The Untold Story of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek’s Intimate—and Complex—Bond

Andrew Durbin’s new dual biography, *The Wonderful World That Almost Was*, explores the profound and volatile relationship between photographer Peter Hujar and artist Paul Thek. Spanning from their meeting in the late 1950s to their deaths from AIDS-related complications in the 1980s, the book details how their shared experiences—most notably a 1963 visit to the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo—fundamentally shaped their artistic trajectories. While Hujar captured the mummified remains in haunting photographs, Thek translated the encounter into his visceral "meat pieces" and wax effigies.

david wojnarowicz mural rediscovered kentucky

In 1985, David Wojnarowicz and other New York artists traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, to create site-specific murals for a weeklong fundraiser benefiting the Kentucky Child Victims' Trust Fund. The murals were expected to be destroyed after the event, but in 2023, the Wojnarowicz Foundation discovered that Wojnarowicz's mural, titled 'The Missing Children Show' Mural, had survived behind a false wall. However, the work has since been covered again, leaving its fate uncertain.

Patarei Prison Could Become Museum

paterei prison could become museum

Estonia’s Minister of Justice, Urmas Reinsalu, has proposed transforming the historic Patarei Prison in Tallinn into an international museum and research center dedicated to the crimes of communism. The sprawling 10-acre seaside complex, which served as a site of political incarceration under Soviet rule until 2002, remains largely unrestored, containing haunting remnants such as surgical tools and tattered bunk beds. The proposal has gained significant diplomatic traction, receiving formal support from representatives of eight EU member states during a recent meeting in the Estonian capital.

national portrait gallery shells record 4 million artemesia gentileschi self portrait

London's National Gallery has acquired a recently rediscovered self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi, 'Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria' (c. 1615–17), for £3.6 million ($4.7 million). The painting was purchased from a London dealer who had secured it at a Paris auction in December, where it set a new auction record for the artist. The acquisition marks a significant addition to the museum's holdings, as it is only the 21st work by a female artist in its collection of over 2,300 pieces.

pioneer works choke hole performance

At Brooklyn's Pioneer Works, a drag queen professional wrestling event called Choke Hole, part of artist Raúl de Nieves's exhibition, was disrupted when audience member and performer Chiquitita stormed the stage. She objected to a skit that made light of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations, shouting that 'ICE is not entertainment!' and hurling the microphone into a video screen. The performance, titled ARMAGEDDON, featured an alien queen plot involving nuclear codes and ICE, and Choke Hole later apologized, removing the segment from subsequent shows.

choke hole ice pioneer works apology

Choke Hole, a drag wrestling show, issued an apology on Friday for a controversial ICE-themed segment performed at Pioneer Works, a Brooklyn art center. The event, titled ARMAGEDDON, was held in conjunction with a show by artist Raúl de Nieves and featured a character named Visqueen, a sex robot, who announced that an ICE agent was present to deport an alien queen. Wrestler Candy Pain fought the fictional agent and won, but the performance angered spectators, including trans activist Chiquitita, who confronted the cast and criticized the trivialization of real ICE violence. Choke Hole acknowledged the harm, donated over $3,000 to NYC ICE Watch, and urged followers to contribute.

condo moves from hauser wirth to spruth magers and skarstedt was j m w turner neurodivergent trump squeezes arts talent pool morning link for november 10 2025

Artist George Condo has left Hauser & Wirth and will now be jointly represented by Sprüth Magers and Skarstedt, marking a return to galleries with which he had long-standing relationships. Condo first showed with Monika Sprüth in 1984 and was represented by Skarstedt from 2004 to 2019 before joining Hauser & Wirth in late 2019. Separately, a new BBC documentary titled *Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks* explores whether J. M. W. Turner's creative genius was shaped by childhood trauma and neurodivergence, featuring commentary from artists, actors, and a psychotherapist. The article also reports that Dana Awartani will represent Saudi Arabia at the 2026 Venice Biennale, and that the Trump administration has tightened H-1B visa rules, making it harder for arts institutions to hire foreign specialists.

