Arts of Africa

This article explores the deep history and cultural significance of Africa's artistic traditions, focusing on the continent as the cradle of human creativity. It traces the development of diverse cultures south of the Sahara over 160,000 years, highlighting how artists and workshops translated worldviews into enduring creations. The text also examines Africa's Atlantic Coast engagement from 1445 onward, detailing early European contact, trade agreements along the Gold Coast, and the forced exodus of captives during the transatlantic slave trade, which deprived the region of its productive youth.

Fire-damaged room at Castle Howard brought back to life by meticulous restoration

The Tapestry Drawing Room at Castle Howard, a historic stately home in Yorkshire, England, has been meticulously restored after being gutted by a fire in 1940. The room, originally adorned with early 18th-century tapestries woven by John Vanderbank and based on scenes by David Teniers, was reduced to a scorched shell. Nick Howard, whose family has lived in the house for three centuries, oversaw the restoration, which involved reinstalling the original tapestries—found rolled up in the attic—after conservation by Alison Stanton. The centerpiece, a painting by Marco Ricci titled *Judgment of Paris*, and a newly built fireplace based on archival photographs complete the revival.

Donna Distefano Recreates Centuries-Old Jewelry for the Frick Collection

Donna Distefano, a contemporary jewelry designer, has meticulously recreated 16th-century jewelry pieces for The Frick Collection's exhibition "Gold, Silver, and Rare Stones: Renaissance Jewelry in the Robert Lehman Collection." Her work involved extensive research into historical techniques and materials, resulting in wearable replicas of intricate pendants and brooches originally owned by European nobility.

Sir Peter Blake’s Studio Comes to Pitzhanger Manor in a Landmark West London Exhibition

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery in West London has announced a major exhibition, "Peter Blake: In the Studio," scheduled to run from November 2026 to April 2027. The landmark show will feature a full-scale recreation of the artist’s Hammersmith workspace, providing an immersive look at the environment where the 'Godfather of British Pop Art' conceived his most famous works. The exhibition will span seven decades of Blake's career, showcasing paintings, collages, and sculptures alongside his personal collection of curiosities and memorabilia.

David Hockney’s Vibrant Creations Anchor Artnet’s Contemporary Editions Auction

Artnet Auctions is staging its Contemporary Editions sale, now live for bidding through November 19, 2025, featuring three works by David Hockney: an iPad drawing titled *16th February, 2021, More Flowers in a Glass Vase* (est. $40,000–$60,000), a digitally stitched photograph *In the Studio, December 2017* (est. $50,000–$70,000), and a lithograph *Pretty Tulips* (1969) (est. $35,000–$55,000). The sale highlights Hockney’s ongoing experimentation with digital tools and printmaking, offering collectors accessible entry points into his six-decade career.

Robilant and Voena gallery founders part ways to start separate ventures with their children

Edmondo di Robilant and Marco Voena, the founders of the prominent gallery Robilant + Voena (R+V), have announced the dissolution of their 22-year partnership to launch two separate family-run firms. The split results in the creation of 'Robilant' and 'Voena,' with both founders bringing their children into senior leadership roles to ensure long-term succession. Michele di Robilant will serve as director of Robilant, while Edoardo and Virginia Voena will take on director and sales director roles respectively at Voena.

À Deauville, un vitrail monumental de Clara Rivault fête les cinq ans des Franciscaines

Les Franciscaines de Deauville, a former convent turned cultural center, celebrates its fifth anniversary by unveiling its first permanent commission: a monumental contemporary stained glass window by Clara Rivault. Titled "Ceux qui traversent," the double-sided work spans the entrance of the Grande Galerie, blending traditional glass techniques with photographic transfers, lead, and light. Rivault, born in 1991 and trained at Montpellier's École supérieure des beaux-arts, La Cambre in Brussels, and the Centre international d'Art verrier de Meisenthal, has previously created works for the Institut français in Paris and the church of Saint-Paterne in Saint-Pair-sur-Mer.

Greece Introduces New Law to Combat Art Forgery and Vandalism

Greece has enacted a landmark legislative framework specifically designed to combat art forgery, vandalism, and the trade of counterfeit cultural property. The new law introduces stringent criminal penalties, including prison sentences of up to ten years and fines reaching €300,000, while mandating the destruction of works confirmed as fakes. Key provisions include the creation of an independent registry of forgery experts under the culture ministry and the expansion of legal protections to include historically significant cinemas.

