ralph lemon artnews awards 2025 lifetime achievement 1234763082

Ralph Lemon has been awarded the 2025 ARTnews Lifetime Achievement Award for his multidisciplinary practice spanning dance, drawing, painting, installation, sculpture, and writing. The article highlights his career trajectory from founding the Ralph Lemon Dance Company to disbanding it in 1995 to focus on broader artistic collaborations. Central to his work is the Geography Trilogy (1996–2004) and his long-term collaboration with Walter Carter, a former Mississippi sharecropper, whose life and family became a recurring subject. Lemon's recent exhibition "Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon" at MoMA PS1 (November 14, 2024–March 24, 2025), curated by Connie Butler and Thomas Lax, featured videos, found African sculptures, drawings, and a four-channel performance piece, Rant (redux), with Kevin Beasley and Okwui Okpokwasili.

trustees bolt palm springs art museum director hire 1234761292

Trustee Patsy Marino resigned from the Palm Springs Art Museum board just one week after Christine Vendredi was appointed director on September 29, 2024. In a resignation letter reported by the Los Angeles Times, Marino alleged that the hiring committee failed to interview any outside candidates, despite two "exceptional" candidates being considered, and cited "inappropriate interference" by the executive committee, individual trustees, and museum staff. Two other board members also left the 22-member body, though the museum claims their departures were unrelated. Vendredi, previously chief curator and interim CEO, has a background in luxury brand management at Louis Vuitton and holds multiple advanced degrees but no prior museum directorship experience.

tania willard wins sobey art award 1234760864

Tania Willard, a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist from Neskonlith, British Columbia, has won the 2025 Sobey Art Award, receiving CAD$100,000 ($71,000). The announcement was made at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The award, established in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, supports contemporary Canadian artists. The five other shortlisted artists—Tarralik Duffy, Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, Sandra Brewster, Swapnaa Tamhane, and Hangama Amiri—each receive CAD$25,000. Willard's land-based, community-focused practice centers Indigenous resurgence, and her site-specific installation *Declaration of the Understory* is on view at Bentway Staging Grounds in Toronto through spring 2026.

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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.

biennale of sydney 2026 artist list 1234758937

The Biennale of Sydney has announced the full artist list for its 2026 edition, titled 'Rememory,' which opens on March 14, 2026. The exhibition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, marking her second major biennial after the Aichi Triennale. The show will feature over 60 artists and collectives, with a heightened focus on Indigenous art through a partnership with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, facilitating 15 commissions by First Nations artists. Notable participants include Emily Jacir, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and many others from diverse global backgrounds.

fondation cartier reopens paris 1234758463

The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain will reopen its new space at 2 Place du Palais-Royal in Paris on October 25, 2025, during Paris Art Week. Designed by architect Jean Nouvel, the building—originally constructed for the 1855 Exposition Universelle and later a hotel, department store, and antiques center—has been transformed with a modular system of five movable platforms, a glass canopy, and transparent ground-floor windows to create an open, flexible exhibition environment. The inaugural show, titled “Exposition Générale,” features nearly 600 works by over 100 artists from the foundation’s history.

Harmony Korine Makes Sense of His Shape-Shifting Art: ‘It’s Really One Whole Work’

Harmony Korine's first-ever U.S. retrospective, titled "Perfect Nonsense," has opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. The exhibition gathers over 50 pieces spanning his career, including adolescent writings, zines, collages from the 1990s, figurative paintings, and recent works using game engines. Korine, known for transgressive films like *Gummo* (1997) and *Spring Breakers* (2012), also founded EDGLRD, a studio producing experimental content with cutting-edge tech, such as his 2023 project *AGGRO DR1FT*, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.

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Meg Molloy, founder of the Working Arts Club, discusses the systemic barriers facing working-class professionals in the art world. Launched last year, the independent network provides social and professional support for arts workers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, a demographic often excluded by the industry's reliance on unpaid internships, low entry-level salaries, and expensive urban hubs like London.

