The Wild Ways Artists Have Made Their Livings, from the Renaissance to Today
Mason Currey's new book, 'Making Art and Making a Living,' compiles stories of how artists from the Renaissance to today have funded their creative lives. It details diverse methods beyond family wealth, including odd jobs, dual careers, and institutional roles, highlighting figures like Louise Nevelson, Philip Glass, and Frank O'Hara.
Magnum Photos, in partnership with The Photographers' Gallery, is holding a print sale titled 'Odyssey' featuring works from over 100 of its photographers. The sale includes iconic images from artists like Eve Arnold, Alec Soth, and Chris Killip, with themes ranging from personal journeys and American life to global migrations and cultural rituals. The event runs until March 29, 2026.
Jo Ractliffe au Jeu de Paume : « Je ne suis pas une photographe militante, mais quand on travaille en Afrique du Sud on ne peut échapper aux histoires de violence »
South African photographer Jo Ractliffe discusses her upcoming retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, reflecting on her career path that began during the isolation of the apartheid era. Eschewing traditional photojournalism, Ractliffe developed a singular poetic language focused on landscapes and animals to address the heavy histories of violence, ownership, and displacement in Southern Africa.
A major exhibition titled "The Great Camouflage" is on view at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, curated by X Zhu-Nowell and Kandis Williams. The show explores 20th-century Afro-Asian revolutionary alliances and Black feminist thought through contemporary art, featuring works by artists like Pope.L, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Onyeka Igwe that process these histories from feminist perspectives.
Artist Ding Shilun's career is accelerating, marked by a major auction record for his 2021 work 'The Adoption of the Maiden' at Phillips London and a current solo exhibition, 'Spectres in Rehearsal,' at Bernheim Gallery in Zurich. His large-scale paintings blend theatrical compositions, Goya-esque and manga influences, and narrative structures from Chinese zhiguai tales to create accessible yet complex scenes.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London has launched a dedicated digital hub to document the provenance of its collection, specifically addressing objects acquired through violence, coercion, or looting. The initiative includes detailed research on controversial items such as the Maqdala material from Ethiopia, Asante Regalia from Ghana, and imperial Chinese jade. This transparency effort coincides with International Provenance Research Day and aims to provide public accountability regarding the museum's colonial-era acquisitions.
Anzia Yezierska, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who arrived in New York in 1890, defied traditional gender expectations to become a leading literary voice of the 1920s. Dubbed the 'Queen of the Ghetto,' she documented the raw struggles of immigrant women on the Lower East Side using a unique 'immigrant English' style that captured Yiddish idioms. After escaping a restrictive marriage and pursuing an education at Columbia University, she channeled her personal frustrations into stories of poverty, ambition, and the psychological toll of assimilation.
Two previously unseen preliminary pencil sketches of Winnie-the-Pooh by illustrator E.H. Shepard have been revealed to the public for the first time. Shared by the artist’s family to mark the centenary of A.A. Milne’s classic stories, the drawings depict scenes from the "expotition" to the North Pole and the hunt for a "Woozle" that were never included in the final 1926 publication. These rare works are set to go on display at Peter Harrington Rare Books in London starting April 17.
Annunciati i candidati al Festival di Cannes 2026 (pure qui niente italiani, come alla Biennale)
The 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its official selection for 2026, scheduled to run from May 12 to 23. Led by President Iris Knobloch and General Delegate Thierry Frémaux, the festival will open with Pierre Salvadori’s 'La Vénus électrique,' a romantic comedy set in 1928 Paris centered on a painter who loses his inspiration. The competition lineup features a global array of heavyweights, including new works by Pedro Almodóvar, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Asghar Farhadi.
The Denver Art Museum has unveiled "Conversation Pieces: Stories from the Fashion Archives," an exhibition composed entirely of works from its permanent collection. Featuring approximately 60 mannequins, the show highlights high-fashion garments from the past century, many of which have never been publicly displayed. The curation includes iconic pieces by legendary designers such as Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, and Elsa Schiaparelli, alongside contemporary works by Alexander McQueen and Carla Fernández.
