Arts news

• ‘Portrait of a man’, who was 18th-century Corsican independence leader, goes on sale

  08-12-2025 06:00
  Painting of Enlightenment figure, whose constitution for the island inspired revolutionaries in US, is up for auctionThirty years ago, a painting by the British artist Sir William Beechey was sold as “portrait of a man”.The anonymous buyer, however, knew precisely who the unnamed man in the picture was: Pascal Paoli, the 18th-century Corsican independence leader and icon of the Enlightenment. Continue reading...
  
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• Brazilian Police Identify Suspect in Theft of Matisse Prints from São Paulo Library

  08-12-2025 19:57 via artnews.com
  In a daylight robbery on Sunday, two armed thieves stole eight prints by Henri Matisse and at least five engravings by Brazilian modernist painter Cândido Portinari from the Mário de Andrade Library in São Paulo. The works were part of “From Book to Museum,” an exhibition that closed on Sunday and that was presented in collaboration with the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, which focused on art linked to books, included examples of artworks a
  
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• Louvre Staff Vote ‘With Unanimity’ to Strike, in Latest Blow to French Museum

  08-12-2025 19:35 via artnews.com
  At a meeting of 200 Louvre staffers from three unions, employees voted “with unanimity” in favor of a strike set to start on December 15, the Agence France-Presse reported Monday.A strike notice was filed by the CGT, CFDT, and Sud unions to France’s Ministry of Culture and shared with the press. In it, the unions said “visiting the Louvre has become a real obstacle course” for visitors, describing the museum as being in “crisis” with “increasingly
  
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• Art World Figures Remember the Late Frank Gehry, Internationally Renowned Museum Starchitect

  08-12-2025 18:49 via artnews.com
  Frank Gehry designed some of the world’s most recognizable cultural landmarks, from museums like the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Guggenheim in Bilbao to Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago. Gehry died on December 5 at age 96. Over the weekend, many figures in the worlds of art and architecture remembered Gehry for his groundbreaking designs and outsize personality. On Instagram, artist Rob Pruitt posted a photo of his living room wi
  
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• Nashville Museum Seeks Help Restoring Red Grooms’s Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel

  08-12-2025 18:45 via artnews.com
  In 1995, armed with a grant from a Nashville nonprofit, New York–based artist Red Grooms set out to create a working carousel for the city of his birth. Three years later, the Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel opened to the public on city land at the base of Nashville’s Broadway.Instead of the usual horses, the ride featured mounts modeled after figures from Tennessee’s history, all rendered in the Pop artist’s cartoonish style. The 36 characters included both the famous and the
  
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• UBS Report Provides a Sliver of Hope for Dealers: Many Billionaires Aim To Spend More on Art and Antiques

  08-12-2025 18:37 via artnews.com
  The eleventh Billionaire Ambitions Report from Swiss bank UBS provides a sliver of hope in a shaky moment for dealers of art and antiques—if they manage to get access to that coveted demographic.Global billionaire wealth reached an all-time high in 2025, says the report, published last week, noting that 196 self-made billionaires added $386.5 billion to their combined wealth, pushing that figure to a record $15.8 trillion—the second-highest annual increase recorded in the history of
  
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• Artist Zineb Sedira Picked for Next Tate Britain Commission

  08-12-2025 18:19 via artnews.com
  Tate, the UK museum network, announced Monday that Zineb Sedira will take on the next Tate Britain Commission, which is staged in that institution’s neoclassical Duveen Galleries. The commission, the artist’s largest to date, will run May 2026 to January 2027, and it will be curated by Jessica Vaughan, Tate Britain’s curator of contemporary British art.Sedira is known for an expansive practice that encompasses photography, performance, video, and installation. Her works typical
  
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• ARTnews 2025 Awards Announced, Trump Kennedy Center Seizure Capped by Honors Event, and More: Morning Links for December 8, 2025

  08-12-2025 16:55 via artnews.com
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good Morning!ARTnews has revealed the winners of its annual awards in six categories.President Trump hosts the Kennedy Center Honors after a year of seizing control of the arts institution.Celebrated photographer Martin Parr has died at age 73.The Headlines ARTNEWS AWARDS 2025. It’s that time of year. The second annual ARTnews Awards winners w
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025 Lifetime Achievement: Ralph Lemon

