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Artist Haegue Yang has been appointed chair of the board overseeing KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, succeeding German artist Katharina Grosse, who served for four years. Yang, who is based between Seoul and Berlin, takes on the role at a time when Berlin has cut its culture budget by €130 million ($154 million), sparking outcry, and as the city grapples with controversies over how institutions handle pro-Palestine artists and artworks. Yang has taught at Berlin's Städelschule since 2017 and won the Museum Ludwig's Wolfgang Hahn Prize in 2018.

robert wilson theatre director artist dead 1234748659

Robert Wilson, the influential playwright and artist known for his spare, slow-moving productions that blurred the line between performance art and theater, died Thursday at age 83 in Water Mill, New York. His death was announced by the Watermill Center, the arts center he founded, which stated he died of a brief but acute illness. Wilson's career spanned stage works like the landmark 1976 opera *Einstein on the Beach* (with Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs), video portraits of figures such as Lady Gaga and Brad Pitt, and sculptures, all characterized by stillness and a radical use of time.

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Stan Douglas's survey at Bard College's Hessel Museum of Art features a new video installation titled "Birth of a Nation" (2025), which reworks a racist sequence from D.W. Griffith's 1915 film of the same name. The installation presents the original footage alongside four new videos from different character perspectives, shot in black and white without sound, and ends with a blue screen left bare to suggest the mutability of historical images. The survey also includes earlier works like "Hors-Champs" (1992), which critiques televisual representation through a staged free jazz performance.

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Adam Lindemann, a collector-turned-dealer, announced he will close Venus Over Manhattan, the New York gallery he founded 14 years ago. The gallery's final exhibition, a solo show for painter Susumu Kamijo, will run until July 18. Lindemann revealed the decision in an opinion piece for Artnet News, citing the challenges of straddling the roles of collector and dealer, as well as the politics of art fairs. He plans to return to collecting full-time.

bill dilworth new york earth room caretaker dead 1234747310

Bill Dilworth, the longtime caretaker of Walter De Maria's "The New York Earth Room," died on December 10, 2024, at age 70 from a stroke. His death was reported by The New York Times on Saturday. Dilworth tended the 1977 installation—280,000 pounds of dirt piled two feet high—for 35 years, from 1989 until his retirement in 2024. Managed by the Dia Art Foundation, the piece has been open to the public since 1980 and became a cult favorite, even inspiring a lookalike in a music video by pop star Lorde. Dilworth, an abstract painter, also maintained another De Maria work, "The Broken Kilometer," through his wife Patti, who served as its caretaker.

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ARTnews analyzed publicly reported sales from five blue-chip galleries—Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Thaddaeus Ropac, White Cube, and David Zwirner—at Art Basel 2025, finding a combined total over 35% lower than in 2024, around 8% below 2023, and just over 20% down from 2022. The high-water mark was $204 million in 2024, boosted by eight-figure works from Hauser & Wirth. Meanwhile, the number of artists sold by these galleries rose steadily from 109 in 2022 to 157 in 2025, indicating a shift toward broader, less concentrated inventory. Dealers reported mixed sentiments, though seven-figure deals still occurred, and some noted that market uncertainty has led to more scattershot presentations with wider price ranges.

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Beijing concluded its inaugural "Beijing Art Season" from May 22 to June 1, comprising the long-running Gallery Weekend Beijing and two local art fairs, Beijing Dangdai and Art021 Beijing. The event took place shortly after a diplomatic breakthrough in U.S.–China tariff tensions, but amid China's economic slowdown, the atmosphere was subdued: the Visiting Sector for international galleries and the large-scale group show were scrapped, and satellite events were fewer. Despite this, collectors, curators, and institutional directors from Germany, the UK, Korea, and Japan attended, with some noting China's strategic importance due to its deep collector base. French billionaire Laurent Dassault reported better market sentiment in Beijing than in Europe, while Berlin galleries PSM and Galerie Thomas Schulte made their first appearances at Beijing Dangdai, collaborating with Hua International for a "Berlin Section." The fair grew from 32 galleries in 2018 to 87 this year, reflecting local collectors' appetite for international and experimental contemporary art.

j hobermans book everything is now 1960s nyc downtown yoko ono andy warhol 1234743253

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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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.