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President Donald Trump has initiated a controversial overhaul of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., renaming it the 'Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts' and appointing himself chairman. Following the dismissal of long-time president Deborah Rutter and the installation of a board led by Richard Grenell, the institution has pivoted toward conservative programming, leading to a 93% to 57% drop in ticket sales and high-profile boycotts from artists like Philip Glass. The center is now slated for a two-year closure starting after July 4 for major renovations, a move that has sparked alarm among preservationists and political figures.

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The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has announced an $11.5 million permanent sculpture garden, funded by a €60 million donation from the Don Quixote Foundation. Designed by Foster + Partners and landscape architect Piet Blanckaert, the garden will transform three areas of the museum grounds into a permanent display of Modern and contemporary sculpture, featuring works by Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Roni Horn. Three existing pavilions will be converted into exhibition spaces, and the garden is slated to open later this year, pending local council approval.

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The Arkansas Museum of Art in Little Rock is presenting "Architects of Being," an exhibition pairing the work of Esphyr Slobodkina and Louise Nevelson through January 11, 2026. Slobodkina, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant and founding member of the American Abstract Artists, was a painter, sculptor, writer, and fashion designer who also authored the classic children's book *Caps for Sale*. Nevelson, also an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, is renowned for her monochromatic wood assemblages. The show juxtaposes their geometric abstractions, collages, sculptures, and personal fashion, curated as a hypothetical dialogue between two kindred spirits who never met. The exhibition will travel to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

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The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has organized the first exhibition dedicated to conceptual artist Roni Horn's long-standing engagement with water. Titled "Roni Horn: Water, Water on the Wall, You're the Fairest of Them All," the show spans sculpture, photography, drawing, and bookmaking, exploring water's mutability, ecological resonance, and paradoxical purity. Horn, who has received a Ford Foundation grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, and three NEA fellowships, has shown at major institutions including the Menil Collection, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, and Tate Modern, and is represented by Hauser and Wirth.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its Spring 2026 Costume Institute exhibition, “Costume Art,” which will open on May 10, 2026, inaugurating the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast gallery designed by Peterson Rich Office. The exhibition will feature artworks from across the Met’s collections in dialogue with garments from the Costume Institute, focusing primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present. Major sponsors include Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, with additional support from Saint Laurent and Condé Nast. Curator Andrew Bolton and museum director Max Hollein spoke at the press conference, where preview objects included Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons ensemble and Hans Bellmer’s "La Poupée."

Restored Victorian greenhouse links Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery to its living neighbours

Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery has unveiled the 'Green-House,' a $34m welcome and education center centered around a meticulously restored 1895 Victorian cast-iron greenhouse. Designed by Architecture Research Office (ARO), the facility includes classrooms, research archives, and dedicated gallery spaces. The project transforms a formerly dilapidated commercial florist shop into a modern gateway that connects the 478-acre National Historic Landmark to its surrounding urban neighborhood.

Gagosian to Debut New Gallery With Duchamp’s “Readymades”

Gagosian has announced that the inaugural exhibition at its new ground-level space at 980 Madison Avenue will feature the iconic "readymades" of Marcel Duchamp. Opening April 25, the show will showcase a series of 14 authorized replicas created in 1964 by Duchamp and dealer Arturo Schwarz, including famous works like "Fountain" and "Bicycle Wheel." The exhibition is timed to run concurrently with a major Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the artist's first in the United States in over half a century.

