Peggy Guggenheim's influential—and short-lived—London gallery to be celebrated in new show in Venice and at London's Royal Academy

A new exhibition titled "Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector" will celebrate the legacy of Peggy Guggenheim's short-lived London gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, which operated from January 1938 to just 18 months later. The show, featuring over 100 works, opens at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in spring 2026 before traveling to the Royal Academy in London. Highlights include the first painting Lucian Freud ever exhibited, Vasily Kandinsky's first solo London exhibition, and the first major collage group show in Britain, among other groundbreaking displays.

Show at Civil War-era fort spotlights California’s Black history from the 19th century to today

Fort Point, a Civil War-era fortification beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, opens the exhibition "Black Gold: Stories Untold" today through November 2. The show features works by 16 contemporary artists and one collective, exploring 19th-century African American life in California—from the Gold Rush onward—highlighting little-known entrepreneurs, activists, soldiers, and musicians. Curated by Cheryl Haines of the non-profit For-Site, the exhibition includes recent works by artists such as Carla Edwards, Isaac Julien, Alison Saar, Yinka Shonibare CBE, and Hank Willis Thomas, alongside new commissions by Demetri Broxton, Adrian L. Burrell, Mildred Howard, and others. The project was two years in the making, privately funded, and developed with a nine-person advisory committee of Black historians and curators.

$70m Giacometti bombs at patchy Sotheby’s Modern art auction

Sotheby's Modern evening sale in New York on May 13 brought in $152 million ($186.4 million with fees), falling short of its presale estimate of $170 million to $248 million. Four lots were withdrawn before bidding began, including works by Winslow Homer, Wassily Kandinsky, Candido Portinari, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The sale's star lot, Alberto Giacometti's bronze bust 'Grande tête mince' (1954/55), estimated at over $70 million, failed to sell when bidding stalled around $64 million. Other notable results included strong sales for Jean Arp, František Kupka, and Robert Delaunay, but several high-profile works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Pierre Soulages, and David Smith also failed to find buyers.

Adam Lindemann opens exhibition of 19th-century African sculpture and contemporary Black abstraction

Collector and dealer Adam Lindemann has opened a non-selling exhibition titled 'Urhobo + Abstraction' at his David Adjaye-designed home near the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The show, running until June 13, pairs 19th-century Urhobo sculptures from the Niger Delta with works by Black American abstractionists including Ed Clark, Norman Lewis, Richard Mayhew, Merton D. Simpson, and Alma Thomas. It is the first time Urhobo sculptures have been shown together in the US, and the exhibition is anchored by five wood carvings of warriors and royalty, one from Lindemann's private collection.

Comment | The greatest failure of PST Art: its successes are not travelling

The article critiques PST Art (formerly Pacific Standard Time), a $20 million Getty-funded initiative in Southern California, as its current edition wraps up. It highlights the closure of key exhibitions like "For Dear Life: Art, Medicine and Disability" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego before major art events like Frieze Los Angeles, and notes that only 7 of the 72 exhibitions are traveling to other institutions. The piece questions the initiative's purpose and effectiveness in reaching broader audiences.

Could 17th-century Italy provide a useful model for today’s challenging art market?

An exhibition at Nicholas Hall Gallery in New York, titled "Beyond the Fringe," explores the understudied early art market of 17th-century Italy, featuring 30 works on loan from public and private collections. The show highlights how barbers, tailors, innkeepers, and other tradespeople became part-time art dealers, while a decentralized network of collectors and middlemen emerged alongside foreign artists in Rome, such as the Bentvueghels, who produced new genres like landscape and genre scenes. The exhibition and its catalogue, with new research by art historians Patrizia Cavazzini and Caterina Volpi, trace the rise of art as an alternative asset class independent of traditional aristocratic and ecclesiastical patronage.

Sharpsburg’s ZYNKA Gallery turns 5: reflecting on growth and future exhibitions

ZYNKA Gallery in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, celebrates its fifth anniversary. Founded by Jeff Jarzynka in November 2019, the gallery represents over 50 mostly regional artists. Its current exhibition, “Time Between Echoes,” features Dutch-born artist Hans Neleman and runs through June 8. The gallery faced an early challenge when it had to close just months after opening due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it reopened in summer 2020 with timed visits. Jarzynka has since expanded his curatorial work, including curating exhibitions for The Portal Art Gallery at Bakery Square in East Liberty since February 2024.

