Arts news

• Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.01.16

  02-08-2016 10:40 via feedproxy.google.com
  Attention Deficit Disorder: Our Walled-Garden Problem
  As the digital world pummels us with more information and choice, many of us react by walling off the things we simply won’t pay attention to. It’s a survival strategy. … read more
  AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-08-01Evanescent Permanent Collections: Warhol Museum’s & Fisk University’s Stealth Deaccessions
  Recent revelations of secret disposals of artworks held in public trust by a museu
  
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• In Leaked Transcript, UNT Dean Cites Politics as the Reason Behind Cancelation of Show with Anti-ICE Art Show

  24-02-2026 20:37 via artnews.com
  The decision to cancel a solo exhibition featuring anti-ICE art at the University of North Texas art school was an “institutional directive,” Dean Karen Hutzel said in newly leaked transcripts of a faculty meeting. First reported by the Denton Record-Chronicle, the transcripts show Hutzel declining to identify the directive’s source while warning colleagues to expect a “media storm.”The College of Visual Arts and Design (CVAD) at the University of North Texas made n
  
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• Butter Art Fair Expands to Los Angeles During Frieze Week

  24-02-2026 20:11 via artnews.com
  Butter, the Indianapolis-founded art fair that returns 100 percent of sales proceeds to artists, will make its Los Angeles debut this week, expanding for the first time beyond its Midwest base as the city fills with collectors and dealers for Frieze week.Founded in 2021 and organized by Indianapolis-based cultural development firm GangGang, Butter positions itself as a no-commission alternative to the traditional art fair model, centering Black visual artists from California and across the count
  
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• Louvre Director Laurence des Cars Resigns After Heist and Internal Turmoil

  24-02-2026 19:10 via artnews.com
  After a prolonged period of internal turmoil that has included a widely publicized heist, striking workers, two structural leaks, and a ticketing scam, the Louvre has lost its director.On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he had officially accepted the resignation of Laurence des Cars, who had led the Louvre since 2021.“Ms. Laurence des Cars has submitted to the President of the Republic her letter of resignation from the presidency of the Louvre Museum,” a short stateme
  
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• MOCA Los Angeles Reveals 158 Newly Acquired Works, Including Acclaimed Kara Walker Sculpture

  24-02-2026 18:40 via artnews.com
  An acclaimed Kara Walker sculpture, abstractions by beloved painters of the past and present, and a video about two lizards in Covid-era New York are among the 158 artworks acquired last year by the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, which revealed the newest pieces to enter its holdings on Tuesday. Fifty of the artists behind those works have never before seen their art acquired by MOCA, one of LA’s top museums.The Walker sculpture, Unmanned Drone (2023), is perhaps the most high-pro
  
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• Four Suffer Minor Injuries After Michael Joo Sculpture Is Damaged in New York

  24-02-2026 18:37 via artnews.com
  A large sculpture by Korean American artist Michael Joo collapsed after an accident, reportedly caused by a careless visitor, during the February 20 opening of his exhibition “Sweat Models 1991–2006,” at New York’s Space ZeroOne. The collapse of the piece Saltiness of Greatness (1992) injured four, who were taken to the emergency room via ambulance, according to a report in Seoul Economic Daily. The piece reportedly consists of stacks of compressed salt and, per a 20
  
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• Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock to Star in Blockbuster Exhibition at the Met

  24-02-2026 18:33 via artnews.com
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will host a major exhibition for two major artists who have never been subject to such treatment by the institution before: Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.The famously married artists each established a legacy that stands on its own. This show, to open in October and run through January 2027, will survey those legacies both on their own and side-by-side.In a press release, Met director Max Hollein said, “With its distinctive premise and scope, Kr
  
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• Digital Artist Gets in Hot Water for AI-Generated Works ‘After’ George Condo 

  24-02-2026 18:31 via artnews.com
  Artists copying or quoting other artists’ works is common throughout art history. But when is a new piece too close to an existing artist’s work?This question, and the way that AI might shift the answer to it, is at the center of a show on view through March 15 at New York’s Heft Gallery. It’s the New York solo debut of 31-year-old New York artist Kevin Esherick, who started creating art in the 2021 wave of interest in digital art, especially NFTs. Founded last year by Ad
  
