Saudi Arabia's Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and the Centre Pompidou have revealed new details about the planned AlUla Contemporary Art Museum, designed by architect Lina Ghotmeh. The announcement was made at the opening of the "Arduna" exhibition, a collaborative preview show featuring over 80 works by regional and international artists.
Sotheby’s held its annual modern and contemporary art sale in Singapore on Sunday, achieving $13.1 million across 62 lots with a 94% sell-through rate. The top lot was Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres’s *Weavers* (1953) at $1.2 million, followed by Takashi Murakami’s *Blue Signals* (2017) at $1.06 million. New artist records were set for Pacita Abad, whose *Assaulting the eye with Ecstasy* (1984) sold for $389,400, and Singaporean artist Anthony Poon, whose *Colour Waves* (1986) fetched $129,800. Bidders came from Southeast Asia, the US, the UAE, Europe, South Korea, Japan, India, and China.
Hong Kong's M+ museum has selected Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander's hand-painted animated film *3 to 12 Nautical Miles* (2026) for its latest M+ Facade commission, a massive LED media screen. Co-commissioned by M+ and Art Basel, the work will screen from March 23 through June 21. The animation explores entangled histories of empire and commerce, linking Imperial Britain, the Indian subcontinent, and Qing China, and chronicles the Mughal Empire's decline, the East India Company's rise, and the First Opium War.
New York University has appointed Alison Weaver as the next director of its Grey Art Museum, effective May 26. Weaver, who has served as founding executive director of the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University since 2015, succeeds Lynn Gumpert, who retired last year after leading the museum since 1997. At Rice, Weaver oversaw the completion of a new building for the Moody Center, launched an artist-in-residence program, curated over 25 exhibitions, and expanded the university's art holdings. She previously taught art history at the City University of New York and served as director of affiliate museums at the Guggenheim Museum, overseeing its outposts in Bilbao, Venice, Berlin, and Las Vegas.
Jermaine Jackson has announced plans to launch a touring museum dedicated to Michael Jackson's visual art, debuting in Monaco toward the end of 2026 as part of a biennial. The museum, described as a "Showseum," will open with a 120-work exhibition of Jackson's paintings, including collaborations with Andy Warhol and portraits of US presidents. The collection of 200 works, reportedly worth $1.6 billion, has been stored in a secure facility in Washington, D.C., and is not for sale.
Swatch has announced a new collaboration with the Guggenheim, releasing a collection of watches featuring artworks from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The collection includes designs based on works by Edgar Degas, Paul Klee, Claude Monet, and Jackson Pollock, and is part of Swatch's ongoing Art Journey series, which has previously partnered with institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The Diriyah Biennale Foundation has announced the artist list for the third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, opening January 30 in the JAX District of Diriyah, near Riyadh. Titled “In Interludes and Transitions,” the biennale is curated by Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed and features over 65 artists, including more than 20 new commissions. Participants range from historic figures like Pacita Abad and Etel Adnan to emerging voices such as Raven Chacon and Dineo Seshee Bopape, working across painting, installation, film, sound, architecture, and publishing.
Jacqueline Humphries's survey exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum features her painting installation "TSLA" (2025), a five-panel work hung on bare metal studs that bisects the gallery space. The installation plays with perception through mirrors and anamorphic imagery, including a distorted Tesla logo, and includes a hidden set of red paintings visible only as reflections. The show also presents nine smaller works generated in part by artificial intelligence, housed in a green-walled adjacent room.
The Flemish government's plan to dissolve M HKA, a contemporary art institution in Antwerp, has been met with legal opposition after the museum initiated a legal review that claims the move would be illegal. The review, presented to the press on Tuesday with artists Luc Tuymans and Otobong Nkanga in attendance, argues that the government's proposal—which would close M HKA, transfer its collection to Ghent, and rebrand S.M.A.K. as the Flemish Museum of Contemporary and Current Art by 2028—contains "flagrant illegalities." The plan has drawn widespread condemnation from museum directors and artists, including Anish Kapoor, who demanded the removal of his work from M HKA's website.
British museums are increasingly turning to citizens' assemblies to guide policy, priorities, and funding decisions, with the National Gallery launching its NG Citizens panel following similar initiatives at Birmingham Museums Trust, the Imperial War Museum, and the Migration Museum. Separately, Donald Trump hosted a New Year's Eve gala at Mar-a-Lago where a live-painted portrait of Jesus Christ by artist Vanessa Horabuena sold for $2.75 million, with proceeds split between St. Jude's Children's Hospital and the local sheriff's department. The article also reports a £30 million donation to the Royal Academy of Music's museum, the discovery of a 9,500-year-old cremation pyre in Malawi, a list of major 2026 exhibitions, the death of artist Janet Fish, and research by Daisy Fancourt linking arts engagement to better health outcomes.
