Arts news

• Tristram’s tip-top tweets

  13-04-2017 10:54
  
  Tristram Hunt, the newly appointed director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is fast becoming our favourite tweeter. The former Labour politician posts all sorts of helpful digital missives about events, personalities and hot topics at the V&A. Earlier this week, he declared online: V worrying to see schools 'shedding' design & technology http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39527183 
  We @V_and_A stand ready to help. But his best tweet so far plugs a top post at the museu
  
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• How Larry Gagosian Pulled Off a Standout Show of Jasper Johns’s Crosshatch Paintings

  23-01-2026 19:42 via artnews.com
  Why did Larry Gagosian want to stage a just-opened blockbuster exhibition of Jasper Johns’s paintings at his Upper East Side gallery in New York? “First of all, because I want to look at them,” he told Alison McDonald in a soon-to-be-published Gagosian Quarterly interview. It’s not an especially lofty justification, but it’s at least an honest one—and it sets the tone for the entire conversation.In the piece, Gagosian talks fluently about the formal characteri
  
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• Jonathan Carver Moore Is Building the Art World He Wanted to Walk Into

  23-01-2026 19:35 via artnews.com
  When Jonathan Carver Moore talks about his gallery, he rarely starts with sales figures or artists’ résumés. He starts with a feeling. The feeling of walking into a space and not wondering whether you belong there.That instinct is on display this week at the FOG Design + Art Fair in San Francisco, where Moore is presenting a solo booth of new paintings by Sesse Elangwe, developed during the artist’s recent residency with the gallery. The work is lush and exacting, satur
  
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• Gelman Collection of Mexican Art Surfaces at Santander, With Plans to Bring it to Spain

  23-01-2026 19:32 via artnews.com
  Banco Santander announced Wednesday that it will manage roughly half of the Gelman Collection—one of the most significant collections of 20th-century Mexican art—after the collection disappeared from public view in 2008, El País reports.More precisely, the Madrid-based bank now oversees 160 of approximately 300 works amassed by influential art patrons Jacques and Natasha Gelman. After their deaths, the collection passed to their executor, Robert R. Littman, who reportedly divi
  
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• ‘Secret Mall Apartment,’ Documentary About Providence Artists Living In Mall, Releases on Netflix

  23-01-2026 18:45 via artnews.com
  Secret Mall Apartment, the 2024 documentary film recounting the story of several artists who secretly lived inside a Providence mall for four years, released on Netflix Friday.Originally released in theaters in last March, becoming one of the year’s hit documentaries, the film has since been available for rental on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. However, as is often the case when a film or television series hits Netflix, the documentary is sure to reach a whole new level of audience.Secr
  
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• Why Are So Many New York Gallery Shows This Winter About Saving the Trees?

  23-01-2026 18:36 via artnews.com
  A rich tradition of tree art has sprouted in biennials across the world, with installations composed of saplings, snags, and perennials in various stages of development popping up at seemingly every big art event. (A recent case in point: the centerpiece of last year’s inaugural edition of the Sky High Farm Biennial in Upstate New York was a 1972–73 Harrisons piece resembling an orchard featuring actual trees planted in a gallery.) In 2022, the trend spurred Wallpaper to ask: “
  
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• A Long-Lost Henry Raeburn Painting Discovered at a London House Sale Goes on View in Scotland

  23-01-2026 17:55 via artnews.com
  A long-lost portrait of Robert Burns by Sir Henry Raeburn is now on view at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. The painting was discovered at a London house sale last year.Scotland’s most famous bard, Robert Burns (1759–1796) is perhaps best known for songs such as “A Red, Red Rose” (1794) and “Auld Lang Syne” (1788), which he based on traditional Scottish ballads. While they lived on the same street, Burns seems to have never sat for his contemp
  
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• Beloved California Art Park Lists Its Estate for $10.9 M. Amid Financial Strife