New Exhibition Explores the 60 Artists At the Forefront of Contemporary Fiber Art

The Golden Thread 2, a new exhibition organized by Karin Bravin and John Lee of BravinLee Programs, showcases the work of 60 contemporary fiber artists at an 18th-century mercantile building in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport neighborhood. Running until May 16, 2025, the show features a wide range of techniques including weaving, crochet, knitting, embroidery, tufting, and quilting, with pieces by artists such as Julia Bland, Lucia Engstrom, Mark Fleuridor, Sammy Bennet, Ali Dipp, Ana Maria Hernando, and Ellie Murphy. This second iteration is larger and longer than the first, which coincided with Frieze New York in 2024.

Ali Cherri Files War Crime Case Over Israeli Airstrike on Beirut

French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, in collaboration with the International Federation for Human Rights, has filed a civil complaint in a French court regarding a 2024 Israeli airstrike in Beirut. The strike, which occurred in the Noueiri neighborhood just hours before a ceasefire, destroyed Cherri’s family home and killed seven civilians, including his parents and their domestic helper. The legal action, submitted to a specialized war crimes unit, alleges that the targeting of a civilian residence constitutes a war crime under both French and international law.

Julia Heyward “Voices of Many Voices” at Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster

The Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster is presenting "Voices of Many Voices," a significant exhibition dedicated to the pioneering work of Julia Heyward. The show highlights Heyward’s multidisciplinary practice, which emerged from the 1970s New York performance scene, blending vocal experimentation, monologues, and complex multimedia orchestrations. By juxtaposing music, image, and language, the exhibition captures the artist's unique ability to navigate emotional extremes and the "simultaneity of opposites."

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Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art day sale on Thursday achieved $88.7 million, with an 88% sell-through rate by lot and 90% by value. The standout lot was Lynne Drexler’s 1960 painting *Keller Fair II*, which sold for $2,027,000—shattering her previous auction record by nearly $500,000 and far exceeding its $800,000–$1.2 million estimate. The work, a dense abstraction from Drexler’s early 1960s period, was described by advisors and dealers as a rare, exceptional example.

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Italy slashed VAT on art sales from 22% to 5% in July 2024, the lowest rate in the European Union, after two decades of lobbying by the Apollo Group. The tax cut took effect just before Artissima, Italy's largest contemporary art fair, which saw strong turnout and reported sales increases for many of its 73 Italian galleries, with prices ranging from $2,200 to nearly $20,000. ARTnews interviewed Artissima director Luigi Fassi about the impact of the new rate on the Italian art market and the broader cultural ecosystem.

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Project Native Informant, a London gallery known for its focus on internet-influenced art, announced it will close after 12 years. Founder Stephan Tanbin Sastrawidjaja cited the volatile global economic, political, and social environment, along with personal factors, as reasons for the decision. The gallery launched in 2013 in a Mayfair garage before moving to the East End, and its final show was a solo exhibition for Sean Steadman that closed over the summer.

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Brazilian police raided the São Paulo branch of Almeida & Dale, a prominent gallery, on Wednesday in connection with three missing paintings by modernist Alfredo Volpi. The São Paulo State Department of Criminal Investigations (Deic) executed a search warrant regarding the works, valued at R$6.4 million (about $1.2 million), which have been the subject of a civil dispute. The artist's estate accuses gallery cofounder Carlos Dale of brokering an unauthorized sale in 2006 of the paintings, which were reported stolen in 2008. No artworks were seized, but a laptop was taken, and the gallery has denied wrongdoing, stating it acted as an intermediary in legitimate transactions before any theft report.

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Paris Internationale, the emerging art fair known for hosting independent galleries, announced it will launch a Milan edition in April 2026, just before its 11th edition opened in Paris. The fair, founded in 2015 by a group of independent galleries, plans to establish a lasting presence in Milan, with founder Nerina Ciaccia citing alignment with the fair's values and approach to the art market. The Milan edition is partly driven by Italy's recent reduction of VAT on art exchanges from 22% to 5%, making it more competitive than France's 5.5%. The fair has not yet secured a venue but intends to choose an architecturally historic location, continuing its nomadic tradition.

