The Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt is presenting an exhibition of work by American artist Trisha Donnelly. The show features a range of her untitled pieces from 2005 to 2025, including sculptures, photographs, and other media, drawn from her own studio and various international collections and galleries.
Nadine Khoury, a Dubai-based collector, curator, and art adviser, founded the Young Collectors Circle in 2023 to engage Millennial and Gen Z professionals in the Gulf region with the local art scene. The initiative offers free events such as studio visits, suppers with established collectors, and group outings to exhibition openings, aiming to make art collecting accessible and educational. Khoury, who previously worked at Green Art Gallery, started the circle with friends and grew it through social media and word-of-mouth, limiting attendance to 15 people to foster a friendly, barrier-free environment.
Brittany Nelson, a Brooklyn-based artist, explores the intersection of space exploration, queer identity, and early photochemistry in her work. Her 2024 show "I Can't Make You Love Me" at PATRON Gallery in Chicago featured bromoil prints of images from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, which she describes as a "lesbian icon." She also creates works like a programmed typewriter that types the word "Starbear," inspired by letters between sci-fi writers Ursula K. Le Guin and Alice B. Sheldon. Nelson is currently developing new work focused on telescope arrays, following a residency at the SETI Institute and a two-person exhibition at Luhring Augustine in New York.
Fanny Pereire, an art advisor specializing in film and television, curates the art seen on the walls of fictional characters like Miranda Priestly in *The Devil Wears Prada 2*, Logan Roy in *Succession*, and Bobby Axelrod in *Billions*. She works as a fine art coordinator, sourcing reproductions and original works to match character personalities and socioeconomic status, often overseeing the destruction of replicas after filming. Her role, created by producer Scott Rudin in 1999, involves clearing copyrights for every artwork shown on screen, from children's drawings to high-end pieces by artists like Wayne Thiebaud and Alex Katz.
Los Angeles-based painter Michelle Blade is presenting her first solo show with Night Gallery in Los Angeles, titled "It's About Time." The exhibition features a new body of work focused on still lifes and landscapes from around her home, captured at different hours of the day. Using acrylic and ink on cotton poplin with a wet-on-wet technique, Blade creates luminous, shimmering compositions that blend memory, perception, and projections of the future. The show follows her recent solo exhibition at the Powerlong Museum in Shanghai and her inclusion in the group show "Superbloom" at Night Gallery.
British artist Gavin Turk is set to debut a new body of work at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London for his sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, titled "The Escapologist." The exhibition features a series of trompe l’oeil paintings depicting partially open doors set within frames, hung low to create a sculptural, illusionistic effect. Drawing on art historical references ranging from Gerhard Richter’s modernist doors to René Magritte’s surrealist metaphors, the works explore the door as a symbol of the threshold and the psychological tension between anticipation and absence.
The US Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, often called the 'art world Olympics,' is mired in controversy and delays under the Trump administration. Curator Jeffrey Uslip insists the process has been smooth and artistically autonomous, but the selection of sculptor Alma Allen and commissioner Jenni Parido—a former pet supply shop owner with a new nonprofit—has raised eyebrows. The usual vetting process by the National Endowment for the Arts was disrupted, new language banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts was added to applications, and a government shutdown left only six months to fundraise and plan the exhibition, which coincides with the US's 250th anniversary.
Vanity Fair art and style correspondents Nate Freeman and José Criales-Unzueta preview the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute spring exhibition "Costume Art," which inaugurates the Condé M. Nast Galleries. The exhibition arrives amid controversy over the Met Gala being sponsored by Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Jeff Bezos, leading to boycott calls and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipping the event. Despite this, Anna Wintour and Met director Max Hollein announced the gala raised a record $42 million. Head curator Andrew Bolton presents fashion as art, pairing garments with artworks like Warhol's Skull and Sarah Lucas's Nud Cycladic 9.
Der große Einzelgänger der Kunst
Georg Baselitz, the German painter known for his radical, figurative works and iconic upside-down motifs, has died at age 88. Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, he fled East Germany for West Berlin in 1957 after being expelled from art school for "socio-political immaturity." Baselitz rose to international fame with his expressive, fractured depictions of the human figure, famously inverting his compositions starting with "Der Wald auf dem Kopf" (1969). He also worked as a stage and costume designer for operas by Harrison Birtwistle, György Ligeti, and Richard Wagner.