  23-01-2026 16:56 via artnews.com
  The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, a beloved art park in Naples, California, that is in the midst of a prolonged period of financial difficulty, has listed its estate for $10.9 million, according a report by the San Francisco Chronicle from last weekend.The park is host to a range of notable works by Northern California artists from the postwar era, most notably an iconic Mark di Suvero sculpture that presides over the 217-acre estate. Also included in its collection are important pieces b
  
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• Cyberattack on Dresden State Art Collections Puts Museum Network on Guard

  23-01-2026 16:53 via artnews.com
  A cyberattack on the Dresden State Art Collections was detected on Wednesday, with the museums remaining open but certain operations put on pause as a result. Among the latter are the museum network’s online shop and visitor services. As reported by Monopol on Thursday, the Dresden State Art Collections—a network of some 15 museums in the east of Germany—issued a statement reading, “Large parts of the digital infrastructure are affected. IT specialists and IT forensi
  
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• Thieves Steal Dutch Museum’s Entire Silver Collection

  23-01-2026 13:30 via artnews.com
  A museum in the eastern Dutch city of Doesburg has been hit by thieves who lifted its entire silverware collection in the early hours of Wednesday morning. According to museum staff, more than 300 “irreplaceable” objects were stolen, valued at tens of thousands of dollars.At approximately 4:30 a.m. local time, two men forced entry into the Doesburg Silver Museum, housed in the 13th-century Martini Church. CCTV footage shows the duo using a crowbar to force open a door and shatter dis
  
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• Is Flora Yukhnovich’s Neo-Rococo Any Different than MAGA’s?

  23-01-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  “Let them eat cake,” the anonymously-run X account @PatriotTakes declared earlier this month. Following its stated mission of monitoring “right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy,” the account issued this declarative alongside found footage of a rather peculiar party. A husky in a pistachio overcoat and breeches spins his flouncy bulldog lover around a patch of overly green golf grass to the croons of a knockoff Sinatra. On the edge of a night-lit pool, a pink-
  
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• $1 M. Jack Whitten Painting Leads Steady Sales at San Francisco’s FOG Design+Art

  22-01-2026 23:57 via artnews.com
  At the FOG Design+Art, a San Francisco art fair set across two piers at the Fort Mason Center, the tone for opening night on Thursday was set by what takes place the event’s environs. There, one can find a slew of valet drivers in white dinner jackets; they’ve returned from picking up cars belonging to VIPs. Inside, drinks flowed, and stationed hors d’oeuvres—including sushi rolls, dim sum, yuzu-glaze salmon over beet couscous, and more—could be found.This glitzy pr
  
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• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Names Kristen Shepherd as New President and CEO

  22-01-2026 21:31 via artnews.com
  The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts announced Thursday that it has named Kristen Shepherd as its new president and CEO. Shepherd will start in the role on February 9.Shepherd, 54, previously served as executive director and CEO at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida for five and a half years. She also held leadership positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum in New York, and Sotheby’s in New York and London. She has also served as a consulta
  
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• ICA San Francisco to Stage Major Public Art Commission by Jeffrey Gibson For Super Bowl LX

  22-01-2026 20:23 via artnews.com
  While the San Francisco 49ers may have blown their chance at a hometown Super Bowl win, that hasn’t stopped the Bay Area from getting into the festivities. On Thursday, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco announced that it will stage a major new public art commission by Jeffrey Gibson.The work—an adaptation of Gibson’s 2022 video installation THIS BURNING WORLD—will be installed on the façade of the former Bloomingdale’s building at San Francisco
  
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• New Imaging Technology Revels Spicy, 2,000-Year-Old Graffiti Along Pompeii Passageway

  22-01-2026 20:10 via artnews.com
  Researchers at the Pompeii Archaeological Park have utilized cutting-edge imaging technology to decipher centuries-old graffiti—both textual and figurative, some of it quite spicy!—written on the walls of a theater district corridor in the ancient city. The project, called Bruits de coulous (Rumors) was initiated by a team from the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Québec in Montreal during two field campaigns, in 2022 and 2025.The goal of the project is to “restor
  
