Arts news

• 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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• Visitors Arrested at Louvre After Posting Their Artworks Near Mona Lisa

  20-09-2026 19:01 via artnews.com
  
  Two visitors to the Louvre in Paris were arrested Saturday after they installed two paintings in the Salle des États, which houses the Mona Lisa, according to a report by Agence France-Presse that cited police sources.According to police, they stuck two paintings (each measuring about 11.8 by 15.7 inches) onto the walls of the Salle des États with sticky tape. One painting showed one of the suspects wearing a suit of armor, while the other showed the two with a woman. The Mona Lisa
  
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• John Clapp shares strategies for successful inclusion efforts

  19-09-2026 16:59 via artsjournal.com
  John Clapp, Chief Orchestra & Production Officer of the Cincinnati Symphony, shares the sustainable strategy that drives their inclusion efforts.
  
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• Nobody Endows a Wing Called “It’s Complicated”

  19-09-2026 16:31 via artsjournal.com
  This Week’s Highlights:The Kennedy Center closed its doors this week, its board voting to shut down indefinitely after a presidential phone call and weeks of pressure to put his name on the building (The New Republic). Philip Kennicott made the point that deserves attention: this was arguably the country’s most authentically populist arts center, caricatured as elitist by the man starving it (Washington Post). The Wall Street Journal’s remedy for such capture — privatize
  
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• Tim Hayward on the strange shame of brown food

  19-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  Colour photography transformed food writing — and left magazines forever trying to brighten the roasts, stews, cakes and sauces that need no apology
  
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• The legacy of Emmett Till

  19-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  As America grapples with deep divisions over its past, a powerful show in Chicago commemorates a watershed moment for the civil rights movement
  
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• Entente cordiale: how French living has influenced British artists

  19-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  Bread, butter and cheap digs led figures from David Hockney to Gwen John to move across the Channel — their experiences encapsulated in the frame
  
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• A love letter to the luncheonette

  19-09-2026 06:00 via ft.com
  Photographers James and Karla Murray pay tribute to the remarkable survival of an American institution in ‘Counter Culture’
  
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• Fashion Week Just Wanted to Touch Grass

  19-09-2026 00:15 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Culture registers a shift before policy does. At New York Fashion Week, an unusual number of designers sent out clothes yearning for wilderness and open air — the runway as a collective request to log off (Washington Post). In at least 36 states, people aren’t waiting for city councils to regulate license-plate cameras; they’re taking them down themselves (The Conversation). Universities that spent three years pushing students toward AI now face studies suggesting
  
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• Documenta 16 Curator Naomi Beckwith Says Some Artists Declined to Participate Due to Germany’s Stance on Gaza

  18-09-2026 22:43 via artnews.com
  
  Naomi Beckwith, the curator of the forthcoming edition of Documenta, said some artists had already declined to participate in the exhibition because of Germany’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.Documenta, which is staged every five years in Kassel, Germany, is one of the most prestigious recurring art exhibitions in the world. But ever since the controversy that faced the last edition, in 2022, the show has faced bitter criticism, with many alleging that politicians’ accusations
  
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• Rep. Joyce Beatty Asks Judge to Make ‘Crystal Clear’ Trump Cannot Demolish Kennedy Center in Wake of Viral Photo

  18-09-2026 22:34 via artnews.com
  
  When Getty photographer Brendan Smialowski captured a photo on Wednesday night of Air Force One after landing at Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington, D.C., it showed president Donald Trump in a red baseball cap reading a placard that seems to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” This led to an emergency Thursday filing by Joyce Beatty, Democratic US Representative for Ohio’s Third Congressional District and an ex officio trustee of the Center, asking the federal judge in the on
  
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• New Discoveries at Ancient Egyptian Fort Include Ceremonial Burial of a Horse

  18-09-2026 21:59 via artnews.com
  
  New archaeological discoveries at Tell Al-Abqain in Beheira are revealing details about life within the ancient Egyptian fortress, the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Wednesday. According to the ministry, they also underscore Tell Al-Abqain’s importance as a military stronghold during the New Kingdom period (1570–1069 BCE), when it was established to protect Egypt against incursions by Libyan tribes.The finds, made by an Egyptian archaeological missio
  
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• Tomokazu Matsuyama and Tom Wesselmann Estate Team Up on a Show at the Pop Artist’s New York Studio

  18-09-2026 21:49 via artnews.com
  
  The estate of Pop giant Tom Wesselmann has teamed up with Japanese American artist Tomokazu Matsuyama on a first: an exhibition at the East Village studio that Wesselmann occupied in the last decade of his life. Open to the public by appointment through September 27, the show arrives just in time for Armory Week, when thousands of dealers and collectors will converge on the city.Showing in another artist’s workspace, Matsuyama told me during a visit this week, is a unique experience: &ldqu
  
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• Stockholm’s Moderna Museet Appoints Cédric Fauq as Curator of Contemporary International Art

  18-09-2026 21:42 via artnews.com
  
  The Moderna Museet in Stockholm named Cédric Fauq as its next curator of contemporary international art, to start in the role on December 1. He is currently the chief curator and head of programs and collections at Capc Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and he worked previously as a curator at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo and Nottingham Contemporary in England.Credits of Fauq’s in Bordeaux include the group exhibition “Blackground: murmures des mornes,”
  
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• Prolific Theatre And Film Director Anthony Page Has Died At 90

  18-09-2026 20:50 via playbill.com
  
  He directed more than 35 titles for film and TV, including The Lady Vanishes and Middlemarch, but had even greater impact in theatre: he staged numerous classics in London and New York, notably by Beckett and Albee, and won a Tony for directing Janet McTeer in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. – Playbill
  
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• NPR Has An Aggressive Plan For Its Digital Future

