An authorized David Hockney exhibition poster titled "THE DOG SHOW" (ca. 1990) has been made available for sale through MK Contemporary Ltd via the Artsy platform. The work is an offset lithograph measuring approximately 28 by 19 inches and features Hockney's signature aesthetic, including his distinct handwriting and playful use of shadows and light.
The Serpentine in London is set to open a major free exhibition titled 'David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting' on March 12, 2026. The centerpiece of the show is a 90-meter-long iPad painting composed of 220 panels that document the changing seasons in the artist's French garden during the pandemic. In addition to this monumental digital work, the exhibition will debut five new still lifes and five new portraits of the artist's inner circle.
The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds has opened "Beyond the Visual," the first major UK exhibition of sculpture centered on blind and partially blind artists and curators. Co-curated by Ken Wilder, Aaron McPeake, and Clare O'Dowd, the show features works by 16 international artists including Henry Moore, Barry Flanagan, Lenka Clayton, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, David Johnson, and others. The exhibition prioritizes touch, sound, and sensory engagement, with all objects available to handle, textured flooring mats, high-contrast signage, and audio descriptions. It includes new commissions such as David Johnson's "Nuggets of Embodiment" (2024-25), made of 10,000 stone-plaster Digestive biscuits with Braille text.
Gustav Klimt's rare portrait 'Elisabeth Lederer' sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby's, setting a new record as the most expensive work of modern art ever sold at auction. The painting, created in the final years of Klimt's life, narrowly survived World War II after being separated from other works destroyed in a fire at Immendorf Castle. It came from the collection of Estée Lauder heir Leonard A. Lauder, who died earlier this year. The sale also featured Maurizio Cattelan's 18-karat gold toilet 'America', which drew only a single bid and sold for $12.1 million.
Sotheby's New York held a landmark auction evening on November 18, 2025, featuring two headline-grabbing lots: Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' (1914-16), which sold for $236.4 million, becoming the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction, and Maurizio Cattelan's solid-gold toilet 'America', which sold for a disappointing $12.1 million after a single bid. The Klimt came from the collection of the late cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, whose two-night auction total reached $527.5 million. The toilet, previously owned by investor Steve Cohen, had been commissioned when gold prices were far lower, ensuring the seller a profit regardless of the modest bidding.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is opening a massive retrospective of Gerhard Richter's work, featuring 275 pieces spanning his entire career from the 1960s to recent ink-cloud drawings. Curated by Dieter Schwarz and Nicholas Serota at Richter's own suggestion, the exhibition is strictly chronological and occupies over 3,000 square meters of Frank Gehry-designed gallery space. It includes iconic works like *Uncle Rudi* (1965) and *Table* (1962), alongside very recent small-scale drawings, and draws from both public and private collections.
LA Louver, the longest-running gallery in Los Angeles, is closing its Venice, California space after 50 years in business. Founder Peter Goulds, who turns 77 next month, is transitioning the gallery into a private dealing model with pop-up exhibitions from its Jefferson Boulevard warehouse in West Adams. The Venice space will be listed for sale but remain open by appointment to sell inventory. The gallery is also donating its extensive archive to the Huntington Library in San Marino, which includes papers of writers like Octavia Butler and Christopher Isherwood.
The global art market saw total sales of $57.5 billion in 2024, a 12% decline year-on-year, marking the second consecutive annual drop. Transaction volumes rose 3% to about 40.5 million, driven by works under $50,000 which made up 85% of dealer sales. Sotheby's and Christie's together accounted for roughly half of global fine-art auction turnover, though both saw significant auction revenue declines. The United States led with 43% of global sales, while China's market share fell to 15%, its lowest since 2009. Online art sales grew to 18% of total value, and new buyer momentum was strong, with 44% of dealer buyers being new and 91% of high-net-worth collectors optimistic.
