Arts news

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Jeff Koons Teams Up with Hublot for a New Watch Collaboration

  09-09-2026 16:17 via artnews.com
  
  Swiss luxury watchmaker Hublot has collaborated with the likes of Shepard Fairey, Richard Orlinski, Daniel Arsham, and Takashi Murakami. Now, it’s tapping Jeff Koons as a collaborator and ambassador.Koons will unveil his reimagination of what a Hublot watch should look like in mid-September in New York. This is the artist’s first collaboration with a watch brand. “Hublot and I have always shared [a] fascination for the material sciences,” said the artist in a statement. H
  
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• Valie Export Was Ahead of Her Time and as Subtle as She Was Provocative

  09-09-2026 15:57 via artnews.com
  
  One chilly but sparkling afternoon this past January, I made a pilgrimage. The destination was a somewhat unlikely site for work by one of the most iconoclastic (in every sense of that term) feminist artists of the last century: a Roman Catholic church. The Pöstlingberg basilica gleams atop the steep hill of the same name, looking out upon a wide vista of the Danube flowing through Linz—where VALIE EXPORT, born Waltraud Lehner in Nazi-era Austria, spent her formative years. I was
  
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• Hungary Axes SANAA-Designed National Gallery, Basel Social Club to Launch Tokyo Event, and More: Morning Links for September 9, 2026

  09-09-2026 15:29 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good Morning!
  Hungary’s new government has nixed plans to build a SANAA-designed National Gallery in Budapest. Basel Social Club is launching Tokyo Jazz Club in November. Greece rejected a request from Frankfurt’s Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection to borrow Parthenon marbles because of the British Museum’s participation.The Hea
  
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• Eric Firestone to Open Fifth Gallery in West Palm Beach

  09-09-2026 15:15 via artnews.com
  
  Eric Firestone is expanding south. The dealer will open his fifth gallery space, this time in West Palm Beach in mid-November, adding a permanent South Florida location to his two spaces in New York and two in East Hampton. The new gallery, at 2412 Florida Avenue, will occupy a warehouse space near the Norton Museum of Art. For Firestone, who grew up in Miami and left South Florida in 1989, the move is both a homecoming and a bet on a region he’s familiar with as an art dealer. &ldquo
  
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• Kasseem Dean and Alicia Keys Team Up with Bonhams for Initiative That Gives Artists a Cut of Secondary-Market Sales

  09-09-2026 15:00 via artnews.com
  
  When Kasseem Dean (better known as Swizz Beatz) and Alicia Keys saw Kerry James Marshall’s painting Past Times (1997) sell at Sotheby’s in 2018 for $21 million, making what the house quickly labeled “a record for a living African American artist,” they despaired that Marshall himself didn’t see any of the upside from the sale. “We thought being a part of a milestone like that would be so advantageous to the artist who created the work,” they wrote to ART
  
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• Christie’s to Auction Peter Simon’s $172 M. Art Collection, Led by Bacon, Mondrian, Warhol Works

  09-09-2026 14:47 via artnews.com
  
  An art collection, estimated to be worth £87 million to £127 million ($118 million to $172 million), featuring works by Francis Bacon, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons, and more, is coming to Christie’s on October 14 and 15 during Frieze Week. The collection belongs to British businessman and art collector Peter Simon, who has appeared on each edition of ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors list since 2005.The sale of “Monsoon: The Pe
  
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• Christie’s to Auction Bacon, Mondrian, Warhol in a £127 M. Art Collection

  09-09-2026 14:47 via artnews.com
  
  An art collection, estimated to be worth £87 million to £127 million ($118 million to $172 million), featuring works by Francis Bacon, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons, and more, is coming to Christie’s on October 14 and 15 during Frieze Week. The collection belongs to British businessman and art collector Peter Simon, who has appeared on each edition of ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors list since 2005.The sale of “Monsoon: The Pe
  
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• Planned SANAA Architect Project in Hungary to Be Turned Into Public Parkland

  09-09-2026 14:20 via artnews.com
  
  The Tokyo-based architectural firm SANAA’s plans to build a New National Gallery in Hungary have been axed. The decision was made by the country’s new government, which came into power in May with the newly appointed prime minister Péter Magyar. A decree published on June 18 put all construction work to a stop.The new gallery was part of the Liget Budapest Project to restore Hungary’s historic Városliget, otherwise known as City Park. SANAA won the competition to
  
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• Eight Must-See Islands for Art Lovers

  09-09-2026 12:00 via artnews.com
  
  No work, no chores, no stress. . . A far-flung island may be the perfect place to hide from day-to-day responsibilities. If you’re an art lover looking to get away, but lazing in the sun with an exotic drink isn’t quite your style, you will be happy to know that there are some destinations—from the Seto Inland Sea to the Mediterranean, designed to quench your thirst for culture and contemplation. Below, a look at eight islands around the world that are certain to plea
  
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• Philippe Parreno’s ‘Iceman’ Sculpture Will Melt Away at Independent 20th Century

  09-09-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  The iceman cometh—to the Breuer building.Later this month, Philippe Parreno’s iconic Iceman in Reality Park (1995–2023) will make its New York debut, courtesy his gallery, Esther Schipper, which will show it at Independent 20th Century.“The beautiful idea with the ‘Iceman’ series is that it can be reproduced as many or as few times as desired,” Leah Turner, the gallery’s New York–based senior director, told ARTnews.The booth also marks Esther
  
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