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Haitian-American artist Patrick Eugène has been selected by Dior to reinterpret the iconic Lady Dior handbag for the 10th-anniversary edition of its Dior Lady Art initiative. He is one of ten international participants and one of only two U.S.-based artists in the milestone edition, which will premiere at Art Basel Paris later this month before becoming available at Dior boutiques worldwide. Eugène's design draws on his Haitian roots, incorporating leather and textile patchwork, wooden beads, macramé, raffia embroidery, and straw weaving, with a standout feature of woven leather side panels inlaid with pearls referencing Haiti's historic nickname, the "Pearl of the Antilles." The collaboration will also anchor special activations during Art Basel Miami Beach in December.

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British artist and designer Mason Newman is selling limited-edition silkscreen prints of his artwork "Prince of Darkness," which was gifted to the late Ozzy Osbourne just before the Black Sabbath vocalist's death. The prints, featuring goldleaf detail and limited to an edition of 76, are priced at £850 and benefit Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorns Hospice, and Cure Parkinson’s, in line with the Osbourne family’s wishes. The release coincided with the airing of two documentaries about Osbourne on BBC and Paramount+.

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Artnet News released its mid-year intelligence report on the art market, led by Katya Kazakina's analysis titled “The Storm Hits the Art Market: Who’s Getting Swept Away?” The article cites major gallery closures including Blum, Venus Over Manhattan, and Kasmin, and quotes a collector warning that “blood will flow in the streets” before the market recalibrates. Kenny Schachter, an artist, dealer, and Artnet columnist, publicly criticized the coverage on Instagram, calling it alarmist and arguing that the market is “fucking fine.” The exchange has sparked a debate about the fairness and responsibility of art-market reporting.

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Sotheby's will auction approximately 100 lots from the private collection of French antiques collector Pierre-Jean Chalençon on June 25 in Paris, including Napoleon Bonaparte's iconic bicorne hat (estimated at €800,000), a herald sword and stick from his 1804 coronation, his personal gold and ebony seal, worn stockings, and a portable camp bed. The sale, described as one of the most significant offerings of Napoleonic material ever to come to market, spans imperial furniture, Old Master paintings, and personal relics. Chalençon, who has amassed the collection over four decades, is reportedly selling the items to repay a €10 million loan from Swiss Life Banque Privée, though he has denied being deeply in debt.

Primitivism to Reinvent Art

Le primitivisme pour réinventer l’art

Philippe Dagen has published the third and final volume of his series on primitivism, covering the period from World War II to the late 1970s. The book traces how Western artists, from Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock to members of the CoBrA movement and figures like Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, and Yayoi Kusama, engaged with so-called "primitive" art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, often as a means of rejecting or redefining modern civilization. Dagen also examines the intellectual debates surrounding primitivism, including the critiques of colonized peoples who refused the label "primitive," and the shifting attitudes of thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Leiris, and Aimé Césaire.

Rising Artist Veronica Fernandez’s Uneasy Monument to Childhood Imagination

Artist Veronica Fernandez opened a solo exhibition titled "Prey" at the Anat Ebgi gallery. The show features a notable shift in her practice, moving from typically monumental canvases to smaller-scale paintings that explore themes of claustrophobia, survival, and the uneasy tension between comfort and foreboding in domestic and communal spaces.

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Brazilian artist Laura Lima is currently the subject of two major concurrent solo exhibitions in London. At Goodman Gallery, her show "Communal Nests for Windows, Balconies, Verandas, Gardens, and Forests" features woven, nest-like sculptures made from organic materials like jute and sisal, which she encourages collectors to install outdoors to be used by wildlife. Simultaneously, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is hosting "The Drawing Drawing," a career-spanning survey centered on a site-specific performance piece involving life models and artists on mechanized orbiting platforms.

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Austrian artist Tobias Pils presents a new body of pencil and ink drawings at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Vienna, in an exhibition titled "Blende zum Morgen / Fade to Morning. Zeichnungen / Drawings." The show features works that are finished pieces rather than preparatory sketches, highlighting the dynamism of drawing as a medium. Pils, known for his monochromatic paintings blending figuration and abstraction, here eschews color entirely, allowing the raw qualities of ink and pencil to reveal the core of his creative vision. The exhibition runs through December 19, 2025.

