Arts news

• The Crushing Debt Of Arts Schools

  10-11-2025 19:40
  
  Art schools are marketed as gateways to success. However, the fine print tells a different story: crushing debt, unreliable outcomes, and a mismatch between what’s promised and what’s delivered. – Hyperallergic
  
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• Tom Jung’s 1977 ‘Star Wars’ Painting Fetches $3.9 M., Breaking Auction Record for the Franchise

  10-12-2025 23:44 via artnews.com
  At a Heritage Auctions sale of Hollywood memorabilia in Dallas on Wednesday, a Star Wars painting sold for $3.88 million, breaking the record for an object associated with the series.The work, a painting by illustrator Tom Jung, served as the original half-sheet poster for Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope when it was first released in 1977. The work was consigned by the family of the film’s producer Gary Kurtz, who has owned it since it was first produced by Jung.The work first app
  
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• Consultants’ Gulf Gold Rush, South Arts New CEO and More: Industry Moves for December 10, 2025

  10-12-2025 21:31 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.Happy Thursday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week:South Arts Names Doug Shipman as Next President and CEO: Shipman will depart his post as Atlanta’s City Council president to take the helm of the regional arts nonprofit in January, overseeing
  
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• Sotheby’s Nets $133 M. from Abu Dhabi Collectors’ Week as Its Luxury Prospecting Strikes Gold

  10-12-2025 21:27 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.Last week, Sotheby’s took over the ritzy St. Regis Island Resort on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, transforming two of its restaurants into showrooms—one touting handbags, diamonds, and watches, the other staging a non-selling display of $500 million worth of art. In the palm-shaded gard
  
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• Louvre Thieves Evaded Police by a ‘Hair’s Breadth,’ Says Investigator

  10-12-2025 20:11 via artnews.com
  The thieves who stole jewelry from the Louvre evaded capture in October “by a hair’s breadth,” a senior official from the administrative inquiry into the museum’s security failings told the French Senate on Wednesday, as reported by Le Figaro.Noël Corbin, director of the General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs (IGAC), noted that Louvre agents or the police had a chance to prevent their escape. Another rapporteur for the investigation, Pascal
  
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• Lalanne’s ‘Hippopotame Bar’ Sells for $31.4 M., Shattering Design Auction Record

  10-12-2025 20:05 via artnews.com
  François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar sold today for a staggering $31.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York, shattering every precedent in the market for design and setting a new auction record for the artist by a wide margin. Estimated at $7 million–$10 million, the hand-wrought copper bar more than tripled its high estimate after a 26-minute bidding contest among seven bidders.Not only does the result confirm Lalanne’s commercial star power, it also re
  
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• Now’s Your Chance to Snag a $1.12 M. Picasso for Just $115 in a Global Raffle for Alzheimer’s Research

  10-12-2025 19:57 via artnews.com
  You might associate raffles with pretty low stakes: pitch in a few dollars for the Girl Scouts, say, and win a chance for something like a gift card or a spa day. But now aspiring art collectors can donate just €100 (about $115) to a raffle organized by France’s Fondation Recherche Alzheimer and win the chance to take home a Pablo Picasso valued at €1 million ($1.2 million).Entrants can buy one of 120,000 tickets at the site 1picasso100euros; the draw will take place April 14, 20
  
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• Now’s Your Chance to Snag a €1 M. Picasso for Just €100 in a Global Raffle for Alzheimer’s Research

  10-12-2025 19:57 via artnews.com
  You might associate raffles with pretty low stakes: pitch in a few dollars for the Girl Scouts, say, and win a chance for something like a gift card or a spa day. But now aspiring art collectors can donate just €100 (about $115) to a raffle organized by France’s Fondation Recherche Alzheimer and win the chance to take home a Pablo Picasso valued at €1 million ($1.2 million).Entrants can buy one of 120,000 tickets at the site 1picasso100euros; the draw will take place April 14, 20
  
