romare bearden digital catalogue raisonne

The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) and the Romare Bearden Foundation have launched the first installment of a digital catalogue raisonné for the artist Romare Bearden, covering his work from 1964 to 1969. The project, which began in earnest in 2017, has so far documented 3,000 artworks, including 210 in this initial chapter, and has uncovered previously unknown works such as a portrait of artist Edmonia Lewis. The research builds on three decades of archival work by the foundation, which digitized Bearden's ephemera to aid in tracking down works he often gave away informally.

sfmoma fisher collection galleries reinstallation

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has announced a major reinstallation of its Fisher Collection galleries, titled “Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10,” opening April 18, 2026. The overhaul will feature 250 artworks by 35 modern and contemporary artists across 60,000 square feet of gallery space, organized by thematic and monographic floors. The project is led by curator Ted Mann and chief education officer Gamynne Guillotte. The Fisher Collection, a 100-year loan from the Fisher Art Foundation, includes blue-chip works by Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, and others, assembled by Gap Inc. founders Donald and Doris Fisher.

ex christies chief jussi pylkkanen works trends watch auction season

Jussi Pylkkanen, former Christie's chairman, analyzes the upcoming New York 20th and 21st Century Art sales, noting a return to market confidence after strong European auctions in London and Paris aligned with Frieze and Art Basel Paris fairs. Christie's London posted its best October sales since 2018, Sotheby's had its most valuable Paris season, and a Picasso portrait sold for $37 million at Hôtel Drouot. The season shows a shift from speculative buying toward established artists like Bacon, Freud, Picasso, and Klimt, with 27 works valued over $10 million, led by Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer* from the Leonard Lauder collection, estimated to exceed $150 million at Sotheby's.

sothebys newly relocated to the breuer building reintroduces itself to new york

Sotheby's has relocated its New York headquarters to Marcel Breuer's iconic Brutalist building on Madison Avenue, formerly home to the Whitney Museum, the Met Breuer, and a Frick Collection outpost. After a renovation by Herzog & de Meuron that restored original gallery proportions and upgraded infrastructure, the auction house is inaugurating the space with a series of exhibitions featuring three major single-owner collections—Leonard A. Lauder, Cindy and Jay Pritzker, and Exquisite Corpus—estimated at over a billion dollars. Highlights include Gustav Klimts from the Lauder trove, a Van Gogh still life from the Pritzker collection, a Frida Kahlo painting expected to set a record for a woman artist, and a Basquiat work in the contemporary evening sale.

jennifer lawrence contemporary artist collaboration w magazine art issue

W magazine's current art issue features Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence in a three-part collaboration with French filmmaker and artist Philippe Parreno, American painter Elizabeth Peyton, and German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. Parreno shot a short film starring Lawrence, Tillmans photographed her at his London studio wearing a T-shirt referencing his Centre Pompidou exhibition, and Peyton painted a portrait of the actress in her signature loose, romantic style. The issue has three different covers, each dedicated to one collaborating artist's work.

art basel paris vip preview sales report

Art Basel Paris opened its VIP preview on Wednesday, following a new invite-only preview called Avant Première on Tuesday. Major galleries reported strong sales, including Hauser & Wirth's $23 million Gerhard Richter abstract, the highest reported sale at the fair. Other notable sales included Julie Mehretu's $11.5 million painting at White Cube, a $4.7 million Bruce Nauman neon at Hauser & Wirth, and a $2.5 million Marlene Dumas painting at David Zwirner. Dealers noted that the staggered two-day opening helped spread out crowds and allowed collectors to return for the official VIP day, with many describing the fair as the most successful edition in Paris to date.

future of the art world andras szanto review

András Szántó has published the third volume of his trilogy on the future of museums and the art world, titled "The Future of the Art World." The book compiles 38 interviews conducted between April 2024 and June 2025 with a wide range of art-world stakeholders, including artists, curators, collectors, dealers, auctioneers, art fair directors, sociologists, philosophers, and policymakers. Unlike his previous books, which focused on museum directors and architects, this volume gives significant voice to artists, who offer provocative critiques and predictions about the future of museums, art education, and digital art.

