The Seattle Art Museum has launched "Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest," a major exhibition that re-evaluates the legacy of the "Northwest Mystics." The show features pivotal works such as Mark Tobey’s "Dancing Miners" and Malcolm M. Roberts’ surrealist "Lunar Landscape," tracing how global movements like Surrealism and local landscapes merged to define the region's mid-century aesthetic.
This guide highlights Galerie Daniel Templon as a cornerstone of the Parisian art scene. Located near the Centre Pompidou, the gallery has been a fixture since the 1960s, specializing in contemporary painting and sculpture from both European and American artists including David Salle and Jonathan Meese.
The Fairfield University Art Museum has launched "For Which It Stands…," a landmark exhibition featuring over 70 artworks that utilize the American flag as a central motif. Curated by Carey Mack Weber, the show spans more than a century of artistic production, from World War I-era paintings by Childe Hassam to contemporary works by artists such as Julie Mehretu and Danielle Scott. The exhibition is a centerpiece of the university's America250 programming, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Newcastle Art Gallery has officially reopened following a four-year, $48 million expansion that more than doubles its exhibition space. The upgraded facility now features 13 galleries, allowing the institution to maintain a permanent display of its $145 million collection for the first time in its history. The reopening was marked by a massive community response, with 28,000 visitors attending the inaugural weekend festivities and the debut exhibition, "Iconic Loved Unexpected."
The Wichita Art Museum (WAM) has opened a major exhibition titled 'Alex Katz: Theater and Dance,' focusing on the celebrated American artist's decades-long engagement with performing arts subjects. The show features over 50 works, including paintings, collages, and prints, that capture the energy and aesthetics of theater and dance, highlighting Katz's distinctive style of flat planes and bold color.
The Wichita Art Museum (WAM) has opened a major exhibition titled 'Alex Katz: Theater and Dance,' focusing on the celebrated American artist's decades-long engagement with performing arts subjects. The show features over 50 works, including paintings, collages, and prints that capture the energy and aesthetics of theater and dance, highlighting a significant but less-explored facet of Katz's prolific career.
London's National Gallery is implementing significant staff cuts and restructuring its operations to address a projected £8.2 million deficit for the 2026-27 financial year. The institution will first offer a voluntary exit scheme to its nearly 500 staff, with compulsory redundancies possible if savings are insufficient. The financial crisis stems from rising operational costs, stagnant income, and visitor numbers that have not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, despite a recent boost from a popular Van Gogh exhibition.
The 12th edition of Fog Design+Art in San Francisco opened with a record-breaking preview gala on January 21, drawing over 2,700 guests. The fair features 65 presentations from local and international dealers, with standout booths including Jessica Silverman's blue-hued works and Hauser & Wirth's $1m sale of Jack Whitten's 'Solar Space' (1971). Large-scale paintings dominate, alongside a notable abundance of botanical imagery, while geometric abstractions outnumber representational works. The fair's director, Sydney Blumenkranz, noted a particularly buoyant mood and strong attendance from tech industry leaders.
Art sales are surging after a two-year slump, according to prominent Canadian art advisor Barbara Guggenheim, CEO of Barbara Guggenheim Associates. In an interview with BNN Bloomberg, Guggenheim noted that collectors are now prioritizing quality, seeking established artists like Picasso and Warhol, and that fresh-to-market works are attracting strong bids. Recent record-breaking sales include Frida Kahlo's self-portrait for $54.7 million and Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' for $236.4 million at Sotheby's. The middle market remains robust, with works like Stuart Davis's 'Municipal' selling for $1.5 million, while lower-priced pieces under $30,000 are harder to guarantee as investments.
A €3 million contemporary art exhibition titled 'Contemporary Icons' will open at Gormleys Gallery in Dublin from January 15 to February 2, 2025. The show features over 40 works by blue-chip artists including Andy Warhol, Banksy, Tracey Emin, Bridget Riley, Damien Hirst, Keith Haring, Julian Opie, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, and Robert Indiana. Highlights include Warhol's 'Mick Jagger' (1975) priced at €139,500 and 'Orangutan' (1983) from his Endangered Species series at €220,000.
The Smithsonian Institution has announced 19 new exhibitions opening across its museums in 2026, including shows at the African American History and Culture Museum, African Art Museum, Air and Space Museum, American Art Museum, American History Museum, and Asian Art Museum. Highlights include Nick Cave's immersive installation "Mammoth" at the American Art Museum, a photography survey of the U.S. Bicentennial, and a major reopening of the Air and Space Museum's final seven galleries after eight years of renovations. Several exhibitions tie into the nation's 250th anniversary, while others explore LGBTQ+ African art, HBCU collections, salsa music history, and contemporary water-themed paintings by Hiroshi Senju and Bingyi.
