Arts news

• The Meaning Of Lonnie Bunch Leaving The Smithsonian

  09-09-2026 17:31 via yahoo.com
  What this administration cannot capture directly of the country’s culture, it destroys with chaos, making life intolerable for people who persevere in the audacious belief that things like “the increase and diffusion of knowledge” actually matter. – Washington Post (Yahoo)
  
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• Sandra Vásquez De La Horra’s Dreamlike Drawings Unite Nature and Humanity

  10-09-2026 14:45 via artnews.com
  
  As a young child visiting her grandparents in the Chilean countryside, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra went missing. “Nobody could find me. They searched for hours and hours, until finally they found me with a pig who had just given birth. I was sleeping with the piglets,” the artist recently recalled, beginning to laugh. “My relationship with nature is that I’m part of it. I don’t feel separation.”For more than four decades, Vásquez de la Horra has m
  
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• Rabkin Foundation Names Eight Winners of Its 2026 Arts Journalism Grants 

  10-09-2026 12:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Foundation in Portland, Maine, named eight recipients of its 2026 prize for visual arts journalists. The Rabkin Prize carries an unrestricted $50,000 purse, along with creative and intellectual recognition. This year’s recipients, the foundation said, are “deeply interested in the forces that shape what we see—and what we don’t.”This year’s grant winners are Damien Davis, a writer, educator, and artist whose work interrogates how
  
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• After a Turbulent Decade and Multiple Delays, Brussels’s Kanal-Centre Pompidou Will Open in November. Not Everyone Is Happy About It.

  10-09-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  This past spring, an eclectic mix of journalists donned hard hats and dusty boots to join Kasia Redzisz, the artistic director of the Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels, on a tour through the institution’s colossal former Citroën garage from the 1930s ahead of its long-awaited reopening. After a crisis-ridden decade of planning and renovations and more than €250 million ($290 million), the 430,000-square-foot complex is set to open on November 28, when it will become the Belgian c
  
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• Getty Center Closes After Fire Breaks Out Along Los Angeles’s 405 Freeway

  10-09-2026 03:27 via artnews.com
  
  Los Angeles’s Getty Center closed early on Wednesday after a fire broke out along the 405 Freeway.Per the Los Angeles Times, the fire was reported to the city’s Fire Department at 4:30 p.m.; it has already burned five acres. The Fire Department has issued an evacuation warning for an area that includes the Getty Center, a complex that includes museum buildings host to Renaissance and Old Master paintings, the Getty Research Institute, and a Robert Irwin–designed garden.Accordin
  
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• The Ninety Nobody Wants From ChatGPT

  09-09-2026 23:37 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Students, it turns out, are tired of AI — not on principle, but because a ninety from ChatGPT doesn’t feel like anything, while a ninety earned over six hours in a basement does (The Walrus). Most people want to earn their accomplishments. That’s the argument culture often fails to win when it’s asked to justify itself in somebody else’s currency.Today’s institutional news is that failure in four lenses. London’s Gate Theatre closes after 47
  
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• Louisville’s Speed Art Museum Names New Director 

  09-09-2026 21:26 via artnews.com
  
  The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, has named Kathleen V. Jameson as its next director. She officially began in the role on Tuesday. She replaces Raphaela Platow, who stepped down last year at the end of a four-year contract.  A scholar of late 19th- and early 20th-century American art, with an emphasis on photography and works on paper, Jameson was most recently the executive director of Pennsylvania’s James A. Michener Art Museum, a role she held from 2018 to 2019.Pre
  
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• Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Faces Lawsuit over Whether It Truly Is a Private Museum at All

  09-09-2026 21:25 via artnews.com
  
  The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the newly inaugurated institution spearheaded by collectors George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, may finally have opened to the press and founding members after $1 billion in costs and more than a decade of bureaucratic wrangling, but a new lawsuit alleges that the museum should’ve faced yet more hurdles during its construction.The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that the museum is currently the subject of four lawsuits by contractors, one of whom is
  
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• Dimitris Daskalopoulos Collection Donates 51 Artworks to Four Museums in Greece and Scotland