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• Yokohama Triennale Announces Co-Artistic Directors for 2027 Edition

  10-12-2025 19:54 via artnews.com
  Japan’s Yokohama Triennale has announced Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero as co-artistic directors for its 9th edition, set to open at the Yokohama Museum of Art on April 23, 2027. Costinaș, from Romania, is a writer and critic. He is a senior curator at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, an art center in Berlin; at the end of the year, he will transition from his current role and become a curatorial adviser to the museum. Guerrero, from Bogotá, is a professor in the School of C
  
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• The New Mexico Desert That Inspired Georgia O’Keeffe Is Now a Protected Zone

  10-12-2025 18:50 via artnews.com
  A conservation plan is underway to safeguard the spectacular stretch of New Mexico desert that inspired some of Georgia O’Keeffe’s most enduring artworks. The initial phase establishes a protected area spanning some 26 square kilometers near Abiquiu, in northern New Mexico, encompassing the sandstone bluffs and grasslands familiar to fans of the modernist artist. The land is owned by a charitable arm of the Presbyterian Church, which partnered with the New Mexico Land Conservanc
  
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• San Francisco Asian Art Museum Returns Stolen Ancient Sculptures to Thailand

  10-12-2025 18:45 via artnews.com
  After years of research revealed they had been illegally removed in the 1960s, four ancient bronze sculptures were transferred from San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum to their original home in Thailand as a result of an investigation led by the US Department of Homeland Security.The works, most recently featured in the 2024 exhibition “Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities,” were connected to Douglas Latchford, a dealer indicted for illegally trafficking in S
  
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• ‘Nnena Kalu was ready for this – nobody else was’: how her Turner prize victory shook the art world

  10-12-2025 18:22
  As the first learning-disabled artist to win the UK’s most prestigious art award, Kalu has smashed a ‘very stubborn glass ceiling’. Her facilitator reveals why her victory is so seismic – and the secrets of her party playlistThe morning after the Turner prize ceremony, the winner of the UK’s most prestigious art award, Nnena Kalu, is eating toast and drinking a strong cup of tea. Everyone around her is beaming – only a little the worse for wear after dancing t
  
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• Ximena Garrido-Lecca Wins Miami Beach Legacy Purchase as City Highlights Year-Round Cultural Role

  10-12-2025 17:58 via artnews.com
  Now that the art world has finally caught its breath after a sun- and champagne-soaked Miami Art Week, it’s worth remembering that Miami Beach does more than host the annual influx of collectors, artists, and fashion pilgrims. The city is also an active cultural player in its own right—not just during the fairs, but throughout the year.Last week, that role sharpened into view with the announcement of the 2025 Legacy Purchase Program winner, the city’s headline public-art a
  
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• Yves Bouvier Seeks US Discovery to Track 91 Artworks in New Twist to Long-Running Feud

  10-12-2025 17:54 via artnews.com
  After Sotheby’s was cleared of any wrongdoing in the Yves Bouvier affair last year, the art world thought it had finally thumbed through the final chapter. But no story in this business ever truly ends. And like Hollywood’s penchant for remakes and sequels, the saga is gearing up for yet another installment: the Swiss art dealer has now filed a sweeping petition in US federal court to track down 91 artworks he claims are rightfully his.Bouvier’s filing—known as a Section
  
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• Zohran Mamdani’s Favorite Museum in New York Is ‘Our Subway System’

  10-12-2025 17:48 via artnews.com
  New York has one of the richest art museum ecosystems in the world, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum all located within the same borough—and that’s to say nothing of the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, the Bronx Museum, and many other institutions that make this city’s art world go round. But according to Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Mayor-elect, the best museum is none of these. Instead, it’s “our su
  
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• Who Was Auguste Rodin and Why Was His Sculpture So Radical?