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MoMA PS1 has opened its marquee spring exhibition, “The Gatherers,” a group show featuring 14 artists from around the world who explore the psychic and material burdens of climate change, globalization, and neoliberalism. Curated by Ruba Katrib, the exhibition includes works in sculpture, video, assemblage, and installation, spanning regions from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Lithuania, and is on view through October 6. Katrib, PS1’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, emphasizes that the show lets the artworks speak for themselves through form and material rather than delivering a direct lecture.

bill horrigan curator video wexner center dead 1234742812

Bill Horrigan, a pioneering curator who transformed Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts into a leading destination for film and video art, died on May 15 after a long battle with amyloidosis. Over 34 years at the Columbus museum, he built a celebrated film and video program that attracted world-renowned artists like Chris Marker and Julia Scher, and organized landmark exhibitions for Mark Dion, Gretchen Bender, and Shirin Neshat. He also served as a curatorial adviser for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, helped program the Video Data Bank, and led the 1989 edition of Video Against AIDS.

leonard blavatnik james dyson idan ofer rich list uk 2025 1234742626

The Sunday Times's 2025 'Rich List' shows that Top 200 collector and art patron Leonard Blavatnik's net worth fell by more than £3.5 billion to £25.725 billion, dropping him to #3 on the UK wealth ranking. The list includes over a dozen collectors from ARTnews's 2024 Top 200 Collectors list, such as James Dyson, Idan Ofer, Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, Alan Howard, and Mohammed Mahdi al-Tajir, with Ofer noted as one of the top five individuals whose wealth rose most. Other figures mentioned include Simon Reuben, John Fredriksen, Sri Prakash Lohia, Lakshmi Mittal, Elton John, and former Christie's stakeholder Joe Lewis.

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Sotheby's three-part evening sale in New York on Thursday generated $186.1 million across 68 lots, landing near the high end of its $141 million to $204.9 million estimate. The sale included a focused 12-lot offering from the collection of late gallerist Barbara Gladstone, which sold all works without guarantees and totaled $18.5 million, and a 15-work guaranteed sale from dealer Daniella Luxembourg featuring postwar Italian artists, where Lucio Fontana's 'Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio' (1963) achieved $14.5 million and Michelangelo Pistoletto's 'Maria Nuda' (1969) sold for $2.7 million after a five-minute bidding war.

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London's National Gallery has reopened its Sainsbury Wing after a three-year, $113 million renovation, timed to the museum's 200th anniversary. Director Gabriele Finaldi, who was knighted this year, oversaw the project, which was designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf and faced criticism from original architect Denise Scott Brown. The revamped wing features a light-filled foyer, 17 galleries with no prescribed route, and a rehang titled “The Wonder of Art.” The museum also acquired a mysterious painting by an unknown artist, The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels (1500–10), for $20 million through Sotheby's.

Eddie Kang at Gana Art Los Angeles

The article is a table of contents for the February 2026 issue of Contemporary Art Review LA, listing numerous features, interviews, and reviews. It highlights an interview with artist Eddie Kang at Gana Art Los Angeles, alongside other content covering topics like olfactory art, tarot, video art, and reviews of exhibitions across Los Angeles galleries and museums.

Tefaf restoration award goes to 500-year-old Medici tapestry

Tefaf has awarded its Museum Restoration Fund prize to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) for the restoration of a 500-year-old Medici tapestry, "The Meeting of Dante and Virgil" (circa 1547-49). The €25,000 grant will support cleaning, consolidation, and lining of the 5.3-meter-high work, which has not been displayed in over 60 years due to severe damage including silk weft loss and open slits. The conservation will be carried out by the Midwest Art Conservation Center, and the tapestry is expected to go on public view at MIA this summer.

Edvard Munch’s Paintings for a Chocolate Factory Get a Rare Museum Outing

A series of 12 monumental paintings by Edvard Munch, created for the workers' canteen of the Freia chocolate factory in Oslo, have been temporarily removed from their original location for the first time. The works, known as the Freia Frieze, are now on display at the nearby Munch Museum in an exhibition titled "Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory," which also includes preparatory sketches and examines the artist's output in the 1920s.

What is a botanical curator? Rahel Kesselring takes on inaugural role at Fondation Beyeler

Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland has appointed Rahel Kesselring as its inaugural botanical curator, a newly created position supported by the Chanel Culture Fund. Kesselring, a former research associate at Humboldt University, will develop a hybrid curatorial programme focused on the museum's park and surrounding ecosystems, aiming to integrate botanical knowledge with artistic practice on a practical, material level.

A teaspoon at a time: how LACMA built its collection

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has grown from a fledgling institution into a world-class museum through a deliberate, long-term strategy of cultivating collectors, building strong local relationships, and leveraging its exhibition program to acquire major works. This approach, described as "a teaspoon at a time," involved patient donor cultivation and using international loan shows as opportunities to secure significant pieces for the permanent collection.

Melissa Chiu leaving Hirshhorn to take over New York’s Guggenheim Museum

Melissa Chiu has been appointed as the new director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, transitioning directly from her decade-long tenure at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. During her time at the Hirshhorn, Chiu was credited with doubling attendance, significantly increasing fundraising, and overseeing a major $68m garden renovation by Hiroshi Sugimoto. She will begin her new role on September 1, while Aaron Seeto steps in as interim director at the Hirshhorn.

