An exhibition titled “The Women of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka” has opened at the Belvedere Palace & Museum in Vienna, running from October 22, 2015 to February 28, 2016. The show examines how Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka depicted women, highlighting the artists' obsessive focus on female subjects against the backdrop of Vienna's changing society and the early 20th-century revolution in gender politics and sexuality.
The New York Academy of Art held its 25th annual 'Take Home a Nude' fundraiser at Sotheby’s New York on October 24, featuring a live auction and party. Attendees included actresses Brooke Shields and Naomi Watts, who bid on artworks, along with dealers, artists, and collectors. Sotheby’s auctioneer Courtney Christensen led the sale, and 'Baby' Jane Holzer was honored for her collecting and Warhol-era legacy. Watts purchased four works, including a portrait by Liz Markus for $14,000, while Shields helped raise bids online.
Curator Klaus Biesenbach, now director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, gave a lengthy interview to Der Spiegel in which he explained his decision to leave the American art scene, citing what he described as an oppressive climate of "political correctness." He claimed that DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) initiatives in U.S. museums had become "unbearable" quota requirements, and recounted a story about mandatory Zoom meetings after George Floyd's murder where he felt pressured to share personal experiences of discrimination. He also referenced the resignation of SFMOMA curator Gary Garrels over "reverse discrimination" comments and acknowledged his own controversial tenure at MOCA Los Angeles, which saw two high-profile resignations and a leadership restructuring.
Stanford University's libraries and Cantor Arts Center have acquired the archives of Filipina American artist Pacita Abad, who died in 2004 at age 58. The 120-foot-long collection, a gift from her estate managed by her husband Jack Garrity, includes correspondence with artists like Faith Ringgold, photographs from her childhood in Manila, and materials from her global travels and exhibitions. The acquisition comes with a donation to support processing, and is seen as a homecoming for Abad, who left the Philippines in 1969 after student protests and later settled in the Bay Area, where she studied and began her art career.
Lorde's new single "Man of the Year" from her upcoming album *Virgin* (released June 27) features a music video that visually references Walter De Maria's *New York Earth Room* (1977), a minimalist installation of 280,000 pounds of soil filling a SoHo loft. The video shows Lorde stripping, taping her breasts, and rolling in dirt, while the song's lyrics explore her fluid gender identity. Lorde also cites Italian artist Lucio Fontana and includes an X-ray cover image by photographer Heji Shin.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao has completed a restoration of Pedro Berruguete's *The Annunciation* (1485–1490), a painting that once formed part of an altarpiece likely for a church in Palencia, Spain. The work, on a five-year loan from the Arburu collection, had suffered from cracks, dirt, and oxidized varnish over centuries. Two specialists—Elisa Mora Sánchez for the paint layer and Mayte Camino Martín for the gilding—cleaned, repaired, and re-gilded the panel, revealing Berruguete's blend of Italian Renaissance, Flemish, and Castilian Gothic influences.
Artechouse has partnered with Rolling Stone to launch "Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience," a 50-minute, 270-degree immersive journey through rock history. The showcase draws on Rolling Stone's vast photography archive, featuring over 1,000 images, 200 videos, and 1,300 magazine covers, with a soundtrack of classic rock songs. The experience is divided into thematic chapters such as "Backstage," "Fans," "Studio," and "Hair," and includes narration by actor Kevin Bacon. The creative team, led by former Rolling Stone creative director Jodi Peckman and music director Joe Levy, spent two years curating the archival material, which includes work by renowned photographers like Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen, and Anton Corbijn.
MoMA has opened "Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction," a touring survey that examines the role of textiles in modern and contemporary art. The exhibition features works by artists such as Sonia Delaunay, Paul Klee, Agnes Martin, Jeffrey Gibson, and Anni Albers, and incorporates other mediums like video and photography. Curator Lynne Cooke notes that the show has evolved at each venue, and at MoMA it holds special significance because the museum was foundational in writing the history of Modernism and collected textiles from its early days.
Teresa Iarocci Mavica, former director of the Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation, which she co-founded with Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, has resurfaced after three years of silence. She resigned from V-A-C in November 2021, just before the opening of GES-2 House of Culture, Russia's largest contemporary art museum, and left Russia shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now based in Naples, she has curated "The Sun to Come" at Made in Cloister, launching her biennial program "REBIRTH." The exhibition includes three Russian artists, reflecting her continued commitment to cultural dialogue between Russia and Europe despite the war.
Valparaiso University in Indiana has finalized the sale of two valuable paintings from the Brauer Museum of Art—Childe Hassam's *The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate* (1914) and Georgia O'Keeffe's *Rust Red Hills* (1930)—and is in the process of selling a third, Frederic Edwin Church's *Mountain Landscape* (c. 1849). The sales, collectively valued at up to $20 million, are intended to fund renovations of freshman dormitories amid budget shortfalls. The decision has sparked vocal protests, a lawsuit, and a vote of no confidence from the faculty senate against university president José Padilla, who announced his retirement. Moody's Ratings downgraded the school's credit rating to junk status, partly due to the controversy.
