James Rondeau, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, has given his first detailed interview about a 2023 incident where he removed his clothes on a flight from Chicago to Munich after consuming alcohol and prescription medication. The event led to police involvement and a voluntary six-week leave before the museum's board reinstated him, expressing confidence in his leadership.
A long-lost portrait of Scottish poet Robert Burns by Sir Henry Raeburn has been rediscovered and is now on display at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. The painting was found at a London house sale last year, consigned to Wimbledon Auctions with a low estimate of £300–£500, but sold for £68,000 after intense bidding. It was purchased by Edinburgh-based art collector William Zachs, who had it restored and brought to Scotland, where experts confirmed it as an authentic Raeburn. The work is a copy Raeburn made in 1803 of a 1787 portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, commissioned by London publishers Cadell & Davies but lost shortly after completion.
Three Jewish groups issued an open letter to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a prominent German art school, calling for the cancellation of a lecture by Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma Al-Sharif, scheduled for January 21. The groups alleged, without providing proof, that Al-Sharif's past events and social media posts—including one referring to Israel as a "Zionist entity" and stating "The lie of #neveragain is over"—trivialized terrorism and constituted antisemitism. The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf declined to cancel the event, affirming its commitment to free dialogue and noting that Al-Sharif was invited based on her CV, while also condemning the Hamas terrorist attack as a grave crime.
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.
London's National Gallery has announced Project Domani, a nearly $1 billion initiative to collect 20th- and 21st-century art and build a new wing to house it. The institution has shortlisted six architectural firms—including Foster + Partners, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and Kengo Kuma and Associates—from 65 entrants in an international competition, with a winner to be announced in April. About half the funds have been raised, with major pledges from Crankstart, the Julia Rausing Trust, and the National Gallery Trust. The wing will be built on the last undeveloped portion of the campus at 30 Orange Street and is projected to open in the early 2030s.
The Musée du Louvre has acquired its first video work, *Les 4 temps (The 4 Seasons)*, created by Algeria-born artist Mohamed Bourouissa. The piece centers on the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, which connect the museum to the Place de la Concorde, and also references the 4 Temps mall in La Défense where Bourouissa grew up. The video will be on view in the Salle de la Chapelle from October 22, 2025, through January 19, 2026. The acquisition follows a year-long Instagram project in which Bourouissa posted weekly videos for the museum, garnering millions of views.
The Musée du Louvre has acquired its first video work, *Les 4 temps (The 4 Seasons)*, created by Algeria-born artist Mohamed Bourouissa. The piece centers on the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, which connect the museum to the Place de la Concorde, and also references the 4 Temps mall in La Défense where Bourouissa grew up. The video will be on view in the Salle de la Chapelle from October 22 through January 19, 2026. The acquisition follows a year-long Instagram project in which Bourouissa posted weekly videos of the gardens, garnering millions of views.
Cannupa Hanska Luger revealed on Instagram that he collaborated with the filmmakers of the horror film *Him*, directed by Justin Tipping and produced by Jordan Peele, to create a sports mascot named “Tinsel Larry.” The mascot appears in the film as the symbol of the fictional San Antonio Saviors team. Luger worked with lead costume designer Dominique Dawson to evolve the character from “Conquistador Larry” into a “razzle-dazzle rose gold glitter monster” that incorporates Indigenous references. The film follows a rising football player who joins his idol at an isolated training compound, where violent events explore the relationship between football, violence, and fame for Black athletes.
A Wade Guyton artwork (2007) that was forfeited by Inigo Philbrick's business partner Robert Newland failed to sell at a Sotheby's New York auction in late April 2025, carrying an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. The piece had previously sold for $208,000 in a U.S. Marshals Service auction at Gaston & Sheehan in Texas in August 2023, a steep decline from its $490,000 sale at Sotheby's in 2015. The artwork's provenance traces back to Modern Collections, London, the dealership founded by White Cube's Jay Jopling, where both Philbrick and Newland served as directors. A second Guyton (2018) forfeited by Philbrick himself sold for $215,100 at the same 2023 U.S. Marshals auction, representing a 65% drop from its 2018 Christie's Paris sale.
P. Staff's current exhibition at David Zwirner in New York transforms the gallery's Upper East Side townhouse into a haunting, body-centric experience. The show features a new video titled *Penetration* (2025), split across three floors, depicting a person with a laser beamed at their bare stomach, alongside sculptures with wood spikes under latex drapes and ambient sounds of a beating heart. The installation evokes a dread of having a body, with jaundiced yellow window films and disjointed sensory elements creating an uncomfortable, dysphoric atmosphere.