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  Ralph Lemon for “Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon” at MoMA PS1, New York
  November 14, 2024–March 24, 2025Never content to work in just one medium, Ralph Lemon spent the past three decades creating works that blur the divisions between dance, drawing, painting, installation, sculpture, and writing. He started out as a dancer and choreographer, operating the Ralph Lemon Dance Company for a decade before disbanding it in 1995 to focus on other artistic endeavors. Lemon sees
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025 Historical Artist of the Year: Jack Whitten

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  Jack Whitten for “Jack Whitten: The Messenger” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
  March 23–August 2, 2025
  Curators: Michelle Kuo, with Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge Across his six-decade career, Jack Whitten repeatedly found daring, innovative, and new ways of wielding paint, only rarely using the traditional oil-on-canvas method that has long dominated his chosen medium. During the late 1960s, he began using acrylic, a type of paint that dries faster
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025 Established Artist of the Year: Wafaa Bilal

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  Wafaa Bilal for “Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, ChicagoFebruary 1–October 19, 2025For nearly two decades, Wafaa Bilal has put his body on the line for his art-making. “Indulge Me” at the MCA Chicago, the first major survey for the Iraqi American artist, showcased how his work highlights the tension—implicit at times, explicit at others—between what is perceived to be a conflict zone and what is perceived to be its inverse, a
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025 Emerging Artist of the Year: Claudia Alarcón and Silät

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  Claudia Alarcón and Silät for “Claudia Alarcón & Silät” at James Cohan, New YorkApril 11–May 10, 2025For over a decade, Claudia Alarcón has been immortalizing aspects of Wichí lore in the form of weavings, many of them produced collaboratively with an all-women group of weavers called Silät that was formed by curator Andrei Fernández. Working in Argentina’s Salta province, these women have used traditional Wichí
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025 Best Thematic Museum Show: “Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City”

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  “Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City” at 80WSE, New York
  Curators: Howie Chen, Jayne Cole Southard, and christina ong
  September 11–December 20, 2024“Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City” was billed as the first institutional show ever to survey artists of Asian descent in its titular city, a distinction that would make this show significant enough its own right. But curators Howie Chen, Jayne Cole Southard, and christina ong al
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025 Best Gallery Group Show: “Bowls, Boxes, Plates & Vessels”

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  “Bowls, Boxes, Plates & Vessels” at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles
  February 1–October 19, 2025Saying goodbye can be hard. That was the premise of “Bowls, Boxes, Plates & Vessels,” Parker Gallery’s final exhibition at its longtime base in founder Sam Parker’s home in LA’s Los Feliz neighborhood. Since its founding in 2017, Parker Gallery has gained a reputation for spotlighting under-recognized artists alongside rising ones. This show thrilling
  
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• ARTnews Awards 2025: About the Jury

  08-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  The second annual ARTnews Awards, an editorial project honoring excellence in art achievements at US arts institutions, has just revealed the winners for its 2025 edition. To help select this year’s winners, ARTnews invited five esteemed US-based curators to review exhibitions held between August 2024 and July 2025. Over the course of two meetings, these curators joined two ARTnews senior editors to select a group of nominees and a winner in each of six categories. Read
  
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• The Year in Digital Folk Art: Much of 2025’s Creative Innovation Happened Outside the Art World

  08-12-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  Late last year, cyberethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot wrote an insightful ARTnews article pondering the effect of AI on digital folk art. In it, he describes online content creation as a type of folk art born of the Internet, defining such work—from Ally Sheehan’s Taylor Swift video tributes, to Natalie Wynn’s theatrical sociopolitical commentary—as “a devotional act” to a niche online community, sometimes “for no or little compensation.” Such work
  
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• The Defining Artworks of 2025

  08-12-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  By some measures, democracy is in downward decline in quite a few countries across the world, while censorship is only increasing. (A coincidence? Hardly.) But even with so much valid concern about the fragility of the world order more broadly, artists pressed ahead in 2025, producing valuable works that contended with police violence, abuses of power, fallen monuments, climate change, and trans rights.This list taking stock of the 25 artworks that defined the year includes many pieces confronti
  
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• Talia Chetrit Is the Artist on Every Fashion Brand’s Mood Board

  08-12-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  I meet Talia Chetrit on one of those exalted September days that seem to taunt us for failing to make the best possible use of our lives. In the nervy hush of a home in thrall to a sleeping newborn, she leads me up to her top-floor studio. Her family’s Brooklyn house as I glimpse it is bright and bare, the stairs up to the studio painted a darkly resonant menstrual red. Chetrit’s studio is all crisp white, as is her collared shirt, despite the fact that she’s recently given bir
  