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• Walker Art Center Will Close Tomorrow in Support of Minneapolis ICE Protest

  22-01-2026 20:00 via artnews.com
  The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis will close Friday, January 23, during the Day of Truth and Freedom protest, a state-wide action organized in response to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence in Minnesota communities. Organizers of the action, led by local labor unions and community organizations, have asked Minnesotans to mount a general strike by not working, spending money, or going to school on the day of the protest.The Walker is the largest organization so far to announ
  
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• Leonardo da Vinci Mural Will Be On View in Milan During Olympics

  22-01-2026 19:51 via artnews.com
  When the Winter Olympics begin in Italy next month, a mural by Leonardo da Vinci in the midst of restoration will go on view for five weeks staring February 7. That means visitors to Milan not preoccupied with sports like figure-skating and luge can set their eyes on an unfinished painting on the ceiling and a wall of Sforza Castle by a master for the ages.As reported by Artnet News, “Visitors will be allowed to climb the towering 20-foot scaffold inside the castle’s Sala delle Asse
  
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• Travesía Cuatro Takes on Virginia Chihota, Baltimore Museum Fellowship Awardees, and More

  22-01-2026 18:47 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.Industry MovesSaâdane Afif Joins Esther Schipper: Afif, who is currently having a show at the Hamburger Bahnhof, will continue to work with Mehdi Chouakri, a Berlin-based gallery that recently
  
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• Travesía Cuatro Takes on Virginia Chihota, Baltimore Museum Fellowship Awardees, and More: Industry Moves for January 22, 2026

  22-01-2026 18:47 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.Saâdane Afif Joins Esther Schipper: Afif, who is currently having a show at the Hamburger Bahnhof, will continue to work with Mehdi Chouakri, a Berlin-based gallery that recently announced pla
  
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• Lorena Levi, Rising Artist Who Painted ‘Narrative Portraiture,’ Dies at 29

  22-01-2026 18:42 via artnews.com
  Lorena Levi, an artist whose portraits painted on wood gained her fast-growing momentum in the UK, died on January 8 at 29. Her death was announced this week via her Instagram, which said she had battled pancreatic cancer.Levi rose quickly over the past few years, staging a show in Milan with M+B, a well-regarded gallery based in Los Angeles, and taking part in the V.O. Curations program, which has offered artists ranging from Emma Prempeh to Cajsa von Zeipel studio spaces in London. Shortly bef
  
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• Beryl Cook: Pride and Joy review – a saucy parade of bouncing bosoms, smirky smokers and a spot of BDSM

  22-01-2026 18:38
  The Box, PlymouthRoof-felters, bawdy boozers, off-duty sailors, whip-wielding dominatrixes … this 100th birthday show in Cook’s home town is an exuberant celebration of working-class frivolityGenerally, you get two versions of England in art: it’s either bucolic vistas, rolling hills, babbling brooks and gambolling sheep – or it’s downtrodden, browbeaten, grim poverty and misery. But Beryl Cook saw something else in all the drizzle and grey of this damp old country
  
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• Researchers Have Found the World’s Oldest Known Rock Art in Indonesia, Dating Back 67,800 Years

  22-01-2026 18:07 via artnews.com
  Less than two years after discovering a 51,200-year-old cave painting of a pig on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, in what was then declared the oldest known figurative artwork, the same researchers have discovered an even older work.The newly dated work, located on the southeastern peninsula of Sulawesi, is a hand stencil dating to 67,800 years ago. Little of the work remains: it exists now as “only a 14 × 10 cm patch of faded pigment bearing a portion of the
  
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• The Tate Has a Frida Kahlo Problem

