the worst art we saw in 2025

Artnet News editors and writers compiled a list of the worst art of 2025, calling out works they found lazy, cynical, overhyped, or ethically dubious. Highlights include Flora Yukhnovich's site-specific painting installation at the Frick Collection, which critics deemed middling and out of place among the museum's historic masterpieces; Jeff Koons's eight-foot-tall Hulk (Tubas) sculpture, sold for $3 million at Frieze New York and described as an obnoxious trophy piece; and actor Adrien Brody's interactive gum wall installation, which invited visitors to stick chewed gum onto a canvas.

What You Should Definitely Avoid in Venice

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The article humorously critiques the Venice Biennale, highlighting several disappointments. It describes a Japanese pavilion installation by Ei Arakawa-Nash featuring baby dolls for diaper-changing, which a critic dismisses as a male artist over-romanticizing parenthood. Other flops include long queues for the German and Austrian pavilions, underwhelming main exhibition "In Minor Keys," and annoying self-promotional performers outside venues. The piece also laments the presence of loud American collectors and donors who dominate the event.

future of the art world andras szanto review

András Szántó has published the third volume of his trilogy on the future of museums and the art world, titled "The Future of the Art World." The book compiles 38 interviews conducted between April 2024 and June 2025 with a wide range of art-world stakeholders, including artists, curators, collectors, dealers, auctioneers, art fair directors, sociologists, philosophers, and policymakers. Unlike his previous books, which focused on museum directors and architects, this volume gives significant voice to artists, who offer provocative critiques and predictions about the future of museums, art education, and digital art.

What does a woman swimming in urine tell us about the state of the world? Lots! – Venice Biennale review

The 2026 Venice Biennale, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh under the theme "In Minor Keys," has been plagued by months of turmoil including countries withdrawing, artists being fired, exhibitions cancelled, funding pulled, and protests during the preview. A five-person curatorial team took over after Kouoh's death, resulting in what the critic describes as a disjointed, committee-driven exhibition that prioritizes quiet contemplation and healing over direct political engagement. The central shows in the Giardini and Arsenale feature a vast, poorly explained array of art from the global south, with installations of ceramics, textiles, slide projectors, and serene natural scenes that the critic finds anachronistic and dull.

art best and worst art of 2025 list

Cultured's art critic reflects on the best and worst of 2025, highlighting standout moments including Salman Toor's 2007 portrait of Zohran Mamdani (now mayor-elect of New York), the posthumous Jack Whitten survey "The Messenger" at MoMA, and Anne Imhof's epic production "DOOM: House of Hope" at the Park Avenue Armory. The article also notes Mamdani's arts-friendly transition committee and the broader resilience of artists amid political turmoil.

Can a Play Capture an Artist as Enigmatic as Henry Darger?

Can a Play Capture an Artist as Enigmatic as Henry Darger?

A new play, *Bughouse*, is attempting to portray the life of reclusive artist Henry Darger on stage at New York's Vineyard Theater. The one-man show, starring John Kelly, draws from Darger's own lengthy autobiography to depict his traumatic childhood, institutionalization, and decades of solitary life in Chicago, where he secretly created his vast, fantastical artwork and writings.

The Big Review: Rothko in Florence ★★★★★

The Palazzo Strozzi in Florence has launched a major exhibition exploring the profound influence of the Italian Renaissance on Mark Rothko. Co-curated by the artist's son, Christopher Rothko, the show spans three historic locations: the Palazzo Strozzi, the Museo di San Marco, and the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. By placing Rothko’s abstract canvases in direct dialogue with Fra Angelico’s frescoes and Michelangelo’s architecture, the exhibition highlights how the artist’s visits to Italy in the 1950s and 60s shaped his spatial thinking and spiritual intensity.

rashid johnson guggenheim museum retrospective review

Rashid Johnson's mid-career retrospective, "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers," has opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, filling the rotunda with paintings, sculptures, photographs, and films. Curated by Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, with Faith Hunter, the exhibition includes Johnson's well-known "Anxious Men" works alongside lesser-seen films like *Threeness* (2005), which challenge viewers' expectations. The show features recurring target motifs, as seen in the outdoor sculpture *Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos* (2008), and explores themes of looking, being looked at, and the fluidity of Black identity.

25th Biennale of Sydney Review: From the Margins

The 25th Biennale of Sydney, titled "Rememory" and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, features 143 works by 83 artists and collectives from 37 countries across five venues. The exhibition explores marginalized, fragmented, and repressed histories, drawing on Toni Morrison's concept of 'rememory' as a space between remembering and forgetting. Key works include Tuan Andrew Nguyen's film on Vietnam War trauma, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's immersive installation on Palestinian displacement, Khalid Albaih's photographs of Sudan, and Massinissa Selmani's drawings on Algerian socialist building projects.