The art of technology jostles for position in venues both new and historic

Canyon, a new 40,000-square-foot institution dedicated to moving image, sound, and performance art, is set to open this autumn on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Founded by entrepreneur Robert Rosenkranz and led by former Mass MoCA director Joe Thompson, the space aims to bypass the slow curatorial cycles of traditional museums by hosting international media-rich exhibitions with a faster 18-to-24-month turnaround. Unlike traditional collecting institutions, Canyon will focus on public accessibility and domestic-style hospitality rather than building its own permanent archive.

The story of London's Great Exhibition, as seen through the eyes of artists

Julius Bryant’s new book, the fourth volume in his history of the Victoria and Albert Museum, re-examines the 1851 Great Exhibition through its visual legacy. By analyzing paintings, prints, and ephemera—including the vast archive of Charles Wentworth Dilke—Bryant reconstructs the 'Crystal Palace' experience, highlighting the youth of its organizers and the staggering speed of its construction. The narrative shifts focus away from traditional social theory toward the actual visual evidence of the event, from David Roberts’s massive panoramic paintings to the 235 sculptures that defined the era's artistic output.

The Prints Market Is Having a Moment—Driven by New Collectors and a Taste for the Historic

The prints and multiples market is experiencing a significant transformation, driven by an influx of new collectors and a shift in taste toward historically significant works. Artnet Auctions data shows that 50% of prints and multiples lots sold between 2020 and 2025 went to first-time buyers on their platform. This surge in demand is coinciding with major events like the IFPDA Print Fair and Artnet's own Premier Prints and Multiples sale, which features works from modern masters like Frank Stella and Jeff Koons.

How Pharrell’s Joopiter Is Redefining What an Auction House Can Be

Pharrell Williams launched his own auction platform, Joopiter, after finding traditional auction houses ill-suited to sell his collection of fashion, jewelry, and timepieces. The platform has rapidly expanded from single-owner sales into a multi-category auction house, handling luxury goods, sports memorabilia, pop culture artifacts, and contemporary art, with a recent headline lot being a $5 million Triceratops skeleton named Trey.

One of Donatello’s most important bronze statues is being restored: should it ever be shown outdoors again?

Donatello's monumental 1453 bronze equestrian statue, Gattamelata, has been moved from its outdoor plinth in Padua to a nearby indoor hall for a major €1 million restoration. This marks only the third time the statue has been moved indoors in nearly 600 years, prompted by severe corrosion known as "bronze cancer" and structural concerns about its stone pedestal. The restoration is funded by two American non-profit organizations, Friends of Florence and Save Venice.

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The New Museum in New York has announced a major $80 million capital campaign to double its physical footprint on the Bowery. The expansion will utilize an adjacent building already owned by the institution, increasing the total space from 58,000 to over 100,000 square feet. The museum has already secured $43 million of its goal, bolstered by a record-breaking undisclosed donation from longtime supporter Toby Devan Lewis.

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The 2026 Whitney Biennial has opened to an early critical consensus of being "above average," though critics suggest the exhibition requires significant time to process. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the show emphasizes a subtle atmospheric mood rather than overt spectacle, featuring a diverse array of installations, sculptures, and multimedia works that span multiple floors of the museum and its exterior.

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The longtime New York City residence and studio of legendary photographer Robert Frank and sculptor June Leaf has been listed for sale at $6.5 million. Located at 7 Bleecker Street in NoHo, the 209-year-old Federal-style townhouse served as the couple's creative base for over four decades, maintaining a raw, unfinished aesthetic that mirrored their artistic sensibilities. Despite its significant art-historical pedigree, the real estate listing omits the artists' names, instead marketing the property as a redevelopment opportunity with significant buildable square footage.

It's Time to Give Annibale Carracci Some of Rembrandt's Spotlight

its time to give annibale carracci some of rembrandts spotlight 2742854

This article advocates for a critical re-evaluation of the Italian Baroque painter Annibale Carracci, arguing that his historical significance and artistic influence rival that of the more widely celebrated Rembrandt van Rijn. While Rembrandt has dominated recent museum headlines and auction records, the author highlights Carracci’s foundational role in establishing the Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna, which revolutionized art education by prioritizing life drawing and elevating the social status of artists from mere craftsmen to intellectual creators.

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LG OLED has partnered with the Whanki Foundation to present "We Meet Again In New York" at Frieze New York, featuring digital reinterpretations of works by the late Korean abstractionist Kim Whanki. The presentation utilizes high-definition screens to showcase five of Kim’s iconic "all-over dot" paintings, animated by contemporary Korean multimedia artists including Je Baak and Mano Ahn. This digital showcase coincides with a physical exhibition of Kim’s work at the Korean Cultural Center New York, marking the artist's first major posthumous return to the city where he spent his final decade.