A nationwide general strike, called for Friday, January 30, 2026, in protest of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis, has prompted numerous art galleries and organizations to close their doors. Major commercial galleries like Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace Gallery, alongside institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Drawing Center, are participating in the shutdown.
A significant number of New York art galleries, including major players like Pace Gallery, David Zwirner, and Marian Goodman, will close on January 30 to join a nationwide general strike protesting expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. The strike is a response to allegations of federal overreach, including the use of deadly force against protestors and the detention of Native Americans, which have fueled widespread outrage.
The FOG Design+Art fair in San Francisco opened with a glitzy preview gala at Fort Mason Center, serving as a fundraiser for SFMOMA's education initiatives. VIP tickets started at $10,000 for the first hour, and by 7 p.m., the event filled to capacity as prices dropped to $250. Dealers reported a different energy this year, partly due to the recent Los Angeles wildfires affecting many participating galleries. Sales were strong, with New York dealer Ales Ortuzar selling multiple works by Suzanne Jackson in the first few hours. Local collector Sonya Yu, a recent ARTnews Top 200 listee, highlighted the resilience and sophistication of the Bay Area art community.
A senior curator and two collections committee volunteers have resigned from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) after the institution voted against acquiring a new slideshow work by artist Nan Goldin. The purchase was rejected by an 11-9 vote, with some committee members finding Goldin's November 2024 speech denouncing Israel's attacks on Gaza as genocide to be "offensive" and "antisemitic." Goldin had spoken at the Berlin opening of her traveling retrospective, expressing moral outrage and arguing that calling anti-Zionism antisemitic is a false equivalency. The AGO's modern and contemporary curator, John Zeppetelli, stepped down allegedly because of the incident, while the Vancouver Art Gallery and Walker Art Center proceeded with their part of the acquisition.
Artnet News highlights 11 must-see gallery shows during Armory Art Week in New York City, running from September 5 to October 26, 2024. Featured exhibitions include Gina Beavers' 'Divine Consumer' at Marianne Boesky Gallery, where she presents semi-sculptural relief paintings inspired by internet blankets and towels; Jenny Holzer's 'Words' at Sprüth Magers, showcasing her text-based works from the 1980s to present, including a new AI-generated LED installation; 'Radical Artists of the 1960s/1970s: Between Geometry and Gesture' at David Nolan, featuring works by Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman, and others; and Stephen Thorpe's 'Dream House' at Dimin, with oil paintings of interiors merging into dreamlike landscapes.
The private collection of Hollywood icons Kathryn and Bing Crosby sold at Sotheby's for $6.7 million on December 18. The white-glove auction, held at Sotheby's new Breuer Building location on Manhattan's Upper East Side, surpassed its pre-sale high estimate of $6.3 million, with two-thirds of the lots exceeding their high estimates. The nearly 200-lot sale featured fine art, furnishings, and collectibles, with the top lot being Alfred James Munnings' painting *On the Moors* (1914), which sold for $1.2 million. Other highlights included works by Charles Marion Russell, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Corot, as well as nearly 50 lots of Fabergé items that achieved $2 million in sales.
Christie's and Sotheby's have released their projected 2025 sales results, signaling a potential recovery after three years of market contraction. Sotheby's reported total sales of $7 billion, a 17% increase over 2024, with fine art up 15% to $4.3 billion. Christie's posted $6.2 billion, a 6% rise from $5.8 billion in 2024, bolstered by $234 million from its Gooding acquisition. Notable sales include Canaletto's Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day for £31.9 million at Christie's and a Gustav Klimt painting that sold for $236 million at Sotheby's.
Artnet News highlights the top photography moments of 2025, including Sara Cwynar's exhibition of search-engine images at ICA Boston, Inuuteq Storch's debut at MoMA PS1 showcasing his Greenlandic hometown, and Dietemar Busse's Polaroid portraits celebrated at Amant, New York. The year also saw Wolfgang Tillmans' blockbuster farewell exhibition at the Centre Pompidou before its five-year renovation, and Marian Goodman Gallery's inaugural show of Ana Mendieta's work, "Back to the Source," featuring her iconic photographs and performances. Mendieta's work was also spotlighted at Art Basel Miami Beach, with her piece "Sandwoman" (1983) drawing emotional responses from visitors.
