Arts news

• A Closer Look at the Lots in Next Week’s Marquee Art Sales

  12-11-2025 23:35 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.After several lean auction seasons, next week’s marquee sales in New York are packed with inventory. On Monday night alone, Christie’s will send 80 works to the block. Across the week, 27 lots carry estimates north of $10 million—a “staggering number for a bumpy market,” as
  
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• This TV Storyline About a Stolen Rembrandt Eerily Recalls the Louvre Heist

  12-11-2025 23:14 via artnews.com
  Reality sometimes really is stranger than fiction, as was the case when one television series released an episode about a high-profile art heist involving a Rembrandt a week after a theft at the Louvre captured global attention.The ABC series, titled High Potential, focuses on Morgan Gillory, a single mom with three kids and a high intellectual potential. Played by Kaitlin Olsen, she helps the Los Angeles police department solve its most difficult crime cases as a cleaning lady turned private co
  
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• Dolce & Gabbana Exhibition Will Travel to ICA Miami in February

  12-11-2025 21:45 via artnews.com
  Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana announced on Wednesday that “From the Heart to the Hands”, an exhibition celebrating the work of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, will travel to the US in 2026. The show is slated to open February 6 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, where it will be on view until June 14.The ICA Miami run follows presentations at Milan’s Palazzo Reale, Paris’s Grand Palais, and Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni. The show is cura
  
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• Trump-Ordered Funding Cuts Hit US Museums Hard, New Report Shows

  12-11-2025 21:32 via artnews.com
  One-third of American museums have lost government grants and contracts since President Donald Trump took office, according to a new survey of museum directors conducted by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).The survey, published Tuesday, is based largely on responses from 511 museum directors. Though the AAM did not disclose the names of those directors, the organization said that nine percent of their museums had annual operating expenses greater than $10 million.Even with its relatively s
  
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• Toronto’s Gardiner Museum Reopens After a 15-Month Renovation

  12-11-2025 21:22 via artnews.com
  The Gardiner Museum in Toronto has reopened after a 15-month, C$15.5 million (about $11 million) renovation of its ground floor spaces. The museum, founded in 1984 by George and Helen Gardiner, focuses on ceramics and has a collection of some 5,000 pieces dating from prehistory to the present. The reimagined galleries will enable it to show up to 40 percent of its holdings at one time, which is unusual for collecting institutions.Undertaken by Montgomery Sisam Architects and Andrew Jones Design
  
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• Artist Secretly Hangs AI Work in Welsh Museum, Calling It ‘Participation Without Permission’

  12-11-2025 20:36 via artnews.com
  Elias Marrow, a conceptual artist, said he secretly hung an AI-generated artwork inside the National Museum Cardiff, calling the act “participation without permission” rather than vandalism.On October 29, Marrow installed the framed digital print, titled Empty Plate, in the museum’s contemporary art galleries, where it remained on view for several hours before staff removed it. The image depicts a schoolboy in a Welsh uniform holding a book and a blank plate, which Ma
  
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• Heritage Auctions Is Selling the Witch Hat from ‘The Wizard of Oz’

  12-11-2025 20:33 via artnews.com
  The hat worn by Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West onscreen in the original Wizard of Oz film, is being sold by Heritage Auctions next month. The minimum bid is $100,000. The pointy black hat was created by the mononymous costume designer Adrian, who worked on dozens of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films in the 1930s and ‘40s, the most famous of which was The Wizard of Oz.Hamilton’s hat is part of a large cache of items that will be auctioned off on Dec. 9-10. Of the o
  
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• Preservationists Petition to Save Wilbur Building, the ‘Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art’

  12-11-2025 20:32 via artnews.com
  Preservationists are petitioning to save Washington, D.C.’s Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, dubbed the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art” for the 20th-century masterpieces its houses, including murals by Philip Guston and Ben Shahn. Despite its landmark status, the Trump administration has listed the building up for sale, raising fears it could be demolished.Living New Deal, a California-based nonprofit building a database of New Deal public artworks across America, launched a
  
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• Top 200 Collector Ken Griffin Is Planning to Build a Superyacht Marina Complex in Miami

