France Passes Landmark Restitution Law for Looted Art

France has passed a landmark restitution law for looted art, marking a significant shift in the country's approach to addressing Nazi-era confiscations and colonial-era acquisitions. The legislation establishes a legal framework for returning artworks and cultural objects to their rightful owners or heirs, streamlining a process that previously required case-by-case parliamentary approval. This law is expected to accelerate the return of thousands of items held in French museums and public collections.

The Marcel Duchamps That Got Away: On Collecting His Work and the Sprawling MoMA Show

The article recounts the author's personal experience as a collector who passed up the opportunity to buy a complete set of Marcel Duchamp's readymades at a 2002 Phillips de Pury and Luxembourg auction. The set, editioned by dealer Arturo Schwartz in 1964, included iconic works like *Fountain* and *Bicycle Wheel*, but the sale was a financial failure, with many pieces bought-in or selling for far below expectations. The author later acquired some of the unsold works privately. The piece is framed around the concurrent Duchamp exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and Gagosian.

Picasso Painting That Cost S. I. Newhouse a MoMA Board Position Heads to Christie’s for $55 M.

Christie’s New York will auction 16 masterpieces from the collection of late Condé Nast magnate S. I. Newhouse on May 18, with an estimated total of $450 million. The highlight is Pablo Picasso’s Cubist painting *Homme à la guitare* (1913), estimated at $35–55 million, which Newhouse acquired in 2000 for $10 million after MoMA sold it from its collection. Newhouse, then a MoMA board member, violated museum policy by buying the work and subsequently resigned from the board.

Bruno Bischofberger, Swiss Art Dealer and Early Backer of Basquiat, Dies at 86

Bruno Bischofberger, the influential Swiss art dealer, collector, and historian, died on Saturday at age 86. He opened his first galleries in Zurich and St. Moritz in 1963, championed American Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and became an early backer of Jean-Michel Basquiat, representing him from 1982. Bischofberger also helped found Interview magazine with Peter Brant and was a longtime exhibitor at Art Basel.

5 Under-Recognized Artists Getting Their Due in New York This Season

The article highlights five under-recognized artists whose exhibitions are on view in New York this season, focusing on Domenico Gnoli at Lévy Gorvy Dayan and Raquel Rabinovich at Hutchinson Modern and Contemporary. Gnoli, an Italian painter who died in 1970, is known for his pallid, claustrophobic depictions of everyday subjects, while Rabinovich, who died at 102 in January 2026, created somber minimalist paintings exploring silence and withholding. The piece notes that New York galleries often use the pre-fair period to showcase less prominent artists of great promise.

Artist Trevor Paglen Will Curate the Swiss Edition of Art Basel’s Digital Art Sector

Artist Trevor Paglen will curate the third edition of "Zero 10," Art Basel's digital art sector, at the fair's Swiss edition from June 17–21. Major galleries including Marian Goodman, Hauser and Wirth, and Almine Rech will present works by artists such as John Gerrard, Agnieszka Kurant, Avery Singer, and Hito Steyerl. Paglen co-curates with digital art strategist Eli Scheinman, and the presentation, titled "The Condition," surveys seven decades of instruction-based and computational art, featuring pioneers like Vera Molnár, Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth, and Ben F. Laposky alongside contemporary stars.

How Christie’s Recruited Nicole Kidman to Sell S.I. Newhouse’s $100 Million Brancusi

Christie's has released a promotional video featuring actress Nicole Kidman to advertise the upcoming auction of Constantin Brancusi's bronze sculpture *Danaïde* (1913), estimated at $100 million. The sculpture comes from the collection of the late media mogul S.I. Newhouse, who purchased it for $18.2 million in 2002. The nearly two-minute film, shot at Christie's Rockefeller Center headquarters, shows Kidman interacting with the work and was conceived by former Sotheby's auctioneer and Newhouse estate advisor Tobias Meyer. The sale is scheduled for May 18 in New York.

Who Went to Venice Last Week? Jenny Saville, Glenn Lowry, Jewel, and Many Other Power Players

Artnet News reporter Katya Kazakina recounts her experience at the opening week of the 61st Venice Biennale, describing a whirlwind of art, parties, and chance encounters. Notable figures spotted include former MoMA director Glenn Lowry, singer-songwriter Jewel (who debuted her visual art show "Matriclysm: An Archaeology of Connections Lost"), and Japanese Nintendo heir and collector Banjo Yamauchi. High-profile events included Thaddaeus Ropac gallery's reception for Georg Baselitz's final paintings (priced up to $1.5 million) and François Pinault's annual party at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, attended by Selma Hayek, Lorna Simpson, and JR. The article also highlights the social dynamics of the biennale, where dealers, curators, and collectors network across historic palazzos and hotels.