  09-09-2026 21:24 via artnews.com
  
  The D. Daskalopoulos Collection announced a donation of 51 artworks to four museums across Greece and Scotland.The majority of the works will be spread across the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOMUS), and the National Gallery of Greece, all in Greece, with three pieces heading to the National Galleries of Scotland.The donation continues the collection’s “commitment to making contemporary art accessible to wider audiences,” the announcement
  
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• Europe’s Largest Center For Dance Is Now Under Construction In The Netherlands

  09-09-2026 21:02 via gramilano.com
  
  “Located on a prominent site in Rotterdam’s historic docklands, … Danshuis will be the largest centre in Europe dedicated to the production and development of dance under one roof. Open to all ages and levels of experience, it will provide facilities for both professional and amateur dance-making.” – Gramilano
  
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• Many Students Are Sick Of AI

  09-09-2026 20:31 via thewalrus.ca
  
  “Obviously, failing and struggling is not fun, but the sense of pride and succeeding afterwards is very, very motivating for me. And I don’t think you’d get that same kick or that same hit from getting a ninety from ChatGPT versus getting a ninety over an essay where you spent six hours in a basement.” – The Walrus
  
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• Scott Rudin Is Back On Broadway Again — And These Next Projects Are Pretty Brave

  09-09-2026 20:05 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  The first, starting previews next month, is Bruce Norris’s Downstate, about four convicted sex offenders, one of whom is confronted by a now-adult victim. The second has less fraught subject matter; in fact, it has almost no words at all. Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds stars Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd. – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Amateur Metal Detectorist Finds Finland’s Largest Viking-Age Silver Hoard

  09-09-2026 19:38 via artnews.com
  
  A hoard of thousands of silver coins was unearthed by an amateur metal detectorist in southern Finland. Experts at Lahti Museums believe it’s the largest Viking-era coin hoard found in the country, Heritage Daily reported.Kalle Lappinen made the find with a metal detector near Sysmä church village on September 3. Archaeologists have since inspected the site and recovered a trove of almost 10 pounds of silver coins, with individual pieces still to be cleaned, separated, and counted.The
  
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• Lonnie Bunch’s Smithsonian Legacy

  09-09-2026 19:31 via theatlantic.com
  
  Through a combination of principled stances and deft political skills, he has kept the sprawling institution on mission and aligned with its public. – The Atlantic
  
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• Will The Lucas Museum Disrupt Museums?

  09-09-2026 19:15 via latimes.com
  
  The museum calls it “narrative art,” defined as art “created to tell stories through images.” George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, have also described their collection as “the people’s art.” – Los Angeles Times
  
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• London Loses Another Theatre Company As The Gate Shuts Down

  09-09-2026 19:01 via theguardian.com
  “The Gate Theatre, which has punched above its weight ever since it was founded above a Notting Hill pub in 1979, is to close permanently next month. The announcement comes four years after the theatre had what it described as a ‘devastating’ 100% cut to its Arts Council England funding.” – The Guardian
  
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• Modernist Trove Rich in Signac Paintings Heads to Sale at Christie’s

  09-09-2026 18:47 via artnews.com
  
  Christie’s will sell nearly 600 works of modernist art from the same collection under the title “Radiant Modernism.” The sale will occur across multiple dates, the first of which will take place this October during Frieze London.The auction house did not name the seller of the works, though it did say that the pieces all belonged to a private European collection. Christie’s said the works could collectively bring in somewhere between $40 million and $60 million.The nearly
  
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• Modernist Collection Rich in Signac Paintings Heads to Sale at Christie’s

  09-09-2026 18:47 via artnews.com
  
  Christie’s will sell nearly 600 works of modernist art from the same collection under the title “Radiant Modernism.” The sale will occur across multiple dates, the first of which will take place this October during Frieze London.The auction house did not name the seller of the works, though it did say that the pieces all belonged to a private European collection. Christie’s said the works could collectively bring in somewhere between $40 million and $60 million.The nearly
  
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• Basel Social Club Launches Japanese Counterpart for Art Week Tokyo

  09-09-2026 18:32 via artnews.com
  
  Basel Social Club, an adventurous initiative that has provided counterpoint programming to the spectacle of Art Basel week in Switzerland since 2022, will launch a Japanese edition for Art Week Tokyo in November.Dubbed the Tokyo Jazz Club, the project will transpire in an eight-story former capsule hotel in the bookshop-intensive Jimbocho district of the city, with dates listed as November 1-8.As reported by the Italian publication Artribune, “Inspired by the cross-pollination of fields an
  
