New Manhattan gallery slips into historic property

Slip House, a new Manhattan gallery co-founded by Ingrid Lundgren and Marissa Dembkoski, has opened in a historic carriage house on East 5th Street. Its inaugural group exhibition, "As if a line" (9 May–14 June), features a cross-generational lineup of painters including Jack Whitten, Claude Viallat, and emerging talents like Lizzy Gabay and Alix Vernet. The show was organized with former Sprüth Magers director Jessica Draper, and the space also includes lamps by ceramicist Gordon Moore on consignment. The building, built in the 1880s, once belonged to fashion designer and artist Charles Kritsky, who allegedly had Jean-Michel Basquiat contribute to its penny mosaic facade.

Frank Auerbach’s Berlin homecoming, human remains and museums, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s ‘Republic’—podcast

This podcast episode covers three major art-world stories. First, the late artist Frank Auerbach receives his first-ever Berlin exhibition at Galerie Michael Werner, decades after fleeing the city as a Jewish refugee in 1939. Second, curator and author Dan Hicks discusses his new book *Every Monument Must Fall*, which examines the origins of contemporary debates around colonialism, art, and heritage, focusing on the acquisition and display of human remains in museums. Third, the episode highlights the centenary of artist Ian Hamilton Finlay with a look at his work *Republic* (1995) and a series of international exhibitions celebrating his legacy.

À Berlin, le Musée de Pergame rouvrira partiellement en 2027

Berlin's Pergamon Museum, closed since October 2023, will partially reopen in June 2027, with only the north wing and central section accessible. The renovation and expansion project, launched in 2012, has faced repeated delays and its budget has ballooned to €1.5 billion. The partial reopening coincides with the bicentenary of Berlin's Museum Island and will bring back the Pergamon Altar, unseen for over a decade, along with redesigned permanent exhibitions for the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of the Ancient Near East. However, major attractions like the Ishtar Gate and the Market Gate of Miletus will remain closed until the 2030s, with full museum completion now estimated between 2037 and 2043.

Glasgow International announces full 2026 programme

Glasgow International has revealed the complete programme for its 11th edition, scheduled for 5-21 June 2026. The biennial, now under the direction of Helen Nisbet, will feature new works by artists including Kate Cooper, Tanoa Sasraku, and Luke Fowler, and will explore themes of memory, kinship, and cultural resonance. The festival also includes the 'Gatherings' event series and a new 'Special Projects' initiative highlighting community-embedded organizations in Glasgow.

In ‘Piercing the Veil,’ Marina Kappos Gets to Know the Spectre of Grief

Artist Marina Kappos opens her solo exhibition 'Piercing the Veil' at SHRINE gallery in New York City, running from May 15 to June 27. The show features her signature acrylic-on-wood-panel paintings that use thin layers of pigment to create gauzy, prismatic effects. Inspired by the sculptural figures of grieving women she encountered at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Kappos explores themes of loss, memory, presence and absence, and the threshold between life and death. Works like 'Veil Study (Eclipse)' (2026) and 'Quantum Study (Green Entanglement)' (2025) depict hazy landscapes and keyhole-shaped portals that invite viewers to contemplate the unknown and the spiritual.

For the Queen's 100th, Ketterer Auctions a Warhol Painting

Zum 100. der Queen versteigert Ketterer Warhol-Gemälde

The Munich-based auction house Ketterer Kunst is offering a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol for sale at its auction on June 12. The work is a silkscreen print enhanced with diamond dust and carries a pre-sale estimate of €150,000 to €250,000. The auction coincides with what would have been the late Queen's 100th birthday year.

À Annecy, le cinéma d’animation célébré toute l’année grâce à l’ouverture d’un lieu hybride et ambitieux en juin

A new permanent home for animation cinema, the Cité internationale du cinéma d'animation, will open in Annecy, France, on June 19, 2025, just before the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Housed in a restored 19th-century horse stable (haras) listed as a historic monument, the 54-million-euro project includes a 450 m² permanent museum, a 332-seat cinema, temporary exhibition spaces, educational workshops, artist residencies, and image-education facilities. The city of Annecy contributes 30 million euros, with additional funding from the Haute-Savoie department, the state, and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. Designed by architecture firm dd.a and landscape architect Philippe Deliau, the center aims to be a hybrid, year-round hub for animation, blending heritage, creation, and transmission.

