ugly and pornographic mermaid statue removed copenhagen

The Danish government has ordered the removal of a 13-foot tall mermaid statue known as the "Big Mermaid" from Dragør Fort in Copenhagen, following years of criticism that it is sexualized, ugly, and pornographic. The sculpture, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, was installed without permission on a protected monument site overseen by the Agency for Culture and Palaces, which determined it disrupts the fort's military structure. Critics including Sorine Gotfredsen and Mathias Kryger condemned the work, while entrepreneur Peter Bech, who commissioned it, defended the statue's proportions.

art asher lifrin young artist

Asher Liftin, a 27-year-old New York-based artist, is profiled as part of Cultured's 2025 Young Artists list. He gained early recognition at age 12 when Wes Anderson selected his artwork for the film *Moonrise Kingdom*. Liftin now creates trompe l'oeil paintings that resemble tapestries but are actually finely rendered pointillist compositions inspired by art-historical still lifes and history paintings. He holds degrees in cognitive science and visual art, and cites graffiti artist Christian Aldunate as a key early influence.

parties art corita art center gala melissa mccarthy kathryn hahn

The Corita Art Center held its first benefit gala at the Marciano Art Foundation in downtown Los Angeles, celebrating the legacy of artist and nun Corita Kent. The event drew a high-profile crowd including actors Melissa McCarthy and Kathryn Hahn, artists Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie, and Laura Owens, along with patrons, chefs, and designers. Guests enjoyed a new exhibition of Kent's work, a family-style dinner, and a performance by musician Natalie Bergman, with a 'GIVE A DAMN' tote bag as a parting gift.

fashion dior lady art handbag

Dior has launched the 10th edition of its Lady Art initiative, inviting a new roster of artists to reimagine the iconic Lady Dior handbag. The project, which began nearly a decade ago, has previously featured artists like Judy Chicago, Jack Pierson, and Mickalene Thomas. This year's participants include Jessica Cannon and Ju Ting, who discuss their creative processes, material explorations, and the dialogue between their artistic practices and Dior's heritage. The handbags incorporate sculpted tulle, pleated silk, stones, glass beads, and pearlized elements, blending fine art with fashion.

beauty judy chicago catherine dior parfums

Artist Judy Chicago has created a limited-edition perfume trunk for Dior's Miss Dior fragrance, reimagining the scent and its presentation as a tribute to Catherine Dior, the sister of Christian Dior. The trunk, of which only 25 exist, features hand-embroidery, floral motifs, and colors adapted from Chicago's iconic work *The Dinner Party*, and includes a custom version of the perfume by Dior's Francis Kurkdjian. Chicago discusses how the project honors Catherine Dior's legacy as a French Resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor, paralleling her own efforts to elevate overlooked women in history.

christian dior couture scad fash lacoste exhibition

A new exhibition titled “Christian Dior: Jardins Rêvés” has opened at SCAD FASH Lacoste, the Provençal campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design in France. The show features nearly 30 archival Dior couture silhouettes, over 60 accessories, perfume bottles, press sketches, René Gruau illustrations, and personal ephemera, all organized around a botanical theme. A bespoke paper installation by Spanish studio Wanda Barcelona crowns the exhibition, which traces the house’s evolution from founder Christian Dior’s childhood gardens in Granville to the work of his successors, including Yves Saint Laurent, Raf Simons, and Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Industrial Dreams of the GDR

Industrieträume der DDR

The exhibition "Robotron – Arbeiterklasse und Intelligenz" has opened at the Hartware Medienkunstverein (HMKV) in Dortmund, following its initial run in Leipzig. Centered on the history of the GDR’s largest computer manufacturer, the show features 20 artistic positions including photography, film, and sculpture, alongside a significant five-meter oil sketch by Socialist Realist painter Werner Tübke. The presentation bridges East and West German industrial histories by juxtaposing state-commissioned propaganda with progressive, unofficial works by artists like Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and A.R. Penck.