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• The Making Of American Sophistication

  09-09-2026 18:31 via newyorker.com
  
  Sophistication, one begins to think, is a thing won against the grain of privilege—a substitute for it, a social sleight of hand. A “classy” entertainer is almost never someone from the upper classes; sophisticated people are mostly smart people passing as rich people.  – The New Yorker
  
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• Leilah Babirye Joins Salon 94, George Rouy’s Solo at Hauser & Wirth in New York, and More: Industry Moves for September 9, 2026

  09-09-2026 18:26 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.Industry Moves Leilah Babirye Joins Salon 94: Known for her ceramic and wood sculptures about queer identity, Babirye will have a show next spring at the gallery, which will represent her in partnership with Gordon Robichaux and Galerie Max Hetzler. Babirye featured in the 2024 Venic
  
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• Jerome Foundation works to close the Hope Gap

  09-09-2026 18:24 via artsjournal.com
  Jerome Foundation announces an unprecedented increase in grantmaking this year, helping their grantees persevere and innovate in challenging times.
  
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• Hungary’s New Government Cancels New Museum

  09-09-2026 18:15 via theartnewspaper.com
  
  Hungary’s new government has scrapped plans for a New National Gallery that was to form part of a development in Budapest’s City Park (Városliget) aimed at elevating the capital’s cultural standing. – The Art Newspaper
  
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• Contractors Sue $1B Lucas Museum Over Unpaid Bills

  09-09-2026 18:15 via msn.com
  The suit, one of four recently brought by contractors alleging nonpayment, claims the museum “actively promoted, contracted, and labeled the construction as a ‘private, non-profit development’ to bypass the rigorous administrative, registration, and bonding mandates of the California Public Contract Code, Civil Code, and Labor Code.”  – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• How Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl” Became A Free-Speech Landmark

  09-09-2026 18:06 via msn.com
  In 1957, undercover police bought a copy of the poetry collection which featured “Howl” at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco — and proceeded to arrest owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti and manager Shig Murao for selling obscene material. Their trial set a major precedent in First Amendment case law. – BBC (MSN)
  
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• We Need Word Detectives

  09-09-2026 17:47 via psyche.co
  We appreciate that each of us is a link in a millennia-long chain of language, connected to people over the centuries by the words they bequeathed us. Following where, and through whom, that chain has passed is the business of etymology. – Psyche
  
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• Diotima Unveils Fall Ad Campaign Inspired by Artist Wilfredo Lam’s Afro-Cuban Symbolism and History

  09-09-2026 17:34 via artnews.com
  
  Rachel Scott, founder and creative director of Diotima, has released the company’s fall ad campaign, which is a collaboration with the estate of Wilfredo Lam, whose art was shaped by Afro-Cuban symbolism, Caribbean spirituality, and European modernism and carries a political and cultural consciousness.On Friday, Scott told WWD how meaningful Lam’s artwork was to her and her fall ’26 collection. “He’s one of the most influential of my work and my life. The
  
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• Trump Administration Strips Critical Language On Confederacy From Statue

  09-09-2026 17:30 via washingtonpost.com
  That language has been removed from the website, and the marker in the cemetery has been replaced by a new sign that omits wording critical of slavery and the Confederacy. – Washington Post
  
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• Three Stolen Renoir Paintings May Have Been Nazi Looted

  09-09-2026 17:21 via artnews.com
  
  Three of the Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings stolen yesterday morning from a museum in southern France may have been stolen before. France’s Ministry of Culture announced in a press release that three of the four paintings initially snatched from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer had been returned to France from Germany after World War II. They became informally known as “orphans” because their rightful owners were unknown. It’s still unclear which paintings have the of
  
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• Choreographer Richard Alston, Pivotal Figure In British Contemporary Dance, Has Died At 77

  09-09-2026 17:03 via theguardian.com
  “He played a leading role in developing the independent dance scene through the 1970s and early ‘80s, before going on to direct Ballet Rambert for six years from 1986, and then the Richard Alston Dance Company from 1994 to 2020.” – The Guardian
  
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