Remembering Agosto Machado, Keeper of Queer Histories

Agosto Machado, a seminal performer, archivist, and fixture of New York’s downtown queer arts scene, has passed away. Known as a "keeper of secrets" and a vital connector within the avant-garde community, Machado was a muse to filmmaker Jack Smith and a lifelong friend to Warhol superstar Mario Montez. His life spanned the height of the East Village performance era, where he transitioned from a quiet observer to an essential participant in the preservation of underground history.

almine rech closes london gallery 1234755425

Almine Rech is closing her London gallery in Mayfair after more than a decade, as reported by Melanie Gerlis in the Art Newspaper. The space, which opened in 2014 on Savile Row before moving to Grosvenor Hill, hosted exhibitions by artists including Javier Calleja, Chloe Wise, Jeff Koons, and Esther Mahlangu. Rech stated that London remains "important" to her and that she plans to open something in the city in the future, but offered no specifics. The London branch was put into liquidation, with Companies House filings indicating a £6.3 million deficit, though Rech said she owes no money to artists, workers, or suppliers and described the filing as a technical step to restructure a lease. Her gallery will continue operating its other eight locations across Paris, New York, Brussels, Shanghai, Monaco, and Gstaad.

‘He sent someone to intimidate me’: Christopher Anderson, the photographer who shot Jeffrey Epstein

Photographer Christopher Anderson has revealed the details behind his 2015 encounter with Jeffrey Epstein, whom he photographed for a cancelled New York magazine profile. Anderson describes a series of unsettling interactions, including Epstein's attempts to buy the image rights for $20,000 and the eventual dispatch of a "mafia-esque" intimidator to Anderson's studio to seize a hard drive. The photographer's email exchanges with Epstein’s staff were recently made public as part of the Department of Justice's release of the Epstein files.

Alexander Calder, Brilliant Sculptor of Air and Color Celebrated at the Fondation Vuitton

Alexander Calder, génial sculpteur de l’air et de la couleur célébré à la fondation Vuitton

The Fondation Louis Vuitton is hosting a major celebration of Alexander Calder, the American sculptor who revolutionized 20th-century art by introducing movement and play into the medium. The article traces Calder's formative years in Paris starting in 1926, where the young engineer-turned-artist gained avant-garde fame with his 'Cirque Calder'—a miniature circus of wire and fabric figurines. This period marked his transition from traditional painting to his signature 'drawings in space,' featuring wire sculptures of figures like Josephine Baker that projected dancing shadows and captured the kinetic energy of the era.

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The article examines the growing role of artist estates in the art market, particularly for smaller and emerging galleries. While mega-galleries like Hauser & Wirth have long profited from managing blue-chip estates, a new wave of smaller galleries is now turning to overlooked and under-researched artists who died without established legacies. These galleries invest in building archives, cultivating institutional relationships, and reintroducing artists to contemporary audiences, often at more accessible price points with significant room for growth. Examples include Gunia Nowik Gallery working with the estate of Polish artist Krzysztof Jung and Gianni Manhattan representing Estonian sculptor Anu Põder.

Berlin Modern Museum Delayed Again as Moisture Damage Pushes Opening to 2030

Berlin's long-awaited Berlin Modern museum has been delayed again, with its opening now pushed to 2030 due to moisture damage in the building's shell and microbial contamination in other parts of the structure. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation announced the delay after the Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting Corporation broke the story. The Herzog & de Meuron-designed building, originally scheduled to open this year as the Museum of the 20th Century, has faced multiple setbacks since groundbreaking in December 2019, with completion dates slipping from 2026 to 2028, then 2029, and now 2030. The project's cost has ballooned from €200 million to €507 million.

Andy Warhol’s Former Studio Building Now Home to New Uniqlo Union Square Store

The former New York City studio building of Andy Warhol, known as The Factory, will now house a Uniqlo store. The Japanese fast-fashion brand is opening its seventh New York location on the ground floor of 860 Broadway, the same building where Warhol worked from 1974 to 1984. The brand is leveraging the site's artistic history by selling exclusive merchandise featuring Warhol's imagery to promote the opening.