Chicago-based artist Carlos Rolón has unveiled a new body of work at 65Grand titled 'The Division Street Riots,' which explores the 1966 Puerto Rican uprising in Humboldt Park. Moving away from his signature vibrant, crystal-embellished installations, Rolón utilizes graphite, charcoal, and dye sublimation prints to interpret archival imagery of the three-day unrest sparked by a police shooting. The exhibition marks a stylistic shift toward a more somber, documentary-style realism that emphasizes historical witnessing over spectacle.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced the official opening date of April 19, 2026, for its new David Geffen Galleries. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the 274-meter-long concrete structure will house between 2,500 and 3,000 objects from the museum's permanent collection. The inaugural display will feature a mix of historical masterpieces by artists such as Matisse and Van Gogh alongside new contemporary commissions by Todd Gray, Lauren Halsey, and Do Ho Suh.
"Im Moment ist die Verunsicherung auf dem Kunstmarkt extrem"
Prominent Cologne gallerist Gisela Capitain is celebrating her 40th anniversary amid a period of significant market volatility. In recent interviews, she reflects on her career—defined by long-term artist relationships like that with Martin Kippenberger—while critiquing the current state of the art world. She notes that buyers have become increasingly hesitant and deliberate, describing the current level of uncertainty in the art market as extreme and calling for reforms to institutions like Art Cologne.
Art Basel Hong Kong has launched a new curated section called 'Echoes,' dedicated to presenting works created within the past five years. The section features focused presentations from galleries worldwide, highlighting ten standout works by artists such as Hyun Nahm, Leelee Chan, and Tiffany Chung, who explore themes from digital consumption to colonial histories through diverse mediums.
Tai Kwun in Hong Kong is presenting a two-part exhibition titled 'Stay Connected: Art and China Since 2008,' aiming to be the most comprehensive survey of 21st-century Chinese art. The first part, 'Navigating the Cloud,' examined the early internet's influence, while the current second part, 'Supplying the Globe,' focuses on the physical world of labor and China's manufacturing supply chain. The show is structured thematically, exploring ecological footprints, reconfigured labor, networks of exchange, and global realignment.
This week’s roundup of essential art reading highlights a diverse range of global initiatives, from the development of a new arts center in Compton by formerly incarcerated painter Mr. Wash to a mural project for displaced children in Lebanon led by artist Abed Al Kadiri. The report also covers a guerrilla projection protest at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where activists criticized the institution for laying off staff members of color despite a massive endowment, and a poignant look at medical students graduating amidst the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
The Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC Lyon) has launched a major seasonal program featuring three distinct exhibitions that explore memory, archives, and the evolution of contemporary media. Central to the program is Giulia Andreani’s solo exhibition, "Cold Painting," which presents sixty canvases created between 2011 and 2025 that interrogate historical power structures and the erasure of women from art history. Complementing this is a significant showcase of video art drawn from a massive donation by collectors Isabelle and Jean-Conrad Lemaître, alongside a retrospective dedicated to Jean-Claude Guillaumon.
Everlyn Nicodemus presents 'Without History' at Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, marking her first solo exhibition with the gallery and a rare return to the African continent since the 1980s. The show, organized in partnership with Richard Saltoun Gallery, features major bodies of work including the 'Woman in the World' cycle and the 'Wedding' series. These works, created while Nicodemus lived across Europe, explore themes of trauma, gender, and spiritual survival through a practice that blends painting with deep archival research and social anthropology.
Artist Fran Siegel presents 'Arrábida' at Wilding Cran Gallery, a body of work developed during a Fulbright fellowship in Portugal. The exhibition features multi-panel compositions, cyanotypes, and drawings that investigate the botanical motifs of traditional Portuguese azulejo tiles. By layering organic plant impressions with rigid geometric patterns, Siegel explores how these ceramic surfaces function as a 'visual cartography' that encodes histories of trade, colonial expansion, and cultural identity.
Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) partnered with the City of Boynton Beach to host the fifth annual 'Art and Autism' exposition. Held at the Boynton Beach Arts & Cultural Center in honor of Autism Awareness Month, the event featured approximately 50 artists—a significant increase from the three or four participants at its inception in 2021. The showcase included a diverse array of media, from graphic illustrations and children's books by artists like Kiora Slate to live musical performances by Patrick Fahely, providing a public platform for neurodivergent creators to sell their work and share their personal stories.