The Akron Art Museum is hosting a series of exhibitions that explore the identity and creative spirit of Akron, Ohio, as the city celebrates its 2025 bicentennial. The centerpiece is a large-scale retrospective of Alfred McMoore (1950-2009), a self-trained outsider artist from Akron who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent much of his life in psychiatric institutions. McMoore created massive pencil and crayon drawings focused on funerals and death rituals, and his work attracted a circle of supporters including the late antiques dealer Chuck Auerbach and journalist Jim Carney, whose sons Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney later founded the Grammy-winning band The Black Keys, named after McMoore's cryptic phrase.
Maria Balshaw, director of the Tate, will step down in spring 2026 after nearly a decade leading the institution. She joined in 2017, succeeding Nicholas Serota, and oversaw blockbuster exhibitions including Van Gogh and Britain, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, and Sargent and Fashion. Her final project will be a major survey of Tracey Emin. The Tate credited her with diversifying the collection, improving gender and geographic balance, and growing membership to 150,000, the largest arts membership globally.
Barbara Dauphin Duthuit, the wife of Henri Matisse’s late grandson Claude Duthuit, has donated 61 works by Matisse to the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. The donation includes seven paintings, one sculpture, 28 drawings, and eight etchings, most of which depict Matisse’s eldest daughter Marguerite. Many of the works were featured earlier this year in the museum’s exhibition *Matisse and Marguerite: Through Her Father’s Eyes*. The pieces span the first half of the 20th century, from early childhood portraits to moving works created in 1945 after Marguerite survived deportation for her role in the French Resistance.
The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima has launched an ambitious revitalization project called Lima 2035 to restore the city's historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991. Decades of neglect, earthquakes, and urban flight have left many buildings abandoned and damaged, particularly those made of adobe and quincha. The project, led by architect Luis Martín Bogdanovich Mendoza, involves over 500 professionals working since 2019 to rehabilitate the area, with completion timed for Lima's 500th birthday in 2035.
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (MSN Warsaw) will launch two concurrent exhibitions, "The Woman Question 1550–2025" and "The City of Women," running from November 21, 2025, to May 3, 2026. Featuring nearly 200 women artists from around the world—spanning from Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo to Yoko Ono and Tala Madani—the shows aim to present five centuries of art by women, curated by Alison M. Gingeras and a team of researchers including Julia Bryan-Wilson, Michalina Sablik, Vera Zalutskaya, Karolina Gembara, and Wiktoria Szczupacka. The exhibitions include works borrowed from major international institutions such as the Uffizi Gallery, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Nasjonalmuseet.
The Albuquerque Museum has opened a landmark exhibition titled "Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin," featuring German and European art from the early 20th century. The show traces the trajectory from the German Empire through World War I, the Weimar Republic, Nazi rule, and World War II, including works by Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, and others. Many pieces were originally condemned as "degenerate art" by the Nazis. The exhibition, which has three U.S. stops, is currently in Albuquerque after appearing at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and will travel to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open the Condé M. Nast Galleries, a nearly 12,000-square-foot space adjacent to the Grand Hall, in spring 2026. The new galleries will serve as a permanent home for the Costume Institute's annual exhibitions, replacing the museum's largest retail space. The inaugural show, "Costume Art" (10 May 2026–10 January 2027), will pair paintings, sculptures, and historical garments to highlight the centrality of the dressed body in art, moving away from displaying clothes as disembodied objects. The expansion follows the record-breaking success of 2018's "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," which drew over 1.6 million visitors.
The article reflects on the enduring relevance of John Berger, the influential art critic and writer best known for his 1972 series and book "Ways of Seeing." It highlights two current cultural events that underscore his legacy: a new edition of his 1975 book "A Seventh Man," which examines migrant labor in Europe through text and photographs by Jean Mohr, and a dance-theatre collaboration between Nederlands Dans Theater and Complicité titled "Figures in Extinction," which draws on Berger's writings about humanity's relationship with nature and the economy of the dead.
Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur has announced her first permanent public artwork, titled *Was.Is.Will.Be*, to be unveiled on 28 November at Southmere Lake in Cygnet Square, Thamesmead, southeast London. The sculpture is funded by housing association Peabody and was selected with input from a creative studio that includes five local residents, among them filmmaker Comfort Adeneye and painter Gonzalo Fuentes. Other project partners include Studio Danmole, Company, Place, and youth culture specialist Joseph Gray. The work incorporates fragments of local conversation and features the phrase 'horses are here' written in the sky.
Gotham, the world's first cannabis concept store, has unveiled 'The Smoking Section,' its first commissioned art exhibition at Gotham Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Running from November 6, 2025, to January 5, 2026, the show features over 45 artists and designers—including Ridykeulous (Nicole Eisenman and A.L. Steiner), Daniel Gordon, Mika Tajima, Deborah Czeresko, and Peter Shire—who each created original ashtrays that range from functional to conceptual. Curated by Rachel Berks, Gotham's VP of Product Development & Partnerships, the exhibition explores the ashtray as both a ritual object and cultural symbol, linking cannabis culture to contemporary art.