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• Pritzker Prize Defends Jury Independence After Tom Pritzker’s Epstein Ties Surface

  24-02-2026 16:07 via artnews.com
  The Pritzker Architecture Prize issued a statement defending the integrity of its selection process after newly released Jeffrey Epstein files detailed past contact between Tom Pritzker, the director of the foundation behind the award, and the disgraced financier.The statement, released to the New York Times, said the Hyatt Foundation’s role as the prize’s benefactor allows it “to remain assured in the strength of its process and focus entirely on the celebration of a
  
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• Berkeley Art Museum Will Receive Major Bequest of Work by Women Artists

  24-02-2026 16:05 via artnews.com
  The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive announced on Monday that it will receive a bequest of nearly 150 artworks from Penny Cooper and Rena Rosenwasser, two Berkeley-based collectors who focus on modern and contemporary art by women.Cooper, a criminal defense attorney and advocate for social justice, and Rosenwasser, a poet and cofounder of the Bay Area–based feminist publishing house Kelsey Street Press, have long made collecting a part of their support for women in the arts.Sin
  
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• British Museum Sets Aside £1.2 M. to Cover Transport of the Bayeux Tapestry

  24-02-2026 13:35 via artnews.com
  The British Museum is gearing up for a major logistical challenge: moving the iconic Bayeux Tapestry from Normandy to London. According to the online publication Arts Professional, the museum has set aside £1.2 million to cover the transport, including all the preliminary work needed to get the 11th-century masterpiece safely across the Channel.The tapestry is already being covered by a UK Treasury guarantee of around £800 million ($1 billion). Now the museum has confirmed the extra
  
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• British Museum Sets Aside £1.2 M. to Cover Transport of the Bayeux Tapestry from Normandy to London

  24-02-2026 13:35 via artnews.com
  The British Museum is gearing up for a major logistical challenge: moving the iconic Bayeux Tapestry from Normandy to London. According to the online publication Arts Professional, the museum has set aside £1.2 million to cover the transport, including all the preliminary work needed to get the 11th-century masterpiece safely across the Channel.The tapestry is already being covered by a UK Treasury guarantee of around £800 million ($1 billion). Now the museum has confirmed the extra
  
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• The Tangs Donate 150 Native American Artworks to NY Historical, Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos Become Honorary Chairs of Met Gala: Morning Links for February 24, 2026

  24-02-2026 13:18 via artnews.com
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesPAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. The New York Historical (NYH) has just received 150 artworks by Native American artists, donated by the chair of its board of trustees, Agnes Hsu-Tang—and her husband, Oscar Tang. The gift coincides with the 250th anniversary of the US, reports the Art Newspaper. Works by Fritz Scholder (Luiseño)
  
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• France Returns Looted ‘Talking Drum’ to the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire

  24-02-2026 00:01 via artnews.com
  In a ceremony held on Friday at the Musée Quai Branly in Paris, France officially returned a drum known as the “talking drum” or Djidji Ayôkwé, to the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. The news was reported by French newspaper Le Monde.The ten-foot-long, 940-pound drum has a single-piece soundbox slit in half longitudinally. Extending out from the slit are two planks, one of which supports a carving of a jumping leopard. The box itself is decorated with carve
  
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• Artists Rally for Jamaica and L.A. With a Hollywood Auction During Art Week

  23-02-2026 22:20 via artnews.com
  The art world loves a party. This time it’s putting that energy to work. On February 26, during L.A. Art Week, CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) and TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary will launch “Get Up Stand Up: Artists for Jamaica and Los Angeles,” a benefit auction aimed at long-term recovery efforts after Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica and the recent wildfires in Los Angeles.The event kicks off in Hollywood with a live sale led by Swiss auctioneer Simon de
  
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• Met Gala Reveals 2026 Dress Code: ‘Fashion is Art’

