Christie's and the Arts Council Collection to present Close Encounters celebrating 80 years of the Arts Council Collection - Christie's

Christie's London will host 'Close Encounters: Figuration, Painting and Landscape in the Arts Council Collection' from 3 to 23 June 2026, in partnership with the Arts Council Collection to mark its 80th anniversary. The exhibition brings together historical works by artists such as David Hockney, Sonia Boyce, Peter Doig, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Michael Armitage, and Claudette Johnson alongside new acquisitions by Christina Kimeze and Vanessa Raw, exploring themes of gender, sexuality, landscape, and Black British women's representation.

34 Of The Best London Art Exhibitions To See In May 2026

The article highlights 34 of the best London art exhibitions to see in May 2026, focusing on three major shows: the V&A's 'Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art', the first UK exhibition dedicated to designer Elsa Schiaparelli; Tate Modern's 'Tracey Emin: A Second Life', the largest retrospective of the YBA artist's 40-year career; and the Design Museum's 'NIGO: From Japan with Love', a retrospective of Japanese creative NIGO spanning over 700 objects. These exhibitions showcase fashion, contemporary art, and street culture, with the V&A show running until November, Tate Modern until August, and the Design Museum until October.

Andy Warhol | Kiku Flowers (with hardback exhibition book, “edition club” order forms) (1984) | Available for Sale

APC ART has announced the exclusive sale of a rare 1984 Andy Warhol screenprint titled "Kiku Flowers." The work originates from a limited edition of 1,500 produced for a landmark exhibition at the Gendai Hanga Center in Tokyo and is being offered as a comprehensive historical package. The sale includes the original cloth-bound exhibition catalog and primary source documents, such as the original "edition club" order forms used for the Kiku suite.

Embrace the Sparkle at 7 Jewelry-Themed Museum Exhibitions Across the Globe

Seven jewelry-themed museum exhibitions are on view globally in 2025, showcasing pieces from Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, and artist-designed adornments by Man Ray and Pablo Picasso. Highlights include "Cosmic Splendor" at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, featuring astronomically inspired Van Cleef & Arpels creations, and "Cartier" at the V&A in London, displaying over 350 objects including royal commissions and iconic panther jewels. Other shows feature contemporary and vintage designs, emphasizing jewelry as a wearable art form.

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The Art of Appearing

De l’art de paraître

The Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris is hosting an exhibition titled "Révéler le féminin," which explores the intersection of 18th-century fashion and portraiture. Curated in collaboration with the Palais Galliera and the Musée d’arts de Nantes, the show features works by prominent portraitists like Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and Maurice Quentin de La Tour alongside rare period textiles. The exhibition examines how the rising bourgeoisie used clothing as a visual language of prestige and social standing during the Enlightenment.

Guernica will remain in Madrid

Guernica restera à Madrid

The Spanish government has officially confirmed that Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, Guernica, will remain at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. This decision puts an end to long-standing requests from the Basque Country to have the mural moved to Bilbao, specifically to the Guggenheim Museum, or to Guernica itself, the town whose 1937 bombing inspired the work.

« Le jardin anglais incarne une vision de la société » : une expo à Versailles explore cette passion de l’Europe des Lumières

The article explores an exhibition at the Grand Trianon in Versailles dedicated to the English garden, a style that emerged in 18th-century Europe as a deliberate contrast to the rigid symmetry of the formal French garden. Curator Élisabeth Maisonnier and museum director Laurent Salomé explain how these gardens, with their winding paths, irregular flowerbeds, and surprise features like grottoes and pagodas, were carefully constructed to imitate and amplify nature's complexity, drawing on influences from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and China.

parties masnyc awards annabelle selldorf elizabeth diller

The Municipal Arts Society of New York (MASNYC) held its 2025 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal dinner on October 6, honoring architects Elizabeth Diller and Annabelle Selldorf. The event took place at the Pool and Grill in the Seagram Building, a landmarked space that both architects have worked on—Diller's firm DS+R transformed the basement Brasserie, and Selldorf renovated the Four Seasons Restaurant. The crowd included architecture and design luminaries such as Dan Doctoroff, Amanda Burden, curators Roselee Goldberg and Paola Antonelli, and architects Charles Renfro and Vishaan Chakrabarti.

