Arts news

• Woeful Security At The Louvre (Including Its Passwords)

  07-11-2025 19:44 via cnn.com
  
  Since the heist, information has resurfaced showing that gaps in security appear to have been known for years – including a 2014 warning that alleged one of the museum’s key passwords was simply “LOUVRE.” – CNN
  
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• The Most Discussed Art Heists of 2025

  15-12-2025 14:26 via artnews.com
  While the Louvre heist in October captured global attention, 2025 was seemingly a record year for art theft. Close to a dozen museums and institutions—from Brazil to France—were targeted, with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of artworks and artifacts stolen.Many have rightly wondered why so many robberies appear to be occurring this year. Several experts have pointed to inadequate or outdated security measures at the affected institutions. But there may also be an elemen
  
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• Why Modern Art Foundry Is the Art World’s Go-To Shop for Bronzes

  15-12-2025 13:00 via artnews.com
  Founded in 1932, Modern Art Foundry is one of the oldest foundries in the United States. Located in Astoria, Queens, since 1944, the foundry has a history in producing well-known sculptures, from José de Creeft’s Alice in Wonderland monument in Central Park to Louise Bourgeois’s “Spiders” (and just about everything else she made in bronze or aluminum from the early 1980s onward). The company’s clients have included modernists like Jacques Lipchitz and Maria M
  
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• María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s ARTnews Awards Are Artworks Unto Themselves

  15-12-2025 13:00 via artnews.com
  María Magdalena Campos-Pons is gradually becoming a fixture in US museums, with a 2023 Brooklyn Museum retrospective having done much to raise her profile. In her installations, sculptures, videos, and performances, she mulls diasporas and migrations, often focusing on the ways in which history is carried in one’s body and how it registers the effects of the past in ways both painful and transcendent.Among Campos-Pons’s latest projects is something more unconventional: a group
  
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• Guggenheim Launches New $50,000 Art Prize, With Catherine Telford Keogh as First Winner

  15-12-2025 13:00 via artnews.com
  The Guggenheim Museum will this year new launch a new art prize. Titled the Jack Galef Visual Arts Award, the $50,000 prize is being endowed by the estate of Jack Galef and will be given out biennially to an artist working in sculpture, installation, and related mediums.The prize’s first winner is Catherine Telford Keogh, whose sculptures consider the past lives of found materials and the connections between the environment and the global economy.“Being the first artist recognized by
  
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• Art Basel to Mount Special Projects by Bruce Nauman, Khalil Rabah, and More at Qatar Fair

  15-12-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  Art Basel has released full details for its inaugural Qatar edition, which will open in Doha next February and mark the fair’s first expansion into the Middle East. The new event, staged in partnership with Qatar Sports Investments and QC+, will run February 5–7, 2026, with preview days on February 3–4. It will take place across Msheireb Downtown Doha, centering on venues M7 and the Doha Design District. The debut fair will bring together 87 galleries from 31 countrie
  
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• Benin City’s Flourishing Art Ecosystem Is Gaining International Attention for a Reason

  15-12-2025 11:30 via artnews.com
  “Every square meter in Benin City has an artist,” Victor Ehikhamenor said with a laugh. He was talking about the capital of Edo, the Nigerian State, which is famed as a historical, cultural and artistic heritage center. “Every family” in the city, he continued, has an artist. “I can stand by that statement.”Sitting in his office in the Lagos space of Angels and Muse, the nonprofit art organization he founded in 2018, the Nigerian-American artist sounded like a
  
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• How Advances in Digital Printing Are Blurring Boundaries Between Photography and Art

  15-12-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  In the late 1980s, I noticed photography’s transition from analog to digital in small ways in printed media. I saw it in typography in the East Village Eye that was elongated on a computer, and in the artificially sharpened images that occasionally cropped up in the New York Times. But only after the turn of the millennium did the powerful, digital prepress tools we know today—ultra-high-resolution scanners, imagesetters, and inkjet printers—become widely available to photograp
  
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• Good Morning

  12-12-2025 23:19 via artsjournal.com
  Today’s AJ highlights:A game-changing media deal that could redefine copyright.The most significant story today is the massive investment and licensing deal, which sees Disney license its vast character library to OpenAI’s new AI platforms in a deal that will redefine copyright (The Wall Street Journal (MSN)). This arrangement is a watershed moment that places AI at the center of the creative economy’s intellectual property landscape. The traditional media world faces its own u
  
