The historic Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles is reopening after decades for a six-week exhibition titled "What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem." The show, running through March 20, presents a non-linear, late-night experience featuring over 120 years of moving images, from early cinema to contemporary video art, allowing visitors to wander freely from 5 p.m. to midnight.
A painting by Saudi artist Safeya Binzagr, 'Coffee Shop in Madina Road' (1968), sold for $2.06 million at Sotheby's Origins II auction in Diriyah, shattering its high estimate of $200,000. The sale set a new auction record for Binzagr and is the third-highest price ever achieved by an Arab artist at auction.
The Ceramic Brussels art fair in January showcased a wide range of ceramic works, from monumental sculptures by Jun Kaneko to tiny food renditions by Nellie Jonsson. The fair highlighted emerging talent through its Jury Prize and laureate program, with 10 new artists selected for their innovative approaches. Among the eight standouts profiled are Danny Cremers, who creates colorful, reassembled porcelain vases; Marie Pic, a French artist making 2D decorative panels inspired by Art Nouveau; and Faye Papargyropoulou, an Athens-based former advertising creative director exploring fragility and strength. Other notable artists include Kira Fröse, Lorie Ballage, Angelika Stefaniak, Ninon Hivert, and Walter Yu, each bringing unique perspectives to clay as a medium.
Christopher Green, a leading scholar of Cubism, has published a new book titled *Cubism and Reality*, which reexamines the origins and intentions of early Cubism through the works of Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Juan Gris. The book focuses on the years immediately before World War I, arguing that Cubism was not a step toward abstraction but a deliberate reinvention of reality based on lived visual experience. Green draws on decades of research, including his own earlier works and the foundational 1959 study by John Golding, and contrasts the movement with mass-produced imagery in chapters on Roy Lichtenstein and Francis Picabia.
The World Monuments Fund and Knoll have awarded the 2026 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize to the Australia-based architecture firm Architectus for its conservation of Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The building, completed in 1961 and designed by Italian architect Arturo Mezzedimi, serves as the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and was commissioned by Emperor Haile Selassie. The decade-long, $57 million restoration project, completed in October 2024, involved local experts, restored original furniture and stained-glass windows by artist Afewerk Tekle, and modernized the structure while preserving its modernist vision. The jury also awarded its first Stewardship Award for Modernist Homes to the Umbrella House in Sarasota, Florida, designed by Paul Rudolph.
Guild Hall in East Hampton is opening two exhibitions on Sunday: “Jason Bard Yarmosky: Time Has Many Faces,” a decade-long series of meticulously rendered portraits focusing on the artist’s aging grandparents, and “Liberty Labs: A Decade of Design,” featuring furniture, lighting, and objects by 33 current and former members of the Liberty Labs Foundation design collective. The portraits blend 17th- and 18th-century painting techniques with contemporary, often playful imagery, while the design show highlights collaborative experimentation. Museum director Melanie Crader, who curated both shows, notes that the artists share Brooklyn bases and East End ties.
The Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, has opened two new exhibitions, “Returning To Wonder” and “All Sketches Wish To Be Real,” featuring international and local artists. Among the featured artists is Alexandra Fuller, a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes cyanotypes of wildlife and who has ties to the Sundance Film Festival—her short film “Sister Wife” was accepted at the 2009 festival. The exhibitions also include works by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, American artist Lia Halloran, and Utah-based artist Antra Sinha. The center will host a series of public programs, including artist talks, workshops, and a book discussion, to engage the local community.
Sotheby’s is returning to Riyadh for the second edition of its Origins sale, titled Origins II, with a live auction scheduled for 31 January. The sale will feature over 70 lots spanning Modern and Contemporary Art, Ancient Sculpture, and 20th-Century Design, including works by Saudi pioneer Safeya Binzagr, Iraqi artist Mahmoud Sabri, and Pablo Picasso. The auction coincides with the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale and the debut of Art Basel Doha, and will be preceded by a public exhibition at Diriyah’s Bujairi Terrace from 24 to 31 January.
