How Josh Kline Wrote the Essay That the Art World Can’t Stop Talking About

Artist Josh Kline has sparked intense debate across the New York art world with his viral essay, "New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art," published in the journal October. The text serves as a scathing critique of the current state of the American art industry, diagnosing it as "sick" due to skyrocketing real estate costs, systemic power imbalances, and a market that has become an unsustainable "conveyor belt" of commercial painting. Kline argues that the economic pressures of post-pandemic New York have made the city a hostile environment for experimental and conceptual practices.

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Machteld Rullens, a Dutch artist based in The Hague, is presenting her second solo exhibition with Page (NYC) titled “Beacon Road,” jointly staged at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. The show features works created during a residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut, using discarded cardboard boxes that Rullens collects from recycling bins and other sources. Her sculptures, which initially appear ceramic or metallic, are actually intricate assemblages of cardboard, exploring form, commodity, and waste. The exhibition marks a departure from her earlier work, with crushed and folded forms and exposed bolts conveying a sense of restrained energy.

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The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2025 class of 22 MacArthur Fellows, each receiving an $800,000 no-strings-attached grant. Among the winners are several visual artists: Garrett Bradley, known for her Oscar-nominated documentary *Time* (2020) and works centering Black resistance; Gala Porras-Kim, whose practice questions how art institutions convey or conceal information about objects; Tuan Andrew Nguyen, whose films and installations explore trauma and colonization; and Jeremy Frey, a seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket maker whose midcareer survey is on view at the Bruce Museum. Photographers Matt Black and Tonika Lewis Johnson also received fellowships, along with archaeologist Kristina Douglass and non-artists such as novelist Tommy Orange and astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry.

Riyadh’s New Black Gold Museum Attempts to Convey ‘The Legacy of Oil Through Art’

The Black Gold Museum has officially opened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a flagship project of the nation’s Vision 2030 initiative. Housed in a Zaha Hadid-designed complex and directed by Jack Persekian, the institution features over 350 artworks by 170 international and local artists, including Manal AlDowayan and Doug Aitken. The museum explores the history and cultural impact of oil through four thematic sections—Encounter, Dreams, Doubts, and Visions—blending historical narrative with contemporary artistic reflection.

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A federal judge has denied music producer and prominent art collector Kasseem Dean, known as Swizz Beatz, his motion to dismiss a lawsuit tied to the 1MDB scandal. The case, filed in October 2024 in the Southern District of New York, involves claims of fraudulent conveyance and unjust enrichment against Dean and two of his companies. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled that the plaintiffs' claims are not time-barred and that they have standing to proceed, moving the case into the discovery phase. The plaintiffs, joint liquidators Angela Barkhouse and Toni Shukla, seek to recover $7.3 million allegedly transferred from entities linked to 1MDB to Dean and his companies.

Handpicked review – delightful dancing dahlias and petals so pillowy you can feel them

The Guardian reviews "Handpicked," an exhibition at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge that brings together over 40 artists from the 20th century to the present, all sharing a floral passion. The show features works by Rory McEwen, Vanessa Bell, Cedric Morris, Christopher Wood, Tirzah Garwood, Celia Paul, Gluck, and Caroline Walker, among others, displayed on white and leaf-green walls inspired by the fresh flowers and floral paintings in the neighboring house. The review highlights specific pieces, such as McEwen's exquisite tulip watercolor and Garwood's poignant painting from the last year of her life, noting the technical variety and emotional depth across the exhibition.

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New York’s Jeffrey Deitch gallery apologized to artist Miles Greenberg after rapper Lexa Gates staged a performance inside a giant wheel at the gallery on January 14 to promote her album. Greenberg noted striking similarities to his own endurance piece Oysterknife, in which he walked on a conveyor belt for nearly a full day, first performed at the Marina Abramović Institute in 2020 and restaged at Jeffrey Deitch in 2021. Gates responded that she had never seen Greenberg’s work, but the gallery later acknowledged an “unauthorized derivative” of Greenberg’s work had taken place without his consent.

Paula Rego review – tantalising drawings with the shoeprints left on them

Victoria Miro is hosting the largest exhibition of Paula Rego’s drawings to date, curated by the artist’s son, Nick Willing. Spanning from the 1950s until her death in 2022, the show features intimate pencil sketches, pastels, and ink drawings that reveal the foundational narratives of her career, including her early childhood sketches, her fierce opposition to the Salazar dictatorship, and her advocacy for women's rights.

Hans Holbein Painted the Human

A new book, 'Holbein: Renaissance Master' by Elizabeth Goldring, published by Yale University Press and the Paul Mellon Centre, offers a comprehensive scholarly examination of the 16th-century German painter Hans Holbein the Younger. The review focuses on Holbein's masterful portraiture, particularly his depictions of opposing Tudor-era figures like Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, which are highlighted as embodying the era's complex political and religious tensions through their visual presentation at the Frick Collection in New York.

