Arts news

• The Creative Force That Was Peter Hall

  13-09-2017 17:42 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Michael Billington: "What I most admired about Hall at the National was his tenacity in withstanding industrial action, persistent attacks from disappointed members of the Olivier regime and media abuse."
  
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• Dóra Maurer, Artist Beloved for Heady Films and Exuberantly Colored Paintings, Dies at 88

  19-02-2026 20:36 via artnews.com
  Dóra Maurer, a Hungarian conceptual artist whose output in multiple mediums explored how meaning shifts across time and space, has died at 88. The Art Newspaper reported that the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts, where Maurer served as president, confirmed her passing.Maurer was one of the most important contemporary artists in Hungary. She is today best known for her works produced in the country while it was still under Soviet rule. Many of those famous works were produce
  
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• Fossil in Montana Seen as Evidence of Vicious Tyrannosaurus Attack

  19-02-2026 19:47 via artnews.com
  A rare fossil in the collection of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, is the subject of new research that suggests its shows signs of an attack by a Tyrannosaurus rex.As reported by Phys.org, the skull of an Edmontosaurus—a duck-billed creature that counts among the last dinosaurs to exist—has a Tyrannosaurus tooth lodged within it in a way that indicates a fateful bite to the face. The skull, found in 2005 in eastern Montana and currently on display in the Museum of the
  
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• A Popular Bernini Sculpture of an Elephant in a Rome Square Was Damaged. Was It Weather or Vandalism?

  19-02-2026 18:22 via artnews.com
  Baroque master Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s popular marble sculpture of an elephant in Rome’s Piazza della Minerva was damaged over the weekend, with a four-inch fragment of the tip of one of its tusks broken off and found on the ground. Local authorities discovered the damage over the weekend and revealed it on Monday night. It’s at least the second time the statue has sustained damage. The tip of the same tusk was broken off in 2016 by a vandal and later restored.The Italian c
  
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• The Victoria & Albert Museum Acquires First YouTube Video Ever

  19-02-2026 16:17 via artnews.com
  The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has acquired the first video ever uploaded to YouTube, as well as an early watch page of the video-sharing platform, for its collection.The video, “Me at the zoo,” was first uploaded to the site on April 23, 2005. YouTube was officially founded in February 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The 19-second video features Karim at the San Diego Zoo standing in front of several elephants.The site launched i
  
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• Art Basel Exhibitors Revealed for Its Swiss Fair, Hungarian Artist Dóra Maurer Dies at 89: Morning Links for February 19, 2026

  19-02-2026 14:18 via artnews.com
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesBASEL SQUARED. Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, has revealed the 290 exhibitors from 42 countries participating in its hometown, 2026 edition, from June 18 to 21. This year, 21 first-timers are making the trip, several hailing from an ever-broadening geographic scope, including the Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, to name a few, accordi
  
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• Art Basel Names 290 Galleries from 43 Countries for Its Flagship Swiss Fair, with 21 First Timers

  19-02-2026 14:09 via artnews.com
  Art Basel has announced the 290 galleries that will participate in its 2026 flagship fair in Basel, taking place June 18-21, with the VIP days on June 16 and 17. Exhibitors come from 43 countries and territories, including 21 first-time participants.The main Galleries sector will include 232 exhibitors spanning historical to contemporary work. Twelve galleries enter the sector for the first time, eight of which previously showed in Feature, Statements, or Premiere. Four galleries—Berry Cam
  
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• Rana Begum’s Abstractions Are Industrial-Strength, But They Shine

  19-02-2026 14:02 via artnews.com
  Growing up in Bangladesh and Hertfordshire, England, Rana Begum didn’t know that being an artist was a possible future for her. Her father worked various jobs to support the family, and brought them to the UK looking for a better life. “I didn’t even know I could draw,” the artist told me recently, but since she didn’t yet speak English when she arrived in the UK in 1983, her teachers gave her colored pencils to keep her busy, and it stuck. “Art became a tool
  