From simple blue to haute couture suit: workwear studied at the Musée Postal

Du simple bleu au tailleur haute couture, le vêtement de travail étudié au musée Postal

The Musée Postal in Paris has reopened with a new name and identity, launching its first exhibition titled "Sous toutes les coutures" ("Under All Seams"). Curated by Elodie Goëssant and Didier Filoche, the show brings together 420 pieces, artworks, and archival objects to explore the history of workwear in France, from uniforms and protective clothing to high-fashion collaborations. It traces the evolution of work attire from the 18th century to the present, highlighting how women lacked dedicated work clothing until the 1970s and how airlines like Air France pioneered partnerships with luxury houses such as Christian Dior to dress flight attendants as national ambassadors.

Kengo Kuma: "The first time architecture moved me, it was a church"

Kengo Kuma : « La première fois qu’une architecture m’a ému, c’était celle d’une église »

Renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma discusses his design philosophy and his recent intervention at the Angers Cathedral in France. He emphasizes a "dialogue with the place" over architectural ego, focusing on topography, local materials, and the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in the aging of materials over time. Kuma reflects on how his first emotional encounter with architecture occurred in a Christian chapel as a child, an experience that continues to inform his use of light and verticality.

Magazzino Italian Art: a major exhibition on Alighiero Boetti in New York.

Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, New York, will present a major retrospective of Alighiero Boetti titled "Tutto Boetti 1966-1993," running from April 26, 2026 to April 26, 2028. The exhibition features about 30 works drawn from the museum's permanent collection, loans from the artist's heirs, and a private collection, spanning Boetti's career from 1966 to 1993. Highlights include large-scale pieces such as "Mazzo di tubi" (1966), "Da mille a mille" (1975), "Insicuro Noncurante" (1975-76), and the kilim "Alternando da uno a cento e viceversa" (1993). The show is part of Magazzino's ongoing series of monographic exhibitions on Arte Povera artists, following earlier focuses on Piero Gilardi and Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Photos: Art Gallery "2.16 Contemporary" Grand Opening

On January 21, 2026, the 2.16 Contemporary art gallery opened at 325 Constitución Street in Puerto Vallarta's Zona Romántica with a gala event featuring the exhibition “Liberatio” by Guadalajara-based artist Victor Haro, celebrating his 40-year career. The ribbon-cutting ceremony included owners and gallerists Orlando Santamaría and Abrajam Romero, Culture Councilwoman Laurel Carrillo, and Haro himself, with the show presenting hyperrealistic works in acrylic paste and airbrushing that explore human liberation.

ENTERTAINMENT: AMFA opens Young Arkansas Artists exhibition; UCA Public Appearances sets 2026-27 season

The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) in Little Rock opens the 65th Young Arkansas Artists exhibition on Saturday, featuring 52 artworks selected by a panel of museum and art professionals. The exhibition expands to four works per grade, K-12, and includes a "Best in Class" award chosen by grand juror Celeste Alexander. The show runs through July 26 in the Robyn and John Horn Gallery, with free admission and related activities at the museum's Windgate Art School.

Women in Art Fair Returns to London

The Women in Art Fair (WIAF), the UK's leading fair dedicated exclusively to women artists, will return to London's OXO Gallery for its fourth edition from May 7-10, 2026. The event will showcase 80 artists selected from 600 applicants through a blind review process, featuring a program of exhibitions, awards, and events, including a Creative Health & Wellbeing Day.

In Milan there is an exhibition where color fascinates because it is mystical and changeable

A Milano c’è una mostra dove il colore affascina perché è mistico e mutevole

The article reports on Jason Martin's second solo exhibition at Christian Stein gallery in Milan, titled "Vertex," curated by Sergio Risaliti. Eight new large-scale works fill the Palazzo Cicogna space, showcasing Martin's signature thick oil paint surfaces that shift in color and texture, evoking the changing appearance of a wheat field. The exhibition runs until May 23, 2025.

Bildmuseet opens the MFA exhibition from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts.

Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden, will host the Master's exhibition "Of Love and Care" from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts at Umeå University, opening on 22 May 2026 with an Art Friday event featuring talks, performances, tours, live music, and a DJ. The exhibition showcases works by ten graduating artists—Christian Abrahamsson, Amanda Angeli Blombäck, Time Bohlin, Renan De Menezes Anan, Elna Dani Liljedahl, Joanne Löfling, Måns Palmberg, Sofia Tien, Fanny Åberg, and Tin Åling—whose pieces explore themes of love, care, mysticism, and the wonder of existence, moving beyond overtly political and consumerist messages. A media preview will be held on 20 May, and the exhibition runs through 23 August 2026.