Angela de la Cruz review – wonky chairs and busted pianos are monuments to resilience

Angela de la Cruz's solo exhibition "Upright" at Birmingham's Ikon gallery presents a collection of broken and mended artworks. Her canvases are crumpled, folded, and snapped, while sculptures are assembled from precarious junk like a three-legged chair on a stool and a piano stacked atop another. The works, though appearing on the verge of collapse, are all repaired and propped back up, reflecting a state of post-collapse resilience.

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Konstantina Krikzoni's solo exhibition "ARMATURA" at L'Appartement in Geneva presents a new suite of paintings born from a period of intense solitude. The works explore painting as a medium for self-expression, using the metaphor of an armature—the metal framework that supports sculptures—to represent an inner structure of fortification, endurance, and survival. The paintings feature elusive female figures and landscapes rendered with delicate layers of pigment, evoking ancient myths and goddesses, with works like *Warrior I* (2025), *L.K. I Killed the Pink* (2025), and the titular *Armatura* (2025) conveying emotional rawness and psychological drama.

How Digital Animation Can Help Audiences Understand Installation Art Before They Experience It in Person

The article examines the inherent limitations of traditional photography in documenting installation art, arguing that static images fail to convey the experiential qualities of scale, sequence, and audience interaction central to the medium. It uses Olafur Eliasson's iconic 'The Weather Project' as a prime example of a work whose atmospheric and social dimensions are lost in photographic reproduction.

Tehching Hsieh: ‘I didn’t try to be a superman, my work is not about heroism’

Tehching Hsieh, the pioneering performance artist known for his extreme durational works, has opened his first retrospective, 'Lifeworks 1978-99', at Dia Beacon. The exhibition follows his gift of 11 major works to the institution last year and features six spaces designed to convey the relative time of his performances—including his five one-year pieces (Cage Piece, Time Clock Piece, Outdoor Piece, Rope Piece, No Art Piece) and the Thirteen Year Plan—using spatial measurements to represent 'art time' and 'life time'.

Anarchic Cats Are Ensnared in Chaos in Léo Forest’s Dynamic Drawings

Paris-based artist Léo Forest creates high-energy pencil drawings that capture the chaotic and dramatic nature of domestic cats. Drawing inspiration from the feline's predatory instincts and internet meme culture, Forest utilizes blurred motion and flailing limbs to depict cats in various states of action, from grooming to brawling.

New York Court Orders Restitution of a Modigliani to the Oscar Stettiner Estate

La justice new-yorkaise ordonne la restitution d’un Modigliani à la succession d’Oscar Stettiner

A New York court has ordered the restitution of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1918 painting 'Seated Man with a Cane' to the heirs of Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer. The work was seized during the Nazi occupation of Paris and sold at a forced auction in 1944 before eventually being purchased by the billionaire Nahmad family via an offshore company in 1996. Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled that the evidence of Stettiner’s prior ownership was "unusually strong" and dismissed the defense's claims that the painting was a different version or that the claim was filed too late.

New York Court Orders Restitution of a Modigliani to the Oscar Stettiner Estate

La justice new-yorkaise ordonne la restitution d’un Modigliani à la succession d’Oscar Stettiner

A New York judge has ordered the restitution of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1918 painting, "Seated Man With a Cane," to the heirs of Oscar Stettiner. The artwork, which was seized during the Nazi occupation of Paris and sold at a forced auction in 1944, had been in the possession of the powerful Nahmad art-dealing family since 1996. Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled that the evidence of Stettiner’s prior ownership was "unusually strong" and dismissed the defense's claims that the work was a different version or that the claim was filed too late.

Artist displays big ideas with Alpharetta exhibit

The Alpharetta Arts Center is hosting a solo exhibition of works by Cuban-born, Atlanta-based artist Alexi Torres through April 18. The showcase features a diverse range of media, including intricate oil paintings that mimic woven textures, bronze sculptures, and embroideries that explore themes of spiritual connection and human consciousness. Torres, who follows lunar cycles for his creative process, utilizes symbolic imagery such as a scarlet wicker Buddha and a Statue of Liberty rendered in baseball stitching to convey complex narratives.

Smith College Museum of Art Exhibit Explores Access

The Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) is presenting the exhibition 'Don’t mind if I do,' a project conceived by artist Finnegan Shannon. The show features a 25-foot conveyor belt loop that displays 30 small, touchable sculptures by eight artists, allowing visitors to view the art from comfortable seating without needing to move through the gallery. The project originated from a 2019 residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and has toured to several university galleries before arriving at Smith.

Guangzhou Image Triennial 2025 Review: The Case for Sensitivity

The Guangzhou Image Triennial 2025, titled 'The Case for Sensitivity,' has opened at the Guangdong Art Museum. The exhibition, featuring over 50 artists and artist groups, directly addresses a perceived crisis of technological mediation, arguing that digital existence deprives us of direct contact with the natural world. It aims to foster new forms of attention by emphasizing the materiality of images—what they are made of—over what they represent.

