Jeffrey Epstein commissioned a large-scale reproduction of Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem's 1591 painting 'The Massacre of the Innocents' for the entrance of his New Mexico ranch. The $1,999 copy, depicting Roman soldiers killing infants, was ordered in 2010 from the reproduction company Ocean's Bridge Group and was requested to be shipped by his assistant in 2011.
The Kosciusko, Mississippi, home of self-taught African American artist L.V. Hull has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Hull transformed her property into a vibrant art environment over decades, using found objects and her signature dot paintings, attracting international visitors. This marks the first home-studio of an African American woman visual artist, and the first such environment by any African American artist, to be listed at the national significance level.
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The Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture has opened in Almaty, Kazakhstan, launching its program with a powerful performance titled 'Barsakelmes.' The event, created by a collective of Kazakh artists, musicians, and poets, used traditional and contemporary elements to summon the ecological and cultural trauma of the Aral Sea's destruction under Soviet rule, framing decolonization as a process of remembrance, rethinking, and advancement.
Amy Sherald's traveling mid-career survey, 'American Sublime,' has set a new attendance record at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), drawing 63,000 visitors as of early February with an expected final total of 75,000. This makes it the museum's most-attended show since 2000. The exhibition features nearly 50 grisaille portraits of Black Americans and was previously shown at SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
MoMA PS1 has announced the 53 artists selected for the 2026 edition of its quinquennial exhibition, Greater New York. The show, opening April 16, is organized by the museum's in-house curatorial staff and focuses on artists living and working in New York City, with a strong emphasis on early and mid-career practitioners. It notably features only one deceased artist, painter Jay Carrier.
The British Museum has opened a major exhibition titled "Samurai" that challenges popular perceptions of the warrior class. It reveals that after 1615, half of all samurai were women, though they did not engage in combat, and explores the evolution of samurai from medieval fighters to Edo-period bureaucrats and cultural figures. The show features over 280 objects, from armor and weapons to everyday items like a woman's dressing set, and examines the contrast between historical reality and modern pop culture portrayals.
The San Francisco Bay Area's spring art season features a robust lineup of exhibitions highlighting local artists, history, and community resilience amid a challenging cultural climate. Shows include Cece Carpio's first solo exhibition at SOMArts blending street art and folklore, a major Theresa Hak Kyung Cha retrospective at BAMPFA, and Trina Michelle Robinson's two-venue exploration of Black migration at 500 Capp Street and Root Division.
Greenlander artist Inuuteq Storch, who gained international recognition for his takeover of the Danish pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, discusses the impact of Donald Trump's renewed claims about taking over Greenland. Storch, whose work focuses on everyday life in Greenland, expresses concern that the political rhetoric could disrupt the quiet, preserved way of life in his community. He is currently showing a new iteration of his Venice exhibition at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Sweden, and has a major show at MoMA PS1. Storch's practice includes archiving historical images, such as those by Greenland's first photographer John Møller, and using his art to address colonial legacies and resistance.
Ukraine's pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale will feature artist Zhanna Kadyrova's concrete sculpture *Origami Deer*, which was evacuated from Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region as Russian forces advanced in 2024. The pavilion, titled *Security Guarantees*, references the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and will include archival materials and a video installation documenting the sculpture's journey across Europe. The work will be suspended from a crane on a truck along the Venice lagoon, symbolizing forced displacement and the fragility of international promises.
Qatar has announced details for its inaugural contemporary art quadrennial, Rubaiya Qatar, set to launch in November alongside Frieze Abu Dhabi. Organized by Qatar Museums, the event will feature over 50 artists and new commissions, with a major exhibition titled 'Unruly Waters' curated by Tom Eccles, Ruba Katrib, Mark Rappolt, and Shabbir Hussain Mustafa. Confirmed artists include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sophia Al Maria, Mohamed Bourouissa, and Lydia Ourahmane. Additionally, a previously unpublicized pavilion dedicated to Gerhard Richter will open within the quadrennial. Separately, revelations from the Epstein files show ties between Jeffrey Epstein and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, including a donated artwork and potential financial backing for a piece by Neri Oxman. A small Michelangelo drawing of a foot sold at Christie's for $27.2 million, setting a new auction record.