  22-01-2026 17:53 via artnews.com
  Curators at Tate Modern are finding that Frida Kahlo’s global popularity now comes with a practical drawback: it has become harder to borrow her paintings.The museum’s forthcoming exhibition, Frida: The Making of an Icon, opening in June, will include 36 works by the Mexican artist, fewer than the more than the 50 shown during Tate Modern’s last major Kahlo exhibition in 2005, according to reporting by The Independent. The reduced number reflects the growing scar
  
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• Tate Faces Trouble Securing Frida Kahlo Masterpieces for Summer Blockbuster

  22-01-2026 17:53 via artnews.com
  Curators at Tate Modern are finding that Frida Kahlo’s global popularity now comes with a practical drawback: it has become harder to borrow her paintings.The museum’s forthcoming exhibition, Frida: The Making of an Icon, opening in June, will include 36 works by the Mexican artist, fewer than the more than the 50 shown during Tate Modern’s last major Kahlo exhibition in 2005, according to reporting by the Times of London. (The show premieres at the Museum of Fine Art
  
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• Art Gallery of Ontario Nixed Nan Goldin Acquisition Because of Her Comments on Israel’s War in Gaza

  22-01-2026 17:49 via artnews.com
  The Art Gallery of Ontario, one of Canada’s most internationally well-regarded museums, chose not to acquire a piece by Nan Goldin because of the artist’s comments on Israel’s war in Gaza, according to a report published by the Globe and Mail on Wednesday.The work, a 2024 video called Stendhal Syndrome, was to be acquired in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Drawn from 35mm slides that show blurred images of semi-nude figures a
  
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• Short Film by Artist Alexandre Singh and Art Historian Natalie Musteata Nominated for an Oscar

  22-01-2026 17:45 via artnews.com
  Two People Exchanging Saliva, a black-and-white film written and directed by Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata, has been nominated for an Academy Award in the live action short film category.The 36-minute film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year, and has been making the festival rounds this fall and winter, winning various prizes and honors, including also being shortlisted for a 2026 César Award, often referred to as a “French Oscar.” The film is bei
  
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• Nahmad Contemporary to Stage Picasso Exhibition in Collaboration with Supermodel Naomi Campbell 

  22-01-2026 17:44 via artnews.com
  Nahmad Contemporary will mount an exhibition titled “Picasso | Painter and Model, Reflections by Naomi Campbell” next month at its exhibition space in Gstaad, Switzerland.The exhibition, which runs February 14–March 15, focuses on Pablo Picasso’s late series “Le Peintre et son modèle” (The Painter and his model), and will feature 14 works produced between 1963 and 1965. Several of the works on view have been previously exhibited in Picasso exhibitions a
  
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• How Beverly Buchanan Crafted Her Own Economy of Exchange

  22-01-2026 17:44 via artnews.com
  For the 20-plus years she lived in Athens, Georgia, Beverly Buchanan paid for everyday needs with artworks. Or some of them, at least.A calendar with 12 hand-drawn self-portraits that she traded with her doctor, Dr. Stephen Lucas, opens “Beverly’s Athens,” a show on view at the University of Georgia’s Athenaeum through March 21. After visits, she’d pay him not with cash or co-pays but with art. They made the exchanges in the parking lot, as if illicitly.Dr. Lucas le
  
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• How NADA Is Building the Next Generation of Collectors Through a Series of Salons

  22-01-2026 16:26 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.There are obvious hurdles to becoming an art collector, chief among them money and space. But then there are the less obvious ones, and chief among these is the intimidation factor: Contemporary art, and the galleries that show it, can seem scary or snooty or both, and a lot of people just don’t f
  
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• UK Government Spends Big on Arts Sector, Creative Time Appoints Jean Cooney As Executive Director: Morning Links for January 22, 2026

  22-01-2026 15:06 via artnews.com
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The Headlines UK ART INJECTION. London-based national museums must do more to serve audiences across the UK, culture secretary Lisa Nandy said on Wednesday as she announced a £1.5 billion funding package for the arts, described as the biggest reset for the sector in a generation. The Guardian reported that while institutions such as the British Museum a
  
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