Obama Presidential Center announces new work by Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Lorna Simpson.

The Obama Foundation has unveiled the final group of artists commissioned to create site-specific works for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. This prestigious roster includes Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Lorna Simpson, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, whose works will be integrated into the 19.3-acre campus. The announcement completes the artistic vision for the center, which aims to blend public space with high-caliber contemporary art when it opens on June 19th.

2026 Art Basel Award Winners Announced

Art Basel has unveiled the 33 medalists for its 2026 global honors program, recognizing a diverse group of artists, curators, and institutions. The selection highlights a strong Southeast Asian presence, including architect Kulapat Yantrasast and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, alongside international figures like Laurie Anderson and Julie Mehretu. These awards celebrate practitioners across categories such as Emerging Artist, Established Artist, and Cross-Disciplinary Creator, with winners to be celebrated at the upcoming Basel fair in June.

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A long-lost painting by the 17th-century Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, titled *Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy*, has been rediscovered and will be auctioned at Sotheby's in Paris on June 26. The work, previously known only from a single black-and-white photograph, was found in a private collection in the south of France and has not been publicly seen for 80 years.

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A group of 14 watercolors and drawings by Adolf Hitler, dated from 1904 to 1922, will be auctioned at the Weidler auction house in Nuremberg, Germany, between June 18 and 20. The works are expected to sell for between €1,000 and €45,000 each, following a previous sale of a Hitler watercolor that fetched €130,000 in November last year.

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The National Portrait Gallery in London has acquired the only surviving photographs of 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, a group of three daguerreotypes that were originally offered at Bonhams in June 2025 with an estimate of £80,000 to £120,000. The lot was withdrawn from auction and the museum secured it via a private treaty sale, a confidential negotiation process that allows institutions to purchase significant artworks directly from private owners. Two of the daguerreotypes were taken by French photographer Antoine Claudet around 1843, the year Lovelace published her foundational paper on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, while the third, by an unknown photographer, reproduces an 1852 portrait by Henry Wyndham Phillips showing Lovelace near the end of her life.

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The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) will host a major retrospective for Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, titled “Poetics of Memory,” opening in June 2025. The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s work, including new pieces, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with plans for a national tour. Howard, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, has a long history with OMCA, which owns her 1989 installation *TAP: Investigation of Memory*. Senior curator Carin Adams, who worked with Howard on reinstalling *TAP* in 2019, proposed the retrospective to honor Howard’s legacy in the Bay Area arts scene.

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For 12 years, a one-acre community garden in Manhattan's Nolita neighborhood, Elizabeth Street Garden, has been locked in a battle with New York City officials over plans to build affordable housing on the site. The city, under former Mayor Eric Adams, had scheduled an eviction for March 2024 to make way for Haven Garden, a 123-unit senior housing development. After a last-minute impasse, the Adams administration abandoned those plans in June, instead rezoning three nearby sites. However, newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on closing the garden for housing, has revived uncertainty. Just before Mamdani took office, the Adams administration permanently dedicated the land as public parkland, requiring state legislative approval for any future development.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams has permanently designated the Elizabeth Street Garden in Manhattan's Nolita neighborhood as public parkland, blocking plans for affordable housing on the site. The move comes just weeks before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office, who had campaigned on building affordable housing for older adults on the lot. The garden, a one-acre green space managed by executive director Joseph Reiver since 1991, had previously faced eviction under Adams before he abandoned the housing project in June. Mamdani now needs state legislature approval to pursue any development on the land.

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San Francisco is considering destroying the Brutalist Vaillancourt Fountain by Armand Vaillancourt as part of a redevelopment plan for Embarcadero Plaza. City officials, including Recreation and Park Commission general manager Phil Ginsburg, have discussed the redevelopment for over a decade, and the San Francisco Arts Commission is preparing to vote on deaccessioning the fountain. The fountain, completed in 1971, has been fenced off since June 2024 due to safety concerns and has not had running water since then, with repairs estimated at $28.9 million.

