Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: Surrealist Lovers Who Defied the German Occupation

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: Surrealist Lovers Who Defied the German Occupation

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, two Surrealist artists and life partners, are the focus of a new exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. The show, titled "And I Saw New Heavens and a New Earth," presents their collaborative work, including intimate portraits and photomontages, and highlights their daring resistance activities, such as creating anti-Nazi propaganda during the German occupation of Jersey.

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Kim Sajet, former director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG), has been appointed as the new director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, starting September 22. She left the NPG in June after a high-profile clash with President Donald Trump over diversity initiatives and funding. Sajet brings extensive experience from museums in the Netherlands and Australia, and during her 12-year tenure at the NPG, she doubled attendance and raised $85 million. She replaces Marcelle Polednik, who departed in May after nine years.

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.

Kamrooz Aram Is Everywhere

Iranian artist Kamrooz Aram is currently experiencing a significant institutional and commercial moment, with his work appearing in three major exhibitions across two continents simultaneously. Critic Aruna D’Souza highlights Aram’s ability to synthesize Islamic visual idioms with Western abstraction, creating a painterly language that transcends cultural hierarchies and treats historical narratives with a unique lightness.

8 Artists to Follow If You Like Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp’s legacy continues to shape contemporary art through his pioneering use of readymades, conceptual rigor, and institutional critique. This analysis identifies eight modern and contemporary artists whose practices echo Duchamp’s subversion of traditional aesthetics, ranging from his early experiments with found objects to his later explorations of gender and mechanical desire.

Marcel Duchamp readymades show to inaugurate new Gagosian Upper East Side gallery.

Gagosian has announced that its new gallery space on the Upper East Side will open with a major exhibition dedicated to Marcel Duchamp. The show, located at 980 Madison Avenue, will feature a comprehensive collection of the artist's iconic readymades, marking a significant addition to the New York spring art calendar.

Where to go this weekend?

Wohin am Wochenende?

Major international exhibitions and events are launching this week, headlined by a massive Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first of its scale in the U.S. since the 1970s. In Milan, Cao Fei debuts a research-heavy project at Fondazione Prada exploring the intersection of high-tech agriculture and tradition, while Berlin’s Georg Kolbe Museum recovers the legacy of British constructivist Marlow Moss. Additionally, the inaugural Art Cologne Palma Mallorca art festival opens in Spain, attempting to stimulate the market during a challenging economic period.

Do We Have Duchamp All Wrong? A Brilliant MoMA Retrospective Reintroduces One of Modernism’s Greats

The Museum of Modern Art has launched a massive retrospective of Marcel Duchamp, featuring over 300 works spanning the artist's career from the early 1900s to the late 1960s. Organized in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition eschews a heavy-handed narrative in favor of a methodical, factual presentation. Key highlights include the controversial "Genre Allegory" (1943) and his iconic readymades, alongside his early experiments in painting like "Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)."

Marcel Duchamp Was the Messenger of History

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is launching the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s work in over 50 years. In an interview regarding the opening, renowned scholar Thierry de Duve discusses the artist's enduring legacy, from his infamous readymades like "Fountain" to his complex, labor-intensive works like the "Large Glass." The exhibition seeks to reconcile Duchamp’s identity as both a conceptual provocateur and a meticulous craftsman.

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John Pritzker, a Top 200 collector and Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee, has donated 188 Dada and Surrealist works by 37 avant-garde artists to the Met. The Bluff Collection includes pieces by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, and others, spanning collages, paintings, photographs, objects, and rare publications. Many works will feature in the museum's upcoming exhibition “Man Ray: When Objects Dream,” opening September 14, which includes 35 Man Ray pieces from the collection. The gift also establishes a research program funded by the John Pritzker Family Fund.

Cathalijn Wouters’s Lyrical Practice Blurs Painting and Drawing

Amsterdam-based artist Cathalijn Wouters has joined the roster of SmithDavidson Gallery. Her practice, which blends painting and drawing through fields of color and linework, is informed by her graphic design training and a pivotal encounter with modern art at the Stedelijk Museum. She describes her process as beginning with drawings and sketches on linen treated like paper, and cites influences ranging from Marcel Proust to Egon Schiele and postwar painting.

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Kevin McGarry reviews the debut issue of *Even*, a new print art journal launched by *Guardian* contributor Jason Farago during Frieze New York. Named after a phrase from Marcel Duchamp's *The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even*, the magazine is a small, paperback-sized publication that prioritizes text over images, positioning itself as an antidote to market-driven art discourse. The first issue features a lengthy essay on artist Joan Jonas by Elisabeth Lebovici, timed to Jonas's U.S. pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, and a piece by Zachary Woolfe on the Björk exhibition at MoMA. McGarry critiques the journal's ambition to revitalize art criticism, noting that while its goals are lofty, the content sometimes falls back on familiar artspeak.

