The art world is currently reflecting on the enduring legacy of Jasper Johns, highlighted by a new Gagosian exhibition focusing on his 1970s output. Critic John Yau explores Johns's career-long fascination with materiality and the inevitable decay of art, noting how the artist uses newsprint and wax to acknowledge that nothing remains static in time.
The New York Gallery History Project, a partnership between Independent and Contemporary Art Library, has launched the digital archives of Jay Gorney Modern Art, a seminal New York gallery that operated from 1985 to 1998. The archive includes documentation of landmark exhibitions such as Lari Pittman's first New York solo show, Nan Goldin's first prints of "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (1985), and shows by Catherine Opie, Barbara Bloom, and others. The project also collects material from other closed galleries like Foxy Production, Off Vendome, and Paradise Garage to preserve art history that might otherwise be lost.
Art communities and heritage in Iran, moderate recovery in the art market, Sydney Biennale—podcast
The latest episode of The Week in Art podcast covers three main topics. First, it discusses the impact of the ongoing Middle East conflict on cultural communities and heritage sites in Iran and Lebanon, including damage to the Chehel Sotoun palace in Isfahan. Second, it analyzes the new Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, which indicates a market recovery but reveals a complex picture. Third, it features a new installation by Indigenous American artist Cannupa Hanska Luger at the Sydney Biennale, consisting of ceramic dingo skulls, which has gained relevance following a recent tragedy in Australia.
A British businessman, Frederick Doe, has received a 21-month suspended sentence at Oxford Crown Court for his role in the 2019 theft of Maurizio Cattelan's solid-gold toilet artwork "America" (2016), valued at $6 million. The toilet was stolen from Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site and former home of Winston Churchill, where it was installed as part of a Cattelan exhibition. Doe acted as a middleman, convicted of conspiring to transfer criminal property after being recorded offering to sell the 227-pound, 18-karat-gold toilet. Two other men, Michael Jones and James Sheen, were found guilty of planning the theft and are due to be sentenced next month. The gold has never been recovered and is believed to have been broken up and sold.
The Palaces of Memory
The article reports that Israeli and US airstrikes on Isfahan, Iran, damaged several centuries-old palaces and cultural buildings. It draws a parallel to the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza, suggesting this may be a targeted strategy to erase cultural identity and history, which are seen as threats to occupying forces.
Artnet News published its quarterly analysis of the most exhibited living artists at over 250 U.S. museums in March 2025, identifying more than 3,700 artists. The top artist is photographer Cara Romero, who appears in multiple museum shows including a major retrospective at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College. Three of the six most featured artists have Native American backgrounds, reflecting a surge in exhibitions celebrating Indigenous art. The list excludes the late Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a Native painter and curator who died in January 2025 at age 85 and would have ranked highly.
The Koyo Kouoh Foundation has launched in Basel, Switzerland, coinciding with the opening of the 2026 Venice Biennale, which features the late curator Koyo Kouoh's main exhibition "In Minor Keys." The foundation aims to continue Kouoh's work supporting contemporary African cultural production globally, including plans for the Koyo Kouoh Prize and a permanent home for the Koyo Kouoh Collection. It is led by her partner, saxophonist Philippe Mall, and includes board members such as artist Alfredo Jaar, curator Adrienne Edwards, and former Kunstmuseum Basel director Josef Helfenstein.
A time capsule designed by British architect Norman Foster has been buried in Washington D.C. to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence. The titanium box features 13 facets and stars representing the original colonies, and contains letters from King Charles III and President Donald Trump, along with soil from George Washington's ancestral home. It was presented by Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin and U.K. officials to the U.S. Department of Interior, and is not to be opened until July 4, 2276.
The UK government has finalized design plans for a national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II in London’s St James’s Park. A team led by architect Norman Foster of Foster + Partners, including British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, will create a natural stone path connecting royal gardens, a translucent cast-glass balustrade on the Blue Bridge inspired by the Queen’s wedding tiara, and figurative sculptures of the Queen and Prince Philip. Landscape designer Michael Desvigne is also part of the team, working with the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee. The final design will be announced in April 2026, coinciding with what would have been the Queen’s 100th birthday, with a budget of £23 to £46 million from public funds.
Cuban-born, Miami-based artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello arrived at the Neuendorf Residency in Mallorca with plans to use art supplies shipped from mainland Spain, but they never arrived. Undeterred, he worked with only watercolors and paper he had packed, drawing inspiration from the surrounding cliffs, sea, and plant life. The residency, housed in a minimalist building designed by John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin and commissioned by Artnet founder Hans Neuendorf, offered him solitude to create memory-based paintings of swimmers and landscapes.