v joy simmons collection tour baldwin hills home

V. Joy Simmons, a Los Angeles-based physician and longtime art collector, opened her Baldwin Hills home to ARTnews for a tour of her extensive collection. The house features over 150 objects, including stained-glass windows by Varnette Honeywood and Joyce Dudnick, a site-specific column installation by Lauren Halsey, and works by Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall, Mark Bradford, Kehinde Wiley, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others. Simmons began collecting in the 1970s with a $50 lithograph by Catlett and has since built a collection that spans generations of Black artists, often juxtaposing older and younger artists in her displays.

agnes gund dead moma art collecting

Agnes Gund, one of the most influential art patrons in the United States, has died at 87. Her collecting and philanthropy transformed the American art world, particularly at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where she served as president from 1991 to 2002 and remained a life trustee. Gund helped fund MoMA's 2004 expansion, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, and played a key role in bringing MoMA PS1 under the museum's aegis in 1999. She was a longtime donor of over 250 works to MoMA, including pieces by Jasper Johns, Elizabeth Murray, and Julie Mehretu, and appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list every year from 1990 to 2018.

alex da corte modern art museum of fort worth review

Alex Da Corte's mid-career survey, "The Whale," is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, featuring works that repurpose pop-cultural icons like Disney villains and Mariah Carey to explore themes of erasure and violence. The exhibition includes pieces such as *A Time to Kill* (2016), which obliquely references the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting through an inverted Elsa standee, and *The Great Pretender* (2021), which removes Lily Tomlin from a TIME magazine cover to comment on queer erasure.

america 250th anniversary exhibitions

Museums across the United States are preparing exhibitions to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence in 2026. The New York Historical will present "Democracy Matters," opening June 19, 2026, exploring voting, free speech, and land rights through works by Thomas Cole, Mel Chin, and Lady Pink alongside historic documents. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will debut "America at 250" on the same date, integrating Native and non-Native art with pieces like Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington and a critique by Mohawk artist Alan Michelson. The National Portrait Gallery had planned "Amy Sherald: American Sublime" for September 2025, but Sherald canceled the show over censorship concerns in July 2025. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will host "A Nation of Artists" from April 2026 through September 2027, featuring Frederic Edwin Church's "Pichincha."

black arts institutions funding nea cuts

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced funding cuts to arts organizations across the U.S. as part of broader government spending reductions under the Trump administration. These cuts disproportionately affect Black-led art institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), Museum Hue, and the Billie Holiday Theatre, which rely heavily on federal grants for programming and operations. While some organizations received final payments or avoided returning funds, they face an uncertain future as critical funding streams are terminated or made ineligible for renewal.

art dealer provocative solution poaching problem

Art dealer Wendi Norris of San Francisco has introduced buyout clauses in contracts with her artists, borrowing a strategy from professional sports. If an artist leaves for a mega-gallery like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, or David Zwirner, Norris receives financial compensation—such as the right to purchase works at her original prices for potential resale. This practice aims to address the widespread problem of poaching, where larger galleries lure rising artists away from the smaller dealers who nurtured their careers, often causing financial and emotional strain.

8 times david hockney broke rules

David Hockney, the legendary British artist, turns 88 on July 9, and Artnet News reflects on his seven-decade career of rule-breaking. The article highlights eight key moments of defiance, including his openness about his homosexuality before decriminalization in the U.K., his public smoking habit that led to a Paris Metro ad being pulled, and his controversial "Hockney-Falco thesis" arguing that Old Masters used optical tools like the camera lucida. Hockney currently ranks third on the Artnet Intelligence Report for best-selling and most bankable postwar artists, and his largest-ever exhibition is on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

mschfs king solomons baby at pioneer

MSCHF, the Brooklyn-based art collective known for viral stunts like the Big Red Boot and a Damien Hirst dot-selling ATM, has unveiled a new participatory sculpture titled *King Solomon's Baby* (2025). The work is a large-scale polystyrene foam and paint sculpture that will be progressively dismembered and sold in thin slices as more buyers join. Priced at $100,000 for a single buyer, the cost drops as more participants purchase shares, down to $100 each if 1,000 people buy in. Sales open July 10 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, with the fully deconstructed work on view July 13.

