,000 ($13,480) each. The chosen applicants are artists Alice Bucknell from the United States, Al
  
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• Untitled Art, Miami Beach Names 166 Exhibitors for 2026 Edition 

  02-09-2026 15:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Untitled, Art Miami Beach fair has revealed the exhibitor list for its 15th edition, bringing together 166 galleries and nonprofit organizations from 36 countries and territories. Taking place December 2–December 5, 2026, the fair will be organized into five sectors, including the main galleries sector as well as a section for nonprofits, an artist spotlight section curated by Mexico City dealer Agustina Ferreyra, one for special projects overseen by Brussels dealer Damîen Dakota
  
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• Kennedy Center to Remove ‘Blue’ Landmark Sculpture, Bonhams Bumps Buyer’s Premium, and More: Morning Links for September 2, 2026

  02-09-2026 14:48 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good Morning!
  The Kennedy Center is removing its massive landmark sculpture, titled “Blue,” by the late artist Joel Shapiro.Bonhams is bumping its buyer’s premium up to 30 percent from 28 percent for bids of £25,000 ($33,700) or less. The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in San Diego is facing a financial crisis, and employees
  
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• Beryl Cook takes Bicester – and beyond

  02-09-2026 12:00 via ft.com
  The artist’s fabulously saucy heroines have arrived at the luxury shopping destination. Next they’re off to the Tate
  
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• The modern face of the debutante ball

  02-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  African American communities have developed their own cotillion traditions
  
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• Poet Arch Hades: ‘I don’t have to share a space with another human being’

  02-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  In the Channel Islands, the painter and sculptor is free to mix two favourite aesthetics — Snow White’s cottage and Cologne Cathedral — with no one to judge
  
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• La Scala has made its streaming free

  02-09-2026 00:50 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Silicon Valley has discovered the theatre — not as a patron but as a training ground, with founders and engineers filing into improv classes to learn a skill that refuses to scale (The New York Times).
  Listeners can’t reliably tell AI-made music from the human kind, and largely don’t care once they’re told (Washington Post).
  Edinburgh’s Fringe sold 2.8 million tickets, back within sight of pre-pandemic numbers (Yahoo) — finally. AMC — an exh
  
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• UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham Reverses Call for British Museum to Return Parthenon Marbles

  01-09-2026 23:42 via artnews.com
  
  UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office in July, has reversed his previous calls for the British Museum in London to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece, the Financial Times reports.Burnham had as early as 2002 said he supported the Parthenon marbles’ return to Greece, reupping that statement as recently as 2023. At the time, he added that their return should be “no strings attached.”However, when asked by the FT in an interview last month about his current stance on
  
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• In the Face of European Colonization, Aboriginal Artists Created Images of Powerful Beings, Study Finds

  01-09-2026 23:07 via artnews.com
  
  In the face of European colonization, Aboriginal artists created images of powerful ancestral beings, a new study has found. The results of the eight-year study, led by Paul Taçon, an archaeologist at Griffith University, were published online by the journal Australian Archaeology August 14.Awunbarna is a landmark located in the northwestern region of Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory. The area, which is owned by the Aboriginal Amurdak people, is renowned for its Aborigi
  
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• Art Gallery of Ontario Director Stephan Jost to Depart After a Decade

  01-09-2026 21:57 via artnews.com
  
  Stephan Jost, the director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario, will leave his posts at the end of the year, the Toronto museum announced on Tuesday.Within the Canadian art scene, Jost’s leadership has been polarizing. He has drawn praise for making a significant investment in modern and contemporary art at the AGO, which acquired a range of important artworks in that area, including 450 works by Diane Arbus, 200 works by Peter Hujar, and 227 works by Hiroshi Sugimoto. In 2027, the museu
  
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• ICE Unit Says It Seized 22,000 Ancient Artifacts in Florida

  01-09-2026 21:47 via artnews.com
  
  The Homeland Security Investigations unit of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) said it seized more than 22,000 ancient artifacts in Florida as part of a smuggling inquest that counts “among the largest in the agency’s history,” according to a press release.“The identification and authentication process for the large number of items will take time,” the release reads, “but preliminary evaluations indicate that some objects may have origina
  
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• Christie’s London Offers a Restituted Kandinsky, Long Displayed in a German Museum, for $30 M.

  01-09-2026 21:46 via artnews.com
  
  A Wassily Kandinsky painting left behind by a Dutch family fleeing the Nazi occupation and later on view for decades in a German museum will come to the auction block at Christie’s London on October 14, during Frieze week. Estimated in excess of $30 million, Das bunte Leben (The Colorful Life, 1907) was restituted to the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann in 2023 after a six-year legal battle. Measuring just over four feet high and five feet wide, it was Kandinsky’s largest ca
  
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• Today in Great Jobs: Casting Director Who Chooses The Series Of Actors Starring In “Oh, Mary!”