  12-11-2025 20:26 via artnews.com
  Citadel Securities founder Ken Griffin is expanding his South Florida property holdings with a private superyacht marina on Miami Beach’s Terminal Island. The 3.7-acre property would have berth spaces for six superyachts, along with a resort-style club that includes pools, pickleball courts, gym, sauna and facilities for crew. Griffin would also have a private lounge and pool for marina guests. The complex would be located on the tip of Terminal Island, and the mar
  
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• Lucas Museum Sets Opening Date for September 2026

  12-11-2025 19:00 via artnews.com
  The long-awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles has set its opening date for September 22, 2026.The Lucas Museum has been in the works for over a decade. Its founders, filmmaker George Lucas and Ariel Investments co-CEO and president Mellody Hobson, first began exploring a location for the museum in 2013, with San Francisco and later Chicago as possible sites.Eventually, they landed on Los Angeles, securing a site in Exposition Park in 2017, with the groundbreaking happening the fo
  
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• New Research Suggests Peru’s Mysterious ‘Band of Holes’ May Have Been an Ancient Marketplace

  12-11-2025 18:45 via artnews.com
  Researchers from the University of Sydney have uncovered new evidence that might solve one of South America’s most enduring archaeological puzzles—the “Band of Holes,” an almost one mile stretch of more than 5,000 circular depressions carved into the desert hills of Peru’s Pisco Valley.According to Science Daily,  a study published on November 10 in Antiquity, suggests that the site, formally known as Monte Sierpe (“serpent mountain&rd
  
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• Trustees Bolt From Palm Springs Art Museum After Contested Director Hire 

  12-11-2025 18:39 via artnews.com
  Trouble is brewing in sunny Palm Springs, California, where an art museum board member has loudly exited her post, firing off a lengthy letter detailing what she says was a faulty process to hire a new director. The Palm Springs Art Museum (PSAM) has had considerable turnover in the top job. Christine Vendredi, appointed on September 29, is the third person to be named to the post in seven years (in addition to a trustee who briefly served as interm CEO), according to a report in the Los An
  
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• Consignor Behind Phillips Sale of Amoako Boafo’s Portrait of Thelma Golden Is Jesse Williams

  12-11-2025 18:02 via artnews.com
  An Amoako Boafo painting listed for sale in Phillips’s upcoming modern and contemporary art day sale next week was consigned by actor and ARTnews Top 200 collector Jesse Williams, ARTnews has learned.The 2017 oil on paper work Red Dress measures 52 3/8 inches by 56 inches and depicts Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of New York’s newly reopened Studio Museum in Harlem. It carries an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000.The work was featured in the 2022 Boafo solo exhibition, &ld
  
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• Vanderbilt Family Treasures Sell Out in Phillips’s $17 M. ‘Geneva Jewels’ Auction

  12-11-2025 17:52 via artnews.com
  Twelve lots offering storied jewels from the Vanderbilt family sold out in Phillips’s “Geneva Jewels Auction” on Monday, making up a significant portion of the total of CHF 13.7 million (around $17 million) raked in by the sale. Ninety-six of 113 total lots sold, measuring in for a 85-percent sell-through rate, and the results “attest to the enduring appeal of period jewels and the discerning eye of our international clients,” according to Phillips worldwide head of
  
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• Artist Mr. Wash Launches Book Fundraiser for Forthcoming Community Center in Compton

  12-11-2025 17:10 via artnews.com
  When artist Fulton Leroy Washington, who is better known as Mr. Wash, was released from prison in 2016 after President Barack Obama commuted his life sentence, he quickly realized just how much of a need there was for organizations providing services to recently incarcerated individuals readjusting to life outside prison.In the past decade since his release, he has also come to see that the youth of his community in Compton, California, also need a space to learn art-making. But more importantly
  
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• Curator Stanton Thomas Spotlights Five Baroque Masterpieces from His Buzzy Caravaggio Show

