Rare Early Basquiat Works Return to Brooklyn After HBCU Tour

An intimate collection of early Jean-Michel Basquiat works and ephemera, titled "Our Friend, Jean," is returning to Brooklyn's The Bishop Gallery starting May 16, 2026. The exhibition draws primarily from the archive of Alexis Adler, Basquiat's former roommate and partner from 1979–80, and includes paintings on sweatshirts, postcards, writings, and photographs Adler took of the artist. Originally presented in 2019, the show traveled to six historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) between 2022 and 2024, attracting 10,000 visitors and involving students in the installation process.

Beverly Buchanan’s Architecture of Care

Beverly Buchanan’s Architecture of Care

A major retrospective and a focused exhibition of artist Beverly Buchanan's work are now on view in Athens, Georgia, where she lived for many years. "Shacks, Stories, and Spirit: Beverly Buchanan’s Art of Home" at the Georgia Museum of Art features her canonical "Medicine Woman" sculpture, while "Beverly’s Athens" at the University of Georgia’s Athenaeum presents a rich archive of her ephemera, sketches, and community-focused works, marking the city's first institutional solo exhibitions of her art posthumously.

Pat Steir, known for her colorful, cascading “Waterfall” paintings, dies at 87.

Pat Steir, the influential abstract painter celebrated for her large-scale "Waterfall" works created by pouring paint down the canvas, has died at the age of 87. Her death was confirmed by family and her gallery, Hauser & Wirth.

No Need to Shed a Tear for the Jury

"Man muss der Jury keine Träne nachweinen"

The entire jury of the Venice Biennale resigned shortly before the opening, prompting criticism of Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli accused Buttafuoco of pursuing a misguided "pacificist fantasy" by readmitting Russia to the six-month exhibition, calling it failed "side foreign policy." Commentators in German media, including Niklas Maak (FAZ) and Marcus Woeller (Die Welt), see the resignation as a symptom of a crisis in the art world, with the jury having acted as a "political tribunal" by pre-judging artists based on nationality, particularly regarding Israel. The Biennale leadership defended inclusion, but the standoff has caused significant "image damage." Separately, Dirk Knipphals (wochentaz) delivers a scathing review of Wolfram Weimer's first year as cultural policy commissioner, accusing him of empty rhetoric and failing to counter right-wing cultural politics. Juliane von Mittelstaedt (Der Spiegel) reports on Saudi Arabia's use of a spectacular new art museum in Riyadh as a stability narrative amid regional conflict.

At the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp a major exhibition on Antony Gormley, with more than one hundred works

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) is hosting a major exhibition titled "Geestgrond" dedicated to British sculptor Antony Gormley, running from May 23 to September 20, 2026. Curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the show features over 100 works made from diverse materials including clay, stone, wood, glass, bread, iron, lead, and steel. The exhibition places Gormley's sculptures in dialogue with the museum's historical collection, spanning from a 14th-century Flemish Crucifixion to works by James Ensor, Auguste Rodin, and Julio González. It also extends beyond the museum walls into the streets of Antwerp and along the Scheldt River, with works from the Domain and Weave Works series appearing in urban spaces.

The Angel of History Is Stuck in Jerusalem

The Jewish Museum in New York's exhibition 'Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds' is missing its central artwork, Paul Klee's 'Angelus Novus' (1920). The original, owned by Walter Benjamin and normally housed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, is absent due to "current conditions affecting international transport," a likely reference to the Israel-Hamas war. A reproduction stands in its place, alongside Benjamin's famous 'Angel of History' text, which interprets the angel as a figure witnessing the catastrophic pile-up of history.

Remembering F. John Sierra, Valie Export, and Mary Lovelace O’Neal

This week's In Memoriam column honors seven figures from the art world who recently passed away, including muralist and Chicano art champion F. John Sierra (1942–2026), Austrian feminist performance and film artist Valie Export (1940–2026), and painter and Civil Rights activist Mary Lovelace O'Neal (1942–2026). Also remembered are Maltese coin and monument designer Noel Galea Bason (1955–2026), Iranian-Irish gallerist and polymath Jamshid MirFenderesky (1947–2026), Philadelphia painter and educator Peter Paone (1936–2026), and Italian sculptor and installation artist Remo Salvadori (1947–2026). Each entry highlights their key contributions, from founding institutions and participating in major biennials to shaping cultural identity and challenging societal norms through art.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Painter and Civil Rights Luminary, Dies at 84