10 Shows Around Venice Not to Miss During the Biennale

ARTnews has published a guide to 10 exhibitions in Venice worth seeing during the 2026 Biennale, beyond the central show "In Minor Keys" curated by the late Koyo Kouoh and the national pavilions. Highlights include a major survey of Lee Ufan at the San Marco Art Centre (SMAC Venice), organized by the Dia Art Foundation and curated by Jessica Morgan; "Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince" at Fondazione Prada, curated by Nancy Spector; and "Strange Rules" at Palazzo Diedo, conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, introducing the concept of "Protocol Art." Other venues include the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Pinault Collection, Berggruen Arts & Culture, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and a three-night-only performance at Teatro Goldoni.

Rare early photographs reveal lost sites featured in Van Gogh’s paintings

Two rare photographic albums taken by art critic Gustave Coquiot in 1922 have been acquired by the newly established Van Gogh Academy in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and are now on display. The images capture many of the sites in Arles that Vincent van Gogh painted in the late 1880s, including the Yellow House, the Langlois Bridge, and the Rhône riverbank. Several of these locations were later destroyed during World War II or by modernization, making Coquiot's photographs valuable historical records of Van Gogh's original subjects.

Slags, bings and pipelines: Edinburgh landscape offers fitting backdrop for exhibition on fossil fuel extraction

Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park and gallery near Edinburgh, Scotland, is hosting the exhibition "Extraction" (through July 26), which examines the impact of fossil fuel extraction on landscapes and culture. Set against a backdrop of historic shale oil bings, North Sea oil pipelines, and modern wind farms, the show features five artists who explore energy histories through nuanced, non-polemical lenses. Glasgow-born painter Siobhan McLaughlin uses earth pigments gathered from the nearby Five Sisters Bing to create works like "Date of Exhaustion" (2025) and "Pioneer Species" (2025), turning mining waste into art that reflects on memory, ecology, and regeneration.

For Italy’s Art Pioneer, a New Bronze Age

Giuseppe Penone, a leading figure of the Arte Povera movement, is preparing a major exhibition at Gagosian gallery in New York. The show will feature new bronze sculptures that continue his lifelong exploration of nature, form, and the human body, created in collaboration with curator Adam Weinberg, the former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

A Delayed Art Dubai Opens With Fewer Galleries—but Buyers Abound

Art Dubai opened its 20th edition at Madinat Jumeirah with a significantly reduced number of exhibitors—50 largely regional galleries, down from the originally expected 120—after being delayed from mid-April due to geopolitical tensions following the U.S.-Iran ceasefire on April 8. The fair, which offered free entry for the first time and refunded booth costs for participating galleries, saw strong attendance from Gulf and Middle Eastern collectors, with an upbeat mood and a more intimate atmosphere reminiscent of pre-Covid editions. Galleries from Lebanon and other conflict-affected regions were present, emphasizing art as a form of resilience and cultural identity.

Borghese Gallery Faces Pushback Over New Building Plan

The Borghese Gallery in Rome has proposed building an adjacent facility to expand its exhibition space and increase visitor capacity beyond the current limit of 360 people per two-hour slot. The museum, which welcomed over 630,000 visitors in 2025, argues the expansion is needed to display works long held in storage. A press conference is scheduled for May 19 to provide further details.

At the Venice Biennale, the Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat

The article reports on the opening of the 61st Venice Biennale, highlighting the central exhibition "In Minor Keys" conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh, along with national pavilions and collateral events. It notes standout contributions from artists such as Alvaro Barrington, Kaloki Nyamai, Florentina Holzinger, Ei Arakawa-Nash, Li Yi-Fan, and Dries Verhoeven, while describing the American pavilion as lackluster and the overall commercial offerings as uneven. The text also covers performances and exhibitions featuring nudity and body horror, including Tino Sehgal's "The Kiss" and Maja Malou Lyse's video with the collective DIS.

