Latin American galleries dominate at Frieze New York

Frieze New York 2025 features a surge of 14 Latin American galleries from Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, reversing a trend of withdrawal seen during the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Non-profit support from organizations like Latitude, which helped all eight Brazilian exhibitors, and a concerted effort by Frieze’s Americas team have enabled this increased presence, despite ongoing challenges such as high shipping costs, tariffs, and visa denials—exemplified by Mexican artist Dr Lakra being unable to attend his own show at Kurimanzutto.

michele pred projecting democracy

Artist and activist Michele Pred has opened a solo exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York, showcasing a body of work that addresses the erosion of civil and reproductive rights. The exhibition features her signature electroluminescent wire-stitched vintage handbags, sculptures made from found objects like wooden gavels and disarmed bullets, and large-scale inflatable abortion pill sculptures. Pred’s practice, rooted in her upbringing between California and Sweden, utilizes approachable domestic objects to deliver urgent political messages regarding bodily autonomy and social justice.

Phillips’ $115.2 Million Evening Sale Was a Testament to the Power of Pre-Planning and Priority Bidding

Phillips’ Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 19 achieved a white-glove result, totaling $115.2 million across 41 lots—a 122 percent increase from May 2025. The sale saw strong performances from works by Lee Bontecou, Salman Toor, and Cecily Brown, with Bontecou’s 1985 pastel on canvas setting a record for a two-dimensional work by the artist at $4.2 million. Other top lots included Andy Warhol’s *Sixteen Jackies* (1964) at $16.2 million, a Monet landscape at $9.3 million, and a Joan Mitchell at $6.9 million. Notably, less than half of the lots were guaranteed, with Phillips’ Priority Bidding incentive—offering a 4 percent discount on buyer’s premium—contributing to the strong results, as more than half of the lots attracted such bids.

New York Is About to Sell $3 Billion in Art. Who’s Buying?

Vanity Fair's Nate Freeman reports on New York's spring art season, where auction houses are poised to sell at least $2.6 billion in art alongside major museum exhibitions (Raphael at the Met, Duchamp at MoMA, Matisse at Acquavella) and the opening of Frieze New York at The Shed. The article follows the social and commercial frenzy, highlighting a David Shrigley gong installation at Anton Kern Gallery's booth and the enduring dominance of New York, where nearly 90% of U.S. art sales occur.

15 of the Most Anticipated Museum Exhibitions Around the World in 2026

Major museums worldwide have announced their flagship exhibitions for 2026, featuring a diverse array of artists and historical periods. Highlights include a Frida Kahlo retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, exploring her rise to icon status; a survey of Ovid's influence on art from Caravaggio to Louise Bourgeois at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum; a centennial exhibition for Mary Cassatt at the National Gallery of Art; and the largest career survey to date for Tracey Emin at Tate Modern. Other key shows feature Carol Bove at the Guggenheim Museum, Korean national treasures at the Art Institute of Chicago, and exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Louvre.

With Ruth Asawa, MoMA is set to open its biggest show ever by a woman artist

MoMA is opening "Ruth Asawa: Retrospective" on October 19, 2025, running through February 7, 2026, featuring 275 works by the artist, including over 60 looped-wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, and drawings. The exhibition, which previously appeared at SFMoMA, occupies 16,000 square feet on MoMA's sixth floor and is the largest show ever devoted to a woman artist at either institution by checklist count, though neither museum has emphasized this superlative.

Charge of the Indian art brigade

At a Christie’s auction in New York’s Rockefeller Center, an untitled work (Gram Yatra) by MF Husain sold for over Rs 118.7 crore ($13.8 million), becoming the most expensive modern Indian painting ever sold. The buyer is reportedly collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar. Other record-tying sales include Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller and Tyeb Mehta’s Trussed Bull, each fetching Rs 61.8 crore at SaffronArt auctions, while a Jagdish Swaminathan painting exceeded estimates at Sotheby’s. These results come amid a 19% rise in the top 50 Indian artists’ sales to $36.2 million, per the 2024 Hurun India Art List.

popular artists march 2025

Artnet News published its quarterly analysis of the most exhibited living artists at over 250 U.S. museums in March 2025, identifying more than 3,700 artists. The top artist is photographer Cara Romero, who appears in multiple museum shows including a major retrospective at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College. Three of the six most featured artists have Native American backgrounds, reflecting a surge in exhibitions celebrating Indigenous art. The list excludes the late Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a Native painter and curator who died in January 2025 at age 85 and would have ranked highly.

Caravaggio Documentary Will Premiere on Marquee TV Next Week

A feature-length documentary about Baroque painter Caravaggio, directed by Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaff, will premiere on the streaming platform Marquee TV on April 6. The film, part of the "Exhibition on Screen" series, was previously released in theaters last fall and focuses on the artist's innovative painting style rather than his notorious personal life.