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, a painter, educator, and Civil Rights activist, died on May 10 at age 84 in Mérida, Mexico. Known for her monumental canvases and inventive “lampblack” works, she moved fluidly between abstraction and figuration, using layers of black pigment to assert Blackness and presence. Her career included studies at Howard University and Columbia University, activism with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and connections to the Black Arts Movement.

arsmonitor florin mitroi

Bucharest-based gallery Arsmonitor is presenting the second installment of a four-part curatorial program dedicated to Romanian artist Florin Mitroi (1938–2002). Titled "Florin Mitroi: Ch.II: Autumn," the exhibition is curated by Erwin Kessler and is anchored by the recent rediscovery of over 600 previously unseen works—files, notebooks, drawings, and pieces on wood and metal—that had been forgotten in storage for nearly two decades. The show frames these recovered materials as foundational, expanding the known oeuvre of an artist who exhibited only a small fraction of his production and later regretted even those works. The program, structured around the four seasons, includes chapters titled "Winter," "Autumn," "Summer" (planned for 2027), and "Spring," aligning with the season of Mitroi's death.

jackie amezquita bricks new talent

Jackie Amézquita, a Los Angeles-based artist originally from Guatemala, has developed a unique brick-making process using soil and masa de maíz (corn dough) mixed with organic materials like blue pea flower, cocoa, cochineal, and charcoal to create vibrant, colorful bricks. Her work, including the 2023 installation *El suelo que nos alimenta* commissioned by the Hammer Museum for the Made in L.A. biennial, uses soil from each of LA's neighborhoods to explore themes of migration, memory, and colonial legacies. Amézquita's practice is deeply personal, drawing on her family's migration history—her mother moved from Guatemala in 1987, and her grandmother fled Mexico during the Cristero War—and her own eight-day walk from Tijuana to LA, during which she collected soil samples as an archive of memory.

untitled art houston 2025 exhibitor list

Untitled Art has announced the 84 exhibitors for its inaugural Houston edition, taking place September 19–21, 2025, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, with a preview day on September 18. The fair, which has run in Miami Beach for 12 years, expands to Houston citing the city's $1.3 billion arts-related spending in 2022, making it the largest art market in Texas. The exhibitor list includes 17 Texas-based galleries (about 20% of participants), leading US galleries from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York, and international dealers from Canada, Spain, the UK, Peru, the Bahamas, and Latvia. A Nest section offers reduced booth prices for 20 galleries, and the fair will collaborate with Houston institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Menil Collection for special projects.

art cynthia hawkins painter black abstraction

Cynthia Hawkins, a 76-year-old Black abstract painter, discusses her latest work and career in an interview with Cultured. She describes her ongoing "Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D" series, which began in 1979, and her current exploration of a new iteration called "Fielding Space" or "Maps Fielding Space." Hawkins will be featured in the upcoming "Hard Art" exhibition at MoMA PS1 opening November 5, which places her work alongside over 40 other Black abstract artists including Sam Gilliam and Carolyn Lazard. She reflects on her early art experiences, from learning to draw Mickey Mouse with her father to rejecting paint-by-numbers, and her enduring fascination with color, particularly orange and yellow.

parties miami art week social playbook fashion culture nightlife

Cultured's 'Parties Miami Art Week Social Playbook' provides a curated guide to the social and cultural events surrounding Miami Art Week 2024. It lists key art fairs including NADA (Dec. 2-6), Untitled Art (Dec. 3-7), Satellite Art Show (Dec. 4-7), and the Open Invitational (Dec. 1-6), alongside parties, fashion collaborations, and talks. Highlights include a Jimmy Choo installation with Harry Nuriev, a fireside chat with ECOLOGIES moderated by Julia Halperin, and a celebration at MOCA North Miami featuring artists Hiba Schahbaz, Diana Eusebio, and Magnus Sodamin.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Abstract Painter Who Refused to Conform, Dies at 84

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, an abstract painter known for her gestural, unruly works that defied categorization, died on Sunday in Mérida, Mexico, at age 84. Her galleries, Jenkins Johnson and Marianne Boesky, announced her passing. O’Neal produced sprawling paintings characterized by tangles of drippy strokes, often using lamp black pigment to create intensely black canvases. She rejected labels like Abstract Expressionist or Minimalist, insisting she was simply a painter. Her series "Whales Fucking" (1979) and a 2020 exhibition at Mnuchin Gallery revived her profile, leading to inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial.