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• Hauser & Wirth to Represent Carol Rama Estate

  19-02-2026 14:00 via artnews.com
  Hauser & Wirth, one of the biggest galleries in the world, has added yet one more artist to its roster: Carol Rama, whose estate Hauser & Wirth will represent alongside the Berlin-based Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi.Rama was one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. Working in Italy, she produced paintings about female sexuality that belonged to a style all her own. Often featuring bulging eyes and women with their tongues sticking out, these paintings do not cleanly conform
  
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• 8 Artists Reflect on the American War in Vietnam, 50 Years On

  19-02-2026 12:00 via artnews.com
  On May 22, 1970, the Art Strike Against racism, sexism, repression, and war uprooted the New York art world for one day. The strike was organized in the wake of President Richard Nixon’s announcement to expand the US’s war from Vietnam into Cambodia; of mass shootings at Kent State and Jackson State; and of the killing of six Black men and injuring of 75 others by police in Augusta, Georgia. Over 50 galleries, as well as the Whitney Museum and the Jewish Museum, closed. The Muse
  
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• Doha’s Newest Museum Brings to Life the Many Worlds of Indian Modernist M. F. Husain

  19-02-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  A restless experimenter, Maqbool Fida Husain, often shortened to M. F. Husain, worked through world wars, the independence and partition of the Indian Subcontinent, and the subsequent postcolonial transitions. During this time, depictions of the cultural horizons of rural life, the speed and exuberance of street culture, epic narratives of East and West Asia, and pluralities and convergences of religious thought all entered his work as he searched for ways to hold and bridge together these many
  
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• O Surto dos Caça-níqueis de Criptomoedas: Uma Nova Período nos Jogos para PC Online

  18-02-2026 23:05 via zouchmagazine.com
  À medida que as moedas digitais continuam a redefinir numerosas indústrias, o mercado de jogos de vídeo na internet está vivenciando uma melhoria avançada via do desenvolvimento dos portos de criptomoedas. Esta combinação inovadora de criptomoeda e jogos de vídeo de porto padrão fornece oportunidades incríveis e dificuldades tanto para jogadores habilidosos quanto para iniciantes. Neste post, investigaremos as complexidade dos
  
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• In a First, Portugal Returns Looted Antiquities to Mexico

  18-02-2026 21:56 via artnews.com
  In a sign of growing international cooperation in the restitution of looted artifacts, Portugal has returned three pre-Columbian objects to Mexico. This will be the first time Portugal has repatriated unlawfully acquired antiquities to that country.The three pieces represent distinct pre-Hispanic periods and cultures. They include a Shaft Tomb Culture female figure, a Maya painted vessel, and a Zapotec urn.According to a press release from Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the handover
  
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• Petzel to Rep Emma Webster, McNay Appoints New Head of Curatorial Affairs, and More: Industry Moves for February 18, 2026

  18-02-2026 20:34 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.Happy Wednesday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week.Petzel to Represent Emma Webster: The Los Angeles–based artist, known for digitally constructed dioramas that merge Baroque landscape traditions with contemporary technology, will be jointly repre
  
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• Turner Prize–Winning Artist Tai Shani Ends Phaidon Book Deal Over Leon Black’s Relationship to Jeffrey Epstein

  18-02-2026 20:24 via artnews.com
  Tai Shani, a London-based artist who won the Turner Prize in 2019, said this week that she was terminating a book contract with Phaidon, the arts book publisher that has been owned by billionaire art collector Leon Black since 2012.Shani cited Black’s connections to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including “numerous horrific allegations” about Black and some which have been newly revealed as part of the Department Justice’s recent release
  
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• South African Court Rejects Gabrielle Goliath’s Bid to Reinstate Venice Biennale Pavilion

  18-02-2026 19:53 via artnews.com
  A South African high court has dismissed artist Gabrielle Goliath’s last-ditch bid to overturn the cancellation of her Venice Biennale pavilion, rejecting the application just hours before the exhibition’s submission deadline.Goliath’s proposed pavilion, titled Elegy, was selected last month by the nonprofit Art Periodic to represent South Africa at the upcoming Venice Biennale, with Ingrid Masondo as curator. Days later, however, South African culture minister Gayton McKenzie
  
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• What Would Happen to Auction Houses If Luxury Sales Outstrip Art Sales?