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• Tate Director Steps Down, Smithsonian Returns Khmer Sculptures, and More: Morning Links for December 12, 2025

  12-12-2025 23:02 via artnews.com
  The HeadlinesCALLING TIME. The director of Tate in London, Maria Balshaw, will step down in spring 2026 after nearly a decade in the role, the institution said in a press release. Balshaw, who joined in 2017 after leading Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth, succeeded Nicholas Serota following his 29-year tenure. She called her time at Tate a privilege and said the institution is well positioned for new leadership. During her directorship, Balshaw oversaw major exhibitions includi
  
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• CEO of Canadian National Museum Departs After ‘Serious Code of Conduct Breaches’

  12-12-2025 22:49 via artnews.com
  The CEO of a Canadian national stepped down on Thursday following a special commissioner’s determination that she had mistreated staff throughout her decade-long tenure, using slurs and misogynistic language to refer to senior leadership.“In early December as the board was gaining a better understanding of the report—its timing, content and the expectations of government—the board confirmed CEO Marie Chapman’s decision to retire, and effective today, she has stepped
  
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• David Zwirner Benefit Exhibition Raises Nearly $1 M. for Ali Forney Center, Tripling Its Goal          

  12-12-2025 21:08 via artnews.com
  “Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center,” an exhibition at David Zwirner gallery in New York, was only on view at the gallery for four days, but during that short time, it raised $950,000 for the Ali Forney Center, a nonprofit that runs a 24-hour drop-in center for queer youth and offers assistance with housing, education, job training, and medical care.Its curator, art adviser Stephen Truax, initially had the goal of raising $350,000, slightly more than was raised at la
  
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• An Ethnomusicologist Analyzes Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby”

  12-12-2025 20:50 via postandcourier.com
  Prof. Michael O’Brien discusses why we listen to so many of the same songs year after year, the unusual appeal of “Santa Baby,” and why Eartha Kitt’s version is so much better than Madonna’s (or anyone else’s). – The Post and Courier (Charleston)
  
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• New ‘Museumbrary’ Designed by SANAA Opens in Taichung

  12-12-2025 20:38 via artnews.com
  The Taichung Green Museumbrary—new contemporary art museum and public library complex in Taichung, Taiwan, that may count as the first institution ever to have a portmanteau for a name—opens tomorrow. The long-awaited institution houses both the Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library, both of which will be connected by a roof garden known as the Culture Forest.“This integrated design reflects the museum and library’s vision of learning as a shared, living pra
  
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• The Woeful State Of Arts PR. Here’s Why It Matters

  12-12-2025 20:31 via broadstreetreview.com
  On the inside of my job, lousy PR is one of the biggest signs that an institution is struggling. Outreach goes ignored, follow-up is late and flustered, and media events suffer. – Broad Street Review
  
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• Pope Leo Repatriates Indigenous Artifacts from Vatican Back to Canada

  12-12-2025 20:21 via artnews.com
  After years of negotiations starting with a visit by the late Pope Francis in 2022, the Vatican repatriated a wealth of Indigenous cultural treasures that were unveiled this week in a warehouse belonging to the Canadian Museum of History. The institution in Gatineau, Quebec—around a 2.5-hour drive west of Montreal—is currently storing the 62-object handover while Indigenous elders and experts take stock of each piece and investigate its origins.As reported by the Canadian Broadcastin
  
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• The Collective Who’s Transforming Ballet In France’s Second City

  12-12-2025 20:05 via bbc.com
  “(LA)HORDE is a choreographic collective running the National Ballet of Marseille and rewriting the ballet rulebook for a new era. Their work blends classical techniques with surprising influences, from queer nightlife to the political history of social dance.” – BBC (video)
  
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• TONO Reveals 2026 Festival Lineup Across Mexico City and Puebla

  12-12-2025 19:51 via artnews.com
  TONO, the time-based art festival, has announced the lineup for its 2026 edition, returning March 6–22 with a slate of new and existing video installations, performance commissions, music events, and screenings across Mexico City and Puebla. Programming will span major institutions including Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Casa del Lago UNAM, Museo Jumex, and Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, with additional exhibitions at Museo Amparo in Puebla. This year’s live program incl
  
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• What Happens To You Creatively After You’ve Won Success?

  12-12-2025 19:44 via lareviewofbooks.org
  These big breaks and large prizes are remarkable things that can provide incredible opportunities, but there is so often another side to that success. – LA Review of Books
  
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• Why Is Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss So Important?