Look Inside the Art-Filled Home of New York City's Cultural Crusaders

This profile explores the Upper West Side residence of Crystal McCrary McGuire and Raymond J. McGuire, a power couple deeply embedded in New York City’s cultural and financial sectors. Their home serves as a private gallery for a significant collection of African American art, featuring masterworks by Norman Lewis, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden. The couple’s shared passion for collecting began independently, sparked by their formative years studying in France, and has since evolved into a joint mission to preserve and live alongside Black artistic heritage.

art ralph deluca photography market

Art advisor Ralph DeLuca, in his column "Street Smarts" for Cultured, analyzes the struggling photography market. He notes that photography auction sales have plummeted from a peak of $230.5 million in 2014 to just $116.9 million in 2024, attributing the decline partly to smartphones making photography seem effortless. DeLuca, who owns over 20,000 photographs, argues this downturn presents a rare buying opportunity for collectors to build museum-quality collections at lower prices.

Space, stadiums, poses and prizes: the best art and architecture of autumn 2025

This article is a seasonal preview of the best art and architecture exhibitions opening in autumn 2025, primarily in London and other UK venues. It highlights major shows including Mona Hatoum's dialogue with Giacometti at the Barbican, a Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern, Kerry James Marshall's first major European retrospective at the Royal Academy, and the Turner Prize 2025 at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford. Other featured exhibitions cover Hilary Lloyd's work on Dennis Potter, Marie Antoinette's image through art and fashion at the V&A, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's new commission at Nottingham Contemporary, and a Lee Miller retrospective at Tate Britain.

The Venice Biennale has long been a sales platform—now no one is pretending otherwise

The Venice Biennale, traditionally a government-subsidized non-commercial institution where sales were downplayed, is experiencing an unprecedented open embrace of commerce. For the first time, Christie's is hosting an invitation-only selling exhibition in Venice, offering works ranging from Old Masters like Lucas Cranach to Modern and contemporary giants such as Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, and Mark Bradford, with prices from $500,000 to over $35 million. Dealers, auction houses, and private foundations are openly pricing and selling works to collectors, spurred partly by Italy's reduced 5% VAT rate on art imports, now Europe's lowest.

Botticelli Painting Banned from Export Will Stay in the UK

A Botticelli painting, *The Virgin and Child Enthroned* (1470s), previously placed under an export ban to keep it in the UK, has been acquired by the Klesch Collection. The work, valued at £10.2 million, will remain in England through a three-year loan to the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford. The painting was bought in 1904 by Harriet Sarah Jones Loyd (Lady Wantage) from Italian dealer Elia Volpi, who had acquired it from the Magherini Graziani family.

Luca De Michelis, chief executive of Marsilio Arte, on his favourite spots in Venice beyond the Biennale

Luca De Michelis, CEO of Marsilio Arte, shares his personal guide to Venice beyond the Biennale, highlighting historic sites, shopping, dining, and cultural venues. His recommendations include Palazzo Grimani, Micheluzzi Glass, the Gardens of the Church of the Redeemer on Giudecca, Antiche Carampane restaurant, the newly opened Dries Van Noten Foundation, San Giorgio Maggiore island, Codroma for spritz, and the upcoming exhibition 'Strange Rules' at Palazzo Diedo’s Berggruen Arts & Culture.

Botticelli under UK export ban purchased by Klesch Collection

A Botticelli painting, *The Virgin and Child Enthroned* (1470s), valued at £10.2 million, has been purchased by the Klesch Collection, a British private collection, after the UK government placed an export bar on the work in May 2025. The painting, which sold at Sotheby’s London in late 2024 for £9.7 million, will be loaned to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford for three years, ensuring it remains in the UK.

How Caravaggio’s Dark Masterpieces Mirror the Crimes in Netflix’s Ripley

as seen on ripley netflix caravaggio

The Netflix series Ripley, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, utilizes the works of Caravaggio as a central narrative and aesthetic device. The show follows Tom Ripley, a grifter who travels to Italy and eventually adopts the identity of a wealthy acquaintance after committing murder. Throughout the series, Ripley encounters several of Caravaggio's masterpieces, including The Seven Acts of Mercy and David with the Head of Goliath, which serve as dark mirrors to his own descent into violence.

Lost John Constable Painting Rediscovered in Texas Bound for Auction

Lost John Constable Painting Rediscovered in Texas Bound for Auction

A long-lost, large-scale oil study by John Constable for his famous painting *The Cornfield* has been rediscovered and authenticated after decades in a rural Texas museum. Scientific analysis, including pigment tests and infrared reflectography, confirmed the materials and techniques match Constable's own, leading experts to declare it the largest known study for the 1826 masterpiece. The work, which had been mistakenly cataloged as a copy, will now be auctioned by Heritage Auctions in Dallas this June.

gentileschi auction lucretia

A rediscovered painting by Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, titled 'Lucretia,' sold for €4.8 million ($5.28 million) at an Artcurial auction in Paris, shattering the artist's previous auction record. The price soared to six times its high estimate, reflecting intense market competition for the rare work.

sleeping hermaphroditus louvre rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has secured a major loan of the ancient marble sculpture *Sleeping Hermaphroditus* from the Louvre in Paris. The work will be a centerpiece of the museum's upcoming exhibition "Metamorphoses," which opens on February 6, 2026, and explores themes of transformation drawn from Ovid's epic poem.