Tiny Cranach Painting That Vanished During WWII Returns to Dresden

A miniature portrait of Friedrich III (Frederick the Wise) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, missing since World War II, has been returned to the State Art Collections of Dresden, Germany. The painting was last documented in May 1945 in a limestone quarry shelter near Pockau-Lengefeld before vanishing. It resurfaced in 2024 when consigned to Parisian auction house Artcurial, whose provenance investigation revealed a matching inventory number from 1722–1728. The Dreyfus family in France, the modern owners, returned the work after negotiations and a financial agreement. It is now on view at the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Palace in a special exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Friedrich III's death, and will later be permanently displayed in the Semper Gallery.

Artist Mel Kendrick Is Mining New Possibilities From Wood and Color

American artist Mel Kendrick, who began his career in the early 1970s integrating Minimalism and architecture, presents his ninth solo exhibition at David Nolan Gallery in New York. Titled “Mel Kendrick: Tilt,” the show runs through June 6, 2026, and features new and recent wood sculptures alongside older works, including pieces like *Walnut Shelf* (2026), *Gemstone* (2026), and *Yellow Drum* (2025). Kendrick works without pre-planning, allowing the material to guide his process, and treats color as a material with its own weight, inspired by Gothic and medieval architecture.

José Dávila Makes Space the Subject in His New York Show

José Dávila's solo exhibition "The Simple Act of Positioning" opens at Sean Kelly gallery in New York, featuring sculptures that explore the relational placement of objects in space. The show includes totemic pillars of steel, concrete, volcanic rock, and automotive paint, framed by large black structures, inviting viewers to move through the gallery to fully experience the visual conversations between works. Dávila, originally from Guadalajara and trained in architecture, draws on Modernist precedents from artists like Marcel Duchamp and architects like Luis Barragán.

Ghosts, nudes and lesbian pageant queens: highlights from NYC’s Photography Show – in pictures

Aipad: The Photography Show is taking place at the Park Avenue Armory in New York from April 22-26, 2026, featuring works from over 70 galleries. The exhibition highlights include Bill Brandt's 1952 nude, Rania Matar's portrait of a young woman in Lebanon, and Zanele Muholi's 2009 portrait of a lesbian pageant queen, alongside works by Tania Franco Klein, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, and others that explore themes of identity, anxiety, and alternative realities.

The Big Ideas Driving Art Paris This Year

Art Paris 2026 will take place from April 9–12 at the Grand Palais, featuring two major curated themes: "Babel – Art and Language in France," guest-curated by Loïc Le Gall, and "Reparation," curated by Alexia Fabre. The fair will include roughly 165 galleries, with sectors like Promises for emerging artists, Solo Show for monographic presentations, and French Design Art Edition.

mnuchin gallery to close after death of founder in december

Mnuchin Gallery, a prominent Upper East Side gallery founded by former Goldman Sachs executive Robert Mnuchin, will permanently close at the end of February. The closure follows the death of its founder in December 2025, with the gallery stating its program was an expression of his singular vision.

jeffrey deitch miles greenberg apology lexa gates wheel

New York’s Jeffrey Deitch gallery apologized to artist Miles Greenberg after rapper Lexa Gates staged a performance inside a giant wheel at the gallery on January 14 to promote her album. Greenberg noted striking similarities to his own endurance piece Oysterknife, in which he walked on a conveyor belt for nearly a full day, first performed at the Marina Abramović Institute in 2020 and restaged at Jeffrey Deitch in 2021. Gates responded that she had never seen Greenberg’s work, but the gallery later acknowledged an “unauthorized derivative” of Greenberg’s work had taken place without his consent.

este arte 2026 fair uruguay report

The 12th edition of Uruguay's Este Arte fair took place last week in José Ignacio, featuring 14 exhibitors and attracting 5,000 visitors over four days. Notable works included Vanderlei Lopes's aluminum installation resembling a silver leak, Germán Tagle's liquid landscapes paired with altered New York Times front pages, and Diego Bianchi's chimeric sculptures. The fair favored abstraction, with strong sales reported across galleries such as Almeida & Dale, Aninat Galeria, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Piero Atchugarry Gallery, and Black Gallery.