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) has entered talks to take over the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), a move announced last week. The discussions come shortly after OCMA director Heidi Zuckerman revealed she will leave when her contract expires in December. If an agreement is reached, the proposal will go to the University of California Board of Regents this autumn. The potential merger follows OCMA's reopening in a new $94 million building in 2022 and the upcoming edition of its California art biennial.
The Matthiesen Gallery in London has filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York alleging fraud, breach of contract, and other counts over a Gustave Courbet painting, *Mother and Child on a Hammock*. The gallery claims that Thomas Austin Doyle, a convicted con man, orchestrated a scheme to defraud director Patrick Matthiesen, selling the painting—valued at $650,000—through artist and dealer Shalva Sarukhanishvili to Jill Newhouse Gallery for $115,000, which then sold it to top collector Jon Landau for $125,000. The lawsuit also names Landau, who allegedly viewed the work multiple times at TEFAF fairs knowing its retail price, yet refuses to return it. Doyle has a long criminal history, including prior convictions for art fraud and theft.
Ca' Rezzonico, the Museum of 18th-Century Venice, has opened its exhibition season with a selection of ten paintings by Francesco Guardi (1712–1793) on loan from the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. The works, dated between 1770 and 1790, include iconic Venetian views such as the Festa della Sensa in Piazza San Marco and the Regata sul Canal Grande, showcasing Guardi's distinctive loose brushwork and atmospheric perspective. The exhibition also features drawings from civic collections, including Il Gran Teatro La Fenice and two watercolored sheets depicting Le nozze del duca di Polignac.
The fourth edition of Roma Gallery Weekend will take place from May 15 to 17, 2026, featuring 31 galleries across Rome. The event kicks off with a new Gallery Night on May 14, where simultaneous openings and special projects serve as a concentrated prologue. Participating galleries include established names like Gagosian, Galleria Continua, and Lorcan O'Neill, as well as emerging spaces such as Amanita and Cantadora. Highlights include exhibitions of Francesca Woodman, Tracey Emin, Friedrich Kunath, and Carlos Garaicoa, alongside site-specific interventions and group shows.
The artist Jack Milroy has launched a new solo exhibition titled 'Bibliophilia' at Shapero Modern in London, featuring his signature 3D cut-out artworks. The 87-year-old artist transforms books and everyday objects, such as sardine tins, into intricate sculptures where illustrated figures like birds and fish appear to escape their physical confines. The show marks Milroy's first collaboration with the gallery, which is uniquely situated beneath an antiquarian bookshop, providing a thematic contrast between preserved rare volumes and Milroy’s "vandalised" artistic interpretations.
Hillsboro Fine Art in Dublin announces 'Studio house museum', a solo exhibition by Irish artist Eamon O’Kane, running from 5 February to 7 March 2026. The show features new paintings from his ongoing Ideal collection series, inspired by residencies and visits to iconic studios and houses of artists, collectors, and architects, including Francis Bacon’s Reece Mews studio, Eileen Gray’s E-1027, the Edith Farnsworth House, Philip Johnson’s Glass House, and others. O’Kane explores creative spaces as living archives, reconstructing environments that blend Modernist aesthetics, architectural clarity, and painterly intuition, mapping networks of influence across generations.
The article reviews the exhibition "Manet & Morisot" at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, which pairs works by Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot to explore their artistic dialogue. It highlights how, contrary to the common assumption that Morisot was influenced by Manet, the show argues that Manet increasingly adopted Morisot's lighter palette, looser brushwork, and intimate subject matter in his later years, especially as his health declined. Key pairings include Manet's "Before the Mirror" (1877) and Morisot's "Woman at her Toilette" (around 1875-80), as well as their respective series of seasonal allegories, shown together for the first time.