london summer auctions

London's summer auction season saw Sotheby's evening sale bring in $85.7 million, a significant drop from $105 million last year and a 70% decline from $280.1 million in 2015. Christie's opted out of an evening auction entirely, holding only a day sale that netted $12.7 million, while Phillips' combined sales totaled $17.6 million. Highlights included a Tamara de Lempicka painting selling for $10 million, a Jenny Saville drawing setting a new auction record at $2.11 million, and six works from the Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein collection. The sales were described as 'sensible' by advisor Todd Levin, reflecting a cautious market post-Art Basel.

justin sun gave silk road founder ross ulbricht cattelan banana

At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun presented Maurizio Cattelan's artwork *Comedian* (2019)—a duct-taped banana that sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby's—to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road online marketplace. Ulbricht, recently pardoned by Donald Trump after receiving a life sentence, accepted the gift and joked about replacing the banana as it perishes. Sun had previously eaten the banana at a press conference in Hong Kong after purchasing it at auction.

albright pennsylvania college selling art collection

Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, is quietly selling off the Freedman Gallery collection, which includes works by Romare Bearden, Salvador Dalí, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, to address a budget shortfall that recently reached $23 million. Art preparator Rich Houck discovered the storage space emptied without notice and was fired after reporting the move; the college has cut 53 positions, canceled academic majors, and considered selling real estate as part of a broader cost-cutting campaign. Former gallery staff are no longer employed, and major donors were not informed of the sale.

here are the winners of the first art basel awards

Art Basel has announced the winners of its first-ever Art Basel Awards, a new global honors program recognizing excellence across the contemporary art world. The 36 medalists include artists such as David Hammons, Lubaina Himid, Joan Jonas, and Adrian Piper, as well as patrons, curators, museums, and other art-world figures. The awards were unveiled at a press event in New York, with CEO Noah Horowitz and director Vincenzo de Bellis outlining the structure: medalists will later select 12 gold medalists, with up to six artists receiving $50,000 each and a commission for the 2026 Art Basel fair. The jury includes prominent museum directors and curators from around the world.

state of the art market trophy lots and the new competitive auction landscape

The article examines the growing financialization and opacity of the fine-art auction market, highlighting how auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's have made it increasingly difficult for outsiders to understand true demand for individual lots. It details how buyer's premiums, guarantees, and irrevocable bids (third-party guarantees) obscure the actual bidding dynamics, with only a small group of wealthy financiers and intermediaries having clear insight into the market's inner workings.

pope visits venice biennale

Pope Francis became the first pontiff in history to visit the Venice Biennale, touring the Vatican's Holy See pavilion at the 60th edition on April 28, 2024. The exhibition, titled "With My Eyes," was installed inside a women's prison on Giudecca Island and featured works by artists including Maurizio Cattelan, Simone Fattal, and Corita Kent. The pope met with about 80 female inmates, delivered a speech on art's power to address societal ills, and praised the contributions of women artists such as Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois. He also held an open-air mass in St. Mark's Square and spoke with young people at Santa María della Salute.

The Interview: Ei Arakawa-Nash

Ei Arakawa-Nash, a Japanese American performance artist, was selected to represent Japan at the 61st Venice Biennale, becoming the first non-Japanese national to do so in a solo presentation. This follows his first solo museum exhibition, "Paintings Are Popstars," at Tokyo's National Art Center in 2024, which was also the center's first solo show devoted to a performance artist. In an interview with ArtReview, Arakawa-Nash discusses his naturalization as a U.S. citizen, his complex relationship with national identity, and his upcoming Venice exhibition titled "Grass Babies, Moon Babies," cocurated by Lisa Horikawa and Takahashi Mizuki, which will explore themes of care and reparation using babies as a central motif.