France reopens its historic pavilion at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale after restorations with artist Yto Barrada

La Francia riapre il suo storico padiglione alla Biennale Arte 2026 dopo i restauri con l’artista Yto Barrada

France will reopen its historic pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale (May 9–November 22, 2026) after restoration, with Franco-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada (b. 1971) presenting the immersive textile-based project "Comme Saturne," curated by Myriam Ben Salah. The exhibition uses the "dévoré" technique—acid selectively corrodes fabric—as a metaphor for destruction and creation, featuring a goat-skin kite, a Room of Folds with wool drapery that fades in natural light, a Laboratory inspired by Saturnalia, and a Study Room linked to Barrada's garden of dye plants in Tangier, culminating in the Room of the Devoured where chemically attacked material fragments into an aesthetic of wear and formlessness.

Il Padiglione della Gran Bretagna alla Biennale d’Arte di Venezia 2026 spiega cos’è l’appartenenza

The British Council has selected artist Lubaina Himid to represent Great Britain at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Her exhibition, titled "Predicting History: Testing Translation," will transform the British Pavilion into a large-scale installation exploring belonging, displacement, and the recreation of home in new contexts. Created in collaboration with artist Magda Stawarska, the show features multi-panel paintings and a surreal soundscape that engages with the neoclassical architecture of the pavilion. Himid, a Turner Prize winner and pioneer of the Black British Art Movement, focuses on cultural memory and identity, challenging Eurocentric narratives and highlighting overlooked Black figures in Western history.

Paolo Roversi on Getting a Permanent Gallery Space in His Italian Hometown

Italian photographer Paolo Roversi, based in Paris since 1973, has opened a permanent gallery space in his hometown of Ravenna. The Paolo Roversi Gallery officially opened at the Art Museum of the City of Ravenna (Mar), featuring a recreation of his Paris studio, an archive room, and a muses' room with portraits of Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and others. The gallery was curated by Chiara Bardelli Nonino and designed by longtime collaborator Ania Martchenko, building on a previous exhibition at the museum.

75 Years of Making Art in Ardsley

The Ardsley Art Commission is presenting a unique exhibition featuring the works of mother-and-son artists Valda Hancock Wagner and Rich Wagner, spanning 75 years of artistic creation. The show includes oil and acrylic paintings, watercolors, drawings, etchings, and wood block prints, ranging from traditional realism to abstraction. Valda studied with notable artists such as Reginald Marsh, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Beverly Hale, and later taught art in inner-city New York. Rich studied at the Art Students League, the Royal Academy of Arts, and the Royal Drawing School, and has participated in over 80 exhibitions. The exhibition is on view at Ardsley Village Hall through October 1.

Local artists’ works in national IHC exhibition

An exhibition showcasing artwork by 20 local artists with intellectual disabilities will be held at The Loan & Merc in Oamaru next Friday. The North Otago IHC Association Art Exhibition features works by artists including Lisa Graham, Dan Joyce, Katie Mcrae, Christopher Wright, and Katrina Hewitt, with all participants also set to appear in a national exhibition in Wellington next month as part of the IHC National Art Awards. Artists receive 100% of proceeds from sales, and the group attends weekly art classes throughout the year.

‘House of Galleries (Volume 11)’: Niquu Eyeta and Ghizlane Sahli in a Shared Field of Care, Memory, and Material Becoming.

Artists Niquu Eyeta and Ghizlane Sahli are featured in a dual presentation titled ‘House of Galleries (Volume 11),’ showcased by the gallery Sakhile&Me. The exhibition creates a dialogue between Eyeta’s organic compositions, which utilize plant pigments and clay, and Sahli’s intricate 'alveoli' structures made from silk and repurposed plastic. Both artists emphasize the concept of material as a living archive, focusing on themes of ecological consciousness, ritualistic repetition, and the reanimation of discarded matter.

art fashion womens history museum devan diaz

Women's History Museum, the collaborative duo of Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan, presents their first institutional solo exhibition in the U.S., "Grisette à l'enfer," at Amant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The show reimagines the 17th-century French grisette—a working-class woman who was both a laborer and a style icon—through a blend of past video, fashion, and sculpture, staged as a re-creation of a shopping experience. Works like "For a Moment I Have No Pain" (2025) and "Lit Reliquaire de Mary Magdalene" (2025) explore femininity, desire, and the price of beauty, with references to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the artists' own history meeting at that site.

