American artist Maria Kreyn opened her first solo exhibition in Milan, titled "Continuum," at the gallery Robilant+Voena. The show presents a selection of her new paintings, which are characterized by atmospheric renderings that blend figuration with abstract geometry.
Sotheby's will hold its second Saudi Arabia auction, 'Origins II,' on January 31, 2027, focusing exclusively on art after its first sale struggled with a 65.8% sell-through rate and unsold luxury lots. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art has voluntarily returned three statues to Cambodia after determining they were removed during the country's civil war. In digital art news, The Art Newspaper criticizes the 'culture of narcissism' in the field, citing Art Basel Miami Beach's new Zero 10 digital art initiative as an example of bypassing traditional curatorial safeguards.
A French national audit report, the Cour des Comptes, has revealed severe security deficiencies at the Louvre Museum, finding that only 39% of its rooms had cameras as of 2024 and that a security upgrade begun in 2015 only resulted in a tender at the end of last year, with completion not expected until 2032. The report was released shortly after a theft of crown jewels from the museum, and it criticizes the Louvre for prioritizing acquisitions and post-pandemic projects over essential security investments. Louvre director Laurence des Cars acknowledged the museum's "very inadequate" and "outdated" security systems during a Senate hearing, though she stated alarms functioned during the heist. Four suspects are in custody for the October 19 robbery.
Paris prosecutors have revealed that the theft of French crown jewels from the Louvre Museum was carried out by petty criminals, not organized crime professionals. Four individuals—three men and one woman—have been charged, with two of the men having multiple prior theft convictions. The heist occurred on October 19, when robbers used a cherry picker and angle grinder to steal nine pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the Apollo Gallery. One crown belonging to Empress Eugénie was later recovered outside the museum, but eight artifacts remain missing.
On Wednesday, Laurence des Cars, president and director of the Louvre Museum, testified before the French Senate about the theft of nine pieces of France's crown jewels from the Apollo Gallery. The heist occurred on Sunday when robbers used a cherry picker and angle grinder to steal jewelry worth an estimated $102 million in under eight minutes. Des Cars revealed that security cameras were outdated and inadequate, with only one camera covering the breached balcony, and that she offered her resignation afterward, which the French Minister of Culture refused. The museum had previously faced criticism over security, including a staff walkout in June over staffing and safety concerns, and an official report had flagged outdated systems and lack of CCTV.
The 18th edition of the Lyon Biennale, titled "Passer d’un rêve à l’autre" (Moving from One Dream to Another), will run from September 19 to December 13, 2026. Curated by Catherine Nichols, an Australian-born art historian and editor based in Berlin, the biennial will take place across ten venues in Lyon, including the Grandes Locos, macLyon, and for the first time the Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs. More than half of the works will be new productions, and over half of the artists are women, with a substantial focus on Oceanian artists such as Timo Hogan, Jazz Money, and Kaylene Whiskey. The exhibition draws inspiration from Lyon's traboules (hidden passageways) and the writings of artist Robert Filliou, exploring themes of dreams, critical analysis, and a "poetic economy."
Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo, an entrepreneur, investor, Harvard-educated lawyer, former Princeton academic, and board member of the Shed, shares her vision for integrating frontier technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics into the art world. She argues that these tools can enhance human creativity rather than replace it, drawing on her early experiences with Asian antiquities and her pioneering work in blockchain, including co-founding OpenSea 2.0. The article, based on an interview with CULTURED, traces her journey from collecting a jade gourd as a child to advising tech companies and joining the board of the Shed, a Bloomberg-backed cultural center in Hudson Yards.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, will launch its summer exhibition season on June 13, 2026, featuring five new displays. The season includes solo shows by artists Stephen Andrews, Oliver Husain, and Austin Henderson. Andrews presents 'The sum of the parts,' a display of 125 drawings examining media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Husain offers an immersive video installation titled 'I ♥ Snail,' exploring the history of IMAX cinema. Henderson, the RBC emerging artist in residence, debuts works investigating queer history and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Canada through his family history. A free public event with curator remarks, artist-led tours, and a complimentary shuttle from OCAD University in Toronto will mark the opening.
Staff at the National Building Museum share their favorite children's books in celebration of World Book Day, as part of the exhibition 'Building Stories.' Each staff member selects a book that has influenced their imagination or professional work, ranging from century-old illustrated alphabets like C.B. Falls' 'ABC Book' to contemporary picture books such as Christian Robinson's 'Another' and Tony Hillery's 'Harlem Grown.' The selections highlight how storytelling and the built environment intersect, with books like 'Goodnight Moon,' 'Eloise,' and 'The Snowy Day' offering personal and professional insights.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. hosted its popular 'NGA Nights' series, featuring a 'Garden Party' theme that blended paper flower crafting with after-hours gallery access. The upcoming April event, 'United We Create,' shifts focus to the West Building to highlight five centuries of American creativity as part of the 'Celebrating American Art' exhibition and the broader America250 celebrations.