Artist Xandra Ibarra staged a nude performance titled "Nude Laughing" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, walking through the contemporary galleries to challenge viewer etiquette and spark conversations about consent, art history, and the human body. Separately, a 27-foot-tall Buddha sculpture has been installed on the High Line in New York, serving as a resurrection of the destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas and a critical piece of cultural heritage.
A French Senate hearing revealed that Louvre security failures allowed thieves to steal $102 million in French crown jewels from the Apollo Gallery in October, with officials stating that the escape could have been prevented if exterior camera footage had been monitored in real time. Noël Corbin of the General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs and Pascal Mignerey of the Security, Safety and Audit Mission testified that a 2019 security audit by Van Cleef & Arpels identifying gallery weaknesses was not transmitted to new leadership under director Laurence des Cars, contributing to the heist.
A 2018 security audit commissioned by the Louvre from Van Cleef and Arpels identified critical vulnerabilities in the museum's Apollo Gallery, including a balcony accessible via a lift platform—the exact entry point used by thieves in a daring October 19, 2025 heist. The audit, which included diagrams highlighting a window facing Quai François-Mitterrand as a major weakness, was not passed on to current Louvre president Laurence des Cars when she took over in 2021. The museum only discovered the document after the theft, prompting an internal review and referral to France's General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs. French authorities have since arrested four more suspects, bringing the total to eight, as the investigation continues into the theft of eight valuable pieces including Napoleon Bonaparte's emerald-and-diamond necklace.
"Eines der größten fotografischen Dokumente des 20. Jahrhunderts"
A New York court has concluded an eleven-year legal battle by awarding Amedeo Modigliani’s 'Seated Man with a Cane' to the heirs of Jewish art dealer Oscar Stettiner. The ruling rejected the claims of the powerful Nahmad family, with the judge determining that Stettiner never voluntarily relinquished the work during the Nazi era. Additionally, a significant photographic archive belonging to darkroom technician Roland Haupt has surfaced, containing previously unseen World War II images by Lee Miller and Cecil Beaton.
« Guernica » déchire l’Espagne : Madrid refuse le prêt du tableau de Picasso au Pays basque
The Spanish government and the Reina Sofía Museum have rejected a request from the Basque regional government to loan Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, "Guernica," to the Guggenheim Bilbao. The proposed loan was intended to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1937 bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. While Madrid cites the painting's extreme physical fragility as the reason for the refusal, the decision has sparked a heated political row, exacerbated by derogatory comments from Madrid’s regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
PINTA PANAMA ART WEEK 2026 REAFFIRMS THE COUNTRY AS A HUB FOR REGIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART
The second edition of Pinta Panamá Art Week will be held from March 18-22, 2026, featuring works by Panamanian artists like Cisco Merel, Lulu Molinares, Arístides Ureña Ramos, and Isabel de Obaldía. Their projects, ranging from sculpture and textiles to immersive installations and studio visits, explore themes of memory, territory, and everyday life through the manipulation of materials and space.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has announced its 2025 Arts Writers Grant recipients, awarding a total of $1.04 million to 31 writers. The grants, ranging from $15,000 to $50,000, are distributed across four categories: Articles, Books, Short-Form Writing, and a newly introduced Translation category with a $30,000 purse for translating books on contemporary visual art into English. Recipients include past and current contributors to ARTnews and Art in America, such as Glenn Adamson, Jeremy Lybarger, Zoé Samudzi, and Catherine G. Wagley.
Artsy has highlighted five emerging and established artists to watch this April, selected based on recent gallery representation, exhibition success, and market data. The list features Peruvian painter Sylvia Fernández, known for her meticulous and majestic depictions of the natural world, alongside four other artists who have made significant impacts through recent art fairs and new bodies of work.
The Bayeux Tapestry, a 900-year-old embroidery depicting the Norman Conquest of 1066, will be loaned from France to the British Museum for a blockbuster exhibition running from September 2026 to July 2027. French officials reportedly lobbied for discounted or free entry for French citizens, a request British negotiators dismissed as a "try-on" that was "never going to happen." The loan, first proposed in 2018 by then-Prime Minister Theresa May, was delayed over fragility concerns and finally confirmed during President Emmanuel Macron's state visit. In exchange, Britain will send the Sutton Hoo treasures and the Lewis Chessmen to France. French negotiators also floated borrowing the Rosetta Stone, but that proposal failed as the artifact is considered immovable.
Three major museums have announced significant new acquisitions for their permanent collections. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem received a monumental 2014 sculpture by Anselm Kiefer, titled *Die Erdzeitalter (Ages of the World)*, donated by collector Martin Z. Margulies. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., acquired a $1.7 million Pachycephalosaurus dinosaur skull, donated by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy. Meanwhile, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem purchased an early 16th-century genre painting by Maarten van Heemskerck.