A painting discovered in an Argentine home in August, initially attributed to 18th-century Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi and believed to be Nazi-looted art, has been called into question. Paolo Plebani, curator of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy, told the Argentine newspaper Clarín that the work is actually by Giacomo Ceruti, another Northern Italian painter. The painting was previously owned by Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who fled the Nazis, and later by former Nazi Friedrich Kadgien, whose daughters Patricia and Alicia owned the Mar del Plata home where it was found. Argentine authorities recovered the painting after placing the daughters and Patricia's husband under house arrest.
Artnet News resurfaces an interview with painter Taína H. Cruz, who is featured in both the Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1's Greater New York exhibition. Cruz, born in 1998 and a recent MFA graduate from Yale School of Painting, creates moody paintings often depicting Black female figures, drawing on African American and Caribbean folklore, horror, fantasy, and personal imagery. The interview, conducted by Ben Davis, explores her influences and her response to the sudden surge of attention from major institutions.
The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a settlement with the American Library Association and the AFSCME union, effectively halting President Donald Trump’s executive attempt to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Following a series of legal defeats where courts ruled that only Congress has the authority to eliminate federal agencies, the administration withdrew its appeal and reinstated previously terminated grants. However, the threat remains as the proposed 2027 federal budget once again seeks to zero out funding for the IMLS, the NEA, and the NEH.
Edmonia Lewis’s monumental marble sculpture, 'The Death of Cleopatra', debuted to massive acclaim at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia before vanishing into a bizarre century-long obscurity. After failing to sell, the two-ton masterpiece transitioned from Chicago saloons to a racetrack—where it served as a grave marker for a horse—and eventually sat neglected at a shopping mall construction site, exposed to vandalism and the elements.
Critic and artist Aria Dean, known for her influential essays on digital culture and race, has staged a new theatrical work titled "The Color Scheme" as part of the Performa biennial. The piece imagines a 1920s meeting in Berlin between two Black intellectuals, marking a shift from her usual focus on contemporary online life to historical Black culture and politics. Dean's essays are collected in the recent book "Bad Infinity" from Sternberg Press, and her art has appeared in major exhibitions including the Hammer Museum's Made in L.A. Biennial and the Whitney Biennial.
The Philadelphia Art Museum has appointed Daniel Weiss, former CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as its new director, effective December 1. Weiss takes over amid a legal battle with recently ousted director Sasha Suda, who filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit after her November 4 dismissal. The museum has escalated its defense, alleging Suda misappropriated funds prior to her firing. Weiss, who previously restored fiscal stability at the Met, is expected to guide the institution through this tumultuous period, which also includes backlash over a controversial rebrand.
Museums and cultural institutions are participating in a viral social media trend where staff, often older guides or curators, deliver marketing scripts written entirely in Gen Z slang. The trend, which began with a video from England's Hever Castle in early September, has spread across TikTok and Instagram, with hundreds of organizations creating their own versions. Typical phrases include "no cap," "ate and left no crumbs," and "menty b," often accompanied by the "Millennial Pause" for comedic effect. The article highlights several examples, including the Poe Museum in Virginia and the New York Historical Society, and notes that the trend has expanded beyond the art world to include accountancy firms, donkey sanctuaries, and even the NYC Ferry.
A new study published in *Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts* by French researcher Temenuzhka Dimova uses eye-tracking technology to examine how pointing fingers in Old Master paintings affect viewer attention. Conducted through the University of Vienna’s Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA), the study compared participants' eye movements when viewing original paintings—such as Theodor Rombouts's *The Card Players*—and digitally altered versions where the pointing gestures were removed. Results showed that viewers focused more on the faces of pointing figures and the narrative context, not just the target of the gesture, and that removing the finger fundamentally changed how the story was perceived.
Clémentine Bruno’s artistic practice explores the tension between presence and absence, treating the canvas as a site of temporal layers rather than a flat surface for representation. Her work emphasizes the preparatory stages of painting—the laying of gesso and the construction of supports—allowing images to emerge reluctantly through processes of sanding, veiling, and partial erasure. Recent exhibitions, such as "Educational Complex" at Tonus and "Vision of Fading" at Mendes Wood DM, highlight her interest in how institutional structures and memory maps dictate what is retained and what is forgotten.