  23-02-2026 22:18 via artnews.com
  Last November, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute revealed that theme for this May’s Met Gala, is “Costume Art,” a capacious conceit that positions the museum’s five-millennia spanning collection in dialogue with the dressed body (never mind its nonrepresentational holdings). The Met Gala dress code has now been announced, and it pairs neatly: airy to the point of apolitical, a truth too apparent to debate—”Fashion is Art.”The
  
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• Newly Unearthed Documents Propose That the Eastern Island Head Was Not Stolen

  23-02-2026 21:35 via artnews.com
  A British archaeologist has proposed a revised account of the excavation of Hoa Hakananaiʻa, the moai better known as the Easter Island Head, arguing that its removal was not a unilateral act of imperial extraction but a collaborative effort between British explorers and Indigenous Rapa Nui islanders that ultimately led to its voyage to England.Hoa Hakananaiʻa was one of roughly 1,000 basalt statues scattered across Easter Island, a subtropical landmass about the size of Manhattan loca
  
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• Newly Unearthed Documents Propose That the Easter Island Head Was Not Stolen

  23-02-2026 21:35 via artnews.com
  A British archaeologist has proposed a revised account of the excavation of Hoa Hakananaiʻa, the moai better known as the Easter Island Head, arguing that its removal was not a unilateral act of imperial extraction but a collaborative effort between British explorers and Indigenous Rapa Nui islanders that ultimately led to its voyage to England.Hoa Hakananaiʻa was one of roughly 1,000 basalt statues scattered across Easter Island, a subtropical landmass about the size of Manhattan loca
  
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• Ancient Egyptian Tombs, Some Full of Pottery and Jewelry, Discovered at Qubbet Al-Hawa

  23-02-2026 21:30 via artnews.com
  A research team from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has announced new discoveries at Qubbet Al-Hawa, a well-known archaeological site in southeast Egypt, near the city of Aswan. The Upper Egyptian site is known for its sprawling necropolis.This latest mission, as reported in Ahram, focused on rock-cut burial shafts and chambers, most notably two chambers full of 160 pottery vessels, many of which are covered with text, that are believed to have been used to store grain and li
  
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• Newsmakers: Enzo, a Small Art Fair, Could Have a Big Impact on the LA Market

  23-02-2026 21:26 via artnews.com
  Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, an ARTnews series featuring conversations with the figures shaping how the art world is changing right now.This year sees the introduction of two new major fairs: Art Basel Qatar earlier this month and Frieze Abu Dhabi in November. Those enterprises will almost certainly have an important impact on the market, both in the Gulf and globally. But this week in Los Angeles, one collector is thinking through how a smaller fair can also
  
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• Sotheby’s to Auction Jean and Terry de Gunzburg Collection, Led by Claude Lalanne Mirrors and $15 M. Rothko

  23-02-2026 20:42 via artnews.com
  Sotheby’s is about to turn a pair of very polished lives into a two-part auction season.In April and May, the house will present roughly 135 works from the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg, carrying a combined estimate of $67 million to $99 million. The first chapter arrives on April 22 with a dedicated design sale in New York, estimated at $30 million to $44 million and described by Sotheby’s as “the most valuable single-owner design sale in its history.” A selec
  
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• What Will Censorship Look Like in the Age of AI?

  23-02-2026 20:23 via artnews.com
  Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from On Censorship by Ai Weiwei. It releases in March from Thames & Hudson.
   
  In 2025, the rapid development of artificial intelligence pushed a group of young Chinese entrepreneurs to the forefront with DeepSeek, which propelled its search technology into new territories. This triggered panic within the highly competitive AI landscape, sparking strategic shifts in western-dominated technology ecosystems and causing significant market disrupt
  
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• Iris Cantor, Philanthropist Who Transformed the Met and the Brooklyn Museum, Dies at 95

  23-02-2026 19:38 via artnews.com
  Iris Cantor, a collector and philanthropist who provided the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and other US art institutions with millions of dollars worth of support, died on Sunday in Palm Beach, Florida. She was 95, according to a release from her foundation, which did not state a cause.Cantor was a transformative force in the American art world, with her patronage significantly reshaping some of the nation’s top museums. She helped steward the legacy of her husband, B. G
  