'Intellectual Structures: Trigger, Judgment, and Decision' at Each Modern, Taipei, Taiwan on 25 Apr–6 Jun 2026

The group exhibition 'Intellectual Structures: Trigger, Judgment, and Decision' at Each Modern in Taipei explores the cognitive processes behind artistic creation. Featuring works by DAZHI, Ding Hongdan, Jing Ao, Liang Yuanwei, Wenjue, and Xu Qu, the show examines how human thought remains distinct from artificial intelligence by focusing on the 'neural algorithms' of the brain. The curatorial framework breaks down the creative act into three stages: the initial sensory trigger, the critical judgment between experience and transcendence, and the final decision that collapses multiple possibilities into a singular work.

Titanic, a deep emotion

Artist Claudia Bitrán is debuting her long-awaited solo exhibition, "Titanic, a deep emotion," at Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York City. The show features a scene-by-scene remake of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster, meticulously reconstructed over a decade using lo-fi materials, DIY production methods, and a cast of over 1,400 volunteers. The exhibition is presented as a three-channel film installation complemented by paintings, sculptural props, and storyboards that highlight the labor-intensive, communal process of its creation.

lower pecos cave paintings radiocarbon date

Three Texas-based researchers have successfully radiocarbon dated ancient cave paintings in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands along the Rio Grande border between Mexico and West Texas, using a novel combination of technologies. By dating the deer bone marrow used as a paint binder—rather than the mineral pigments themselves—and employing plasma oxidation to extract carbon, the team analyzed 53 figures across 12 sites. Their findings, published in *Science Advances*, reveal that individual murals were created in single painting events, not accumulated over centuries, and that the paintings span four millennia, from about 5,760 to 1,035 years ago.

a new study conducted the most comprehensive survey of egypts karnak temple revealing unprecedented detail

A new study published in the journal Antiquity reveals that Egypt’s Karnak Temple was originally built on a small island, or “fluvial terrace,” surrounded by river channels. The research, led by Ben Pennington of the University of Southampton, is the first comprehensive geoarchaeological survey of the site, analyzing 61 sediment cores and thousands of ceramic fragments. It dates the earliest occupation of Karnak to around 2520 BCE, with ceramics from 2305–1980 BCE, and shows that ancient Egyptians geo-engineered the landscape by dumping desert sand into channels to create new building land.

artnet ceo resigns handelblatt

Jacob Pabst, CEO of Artnet AG, resigned late Sunday night just before the company's annual general meeting in Berlin. His contract had expired at the end of August, and he cited a failure to reach an agreement on continuing. Andrew E. Wolff, who holds about 98.93% of Artnet shares and also owns rival platform Artsy, will serve as interim CEO. The meeting proceeded without Artnet management present, leading to criticism from investor-protection group DSW. Shareholders were given an overview of 2024 finances and approved the creation of authorized capital for a possible increase of up to 50% of share capital. Former major shareholder Rüdiger K. Weng announced he will pursue civil and criminal claims against members of the founding Neuendorf family and board members.

remnants enaissance equestrian statue french dig

Archaeologists from INRAP (the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research) have unearthed a Renaissance-era limestone equestrian statue in Toul, northeastern France. The statue, broken into 27 pieces, was found buried under a roadway among the remains of a medieval gate demolished around 1700. The largest fragment measures about three-and-a-half feet, and the intact work would have stood over five feet high. The horse's trunk and head are preserved, along with the rider's hips and upper thighs, but the rider's head and limbs are missing, making identification uncertain. INRAP suggests the rider may have been Henry II, King of France, or more likely John III of Lorraine, Cardinal of Lorraine and Bishop of Toul, and that Italian artists may have been involved in its creation.

justin allen new language wendys subway

Justin Allen celebrated the launch of his debut book *Language Arts* (2024), published by Wendy’s Subway, with a live reading at Performance Space in New York’s Lower East Side. The book merges music, dance, performance, and language, including a poem "140 BPM" that recreates nights at Bushwick’s Bossa Nova Civic Club. Allen, who grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to New York City, draws on influences from experimental punk, indie sleaze artists like Santigold and M.I.A., and his own invented language, Hatnahans, to craft a work that blends leftist critique with speculative fiction and club culture.