caravaggio morgan library loan

The Morgan Library and Museum in New York will open "Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit in Focus" on January 16, centered on a landmark loan of Caravaggio's titular painting from the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The exhibition, organized through the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture (FIAC) led by Alain Elkann, features 13 artworks by artists who preceded and succeeded Caravaggio, curated by John Marciari to provide context on the artist's influences and legacy.

parlez vous le francais french old masters glossary and museum list

Artnet News published a French-language glossary of Old Masters terminology and a list of French museums dedicated to Old Masters. The article defines an Old Master as a European painter who worked before 1800, then provides an A–Z bilingual glossary covering terms from Baroque to Venetian Renaissance. It also profiles two museums: the Musée du Louvre in Paris, highlighting its history, collection size, and a wartime anecdote about Théodore Géricault's "Le Radeau de la Méduse," and the Musée du Louvre-Lens, a branch museum opened in 2012 on a former mining site.

jack whitten 2025 artnews awards historical artist

Jack Whitten is the recipient of the 2025 ARTnews Award for his retrospective "Jack Whitten: The Messenger" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, running from March 23 to August 2, 2025. Curated by Michelle Kuo with Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge, the exhibition features 175 works spanning Whitten's six-decade career, highlighting his innovative use of acrylic paint, his custom squeegee-like tool called the Developer, and his mosaic-like paintings made from dried acrylic chips. The show includes early works from the civil rights era, mid-career homages to Black thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison, and a monumental abstraction memorializing 9/11.

10 art restorations in 2025

In 2025, a series of major art restorations unveiled transformative discoveries in masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raphael, and Artemisia Gentileschi, among others. Caravaggio's final work, *The Martyrdom of St. Ursula* (1610), owned by Intesa Sanpaolo, was cleaned ahead of Rome's "Caravaggio 2025" exhibition, revealing hidden faces and a soldier's helmet previously only visible by x-ray. At the Vatican Museums, a decade-long restoration of the Raphael Rooms concluded with the revelation that two allegorical figures in the Hall of Constantine were painted by Raphael himself, not just his assistants, rewriting art history. Meanwhile, Artemisia Gentileschi's *Hercules and Omphale* (ca. 1635–37), damaged in the Beirut explosion, underwent emergency conservation by the Getty.

wafaa bilal artnews awards 2025 established artist

Wafaa Bilal has been named the recipient of the 2025 ARTnews Award for Established Artist, recognizing his survey exhibition “Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (February 1–October 19, 2025). The show is the first major retrospective for the Iraqi American artist, featuring works that put his body at risk, including the iconic performance *Domestic Tension* (2007), in which remote participants fired a paintball gun at him over the internet, and *Virtual Jihadi* (2008), a modified video game that blurs the lines between aggressor and victim. Curated by Bana Kattan, the exhibition restages elements of Bilal’s original performance and presents his ongoing critique of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, particularly the Iraq War and the use of drone warfare.

wadsworth atheneum president allison blais

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, has appointed Allison Blais as its new president and CEO, effective January 2026. Blais, currently executive vice president and chief strategy and operations officer at New York’s 9/11 Memorial & Museum, will succeed Jeffrey N. Brown, who held the role for five years. The announcement was made by board chair Duffield Ashmead IV MD, who praised Blais's experience with large-scale capital projects and stakeholder engagement. Blais, a Connecticut native, expressed her long familiarity with the Wadsworth and her enthusiasm for working with museum director Matthew Hargraves.

louvre jacques louis david museum retrospective

The Louvre in Paris is staging a major retrospective of Jacques-Louis David, featuring 100 works by the French Neoclassical painter, to mark the bicentenary of his death in 1825. The exhibition opens October 15 and runs through January, drawing on the Louvre's own collection and prestigious loans from institutions including the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Curator Sébastien Allard emphasizes that the show is not a conventional blockbuster but aims to explore under-examined aspects of David's practice, particularly his political engagement across the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Empire.

aspen air festival 2025

The inaugural AIR festival took place in Aspen as part of Aspen Art Week, featuring a mix of talks, performances, and a closed-door retreat for artists, writers, scientists, and theorists. Highlights included a pack of panting huskies, a psychoanalysis talk in a psychedelic chapel, an artist conversing with his AI doppelganger, and a whispery musical performance on a museum rooftop. The festival kicked off with a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul accompanied by composer Rafiq Bhatia, followed by discussions on dreaming and catastrophe, and site-responsive works by Jota Mombaça and Paul Chan.

artful tom a memoir damn the originals

Thomas Hoving recounts his decision to pursue art history graduate school after military service, rejecting his father's demand that he join the family business and attend business school instead. He describes a cross-country road trip with his wife Nancy and their dog Whiskey, including a failed gambling attempt in Las Vegas and mechanical troubles in Missouri.

diego velasquezs las meninas why so important

Diego Velázquez's 1656 painting *Las Meninas* is examined as one of the most conceptually complex works in Western art history. The article explores how the painting subverts Renaissance artistic conventions by playing with perspective, illusion, and the relationship between viewer and subject, depicting Infanta Margaret Theresa surrounded by her entourage in the Royal Alcázar of Madrid.