Spanish artist Nieves González, born in 1996 and based in Granada, has gained widespread attention for her time-warping portraits of women that blend Old Master influences—such as José de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Diego Velázquez—with contemporary details like colorful puffer coats. Her recent commission for the cover of Lily Allen's album *West End Girl* went viral on social media, and she has just opened her debut solo exhibition, “Sacred Hair,” at T293 Gallery in Rome, focusing on the figure of Mary Magdalene as a powerful, autonomous woman.
Willem de Kooning's 1966 work "Kneeling Woman" has ended its bidding process, with the listing appearing on a platform that aggregates auction results and available works. The piece, an oil on paper on board measuring 23.5 by 11.5 inches, is signed and has a known provenance including Harold Diamond, a private collection in Baltimore, Solomon & Co. Fine Art, Robert Peyser, and a Sotheby's sale in 2019. It was previously exhibited at the Nassau County Museum of Art in 1981 as part of "The Abstract Expressionists and Their Precursors" show.
Rembrandt van Rijn's drawing *Young Lion Resting* (ca. 1638–42) sold for a record $17.9 million at Sotheby's New York on Wednesday, the highest price ever paid for a drawing by the Dutch master. The work, which toured Paris, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, and New York before the sale, was offered from the Leiden Collection, the renowned private trove of 17th-century Dutch Golden Age art assembled by Thomas Kaplan and his wife Daphne. All proceeds from the sale will benefit Panthera, the wild cat conservation charity co-founded by Kaplan and Jon Ayers.
Restorer Bruno Valentinetti admitted to painting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's face onto an angel fresco at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Rome, sparking backlash from lawmakers who called it "covert propaganda." The Vatican ordered the image removed, and Valentinetti complied, erasing his homage. Experts are now studying photographs of the original angel to guide a new restoration. Separately, President Trump announced plans to install a repaired statue of Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds, and an open letter with 500 signatories demanded curatorial independence at the Art Gallery of Ontario after it declined to acquire a Nan Goldin work.
A new exhibition titled "Permission to Breathe: A Black Woman’s Perspective on Living Life Unapologetically" opens at Positive Space Tulsa in midtown Tulsa, featuring nearly 30 works by Black women artists. Co-curated by Ebony Iman Dallas, Elizabeth Henley, and Jaiden Jiji McClellan, the multidisciplinary show explores themes of rest, resistance, joy, ancestral memory, and radical self-acceptance, with most artwork available for sale. The exhibition runs from February 7 to February 28, 2026, and includes both seasoned and first-time artists.
The National Museum Cardiff is mounting a major survey exhibition of Gwen John (1876-1939), one of the most famous artists in its collection, titled "Gwen John: Strange Beauties." The show marks the 150th anniversary of John's birth in Wales and will be the most comprehensive exhibition of her work in decades, featuring major loans from institutions such as Tate and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It will travel to Scotland and the US, emphasizing John's interest in form, materials, and color theory, including late watercolours she never sold or exhibited. The exhibition draws on the museum's extensive archive of over 900 drawings, letters, and photographs acquired in 1976, and aims to shift focus from John's biographical narrative—her relationship with Auguste Rodin and reputation as a recluse—to her artistic dedication and technical innovations.
Young Malaysian artist Lee Wei Heng, 22, has opened his first solo exhibition titled "Ananas" at Artas Gallery in Petaling Jaya. The show features 17 oil paintings that document the grueling lives of pineapple farmers in Pekan Nenas, Johor, where his grandparents worked as laborers. Lee, who studied fine arts and worked part-time in the plantations during school holidays, captures the farmers' daily struggles—from cutting thorny fruit under the sun to praying for protection against wild animals. His works, such as the monochromatic "Old Farmer," use motifs like the parang (machete) to symbolize both the farmers' hidden identities and their pain.