scientists recreate egyptian blue pigment

A team of researchers has successfully recreated Egyptian blue, the world's oldest synthetic pigment, which was used by ancient Egyptians from as early as 3100 B.C.E. The study, published in NPJ Heritage Science, was led by John S. McCloy of Washington State University and Edward P. Vicenzi of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute, in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The researchers experimented with various minerals, heating them in ovens at around 1,000 degrees Celsius for up to 11 hours, and used modern microscopy and analysis techniques to compare their results with ancient artifacts from the Carnegie Museum's collection.

huge olmec heads mesoamerica

A farmer in southern Mexico discovered the first Olmec head in the late 1850s while clearing land for corn cultivation. Since then, 17 colossal stone heads have been unearthed, primarily at the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan archaeological site in Veracruz. Carved by the Olmec civilization between 1200 and 400 B.C.E., these basalt monuments range from 3.5 to 11.5 feet tall and weigh up to 45 tons. Each head features unique facial expressions and is thought to depict individual Olmec rulers, possibly serving as funerary monuments. The heads are now held by institutions such as the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology.

fashion chanel coco game chess jewelry

Chanel has unveiled the Coco Game chess set, a one-of-a-kind luxury object that doubles as a high-jewelry timepiece, presented at the brand's watch and jewelry boutique on Place Vendôme. The set features 32 pieces crafted from ceramic and gold, adorned with over 9,000 diamonds totaling approximately 110 carats, with each queen concealing a detachable watch. The collection also includes 13 watch designs and is part of Chanel's Haute Horlogerie line for 2026, designed by Arnaud Chastaingt, director of the Chanel Watch Creation Studio.

literature james cahill the violet hour book

James Cahill's new novel *The Violet Hour* opens with a young man falling to his death from a London balcony, unraveling a mystery that draws readers into the lives of three figures in the global blue-chip art market: a tormented abstract painter, his estranged first dealer, and a billionaire collector. Cahill, a writer and critic who spent 12 years at Sadie Coles, explores the fraught relationships where creativity, money, friendship, and sexuality collide, offering a more empathetic take than typical satires of extreme wealth.

parties filmmakers cooperative anniversary john waters

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative celebrated its 65th anniversary with a gala at Judson Memorial Church in New York City on a recent Friday. The event featured performances by Isaiah Barr, a recreation of Yvonne Rainer's Trio A by Brittany Bailey, and a closing set by musician Kinlaw. Notable attendees included photographer Nan Goldin, video artist Joan Jonas, and filmmaker John Waters, who was honored in absentia. The evening included speeches, a shoppable collection of film ephemera, and a crowd of artists, actors, and filmmakers.

peninsula new york vincent van gogh

The Peninsula New York's Gotham Lounge has launched a Van Gogh-themed afternoon tea service in collaboration with the New York Botanical Garden's "Van Gogh's Flowers" exhibition. The tea features edible floral creations inspired by the artist's works, including honey and chocolate sunflowers, blueberry and almond sponge Lavenders, and vanilla custard cherry blossoms, served with a chocolate paintbrush and savory items like sunflower seed foie gras. The experience runs through June 28 and includes a complimentary ticket to the botanical garden exhibition.

For the 50th anniversary of his death, the controversial photographer Pierre Molinier at the heart of an important biography

Pour le cinquantenaire de sa mort, le sulfureux photographe Pierre Molinier au cœur d’une importante biographie

A new biography of the provocative French photographer and painter Pierre Molinier (1900–1976) has been published to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. Co-published by Mollat and L'Arbre vengeur, the book "Molinier. Une vie d'enfer" is an updated and expanded version of Pierre Petit's 1992 text, incorporating newly surfaced documents and reflecting Molinier's growing international recognition.

À Sars-Poteries, le MusVerre célèbre pour ses dix ans toutes les infinies possibilités de l’art verrier

The MusVerre in Sars-Poteries, France, celebrates its tenth anniversary with a new exhibition titled "Enchanté – La fabrique des histoires," curated by Laura Bouvard. The museum, which opened in 2016 in a distinctive blue beveled building, houses over 800 glass artworks and 3,000 ancient pottery pieces, originating from the passion of amateur collector Louis Mériaux. Under new director Laetitia Messager, the museum is forging collaborations with the Musée de Charleroi, Cirva Marseille, and Frac Normandie, and plans to host a symposium in autumn to mark the anniversary.