  12-12-2025 19:31 via artnews.com
  In 1900, the events of the 20th century still lay ahead, its horrors and epochal upheavals unknown. But in one European metropolis, signs of that future could be gleaned from the social, political, and artistic unrest that roiled it.Vienna in the years leading up to World War I was the capital of an unstable dual-state domain, Austria-Hungary, whose decrepit monarch, Emperor Franz Joseph I, presided over a powder keg of ethnic groups. These included Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, and
  
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• Fred Child To Lead Portland Classical Music Station

  12-12-2025 19:31 via insideradio.com
  He is best known for his 25-year run as host of American Public Media’s national classical music program “Performance Today.” Child, who will relocate to Oregon from New York City, stepped down from the show in October. – Inside Radio
  
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• Jake Heggie’s New Opera: A Historic 1976 Wine Competition

  12-12-2025 19:16 via msn.com
  His one-act opera “The Judgement of Paris” is set to make its world premiere at Festival Napa Valley at Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena on July 18, part of the Wine Country event’s 20th anniversary season. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• World’s Third-Busiest Public Library Withdraws “Restructuring” Plan After Outcry

  12-12-2025 19:01 via theguardian.com
  Many of Australia’s most prominent writers and artists, along with thousands of ordinary citizens, expressed outrage over the proposal to eliminate 39 jobs — including cutting the number of public-facing reference librarians by 60% — and refocus the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne on tourist-oriented “digital experiences.” – The Guardian
  
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• Trump May Demolish Historic D.C. Buildings With Priceless Murals by Philip Guston, Ben Shahn, and Other Artists

  12-12-2025 18:58 via artnews.com
  Earlier this week, a retired General Services Administration official accused the Trump administration of attempting to demolish four historic federal buildings in Washington, D.C., including the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Bloomberg Law reported.The former official, Mydelle Wright, made the allegation in a supplemental declaration filed in a case brought by preservation groups seeking to stop President Trump from painting a stone federal building. Wright said the White House is soliciting
  
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• Artist Arrested at Art Basel Miami Beach After Chalk ‘Performance’ Involving His Daughter

  12-12-2025 18:53 via artnews.com
  A performance artist from Luxembourg managed to turn a few scrawled lines of washable spray chalk into a night in jail during Art Basel Miami Beach—an outcome he claims was both unexpected and meaningful.Thomas Iser was arrested last week after spray-painting the words “Sorry to disturb, art in progress,” in exaggerated graffiti-style lettering, on a window of the Miami Beach Convention Center during the United States’ largest art fair. He then invited his three-year-old
  
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• Franco Vaccari, Artist Who Expanded Photography’s Possibilities, Dies at 89

  12-12-2025 18:44 via artnews.com
  Franco Vaccari, an Italian conceptual artist whose experiments with photography expanded the medium’s possibilities, has died at 89. His death was announced by his gallery, the Bologna-based P420, which did not specify a cause.Vaccari died just four months before his work was due to be surveyed in a retrospective held at Museion in Bolzano, Italy. Opening in March, the exhibition was being staged to mark what would’ve been Vaccari’s 90th birthday and is due to explore how the a
  
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• David Ellison’s Dangerous Play For Warner Bros.

  12-12-2025 18:44 via nytimes.com
  David Ellison was able to ascend to Paramount moguldom thanks in part to his closeness with Mr. Trump, and now he is trying to capitalize on the same bond to win the president’s favor for an even bigger prize. And he has leverage. – The New York Times
  
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• Profound Changes In Canada’s Cultural Economy

  12-12-2025 18:31 via winnipegfreepress.com
  It found that Manitoba’s cultural sector produces $1,010 worth of cultural goods and services per person, one of the highest per-capita levels in Canada. Manitoba trails only British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. – Winnipeg Free Press
  
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• The Benefits Of Tolerant Cultures

  12-12-2025 18:15 via psyche.co
  A tolerant person is one who does not interfere with other people, even if he thinks they are wrong, but is prepared to let them think what they like and say what they think. If he thinks they are wrong, he may try to persuade them, but he will not try to force them. – Psyche
  
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• Director Of Britain’s Tate Galleries To Step Down

  12-12-2025 18:06 via theguardian.com
  “Maria Balshaw is to (depart) in 2026, after a challenging nine-year tenure when she steered the organisation through the COVID-19 pandemic and had to deal with fluctuating attendance figures and financial instability.” – The Guardian
  
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