Victor Vasarely’s crumbling Aix legacy to be restored

The family of Op Art pioneer Victor Vasarely is leading a major restoration effort for his foundation's iconic building and artworks in Aix-en-Provence. The striking 50-year-old structure, a historic monument, had suffered from years of neglect, leaking roofs, and failed climate systems, with many of its 42 monumental site-specific works in urgent need of conservation. A €12 million renovation, 85% publicly funded, has addressed the building's fabric, but restoring the complex artworks remains a slow, costly process.

At the Grand Palais, the Art Paris Fair Focuses on Language, with a BNP Paribas Private Bank Prize at Stake

Au Grand Palais, la foire Art Paris s’intéresse à la question du langage, avec un Prix BNP Paribas Banque Privée à la clé

The 28th edition of the Art Paris fair is set to return to the Grand Palais in 2026, featuring a mix of 60% French and 40% international galleries. This year’s edition emphasizes emerging talent through its 'Promesses' sector and introduces a strong curatorial focus with two thematic paths: 'Reparation,' curated by Alexia Fabre, and 'Babel,' curated by Loïc Le Gall. The latter explores the intersection of language, signs, and translation through the work of 20 artists from the French scene.

Landmark Works Lead Cowley Abbott’s Sale of Indigenous and International Art

Cowley Abbott is staging its major spring sale, 'Select Masterworks of Indigenous and International Art,' at the Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto on May 27. The auction features a diverse range of works, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 'Paysage du Midi' (ca. 1900), Vincent van Gogh's 'Homme à la Pipe: Portrait du Docteur Gachet' (1890), Philip Russell Goodwin's 'Camping – Canadian Club' (1916), Emily Carr's 'Wind' (1936), and Lawren Stewart Harris's 'Above Coldwell Bay, North Shore, Lake Superior (Lake Superior Sketch XV)' (1925), with estimates ranging from CA$150,000 to CA$700,000.

Marica Vilcek, Art Historian Whose Foundation Upheld the Work of Immigrants, Dies at 89

Marica Vilcek, art historian and co-founder of the Vilcek Foundation, has died at 89 in New York. She and her husband Jan, both immigrants from Czechoslovakia, established the foundation in 2000 to provide grants and prizes, primarily to immigrant artists, curators, and scientists, celebrating their contributions to American society.

art collector questionnaire geoff snack rare books design

Geoff Snack, a brand strategy director and paper dealer, shares his approach to collecting rare books, design objects, and paper ephemera in an interview with CULTURED. His collection includes a signed copy of Andy Warhol's "Exposures," works by Barbara Kruger, Lawrence Weiner, and Chris Burden, and flyers from the 1980s New York art scene. Snack sources his finds through flea markets, Craigslist, and instinctive hunts, and runs the consultancy Wrong Answer and co-organizes the book fair Available Works at WSA in downtown New York.

Still in 'war mode': Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art reopens with exhibitions about conflict

The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) has reopened with a weekly rotating post-ceasefire program called 'Art and War,' following weeks of bombardment that forced its closure and prompted emergency efforts to protect its collection. The program began with works by American Pop artists James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Indiana, and this week features three works from Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman series, focusing on Spain. Museum director Reza Dabirinezhad described the challenges of safeguarding the collection during US-Israeli strikes, including removing 80% of the oil from Noriyuki Haraguchi's installation 'Matter and Mind' (1977) to prevent fire risk, and protecting outdoor sculptures by Henry Moore, René Magritte, and Max Bill.

King Charles Visits Christie’s in New York, After White House Dinner

King Charles III and Queen Camilla made a surprise visit to Christie’s headquarters in New York on April 29, 2026, following a White House dinner and address to Congress. They attended a gala for the King’s Trust, a charity supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, rather than bidding on auction lots like a $100 million Jackson Pollock or a $60 million Roy Lichtenstein. The event, co-chaired by Lionel Richie, drew guests including Martha Stewart and Anna Wintour, and featured a dinner in the James Christie Room. Christie’s CEO Bonnie Brennan curtsied to the king, and the royals viewed the new rostrum designed by Jony Ive, set to debut in New York during Christie’s May marquee week.