Sotheby’s resumed Modern & Contemporary Art auctions in Singapore in 2022 after a 15-year hiatus, signaling renewed confidence in the region. In an interview, Jasmine Prasetio, Managing Director for Southeast Asia at Sotheby’s, discusses how Singaporean and Singapore-based collectors are increasingly active in both local and global sales, actively bidding on and acquiring works by Singaporean artists such as Georgette Chen, Kim Lim, and Jane Lee. Notable auction results include Georgette Chen’s “Lychees and Peaches” achieving $1.5 million in July 2023 and Jane Lee’s “Melt VII” selling for $140,877.
The group exhibition "Electric Dreams" is now on view at isnotgallery in Nicosia, Cyprus, running until January 6. The show expands on the earlier summer exhibition "In Paradise I Have Marked an Island" held at the Almyra Boutique Hotel, bringing many of the same works into a new curatorial framework in the capital. Sixteen Cypriot and international artists participate, including Elysia Athanatou, Savvas Christodoulidis, Alekos Fasianos, and Fikos, among others.
Sotheby's will hold its second auction in Saudi Arabia, Origins II, on January 31 in Diriyah, featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, and Middle Eastern artists including Safeya Binzagr and Mohammed Al Saleem. The sale spans categories from ancient sculpture to contemporary South Asian art, with highlights including Picasso's 'Paysage' (1965, est. $2-3 million) and Binzagr's 'Coffee Shop in Madina Road' (1968, est. $150,000-200,000).
The Gihanga Institute of Contemporary Art (GICA) opened this week in Kigali, Rwanda, as the country's first non-profit centre dedicated to promoting Rwandan art, culture, and history while fostering local and Pan-African artistic exchange. Founded by curator Kami Gahiga and artist-educator Kaneza Schaal, the institute was designed by Rwandan architect Amin Gafaranga and features an exhibition space, reference library, screening room, and residency studios. Its inaugural exhibition, "Inuma: A Bird Shall Carry the Voice," includes works by Rwandan artists and explores themes of faith and subtle expression. The Mellon Foundation provided crucial development support.
The I.V. Savitsky State Art Museum in Nukus, Uzbekistan, near the former Aral Sea, houses nearly 100,000 works of 20th-century art, including Russian avant-garde pieces and Central Asian folk art. After a 2024 exhibition in Florence and Venice, the museum underwent a major renovation led by Italian academics and new director Gulbahar Izentaeva, reopening with updated galleries and a new exhibition, "The World of Igor Savitsky." The project is backed by the Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF), which also launched the inaugural Bukhara Biennial and partnered with Art Basel Paris.
The Obama Presidential Center has announced a new commission by Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates, who will create a large frieze made of photo-printed aluminum using images from the Johnson Publishing Company archives—the publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines—and the work of photographer Howard Simmons. The installation, set to open in 2026, honors the dignity of Black life and the vibrancy of Black culture throughout the 20th century. Gates has been working with 20,000 photographs from the archive since 2016, and the frieze will be visible from Stony Island Avenue, near his own Stony Island Arts Bank. Other high-profile commissions for the center include works by Julie Mehretu, Maya Lin, Lindsay Adams, Nick Cave, Aliza Nisenbaum, Jenny Holzer, and Idris Khan.
French artist Claire Tabouret has unveiled her designs for new stained-glass windows at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The full-scale ink-on-paper maquettes are now on display at the Grand Palais as part of her solo exhibition "In a Single Breath," running through March 15. The exhibition also includes sketches and preparatory works, offering insight into the production process at the Simon-Marq atelier. Tabouret was selected in December 2024 from over 100 artists in a competition hosted by the French Ministry of Culture, tasked with creating contemporary designs based on the Pentecost story. Her windows will replace 19th-century monochrome windows by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus in six bays along the south aisle of the nave.
The 17th Bienal de Cuenca, titled "The Game," opened on 24 October in Cuenca, Ecuador, marking its 40th anniversary. The biennial features 51 artists selected by 17 international curators, with works displayed across multiple venues including museums, gardens, and the airport. The event highlights artists and curators from the Global South, focusing on social and political concerns rather than market priorities. It opened just two days after political protests ended, with a ceremony featuring an Andean ritual led by artist Carmen Vicente, whose installation "Infinite Steps" won the acquisition prize.