  18-02-2026 19:31 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.Since I started reporting on the convergence of the art and luxury markets last year, I’ve been asking people in the auction game a simple, rational question: What happens if luxury sales overtake art at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips? The answer tends to be an emphatic: No, that
  
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• Six National Nonprofits Sue Trump Administration Over Erasing History and Science at National Parks

  18-02-2026 18:46 via artnews.com
  Six national nonprofit organizations devoted to the national parks, history, and science have sued the Trump administration over its censoring of signage it disapproves of in national parks across the U.S.The plaintiffs in the sixty-page suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Masachusetts, include the National Parks Conservation Association; the American Association for State and Local History; the Association of National Park Rangers; the Coalition to Protect America’s National Par
  
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• Saudi Arabia Commissions Giant Mural the Size of 9 Football Fields

  18-02-2026 18:39 via artnews.com
  Saudi Arabia commissioned Domingo Zapata to paint what’s being called the largest mural ever created—at a size, as the New York Post’s “Page Six” put it, of 540,000 square feet, or about nine football fields.The New York–based Zapata—who the Post notes “has painted stars including Kim Kardashian and Sofia Vergara, and painted with the last pope”—said he has been given “a blank check” to create a work with a team of some 100
  
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• Labubus, Vintage YouTube, Pimple Patches, and More On View in the V&A’s Reopened ‘1900-Now’ Galleries

  18-02-2026 18:32 via artnews.com
  On Wednesday, the V&A in London reopened several galleries dedicated to design from the past 126 years. The newly installed Design 1900-Now spaces, which had been closed since November, showcase 250 objects from the 20th and 21st centuries, from a first edition of Kim Kardashian’s coffee table book Selfish, published in 2015, to a bottle of Finlandia vodka from 1969-70, to a “Crate” chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1934.The collection is a reminder of how design infiltr
  
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• French Police Search Institut du Monde Arabe As Part of Epstein Probe

  18-02-2026 17:57 via artnews.com
  French police raided the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris on Monday as part of an investigation into its former president, ex–culture minister Jack Lang, who resigned earlier this month amid scrutiny over his past ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The cultural institution was one of several premises searched, France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. Earlier this month, prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation into Lang and his daug
  
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• Online Blackjack Szórakozás céljából: Játssz és Tudj meg többet a videojátékról

  18-02-2026 15:05 via zouchmagazine.com
  A blackjack csak egy a legkedveltebb szerencsejáték vállalkozás videojátékok közül világszerte. Az ügyesség, módszer és szerencse keveréke csalogató opcióvá teszi mind a képzett kaszinójátékosok, mind a kezdők számára. Az online szerencsejáték vállalkozások érkezésével a blackjack já
  
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• Nan Goldin’s Photobook The Ballad of Sexual Dependency Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary at Gagosian

  18-02-2026 15:00 via artnews.com
  “I don’t ever want to be susceptible to anyone else’s version of my history,” wrote photographer Nan Goldin at the end of her essay for her major photo book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, first published in 1986. In the 20-plus printings of her debut—and still most celebrated—work, Goldin has never changed the foreword (although she does recontextualize the afterword every decade or so).Goldin also explained in the introduction why the Ballad is dedicated to
  
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• Sotheby’s Hikes Buyers’ Fees, Restitution Battle Over Franz Marc Painting Heats Up, and More: Morning Links for February 18, 2026