Master Drawings New York (MDNY) marks its 20th edition this month, founded in 2006 by London dealers Crispian Riley-Smith and Margot Gordon and acquired in 2023 by dealer Christopher Bishop. The fair focuses on works on paper from the 15th century to today, also including painting, sculpture, and photography. This year features 36 dealers across two dozen Upper East Side gallery spaces, with ten new exhibitors from Europe, making it the most geographically diverse edition yet. Programming includes a highlights catalogue of 20 important works sold during previous editions that ended up in major collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty.
The University of Kentucky Art Museum has announced its Spring 2026 exhibition lineup, running from February 3 to June 27, alongside the first Robert C. May Endowed Photography Lecture of the semester. The season features two main exhibitions: "Ecstatic Personas," a group show exploring joy as a radical force with works by Carlos Rosales-Silva and Shannon Alonzo, and "Harry Gamboa Jr.: The Early, The Late, The Lost," a career-spanning survey of the artist's photography, performance, and writing. Gamboa, a co-founder of the influential collective Asco, will also deliver a lecture on March 27 as part of the photography lecture series.
Egypt's visual arts scene in 2025 saw significant growth, marked by the opening of new galleries and a surge in diversity of artistic approaches, aesthetics, and techniques, according to Ehab Ellaban, director of the Arts Complex in Zamalek, and artist Samir Abdelghany. The year featured major exhibitions honoring both established masters and emerging talents, including Mohamed Abla's participation in the 4th–7th Generation exhibition at Al Masar Gallery and his solo show In the Glow of the City, Ahmed Shiha's Egyptian Spirit at Picasso East Gallery, Salah Bisar's Glee at Ubuntu Art Gallery, and retrospectives for Esmat Dawestashy, Salah Abdel Kerim, Chafik Charobim, and Inji Efflatoun. Katherine Bakhoum's Between Sea and Sky at Safarkhan Gallery also highlighted the enduring relevance of Egyptian-French artists.
London-based multimedia artist Lawrence Lek presents his latest work, NOX Pavilion, at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach during Miami Art Week. The installation is part of his ongoing fictional universe NOX ("nonhuman excellence"), which imagines a rehabilitation program for rogue self-driving cars. This year alone, Lek has staged NOX-related works at Tate Modern, the Hammer Museum, and Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, demonstrating his growing international presence. In an interview, Lek discusses how his practice spans architecture, video, gaming, and music, treating immersion as a critical state of perception rather than mere spectacle.
Peggy Robinson has opened a new contemporary art gallery called PEG on Cuba Street in Wellington, New Zealand. The gallery occupies a historic 1907 industrial building that was originally a mattress factory. Robinson, who has nearly a decade of experience in the arts, founded PEG with a kaupapa (Māori concept of principles) centered on presence, care, and deep commitment to artists. The inaugural exhibition features Reece King's show 'Halfway to the Splits', which explores repetition, labour, and process-based poetics developed during his Frances Hodgkins fellowship.
Former Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith, who led the auction house from 2015 to 2019, has emerged as a prominent supporter of blockchain art. The article traces his connection to artist Robert Alice, who first encountered Smith while working as a porter at Sotheby's. Alice, a pioneer in NFT art, sold the first NFT through a major auction house at Christie's in 2020. Now, his blockchain-based painting BLOCK 1 (24.9472° N, 118.5979° E) from the Portraits of a Mind series is being offered at Sotheby's with an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. Smith, who owns another work from the series, is not the consignor or guarantor but expresses hope the sale will promote Alice's work, Bitcoin, and Sotheby's, particularly among younger generations.
Michael Takeo Magruder, the Knight Fund Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Knox College, presented a new exhibition titled "re:GeneratedPrairie" at the Borzello Art Gallery in the Ford Center for the Fine Arts from September 16-30, 2025. The show featured digital prints, canvases, 4K videos, and soundscapes inspired by the prairie burn and regrowth at Knox's Green Oaks ecological site. Magruder, who has held over 300 exhibitions in 35 countries, was invited by Knight Distinguished Chair Robert M. Geraci and also mentored students during his residency, helping them with exhibition setup, curation, and offering critiques.
Newcastle Art Gallery in Australia has reopened its doors to the public for the first time after a major expansion project, unveiling new gallery spaces, a central atrium, and a foyer. The milestone event, held on 26 September 2025, featured a First Nations First ethos with major commissions and acquisitions on display, and was celebrated as part of the New Annual festival. The expansion has more than doubled the gallery's size, adding 1,600 square meters of exhibition space, with several areas named after major donors including Valerie and John Ryan, Margaret Olley, and Robert and Lindy Henderson.
