Arts news

• Sacha Baron Cohen In Quentin Tarantino’s First Stage Play (Wait, What?)

  11-09-2026 14:34 via deadline.com
  
  The play, titled The Popinjay Cavalier and set in Europe in the 1830s, will be produced by Sonia Friedman in London’s West End next spring. – Deadline
  
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• Art in the Room where it happens

  14-09-2026 23:34 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Culture needs a room, but who controls the room? San Francisco Opera’s musicians struck opening night at 7:25 p.m., with patrons already in their seats for an 8 o’clock curtain (The New York Times). Now that’s a power statement. Across the country, Lonnie Bunch concluded the White House intended to take the Smithsonian in a direction he couldn’t go and resigned, calculating that giving up the office was the price of keeping the institution (The New York Times
  
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• Pro-Palestine Activists Protest at British Museum During Bayeux Tapestry Exhibition’s Opening Weekend

  14-09-2026 22:34 via artnews.com
  
  On Saturday, a few days after the highly anticipated Bayeux Tapestry exhibition opened at the British Museum, the group Energy Embargo for Palestine staged a protest in the museum’s Great Hall. The protest was related to the museum’s long-running relationship with British Petroleum and its collaboration with Igor Tulchinsky.Last week, Middle East Eye revealed that the Belarusian billionaire spent $6.8 million to support the artwork’s journey from France to London. Tulchinsky al
  
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• 300-Pound Faun Sculpture Stolen from French Zoo in the ’90s Heads Home

  14-09-2026 22:25 via artnews.com
  
  Three decades after it was stolen from a zoo under the cover of night, a 19th-century bronze sculpture was recovered from the United States and returned to its rightful home in the north of France, where it is now on display at the Musée de Picardie in Amiens.According to a press release issued by the London-based Art Loss Register (ALR), Alfred Lepère’s Faune Chasseur was identified as part of due diligence preceding a proposed sale by one of ALR’s auction-house client
  
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• Prized Gertrude Abercrombie Painting, Priced at $30 at an Estate Sale, Heads to Auction for $250,000

  14-09-2026 22:24 via artnews.com
  
  Missing for decades, a Gertrude Abercrombie painting will find itself some collector’s prize this October at Freeman’s.Of the lots scheduled for Freeman’s postwar and contemporary art auction, Alderman Merriam’s Shells (1951), by the celebrated Chicagoan artist, surely has the best story. According to the house, the enigmatic still life of seashells scattered in a deep void was spotted this summer at a “picked-over” estate sale in Michigan. Hung in a corner of
  
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• Using AI, Scientists Recreate the Sights and Sounds of 2,500-Year-Old Tombs

  14-09-2026 21:56 via artnews.com
  
  The Etruscan painted tombs of Tarquinia, Italy, dating from around the 7th to the 1st century BCE, have long been celebrated for their vivid iconography and remarkable state of preservation. Now, archaeologists have used AI to examine how sight and sound may have affected Etruscan mourners of the time.Focusing on two 5th-century BCE painted tombs at Tarquinia, the Tomba del Gallo and the Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri (“Tomb of the Blue Demon”), as case studies, researchers used acoustic s
  
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• Ready to Lead What’s Next in the Creative Industries?

  14-09-2026 21:42 via artsjournal.com
  See attached word doc.
  
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• Lawsuit Alleges Warhol Forgery Scheme Spanning Florida, Peru, and Philadelphia

  14-09-2026 21:10 via artnews.com
  
  Duped into buying more than $6.7 million worth of fake Andy Warhol paintings and prints, real estate investor Richard Perlman and his family have launched a multinational lawsuit against the players they say are complicit in the alleged scam.Filed on September 9 in a Miami state court and first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit accuses roughly half a dozen individuals and companies across Florida, Philadelphia, and Peru of acting as “suppliers, fake authenticators and distri
  
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• San Francisco Opera Musicians Strike Opening Night Just As Curtain Was Supposed To Go Up

  14-09-2026 21:01 via nytimes.com
  At 7:25 p.m., leaders of the opera walked onstage and told the patrons settling into their seats for an 8 p.m. performance that the opera had been canceled. An outdoor performance set for Sunday at Golden Gate Park, part of the opening festivities, was also called off. – The New York Times
  