  18-09-2026 20:31 via insideradio.com
  Katherine Maher said the organization is fundamentally reimagining its digital presence, looking for more ways to capitalize on its network of 243 newsrooms and member stations, and expanding its programming portfolio beyond what audiences traditionally associate with NPR. – Inside Radio
  
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• Texas Ballet Theater Finds Its New Executive Director In Pittsburgh

  18-09-2026 20:03 via fortworthreport.org
  
  Nicholas Dragga, currently executive director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, will take the same job at the Fort Worth-based company as of January 1. He succeeds Vanessa Logan, who stepped down in June 2025 to become managing director of Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut. – Fort Worth Report
  
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• As Studies Suggest Cognitive Decline With AI Use, Universities Are In A Bind

  18-09-2026 19:44 via nytimes.com
  As A.I. leaders warn about the dangers of their own technology, the dissonance between optimism of university leaders and the fears of many students and professors may increase. Professors and students are often in a bind about what they should do: Use more A.I. to stay relevant, or dial back to preserve learning and thinking? – The New York Times
  
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• Rebellion Against Flock Camera Surveillance Has Become a Rallying Cry

  18-09-2026 19:31 via theconversation.com
  
  In at least 36 states, opponents of the technology have taken matters into their own hands, destroying or impairing ALPRs rather than wait for local governments to step in. – The Conversation
  
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• Interesting: Fashion Week Suggests A Cohesive Theme For Our Times

  18-09-2026 19:15 via washingtonpost.com
  Rarely does such a cohesive, poignant theme emerge from any given New York Fashion Week. But this September, a surprising number of designers showed work that seemed to yearn for a breath of fresh air, for the obliviating embrace of the wilderness and the natural world. – Washington Post
  
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• Lynchpin Of “Oh, Mary!” National Tour Takes Medical Leave

  18-09-2026 19:04 via theatermania.com
  J. Harrison Ghee, who won a Tony in 2023 for playing Jerry/Daphne in Some Like It Hot, was cast as Mary’s Husband for the first part of the tour, then Mary herself as of January. Ghee, who lives with kidney disease, has been advised not to perform until at least November 1. – TheaterMania
  
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• Viewer Ratings For “60 Minutes” Season Premiere Down 21 Percent

  18-09-2026 18:44 via nytimes.com
  Viewership for the season premiere of “60 Minutes” fell roughly 21 percent from a year ago, according to Nielsen, making it the lowest-rated premiere of the long-running show in recent memory. – The New York Times
  
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• At the Guggenheim, Taryn Simon Mounts a Rare America 250th Anniversary Show Worth Celebrating

  18-09-2026 18:41 via artnews.com
  
  When people remember what art museums did this year to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, they will not recall the plethora of anodyne collection shows staged across the nation, many of which have centered on vague notions of democracy and discontent. Instead, I hope they remember Taryn Simon’s paranoid freak-out of an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, whose rotunda she has filled with photographs about surveillance, lies, violence, and—that most American
  
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• Kennicott: The Cultural Significance Of the Kennedy Center

  18-09-2026 18:31 via washingtonpost.com
  Although the president caricatured it as an elite institution, and slandered it as anti-American and a danger to youth, the Kennedy Center was perhaps the most authentically populist major arts center in the country. – Washington Post
  
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• Head of Brussels Government Seeks to Oust Kanal-Centre Pompidou Director Ahead of November Opening

  18-09-2026 18:31 via artnews.com
  
  The plot thickens just a few months away from the grand opening of Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels. Amid criticism that the European capital’s forthcoming and only major modern and contemporary art museum is too large and costly for taxpayers, La Libre reports that the head of Brussels’ local government wants Kanal-Centre Pompidou’s founding general director Yves Goldstein out.On Thursday, Minister-President Boris Dilliès of the center-right francophone Movement R&eacu
  
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• Despite ‘Significant Impact’ of Middle East Wars, Art Basel Parent Group’s First Half 2026 Revenue Climbed 12 Percent

  18-09-2026 18:26 via artnews.com
  
  MCH Group, parent company to the Art Basel fair franchise, saw its operating revenue increase by 12 percent in the first half of 2026, to CHF 248.8 million ($301.6 million). It was the fourth consecutive positive half-year result, according to a statement. The company also saw EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) rise to CHF 34.3 million ($41.6 million). The Art Basel fairs are among the flagship events for the company, which also organizes fairs catering to i
  
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• Microsoft Exec Called AI Scraping Of Online News The “Largest Theft Of Labor In Human History”

  18-09-2026 18:15 via arstechnica.com
  Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht repeatedly warned in documents that scraping news for AI training was “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” calling it perhaps the “largest theft of labor in human history,” news orgs said. – Ars Technica
  
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• “The Sistine Chapel Of The New Deal” Might Be Saved Thanks To A Republican Congressman

  18-09-2026 18:02 via newrepublic.com
  
  “The sponsor of the bill to save it is Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania and former chairman of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, whose mission statement expressing support for ‘limited government’ is the very antithesis of the social welfare programs celebrated in the Cohen building’s artworks.” – The New Republic
  
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• Madrid Gets A New Stellar Museum

  18-09-2026 17:44 via news.artnet.com
  The real game-changer is a landmark donation of over 180 works worth more than €16 million ($18.5 million) from the Thyssen-Bornemisza family, plus a loan of 180 more, worth €10 million ($11.5 million). – Artnet
  
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• David Ellison Is Losing The Hollywood Crowd

  18-09-2026 17:31 via latimes.com
  
  All the right-wing glad-handing that’s been happening, especially at CBS, has created optics that shroud the entire operation. This is a strategic failure that Hollywood moguls throughout history worked to avoid. – Los Angeles Times
  
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