David Byrne, the multi-talented artist best known as the frontman of Talking Heads, discusses his visual art practice in a new interview with Artnet News. He reveals plans for a solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York this fall, featuring his drawings and photographs. Byrne also talks about his immersive project 'Theater of the Mind,' which explores neuroscience and perception, traveling to Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 2026, and reflects on his early art school experiences at Rhode Island School of Design and Maryland Institute College of Art.
The article reviews the joint exhibition "Hunks" at Bureau gallery in New York, featuring works by painter Julia Rommel and photographer Lucas Blalock. Rommel's post-minimalist abstract paintings, created through folding and stapling canvases, explore color and texture with a personal touch, while Blalock's digitally manipulated photographs blend studio effects and surreal editing. The show runs through February 21, 2026, at the gallery's 112 Duane Street location.
Protests erupted outside White Cube's London gallery last Thursday over a fireworks piece by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. The artwork, titled *The Rising Dragon*, was staged on September 19 at a high-altitude plateau in Shigatse, Tibet, and sparked online backlash over environmental concerns. Two UK-based groups, Tibetan Community in Britain and Free Tibet, led the protest, accusing Cai of committing "cultural violence." White Cube acknowledged the groups' concerns but continues to host Cai's exhibition, which opened in June and runs through early November.
Philip Mould & Company in London is hosting a new exhibition titled "Elizabeth I: Queen and Court," featuring four rare portraits of the Tudor monarch alongside depictions of her closest advisors and political rivals. The show traces Elizabeth's visual evolution from a pious young princess to a formidable, iconographic ruler, highlighting how she utilized fashion and symbolism to solidify her authority and manage public perception during a period of immense political and religious transition.
Cultured magazine asked 12 collectors to name the single work in their home that most stops guests in their tracks. Responses include Wolfgang Tillmans’s camera-less photograph *Freischwimmer 153* (2010), a medieval illuminated *Book of Hours* (ca. 1480/90), Jordan Wolfson’s robotic installation *(Female figure)* (2014), Julie Curtiss’s hair-covered sculpture *Spider* (2018), and Haegue Yang’s kinetic bell sculpture *Sonic Rotating Geometry Type E – Brass Plated #23* (2014). Each collector explains why the piece provokes awe, laughter, discomfort, or deep conversation.
Valentina Castellani, a former Gagosian director, has authored a new book titled *Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery* (out 1 May). The book traces how art dealers have historically leveraged societal changes—political, economic, and social—to reshape taste and market structures. Castellani begins in the Middle Ages, when art was made only on commission for patrons like the Catholic church and monarchies, and moves through key shifts such as the Dutch Republic's first open art market in the 17th century, which gave rise to the professional art dealer. She highlights dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel, Joseph Duveen, and Leo Castelli who capitalized on anti-establishment energy, new wealth, and post-war consumer culture to bring avant-garde art to the forefront.
The article presents a curated list of 13 seminal Western artworks featuring the nude form, highlighting how each piece shifted artistic conventions and cultural perceptions. It begins with the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf and moves chronologically through works by artists including Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Lavinia Fontana, and Édouard Manet, analyzing their groundbreaking approaches to depicting the human body.
Art historian Sam Smiles has released a comprehensive new book examining J.M.W. Turner’s complex relationship with the slave trade, expanding on his 2007 discovery of the artist's personal investment in a Jamaican cattle farm that utilized enslaved labor. The research traces Turner’s financial ties from his early patronage by wealthy plantation owners to his own speculative ventures, challenging the long-held perception of the artist as a straightforward abolitionist.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is preparing a major spring retrospective dedicated to Raphael, the Italian Renaissance master who died in 1520 before his 40th birthday. This will be his first such exhibition in the United States, aiming to reassess an artist traditionally viewed as a facile, efficient prodigy rather than a deep intellectual.
Nifty Gateway, a major NFT marketplace launched in 2020, permanently shut down in February 2026. Its closure coincided with a severe cryptocurrency market sell-off, adding to a list of defunct NFT exchanges and contributing to the perception of a market collapse.
John Phelan, a prominent art collector and the current U.S. Secretary of the Navy, flew on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane in 2006, according to newly released flight logs. The trip from London to New York occurred four months before Epstein's first indictment, and a friend of Phelan's confirmed the flight but stated it was his only interaction with the convicted sex offender.
Emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January 2026 reveal that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein boasted to associates about securing a private after-hours visit to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris with filmmaker Woody Allen on March 18, 2012. In the correspondence, Epstein wrote to a recipient identified only as 'junkermann' that the French government would open the museum for him and Allen, and later messaged others including former girlfriend Eva Dubin, who responded with a 'King of the castle' quip. Epstein also made crude sexual references in connection with the visit, mentioning Edgar Degas's depictions of nude women.
Thomas Schlesser's novel *Mona's Eyes* has been named Barnes & Noble's book of the year for 2025, but its cover has sparked controversy online. The cover features Johannes Vermeer's *The Girl with the Pearl Earring*, even though the story is about a girl named Mona who visits Paris museums with her grandfather, and the painting is not held in Paris—it resides at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. A viral Reddit thread on an art history subreddit accused the publisher of "ragebait," noting the mismatch between the cover image and the book's content. Schlesser, an art historian who teaches at the École Polytechnique and runs the Hartung Bergman Foundation, defended the choice, saying he wanted an iconic work symbolizing light and darkness rather than highlighting any of the 52 artworks featured in the story.
Miami's Frost Museum of Science has filed a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Transportation seeking the removal of a giant digital billboard on the grounds of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The 1,800-square-foot sign, which advertises luxury brands like Tiffany and Yves Saint Laurent alongside PAMM programming, was built under a 2023 city commission exception that allowed billboards nearly twice the legal size limit. That exception was later overturned amid controversy over campaign contributions from the billboard's operator, Orange Barrel Media, to the commissioner who introduced it. PAMM argues the sign was approved by all relevant authorities, while Frost Science claims it violates state law, degrades the museum environment, and jeopardizes federal highway funding.
A new James Turrell "Skyspace" titled *As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell* will open in June at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark. Billed as the largest such work in a museum context, the installation features a domed space roughly 50 feet tall and 130 feet in diameter, accessible via an underground corridor, with an open aperture at the top that brings the sky into intimate focus. The work completes the museum's "Next Level" expansion, which already includes an underground exhibition space and an outdoor "Art Square" set to open next year.
The United States will host its first major Marcel Duchamp retrospective in over 50 years, opening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on April 16, 2026, before traveling to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in fall 2026 and then to the Grand Palais in Paris in 2027. Organized by MoMA’s Ann Temkin and Michelle Kuo and the Philadelphia Museum’s Matthew Affron, the exhibition features nearly 300 objects spanning Duchamp’s entire career, including iconic works such as *Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2* (1912) and *Fountain* (1917). The show aims to reveal lesser-known aspects of Duchamp’s practice, emphasizing his transatlantic life between France and the United States.
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei will debut a new site-specific work in Kyiv, Ukraine, this fall, responding to the country's ongoing war with Russia. Titled "Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White," the installation will be on view at Pavilion 13, a Soviet-era exhibition space, from September 14 to November 30. Commissioned by the nonprofit Ribbon International, the work reimagines Ai's "Divina Proportione" series (2004–12) using metal spheres encased in camouflage fabric painted white, symbolizing layered realities and the concealment of truth during conflict.
London gallery Archeus / Post-Modern has organized a by-appointment presentation titled "Bridget Riley: Sixties. The Complete Black and White Graphic Works." The exhibition brings together a rare, complete suite of seven prints on paper and seven companion works on Plexiglas, known as *Fragments*, all created by the English Op Art pioneer in the early-to-mid 1960s.
The article explores the enduring appeal of James McNeill Whistler's 1871 painting commonly known as "Whistler’s Mother," officially titled "Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.1." It recounts how the painting was acquired by the French state in 1891 and became the first American painting in the Louvre, now housed at the Musée d'Orsay. The piece also reveals little-known facts: the sitter's full name was Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, who wore mourning clothes for 31 years after being widowed and moved in with her son in London, displacing his mistress. The article includes her recipe for a dessert called Floating Island and notes that Whistler incorporated his earlier etching "Black Lion Wharf" into the portrait.
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.
Artist Friedrich Kunath, known for his sincere yet absurd paintings, discusses his unlikely friendship with tennis star Reilly Opelka, who is also an art collector. The two share a mutual obsession with each other's crafts—Kunath coaches Opelka in tennis, while Opelka seeks Kunath's insights on artists like Philip Guston. Kunath is preparing for his solo debut at Pace Gallery in New York this November, following his move from Blum Gallery, which closed shortly after. He reflects on the loneliness of both tennis and art, and his creative process, which draws heavily from music and film.