AI Helps UK Researchers Identify Unknown Subject in Hans Holbein Drawing as Anne Boleyn

Researchers Karen L. Davies and Hassan Ugail used artificial intelligence facial recognition to analyze two Hans Holbein drawings from the Royal Collection Trust. Their study, published in npj Heritage Science, suggests that a portrait previously labeled as Anne Boleyn actually depicts her mother, Elizabeth Howard, while a drawing cataloged as an unidentified woman is the true likeness of Anne Boleyn. The findings challenge long-held identifications based on 18th-century inscriptions and align more closely with contemporary descriptions of Boleyn as slender with dark hair.

A.I. Identifies Holbein Drawing as Possible Portrait of Anne Boleyn

Researchers at the University of Bradford have used artificial intelligence to analyze preparatory drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. The AI model, which previously identified a forgotten Raphael painting, suggests that a drawing long believed to depict Anne Boleyn actually shows her mother, Elizabeth Howard, while another drawing labeled "Unidentified Woman" likely portrays Anne Boleyn herself. The findings, published in Heritage Science, are based on biometric analysis of facial features, bone architecture, and proportional relationships, offering quantifiable evidence to resolve long-standing scholarly uncertainty about the sitters' identities.

A Truck Driver Spent 20 Years Building a Miniature Model of New York City. Then, It Went Viral

A truck driver named Joe Macken spent 21 years building a massive, 50-by-27-foot miniature model of New York City from humble materials like balsa wood and cardboard. His daughter's suggestion to post it on TikTok led to the project going viral, which subsequently caught the attention of the Museum of the City of New York. The museum has now mounted a dedicated exhibition, "He Built This City: Joe Macken's Model," featuring the sprawling 1:2400-scale creation.

Palace of Holyroodhouse to Open Queen Elizabeth's Private Apartments for Limited Tour

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The Royal Collection Trust has announced that Queen Elizabeth II’s private apartments at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh will open to the public for the first time. This limited 100-day engagement, running from May 21 to September 10, commemorates what would have been the late monarch’s 100th birthday. Visitors will gain access to the Breakfast Room, Dressing Room, and Sitting Room, which feature a mix of historic Flemish tapestries, Qing dynasty decorative arts, and personal clothing ensembles.

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Marie Antoinette, the final queen of France, is the subject of a blockbuster exhibition titled "Marie Antoinette Style" at London's V&A museum, running through March 22. The show highlights her boldly modern taste, her patronage of women artists like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Anne Vallayer-Coster, and her role as the first French queen to own and redecorate her own palace, the Petit Trianon. The article details how she used her influence to secure Vigée Le Brun's admission to the Académie Royale and pressured the Louvre to exhibit Vallayer-Coster's work, while also exploring how her extravagant spending earned her the epithet "Madame Déficit" and contributed to her downfall during the French Revolution.

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Pieter Brueghel the Younger's painting *The Census at Bethlehem* sold for £5.2 million ($6.9 million) at Sotheby’s Old Master and 19th Century Paintings evening auction in London on December 3, exceeding its £3 million low estimate. The unsigned, undated oil-on-panel work, kept in the same collection for nearly 40 years, was the third-highest seller of the night. The auction overall achieved £30.7 million ($40.5 million), led by Rembrandt's *Saint John on Patmos* at £6.8 million, and Sotheby’s reported a nearly 50% increase in its Old Masters division sales this year.

