The University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA Little Rock) has launched its fall semester by opening new art exhibits on campus. The exhibitions feature works by various artists and are intended to engage students and the local community with contemporary visual art.
Sotheby's has announced that its new flagship auction house and gallery space, located in the iconic Breuer Building on Madison Avenue, will open on November 8. The building, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1966, originally housed the Whitney Museum of American Art and later served as temporary home for The Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The opening exhibition will feature works for Sotheby's marquee modern and contemporary art auctions, followed by pieces for Luxury Week in December. The building also includes a new restaurant from the team behind La Mercerie, and the galleries will be free and open to the public.
Tate museums have experienced a significant drop in attendance, with Tate Modern seeing 25% fewer visitors in 2024 compared to 2019, Tate Britain down 32%, and Tate St Ives down 37%. While domestic visitor numbers have recovered to 95% of pre-Covid levels, international visitors are at only 61%, particularly among European 16-to-24-year-olds, whose numbers fell from 609,000 in 2019-20 to 357,000 in 2023-24. The Art Newspaper's research, combining government data and Tate's internal studies, shows that external socioeconomic factors—including a one-tenth drop in EU visitors to the UK overall—are the primary driver, not curatorial programming as some critics have claimed.
Sicily has inaugurated the Museum of the Present (Museo del Presente) inside Palermo's historic Palazzo Jung on 23 May, marking 33 years since the assassination of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. The museum commemorates Mafia victims and confronts the ongoing threat of Cosa Nostra through personal artifacts, multimedia installations, and historical documentation, including items from Falcone and his colleague Paolo Borsellino. The opening was attended by Italy's interior, justice, and culture ministers, and entry remains free until 19 July.
The Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH) has announced free admission for all visitors during July and August 2025 as part of a new initiative called "Hamilton Strong." The program aims to support community health and wellbeing by providing a space for healing, reflection, and connection amid financial insecurity and political anxiety. Free entry is funded by a private donor and applies during regular business hours, though the gallery remains closed on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Current exhibitions include Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey, Taking Root: Recent Acquisitions, and The Shape of Curiosity, along with the Zucker Sculpture Garden and AGH Creative Lab. Members receive a two-month extension, and new memberships purchased in July or August come with two extra months.
Vian Sora's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, 'Outerworlds,' is on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) through September 7. The exhibition features vibrant, layered abstract paintings that the artist describes as deeply personal, including 'Forest Remains,' a 2023 SBMA acquisition that she considers a self-portrait about migration and assimilation. Sora, born in Baghdad and a survivor of the Iran–Iraq War, Gulf War, and the 2003 invasion, discussed her work in a conversation with SBMA Chief Curator James Glisson, explaining how a 2015 hysterectomy led to a dramatic shift in her style toward bold, colorful compositions. The show will travel to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville and the Asia Society Texas Center after its Santa Barbara run.
Saya Woolfalk's solo exhibition "Empathic Universe" at the Museum of Arts and Design (Mad) in New York presents two decades of her visionary world-building practice. The show unfolds in five chapters, featuring sculptures made from textiles, videos, performances, and immersive digital installations that trace the evolution of fictional plant-and-human hybrid races. Woolfalk discusses the origins of her project, which began after her return from Brazil with works like "Winter Garden: Hybrid Love Objects" (2005) at MoMA PS1, and how the Empathic Universe came into focus during her time in the Whitney Independent Study Program around 2006, drawing on mythology, anthropology, technology, and feminist theory.
London's National Gallery has acquired a mysterious altarpiece, "Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels" (1500-10), for just over $20 million in a private sale arranged through Sotheby's. The painting, funded by the American Friends of the National Gallery London, was sold by a descendant of the Blundell family and had been kept on the Lulworth Estate in Dorset. The artist remains unknown, with proposed names including Jan Gossaert, Jean Hey, and the Master of Saint Giles, and no other works by the same hand are known. The altarpiece was last publicly exhibited in 1960 and has only recently been shown privately to specialists, who remain divided on its attribution.
King Charles III will open a unique exhibition at Buckingham Palace from July 10 to September 28, showcasing 70 artworks by 42 artists who accompanied him on overseas royal tours. The tradition began in 1985 when the then Prince of Wales invited British artist John Ward to document a visit to Italy, and has continued unbroken ever since. Featured artists include Fraser Scarfe, who captured Charles's recent Rome visit on an iPad, Richard Foster, who painted the King and Queen Camilla in the Galápagos in 2009, and Susannah Fiennes, who documented the 1997 Hong Kong handover. The exhibition was conceived by the Earl of Rosslyn, who also edited the companion book 'The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King'.