  12-11-2025 17:02 via artnews.com
  Stanton Thomas, curator of the exhibition “In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi” likens laying eyes on Boy Bitten by a Lizard, the centerpiece of this show, to listening to original recordings on vinyl. Not only is the painting—along with 39 others by Caravaggio and an international cast of Caravaggisti, as the Baroque artist’s followers are known—making a rare trip from Florence to the U.S., it is presented unconserve
  
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• Wifredo Lam, One of Surrealism’s Most Misunderstood Artists, Comes into Focus at MoMA

  12-11-2025 16:41 via artnews.com
  Rare are the shows that reveal a bona fide masterpiece to the public; the Museum of Modern Art’s rich, fascinating Wifredo Lam retrospective is one of them. I’m not talking about his iconic 1942–43 painting La jungla (The Jungle), a landmark of the Surrealist movement that has been a prized possession of MoMA’s since 1945. The real star here is Grande Composition (1949), a 14-foot-wide tangle of angular, elongated creatures that twist through each other.Grande Composition
  
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• See Inside MoMA’s Wifredo Lam Retrospective, Featuring a Newly Unveiled Surrealist Masterpiece

  12-11-2025 16:41 via artnews.com
  Wifredo Lam, a Cuban-born painter, is not exactly little-recognized. Even during his day, he was considered a cornerstone of the Surrealist movement, befriending André Breton, Pablo Picasso, and others through connections forged in France, where he first gained fame. But Lam’s work beyond Europe, which he left in 1941, remains lesser-known outside the Caribbean—something that a new retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art aims to remedy.Curated by Christophe Cherix and Beverl
  
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• MoMA PS1 to Celebrate Its 50th Anniversary in 2026 with Sprawling ‘Greater New York’ Show

  12-11-2025 16:00 via artnews.com
  With its 50th anniversary looming, MoMA PS1 has revealed details for the 2026 edition of Greater New York, its quinquennial for art made in and around the city.Whereas in the past, the edition has sought outside curators to help organize the show, PS1 is looking closer to home this time around. The curatorial team of PS1 will conceive this edition of Greater New York, whose organizers include director Connie Butler, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs Ruba Katrib, and associate cura
  
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• Qatar to Build Gulf’s Largest Art Storage Facility, Anish Kapoor Threatens Legal Action After US Border Agents Pose Next to ‘Bean’ Sculpture: Morning Links for November 12, 2025

  12-11-2025 15:55 via artnews.com
  The HeadlinesVAULTING GULF AMBITIONS. As Qatar expands its cultural ambitions with plans for a major museum of international modern and contemporary art and the launch of its own Art Basel fair, it is also gearing up to open the Gulf region’s largest full-service art storage and logistics facility. As ARTnews reports, the project is a partnership between QC+, a strategic partner of Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and Art Basel, and Gulf Warehousing Company (GWC). The new complex will offer
  
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• Art Basel Qatar’s Strategic Partner Plans Gulf’s Largest Fine Art Storage and Logistics Hub

  12-11-2025 11:36 via artnews.com
  Qatar is planning an enormous museum of international modern and contemporary art, and will soon have its very own Art Basel fair. It will also soon have the Gulf region’s largest full-service storage and logistics facility.To create the new facility, QC+, a strategic partner with Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and Art Basel in presenting the upcoming Art Basel Qatar, has teamed up with the logistics and supply chain provider Gulf Warehousing Company Q.P.S.C (GWC). The facility will provid
  
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• Upon publication, The Picture of Dorian Gray was condemned as “vulgar” and “poisonous.” It’s now a modern classic

  12-11-2025 01:46 via wapo.st
  Upon publication, The Picture of Dorian Gray was condemned as “vulgar” and “poisonous.” It’s now a modern classic
  
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• Today roughly half the countries in the world have a below-replacement fertility rate — and so David Runciman asks, “are we doomed?”

  12-11-2025 01:46 via lrb.co.uk
  Today roughly half the countries in the world have a below-replacement fertility rate — and so David Runciman asks, “are we doomed?”
  
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• Not only nature, but human nature, is being redefined by an anti-limit culture. Is this progress?

  12-11-2025 01:46 via theatlantic.com
  Not only nature, but human nature, is being redefined by an anti-limit culture. Is this progress?
  
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