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Pace Gallery will present a second solo exhibition of David Lynch's artwork at its Berlin space, opening January 29, 2026. The show features never-before-seen mixed media paintings, watercolors, and three lamps, alongside early short films, spanning works from 1999 to 2022. This follows Lynch's death in January 2025 and a successful estate sale, as well as his first posthumous exhibition, "David Lynch: Up In Flames," currently on view at Prague's DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Pace plans a larger survey of Lynch's oeuvre at its Los Angeles outpost in autumn 2026.

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Korean artist Kim Yun Shin, who turns 90 in 2025, is currently the subject of a two-part solo exhibition spanning Lehmann Maupin's London and New York galleries. Titled after her series "Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One," which began in 1975, the shows opened in February 2025 at the gallery's temporary Cork Street space in London and continue at its New York location through May 31, 2025. The exhibitions draw on Eastern philosophy of Yin and Yang, exploring themes of union and division. This follows her debut at the 2024 Venice Biennale, where curator Adriano Pedrosa selected eight of her sculptures for the Central Pavilion under the theme "Foreigners Everywhere." In an interview, Kim discusses her nomadic life—from North Korea to South Korea, Paris, Argentina, and back—and how her experiences as a foreigner shaped her artistic perspective.

Lebanese Artist Ali Cherri Files War Crimes Complaint Against Israel After 2024 Beirut Bombing

Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), has filed a civil complaint in France seeking an investigation into an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut residential building in November 2024. The strike killed seven civilians, including Cherri's parents. The complaint, supported by forensic analysis from Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International, alleges the attack used munitions documented as being employed by the Israeli air force and targeted a civilian object, potentially constituting a war crime.

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The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is launching a new research project to re-examine a 17th-century shipwreck discovered during a 1916 subway dig in Lower Manhattan. The wreck, long believed to be the Dutch ship *Tyger*—one of the earliest European vessels to anchor in New York Harbor—was excavated by subway foreman James A. Kelly and later donated to MCNY in the 1940s. In partnership with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), the museum will apply advanced scientific techniques, including dendrochronology and wood species analysis, to the ship's timbers to confirm their origins and better understand the vessel's history.

11 Artists Having Breakout Moments in 2026

The article profiles eleven artists poised for breakout moments in 2026, highlighting their recent achievements and upcoming projects. Featured artists include Diambe, a nonbinary Brazilian artist who will debut a major solo show at Kunsthalle Basel; Tuan Andrew Nguyen, a Vietnamese-born MacArthur fellow who will unveil a public commission for New York's High Line Plinth; and Balraj Khanna, a self-taught Indian painter who died in 2024 and is gaining posthumous recognition. Other artists on the list include Klára Hosnedlová, Kim Hankyul, Gabriel Chaile, Benni Bosetto, Pat Oleszko, Seba Calfuqueo, Tony Lewis, and Nat Faulkner, each noted for significant exhibitions, gallery representation, or awards that have built momentum toward wider acclaim.

María Jesús Valenzuela: Winter Flowers

MARÍA JESÚS VALENZUELA: FLORES DE INVIERNO

María Jesús Valenzuela presents her solo exhibition "Flores de Invierno" (Winter Flowers) at Galería NAC in Santiago, Chile. The exhibition showcases a multidisciplinary approach to the natural world, featuring hand-embroidered cotton paper, color pencil drawings, and fine art photography. Valenzuela’s work acts as a contemporary field notebook, documenting landscapes ranging from the mangroves of Caddo Lake to the forests of Curaumilla, utilizing both ancient techniques like embroidery and modern digital printing.

Ittai Gradel, Whistleblower in British Museum Gem Theft, Dies at 61

Ittai Gradel, the Israel-born Danish gem expert who alerted the British Museum to the theft of thousands of antiquities from its collection after discovering them for sale on eBay, died on April 28 of renal cancer at age 61. Days before his death, British Museum officials visited him in hospice and presented him with a rarely awarded medal for his service. Gradel first warned deputy director Jonathan Williams in 2021 that artifacts were being sold online, identified veteran curator Peter Higgs as the culprit, and provided detailed evidence. After the museum failed to act, Gradel contacted then-director Hartwig Fischer; two years later, Higgs was fired, and Fischer and Williams left the institution amid the scandal.