With her monumental frescoes and trompe-l'œil, Lucy McKenzie offers a "critical archaeology" of modernity

Avec ses fresques monumentales et ses trompe-l’œil, Lucy McKenzie offre une “archéologie critique” de la modernité

Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie has opened a major solo exhibition titled "Plastic Newspaper" at the Crac Occitanie in Sète, France. This is her first large-scale personal exhibition in the country. The show features monumental frescoes, trompe-l'œil, and immersive installations, including a full-scale fake sports shop facade created with her fashion label Atelier E.B. It represents the third stage of a cycle exploring the origins of mass media, examining 19th-century entertainment devices like panoramas and dioramas.

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LA Louver, one of Los Angeles's longest-running galleries, is closing its physical space in Venice, California, after 50 years and shifting to private dealing. The gallery, founded in 1975 by Peter and Elizabeth Goulds, has shown artists including Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, and Doris Salcedo, mounting over 660 exhibitions. The Venice space will host select exhibitions by appointment, while the gallery will focus activities on a private warehouse in LA's West Adams neighborhood. The Huntington library, museum, and botanical garden will receive LA Louver's archive of photography, correspondence, and documents.

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The Whitney Museum of American Art is preparing to move into a new Renzo Piano-designed building in New York's Meatpacking District, set to open to the public about a year from now. The new downtown location is vastly larger than its current Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, with 50,000 square feet of indoor exhibition space—a 33 percent increase—and a total of 220,000 square feet, nearly triple the size of the old space. The museum's best attendance year was 372,000 visitors in 2009-10, far below MoMA's 3.22 million that same year, but the new building's proximity to the High Line and tourist-heavy neighborhood is expected to dramatically boost visitor numbers.

Gagosian to open new ground-floor space at 980 Madison Avenue with major Duchamp presentation

Gagosian is set to expand its footprint at 980 Madison Avenue by opening a new ground-floor gallery space on April 25, 2026. The inaugural exhibition features a landmark presentation of Marcel Duchamp’s iconic readymades, including "Fountain" and "Bicycle Wheel." This selection specifically highlights the 1964 editions produced with Arturo Schwarz, returning these works to the exact building where they made their American debut at the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery over sixty years ago.

'Marcel Duchamp' at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York, United States on 25 Apr–27 Jun 2026

Gagosian is set to inaugurate its new ground-floor gallery space at 980 Madison Avenue with a major exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s work, opening April 25, 2026. The presentation features the artist’s iconic 1964 readymade editions, including "Fountain" and "Bicycle Wheel," returning them to the exact historic location where they made their American debut at Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery sixty years prior. The show coincides with a major Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The 14 Best Art Museum Exhibits in the World in 2026

PaperCity tapped Elaine de Kooning House founder Chris Byrne to curate a list of the 14 best art museum exhibitions worldwide in 2026. Highlights include a major Marcel Duchamp retrospective at MoMA—the first North American survey in over 50 years—featuring nearly 300 works, and Raphael's first comprehensive U.S. exhibition at The Met, titled 'Raphael: Sublime Poetry,' with 200 drawings, paintings, and tapestries. Other notable shows include 'The Shakers: A World in the Making' at ICA Philadelphia and a Guerrilla Girls exhibition at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Wes Anderson is Gagosian's Latest Collaborator

Gagosian is collaborating with filmmaker Wes Anderson and curator Jasper Sharp to present an exhibition of Joseph Cornell's work in Paris. Titled *The House on Utopia Parkway*, the show will feature a recreation of Cornell's New York studio designed by Anderson, housing over 300 objects and curiosities from the artist's collection, including iconic works like "Pharmacy" (1943) and "Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy)" (1950). The exhibition runs from December 16 through March 14 at Gagosian's rue de Castiglione space, marking Cornell's first solo presentation in over four decades.

The Art World This Week: 20 June 2025

This week's art news is dominated by the opening of Art Basel 2025, where dealers reported a strong start with numerous six-figure sales, including a David Hockney painting at Annely Juda Fine Art for $13–17 million and a $9.5 million Ruth Asawa sculpture at David Zwirner. Other major developments include the Museum of Modern Art announcing a major Marcel Duchamp survey for 2026, the reopening of a historic Paris building (temporary home for Centre Pompidou) after a £395 million rebuild, and the Studio Museum in Harlem receiving a significant gift from Vancouver real estate magnate Bob Rennie. The article also covers gallery representation changes, awards, and the passing of sculptor Joel Shapiro and businessman/art patron Leonard Lauder.