  10-12-2025 17:04 via artnews.com
  Aside from Michelangelo, there’s no artist as synonymous with sculpture as Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). He created an art-historical icon—The Thinker—that rivals Leonardo’s Mona Lisa for pop-cultural fame. But more than this, he set sculpture on its path toward modernism, breaking with the mythological themes and neoclassical refinement endorsed by the French Academy and revolutionizing the medium, imbuing it with raw emotional expression.Rodin’s approach was a
  
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• Napoles Marty Wins Frieze LA’s $25,000 Impact Prize

  10-12-2025 16:00 via artnews.com
  Frieze Los Angeles has awarded its 2026 Impact Prize to artist Napoles Marty, whose work will now be featured in the upcoming fair, scheduled to run February 26–March 1.The annual award, now in its fifth year, is given to an emerging artist and a nonprofit and comes with a solo booth at Frieze LA as well as a $25,000 prize for the artist.This year’s iteration of the Impact Prize was awarded in partnership with NXTHVN, the artist residency program in New Haven, Connecticut, that was f
  
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• A tribute to resilience: what we can learn from the splendour of Accra Cultural Week

  10-12-2025 15:46
  Ghana’s capital is a party and entertainment hub but members of the diaspora would do well to experience its spectacular art scene• Don’t get The Long Wave delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereAfter more than 50 editions surfing across the waves of the global Black diaspora with Nesrine, this will be my final dispatch for the Long Wave, as I move on to a new role on the Opinion desk at the Guardian. I am heartbroken to be leaving, but I am so thankful to all of our readers for b
  
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• Hamza Walker Wins CCS Bard’s 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence

  10-12-2025 15:00 via artnews.com
  The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has given its 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence to Los Angeles–based curator Hamza Walker. He will receive $25,000 and will be honored at CCS Bard’s spring gala in April.Walker has been the executive director of the Brick (formerly LAXART) since 2016. During his tenure, he has mounted exhibitions for artists like Elizabeth Paige Smith, Gregg Bordowitz, and Postcommodity.He is also a cocurator of the acclaime
  
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• Tishan Hsu Is Working with AI for Paintings That Envision Human Bodies as ‘Liquid Soup’

  10-12-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  Tishan Hsu saw the future coming as early as the 1980s, when he began producing abstract paintings with sculptural additions that looked variously like warping screens and torqued body parts. Beyond the body horror seen in David Cronenberg’s films, there wasn’t much out there that looked like Hsu’s paintings of the era. But now, with digital technology having become so fully integrated into daily life, Hsu’s paintings—both the ones produced when he started and the o
  
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• Minnie Evans’s Legacy Raises Questions About Power Dynamics Between Self-Taught Artists and the Art World

  10-12-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  In Atlanta, the desire for critical art writing has spurred many heated debates on the question of responsibility. Whose responsibility is it to write critically about the arts in the Southeast? Which writers have the knowledge and care to write well-informed cultural analyses and critiques without regional prejudice—and, more candidly, without gender or racial prejudice? These debates have become more impassioned since Art Papers, an international art magazine based in Atlanta, announced
  
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• Nnena Kalu becomes first artist with a learning disability to win Turner prize

  09-12-2025 22:44
  Chair of 2025 judging panel says win ‘begins to erase that border between the neurotypical and neurodiverse artist’Nnena Kalu’s embodied, sensuous art makes her a worthy Turner prize winnerNnena Kalu has won the 2025 Turner prize for her colourful drawings and sculptures made from found fabric and VHS tape, becoming the first artist with a learning disability to take home the £25,000 prize.Alex Farquharson, chair of the jury and director of Tate Britain, said the win by t
  
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• Newly Established UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art Names Kathryn Kanjo as First Director

  09-12-2025 21:16 via artnews.com
  This fall, the University of California, Irvine, and Orange County Museum of Art completed their amicable merger, creating a new entity: the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. Today, the new institution named its first director, Kathryn Kanjo, who currently leads the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). She will assume her new role in February 2026, and will also oversee the UC Irvine Jack & Shanaz Langson Institute of California Art.Kanjo ascended from MCASD’s chi
  