New Schwarzman Center art exhibits highlight student experiences

Five new exhibitions opened at the Yale Schwarzman Center on April 7, featuring work from 53 young artists including New Haven high school students, Yale undergraduates, and graduate students. The shows explore themes of identity, unity, memory, nature, and emotion through visual art, photography, installation, digital work, and multimedia. Highlights include "Call-to-Connect," an interactive payphone installation by Soleil Piverger; "The View From Here: Accessing Art Through Photography," a smartphone photography exhibition in collaboration with the Yale Center for British Art; and "Rooted in Heritage: Art Across Yale’s Cultural Centers," curated by Carlynne Robinson, featuring works reflecting multicultural communities at Yale.

High-quality youth artwork shines at Sovereign Young Artist Competition exhibition

The Sovereign Art Foundation and Gibraltar Cultural Services announced the winners of the 2026 Sovereign Young Artist Competition at an awards ceremony on April 16. The exhibition showcases finalists in two age categories, with winners including Aimee Linares (SAF Judges’ Prize), Amelie Romero (SAF Public Vote Prize), Sebastian Andlaw (Alwani Foundation Award), Shelli Abudarham (Ministry of Culture Award), and Tyrone Vera (AquaGib Second Prize). The top student winner received £800, with £2,000 awarded to their school's art department.

Mangkuluhur ARTOTEL Suites Unveils "Weaving The Unseen" Art Exhibition: A Solo Debut by Ratih Alsaira

Mangkuluhur ARTOTEL Suites in Jakarta has opened a solo exhibition titled "Weaving The Unseen" by local artist Ratih Alsaira. The show, featuring ten primary works, explores the resilient strength and multifaceted nature of women, using tailoring and domestic crafts as central metaphors. It runs from February 13 to May 30, 2026, at the hotel's ARTSPACE gallery.

Louvre closes again due to staff strikes

Staff at the Louvre museum in Paris staged another strike on Monday, January 19, the ninth such action in a month, forcing the museum to close completely for the third time since mid-December. The strike, voted unanimously by 350 employees, concerns pay, working conditions, and infrastructure, with unions demanding salary alignment with other national museums and monuments, and calling for the €666m new entrance project to be dropped in favor of basic maintenance. The closure costs the museum about €400,000 per day, and negotiations with France's culture ministry are scheduled for January 29.

Makers of Ancient Egypt to be hailed in Cambridge exhibition

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is opening an exhibition titled "Made in Ancient Egypt" that shifts focus from pharaohs and iconic treasures to the anonymous craftspeople who built and decorated the civilization's artifacts. Featuring loans from the British Museum, Berlin State Museums, and the Musée du Louvre, the show includes jewelry, ceramics, stonework, and personal items like ostraca—pottery shards used as notepads—that reveal the lives, skills, and even the days off of ancient makers. Curator Helen Strudwick highlights recent discoveries, including a handprint on a "soul house" and an unreadable signature on a shrine, emphasizing the human connection these objects provide.

Art Basel Miami Beach to welcome 41 new exhibitors

Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) will return from December 5 to 7, 2025, with 285 galleries, including 41 first-time exhibitors—a significant increase from previous years. The fair will emphasize Latinx, Indigenous, and diasporic artistic currents, and will feature galleries from 44 countries, with over two-thirds operating in the Americas. New participants include New York galleries such as David Peter Francis, Candice Madey, and Margot Samel, as well as Erin Cluley Gallery from Dallas, Miami’s Nina Johnson, and Voloshyn Gallery, the first Ukrainian exhibitor at the fair. Returning mega-galleries include Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, Pace Gallery, and White Cube. The fair will also debut the Art Basel Awards, with gold medalists announced on December 4.

Phoenix Art Museum to Debut 2024 Arizona Artist Awards Exhibitions on July 23

Phoenix Art Museum will debut the 2024 Arizona Artist Awards exhibitions on July 23, 2025, featuring new works by Safwat Saleem, Elizabeth Z. Pineda, and Omar Soto. Saleem presents his first solo museum exhibition, "The Unrequited Love Institute (T.U.L.I.)," a satirical installation exploring immigrant belonging and cultural preservation, while Pineda and Soto are featured in a group exhibition as recipients of the Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards. The exhibitions run through January 25, 2026, with a free public lecture by Saleem on opening night.