Review: The Good, The Bad and The Venice Biennale

The article reviews the 2024 Venice Biennale, focusing on controversies over Russia's and Israel's participation. Protests erupted during opening week, leading the EU to cut funding and the International Jury to resign. As a result, awards like the Golden Lion and Silver Lion will be decided by public vote, with many pavilions and artists withdrawing in protest. The main exhibition, curated under the theme 'Minor Keys,' features standout works by Alfredo Jaar and Carrie Schneider, alongside national pavilions like Austria's provocative entry by Florentina Holzinger.

p staff david zwirner review

P. Staff's current exhibition at David Zwirner in New York transforms the gallery's Upper East Side townhouse into a haunting, body-centric experience. The show features a new video titled *Penetration* (2025), split across three floors, depicting a person with a laser beamed at their bare stomach, alongside sculptures with wood spikes under latex drapes and ambient sounds of a beating heart. The installation evokes a dread of having a body, with jaundiced yellow window films and disjointed sensory elements creating an uncomfortable, dysphoric atmosphere.

Art for Our Age of Chaos

The article reviews two major New York exhibitions opening in 2026: the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, featuring over fifty artists, and "New Humans: Memories of the Future" at the newly expanded New Museum, with over a hundred artists. Both shows are described as enormous and defiant, responding to a distracted public and financial pressures. The reviewer notes that both exhibitions juxtapose large-scale immersive works with tiny, intimate pieces, and finds the Whitney Biennial lacking urgency, while preferring the New Museum's historical narrative about technology and modernity.

the gallerist sundance review natalie portman jenna ortega

The Gallerist, a new satire directed by Cathy Yan, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film follows struggling gallerist Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman), who is betting everything on a one-artist debut at Art Basel Miami Beach. After an obnoxious art influencer, Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis), dies accidentally by impalement on a sculpture titled The Emasculator, Polina and her assistant Kiki (Jenna Ortega) conspire to pass off his corpse as part of the artwork, duping wealthy clients. The ensemble cast also includes Catherine Zeta-Jones as a legendary dealer reminiscent of Marian Goodman, Da'Vine Joy Randolph as the earnest artist Stella Burgess, and Sterling K. Brown as Polina's ex-husband.

The tiniest event can tear a hole. Sara MacKillop by Margaret Kross

Sara MacKillop's exhibition "The Cutaway View" at Good Weather in Chicago presents sculptures made from humble analog materials like blank wall calendars, empty shopping bags, and gift wrapping. The London-based artist alters these objects with minimal interventions—such as surgically cut holes in shopping bags to accommodate vinyl records—drawing attention to the ephemera and texture of retail culture. Her series "Calendar Houses" (2021–ongoing) uses archive boxes and wall calendars to create miniature modernist dwellings that critique systems of order and self-optimization.

I have seen the light and it’s Tracey Emin’s Jesus – RA Summer Exhibition review | Royal Academy of Arts

The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in London features over 1,600 works, with Tracey Emin's painting "The Crucifixion" as the standout piece. The critic describes Emin's work as a sincere, shocking depiction of the crucifixion that reinvigorates religious art, alongside works by Georg Baselitz, Cornelia Parker, Tamara Kostianovsky, George Shaw, Frank Bowling, and Cindy Sherman.

Holbein biography interrogates the artist's life and work from a different angle

Elizabeth Goldring’s new biography of Hans Holbein the Younger takes a documentary-focused approach, prioritizing archival evidence over visual analysis. The book examines Holbein’s life (1497/8–1543) through chronological chapters, using inventories, correspondence, and other records to correct long-held assumptions and propose new theories about his work. Goldring’s detective work includes identifying the green curtain in Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More as a reference to the sitter’s role as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and suggesting that a lost painting of the More family was given to Erasmus as a gift.

Comment | Digital art today has a narcissism problem

Art Basel Miami Beach's new digital art section, Zero 10, featured a heavily subsidized presentation curated by Eli Scheinman, bypassing the fair's usual selection process. The centerpiece was Beeple's installation "Regular Animals" (2025), which displayed dog-like robots with humanoid masks of figures including Kim Jong-un, Elon Musk, and Beeple himself, which critics argue lacks substantive critique and relies on shallow satire.

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The article reviews "A World in the Making: The Shakers," an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, running through August 9, 2026. It pairs Shaker material culture with works by seven contemporary artists, including Kameelah Janan Rasheed, who responds to the archive of Rebecca Cox Jackson, a Black Shaker leader. The exhibition explores how Shaker communal practices, craft traditions, and devotional art resonate in today's digital age, where handmade aesthetics often become lifestyle signals rather than shared experiences.

New film about forgers is ‘Miami Vice’ for the art-world crowd

The article reviews 'Forge', a new crime thriller directed by Jing Ai Ng, which follows Chinese American siblings Coco and Raymond Zhang who forge early 20th-century landscape paintings and sell them as authentic works in South Florida. The film features FBI agent Emily (Kelly Marie Tran) investigating the scheme, while the forgers navigate a world of wealthy collectors, a hurricane-destroyed art collection, and a family legacy of deception. The movie is described as 'Miami Vice' for the art-world crowd, with a dusky palette and pulsing soundtrack set against the backdrop of Art Basel Miami Beach's booming art market.