The US Venice Biennale saga, Queer Islamic art in Oslo, Duane Linklater in Ottawa—podcast

The US has finally appointed artist Alma Allen to represent the country at next year's Venice Biennale, following a delayed application process and an aborted initial commission. The Art Newspaper's Ben Sutton discusses the saga with Ben Luke. Additionally, the National Museum of Norway in Oslo opens 'Deviant Ornaments,' an exhibition exploring queerness in Islamic art over a millennium, curated by Noor Bhangu. The podcast also features Duane Linklater's work 'wintercount_215_kisepîsim' (2022), part of 'Winter Count: Embracing the Cold' at the National Gallery of Canada, which addresses the deaths of First Nations children in the Residential School system.

pompidou secret camera bathroom

A hidden camera was discovered in a women's restroom within the administrative offices of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A female staff member found the device on January 14, leading to the immediate suspension of a suspected perpetrator and the filing of a legal complaint by the museum. The museum has stated that exhaustive inspections found no other devices and has offered support to staff.

louvre installs bars window heist galerie dapollon

The Louvre installed bars on the window through which thieves broke into the Galerie d’Apollon in October, stealing bejeweled objects that remain largely unrecovered. The window was secured on December 23, two days before Christmas, fulfilling a promise made by Louvre director Laurence des Cars, who had sought to resign after the heist but was denied. The museum also plans to add 100 security cameras and discuss securing other windows.

sharon stone rogues gallery

Sharon Stone has created a new series of figurative paintings titled "Rogues Gallery," which she describes as channeling the spirits of historical figures from different eras and locations, including an enslaved individual who drowned in the East China Sea and Iranian freedom fighter Mahsa Amini. The works, made in 2025, mark a shift from her earlier abstracted landscapes and floral motifs, and were produced in her Los Angeles home studio. Stone, who began painting seriously around 2020 and has previously exhibited at C. Parker Gallery, Allouche Gallery, and Galerie Deschler Berlin, approaches the portraits as a medium for healing and confronting difficult histories, including her own family's potential involvement in enslavement.

DHM main building likely closed until 2031

DHM-Hauptbau wohl bis 2031 dicht

The German Historical Museum (DHM) in Berlin will remain without its main building, the Zeughaus on Unter den Linden, until at least 2031 due to further delays in its renovation. Museum director Raphael Gross announced that a binding timeline from the property owner and the federal construction authority is not expected until 2027, and a reopening before 2031 is unrealistic. In the meantime, the museum is using its modern Pei-Bau wing to host a new exhibition titled "Objekte. Geschichte. Geschichten," featuring around 200 highlights from its collection of one million objects, including a samurai armor once gifted to Adolf Hitler and objects from a refugee shelter.

Lebanon’s Art Scene Is Living in ‘War Mode’

On April 8, 2025, a wave of Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon killed 357 people and injured over 1,200, a day now known as 'Black Wednesday.' Amid the violence, Lebanese artist Abed Al Kadiri, who grew up during Lebanon's civil war and Israeli occupation, has been working with displaced children in shelters, using art to help them process trauma. He collects their drawings and plans to combine them with sketches by other artists reflecting their own war experiences, creating concertina-style books to be exhibited and sold to raise funds for over 1.1 million displaced people.

Dataland, World's First A.I. Arts Museum, Will Open in June, and Other News.

Dataland, billed as the world's first museum dedicated to AI-generated art, will open June 20 at The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles, founded by Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç. Its inaugural exhibition, 'Machine Dreams: Rainforest,' uses vast environmental datasets to create multi-sensory AI interpretations of nature. In other news, Tuan Andrew Nguyen's 27-foot-tall sandstone Buddha sculpture has been installed on New York's High Line Plinth; Chanel is launching its first-ever Coco Beach pop-up in Shanghai; Kengo Kuma collaborated with Jaipur Rugs on a carpet collection unveiled at Milan Design Week; and Pittsburgh's new $31 million Arts Landing civic space opened in the Cultural District.

Museum acquisitions round-up: a 17ft sculpture by Anselm Kiefer, a $1.7m dinosaur skull, and a 17th-century genre painting

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.

Two years on from 7 October attacks, Israeli museum directors are in ‘complete isolation’

Two years after the 7 October 2023 attacks, Israeli museum directors report feeling isolated from the international art world. Tania Coen-Uzzielli, director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, says most international collaborations were put on hold, delayed, or cancelled. The museum, which has a history of political activism, closed partially during protests against judicial reforms and has taken a public stance to end the war and suffering in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv-Yafo City Museum, which opened just after the attacks, shifted to documenting wartime reality and supporting artists, but has received no direct support from international colleagues. The National Library of Israel repeatedly deinstalled and secured its collections during Iranian missile attacks, reopening when safe.

Ai Weiwei: ‘Nothing scares me anymore—being terrified does not help’

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has unveiled a major new commission in Kyiv, Ukraine, titled 'Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White,' on view until November 30. The site-specific installation, commissioned by the non-profit cultural platform Ribbon International, features three spheres wrapped in camouflaged fabric dotted with animal images, responding to escalating global armed conflicts. Ai recently traveled to the front line of the war in eastern Ukraine near Kharkiv, meeting Ukrainian fighters and cultural figures, and also planted sunflower seeds and buttons in a field there as a ceremonial act.