Hayward Gallery announces major Nan Goldin exhibition.

The Hayward Gallery in London has announced a major solo exhibition of American artist and activist Nan Goldin, titled "You Never Did Anything Wrong." Running from 24 November 2026 to 7 March 2027, the show will mark Goldin's first institutional exhibition in the UK since 2002, featuring her intimate photographs and slideshows that document personal relationships, addiction, and queer communities over five decades. The exhibition rounds off the Southbank Centre's 75th anniversary year and includes works such as "Flowers with cup and Gaja" (2024) and "Diana in the bath" (2024).

Manhattan's Neue Galerie to Merge With Met Museum

Cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie, a private museum on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue known for its collection of Austrian and German art, will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The merger takes effect in 2028, with the Neue Galerie retaining its physical space and staff. The announcement was made by The Met on May 14. The museum's star attraction is Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907), and it also holds works by Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and others. Lauder co-founded the Neue Galerie with dealer Serge Sabarsky in 2001. As part of the merger, Lauder and his daughter Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer will donate 13 additional paintings from their personal collection and make an undisclosed endowment gift.

10 Exhibitions to See in Upstate New York This May

Hyperallergic's guide highlights 10 exhibitions opening in Upstate New York this May, including the Hessel Museum of Art's annual showcase of thesis exhibitions by graduates of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, featuring works by Alice Aycock, Arthur Jafa, Mike Kelley, and Ana Mendieta. Other notable shows include Daniele Frazier's camera-less photography at September Gallery, Onnis Luque's investigation into resource exploitation at Art Omi, and Japanese woodblock prints at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. The guide also covers Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo's mixed-media works and Maria Auxiliadora da Silva's paintings.

Joan Semmel Kicks Ass at 93

A profile of 93-year-old artist Joan Semmel reveals her continued artistic vigor and rising market demand. The article details her recent studio visit, her philosophy of persistence, and her significant body of work focused on the female form.

Joan Semmel Is Doing Her Best Work at 93

Nonagenarian painter Joan Semmel is experiencing a significant career renaissance, marked by a major survey exhibition at the Jewish Museum and a concurrent solo show at Alexander Gray Associates. At 93, Semmel continues to work from her Soho studio, where she has lived for over fifty years, producing unflinching figurative paintings that explore the female body, aging, and the gaze. The article traces her trajectory from her early education at Cooper Union and a formative period in Madrid to her pivotal role in feminist art history.

10 Exhibitions to See in Chicago This Spring

A guide highlights ten notable art exhibitions opening in Chicago this spring, focusing on shows at smaller, community-focused, and artist-run spaces like Good Weather, Hyde Park Art Center, and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art. Featured exhibitions include Hunter Foster's "Involition," which repurposes a Cold War siren to comment on infrastructure and threat, and Alison Ruttan's ceramic installation "The Paradox of Inaction," which visualizes climate disaster.

The Palaces of Memory

The Palaces of Memory

The article reports that Israeli and US airstrikes on Isfahan, Iran, damaged several centuries-old palaces and cultural buildings. It draws a parallel to the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza, suggesting this may be a targeted strategy to erase cultural identity and history, which are seen as threats to occupying forces.

Heir of Goya and Abstract Expressionism, the painting of Roger-Edgar Gillet finally rediscovered in an unprecedented retrospective

Héritière de Goya et de l’expressionnisme abstrait, la peinture de Roger-Edgar Gillet enfin redécouverte dans une rétrospective inédite

A major retrospective at the Musée Estrine in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence finally brings long-overdue recognition to French painter Roger-Edgar Gillet (1924–2004), an artist who emerged from the post-war abstraction scene of the Nouvelle École de Paris but later forged a singular figurative style blending Goya, Delacroix, and Northern grotesque traditions. The exhibition follows two important donations—to the Centre Pompidou in 2017 and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes in 2022—that helped revive institutional interest in Gillet, whose work had been marginalized since the 1960s.