The 'Everyday People' exhibition, part of Miami's Soul Basel celebration, has opened in Overtown across three venues: the City of Miami Black Police Precinct Courthouse and Museum, the Overtown Performing Arts Center, and The OVRTWN Corner. Featuring over 80 artworks by Black artists from around the world, the exhibit is curated by Terrance Cribbs-Lorrant, executive director of the Black Police Precinct Museum, and Elijah Rashaed, a curator from the Dayton, Ohio NAACP. The show includes historic works from the Miami Black Art Workshop, a pioneering 1970s collective that helped ignite South Florida's Black visual arts movement, and will run through March 2026.
Art Basel Paris in October introduced a new ultra-exclusive preview called Avant Première, catering to top-tier galleries with seven- and eight-figure works, while some emerging exhibitors felt sidelined. Meanwhile, the fair's organizers dropped the term "VIP," renaming its dedicated department to "collector and institutional relations," as CEO Noah Horowitz explained that the term could be off-putting to a new generation of buyers. Parallel events like Trauma, a curatorial platform founded by artist Adrian Ghenie, and the Basel Social Club offered more inclusive, youth-driven alternatives, though they still maintained guest lists.
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Strauss & Co has launched its year-end auctions, featuring five concurrent timed online sessions from 20 November to 8 December 2025, plus a separate contemporary sale titled 'In the Now' running until 9 December. The auctions offer a wide range of modern and contemporary works at accessible price points, including pieces by major South African artists such as Irma Stern, William Kentridge, Sam Nhlengethwa, Norman Catherine, and Alexis Preller. Sessions include 'Re/View' with works from previous auctions, focused sessions on paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, and an 'Art Club' session curated by Strauss & Co specialists.
The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami has opened "Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden," the first major retrospective of Karachi-born, Brooklyn-based artist Hiba Schahbaz. Curated by Jasmine Wahi, the exhibition spans 15 years of Schahbaz's practice, including loans from private collections, studio works, and new commissions. Anchored by the concept of the jannat (Paradise Garden) rooted in Islamic tradition and Sufi poetry, the show is organized around the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. Schahbaz, trained in the Indo-Persian miniature tradition, works with water-based pigments and tea on handmade paper, and her practice has evolved from small formats to large-scale works, including a 45-foot-by-14-foot mermaid painting commissioned for the Miami show.
Martin Wong's monumental 12-foot-wide triptych *Tai Ping Tien Kuo (Tai Ping Kuo)* (1982) sold for $1.6 million to a US museum during Art Basel Miami Beach. The work, shown publicly for only the second time ever, was displayed at the booth of New York gallery PPOW. It had previously been exhibited in 1987 at New York's Asian Arts Institute and remained in storage for decades. The painting will next travel to Wrightwood 659 in Chicago for a forthcoming Wong exhibition.
Cristina Chacón and Diego Uribe, a Colombian couple who have been together since their teens, discuss their art collection and philanthropic work. They serve on the chairman’s council of the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and founded the DC Art Foundation in 2021, which supports mid-career and established artists through exhibitions and residencies. Their collection spans Miami, Bogotá, and Madrid, focusing on Modern and contemporary art from Latin America, with additional works by artists like Christian Boltanski, Ugo Rondinone, and Chiharu Shiota. In an interview, they share their first purchase (a still-life by Alberto Nuño from 1992), a recent acquisition (Gabriel Orozco’s 1999 painted-plywood construction), and regret over not buying a Ruth Asawa piece earlier.
Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, is presenting a new installation titled *Regular Animals* (2025) at Art Basel Miami Beach's Zero 10 digital art section. The work features robotic canines with hyper-realistic heads resembling tech billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, as well as historical figures Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, and Beeple himself. Each robot costs $100,000 (in an edition of two plus one artist's proof), and all were sold during the VIP preview, except the Bezos piece. The robots excrete certificates of authenticity that include QR codes for purchasing accompanying NFTs, and they continuously photograph their surroundings, with images reinterpreted in the style of each dog's humanoid counterpart.