The Barbican Centre in London will close for one year starting in June 2028 as part of a five-year "Barbican Renewal Programme" to renovate its three gallery spaces and other infrastructure. The City of London Corporation has committed £191 million (about $255.8 million) toward the £240 million ($321.3 million) project, with the remainder to be raised through a fundraising campaign. During the closure, the Barbican plans to collaborate with partners and present programming beyond its walls.
The article reflects on the responsibility of critical art writing in the Southeast, sparked by the announcement that Art Papers, an international art magazine based in Atlanta, will sunset in 2026 after 50 years. The author recounts a debate among local art workers about reviewing the forthcoming Minnie Evans retrospective organized by the High Museum of Art and traveling to the Whitney Museum, which he initially declined due to a conflict of interest with curator Katherine Jentleson. He ultimately agrees to write, emphasizing the need for Black scholars to engage with self-taught Black artists. The piece examines how Evans's narrative has been mediated through the lens of white photographer and art historian Nina Howell Starr, questioning the power dynamics and what remains unknown about Evans's own agency.
The Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) has acquired the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed property Fountainhead in Jackson, Mississippi, following approval from the Jackson Planning and Zoning Board and City Council. Originally designed in 1948 and completed in 1954 for oil speculator J. Willis Hughes, the 3,558-square-foot Usonian home was later restored by architect Robert Parker Adams and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980. The museum plans to open the home for public tours, with bus transportation from its main campus, and to establish community partnerships.
In a podcast interview with Louis Theroux, Marina Abramović revealed that curator Klaus Biesenbach was initially skeptical of her landmark 2010 performance "The Artist Is Present" at MoMA. Biesenbach, then chief curator at large at the Museum of Modern Art, had invited Abramović for the institution's first performance art retrospective, proposing the title "The Artist Is Present." When Abramović suggested sitting silently in the museum's atrium every day for three months, Biesenbach reportedly called the idea "ridiculous," predicting no one would participate. Despite his doubts, the performance drew some 1,500 visitors, with one person sitting for an entire day, and became a defining moment in 21st-century art.
Ed Ruscha has collaborated with Los Angeles-based boutique chocolatier andSons to create a limited-edition chocolate bar. The bar is molded to resemble California's Central Valley topography and contains Peruvian dark chocolate, sea salt from Tomales Bay, and blood orange olive oil from Sonoma County. Packaged in an orange box with a reproduction of Ruscha's 1971 lithograph *Made in California*, only 300 bars will be produced, priced at $295 each, available starting early December 2025.
London's Victoria and Albert Museum has announced that its new branch, V&A East Museum, will open to the public on April 18, 2026. The five-story building, designed by Irish architecture firm O'Donnell + Tuomey, is located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and will feature exhibitions, live events, site-specific commissions, and performances. The V&A East Storehouse, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, opened earlier this year and offers free behind-the-scenes access to over half a million objects and books from the V&A's collections. Artists Tania Bruguera, Carrie Mae Weems, Rene Matić, and Thomas J. Price have been commissioned to create new works for the museum.
Matthew Day Jackson, a multidisciplinary artist represented by Pace Gallery, has created 10 original artworks for a 23-piece luxury skiwear collection from Aztech Mountain, a ski brand based in Aspen, Colorado. Titled "Planet Aspen," the line includes ski jackets, pants, and innerwear adorned with Jackson's designs, with prices ranging from $101 to $1,850. Jackson, described as a passionate skier and adventurer, collaborated with Aztech Mountain on its first artist partnership, drawing inspiration from the quiet absurdity and fleeting joy of skiing.
Gagosian became the first exhibitor at Frieze London to announce a complete sellout of its booth, featuring a solo presentation of works by Los Angeles artist Lauren Halsey. The booth included pieces from Halsey's 2025 untitled series of polymer-modified gypsum and stain on wood, as well as a six-foot-tall plaza sign sculpture titled 'LODA PLAZA (2025)'. Gagosian director Antwaun Sargent confirmed that the works were placed with both institutions and serious long-term collectors in the U.S. and Europe.
Taylor Swift's music video for her song 'The Fate of Ophelia' has been found to closely reference Friedrich Heyser's painting 'Ophelia' (ca. 1900), held at the Wiesbaden State Museum in Hamburg. Swifties have flocked to the museum by the hundreds to see the Art Nouveau work, surprising and delighting museum director Andreas Henning. Separately, a street mural reading 'Black Artists Matter' and a rainbow crosswalk in Austin, Texas, face removal under President Trump's directive against DEI initiatives, as ordered by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In other news, Art Basel has renamed its VIP section to 'collector and institutional relations,' five stolen 18th-century snuffboxes have been recovered from the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris, and Chiara Camoni will represent Italy at the upcoming Venice Biennale.
The Louvre in Paris is staging a major retrospective of Jacques-Louis David, featuring 100 works by the French Neoclassical painter, to mark the bicentenary of his death in 1825. The exhibition opens October 15 and runs through January, drawing on the Louvre's own collection and prestigious loans from institutions including the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Curator Sébastien Allard emphasizes that the show is not a conventional blockbuster but aims to explore under-examined aspects of David's practice, particularly his political engagement across the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Empire.