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• Nnena Kalu Wins Turner Prize, Becoming First Learning-Disabled Artist to Take UK’s Top Art Award

  09-12-2025 21:06 via artnews.com
  The Turner Prize, England’s most high-profile art award, has named Nnena Kalu as its 2025 winner. She will take home £25,000 (about $33,300), while the three other shortlisted artists will receive £10,000 ($13,000).Kalu is officially the first-ever learning-disabled artist to win the award, which has in past years gone to artists such as Anish Kapoor, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Lubaina Himid. She is also one of the few Black artists ever to have received the prize.Born in Glasgow i
  
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• Nnena Kalu’s embodied, sensuous art makes her a worthy Turner prize winner

  09-12-2025 20:56
  The closer you get to Kalu’s endless sinewy trails of old VHS tape, the harder it is to know where their forms stop and the space around them beginsNnena Kalu becomes first artist with a learning disability to win Turner prizeNnena Kalu’s forms come at you with their almost alien unknowable presence. They bulge and bifurcate and multiply. The viewer gets caught up in all the roaring, spilling, snaggling details, and you begin to wonder about your own boundaries, the body’s begi
  
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• Looted ‘Nude Emperor’ Statue, Marble Head Returned to Turkey

  09-12-2025 20:25 via artnews.com
  A California antiquities dealer has surrendered to New York prosecutors a 2,000-year-old bronze statue of a Roman emperor believed to have been looted from an archaeological site in Turkey, as first reported in the New York Times.Aaron Mendelsohn, 74, a Santa Monica philanthropist and former medical technology venture capitalist, purchased the headless bronze torso, known as Nude Emperor, from a now-defunct New York gallery in 2007. However, the Manhattan district attorney’s offi
  
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• Christina Vassallo Departs Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati for Pew Center

  09-12-2025 19:55 via artnews.com
  The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, announced that its director, Christina Vassallo, will leave the museum, effective January 2, 2026. She will join the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, a grant-making organization in Philadelphia, on January 5.“It has been an honor to shepherd CAC and be part of Cincinnati’s vibrant artistic legacy,” Vassallo, the museum’s director since 2023, said in a statement. “I’m so proud of the exhibitions we’ve b
  
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• Claire Tabouret’s Designs for Notre-Dame’s New Stained Glass Windows to Go on View in Paris

  09-12-2025 19:50 via artnews.com
  A show of French painter Claire Tabouret’s designs for six new stained-glass windows for the Notre-Dame cathedral will open to the public tomorrow, reports the Art Newspaper. The Los Angeles–based artist’s full-scale, ink-on-paper maquettes for the windows will be displayed at Paris’s Grand Palais museum through March 15.The new windows will replace 19th-century lights installed by architects Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, who won a commission to r
  
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• Swedish Court Acquits Climate Activists Who Smeared Paint on Monet Painting

  09-12-2025 19:26 via artnews.com
  A Stockholm court on Monday acquitted six activists who smeared red paint on the display cade protecting a Claude Monet painting, ruling that they had not intended to damage the work.The painting, The Artist’s Garden at Giverny (1900), was on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to the National Museum of Sweden as part of an exhibition on Impressionists and gardens when, in June 2023, two young women spread paint onto the glass covering the vibrant depiction of pink and p
  
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• Napoleon Jones-Henderson, AfriCOBRA Artist Who Wove Images of Black Power, Dies at 82

  09-12-2025 18:28 via artnews.com
  Napoleon Jones-Henderson, a member of the AfriCOBRA collective who made art for the age of Black Power, died in Boston on December 6 at 82. Wonderland, a Boston-based art publication, reported that Jones-Henderson had been battling cancer.Jones-Henderson was one of the key artists associated with AfriCOBRA, a Chicago-based group whose members synthesized African styles with emergent Black forms of expression in the US. Founded by Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu
  
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