la fire suspect identified dystopian painting image chatgpt 1234756274

Jonathan Rinderknecht has been arrested on suspicion of starting the Pacific Palisades fire in January, which killed 12 people and destroyed over 6,000 homes. Authorities discovered evidence on his phone, including a ChatGPT query where he asked the AI to create a "dystopian painting" depicting a class war during a fire, as well as questions about legal culpability for starting a fire with cigarettes. The fire also damaged the grounds of the Getty Villa, forcing a four-month closure.

finland nada partnership new york galleries 1234759456

Three New York galleries—Gaa Gallery, Margot Samel, and Ulterior Gallery—will stage exhibitions of Finnish contemporary art this winter through a new partnership between the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the Consulate General of Finland, and the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). Funded by the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Finlandia Foundation National, and Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, the initiative sent the galleries to Finland to meet artists and institutions, resulting in shows such as Gaa Gallery's "Beyond Matter" (November 14–January 3, 2026), Margot Samel's "Kuu Maa" (November 21–January 3, 2026), and Ulterior Gallery's presentation of Päivi Takala, Elina Vainio, and Noora Schroderus (January 16–February 21, 2026).

meet augustas serapinas the youngest artist in the venice biennale 1525318

Augustas Serapinas, a 28-year-old Lithuanian artist, is the youngest participant in the main exhibition of the 2019 Venice Biennale, curated by Ralph Rugoff. Known for site-specific, interactive works that blur public and private space, Serapinas creates installations like a functioning sauna and snowmen rescued from playgrounds. He famously hosts studio visits inside a drainage pipe along the Vilnia River, a practice that impressed Rugoff and other curators. Serapinas's work challenges traditional studio and exhibition formats, engaging audiences beyond the gallery.

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Artnet Pro's Talentspotter feature highlights seven Asian artists pushing boundaries in contemporary art through diverse media such as 3D printing, VR, photography, and large-scale installation. The artists include Hà Ninh Pham from Vietnam, who creates speculative topographical works and virtual games, and Heecheon Kim from South Korea, who examines digital cognition and reality using GPS, AR, and VR. The article provides critical and market insights into each artist's practice, background, and recent exhibitions, originally published in the Asia Pivot newsletter.

ArtReview Podcast | Episode 5: Rene Matić

Artist Rene Matić discusses their multidisciplinary practice and cultural influences in the latest episode of the ArtReview Podcast. The conversation explores Matić’s background as a second-generation skinhead of St Lucian heritage, their status as the youngest-ever Turner Prize nominee, and the upcoming commission for the grand opening of the V&A East Museum in April 2026.

The Art of ‘The Christophers’: How the Film Created an Artist’s Fabled Oeuvre

Steven Soderbergh’s new film, The Christophers, explores the complexities of artistic legacy and authenticity through the story of Julian Sklar, a fictional washed-up artist played by Ian McKellen. The plot follows Sklar’s children as they hire an art restorer, played by Michaela Coel, to secretly finish their father’s legendary unfinished series to capitalize on his market value. To ground the film in reality, screenwriter Ed Solomon consulted with art world figures like dealer George Barker and artists Jann Haworth and Derek Boshier, while production designer Antonia Lowe and painter Barnaby Gorton created the physical artworks seen on screen.

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A 1977 Andy Warhol portrait of Muhammad Ali, priced at $18 million, will be the centerpiece of Lévy Gorvy Dayan's booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. The 40-inch acrylic and silkscreen canvas, featuring a royal purple background, was previously purchased for $18.1 million at Christie's in 2021. The work is part of a series of 10 Warhol portraits of sports stars commissioned by collector Richard L. Weisman, and is autographed on the back by Ali.

Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice has announced a major exhibition for 2026 titled "Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector." The show focuses on the pivotal period between 1938 and 1939 when Guggenheim operated her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, on Cork Street. It will feature approximately 100 works by avant-garde masters such as Vasily Kandinsky, Jean Cocteau, and Yves Tanguy, alongside archival materials documenting her early career as a gallerist and patron.