The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has opened a new room in its permanent display featuring 13 artworks recovered from Germany and Austria after World War II, whose provenance remains unknown. The museum is inviting visitors to help identify the original owners of these pieces, which were looted or displaced during the war and later restituted to France.
Museums worldwide are grappling with the escalating need for heightened security measures following a series of high-profile thefts, including a recent bold robbery at the Louvre. Institutions are forced to re-evaluate their surveillance protocols and physical barriers to protect priceless cultural heritage from increasingly sophisticated criminal tactics.
MoMA PS1 has unveiled the latest iteration of 'Greater New York,' its signature quinquennial survey showcasing the diverse output of artists living and working across the five boroughs. This year’s edition features 53 artists and collectives, emphasizing those who operate outside the mainstream spotlight or whose contributions have been historically overlooked. The selection leans into a gritty, experimental aesthetic that captures the complex social and physical realities of contemporary life in the city.
The 1990 theft of 13 artworks from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains unsolved, generating countless theories about the perpetrators. A new book by the former FBI agent who led the investigation for over a decade systematically debunks many prominent public theories, arguing they distract from the actual investigation.
Acclaimed actor Meryl Streep has donated a seven-figure sum to the National Women’s History Museum. The funds will support digital storytelling projects and programming, and the museum has created the Meryl Streep Educator Award in her honor, to be presented annually starting this November.
Blake DeYoung is stepping down as Executive Director of the San Juan Islands Museum of Art (SJIMA) at the end of May to become Executive Director of the Skagit Valley College San Juan Center branch, replacing Randy Martin. Deputy Director Wendy Smith will serve as Acting Director during the transition. The museum board remains unchanged, and the institution views this as an opportunity to realign its structure and build on recent successes, including record attendance in 2025.
The Preservation Society of Newport County is hosting "Full Circle" at the Rosecliff mansion, an exhibition that revisits the landmark 1974 outdoor sculpture show "Monumenta." The current display features scale models, preparatory drawings, and archival photographs of works by modern masters such as Claes Oldenburg, Alexander Calder, and Willem de Kooning. A significant portion of the show is dedicated to Richard Fleischner, whose site-specific earthwork "Sod Maze" remains the only original piece from the 1974 project still standing in its original Newport location.
Hong Kong’s art market showed signs of a significant rebound during the March art week with two rare "white glove" auctions, where every lot was sold. Christie’s led the momentum with a 100 percent sell-through rate totaling HK$655.8 million, followed by Sotheby’s, which achieved HK$548.4 million and set a record for the most valuable work by a female artist sold at auction in Asia with Joan Mitchell’s La Grande Vallée VII.
Hong Kong’s art auction market opened 2025 with significant momentum, characterized by a shift toward high-quality, museum-grade works and selective collecting. Major auction houses like Christie's, Bonhams, and Phillips reported strong results for blue-chip artists, highlighted by the sale of Pablo Picasso’s "Buste de Femme" for HK$196.75 million. While the market has become more deliberate, the demand for rare, impeccably sourced pieces by both Western masters and Asian contemporary icons remains robust.
A Statista chart published in October 2024 ranks the top ten contemporary artists by auction sales from July 2023 to June 2024, broken down by gender. Jean-Michel Basquiat leads all artists with $516.2 million in sales, followed by Yoshitomo Nara ($70.6 million), George Condo ($47.4 million), and Keith Haring ($36.2 million). Julie Mehretu is the only female artist in the top ten, with $36.0 million in sales. The data covers public auctions of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, videos, tapestries, installations, and NFTs, excluding antiques, furniture, and anonymous cultural goods.
Artist Peter Doig and his partner, gallerist Parinaz Mogadassi, have purchased McGlynn's, a beloved London pub in King's Cross that closed after its landlord Gerry died in 2023. They submitted a planning application to restore the Grade II listed building, preserving its original character while ensuring it remains a functioning pub. Doig, who lived near the pub in the 1980s, bought the building opposite to open a gallery, with a Merry Alpern show opening October 13 organized by Tramps.
A new critical biography, "Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures," has been published, marking the first comprehensive study of the British artist Helen Chadwick (1953-96). Edited by Laura Smith, director of collections and exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield, the book includes contributions from historian Marina Warner, curator Katrin Bucher Trantow, and artist Maria Christoforidou. A touring exhibition of Chadwick's work opens at the Hepworth Wakefield on 17 May and runs until 27 October. The article highlights Chadwick's provocative, punky, and perverse body-focused works, such as "Untitled (Eat Art)" (1973), where she cast her face in jelly for viewers to consume, and "Piss Flowers" (1991-92), made from snow she urinated on. It also recounts the infamous 1986 incident at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where her sculpture "Carcass"—a glass tower of rotting vegetables—leaked and collapsed.