Jenny Saville, the British painter known for her monumental depictions of flesh, is the subject of her first major U.S. museum exhibition, "Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting," now on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. The show, which previously opened at London's National Portrait Gallery in June, brings together 45 works from across her career, including charcoal drawings and large-scale oil paintings. In a rare interview, Saville discusses seeing older works like *Plan* again and how the Fort Worth museum's architecture suits her largest canvases. The exhibition runs through January 2026, ahead of a major 2026 showcase in Venice.
On January 7, 2025, the Palisades and Eaton Fires erupted in Los Angeles, fueled by drought and Santa Ana winds exceeding 90 mph, destroying over 12,000 structures. The fires devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena, including the homes and studios of numerous artists, collectors, and art professionals. The Getty Center and Getty Villa were under evacuation but remained safe. Artist Paul McCarthy lost three family homes and his son's editing studio, while many others like Christina Quarles, Analia Saban, and Ruby Neri also suffered losses.
ARTnews reporter Daniel Cassady recounts his experience navigating the nightlife and social events surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach 2024. The article details his week from Monday to Wednesday, including parties at Untitled Art's venue at The Moore, a dinner at Joe's Stone Crab hosted by dealer Rob Dimin, Gagosian's party at Mr. Chow, and late-night gatherings at Casa Tua and Mac's Club Deuce. He spotlights art-world figures such as dealer Lindsey Jarvis, collector Beth DeWoody, and artist Lucy de Kooning Villeneuve, while noting the chaotic, phone-thieving atmosphere of the Deuce.
Frank Gehry, the award-winning architect whose revolutionary museum designs reshaped the art world, died on Friday in Santa Monica, California, at age 96 due to a brief respiratory illness. Best known for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), Gehry's signature style—featuring sloping, incongruous forms clad in titanium—transformed the architectural landscape of art institutions worldwide. His other major museum projects include the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and an upcoming Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi.
At Design Miami 2025, artist Nicole Cherubini presented monumental ceramic sculptures at Friedman Benda's booth, alongside Molly Hatch's installation of 288 ceramic plates at Todd Merrill's booth. The fair, curated under the theme "Make.Believe" by Glenn Adamson, saw 15 previous exhibitors drop out due to President Trump's tariffs—including a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum—while eight more booths appeared overall, dominated by younger, emerging talent and organic, pastel-hued designs. Established galleries like Donzello, Patrick Seguin, and Sarah Myerscough did not return, while first-time exhibitors included Arte y Ritual and Mass Modern Design.
NADA Miami 2025 opened at Ice Palace Studios with strong early sales and a buoyant mood, as crowds streamed through the aisles on Tuesday morning. Dealers reported brisk business, with Polina Berlin selling multiple works by artists including Tamo Jugeli, Parmen Daushvili, and Casey Bolding, while Charles Moffett sold ten paintings by Kenny Rivero. The fair, hosting around 140 exhibitors, saw participation from galleries like Deanna Evans Projects, Alice Amati, and Gladwell Projects, with many dealers expressing relief and confidence after a multi-year contraction in the art market.
British artist Jenny Saville has received her first major solo exhibition at a London museum, titled "Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting" at the National Portrait Gallery. The show spans three decades of her practice across some 50 paintings and drawings, tracing her evolution from a Young British Artist (YBA) known for vast, sensitive paintings of women's bodies to her recent digital-era heads. The exhibition will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas in October. The article also highlights Saville's record-breaking 2018 sale of *Propped* for $12.4 million at Sotheby's London, which made her the highest-selling living female painter at the time, and notes recent auction results including *Juncture* selling for $7.3 million.