Valie Export, Groundbreaking Feminist Artist Who Questioned the Nature of Art, Dies at 85

Valie Export, the pioneering Austrian feminist artist known for challenging the conventions of art and cinema through body-centered, tactile works, died on May 14 at age 85, three days before her birthday. Her death was confirmed by Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, which represents her. Over six decades, Export created influential works such as "TAP and TOUCH CINEMA" (1968) and "Action Pants: Genital Panic" (1968), using her own body to question gender norms and the nature of film. Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz, she reinvented herself as VALIE EXPORT in 1967, a name symbolizing her exportation of personal ideas. She was associated with the Viennese Actionists but developed her own expanded cinema practice, producing works like "Abstract Film No. 1" (1967–68) that redefined the medium.

Controversial Painter Georg Baselitz Knew His Venice Show Would Be His Last. He Went Out Quietly.

Six days after Georg Baselitz's death, his dealer Thaddaeus Ropac opened "Eroi d'Oro" ("Heroes of Gold") at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. The exhibition features the final paintings Baselitz made before he died in April at age 88. In a prerecorded film, Baselitz calls these works his "last paintings," intended as a summation of his six-decade career. The large-scale, gold-ground paintings depict thin, ink-like figures of himself or his wife Elke lying horizontally, floating in undefined space. Baselitz connected the gold grounds to Fayum mummy portraits, Sienese altarpieces, and Byzantine icons, using them to absorb space and create a shadowless, eternal condition.

Overlooked Artist Louisa Chase Returns to the Spotlight

Artnet News reports on a solo exhibition at Berry Campbell, New York, dedicated to overlooked American painter Louisa Chase (1951–2016). Titled "Louisa Chase: The Eighties," the show is the largest and most comprehensive survey of her work in 25 years and the first since the gallery began representing her estate. It features a curated selection of works on paper from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, highlighting Chase's unique synthesis of abstraction and representation that positioned her between Neo-Expressionism and the New Image movement. Chase, who studied under Philip Guston at Yale, had major early success including solo shows at Robert Miller Gallery, appearances at the Whitney Biennial (1981, 1983), and inclusion in the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1984), with works held by MoMA, the Met, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center.

Georg Baselitz, German artist who turned figurative painting on its head, has died, aged 88

Georg Baselitz, the influential German painter and sculptor, died on 30 April at age 88. Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, he grew up amid the ruins of Nazi Germany and later adopted his surname from his birthplace. Expelled from the East Berlin Academy for "sociopolitical immaturity," he moved to West Berlin, where he rejected both gestural abstraction and Expressionism. His first solo exhibition in 1963 was shut down for obscenity. In 1969 he pioneered his signature inverted paintings, turning subjects upside down to sever image from representation. He also created large carved sculptures using axes and chainsaws. His later series, from 2014 onward, are considered his most astonishing work, culminating in a sustained focus on his wife, artist Elke Kretzschmar.

'It’s like the natural world. Nothing lasts forever': Tadashi Kawamata on creating his temporary sculptures

Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata created a temporary wooden vortex sculpture titled "Tornado" inside the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, made from 5,000 individual pieces of wood and installed on the grand staircase for just two weeks in February. The work was commissioned by Ruinart as part of its "Conversations with Nature" series, which presents a piece in Paris before permanently installing it at the champagne house's headquarters in Reims. Kawamata, who has lived in Paris for 18 years, is known for using found materials and creating site-specific, temporary interventions on or inside architecture, emphasizing spontaneity and impermanence.

The car park that changed British art: Bold Tendencies at 20

Bold Tendencies, the pioneering arts organization that transformed a multi-storey car park in Peckham, London, into a vibrant cultural venue, is celebrating its 20th summer season. Founded by gallerist Hannah Barry in 2007, the project has hosted over 3 million visitors, commissioned dozens of new artworks, and built an auditorium and concert hall within the concrete structure. It began as a low-budget experiment in using derelict urban spaces for art, featuring sculptures, performances, and a rooftop bar that predated the experiential art boom.

VALIE EXPORT, pioneering artist who centred the female body, 1940–2026

VALIE EXPORT, the pioneering Austrian feminist artist known for her provocative performances centered on the female body, has died at age 85. Born in Linz in 1940, she adopted the name VALIE EXPORT in 1967 and quickly rose to prominence with iconic actions such as *TAP and TOUCH Cinema* (1968) and *Action Pants: Genital Panic* (1968), which challenged passive representations of women. Her work spanned photography, film, and expanded cinema, and she participated in major international exhibitions including documenta 6 and 12, and the Venice Biennale, where she and Maria Lassnig became the first women to represent Austria in 1980.