  18-02-2026 14:45 via artnews.com
  Good Morning!A restitution battle over a Franz Marc painting in the collection of the Folkwang Museum in Germany heats up.As of last Friday, Sotheby’s has raised its buyers’ fees worldwide.British artist and Turner Prize winner Tai Shani has withdrawn a Phaidon monograph following sexual assault allegations against owner Leon Black revealed in the latest Epstein files.The Headlines FEE HIKE. Sotheby’s has raised its buyer’s premiums worldwide, with the move comi
  
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• Marilyn Minter Wins Anderson Ranch’s International Artist Award

  18-02-2026 14:30 via artnews.com
  Marilyn Minter, known for her feminist practice that blends painting and photography, has won this year’s International Artist Award from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Minter will be honored at the annual Ranch Gala, part of the Ranch’s annual Ranch Week series in July.Ranch President and CEO Peter Waanders told ARTnews in an interview that the choice of Minter came down to her meticulous technique, her studio practice, and her longtime dedication to teaching (Minter is a faculty m
  
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• I Swam To See an Underwater Art Project Off Miami Beach That Imagines a Better Aquatic World

  18-02-2026 14:00 via artnews.com
  The news about the environment, as you may know, is not good. President Donald Trump recently announced that he was erasing the finding that climate change endangers humans and the environment, meaning the Environmental Protection Agency can no longer control pollution. The glaciers on Greenland are melting faster and faster. Partly owing to climate risks, the professional worrywarts who maintain the Doomsday Clock just set it at 85 seconds to midnight, “the closest it has ever been to cat
  
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• From Gorillaz to the Port of Los Angeles: Stephen Thomas Gallagher to Debut a Trippy New Film During Frieze LA

  18-02-2026 14:00 via artnews.com
  There are many people who say they have the coolest job in the world. Stephen Thomas Gallagher might actually have a case.He designs live shows for Gorillaz and Lana Del Rey. He helped build a blazing London tower block with a tube train smashed through it at Glastonbury, and once brought a little bit (or rather, a whole chunk) of 1970s New York City to London. For his latest project, he flew in a bright yellow helicopter over the Port of Los Angeles with the doors off,
  
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• Devyani Saltzman Abruptly Leaves Her Role as Director of the Barbican in London

  18-02-2026 13:46 via artnews.com
  Devyani Saltzman is leaving the Barbican in London, marking another major leadership shake-up just weeks after the center welcomed its new CEO. Saltzman, who became director of arts and participation in February 2024, had only recently unveiled a five-year creative vision for the venue, making her sudden departure all the more surprising.Recognized as one of the 40 most influential women in the UK arts scene, Saltzman was described as the “driving force” behind the Barbican. Her work
  
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• For 83-Year-Old Artist Mia Westerlund Roosen, Endurance Rather Than Attention Has Fueled Her Creativity for Decades

  18-02-2026 13:00 via artnews.com
  When artist Mia Westerlund Roosen debuted her conical sculptures, which unmistakably recall phalluses, at the “25th Anniversary Exhibition of Leo Castelli” in 1982, she did so as a form of feminist protest. The exhibition, celebrating one of the postwar era’s most important galleries, had assembled together a pantheon of postwar American artists, the majority of them men. Westerlund Roosen was one of four women featured in the 29-artist exhibition.Inclusion, however, didn&rsquo
  
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• More than 100 Cuban Cultural Leaders Call for International Aid in Face of Oil Blockade

  17-02-2026 22:49 via artnews.com
  As Cuba endures rolling blackouts and a plunging standard of living, more than 100 artists, curators, and cultural workers have issued a public appeal for international intervention, arguing that the longstanding US oil blockade has made efforts to stabilize the island’s spiraling humanitarian crisis all but impossible.The letter, titled “Cuba is Not a Threat” and published February 16 on the website Peoples Dispatch, was signed by scores of nationally recognized Cuban intellec
  
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