ARTnews sent correspondents Daniel Cassady and George Nelson to cover the social scene at Art Basel, documenting their experiences across three nights of parties, dinners, and cocktail hours. Cassady's journey was marred by travel delays, but he eventually attended a dinner hosted by Thaddaeus Ropac at Safran Zunft, a garden party by Sean Kelly Gallery, and a late-night gathering organized by multiple galleries. Nelson arrived smoothly and joined Cassady for drinks, noting the challenges of street noise and cabbage smells near their Airbnb.
Christo, the Bulgarian-born artist known for his monumental fabric-wrapped installations, reflects on his career ahead of a planned exhibition at the Centre Pompidou titled "Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Paris!" The show, dedicated to Christo and his late wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude, has been indefinitely postponed due to the global health crisis. Christo discusses his early years in Paris, his nomadic artistic approach, and his upcoming project to wrap the Arc de Triomphe, scheduled for September 19 to October 4. The article captures his disdain for retrospection, his escape from communist Bulgaria, and his lifelong commitment to taking art beyond traditional gallery spaces.
The largest-ever exhibition of Diane Arbus's work, titled "Constellation," opens today at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Featuring over 450 prints—many previously unpublished—the immersive show debuted at LUMA Arles in 2023 and arrives in the U.S. with its original labyrinthine format. Curated by Matthieu Humery, the exhibition presents Arbus's iconic photographs of marginalized figures, celebrities, and everyday people without chronological or narrative order, emphasizing her equalizing gaze. The prints come from the collection of Maja Hoffmann, who acquired the complete set of printer's proofs from Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized by the Diane Arbus Estate to print from her negatives.
Pilar Corrias is expanding her London gallery with a new 5,000-square-foot flagship space at 49-51 Conduit Street in Mayfair, featuring 16-foot ceilings and street-level access. The gallery, now 15 years old, has grown from representing 4 to 35 artists, including top-selling names like Christina Quarles. Corrias decided to open the new space after a four-year search, citing its rare size and industrial character as a contrast to her existing Savile Row location, which she will retain. The first exhibition in the new gallery will showcase new paintings by Christina Quarles.
Two major New York art fairs—NADA New York and Independent—opened this week alongside Frieze and TEFAF, marking a crowded spring fair season. Despite a recent market downturn, both fairs reported strong attendance and early sales. NADA's executive director Heather Hubbs noted high-quality visitors and positive feedback on the new venue, while Independent founder Elizabeth Dee cited a 20% increase in opening-day attendance and robust buying from collectors and institutions. Sales ranged from lower-priced works under $50,000 to six-figure transactions, with galleries like Vielmetter Los Angeles, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery reporting significant sales.
This week's art roundup from The Guardian features a major exhibition at Towner Eastbourne titled 'Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism,' which examines how artists, poets, and intellectuals used their work to resist the rise of extremism in 1930s Europe, drawing on the history of the Artists International Association (AIA). Other highlights include 'Hidden: Photography and Displacement Under the Khmer Rouge' at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, a show of early Netherlandish drawings at the British Museum, Katharina Grosse's colorful installations at White Cube, and a flower-themed survey at Kettle's Yard. The image of the week is Sylvia Sleigh's 1963 portrait 'The Bridge (Johanna Lawrenson),' part of a new exhibition of the Welsh artist's work. The article also covers news items such as Lydia Ourahmane's Venice Biennale installation, a Holbein portrait mystery, a restored stained-glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and Anish Kapoor's call to exclude the US from the Venice Biennale due to 'politics of hate.'