Georg Baselitz, artist who turned painting upside down, 1938–2026

Georg Baselitz, the German painter, sculptor, and printmaker known for turning his canvases upside down, has died at age 88. Born Hans-Georg Kern in Saxony in 1938, he witnessed the bombing of Dresden as a child, an experience that shaped his artistic vision. Expelled from art school in East Berlin, he moved to West Berlin and adopted the name Baselitz. His first solo exhibition in 1963 was deemed obscene and confiscated. In 1969, he created his first upside-down painting, which became his signature. He rose to international prominence as a neo-expressionist in the late 1970s and 80s, represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1980, and continued working until his death. A recent series of his paintings will be shown at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice from May to September 2026.

Appropriation Culture: Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa

An upcoming exhibition at ArtReview pairs artists Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa to explore the ethics and aesthetics of image appropriation. Jafa's work, such as the video "Love is the Message, The Message is Death" (2016), uses found footage of police violence and Black cultural icons, while Prince's "Girlfriends" series rephotographs amateur snapshots from biker magazines. Jafa has cited Prince as a key influence on his own practice of transposing images across contexts.

In Venice, 22 unmissable exhibitions on the sidelines of the biennial

À Venise, 22 expositions incontournables en marge de la biennale

The article highlights 22 must-see exhibitions happening alongside the 61st Venice Biennale, which is expected to be affected by geopolitical tensions but still promises artistic vibrancy. Notable events include Bvlgari's dual projects featuring artists Lotus L. Kang, Lara Favaretto, and Monia Ben Hamouda; the unveiling of the Asscher collection at the Ama Venezia foundation with works by Charles Ray, Jenny Saville, and Richard Serra; and the inaugural exhibition "The Only True Protest Is Beauty" at the Fondation Dries Van Noten, showcasing 200 objects across fashion, design, and art. Other highlights include a dialogue between Picasso, Morandi, and Parmiggiani at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa.

VALIE EXPORT, Icon of Feminist Art, Dead at 85

VALIE EXPORT, the radical Austrian performance artist, filmmaker, and sculptor widely regarded as the most significant feminist artist of the postwar era, died in Vienna on May 14, just three days before her 85th birthday. Her death was confirmed by Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, which represents her. Known for provocative works such as *Tapp und Tastkino* (1968), in which she invited passersby to touch her bare breasts through a miniature theater, EXPORT faced hate mail, death threats, and indecency charges but remained undeterred in her mission to challenge patriarchal norms through the female body and sexual agency.

The Box Shutters in Los Angeles After Nearly Two Decades

The Box, a pioneering Los Angeles gallery known for its nonprofit-style support of experimental and performance art, has announced its closure after nearly two decades. Founded in 2007 by Mara McCarthy, the gallery’s final exhibition featured late California painter Wally Hedrick, and a closing event will include a fashion show by Johanna Went. Mara McCarthy cited the shifting market for her father Paul McCarthy’s work and the loss of family homes in the Eaton Fire as factors behind the decision.

Art with Bite: Putting Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s Bravery on Display

An exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, 'Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: The Seeing Stone,' presents the collaborative and subversive work of the French artists and life partners. The show features over 200 objects, including photographs, photomontages, and manuscripts, focusing on their radical self-portraiture and resistance to gender and social norms.

'Reflection of resilience': Art Dubai's war-postponed edition opens to healthy sales

Art Dubai's 20th anniversary edition opened at Madinat Jumeirah after being postponed from April to May due to the US-Israel war in Iran and regional missile threats. Around 75 exhibitors dropped out, leaving roughly 50 participants, mostly from the region. The fair was reorganized in just eight weeks under executive director Benedetta Ghione and new director Dunja Gottweis, who created a new floor plan in a day and a half. The scaled-back format includes an embedded digital section, and initial sales have been strong, with works by Samira Badran, Mostafa Al Hallaj, Safeya Sharif, Alyazia Al Nahyan, Roudhah Al Mazrouei, and Nabil Anani selling at prices ranging from $3,500 to $360,000.

‘This is the place of dreams’: Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s Venetian island venue opens to public

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opened San Giacomo, a Venetian lagoon island she and her husband bought in 2018, to the public on May 7 during the Venice Biennale. The former military site now houses exhibition spaces in converted munitions storehouses, featuring a solo show by Matt Copson curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, selections from the Sandretto collection with works by Michael Armitage, Sarah Lucas, Victor Man, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and outdoor installations by Pamela Rosenkranz, Claire Fontaine, Hugh Hayden, and Goshka Macuga. The island also includes a chapel-like structure by Hayden and a rocket sculpture by Macuga.