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A new biography by art historian Elizabeth Goldring, titled "Holbein: Renaissance Master," traces the journey of German painter Hans Holbein the Younger from his humble beginnings in Augsburg to becoming the official painter of King Henry VIII in Tudor England. The book, already released in the U.K. and hitting U.S. bookshops on January 6, examines how Holbein's portraits—including the iconic image of Henry VIII and rival courtiers Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell—defined the visual legacy of the Tudor dynasty. Goldring highlights Holbein's ability to confer power through paint, with his works still shaping global perceptions of the Tudors centuries later.

taylor swift fate of ophelia painting john everett millais 1234755283

Taylor Swift's new album 'The Life of a Showgirl' includes a song titled 'The Fate of Ophelia,' which references the tragic character from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.' The article draws a parallel between Swift's song and John Everett Millais's Pre-Raphaelite painting 'Ophelia' (1851–52), which depicts the character before her death. The Tate, which owns the painting, posted about the work to discuss the death of its model, Elizabeth Siddal, in 1862. Swift's album cover, showing her floating in water, has been compared to the Millais painting, but the song reimagines Ophelia's narrative with a happy ending tied to her relationship with Travis Kelce.

haitian museum police rescue artworks from gangs 2669538

Haitian police conducted a two-day armed operation to evacuate thousands of artworks and documents from the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, as gangs tightened control over the capital. The museum, founded in 1944 and housing works by artists such as Hector Hyppolite, Georges Liautaud, and Philomé Obin, had been forced to suspend operations in February after gang members stole solar panels and a generator. Under gunfire, authorities used armored vehicles to clear barricaded streets and removed an estimated 6,000 artworks and 3,600 documents to safety.

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A rediscovered Baroque painting by 17th-century Neapolitan artist Diana de Rosa, titled *Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist*, sold for £317,500 ($436,086) at Sotheby’s Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings sale in London on July 2, more than quadrupling its high estimate. The work, previously unknown to scholars, set a new auction record for the artist and was described by Sotheby’s specialist Elisabeth Lobkowicz as a powerful image comparable to Caravaggio’s treatment of the same subject.

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Louise Bonnet, a Los Angeles-based painter known for her cartoonish yet sophisticated depictions of the female nude, discusses her latest work ahead of two major exhibitions. Her two-person show with Elizabeth King, titled "De Anima," opens at the Swiss Institute in New York, focusing on shared approaches to figuration that balance objecthood and liveliness. Bonnet also created a new series for the next edition of the SITE Santa Fe International biennial, opening in June. In an interview with ARTnews editor Emily Watlington, Bonnet explains her shift to tighter cropped compositions emphasizing routine gestures like tying shoelaces or fastening bras, inspired by World War II British spies and films like Rosemary's Baby.

mellon foundation state arts councils emergency grants 2638071

The Mellon Foundation is providing $15 million in emergency grants to the Federation of State Humanities Councils, which will distribute the funds to all 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils across the U.S. This comes after the Trump administration revoked $65 million in grants promised by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), redirected to the National Garden of American Heroes. The administration also terminated over 1,000 NEH grants and placed about 80 percent of NEH staff on paid administrative leave following a visit from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Many state councils now face potential closure or severe program cuts.

Mystery sitter in Holbein portrait could be Anne Boleyn, AI analysis finds

Researchers using AI have analyzed two Renaissance sketches by Hans Holbein from the Royal Collection, known as the Windsor sketch and the Unidentified Woman. The AI model, developed by Professor Hassan Ugail at the University of Bradford, compared the entire Holbein corpus and found that the Unidentified Woman may actually be Anne Boleyn, while the Windsor sketch—long thought to depict Boleyn—may instead show her mother, Elizabeth Howard. The study suggests the works were incorrectly inscribed in the 1700s, leading to centuries of misidentification.

art auction new york record breaking

Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer* (1914-16) sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby's on November 18, becoming the second-most expensive painting ever sold at auction and the most expensive work ever sold by the house. The sale was part of New York's marquee November auctions, which generated over $2 billion in a single week—more than 50 percent above last year's total—driven by high-profile estates including that of cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder. Other notable sales included Mark Rothko's *No. 31 (Yellow Stripe)* for $62.2 million at Christie's, Marc Chagall's *Le songe du Roi David* for $26.5 million, and Frida Kahlo's *El sueño (La cama)* for $55 million, setting a new record for the artist and the highest sum for a work by a female artist at auction. Phillips also sold a juvenile Triceratops skeleton named CERA for $5.4 million.

art robert rauschenberg centennial

Robert Rauschenberg's centenary is being celebrated with a sprawling, interdisciplinary series of events that began this fall and will continue into 2026. At least eight major institutional exhibitions of his work are mounted worldwide, alongside a book of his writings published by Yale University Press and a national tour by the Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Trust featuring Rauschenberg's sets and costumes. Cultured magazine invited artists across disciplines to reflect on his legacy, with contributions from Jeff Koons and RJ Messineo, among others.