The second edition of Manar Abu Dhabi, a public art initiative focused on light-based works, will launch on 1 November 2025, featuring 23 installations across four locations including Jubail Island and Al Ain. High-profile street artist KAWS will present a large-scale work showing his signature COMPANION figure reclining while lifting a lit moon. Other participating artists include Emirati sculptor Shaikha Al Mazrou, Dutch duo DRIFT, Maitha Hamdan, Ammar Al Attar, and Hamburg-based Christian Brinkmann, who will debut an interactive audio-visual piece called Floral Resonance.
The second edition of Manar Abu Dhabi, a public art initiative focused on light-based works, will launch on 1 November 2025 and run through 4 January 2026. The high-profile street artist KAWS will feature prominently with a large-scale installation of his signature COMPANION figure reclining and holding a lit moon. Curated by artistic director Khai Hori, the exhibition includes 23 works across four locations under the theme 'The Light Compass,' with 15 works at Jubail Island—including Shaikha Al Mazrou's land art and a dome by Dutch duo DRIFT—and eight installations at Al Ain, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, featuring artists such as Maitha Hamdan, Ammar Al Attar, and Christian Brinkmann.
Museums across the United States are experimenting with youth-curated exhibitions, handing curatorial authority to teenagers and children. The Orange County Museum of Art's "Piece of Me" exhibition, part of its larger biennial, was organized by 15 members of the Orange County Young Curators program, who surveyed the museum's collection, selected a theme and artworks, collaborated with conservators and designers, and wrote wall text. Similar initiatives are underway at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where young people are curating shows with staff guidance.
Glenn Lowry, the influential former director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), voiced concerns on the podcast "The Art World: What If…?!" by Schwartzman& that non-profit US museums could lose their tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status under the Trump administration. Speaking to journalist Charlotte Burns, Lowry warned that a federal government prepared to exert broad authority could revoke this status, which he called the "magic wand" behind America's robust cultural programming. His comments follow a House bill passed in November that would allow the Treasury Secretary to revoke non-profit status, though it has stalled in the Senate. Lowry also addressed why museums like MoMA have gone "so quiet on politics" compared to 2017, when MoMA showed works by artists from Muslim-majority nations affected by an immigration ban, noting that every non-profit museum is federally funded through its tax exemption.
A new museum dedicated to Frida Kahlo, Museo Casa Kahlo, opened on 27 September in Mexico City's Coyoacán neighborhood, a five-minute walk from the iconic Casa Azul. Housed in the historic Kahlo family home acquired in 1930 and passed down through generations, the museum draws on the private archive of Isolda Kahlo, Cristina Kahlo's daughter, which includes letters, everyday objects, and personal effects. The intimate space focuses on Kahlo's youth and family life, featuring immersive audiovisual elements, a re-created darkroom of her father Guillermo, and a basement studio where Kahlo once painted. A notable highlight is a recently uncovered mixed-media mural from around 1949, hidden for years under white paint.
Museo Casa Kahlo, a new museum dedicated to Frida Kahlo's youth and family life, opened on 27 September in Mexico City's Coyoacán neighborhood, a five-minute walk from the famous Casa Azul. Housed in the historic Kahlo family home acquired in 1930 and later owned by Frida's sister Cristina, the museum was created after over ten years of effort by descendants, led by Mara de Anda Romeo, Cristina's great-granddaughter. The collection draws from the private archive of Isolda Kahlo (Cristina's daughter), featuring letters, personal objects, pre-Hispanic necklaces, traditional dresses, and a few artworks including the early painting *Tray of Poppies* and Frida's only known mixed-media mural (c. 1949), which was uncovered during restoration. The museum emphasizes intimate domestic spaces, audiovisual elements, and the influence of Frida's father Guillermo and the women in her family.
The Bruce Museum in Connecticut is presenting the exhibition 'Gisela Colón: Radiant Earth,' featuring the abstract, luminescent sculptures of the Puerto Rican-American artist. The show, curated by Dr. Danielle O’Steen and Dr. Margarita Karasoulas, includes eight works such as her Pods and Monoliths, which utilize innovative materials and a self-invented 'structural color' technique to create shifting, light-activated hues. It will be on view through June 28, 2026.
Deux expositions dans les galeries parisiennes
Two notable drawing exhibitions are currently on view in Paris galleries. The first, organized by dealer Nicolas Schwed on Rue Saint-Honoré, features a strong selection of old and modern master drawings, with a surprising emphasis on 18th-century French works alongside Italian pieces. Highlights include a preparatory study by Federico Zuccaro for a Roman fresco and a rare drawing of the Trinity by Cornelis Schut, which is linked to a lost altarpiece from Cologne.
60% of Sudan’s National Museum Looted, Report Says
Over 60% of the holdings of the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum have been looted during the country's ongoing civil war. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which controlled the capital for two years, deliberately targeted high-value portable objects like gold and jewelry, stripping storage areas while leaving less portable artifacts behind. Although the museum building remains standing, tens of thousands of antiquities from its collection of 150,000 objects were plundered, with some appearing for sale online.