UK mental health hospitals are about to get more art

More than 50 artists, including Lakwena Maciver, Veronica Ryan, Peter Liversidge, and Alberta Whittle, will create site-specific works for mental health hospitals across the UK as part of a new three-year initiative by the charity Hospital Rooms. The project, delivered in collaboration with NHS Trusts in Birmingham, Bristol, North East London, and South West Yorkshire, is backed by a £600,000 Arts Council England National Lottery grant and additional support from the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Hiscox Foundation. Hospital Rooms will also develop a National Framework for Equal Access to Arts in Mental Health Services, aiming to integrate trauma-informed, autism-friendly, and culturally competent arts programmes into mental healthcare settings.

hew locke belgium sculpture cancelled

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.

Open Letter in Support of the Artist Asel Kadyrkhanova

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.

photojournalist wins world press photo award for image of gazan boy mutilatated by israeli airstrike

Palestinian photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf has won the 2025 World Press Photo award for her image of Mahmoud Ajjour, a 9-year-old Gazan boy whose arms were mutilated by an Israeli airstrike. The photo, taken for the New York Times, was honored at a ceremony in Amsterdam. Abu Elouf, herself from Gaza and now living in Qatar, captured the boy in a shaft of sunlight that gives the image the quality of a classical bust. The award, now in its 70th year, drew nearly 60,000 entries from 4,000 photographers across 141 countries.

Healing From the Burns: How The Getty Recovered From the LA Fires

On January 7, 2025, a wildfire driven by extreme winds reached the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. Thanks to years of preparation, staff efforts, and firefighter support, the museum buildings and art collection survived undamaged, though the landscape suffered severe damage. The Villa closed for about six months, during which staff removed 1,400 burned trees, cleaned soot and ash, restored water service, and installed a new exhibition. It reopened in late June 2025, welcoming visitors back to the galleries and gardens.

NEVERCREW Explores Our Tenuous Relationship with Nature in Huge Murals

The artist duo NEVERCREW, composed of Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, has unveiled a series of large-scale murals across Europe that confront the deteriorating relationship between humanity and the natural world. Their recent works, including the mural "Souvenir" in Vienna and "Switch" in Wuppertal, utilize surrealist imagery—such as polar bears merged with plastic toy components or whales encased in architectural structures—to illustrate how nature is increasingly viewed as an artificial, distant object rather than an integrated system.

rope atlanta black history apex museum

The APEX Museum in Atlanta, a Black history institution founded in 1978, reported discovering a "noose-like rope" in a tree on its premises. The museum's president and CEO, Dan Moore Jr., shared the news in an Instagram post, noting that Homeland Security determined the object was not a noose but that it was removed for evidence. Atlanta police are investigating the incident, which occurred on Wednesday.

Ukrainian installation at Burning Man destroyed by dust storm

Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai's installation *Black Cloud* (2025) was destroyed by a hurricane-force dust storm at the Burning Man festival in Nevada on 24 August, coinciding with Ukrainian Independence Day. The 100-foot-tall, eight-ton inflatable sculpture, funded by private donors from Ukraine and the US, featured strobe lights and a soundscape of missiles and sirens by war veteran DJ Tapolsky. The team behind the work is rebuilding it, and the installation had previously premiered in Kyiv with an edited soundscape to avoid traumatizing residents.

From Prison to Cultural Space: New Life for the Former Austrian Jails of Busto Arsizio

Da prigione a spazio per la cultura: nuova vita per le ex carceri austriache di Busto Arsizio

The city of Busto Arsizio has officially inaugurated the transformation of its mid-19th-century Austrian prison into a vibrant cultural hub. Following a €2.35 million restoration project largely funded by the EU’s PNRR (NextGenerationEU), the historic structure on Via Borroni now serves as an extension of the "G.B. Roggia" Civic Library. The facility features three levels of study rooms, multi-purpose exhibition spaces, and a literary café, all while preserving original architectural elements like cell doors and prisoner graffiti.

London's Postal Museum launches collaboration with victims of Post Office Horizon scandal

The Postal Museum in London has launched a collaborative project with victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal, working with a group of current and former sub-postmasters to create a lasting legacy documenting the impact of the faulty Horizon IT system. Over 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 based on incorrect data from the software, leading to wrongful convictions, imprisonment, and financial ruin. The museum is partnering with the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, led by high court judge Wyn Williams, and has held initial meetings with twelve sub-postmasters to discuss how to mark the scandal in history.