London artist Georg Wilson opens "Against Nature," her second solo exhibition with Pilar Corrias, exploring the hidden world of poisonous plants in the English countryside. The show features paintings of henbane, thorn apple, and nightshade, depicting them as rebellious agents that thrive in abandoned, uncultivated land. Wilson's work coincides with her institutional debut at Jupiter Artland in Edinburgh, titled "The Earth Exhales." Her research began by collecting second-hand botanical books, which led her to notice toxic flora growing unnoticed around London, including a towering thorn apple near her studio.
The 2026 Governor's Capitol Art Exhibition will open at the Wyoming Capitol on February 9, featuring local artist Alexandra Hansen of Aladdin among 53 artists selected from 383 entries by 152 artists. The biennial exhibition, part of Wyoming's tribute to America's 250th anniversary, celebrates the state's landscapes, communities, and people. Hansen, a contemporary Western artist known for stylized vintage patina oil paintings, grew up on a South Dakota ranch and studied at Oklahoma State University. Kate Hlavin, Curator of the Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale, served as guest juror. A public reception and awards ceremony will be held on February 26, with a People's Choice Award vote on the Wyoming State Museum Facebook page.
The artistic center of gravity in Mexico City is shifting from established gallery districts like Condesa and Roma to the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood. Over the past five years, a wave of artists has moved there, drawn by affordable rents, large studio spaces, and a central location, transforming the area into a vibrant, organic hub for artistic production and new, non-traditional exhibition spaces.
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) has opened a new exhibition titled 'Yes &…', inspired by the improvisational comedy rule of accepting and building on ideas. Guest curators Donald Fodness and Tobias Fike selected 18 artists whose work emphasizes process over polish, featuring visible seams, fingerprints, and evidence of human decision-making across painting, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. The exhibition includes interactive elements, such as a sculpture with hand-carved 'ice cubes' intended for viewers to take, and runs through May 3.
Pictorial Foundation, an organization born from the international photography magazine The Pictorial List, has opened a new gallery space at 105 Ann Street in Newburgh, New York. The 1,500-square-foot gallery, located within the ADS Warehouse complex, debuts on February 7 with the group exhibition “Foundations of Practice,” featuring 19 artists whose work emphasizes process over finished results. Founder Karen Ghostlaw Pomarico, a Pratt Institute-trained artist, collaborated with her husband, architect Michael Pomarico of Pomarico Design Studio, to create a flexible system of suspended partitions that can be reconfigured for each show. The gallery grows out of a desire to move beyond the limitations of online art visibility and create a physical space for slow, thoughtful engagement with art.
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.
Ronald Lauder, the billionaire art collector and heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, is named over 900 times in the recently released Jeffrey Epstein court documents. The emails reveal his assistants frequently scheduling meetings and calls with Epstein in 2017, though the substance of their discussions remains largely unclear. One email suggests Epstein sought to review Lauder's tax returns and will, while another indicates Epstein attempted to arrange a dinner involving filmmaker Woody Allen.
A Rembrandt drawing titled 'Young Lion Resting' (ca. 1638–43) sold for $18 million at Sotheby's New York on February 4, setting a new auction record for a work on paper by the artist. The sale price fell within the pre-sale estimate of $15–20 million and far surpassed the previous record of $3.7 million for a Rembrandt drawing.
The British Museum faced significant criticism from archaeologists and the public after posting images containing A.I.-generated content on its Instagram and Facebook accounts. The posts, which featured a young woman contemplating exhibits, were tagged to an A.I. model and a marketing agency. Following a wave of negative comments, the museum removed the posts approximately six hours later and reportedly unfollowed critics on social media.
The British Museum faced criticism from archaeologists and online commentators after posting AI-generated images on its Instagram and Facebook accounts. The posts, which featured a young AI-generated woman in various cultural outfits gazing at museum objects, were removed within hours after a wave of negative feedback. The museum stated it does not post AI-created images and removed the content due to its sensitivity.