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The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has launched the "50 for 50" loan program, a landmark initiative to disperse over 200 artworks from its collection to museums in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Major works by artists like Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Willem de Kooning will be loaned for up to five years, with a focus on reaching underserved and rural communities.

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London’s Courtauld Gallery will open two new contemporary art galleries at its Somerset House campus, funded by a £10 million ($13.8 million) gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The top-floor spaces, originally built as a display area for the Royal Society in the 18th century, are expected to debut in 2029. The donation brings the foundation’s total support for the Courtauld to £20 million ($27.5 million), following earlier backing for the museum’s 2021 renovation. The new galleries will be programmed in part by students in the Courtauld’s curating master’s program and will host exhibitions connecting historical and contemporary art.

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The article reports on the upcoming Art Basel in Miami Beach and the improved mood in the art market, driven by strong auction results. Sotheby's emerged as the clear winner over Christie's in the fall 2024 auctions, achieving over $2.2 billion in total sales across Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips. Key consignments included the Leonard Lauder Collection, featuring a record-making Klimt, a Frida Kahlo that became the highest-selling work by a woman artist, and Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet. The article credits Sotheby's move into the Breuer building—formerly home to the Whitney, the Met, and the Frick—for enhancing the presentation and aura of the previews.

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The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) and the Romare Bearden Foundation have launched the first installment of a digital catalogue raisonné for the artist Romare Bearden, covering his work from 1964 to 1969. The project, which began in earnest in 2017, has so far documented 3,000 artworks, including 210 in this initial chapter, and has uncovered previously unknown works such as a portrait of artist Edmonia Lewis. The research builds on three decades of archival work by the foundation, which digitized Bearden's ephemera to aid in tracking down works he often gave away informally.

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Jussi Pylkkanen, former Christie's chairman, analyzes the upcoming New York 20th and 21st Century Art sales, noting a return to market confidence after strong European auctions in London and Paris aligned with Frieze and Art Basel Paris fairs. Christie's London posted its best October sales since 2018, Sotheby's had its most valuable Paris season, and a Picasso portrait sold for $37 million at Hôtel Drouot. The season shows a shift from speculative buying toward established artists like Bacon, Freud, Picasso, and Klimt, with 27 works valued over $10 million, led by Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer* from the Leonard Lauder collection, estimated to exceed $150 million at Sotheby's.

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Seven artists—Tania Bruguera, Dora Garcia, Phil Collins, Siniša Mitrović, Alessandra Saviotti, and Gemma Medina—have withdrawn their work from the exhibition “1+1: The Relational Years” at MAXXI in Rome, scheduled to open this week. In an open letter published by Nero Editions, they accuse the museum of having “links to genocide in Palestine” through its acceptance of funding from and collaborations with Italian companies Eni and Leonardo s.p.a., which have ties to Israel's military and energy sectors. The exhibition, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, surveys relational aesthetics and also includes works by Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Pierre Huyghe, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Five anti-Zionist activist groups have added their own statement supporting the boycott.

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Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, is quietly selling off the Freedman Gallery collection, which includes works by Romare Bearden, Salvador Dalí, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, to address a budget shortfall that recently reached $23 million. Art preparator Rich Houck discovered the storage space emptied without notice and was fired after reporting the move; the college has cut 53 positions, canceled academic majors, and considered selling real estate as part of a broader cost-cutting campaign. Former gallery staff are no longer employed, and major donors were not informed of the sale.