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• This Year’s Emmy Nominees Are In

  14-09-2026 20:31 via televisionacademy.com
  The full list here. – Television Academy
  
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• Colburn seeks Assistant Vice President of Performance & Rentals Marketing

  14-09-2026 20:15 via artsjournal.com
  Organization Located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles along the city’s renowned Grand Avenue cultural corridor, Colburn is an internationally recognized performing arts institution dedicated to providing the highest quality music and dance education while enriching the broader community through exceptional performances, artistic experiences, and community engagement. Serving more than 2,000 students annually, from young beginners to emerging professionals, Colburn encompasses the Conse
  
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• Charlie Kirk’s Widow Denounces Vandalism of Statue in Arizona: ‘His Instinct Was Always to Build, Not Destroy’

  14-09-2026 20:09 via artnews.com
  
  Not long after it went on view, a sculpture of Charlie Kirk outside his Arizona nonprofit was vandalized, leading to condemnation from the right-wing activist’s widow.The eight-foot-tall statue appeared last week at the Phoenix headquarters of Turning Point USA, the conservative organization that Kirk cofounded in 2012. It was installed last Thursday on the one-year anniversary of the day that Kirk was killed after being fatally shot in the neck before a crowd. That same day, another statu
  
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• Fashion Designer Bob Mackie, 87

  14-09-2026 20:00 via latimes.com
  
  Prolific costume designer Bob Mackie, whose dynamic sparkling and fringed creations dressed pop culture superstars such as Cher, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, has died. – Los Angeles Times
  
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• Angela Duckworth Takes On Will Power

  14-09-2026 19:17 via newyorker.com
  
  High-profile authors are obviously under pressure to offer novel frameworks, but rarely do these second acts feel like an about-face. Duckworth insists that “Situated” is not a reversal but an expansion of her earlier research; as an account of individual success, grit is “necessary but not sufficient,” and must be complemented by the larger picture. – The New Yorker
  
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• George Lucas’ New Temple To Storytelling

  14-09-2026 18:44 via theatlantic.com
  
  The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens this month in Exposition Park, just south of downtown Los Angeles, is a swooping, brain-beggaring, super-sexy, twin-bodied leviathan of a megastructure, white as the gown of Princess Leia, half spaceship, half cetacean, all curves, Shangri-la for skateboarders if they could ever get inside. – The Atlantic
  
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• David Salle On Museum Politics

  14-09-2026 18:31 via news.artnet.com
  Is it possible to make qualitative judgements in an unbiased way? Maybe not. Some people feel that the whole idea of making judgements is just another form of cultural oppression. On one level, aesthetic preferences are all cultural. Take for one example the preference for consonant music over dissonant—it’s cultural, not intrinsic. – Artnet
  
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• What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ — Jim Harrison

  14-09-2026 18:30 via artsjournal.com
  <a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/09/what-is-poetry-a-glimpse-of-sun-jim-harrison.html" title="What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ —
  
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• Sotheby’s to Offer $90 M. in Art from Richard Hedreen’s Collection, Ahead of Major University Gift

  14-09-2026 18:29 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s will offer some 50 works from the collection of Seattle real estate developer Richard “Dick” Hedreen this fall and winter, in a series of sales expected to bring at least $90 million.The sale comes two years after Hedreen pledged his and his late wife Betty’s collection to Seattle University, along with $25 million in seed money to establish a new art museum there. Rather than a reversal of that gift, the family says the sale is intended to help make it happen.A
  
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• Kennedy Center’s Future Hangs in the Balance as Report Warns of Imminent Closure

  14-09-2026 18:25 via artnews.com
  
  The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy. Leaders at the center, who were largely appointed by President Donald Trump, have argued that the only way to avoid “certain fiscal collapse” is by putting the President’s name on the building’s facade to ensure his fundraising efforts, according to a report by the Washington Post.A 57-page packet reviewed by the Post offered a bleak assessment of the center’s future to the
  
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• The Art Of Being Jeff Koons

  14-09-2026 18:15 via nytimes.com
  Koons the pop culture figure is often at odds with Koons the artist, causing some deep ambivalence among the art establishment. He’s at once an esoteric conceptualist and a marketing genius rivaled only by Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí. – The New York Times
  