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The city of Austin, Texas, is set to remove a 'Black Artists Matter' street mural and a rainbow crosswalk after Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to comply with a federal order from President Donald Trump. The July 1 directive from Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy requires states to eliminate political messages and artwork from roadways, citing driver and pedestrian safety. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson has identified about 16 locations that may be affected and warned that non-compliance could jeopardize $175 million in state and federal grant funding. The mural, painted in June 2020 in Austin's historically Black East side neighborhood by local artists with the Austin Justice Coalition and Capitol View Arts, was created in response to the police killing of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mario Ayala Unveils Life Sized Van Portraits at CAM Houston

Mario Ayala's first U.S. solo museum exhibition, 'Seven Vans,' has opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). The show, on view from November 14, 2025, through June 21, 2026, features seven life-size van paintings that use the vehicle's rear body as a shaped canvas. Ayala removes wheels and functional markers, turning the vans into motionless 'pseudo-portraits' that convey owners' personalities through details like faded stickers, patchy repairs, and custom airbrush work inspired by auto body painting. The artist describes his process as 'Research While Driving,' documenting rear vehicle perspectives over six years.

Golnar Adili’s Family Archive

Artist Golnar Adili presents a solo exhibition at Smack Mellon in New York, centered on her family's archive of letters. The show features large-scale text-based sculptures and installations, such as 'Ye Harvest From the Eleven-Page Letter–Installation,' which transforms Persian script from her father's letters into architectural forms, alongside new plaster casts of her body. These works explore the aftermath of her parents' separation due to political exile following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Arlington museum to host Hollywood-themed show on author Jane Austen

The Arlington Museum of Art will open a new exhibition in January 2026 titled "Dressed for the Drawing Room: Fashion in Jane Austen’s World," celebrating the author's 250th birthday. The show features costumes and jewelry from the 2005 film adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" and the 2020 film "Emma," loaned from NBCUniversal Archives & Collection, and is presented in partnership with the Jane Austen Society of North America - North Texas Chapter. The exhibition runs from January 9 to March 22, 2026, and is free to the public.

Tania Yakunova’s Expressive Figures Entwine with Plant Life in Digital and Graphite Illustrations

Kyiv-born illustrator Tania Yakunova creates lush digital and graphite illustrations characterized by grainy textures, gestural lines, bold shapes, and vibrant colors. Her work, which often features expressive human figures entwined with plant life, conveys brand narratives and personal emotions, such as homesickness following her 2023 move from Ukraine to London.

Exhibition | Vio Choe, 'Time Interface' at The Page Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

Artist Vio Choe has opened a solo exhibition titled 'Time Interface' at The Page Gallery in Seoul, South Korea. The exhibition features paintings that Choe describes as an attempt to express energy perceived through unconsciousness, aiming to communicate with viewers on a sensory, non-verbal level.

The week around the world in 20 pictures

The Guardian's weekly photo feature presents a global visual summary of the past seven days, compiled by leading photojournalists. The selection includes powerful and sometimes distressing images covering major international events, from the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and a Russian drone attack in Kharkiv to a Saharan dust storm in Crete and the launch of NASA's Artemis II mission.

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Archaeologists excavating a Roman forum near the ancient city of Amastris (modern-day Amasra) in Turkey have uncovered a marble Medusa carving with an unusual smiling expression. The relief was found atop decorative columns that once formed a covered walkway (stoa) in the forum. Excavations began three years ago after historical remains were discovered during school construction in 2017. The project, overseen by Bartin University’s Archaeology Application and Research Center and supported by the Turkish Ministry of Culture’s “Heritage of the Future” initiative, has so far reconstructed three columns across the 30,000-square-foot site.

Chiang Mai Design Week 2025

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Chiang Mai Design Week 2025 (CMDW2025) will take place from December 6 to 14, 2025, under the theme “Local Plus: Creativity, Technology and Sustainability.” Organized by the Creative Economy Agency (CEA) with a network of Northern Thai creatives and entrepreneurs, the festival features over 150 programs across multiple districts in Chiang Mai, including Klang Wiang, Chang Moi - Tha Phae, and Sanpakoi. Highlights include exhibitions like “Make Scents, Make Sense” by CEA and the Thai Perfumers, “The Homecoming Club” by ThairathPlus, and the “CMDW × Mango Art Festival” showcasing international artists. The festival uses mathematical symbols—Plus, Multiply, Divide, Subtract—to convey themes of collaboration, amplification, knowledge sharing, and sustainability, aiming to create an equation of endless possibilities.

Art exhibition at Two Selves Gallery explores a journey through depression

Two Selves Gallery in Troy, New York, opened a new exhibition titled "Coming Out of Darkness: Landscapes of Presence" by artist Patricia Wood during the April Troy Night Out event. The show, on display through May, is divided into three sections: a series of acrylic paintings on black velvet depicting forest scenes from the Adirondacks, a middle section featuring reference photos, miniatures, encaustic works, and mental health resources, and a front section with oil paintings of Winnie the Pooh characters and Wood's jewelry. Wood describes the exhibition as a personal journey through depression, using light and dark to convey her struggle and recovery.

Art exhibition in Idlib showcases emerging Syrian artists, unity themes

The Idlib Directorate of Culture in Syria opened a visual arts exhibition titled "Coming Colors" as part of its cultural week activities, coinciding with World Art Day. The exhibition features approximately 70 works by amateur and professional artists, with paintings exploring symbolic themes of unity, resilience, and victory.