Was sonst noch geht
Ahead of the Gallery Weekend Berlin (May 1–3), the city is buzzing with parallel exhibitions that extend far beyond the official gallery circuit. The fourth edition of the Sellerie Weekend opens over 75 independent Off-Spaces from April 30 to May 3, featuring performances, curated tours, and a kickoff event with artist Sophia Süßmilch at the Spoiler project space. The Paper Positions art fair returns to Tempelhof Airport (April 30–May 3) with 70 international galleries specializing in works on paper, including artists like Annegret Soltau, Una Ursprung, and Stefanie Moshammer. Meanwhile, the art initiative House presents the group show "Gravity Ease Contract" in the Berghain heating plant hall (May 1–24), curated by David Douard, with works by Susan Philipsz, Julia Scher, and others. Finally, collectors Karen and Christian Boros unveil "Berlin Bunker #5" in their bunker-turned-museum, featuring recent acquisitions by Pol Taburet, Sung Tieu, and Jill Mulleady.
Actor Timothée Chalamet sparked controversy by stating in an interview that he doesn't want to work in ballet or opera, describing them as artforms where the goal is to "keep this thing alive." The comment prompted swift backlash from the dance community, with institutions extending personal invitations and op-eds criticizing his remarks.
Warren Feeney's article highlights 10 exhibitions opening in May 2026, primarily in Christchurch, New Zealand. Featured shows include Stone Maka's 'MONO' at Jonathan Smart Gallery, exploring Tongan tapa cloth traditions; Jess Nicholson's 'Ka maumahara te uku (the clay remembers)' at CoCA Toi Moroki, focusing on Ngāi Tahu culture and land connections; and a group exhibition 'Indigo' at Art on the Quay, featuring seven Central Otago artists. Other notable shows include Jane Barry, Sandra Hussey, and Laurie Roodt's 'Three Exhibitions' at Chambers Art Gallery, and Stephanie Postles' 'What These Walls Remember' at City Art Depot's new Up Stairs space.
Gala Porras-Kim presents her first exhibition at kurimanzutto in Mexico City, titled "Future spaces replicate earlier spaces," running from April 11 to June 13, 2026. The show brings together works that examine how museums and conservation institutions reclassify objects removed from their original contexts, using reconstruction and resituating to explore their spatial, material, and temporal conditions. Central to the exhibition is the installation "The motion of an alluvial record" (2024), which recreates the humid marshland atmosphere of the Yucatán Peninsula inside the gallery, contrasting with the controlled climates of museums. Other works include drawings replicating wall decorations from the Techinantitla complex in Teotihuacan, which were fragmented and sold on the black market, and graphite drawings of objects by artist Brígido Lara, whose "original interpretations" of Totonac ritual clay objects were mistakenly catalogued as Pre-Hispanic artifacts in major museums.
Isaiah Davis '25, a visual arts alumnus of Columbia School of the Arts, opened his third solo exhibition, 'Confessions of Fire,' at King's Leap gallery in Chinatown this fall. The exhibition, which runs through December 20, 2025, features steel sculptures and enamel paintings on metal that explore Black masculinity through the motifs of leather culture and steel, inspired by rapper Cam'ron's debut album. ARTnews named it one of New York's best exhibitions of 2025, with senior editor Alex Greenberger praising the sculpture 'Slave (2025)' as the most surprising work of the year. The New York Times critic Travis Diehl and Frieze critic George Egerton-Warburton also gave it positive reviews.
NEXTpittsburgh's August gallery guide highlights a wave of Pittsburgh-made art appearing in streets, coffeehouses, open studios, and even a warehouse in Brooklyn. Featured exhibitions include the Pittsburgh Photography Club's 140-year retrospective at Manos Gallery, Monica Matthews' graphite pencil drawings at Ruckus Coffee Gallery & Café, the juried group show "Living Canvas III" at Studio 4, Kristin Divers' pastel solo show at Mark Rengers Gallery, the multimedia group exhibition "Horizons" at Castle Consortia, and Annie Heisey's paintings at Sweetwater Center for the Arts. The month also includes a one-night solo show by New Orleans muralist Dago at Studio 4.