The nonagenarian Colombian fiber artist Olga de Amaral, now 92, is the subject of a major retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, following its debut at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris in 2024. The exhibition, on view through October 12, 2025, features works spanning her entire career, from the 1950s to the present, and includes pieces that blend ancient and futuristic aesthetics, often incorporating gold shimmer and woven density. Curated by Marie Perennès and Stephanie Seidel, the show highlights Amaral's pioneering role in textile art, a medium historically marginalized as craft rather than fine art.
The Porter County Superior Court has approved Valparaiso University's plan to sell three valuable paintings from the Brauer Museum of Art—works by Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O'Keeffe valued at around $20 million—to fund renovations to freshman dormitories. The decision follows a year and a half of controversy, including a lawsuit from the museum's founding director Richard Brauer and condemnation from major museum professional organizations, who argue that deaccessioning art for non-collection purposes violates ethical standards.
A comprehensive new documentary on Eva Hesse, the innovative 1960s artist, will premiere in New York in April. Directed by Marcie Begleiter, the film explores Hesse's life as a German-born American who fled Nazi Germany, her difficult childhood as an immigrant, and her rise in New York's art scene. It features interviews with artists like Robert Mangold and examines her pioneering use of materials such as plastic, latex, and fiberglass. Hesse's career was cut short when she died of a brain tumor at age 34 in 1970, but her legacy has grown through posthumous retrospectives at major museums.
Gagosian Gallery will present a new body of work by artist Anna Weyant at TEFAF New York, featuring intimately scaled paintings of jewelry rendered with trompe l’oeil precision. The booth, designed with lavender walls and pine-hued carpet, showcases pieces like "Pearl Earrings" (2025) and "Pearl Bracelet (Sold)" (2025), some with cheeky price tags and red dot stickers. Weyant, represented by Gagosian since 2022, has seen her market soar, with her auction record set at $1.6 million for "Falling Woman" (2020) at Sotheby’s in 2022.
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) will establish the Chanel Center for Artists and Technology, funded by the Chanel Culture Fund. The initiative focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital imaging, creating dozens of new roles, fellowships for artists and technologists-in-residence, and graduate student support, along with cutting-edge equipment. CalArts president Ravi S. Rajan described it as among the largest corporate partnerships the school has had, potentially the largest for any art school.
This article from Artnet News compiles a list of notable accidents in museums, where visitors, children, or even curators have inadvertently damaged valuable artworks and artifacts. Incidents include a four-year-old boy shattering a $15,000 Lego sculpture of a Zootopia character, a 12-year-old boy punching a $1.5 million Baroque painting by Paolo Porpora at Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei, a Cy Twombly sculpture knocked over at the Menil Collection in Houston, and a visitor breaking a 4,000-year-old Minoan vase at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete. The article is framed as a lighthearted yet cautionary look at the fragility of museum objects and the human errors that lead to their damage.
Pablo Picasso's 1932 painting *Femme à la montre*, depicting his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, sold for $139.4 million (including fees) at Sotheby's New York during the highly anticipated Emily Fisher Landau sale. The work, estimated at $120 million, was the centerpiece of the auction, with bidding starting at $95 million and concluding after a two-minute standoff among three phone bidders, including one from Asia. Brooke Lampley, Sotheby's head of global fine art, secured the winning bid on behalf of a client. The sale was handled by Sotheby's, which won the right to auction the estate of Landau, a longtime Whitney Museum board member and private collector.
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.
The article explores how the James McNeill Whistler exhibition at Tate in London prompts a reconsideration of the relationship between music and visual art. Whistler titled his works using musical terms like "Arrangement," "Symphony," and "Nocturne," arguing that painting should be abstract and independent of narrative, much like instrumental music. The exhibition, reviewed by Jonathan Jones, highlights Whistler's radical art-for-art's-sake philosophy, which influenced composer Claude Debussy, whose orchestral Nocturnes were directly inspired by Whistler's paintings of light and atmosphere.
Tate Britain has opened a major retrospective dedicated to James McNeill Whistler, the American painter who scandalized Victorian Britain. The exhibition centers on his iconic work *Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1* (commonly known as *Whistler's Mother*), lent by the Musée d'Orsay, and traces his evolution from raw realist scenes of London's docks to radical, abstract celebrations of color and pattern. It includes a reconstruction of *The Peacock Room* and highlights his rivalry with critic John Ruskin, who accused him of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.'