A late 15th-century Netherlandish triptych, *The Five Miracles of Christ*, sold for £5.7 million at Sotheby’s London Old Master auction. The work, kept for centuries at St. John’s Almshouse in Sherborne, Dorset, had never before appeared on the market. The charity sold it to fund affordable housing, and the buyer—an unnamed Christian charitable foundation—plans to keep the painting publicly viewable in the town. Other highlights included a Rembrandt reattribution, *Saint John on Patmos*, which sold for £6.8 million, and a record £3.2 million for a Hans Eworth portrait of the 4th Duke of Norfolk.
The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) has announced a full slate of programming for its Art of Black Miami (AOBM) initiative during 2025 Miami Art Week, marking the program's 11th year. The lineup includes exhibitions, performances, film screenings, culinary experiences, and artist talks, with highlights such as Asser Saint-Val's "Yellow Elder" sculpture in Coconut Grove and events at venues across neighborhoods including Historic Overtown, Little Haiti, and Little Havana. Featured events include the Peter London Global Dance Company, Woody De Othello's exhibition, the Point Comfort Art Fair, and the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami's Art of Transformation program.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (MOCA) will open "Whitney Oldenburg: left behind" on November 20, 2025, the first institutional survey of the artist's paintings and drawings. The exhibition features 23 sculptures and 19 drawings exploring the complex relationship between humans and objects in contemporary culture, and will remain on view through April 19, 2026. Oldenburg, a Jacksonville-born artist now based in New York, incorporates repurposed consumer items, personal belongings, and craft materials into her work, which challenges viewers to question their attachments to material possessions.
The official preview weekend of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Benin City, Nigeria, was disrupted on Sunday when a group of protestors broke into the main building. Over 250 invited guests, including donors and diplomats, had gathered for a cultural program featuring the exhibition "Nigeria Imaginary: Homecoming," which was an expanded presentation of the Nigerian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. The protestors, wearing red hats, blocked access, shouted accusations about former governor Godwin Obaseki, and forced their way inside, leading to the indefinite cancellation of remaining events. MOWAA subsequently announced a postponement of public opening events, citing the protests and misconceptions about its role, while welcoming a presidential committee to resolve related matters.
Christie's achieved a rare 'white-glove' sale in its Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art auction, selling all 84 lots for $12.38 million—150% above the low estimate. The sale was led by Vasudeo Gaitonde's *Untitled (1984)* at $2.4 million, with strong bidding from India, the US, the UK, the UAE, and Singapore. New artist records were set for Sheikh Mohammed Sultan and Ivan Peries, while works by Rashid Choudhury and Biren De also drew intense interest. The auction, overseen by Nishad Avari, head of Christie's Indian art department, signals a broadening of the market beyond established modernists like M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza.
Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Marten has created an epic opera-like exhibition titled "30 Blizzards." during Art Basel Paris, commissioned by fashion brand Miu Miu. The free exhibition at the Palais d'Iéna in Paris combines installation, video, and performance in a five-channel work activated by 30 performers, staged by theatre director Fabio Cherstich. The work features archetypal characters such as the Fox, the Mother, the Snail, and the Dog Walker, with a libretto written by Marten and music composed by Beatrice Dillon. This marks Marten's first foray into performance, expanding her sculptural and film practice into live, resonant bodies.
The sixth edition of the Aichi Triennale, titled "A Time Between Ashes and Roses," opened in Japan in September and runs until 30 November. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, the first non-Japanese artistic director of the triennial, the exhibition confronts themes of war, displacement, memory, and environmental collapse. Works include Kubo Hiroko's tapestry marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and a video installation by Palestinian duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Al Qasimi explicitly linked the triennial to the situation in Gaza, stating, "Free Palestine," during a press conference. Controversy erupted over the Aichi-Israel Matching Program, a separate prefectural initiative pairing Israeli startups with local companies, leading to protests and the resignation of vice chairman Hideyuki Tomita from the organizing committee.