Holy ground: why Persian carpets played an important symbolic role in the funeral of Pope Francis

Persian carpets from northwest Iran were used in the funeral proceedings of Pope Francis, placed beneath his casket in St. Peter's Basilica and later in St. Peter's Square. The article traces this tradition back over 600 years, explaining how carpets from Islamic lands—first Anatolia, then Iran, Egypt, and the Levant—were depicted in Renaissance religious paintings as markers of sacred space, appearing at the feet of the Virgin Mary and other holy figures.

Maximilien Durand reconduit au Louvre

Maximilien Durand, aged 50, has been reappointed for a three-year term as head of the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Arts at the Louvre Museum in Paris. He has been preparing the department's opening since 2022. Durand previously served as director of the Musée des Tissus in Lyon and deputy director of collections at Paris Musées. His role includes overseeing collections, acquisitions, loans, and exhibitions, as well as a national expertise mission. Separately, Sophie Jugie moved to the Musées de France service after her non-renewal as head of the Sculptures department.

Newfields Returns To The Runway With New Fashion Exhibit

Newfields has opened a new fashion exhibition titled "Body / Beyond: Fashion That Transforms," its first fashion-focused show in over three years. The exhibition features 25 pieces spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s, including designs by Christian Dior, Balmain, Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rei Kawakubo, and Martin Margiela. Highlights include a conical bra cup maxi dress worn by Madonna and three newly acquired works for the museum's collection.

Hall Art Foundation Opens Season With Three Major Exhibitions

The Hall Art Foundation is reopening its Vermont campus for the 2026 season with three major exhibitions running through November 29. The centerpiece, "A Farewell to the Western World," is a group show of roughly 70 works exploring global power shifts and political instability, featuring artists such as Ai Weiwei, Aleksandra Mir, and Philip Guston. Also on view are Christian Marclay's video installation "Made To Be Destroyed," which compiles film scenes of artworks being damaged or destroyed, and Piotr Uklański's photographic installation "The Nazis," examining how film and popular culture have shaped representations of the Third Reich. The campus, set on a former dairy farm in Reading, includes converted gallery buildings and outdoor sculptures by Olafur Eliasson, Antony Gormley, Richard Long, and Marc Quinn.

A Museum Show Like No Other Aschaffenburg’s ‘Bavarian Nice’ Becomes the Stage for a Powerful Ukraine-Europe Art Collaboration Amid Global Conflict!

Aschaffenburg, Germany, is hosting a landmark exhibition titled 'A European Collection' at the Christian Schad Museum, opening April 30, 2026. The show features 73 European masterpieces from the 15th to 19th centuries, loaned from the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine. Works by Peter Paul Rubens, Bernardo Bellotto, and Claude-Joseph Vernet are included, alongside a contemporary piece by Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska juxtaposed with Antonio Canova's sculpture 'La Pace'. This is the first comprehensive presentation of these Ukrainian-held works in Germany.

New exhibition at Buxton reveals insights into Chinese conceptual art

The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has opened a new exhibition titled "Poetry goes no further than language," which examines the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Featuring works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, the show also includes a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold. Curated by Dr. Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, together with artist Liu Ding, the exhibition brings previously inaccessible or little-known works to Australia for the first time.

Buxton Unveils Chinese Conceptual Art Exhibition

The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has opened "Poetry goes no further than language: A historical moment of art becoming art again," an exhibition examining the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. It features works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, alongside a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, and artist Liu Ding.

MKFA Awards Grants: Supporting innovation and community engagement

The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts (MKFA) has announced the recipients of its 2026 Infinite Expansion Grants (IEG), awarding funding to nine contemporary arts organizations across Los Angeles County. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the grant program, with six of the nine organizations receiving MKFA funding for the first time. The grantees include Art in the Park, Clockshop, and Color Compton, among others, each undertaking projects that explore themes of place, memory, diaspora, and community resilience through exhibitions, installations, and public programming. The grants were selected by a jury of five arts professionals including Tiffany Barber, Jibz Cameron, Justen Leroy, Jenny Lin, and Rodrigo Valenzuela.