The article profiles Gordon Stevenson, a forgotten visionary of the no wave movement in late-1970s New York, who was an artist, jewelry designer, musician, and filmmaker best known for the notorious film *Ecstatic Stigmatic*. Decades after his death from AIDS, a storage unit full of his lost work has been discovered, including jewelry, mail-art collaborations with Ray Johnson, and clues to a surviving print of his film. His family has also recovered hundreds of letters he wrote to his parents, chronicling his life in downtown New York and his experiences as one of the city's first AIDS patients. The piece traces his journey from a small town in Georgia, where he met his wife Mirielle Cervenka (who later renamed Exene Cervenka), to their punk-era jewelry brand LHOOQ and his lasting influence on gothic fashion.
The Guardian reviews a major exhibition of 17th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán, highlighting his visionary and surrealist qualities. The show features works such as "The Apparition of Saint Peter to Saint Peter Nolasco" (1629), newly attributed paintings including a giant mask, and iconic pieces like "The Crucified Christ" and "Saint Serapion," all drawn from collections including the Prado and the National Gallery, London. The review emphasizes Zurbarán's ability to paint supernatural subjects with naturalistic conviction, his exquisite rendering of fabrics—especially loincloths—and his influence on modern artists like Salvador Dalí.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has opened a new exhibition titled "Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments," which uses the iconic Rocky Balboa statue as a focal point to explore the power and meaning of monuments across two millennia of boxing and celebrity culture. Curated by Paul Farber, co-founder of Monument Lab, the show features ancient sculptures, 19th-century works, images from boxing's golden age, and contemporary pieces by artists including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Glenn Ligon. The Rocky statue, placed on the museum's steps in 1982, attracts an estimated 4 million visitors annually, rivaling the Statue of Liberty.
Prominent figures in Black British music, including Goldie, Estelle, and Dennis Bovell, reflect on iconic photographs and visual artifacts that define the history of their genre. The article highlights specific works such as Eddie Otchere’s portrait of drum and bass pioneers Kemistry and Storm, Janette Beckman’s photography of Slick Rick, and Adrian Boot’s documentation of the Race Today offices in Brixton.
Artsy Editorial highlights five standout exhibitions at small and rising galleries for May 2026. Among them is British-born, Amsterdam-based painter K. T. Kobel's first major Swiss show, "Hand, Body, Object, Sin," at Kutlesa in Goldau, Switzerland, running through May 29. Kobel, who has exhibited from Los Angeles to Milan since 2022, presents cinematic, storyboard-like paintings that embrace fragmentation and loose ends.
"Ich glaube, ich habe viele Künstler nicht verstanden"
Adrian Searle, the long-standing chief art critic for The Guardian, is stepping down after three decades at the publication and nearly 50 years in art criticism. In a reflective interview, Searle discusses his transition from a practicing painter and educator to a critic, noting that his early interactions with students like Peter Doig and Isaac Julien helped him realize his true strength lay in writing rather than art-making. He recounts his experiences navigating the British art scene, from the decline of Greenbergian abstraction to his encounters with formidable figures like Richard Serra.
Les meilleures expos du moment à voir à Paris
Beaux Arts Magazine has published a guide to the best current exhibitions in Paris for spring 2026, highlighting major shows such as "Martin Parr. Global Warning" at the Jeu de Paume, "Matisse. 1941–1954" at the Grand Palais, "Michel-Ange Rodin" at the Musée du Louvre, "Renoir et l'amour" at the Musée d'Orsay, "Calder. Rêver en équilibre" at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and "Splendeurs du baroque" at the Musée Jacquemart-André. The article also features retrospectives of Hilma af Klint at the Grand Palais, Károly Ferenczy at the Petit Palais, Henry Taylor at the Musée Picasso, a Lee Miller exhibition at the Musée d'Art moderne de Paris, a Giovanni Segantini show at the Musée Marmottan Monet, and a Nan Goldin multimedia presentation at the Grand Palais.
Julian Cox will step down as deputy director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario on April 13, concluding an eight-year tenure. The AGO's director praised Cox's impact on exhibitions, collection growth, and scholarship, stating his departure is not connected to recent institutional turmoil.
South African artist Gabrielle Goliath’s installation "Elegy" was initially censored by South Africa’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie, who blocked it from the country’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale over its focus on Palestinian grief. After public outcry and support from several organizations, the work was instead installed in a Venice church, where critic Aruna D’Souza describes it as "hauntingly beautiful and achingly tender." The article also covers related news: a smear campaign against British-Nigerian photographer Misan Harriman for his Palestinian solidarity, and a list of summer art books.
Hyperallergic's Lakshmi Rivera Amin presents a curated list of 12 art books for summer reading, including a novel lampooning the art world, Megan O'Grady's meditation on art and living, Kory Stamper's exploration of color lexicography, Nan Goldin's reissued photo essay, and Jennifer Higgie's prose poetry novel. The roundup also features Vincenzo Latronico's 'Perfection,' Nina Burleigh's satirical 'Turn Around, Don’t Drown,' and a graphic novel by Naoki Matayoshi and Shinsuke Yoshitake, among others.