ARTnews published a listicle on May 19, 2026, detailing 15 Van Gogh masterpieces that set auction records, from *Landscape with Rising Sun* (1985) to *Portrait of Dr. Gachet* (1990). The article recounts landmark sales including *Sunflowers* ($39.9 million in 1987), *Irises* ($53.9 million in 1987), and *Portrait of Dr. Gachet* ($82.5 million in 1990), highlighting the buyers, provenance, and institutional homes such as the Sompo Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Art Dubai opened its 20th edition at Madinat Jumeirah with a significantly reduced number of exhibitors—50 largely regional galleries, down from the originally expected 120—after being delayed from mid-April due to geopolitical tensions following the U.S.-Iran ceasefire on April 8. The fair, which offered free entry for the first time and refunded booth costs for participating galleries, saw strong attendance from Gulf and Middle Eastern collectors, with an upbeat mood and a more intimate atmosphere reminiscent of pre-Covid editions. Galleries from Lebanon and other conflict-affected regions were present, emphasizing art as a form of resilience and cultural identity.
Hyperallergic interviews Los Angeles-based painter Keith Mayerson, who discusses his ongoing 'My American Dream' series—a cosmology of paintings blending American identity, activism, and popular culture. The conversation covers his early influences from comics, the Muppets, and Hunter S. Thompson, his transition from cartooning to painting, and his vibratory, swirling brushwork. Mayerson's work has been featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and is currently on view at the Aspen Art Museum and the Pollock-Krasner House.
This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast covers three major art events opening this weekend. The largest career survey of 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán since the 1980s opens at the National Gallery in London, co-curated by Francesca Whitlum-Cooper. The 59th Carnegie International, titled "If the word we," opens at the Carnegie Museum of Art and other venues in Pittsburgh, directed by Eric Crosby. The Work of the Week is Walter Sickert's "Ennui" (c.1914), featured in the exhibition "Walter Sickert: Working Notes" at Charleston in Lewes, curated by Robert Travers of Piano Nobile in partnership with Charleston.
Philadelphia gallerist Megan Galardi is launching a new art fair called Elsewhere, set to debut June 4–6 at the Yowie Hotel on South Street. The fair will feature 27 exhibitors from cities including London, New York, and Philadelphia, with seven local dealers such as Fleisher/Ollman, Blah Blah Gallery, and Fjord. Galardi, who founded Blah Blah Gallery in 2023 and has participated in small New York fairs like Spring/Break and Future Fair, designed Elsewhere as a boutique, hotel-based event that offers a lower-cost, more intimate alternative to large-scale art fairs.
New York museums are launching a significant slate of spring exhibitions, featuring major retrospectives and thematic surveys. Highlights include "Noguchi's New York" at the Noguchi Museum, exploring the sculptor's unrealized urban projects; "Raphael: Sublime Poetry" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a comprehensive look at the Renaissance master; and "Gothic by Design: The Dawn of Architectural Draftsmanship," also at the Met, focusing on medieval architectural drawings.
Rebecca Salsbury James, an artist who mastered reverse painting on glass and colcha embroidery, is gaining renewed attention. Born in 1891 in London to parents involved in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, she later moved to Taos, New Mexico, where she lived until her death in 1968. She was married to photographer Paul Strand, a close friend of Georgia O'Keeffe, and exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery. Recent milestones include her inclusion in the 2025 Site Santa Fe International, a new acquisition by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and a record auction price for her work at Christie's in 2016.
Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen has been selected for the next High Line Plinth commission in New York City. His 27-foot-tall sculpture, titled *The Light That Shines Through the Universe* (2026), will be installed for 18 months starting next spring. The work reimagines one of the Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, incorporating melted brass artillery shells and scrap metal from Afghanistan for the hands, which perform mudra poses of fearlessness and compassion. The sculpture will be fabricated in Vietnam from four sandstone parts and installed at night on the High Line.
Darren Bader's first exhibition with Matthew Brown Gallery in New York, titled "Youth," features his signature conceptual works that blur the line between humor and philosophical inquiry. The show includes pieces like "jam on It," a mound of fruit spread placed on a Stephen King novel, and a bin soliciting sock donations, including a pair printed with Edgar Allan Poe's face and injected with Botox. Gallery director Jack Eisenberg describes the challenges of sourcing jam in New York, highlighting the absurd yet meticulous nature of Bader's practice.