Solange has launched the Saint Heron Community Library, a new initiative making rare and out-of-print art books available to the public for free borrowing. The digital library, run through her Saint Heron platform, includes exhibition catalogs for artists such as Barbara Chase-Riboud, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Martin Puryear, Gary Simmons, and Pope.L, as well as texts like Cedric Dover's 1960 book *American Negro Art*. Books are loaned for 45 days, though most are already checked out. The collection also features works by Black thinkers and writers including Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, Octavia Butler, and Wanda Coleman.
Maurizio Cattelan has partnered with the online art platform Avant Arte for a project centered on a new sculptural self-portrait titled *We Are The Revolution* (2025), which references Joseph Beuys's felt suit. The work lampoons the self-importance of contemporary art while reflecting on the artist's evolving role. Limited to 1,000 resin editions priced at €1,500 each, the release involves a randomized draw and a scavenger hunt in New York, Amsterdam, and London, where sculptures will be hidden in market stalls, bodegas, and an antiques dealership from September 30 to October 7. Prices range from $0.99 to €9,999 depending on location.
American artists Jennifer Packer and Marie Watt have been named winners of this year's Heinz Awards for the Arts, each receiving an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000. The awards, now in their 30th year, are distributed by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation and honor six recipients annually across three categories: arts, the economy, and the environment. Packer, based in New York, is known for her jewel-toned paintings that explore Black figuration and abstraction, while Watt, a citizen of the Seneca Nation, works with printmaking, textiles, and sculpture to examine Indigenous traditions and community memory, notably through her "Blanket Stories" series.
The article reports on several art world developments: US museums are making progress on Spanish-language translation efforts despite broader challenges like declining attendance and funding. The Harvard Art Museums have acquired Heinz Mack's Light-Relief (1960), a gift from the Mack Foundation. The Detroit Institute of Arts is opening its first major Native American art exhibition in over three decades, featuring 90 works by Anishinaabe artists. Ukrainian artist David Chichkan was killed fighting against Russia. Additionally, the Natural History Museum is displaying the Alien franchise egg prop in its space exhibition.
Tim Blum, co-founder of the influential Blum & Poe gallery, is stepping away from the traditional gallery model after more than 30 years. He told ARTnews that the decision was driven by burnout with the relentless cycle of art fairs, openings, and obligations, not by financial strain. His Tokyo and Los Angeles locations will close after summer exhibitions, and a planned New York space may not open as a conventional gallery. Blum will instead pursue a more flexible model involving special projects and collaborations, while continuing to buy and sell art personally.
Vancouver-based art collector Bob Rennie has donated 61 artworks valued at C$22.8 million ($16.8 million) to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The donation includes works by Ai Weiwei, Mona Hatoum, Dan Graham, and Rodney Graham, and the museum has named a space after the Rennie family, with plans for at least one more. In other news, the Orange County Museum of Art is exploring a merger with the University of California, Irvine, and its director Heidi Zickerman will step down in December. Critics are blasting a digital projection of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Wrapped Reichstag onto the German parliament, calling it an 'aesthetic outrage.' Additionally, Iván Argote's pigeon sculpture Dinosaur on the High Line Plinth inspired a Pigeon Fest in New York, and rare copies of Lincoln's 13th Amendment and Emancipation Proclamation are heading to auction at Sotheby's.
Adam Pendleton's exhibition "Love Queen" is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., through January 3, 2027. The show features his distinctive abstract works that blend mark-making, pictographs, and all-caps texts, including pieces from his "Untitled (Days)" series and "Black Dada" series, as well as a single-channel video titled "Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?)" that documents the 1968 Poor People's Campaign.
David Hammons has released a "post-exhibition catalogue" through Hauser & Wirth Publishers, six years after his 2019 survey at the gallery's Downtown Los Angeles location. The 12-by-12-inch, nearly 7-pound volume contains hundreds of images—installation shots, artwork reproductions, and ephemera—but no text whatsoever: no table of contents, essays, titles, dates, or page numbers. The book functions more as an artist's book than a traditional exhibition catalog, presenting Hammons's work in a raw, unapologetic sequence that resists scholarly interpretation.
Sebastião Salgado, the acclaimed Brazilian photographer known for his powerful black-and-white images documenting worker exploitation, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses, has died at age 81. His death was announced by Instituto Terra, the organization he co-founded with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado. Salgado had been in declining health since contracting malaria in the 1990s. His work spanned decades and continents, from the Sahel desert to the Amazon rainforest, and he was widely regarded as one of the most beloved photographers of his generation.
Pope Leo XIV, in his first general address, referenced Vincent van Gogh's 1888 painting *The Sower at Sunset* as a metaphor for faith and divine guidance. He noted that behind the sower, van Gogh painted the grain already ripe, interpreting the sun as the central figure of the biblical parable. The address highlighted the Pope's engagement with art as a means of spiritual reflection.