Christie's London will auction a major collection of Indian paintings and calligraphy from the Seattle-based collectors Mary and Cheney Cowles on April 28, with an estimated total exceeding £1.5 million. The sale is dominated by Mughal-era works from the 16th to 19th centuries, including a highlight piece from the Fraser Album estimated at £180,000, and features rare examples of "Mughal Occidentalism" where court artists incorporated European motifs.
Two previously unseen preliminary pencil sketches of Winnie-the-Pooh by illustrator E.H. Shepard have been revealed to the public for the first time. Shared by the artist’s family to mark the centenary of A.A. Milne’s classic stories, the drawings depict scenes from the "expotition" to the North Pole and the hunt for a "Woozle" that were never included in the final 1926 publication. These rare works are set to go on display at Peter Harrington Rare Books in London starting April 17.
Angelina Jolie's New York studio space, Atelier Jolie at 57 Great Jones Street, faces a legal challenge over its name. The pre-existing Atelier Jolie in Easton, Pennsylvania, established in 2021 by artist and curator Omnaia Jolie Abdou, has filed an opposition to Jolie's trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, arguing that the name is already used for art and design goods and services. Jolie's lawyers contend there is no competition between the two establishments, and settlement negotiations are ongoing.
Sotheby's will hold its second auction in Saudi Arabia, titled "Origins II," on January 31 in Diriyah, following its first auction in the kingdom in February 2024. The inaugural sale, also called "Origins," achieved $17.3 million within pre-sale estimates but had a 65.8% sell-through rate, with 40 of 117 lots unsold, particularly jewelry and handbags. The upcoming auction will focus exclusively on fine art, featuring over 70 works by international and Middle Eastern artists, including Anish Kapoor, Andy Warhol, Mohammed Al Saleem, Mahmoud Sabri, and Samia Halaby. The sale is scheduled just before the inaugural Art Basel Qatar.
The Brooklyn Museum has named photographer and multimedia artist Keisha Scarville the winner of its sixth annual UOVO Prize. She will receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant, a public exhibition titled "Where Salt Meets Black Water" at the museum's Iris Cantor Plaza opening May 8, and a commission for a large-scale work on the façade of UOVO's Bushwick storage facility.
Laura Phipps has been appointed director of the Gochman Family Collection, a private collection focused on contemporary Indigenous art. She joins from the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she was an associate curator, and will oversee the collection's strategic direction and the opening of its new 10,000-square-foot exhibition space in Katonah, New York this fall.
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has appointed Emerson Bowyer as its new chief curator, effective March 5. Bowyer joins from the Art Institute of Chicago, where he served as the Searle Curator and oversaw significant acquisitions, including works by William Holman Hunt and Camille Claudel.
The United States solidified its position as the world's leading art market in 2025, with fine-art auction sales rising 25.3 percent to reach $5.4 billion. Despite early volatility caused by trade tariffs, a surging stock market and cooling inflation fueled a massive November auction season in New York, where nine of the year's ten most expensive artworks were sold. In contrast, China's market contracted by nearly 11 percent due to a persistent property crisis, while the United Kingdom and France saw significant growth, with Paris benefiting from the momentum of Art Basel Paris.
ArtVerse Advisory, a London-based B2B firm, has launched a suite of services designed to help galleries and art advisors overcome capital constraints and inventory limitations. Founded by CEO Amit Mehra, the company provides professional intermediaries with access to a curated selection of primary and secondary market works—ranging from blue-chip artists like Andy Warhol to rising stars like Raghav Babbar—through flexible deal structures such as consignments and personalized payment plans.
Tobias Berger, a veteran curator who held senior roles at Hong Kong’s M+ and Tai Kwun, has transitioned from the public sector to lead two new private initiatives: Serakai Studio and the Tanoto Art Foundation. Ahead of Art Basel Hong Kong, Berger is launching "Gold," an experimental salon space in Wong Chuk Hang that merges contemporary art with design and fashion. These roles mark a shift toward agile, privately funded cultural models that prioritize regional focus and experimental programming over the bureaucratic structures of large public museums.
Boston's Midtown Hotel has sparked outrage after decorating its newly renovated space with AI-generated artwork that mimics Andy Warhol's style to depict local celebrities like David Ortiz and Barbara Walters. Guest Alex Steed publicly criticized the hotel on social media, noting the art's uncanny valley quality and the placard proudly stating the works were entirely created by artificial intelligence. The complaint went viral, drawing thousands of views and comments condemning the hotel for choosing AI over hiring local artists in a city known for its art schools and museums.