In Paris, Highly Mobile Gallerists

À Paris, des galeristes très mobiles

The Parisian art scene is experiencing a significant wave of gallery expansions and relocations across both the Right and Left Banks. Major developments include Kamel Mennour acquiring the former Malingue gallery space on Avenue Matignon for secondary market masterpieces, and Christophe Person moving from the Marais to a redesigned space on Rue du Bac with the backing of collector Jean Claude Gandur. Other notable moves include London-based Waddington Custot opening a Parisian branch, Singapore's Cuturi Gallery settling in the Palais-Royal, and Vincent Sator inaugurating a new space in the David Chipperfield-designed Morland Mixité Capitale complex.

Heir of Goya and Abstract Expressionism, the painting of Roger-Edgar Gillet finally rediscovered in an unprecedented retrospective

Héritière de Goya et de l’expressionnisme abstrait, la peinture de Roger-Edgar Gillet enfin redécouverte dans une rétrospective inédite

A major retrospective at the Musée Estrine in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence finally brings long-overdue recognition to French painter Roger-Edgar Gillet (1924–2004), an artist who emerged from the post-war abstraction scene of the Nouvelle École de Paris but later forged a singular figurative style blending Goya, Delacroix, and Northern grotesque traditions. The exhibition follows two important donations—to the Centre Pompidou in 2017 and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes in 2022—that helped revive institutional interest in Gillet, whose work had been marginalized since the 1960s.

Works by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse Snatched in Major Italian Art Heist

Four hooded thieves stole three valuable paintings from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation in Parma, Italy, in a swift nighttime heist. The stolen works include Paul Cézanne's 'Still Life with Cherries,' Henri Matisse's 'Odalisque on the Terrace, 1922,' and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 'Les Poissons (Fish), 1917,' collectively worth millions of euros. The operation, described as highly structured and organized, took less than three minutes.

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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.

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A new generation of young gallerists is revitalizing the art market by specializing in historical art forms—from ancient jewelry and Old Master drawings to Art Deco and overlooked women Impressionists. The article profiles seven dealers who launched their businesses between ages 22 and 41, with half based in London. Notable figures include Pauline Pavec and Quentin Derouet (co-founders of Pavec, focusing on 19th- and 20th-century women artists), Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza (Kallos Fine Jewellery, ancient jewelry), and Maxime Flatry (20th-century art and design). Two of the dealers will exhibit at Frieze Masters this October, directed by Emanuela Tarizzo, who emphasizes that collectors and institutions increasingly seek cross-century narratives.

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.

‘I’m not trying to impress anyone with what I buy’: how Catherine Walsh went from cosmetics queen to art collector

Catherine Walsh, a former cosmetics executive at Estée Lauder and Revlon who pioneered celebrity fragrances at Coty, recounts her journey from buying her first Harry Callahan photograph at age 22 to building a minimalist art collection. She commissioned architect John Pawson to design a house in Telluride, Colorado, after a lecture, and has since acquired works by Gerhard Richter, Donald Judd, Jenny Holzer, Josef Albers, and a 17th-century Dutch portrait, among others. Walsh now lives in a London apartment near the Victoria & Albert Museum, where she displays her carefully curated collection with minimal furniture.

$23 million Gerhard Richter painting leads Art Basel Paris opening sales.

Art Basel Paris opened its 'Avant Première' day at the Grand Palais on October 21, 2025, with strong early sales led by Hauser & Wirth's sale of Gerhard Richter's *Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting)* (1987) for $23 million. Other notable sales included Julie Mehretu's *Charioteer* (2007) for $11.5 million at White Cube, Amedeo Modigliani's *Jeune fille aux macarons* (1918) for just under $10 million at Pace Gallery, and a Ruth Asawa sculpture for $7.5 million at David Zwirner. The fair, running through October 26, features 203 galleries and introduced the exclusive preview day as a new scheduling element.

In the Studio With 33 of the Hottest Art Stars on the Planet

Vanity Fair profiles 33 emerging art stars who have broken into the upper echelon of the art world within the last five years, despite a contracting art market. The feature, written by Nate Freeman and photographed by Jeff Henrikson, highlights artists like Jadé Fadojutimi, Anna Weyant, and Chase Hall, whose work commands high prices and long waiting lists from top collectors. The selection was based on research including gallerist interviews, museum acquisitions, auction results, and dealer insights.