art words of the year

Artnet News critic Ben Davis presents his annual "art words of the year" for 2025, a curated list of terms that capture prevailing moods and ideas in the art world. The list includes "antimemetics" (from writer Nadia Asparhouva and internet fiction), "cyniserity" (coined by art writer David Colman to describe Anne Imhoff's work), "delightmare" (a horror-adjacent feeling linked to overconsumption and AI art, exemplified by Beeple's Art Basel installation), "elite capture" (from philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's book, now a tool for critiquing identity politics in art), and "K-shaped" (an economic term describing divergent recovery, applied to gallery closures versus record auction sales).

winston branch goodman gallery london

Caribbean British artist Winston Branch is the subject of his inaugural solo exhibition with Goodman Gallery in London, titled “Out of the Calabash.” The show features new and recent works alongside a historical piece, *Blue for Miles* (1982), and follows the announcement of his global representation by Goodman Gallery in partnership with Varvara Roza Galleries. Branch, who first exhibited at the alternative art space Arts Lab led by Jim Hanes nearly six decades ago, creates abstract paintings that explore light and color, often working on canvas placed on the floor.

design miami 2025 brings out creatures and comfort

Design Miami 2025 preview drew a bustling crowd with over 70 exhibitors under the theme "Make Believe." Highlights included Katie Stout's whimsical carousel featuring marine animals, Roham Shamekh's biomorphic "Roots" sofa with integrated headphones, and ATRA's futuristic "Intelligence of Evolution" seating system upholstered in Hermès fabric. The Spanish silver brand Garrido showcased collaborations with Peter Marino, while the fair's 20th anniversary edition embraced a carnivalesque atmosphere with popcorn and mirrored walls.

gary tyler quilts la show book release

Fiber artist Gary Tyler, who spent nearly 42 years on death row in Louisiana's Angola prison after being falsely convicted as a teenager, has published a memoir titled "Stitching Freedom" and opened his first Los Angeles gallery show, "Illuminations from a Captured Soul," at Official Welcome in MacArthur Park. The exhibition, on view through December 20, features quilts Tyler learned to make while working in the prison's hospice program, depicting scenes from his life and symbols of freedom like butterflies and birds.

david shrigley selling old rope

British artist David Shrigley has created "Exhibition of Old Rope," a work consisting of 10 tons of salvaged rope arranged on the floor of Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, priced at £1 million ($1.3 million). Shrigley and assistants spent months collecting discarded rope from beaches, cruise ships, climbing schools, tree surgeons, and wind farms, then cleaned and assembled it into a large pile. The work plays on the English idiom "money for old rope," which originally referred to the resale value of used ship rope in early 19th-century Britain.

david shrigleys latest installation is a 1 3 m pile of old rope at stephen friedman gallery in london

British artist David Shrigley has opened a solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London titled “David Shrigley: Exhibition of Old Rope,” featuring a 1.3-meter-high pile of ten tons of discarded rope as a conceptual installation. The work, priced at £1 million ($1.3 million), was assembled from rope salvaged from maritime, climbing, and industrial sources that would otherwise have gone to landfill. Shrigley describes the piece as a literal exploration of the idiom “money for old rope,” questioning the value people place on art.

palais de tokyo removes martinique flag cameron rowland

The Palais de Tokyo in Paris removed Cameron Rowland's artwork "Replacement" (2025) just one day after it went on view in the exhibition "ECHO DELAY REVERB." The piece replaced the French flag above the museum with the flag of Martinique, adopted in 2023, and included a wall text criticizing French colonial rule and quoting the Martinican independence movement. The museum appended a new label stating the work "could be considered illegal" and was no longer included. Neither the Palais de Tokyo nor Rowland's representative commented.

robert grosvenor sculptor minimalism dead

Robert Grosvenor, a sculptor known for his idiosyncratic works that initially aligned with Minimalism before evolving into unclassifiable forms, died in New York at age 88. His death was confirmed by Paula Cooper Gallery, with no cause given. Grosvenor gained prominence in the 1960s through exhibitions like "Primary Structures" at the Jewish Museum and later created spare, industrial sculptures ranging from ceiling-piercing steel forms to altered car-like objects and works incorporating creosote and water. He appeared in two editions of Documenta and the 2022 Venice Biennale, and a survey of his work opened at the Fridericianum museum in Kassel just days before his death.