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J. Hoberman's new book, *Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop*, offers a sweeping cultural history of the downtown New York scene in the 1960s. The book centers on figures like Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Jack Smith, weaving together experimental films, happenings, music, and the chaotic energy of the era. Hoberman, a longtime critic and curator, draws on his personal connections to the scene, including his mentorship under Mekas, and will present a selection of shorts from the book at Anthology Film Archives in June.

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An exhibition titled “How Quantel’s Paintbox Changed Our World” at the Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre in Leicester, U.K., showcases 20 long-lost digital artworks made with the Quantel Paintbox, a pioneering 1980s computer graphics machine. The works, created by artists including David Hockney, Keith Haring, Larry Rivers, and Jennifer Bartlett, were tracked down by graffiti artist and photographer Adrian Wilson, an early Paintbox user. The exhibition is organized by the Computer Arts Society and marks the first public display of these pieces.

Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams will co-chair 2026 Met Gala

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has announced the co-chairs for the 2026 Met Gala, scheduled for May 4, 2026. Pop superstar Beyoncé, actor Nicole Kidman, tennis legend Venus Williams, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour will serve as co-chairs of the annual benefit. The host committee includes fashion designer Anthony Vaccarello, actor Zoë Kravitz, and a roster of celebrities and artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, and artist Anna Weyant. The gala will support the Costume Institute's exhibition "Costume Art" (May 10, 2026–January 10, 2027), which will inaugurate the new Condé M. Nast Galleries. The exhibition pairs 200 artworks from the Met's collection with 200 garments, exploring the relationship between the dressed body and Western art. Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Jeff Bezos are sponsoring the event.

In major auction night, rare Klimt painting smashes records at $236.4 million

Sotheby's held its first sale at its new US headquarters in New York, where Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" sold for $236.4 million, becoming the most valuable work of modern art ever sold at auction and the most expensive artwork ever sold by Sotheby's globally. The record-breaking 20-minute bidding war also saw strong results for works by Edvard Munch ($35.1 million) and a Klimt landscape ($86 million), while the evening's total reached $706 million. However, two top lots by Kerry James Marshall and Barkley L. Hendricks failed to sell, and Maurizio Cattelan's gold toilet "America" drew only a single bid from Ripley's Believe It or Not! for $12.1 million.

The Guardian view on the legacy of the Festival of Britain: look to the future | Editorial

The Guardian editorial reflects on the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, launched by King George VI on 3 May 1951 as a "tonic" for a war-weary nation. It highlights the festival's most enduring legacy: the construction of the South Bank, including the Royal Festival Hall, which later became the Southbank Centre—the UK's largest arts complex. This summer, commemorations include poems from London schoolchildren projected onto its walls and a mobile poetry library visiting coastal towns, recreating the journey of the repurposed naval ship Campania. The festival, a triumph for the Labour government, faced critics like Evelyn Waugh and Noël Coward, and much of its physical infrastructure was demolished by the incoming Conservative government, save for the Royal Festival Hall.

art fashion camille henrot collina strada interview

Camille Henrot and Hillary Taymour, wearing Collina Strada, are featured in a Cultured magazine interview marking the reopening of the New Museum on March 21, 2026, after a 60,000-square-foot expansion by OMA. The conversation is part of a series pairing three artists from the inaugural exhibition "New Humans: Memories of the Future" with three downtown fashion designers. Henrot discusses her New York origin story, her film *In the Veins* premiering in the show, and her upcoming play *Commedia dell’Arte* at the Aspen Art Museum’s AIR Festival, while Taymour recounts moving from Los Angeles to New York in 2010 to pursue fashion design.