Archaeologists have discovered skeletal remains beneath the floor of St. Peter and Paul Church in Maastricht, Netherlands, which are believed to be those of the 17th-century French soldier Charles de Batz de Castelmore, the historical figure who inspired the literary character D'Artagnan. The discovery was made during repair work, and artifacts found nearby—including a French coin and musket ball fragments—align with the historical record of D'Artagnan's death during the 1673 siege of Maastricht.
Artist Gaylen Gerber presented a solo exhibition at Hans Goodrich gallery in Chicago from April 4 to May 17, 2026. The show featured his work "Support" (n.d.), an installation using cremated remains, a felt pen, and a zipper bag, alongside a 1990 painting by Georg Herald.
C’è un padiglione assente alla Biennale d’Arte di Venezia 2026 di cui nessuno ha parlato: il Venezuela
The Venezuelan pavilion at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale remains closed, an absence that has gone largely unnoticed amid other controversies surrounding the Russian, Israeli, South African, and Iranian pavilions. Designed by architect Carlo Scarpa and built between 1953 and 1956, the pavilion now displays a trilingual sign stating it will "rise again soon," reflecting the country's collapse after the kidnapping and imprisonment of President Nicolás Maduro by the United States and the installation of a fragile pro-American interim government.
La pittura ironica e intellettuale di Renato Varese. La mostra a Conegliano
Palazzo Sarcinelli in Conegliano is hosting a retrospective exhibition dedicated to Renato Varese (1926–2024), a versatile Italian painter, graphic artist, engraver, sculptor, and ceramist. Curated by Lorena Gava, the show marks the centenary of Varese's birth and features around fifty works spanning painting and graphic art, highlighting his ironic, intellectual, and visionary style often described as "Gothic." Concurrently, the artist's heirs have donated thirteen works to the city's civic collections, including the large canvas "Beati gli ultimi" (1997), now housed in a dedicated room named Sala L.R. Varese.
Il mito di Sandokan in mostra a Monza tra storia e immaginario. Parola ai curatori
A new exhibition titled "Sandokan. La Tigre ruggisce ancora" has opened at the Reggia di Monza, exploring the enduring myth of the fictional pirate Sandokan, who first appeared in Italian serialized fiction in 1883. Curated by Francesco Aquilanti and Loretta Paderni, the show brings together ethnographic materials, costumes from the 1970s television series, weapons, books, illustrations, and archival items, including the original Dayak collection donated by Sir Charles Brooke to the King of Italy. The exhibition traces Sandokan's evolution across literature, comics, film, and television, presenting him as a layered, ambivalent hero—both ruthless pirate and justice fighter—whose story remains relevant today.
Bologna si prepara al grande festival di editoria per l’infanzia. Parla la direttrice
The Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF) has announced the details for its 63rd edition, scheduled to take place from April 13 to 16, 2026, at BolognaFiere. This upcoming iteration will feature Norway as the Guest of Honor under the theme "What if?" and will host 1,500 exhibitors from 90 countries. The fair continues to evolve beyond traditional publishing, integrating transmedia narratives, licensing, and discussions on artificial intelligence alongside major anniversaries for figures like Carlo Collodi, Agatha Christie, and Mitsumasa Anno.
New York è così cara che ormai non è più possibile produrre arte e cultura in città
Artist and curator Josh Kline has sparked a significant industry debate with his essay, "New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art," which argues that the city's prohibitive real estate market is dismantling its cultural foundation. Kline posits that the financialization of property and the disappearance of affordable lofts and mid-size galleries have created an unsustainable ecosystem where only those with independent wealth can survive. This economic pressure is forcing a generation of creative workers to choose between their practice and basic survival, leading to a stagnation of innovation.
The article recounts the 1968 protests at the Venice Biennale, where artists, students, and activists clashed with police over the event's perceived ties to bourgeois power and capitalist commodification. It draws parallels to the 2024 Biennale, where groups like Art Not Genocide Alliance, Pussy Riot, and Femen demonstrated against the participation of Russia and Israel, while artists staged strikes and performances like the Solidarity Drone Chorus to highlight the Gaza conflict.
Napa County's di Rosa Preserve, a 217-acre estate housing the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, has been listed for sale at $10.9 million. The sale includes the land, buildings, and event spaces but explicitly excludes the art collection, which is owned by the Rene & Veronica di Rosa Foundation. Executive director Kate Eilertsen stated the move is part of 'thoughtful planning' to ensure the institution's sustainability, as operating costs have outpaced endowment income and charitable giving. The foundation is open to a leaseback arrangement that would allow the center to continue operating on site, and the property remains open to the public during the sale process.