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A New Yorker profile of Sotheby's and its billionaire owner Patrick Drahi reveals the chaotic aftermath of the auction house's failed 2024 fee restructuring. The plan, announced in February 2024 and enacted that May, standardized seller's commissions and buyer's premiums but backfired, driving away business and causing profits to plummet. By December, Sotheby's reversed course. The article quotes former and current employees who compare Drahi's management style to Donald Trump's tariff disputes, and recounts a tense June 2024 meeting where contemporary art chairman Grégoire Billault told Drahi he was losing business, only to be told by Drahi that everyone is replaceable.

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The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has returned two Benin Bronzes—a 16th/17th-century terracotta and iron Commemorative Head and a 16th-century bronze Relief Plaque—to the Kingdom of Benin. The works were looted by British soldiers during the 1897 attack on Benin City, later acquired by collector Robert Owen Lehman Jr., and donated to the MFA in 2013 and 2018. The repatriation ceremony took place on June 27 at Nigeria House in New York, with the items handed over to Prince Aghatise Erediauwa and Ambassador Samson Itegboje. The MFA closed its Benin Kingdom Gallery in April and noted that three other Benin works donated by Lehman remain in its collection pending further provenance research.

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An anonymous artist collective, previously responsible for an eight-foot-tall golden monument of Donald Trump crushing Lady Liberty, has installed a new unauthorized artwork on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall. The piece is a life-size, gold-painted television set playing a silent 15-second loop of Trump performing his signature slow-motion dance moves, set against backdrops including campaign rallies and a party with Jeffrey Epstein. The installation, permitted through Sunday, includes a spray-painted gold eagle and a plaque quoting a White House statement criticizing the earlier sculpture. The White House responded with a sarcastic statement from spokesperson Abigail Jackson, claiming the video brings 'joy and inspiration' to tourists.

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A rare painting by Indian modernist Krishna Kanwal (1910–1993) sold for £152,800 ($207,573) at Bonhams London on June 5, setting a new auction record for the artist. Titled *Portrait of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at His Enthronement*, the work came from the collection of British diplomat Sir Basil Gould and depicts the 1940 enthronement ceremony of the four-year-old Dalai Lama. The sale also included a group of 40 watercolors by Kanwal that fetched £457,600, and the 49-lot dedicated sale of Gould's collection achieved £951,770 with a 96% sell-through rate.

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Bonhams Los Angeles is auctioning the archive of legendary album cover designer Gary Burden, who died in 2018, in a sale titled "Cover to Cover" running from June 20 to 30. The collection includes original artwork, sketchbooks, and ephemera from Burden's five-decade career, featuring iconic covers for the Doors' *Morrison Hotel* (1970), the Eagles' *Desperado* (1973) and *One of These Nights* (1975), Joni Mitchell's *Ladies of the Canyon* (1970), and Jackson Browne's 1972 debut, among others. Highlights include a lithograph for the Eagles' *One of These Nights* (estimate $10,000–$15,000) and Burden's preparatory pencil sketch for *Desperado* (estimate $30,000–$40,000).

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Boston's RR Auctions is offering a sale of over 170 World War II autographs and artifacts, live through June 11. Highlights include a German Enigma I Cipher Machine (estimated at over $200,000), a Navy ensign flag that flew on D-Day, and a letter of surrender signed by Reich President Karl Dönitz on May 6, 1945 (estimated at over $100,000). The sale also features handwritten drafts of radiotelegrams from Colonel General Alfred Jodl and a mimeograph copy of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's victory announcement, signed by him as a souvenir.

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Disney has placed a white statue of the character Stitch from "Lilo & Stitch" inside the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, where it sits on a plinth near Michelangelo's David. The installation, part of a partnership between Disney and the Italian Ministry of Culture, promotes the upcoming live-action remake of the 2002 animated film. A promotional video shows Stitch causing mischief in the museum before carving its own marble likeness. The statue will be on view through June 20. Separately, Stitch also made an appearance at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, where it posed with Elvis Presley memorabilia and a pink Cadillac.