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• It’s Just Science: Some Christmas Music Really Tanks Productivity

  07-12-2025 22:00 via fastcompany.com
  Those who love torturing customers and co-workers alike might have to listen to the science. The fact is, Ariana Grande and Andy Williams are out. “On the other hand, Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ emerged as the most productivity-friendly holiday track.” – Fast Company
  
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• Gehry Was The Rare Architect Who Also Changed Music

  07-12-2025 21:30 via yahoo.com
  “The ‘Goldberg Variations’ was Gehry’s favorite work. He loved its otherworldliness and its worldliness. He loved its invitation to dance and to dream. He loved its astonishing sense of design, complex yet flowing with the ocean’s grace, its depth and its inviting surface.” – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
  
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• The Kennedy Center Under The 47th President: Emptier, Showier, Way More Political

  07-12-2025 21:00 via msn.com
  “What is the Kennedy Center now? For one thing, it’s getting a Trumpian revamp. He ordered new marble and the repainting of the exterior columns in austere white. Portraits of the first and second couples now hang in the center’s Hall of Nations.” – Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• Guy Cogeval, Art Historian And Curator Who Turned The Musee D’Orsay Into A Well-Traveled Blockbuster Site, Has Died At 70

  07-12-2025 20:30 via nytimes.com
  “In a country with a reverential approach to its artistic heritage, the flamboyant Mr. Cogeval — ‘deceptively reserved and genuinely eccentric,’ according to Le Figaro newspaper — was a subversive figure. He was unconcerned, even pleased, by the criticism.” – The New York Times
  
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• According To A Linguist Who Works At A Language App, Here Are 2025’s Most Mispronounced Words

  07-12-2025 20:00 via npr.org
  We all know that a lot of folks get the new mayor of New York’s name wrong – sometimes deliberately. And then there’s a museum in Paris that had a famous theft this year. But Denzel Washington? Really? – NPR
  
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• A Flash Mob Waves Ukrainian Flags As La Scala’s Grand Opening Features A Russian Opera

  07-12-2025 19:30 via artsjournal.com
  “A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration removed from the La Scala hubub that aimed ‘to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by (President Vladimir) Putin’s Russia.’” – Seattle Times (AP)
  
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• Dear Ted Sarandos, We Beg Of You Not To Screw This Up

  07-12-2025 19:00 via msn.com
  Please, please, please, PLEASE do not screw this up, Netflix. We want HBO to be HBO, Warner Bros. to be Warner Bros. – and we need movie theatres. Cinemas. Big screens … maybe for your movies, Ted. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• As Slop Fills Streaming And Public Media Is Defunded, What Will Happen To PBS Kids?

  07-12-2025 18:30 via bostonglobe.com
  Parents and researchers are very worried – and rightly so. – Boston Globe
  
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• Artist Imprisoned In Iran For Six Years Says Creativity, And Sewing, Kept Her Alive

  07-12-2025 18:00 via theguardian.com
  Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: “They can take away the world you live in, but they can’t take away what’s happening in your mind, your imagination and your creativity. Holding on to that was how we survived.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• Don’t Put Hannah Arendt On A Pedestal

  07-12-2025 17:30 via nytimes.com
  “Nearly a year into a second Trump presidency and 50 years after Arendt’s death, she is still routinely invoked as the key to understanding our moment. It’s been a strange afterlife for an idiosyncratic thinker who believed that politics was inherently contingent and unpredictable.” – The New York Times
  
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• Martin Parr, Photographer of Tourists with a Wry Sense of Humor, Dies at 73

  07-12-2025 17:13 via artnews.com
  Martin Parr, a photographer known for pictures of tourists that were both genuinely curious explorations of their lifestyle and wry indictments of it, has died on December 6 at his home in Bristol, England. His death was announced on Sunday by the namesake foundation that he founded in Bristol in 2017.Though the foundation did not specify a cause, Parr was diagnosed with myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer, in 2021. The Guardian reported this year that he was in remission, but that he was stil
  
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• The Sphere May Be The Horrifying Future Of Entertainment For All Of Us

  07-12-2025 17:00 via slate.com
  “There is no escape in the Sphere. The walls are screens. The ceilings are screens. The floor, swooping underneath you at an impossible angle, is a screen, too.” – Slate
  
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