The High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, has unveiled a new solo exhibition titled "Miguel Almeida: Las Manos que dan de Comer" (The Hands That Feed). Featuring large-scale murals, hand-painted animations, and a ten-foot-tall cutout figure surrounded by actual soil, the installation explores the daily lives and human stories of farm workers in the American West. Almeida, a first-generation Mexican American artist based in Boise, draws from his own family history of agricultural labor to create vibrant, contemporary works influenced by skateboarding culture and Mexican folk traditions.
London-based artist LR Vandy has opened her first solo museum exhibition, titled "Rise," at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The show, produced in partnership with London's October Gallery, features a new body of site-specific work installed both indoors and on the park's grounds, including a monumental outdoor sculpture. The exhibition creates an immersive environment where Vandy uses materials like rope and found objects to investigate themes of power, trade, and colonialism.
The 'Spectrosynthesis Seoul 2026' exhibition, opening March 20 at the Art Sonje Center, is the fourth installment of the Sunpride Foundation's series showcasing LGBTQ+ art across Asia. It features over 70 artists, including new commissions, and focuses on the experiences of marginalized communities during Korea's modernization and the queer histories of specific Seoul neighborhoods.
Artist Sarah Rosalena has completed a monumental 27-foot tapestry titled "Threading the Boundless: Omnidirectional Terrain" (2025), commissioned for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) new David Geffen Galleries. The work utilizes an industrial-scale jacquard-rapier loom to weave complex patterns that distort NASA satellite imagery of Earth and Mars. By blending her Wixárika maternal weaving traditions with computational craft, Rosalena transforms scientific data into a tactile, atmospheric landscape that challenges traditional methods of planetary mapping.
Vanessa German has unveiled a major new installation at the Speed Art Museum titled '…do you remember when you were the sky?', marking the inaugural project of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program. The exhibition features German’s signature assemblage sculptures, which utilize diverse materials like cowrie shells, quilts, and skateboards to create hybrid figures representing young girls in states of transformation. The body of work is the result of months of community engagement and research into local histories, specifically focusing on the narratives of the Colored Girls Dormitory in Louisville.
Artist Shahzia Sikander's new animated film, '3 to 12 Nautical Miles,' is being projected onto the digital façade of the M+ museum in Hong Kong. The work uses the historical expansion of territorial waters from 3 to 12 nautical miles as a framework to explore themes of maritime sovereignty, surveillance, and the legacy of colonial trade.
Burnaway has launched its fourth Artist Edition, a limited-run t-shirt titled 'Sweet Lilly-Marie' created by artist Marlos E'van. The design is inspired by a character from the film *La Strada* and represents themes of family, innocence, and joy during chaotic times. Preorders are open until April 10, with shirts being hand-printed in Nashville and shipped in late April.
Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta is hosting a significant exhibition of Gordon Parks’ color photography, titled "The South in Colour." Curated by photographer Dawoud Bey, the show features over 30 works from Parks’ 1956 "Segregation Story" series, including previously unshown images and a new portfolio from The Gordon Parks Foundation. The collection documents the daily lives of the Thornton, Causey, and Tanner families in Alabama, capturing the quiet dignity of Black Americans living under the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the postwar era.
Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta is hosting "Gordon Parks: The South in Colour," a major exhibition curated by photographer Dawoud Bey. The show features over 30 works from Parks’ seminal 1956 "Segregation Story" series, including several previously unshown images of the Thornton, Causey, and Tanner families in Alabama. The exhibition coincides with the 70th anniversary of the series' original publication in Life magazine and the 20th anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation.
Milan's art scene is currently anchored by a series of high-profile exhibitions coinciding with the Miart fair. Highlights include Isa Genzken’s architectural investigations at the Triennale Milano, Cao Fei’s exploration of global agriculture at Pirelli HangarBicocca, and Anselm Kiefer’s monumental tributes to female alchemists. These shows span the city's major institutions, offering a diverse look at how contemporary artists engage with history, technology, and the built environment.