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Sotheby's will auction approximately 100 lots from the private collection of French antiques collector Pierre-Jean Chalençon on June 25 in Paris, including Napoleon Bonaparte's iconic bicorne hat (estimated at €800,000), a herald sword and stick from his 1804 coronation, his personal gold and ebony seal, worn stockings, and a portable camp bed. The sale, described as one of the most significant offerings of Napoleonic material ever to come to market, spans imperial furniture, Old Master paintings, and personal relics. Chalençon, who has amassed the collection over four decades, is reportedly selling the items to repay a €10 million loan from Swiss Life Banque Privée, though he has denied being deeply in debt.

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Christie's is hosting a 200-lot auction of the Maillet Daguerreotype Collection from June 10 to 26, featuring rare 19th-century daguerreotypes. The collection includes early works by pioneers like Samuel Morse and John William Draper, as well as images of American monuments and everyday life, such as Henry Fitz Jr.'s Washington Monument and Platt Babbitt's Niagara Falls view. The auction highlights the dawn of photography in America, with many images being unique due to the daguerreotype's lack of negatives.

July-August Exhibit at Sertoma Arts Center

Sertoma Arts Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, presents a group exhibition running from June 29 to August 27, 2025, featuring three distinct shows across its galleries. The Hall Gallery hosts "STRUCTURE & LIGHT: Architectural Paintings by Kenneth Eugene Peters," the Raleigh Room displays "Transcendent Expressions" by Cheryl McCardle, and the Lobby showcases works by Alexandra Zuckerman along with students of Steve Karloski and Tim Cherry. A public reception is scheduled for August 23, 2025.

Immersive experience featuring ‘costumed folk’ shortlisted for world's biggest museum prize

Five British museums have been shortlisted for the 2025 Art Fund Museum of the Year, the world's largest museum prize. The finalists are Beamish, The Living Museum of the North in County Durham; Chapter arts centre in Cardiff; Compton Verney gallery in Warwickshire; Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast; and Perth Museum in Scotland. Beamish, a 55-year-old open-air museum, recently completed its "Remaking Beamish" project recreating a 1950s town with 32,000 community members. Perth Museum opened in March 2024 after a £27m renovation and houses the Stone of Destiny. The winner will be announced on 26 June at the Museum of Liverpool, receiving £120,000, while each of the other finalists gets £15,000.

Art exhibits to check out in May and June

A roundup of art exhibitions opening in May and June 2026 across Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, highlights solo shows by Teresa Olavarria, Tony Foster, Nathan Foley, Mina Kim, and Eunshin Khang, along with group exhibitions including SOS ART 2026, 'Voices of Kenya: Social and Cultural Reflections,' and 'Elizabeth Hawes: Radical American Fashion.' Venues include The Contemporary Dayton, The Dayton Art Institute, Rosewood Arts Center, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and Kennedy Heights Arts Center.

Helen Legg appointed artistic director of Royal Academy

Helen Legg has been named the new artistic director of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, starting in June. She joins from Tate Liverpool, where she served as director since 2018, and brings prior leadership experience from Spike Island in Bristol and curatorial work at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

Lakefront Festival of Art Returns June 12–14 with 145 Artists, Live Music, Local Food, and New Extended Evening Hours

The Lakefront Festival of Art returns to the Milwaukee Art Museum campus from June 12–14, 2026, featuring 145 juried artists from Milwaukee and across the country. Presented by Bank of America, the three-day event includes live music from acts like The Belle Weather, Field Report, and Brett Newski, local food vendors, hands-on artmaking at Kohl's Art Studio, and a Silent Auction Tent with works by participating artists. New this year, extended evening hours until 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday allow visitors to enjoy after-work outings and sunset views. The festival is organized by Friends of Art, the museum's longest-running volunteer support group, and serves as an annual fundraiser for acquisitions and programs.