Zero Art Fair, debuting its second edition at the FLAG Art Foundation in New York City from July 10 to 12, offers a radical alternative to traditional art fairs: attendees can take home selected artworks for free. The fair uses a "store-to-own" contract developed by artist William Powhida, NYU professor Amy Whitaker, and artist-attorney Alfred Steiner. Participants commit to a five-year vesting period before ownership transfers, during which artists retain rights to sell or borrow the work. After transfer, artists receive 50 percent of any sale price and a 10 percent royalty on subsequent resales. The fair was conceived by Powhida and artist Jennifer Dalton, rooted in their experiences with unsold work and structural gaps in the art market.
Non, la justice n'a pas laissé la voie libre aux vitraux contemporains de Notre-Dame
The article clarifies that legal challenges against installing contemporary stained-glass windows in Notre-Dame Cathedral are still ongoing, contrary to misleading headlines. Two judicial procedures remain active: an appeal by the heritage association Sites & Monuments after losing a first-instance ruling on procedural grounds, and a separate case contesting the legitimacy of the works themselves. Although an emergency injunction was denied because the judge found no urgency, the core legal arguments—that replacing Viollet-le-Duc's windows is not conservation or restoration—remain strong. The author warns that if the windows are installed before the appeals are resolved, they may later have to be removed at great expense.
Le non renouvellement de Sébastien Allard confirme la métamorphose du Louvre
Christophe Leribault, the new president of the Louvre, has decided not to renew the contract of Sébastien Allard as director of the painting department, a position Allard held since 2014. This move is part of a broader shift in leadership style and institutional direction under Leribault, who is described as fostering genuine social dialogue and actively participating in meetings, in contrast to his predecessor.
Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton, New Jersey, is presenting "Five Independent Souls: The Signers from New Jersey," an exhibition opening May 3, 2026, through January 17, 2027. The show examines the lives of five lesser-known signers of the Declaration of Independence—Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, and John Witherspoon—through over 100 historic artifacts including manuscripts, paintings, furniture, and personal objects. It confronts the paradox that these men fought for liberty while enslaving people, and also addresses the impact of American independence on New Jersey's indigenous population. Highlights include the painting "Congress Voting Independence" (1796-1817), the first known American depiction of the vote for Independence.
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.
The long-running television series Law & Order has adapted the recent high-profile Louvre Museum jewel heist into a new episode titled "Beyond Measure." Filmed at the Brooklyn Museum—serving as the fictional Atlas Museum of Art—the plot follows detectives investigating the theft of the bejeweled Crown of Popoyan, a fictionalized version of the real-world $102 million heist involving a cherry picker escape. The episode weaves in a complex subplot regarding the repatriation of Indigenous Colombian artifacts held by the Vatican.
The Princeton University Art Museum has reopened after a five-year construction hiatus, returning Charles Willson Peale's iconic 1783 painting, *George Washington at the Battle of Princeton*, to public view. The painting, which had been on continuous display for 236 years prior to the closure, is being presented with a new interpretive framework that highlights the complex history of its ornate frame—originally made for a portrait of King George II, with its crown physically removed—and the painting's timing for the nation's 250th anniversary.
The British Museum has opened a major exhibition titled "Samurai" that challenges popular perceptions of the warrior class. It reveals that after 1615, half of all samurai were women, though they did not engage in combat, and explores the evolution of samurai from medieval fighters to Edo-period bureaucrats and cultural figures. The show features over 280 objects, from armor and weapons to everyday items like a woman's dressing set, and examines the contrast between historical reality and modern pop culture portrayals.
Art Karlsruhe returns for its 23rd edition from February 5–8, 2026, at Messe Karlsruhe in Rheinstetten, Germany. The fair brings together roughly 180 galleries from 18 countries, spanning 120 years of art history with dedicated halls for classical Modernism and contemporary art. New participants include Boston's Chase Young Gallery and Tehran's Maryam Fasihi Harandi Gallery, alongside a strong German contingent. Special sculpture areas feature works by Robert Schad, Martin Hollebecq, Koloman Wagner, and Sonja Edle von Hoeßle.