  01-09-2026 21:02 via npr.org
  
  Henry Russell Bergstein: “I think all these performers that we’ve had play the role are very different. But at heart, they have a sort of … I don’t know if the word wacky and access to wackiness is the right thing, but they also all have incredible acting chops.” – NPR
  
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• How Our Gamification Culture Kills The Spirit Of Play

  01-09-2026 20:31 via aeon.co
  The entire architecture of digital life – with its algorithmic feeds, frictionless production and the ambient expectation that we should be consuming or optimising at all times – nudges us towards chasing outputs rather than generating meaning. – Aeon
  
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• Camille Henrot Will Show 12 Dog Sculptures in Central Park This Fall

  01-09-2026 20:22 via artnews.com
  
  Dog-watching, already one of Central Park’s top attractions, is about to get a little more enticing. This fall, the Paris-born, New York–based artist Camille Henrot will install 12 large-scale dog sculptures in Doris C. Freedman Plaza, a very visible spot at the southwest corner of the New York park. The Public Art Fund project will be on view for a full year, from September 9 through August 29, 2027.Henrot’s “Dogs” will be made of bronze, stone, steel, and concrete
  
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• French Court Faults Deauville City for Removing AP Photograph of Gaza from Exhibition

  01-09-2026 20:20 via artnews.com
  
  An administrative court in Caen, France, faulted the Deauville city hall on Monday for removing a photograph taken in Gaza from a local festival, reported AFP and Le Monde. The image by Associated Press photographer Jehad Alshrafi features a soccer match being played by members of the Palestinian Ahli Gaza Club on a pristine, synthetic green field, surrounded by rubble from Israeli military attacks. But in mid-August, the image was quietly taken down from an outdoor exhibition that is part of th
  
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• The Star Who Injected Feminism Into Indian Classical Dance

  01-09-2026 20:04 via elle.in
  “By the 1950s, Chandralekha was a legendary figure in (Bharatanatyam). However, she walked away from fame, rejecting the Brahminical and nationalist values that had come to shape it. … When she returned to the stage in 1984, she brought with her a radically reimagined practice — sensual, iconoclastic and uncompromisingly feminist.” – Elle India
  
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• Putin’s Crackdown On Literature

  01-09-2026 19:44 via nytimes.com
  After Mr. Putin declared all-out war on Ukraine in 2022, he unleashed a devastating crackdown on free speech. That was initially confined to criticism of the war. Over time it spread, attacking a range of cultural expression. Now, the Kremlin is placing literature squarely in its cross hairs. – The New York Times
  
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• Publisher Announces AI Bot Assistant For Health Care Books

  01-09-2026 19:33 via publishersweekly.com
  Elsevier announced the launch of Nora AI, an AI-powered assistant available within Elsevier e-books through VitalSource’s Bookshelf platform. Nora AI enables users to ask questions and receive personalized, evidence-based answers drawn directly from Elsevier content. – Publishers Weekly
  
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• Beeple Artwork at Wisconsin Museum Generates Controversy over Use of AI: ‘Devoid of Any Critical Engagement’

  01-09-2026 19:33 via artnews.com
  
  A Beeple artwork set to appear at Wisconsin’s Madison Museum of Contemporary Art next month has rankled locals who object to the way that the piece uses AI to analyze artworks in the institution’s collection.An open letter about the piece, titled Diffuse Control (2025), calls into question the ethics of allowing Beeple to scrape images of artworks from the museum’s holdings, seemingly without permission from many of the artists or their representatives. Visitors to the museum w
  
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• Is Regional Theatre Really In Trouble?

  01-09-2026 19:15 via thestage.co.uk
  The idea has taken root that venues outside of London are in perpetual crisis. Standstill funding has affected all theatres but the retreat by local authorities from funding the arts has had a significant impact on theatres outside the capital. – The Stage
  
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• Theft Of Renaissance Altarpiece In Sicily Confounds Investigators

  01-09-2026 19:01 via theguardian.com
  “Investigative authorities have said very little on the record, but sources speaking anonymously to The Guardian and local media, as well as art historians who know the (museum in Messina) intimately, say lots of elements don’t add up, except one: the date chosen by the thieves.” – The Guardian
  
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• Hmnnn. Evidence Listeners Don’t Seem To Care Whether Music Was Made By AI

  01-09-2026 18:44 via washingtonpost.com
  A producer created a cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” using AI-generated vocals and drums. The remix became the most played song on Australian radio, spent 16 weeks on the charts and hit No. 1 for Australian dance singles. Traditionalists called it AI slop, but the reboot been streamed more than 48 million times. – Washington Post
  
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• How Being A Theatre Usher Changed Me

  01-09-2026 18:31 via theguardian.com
  Looking back, having lived and experienced life and now nearing 40, that place felt like a cradle. Being an usher cracked open my heart to the beauty of humans experiencing art and I had the privilege of watching along with them. – The Guardian
  
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• Smithsonian Decides Where American Latino Museum Will Be

  01-09-2026 18:13 via washingtonpost.com
  The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents voted Monday to house the American Latino museum, which Congress created in 2020 but which has lacked a permanent home, in the Arts and Industries Building, a 258,000-square-foot redbrick Victorian structure next to the institution’s headquarters. – Washington Post
  
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• Could Yiddish Be Headed For A New Revival?

  01-09-2026 18:03 via theconversation.com
  
  “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of students enrolled in Yiddish-language online courses exploded – not only in the United States but also in Canada, Mexico and Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. … At the same time, organizations like the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Yiddish Book Center have pushed for a new perception of Yiddish.” – The Conversation
  
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• Divided Supreme Court Rules That Trump’s White House Ballroom Can Proceed

  01-09-2026 17:54 via artnews.com
  
  The construction of President Donald Trump’s luxury ballroom will proceed as planned and replace the East Wing of the White House, a divided Supreme Court ruled on Monday, the New York Times reported.The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to guard public buildings, challenged the construction of the project. It argued that longtime member Alison K. Hoagland, a District of Columbia resident and architectural historian, was personally and profess
  
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