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Independent 20th Century art fair has announced that its 2026 edition will be hosted by Sotheby’s at the auction house’s new flagship headquarters in Manhattan’s historic Breuer building. The move, first reported by the New York Times, marks a significant expansion for the fair and an unprecedented collaboration between an art fair and an auction house in the modern art market. Founded in 2022, Independent 20th Century focuses on overlooked and celebrated artists of the last century, with curatorial programming that reframes movements from women in Surrealism to Arab Modernism. The Breuer—a landmark of Modernist architecture designed by Marcel Breuer and recently renovated by Herzog & de Meuron with PBDW Architects—will allow the fair to grow to more than 50 galleries, up from 31 at its most recent edition.

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A painting by Emily Carr, titled *Fir Trees* (ca. 1935), sold for CA$576,000 ($418,370) at Cowley Abbott’s live auction of Canadian and international art in Toronto on May 28, more than doubling its low estimate. The work is a vivid example of Carr’s signature forest scenes, reflecting her deep connection to the British Columbian landscape and her association with the Group of Seven. The auction also saw strong results for other Group of Seven artists, including Franklin Carmichael’s *Old Orchard* (1940) at CAD$768,000, and for Marcelle Ferron’s untitled 1964 abstract painting at CAD$696,000.

Marcel Duchamp at MoMA: Five Revelations From the Artist’s First North American Survey in Over 50 Years

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has launched a major retrospective of Marcel Duchamp, marking the artist's first comprehensive North American survey in over half a century. The exhibition traces Duchamp’s evolution from his early satirical drawings and avant-garde paintings to his revolutionary experiments with movement and mechanization, featuring iconic works like "Nude Descending a Staircase" and "L.H.O.O.Q." alongside technical diagrams and studies for "The Large Glass."

The art world's most infamous toilet is heading to New York auction for US$10m – and the starting bid moves with gold

Maurizio Cattelan's solid-gold toilet sculpture, *America* (2016), will be auctioned at Sotheby's New York on 18 November 2025 as part of the Now & Contemporary Evening Auction. The work, weighing 223 pounds of 18-karat gold, has a raw material value of around US$10.2 million based on current gold prices. In a first for auction history, the starting bid will fluctuate with live gold prices until bidding begins. The sculpture was previously installed at the Guggenheim Museum, where over 100,000 visitors used it, and later made headlines when the Guggenheim offered it to the Trump White House as a loan alternative to a Van Gogh painting. One edition was stolen and never recovered, making this the only surviving example.

Review: Alex Da Corte’s colorful, pop-inspired art show in Fort Worth

Alex Da Corte's exhibition "The Whale" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is the first museum show to focus on his relationship to painting, though it defies traditional definitions. The show features a variety of works including "puffy paintings," "slatwall paintings," and "reverse glass paintings," alongside a video where Da Corte portrays Marcel Duchamp. Curated by Alison Hearst, the exhibition also integrates some of Da Corte's works into the museum's permanent collection galleries, a first for the institution.

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Calvin Tomkins, the legendary New Yorker writer who chronicled the contemporary art world for over six decades, has died at the age of 100. Joining the magazine's staff in 1960, Tomkins became the preeminent profiler of his era, translating complex aesthetic shifts and avant-garde movements into accessible, witty, and insightful prose. His career-defining focus on art began unexpectedly in 1959 with a chance interview with Marcel Duchamp, sparking a lifelong fascination with the creative process.

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The Prix Marcel Duchamp, France's most prestigious art prize, has announced its 2026 nominees: Joël Andrianomearisoa, Josèfa Ntjam, Laura Henno, and the duo David Brognon and Stéphanie Rollin. The five nominees will exhibit together at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in October, with the winner receiving €35,000. The jury is led by Centre Pompidou director Xavier Rey and includes prominent curators, collectors, and past winners such as Kader Attia.

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The Whitney Biennial has announced the 56 artists selected for its 82nd edition, opening March 8, 2026. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the exhibition explores themes of relationality, kinship, infrastructure, and the US role in global affairs. The curators visited over 300 studios worldwide, and the list includes many emerging and lesser-known artists, with most participants under 45 and a significant number identifying as queer.

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Rowena Chiu has been appointed gallery director of Perrotin's new London operation, which opened in March at Claridge's hotel in Mayfair. Chiu previously served as director of museum and institutional relations at Stephen Friedman Gallery for four years and spent six years at Hauser & Wirth across London, Zurich, and New York. Her first exhibition at Perrotin London will be a solo show by Laurent Grasso, winner of the 2008 Marcel Duchamp Prize, opening October 14.

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The 2026 Whitney Biennial has opened to an early critical consensus of being "above average," though critics suggest the exhibition requires significant time to process. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the show emphasizes a subtle atmospheric mood rather than overt spectacle, featuring a diverse array of installations, sculptures, and multimedia works that span multiple floors of the museum and its exterior.