A team led by architect Norman Foster and British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has won the competition to design a national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II in St James’s Park, London. The winning proposal includes a series of royal gardens linked by a stone path, a new bridge inspired by the Queen Mary fringe tiara, and Shonibare’s Wind Sculpture as a contemplative centerpiece. The project also features figurative sculptures of the Queen and Prince Philip, a Prince Philip gate, and a main monument beside the Mall. The design will be developed with the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee, which will select a sculptor for the figurative elements later this year; the final design is due in April 2026, with a provisional budget of £23m–£46m.
This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast 'The Week in Art' covers three major topics. Host Ben Luke interviews painter Rachel Jones about her exhibition 'Gated Canyons' at Dulwich Picture Gallery, which features both giant and tiny works. Contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck reviews the Liverpool Biennial 2025, titled 'BEDROCK', held at the Walker Art Gallery. The episode also features writer Charlie Porter discussing the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, a commemorative work made of 42 quilts and 23 individual panels honoring 384 individuals affected by HIV and AIDS, currently installed at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
Artsy Editorial's August 2025 edition of 'Artists on Our Radar' highlights five emerging visual artists: Jesse Akele, Ficus Interfaith (the duo of Ryan Bush and Raphael Martinez Cohen), and Shuling Guo. Akele's hazy figurative paintings explore fleeting place and memory, featured in WORKPLACE's group show 'Cold Enough for Snow.' Ficus Interfaith creates playful terrazzo sculptures blending fine art, design, and craft, with a solo exhibition 'Furniture Music' at P.P.O.W in New York. Shuling Guo produces transcendental works in color pencil and oil paint, alluding to her life experiences, with pieces at Hollis Taggart and Mindy Solomon Gallery.
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) has revealed six commission proposals for a monument honoring legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, to be installed outside the Jamaica Performing Arts Center in Queens through the Percent for the Art program. The artists in the running are Thomas J Price, Tanda Francis, Nekisha Durrett, La Vaughn Belle, Tavares Strachan, and Nikesha Breeze, and the public is invited to share input on the conceptual designs before the final selection. The monument emerged from the 2018 She Built NYC initiative, which aimed to address the lack of historical monuments dedicated to influential women in the city, and was revitalized in 2024 after delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Banksy has installed a new sculpture in Waterloo Place, central London, depicting a suited man with his face covered by a flag walking off a plinth toward his demise. The artist confirmed his authorship via an Instagram video and left his signature on the base. The statue was covertly placed in the early hours of April 29, among existing monuments celebrating the British Empire, including King Edward VII, Florence Nightingale, and the Crimean War Memorial.
The World Press Photo 2026 winners have been announced, with Carol Guzy awarded the top honor for her image of distraught girls clinging to their father as ICE agents detain him after an immigration hearing in New York City. Finalists include Saber Nuraldin’s photograph of Palestinians scrambling for aid in Gaza, Victor J Blue’s image of Achi women outside a Guatemala City court, and other powerful works documenting climate displacement in Mexico, a wedding during a typhoon in the Philippines, police detaining a priest at a pensioners’ protest in Argentina, and a social robot in Europe.
Maria Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova, the director of the Narva Museum in Estonia, was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison by a Russian court. The charges stem from her hanging banners on Narva Castle that label Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” including one that fuses Putin’s face with Adolf Hitler’s and another showing a bloodied mug shot of Putin. The court cited laws against disseminating “war fakes” and “rehabilitating Nazism.” Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova has been displaying such banners since 2023 on Russian Victory Day, and Russian authorities have projected Victory Day parades toward Narva from the nearby town of Ivangorod.
London-based British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke expressed disappointment on Instagram after learning that the city of Ostend, Belgium, canceled a site-specific artwork commissioned late last year. The newly-elected city council cited insufficient public consultation before accepting Locke's proposal, which aimed to re-contextualize a statue of former Belgian King Leopold II—a ruler notorious for brutal colonial exploitation in the Congo. Locke offered to extend public consultation and reduce the installation from ten to five years, but received no response. The council's decision was announced without joint press release coordination, and Locke has had no further communication from them.
An open letter initiated by members of the Kazakhstani and international art community protests the removal of artist Asel Kadyrkhanova's work *Machine* (2013) from the Kazakhstan pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The mixed-media installation, which addresses Stalinist repression through a vintage typewriter, arrest warrants, and red threads, was dismantled on May 5, 2026, reportedly by order of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Culture and Information, just before the pavilion's opening. The artist and curator were allegedly pressured to alter the work beforehand, and the ministry initially cited restrictions from the Italian side, but the Italian Ministry of Defense denied involvement.