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• Refik Anadol’s ‘Lava Lamp’ Reignites the AI Art Debate on ’60 Minutes’

  23-02-2026 19:22 via artnews.com
  According to one 2017 study, museum visitors on average spend about 27 seconds looking at a work of art, which is barely enough time to squint, nod thoughtfully, and move on. But if you ask AI artist Refik Anadol about how long people spent with Unsupervised, the controversial artwork he showed at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022, he’d say he got people’s attention for much longer—about 38 minutes per person, to be precise. To make the work, Anadol fed AI metadata related
  
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• New Museum to Open in Portugal Around Collection of José Teixeira

  23-02-2026 18:23 via artnews.com
  A new museum is slated to open in Portugal in April around the contemporary art collection of José Teixeira, the chairman of dstgroup, a civil construction and public-works engineering company. The institution in Braga, about an hour by car or train from Porto in the northwest of Portugal, will showcase a collection of 1,500 artworks under the name MUZEU—Thought & Contemporary Art dst.“The collection champions artists and bodies of work with strong poetic, philosophical, a
  
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• An Appeals Court Clears a Spanish Art Dealer in the Case of a Convent’s Sculpture Offered at TEFAF 

  23-02-2026 18:19 via artnews.com
  After a convoluted process dating back to 2018, the High Court of Justice of Andalusia has overturned a four-year prison sentence for a Spanish antiques dealer in a case involving an artwork from a 16th-century convent in an ancient Italian city just north of Rome, El País reports.
  reports El País.At the center of the saga is a five-foot-high, 17th-century Baroque wood sculpture known as Saint Margaret of Cortona, by Granada artist José de Mora. It had resided for decades at
  
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• NADA New York Names Over 110 Galleries for 2026 Edition

  23-02-2026 17:00 via artnews.com
  The New Art Dealers Alliance has named the more than 110 exhibitors who will take part in the organization’s upcoming New York fair. Running May 13 to 17, the fair will return to the Starrett-Lehigh Building in West Chelsea for the second time.NADA New York’s 12th edition will feature 45 NADA members, including Chozick Family Art Gallery, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Embajada, Kates-Ferri Projects, la BEAST gallery, Proxyco, Rivalry Projects, and Spinello Projects, as well as two newly
  
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• Activists Hang Prince Andrew Arrest Photo in the Louvre, Turning Royal Crisis into a Work of Art

  23-02-2026 16:34 via artnews.com
  For roughly 15 minutes on Sunday, visitors to the Louvre could have stumbled upon a curious addition to the museum’s holdings: a framed photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, that was captured moments after his arrest on February 19.The image, taken by Reuters photographer Phil Noble as Andrew left police custody in Norfolk, shows him slumped in the back of a car. Activists from the anti-billionaire campaign group Everyone Hates Elon placed the
  
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• France Restitutes ‘Talking Drum’ to Ivory Coast, Is Free Entry to UK Museums at Risk? Morning Links for February 23, 2026

  23-02-2026 13:29 via artnews.com
  The HeadlinesDRUMMED UP. France has finally repatriated a long-promised looted artifact to the Ivory Coast, known as the “talking drum,” or Djidji Ayokwe, reports Le Monde. In 1916, when French colonial officers learned that the Ivory Coast’s Ebrie tribe used the 10-foot-long wood-sculpted drum to warn of oncoming French soldiers, the latter stole it from them. Eventually, the French brought the drum to Paris, where it made its rounds through several museums, ultimately landing
  
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• Hundreds of People Stage Sit-Ins in Spanish Museums in Protest of High VAT on Art Sales

  23-02-2026 13:03 via artnews.com
  Hundreds of artists, gallery owners, and collectors staged sit-ins last week in museums across Spain to draw attention to the country’s high cultural VAT.Over 100 demonstrators parked their backsides on the floor of Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía in the room dedicated to the late American artist Richard Serra. They surrounded Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi, a replica of a sculpture that had disappeared from a storage facility sometime between 1990 and 2005. It consisted of four 3
  
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