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• Christie’s to Auction 31 Pablo Picasso Prints, Including Three Rare Portraits of Wife Jacqueline Roque

  14-09-2026 18:05 via artnews.com
  
  More than 30 prints by Pablo Picasso have gone on display at Christie’s in London through September 23, as part of the auction house’s “Prints & Multiples” sale and exhibition. The total 31-piece lot is estimated to fetch between £2.8 million and £4.1 million ($3.8 million and $5.53 million).Include in the print collection are three portraits of Jacqueline Roque, who was Picasso’s second wife and last lover, until his death in 1973. This October mark
  
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• “The Odyssey” Was Shot On Film. Only One Company Makes The Film

  14-09-2026 18:03 via nytimes.com
  Beyond specific formats, Nolan and “The Odyssey” are part of a broader revival of physical film after the digital revolution seemed to have left it for dead.  – The New York Times
  
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• Christie’s to Auction Antonio Homem Sonnabend’s $50 M. Art Collection

  14-09-2026 18:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Antonio Homem Sonnabend Collection that’s estimated to achieve more than $50 million at auction is coming to Christie’s this fall, with works by Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol. He is the late adopted son of art dealers Ileana and Michael Sonnabend.During his lifetime, Antonio oversaw Ilena and Michael’s vast collection of works, which included post-war and contemporary art, photographs, prints and multiples, and design, which wi
  
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• Restored Giotto Frescoes Unveiled

  14-09-2026 17:44 via apnews.com
  The newly vibrant “Stories of St. Francis” were shown to the public last week in the Basilica of Santa Croce, just in time for the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death on Oct. 4. – AP News
  
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• Net.Art Pioneer Olia Lialina on the Practice of Preservation

  14-09-2026 17:33 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s note: This story is the latest edition of Link Rot, a column by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei that explores the intersections of art, technology, and the internet.Olia Lialina has been distributing herself online since 1994, counting her among the first artists in the net.art scene. 30 years worth of her fascination with the poetics of servers, browsers, and GIFs is now on view in “Network Portraits” through October 3, at Berlin’s Panke Gallery. (Elsewhere, at the
  
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• Four Million Books Were Published In The US Last Year. 3.5M Of Them Were Self-Published

  14-09-2026 17:31 via linkedin.com
  
  U.S. title output reached roughly four million in 2025, up about 32 percent in a single year, and around 3.5 million of those were self-published titles with ISBNs, up nearly 39 percent on the year before. Self-published books outnumbered traditionally published ones by more than five to one. – Rachel Alterberry
  
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• Thousands of Art Nonprofits Command Billions in Assets. A New York Conference Sheds Light on an Under-Studied Sector

  14-09-2026 17:21 via artnews.com
  
  Spanning the globe, there are uncounted thousands of nonprofit arts organizations, with varying missions, budgets, and staff sizes. While there are many regular reports that cover the art market and the museum world, it may be that private arts foundations are less studied, perhaps partly because they are so varied. Clare Hindle and Meagan Ryan, cofounders (with creative director Hilary Wolfe) of the Stoa Foundation, released an inaugural report this winter and have organized conferences to
  
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• More Dance Clubs Prohibit Cameras And Smart Glasses

  14-09-2026 17:15 via cbc.ca
  
  That desire to disconnect comes as technology has fundamentally changed what it means to go out. In the 1990s rave scene, there was no smartphone in your pocket and no expectation that a night out would be documented and shared online. – CBC
  
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• Desecrating DC To Own The Libs

  14-09-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Trump Arch is just the latest in a series of architectural and visual crimes committed on the capital city. – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• Arthur Jafa Addresses His Work for Kanye West: ‘I’m Not Into Discarding Black Folk Simply for Things They Say’

  14-09-2026 16:52 via artnews.com
  
  Arthur Jafa, the artist and filmmaker whose work will soon be the subject of an expansive exhibition at New York’s New Museum this month, addressed his decision to make a music video for Kanye West, the rapper whose comments about Jews and the enslavement of Black people have drawn widespread scrutiny.In 2020, Jafa directed a music video for West called “Wash Us in the Blood.” Like other works by Jafa, most notably his famed 2016 video Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death,
  
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