Slim Phillips London Sale Totals $13.9 Million, Off 32 Percent From 2024

Phillips London's evening sale of Modern and contemporary art on Thursday totaled £10.3 million ($13.9 million), a 32 percent drop from the equivalent sale in 2024. The 45-minute auction saw 4 of 26 lots withdrawn before bidding, and 4 of the remaining 22 failed to sell, including works by Banksy, Andreas Gursky, Sigmar Polke, and Andy Warhol. The top lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat's *Untitled (Pestus)* (1982), which sold for £2.37 million ($3.19 million), just below its estimate. A new auction record was set for Emma McIntyre, whose painting *Seven types of ambiguity* (2021) more than doubled its high estimate to fetch £167,700 ($225,355).

10 Must-See Shows during Frieze London 2025

Frieze London 2025 has arrived, bringing with it a sprawling public sculpture exhibition and two art-packed tents in Regent's Park, including the historically focused Frieze Masters. Alongside the main fair, London's galleries are hosting a mix of shows ranging from established favorites to emerging talents, with many exhibitions featuring ambitious sculptural works made from unconventional materials like furniture and driftwood. Notable highlights include Sonia Gomes and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami showing bronze sculptures for the first time, Cai Guo-Qiang's controversial gunpowder canvases at White Cube, and Danielle Fretwell's sumptuous oil paintings at Alice Amati. Artsy has curated a list of 10 must-see gallery exhibitions taking place during the fair.

When Gagosian Goes So Do His Galleries, How Hockney’s Swimmer Swam Away, and Green Shoots in the Gallery World

Kenny Schachter's article opens with a broad critique of the political climate under the Trump administration, linking it to a chilling effect on free speech and democracy, before pivoting to the art world. He notes the absence of a U.S. representative for the 61st Venice Biennale, mentions Marilyn Minter's protest piece, and references David Hockney's *Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)* at Christie's. The piece also touches on market negativity, the resilience of art, and skepticism about the Middle East as a market savior.

9 Must-See Shows at Paris Gallery Weekend 2025

Paris Gallery Weekend 2025 takes place May 23–25 across 74 galleries in the capital, featuring vernissages, performances, exhibition walkthroughs, and artist talks. Now in its second decade, the event was founded to spotlight Paris’s contemporary art scene and offers a counterpoint to the art fair circuit. Highlights include Sophie Calle’s "SÉANCE DE RATTRAPAGE" at Perrotin, where she revisits unfinished projects from her 2023 Picasso Museum exhibition, and major institutional shows like the David Hockney retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton and "Corps et âmes" at Bourse de Commerce. The weekend also includes a new Agnès Varda exhibition at Musée Carnavalet linking her photography to her Montparnasse atelier.

Huge Paris exhibition reveals David Hockney’s love of Van Gogh

A major exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, titled "David Hockney 25," showcases 400 works by the British artist, with a focus on the past 25 years of his career. The show highlights Hockney’s deep admiration for Vincent van Gogh, featuring a section called "The Great Wall" that includes 29 Van Gogh reproductions alongside works by other artists. Key pieces on display include Hockney’s portrait of his partner Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, inspired by Van Gogh’s "Sorrowing Old Man," and iPad drawings echoing Van Gogh’s sunflower still lifes. The exhibition runs until 31 August.

Our Guide to New York Art Week 2025

New York Art Week 2025 is condensed into a single mega-week starting May 5, featuring major art fairs including Frieze New York, Independent, and TEFAF New York, alongside gallery openings, auction previews, and museum shows. The guide provides a day-by-day itinerary, fair overviews, and practical tips for navigating the week, emphasizing that many events are ticketed or free and do not require VIP passes.

The Great Lone Wolf of Art

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.