Cal Poly Humboldt alumni and staff are prominently featured in "Rooted in Place: California Native Art," a new exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco that highlights Northern California’s Indigenous artists. The show includes works by the late Karuk painter Brian D. Tripp, Hupa artist and gallery director Brittany Britton, and other contributors such as Robert Benson, George Blake, Lena R. Bommelyn, and Shoshoni Gensaw-Hostler. Britton's beaded chair and Gensaw-Hostler's dentalium-shell cape are among the pieces displayed in the newly reinstalled Arts of Indigenous America galleries, which focus on the Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa, Wiyot, and Yurok peoples.
A rarely seen Caravaggio masterpiece, *Boy Bitten by a Lizard* (1593–94), is traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, for a new exhibition titled “In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi.” The show features 40 paintings by Caravaggio and his followers, the Caravaggisti, drawn from the collection of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi in Florence. The last time this painting was in the U.S. was in 2012 at the Kimbell Art Museum, and the Longhi collection has never before had a dedicated exhibition in America.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has granted Grade II* listed status to "Henry’s Castle," a mysterious limestone structure in the Lake District previously used as a livestock shelter. Following a four-year restoration project involving archaeologists and conservation engineers, experts identified high-status architectural features including a 14th-century oak roof truss, a corbelled chimneystack, and a garderobe. These elements suggest the building was originally a significant residence, such as a hunting lodge or a lookout dwelling, rather than a simple barn.
The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver will open a multisensory exhibition titled "Still in Sound" on May 16, exploring how visitors can experience abstract visual language through sound. Co-curated by Bailey Placzek, the museum's curator of collections, and British multidisciplinary artist Ben Coleman, the exhibition features original sonic interpretations by contemporary artists Maria Chávez, Maya Dunietz, Kalyn Heffernan, Matana Roberts, and Michael Schumacher, each responding to a specific Clyfford Still artwork. The museum will also open a special-feature exhibition, "Celebrating 15 Years: 15 New Paintings in 15 Months," unveiling one previously unseen painting each month for 15 months. The exhibition runs through February 14, 2027.
A pack of robot dogs fitted with hyper-realistic silicone heads of tech billionaires and cultural icons—including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol—is now on display at the New National Gallery in Berlin as part of the traveling interactive exhibit "Regular Animals." Created by American artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), the cyborg canines wander aimlessly and defecate AI-generated images in the style of the celebrity head they wear. The exhibit previously appeared in Miami and San Francisco.
Valerie Mercer, the lead curator of African American art at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), has spent over two decades building a collection that now includes more than 700 works. Last fall, the museum unveiled a major reinstallation titled "Reimagine African American Art," moving African American art from scattered locations to the heart of the institution, near Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals. The rehang traces a lineage from 19th-century painters like Robert S. Duncanson to modern innovators like Sam Gilliam, covering key cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement.
Gagosian Gallery will present an exhibition of six early works by Robert Rauschenberg from the Cy Twombly Foundation, opening April 25 at 980 Madison Avenue. The show coincides with the centennial of Rauschenberg’s birth and runs alongside a Marcel Duchamp exhibition in the gallery’s new ground-floor space. The featured works, including a rare 1950 sculpture and the photogram *Untitled (1950)*, were preserved by Cy Twombly, reflecting the close friendship and artistic exchange between the two artists who met in 1951 at the Art Students League of New York and later traveled together through Europe and North Africa.
Sotheby's Paris sale on April 16, 2026, achieved a total of 35 million euros, an 84% increase over the previous year's equivalent auction. The event was dominated by two rediscovered Claude Monet paintings, with 'Vétheuil, effet du matin' setting a new auction record for the artist in France at 10.2 million euros. Strong results were also posted for works by Marc Chagall, Lucio Fontana, and Gerhard Richter, with 62.5% of lots selling above their high estimates.
The Greater Bay Area is hosting a diverse range of cultural events this week, highlighted by the exhibition "Blooming: The Art of Gardens in East and West" at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. This show features rare works by Claude Monet, including his iconic Water Lilies, alongside traditional Chinese garden-themed art. Other notable visual arts events include the "Fragrance of Youth" exhibition at the Guangdong Museum of Art, showcasing contemporary Lingnan female artists, and the Tap Siac Craft Market in Macao, which features over 200 artisanal stalls.
The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, is highlighted as the state's first modern art museum, uniquely housed in a 1929 Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion. Founded in 1954 by collector Marion Koogler McNay, the institution manages a collection of over 20,000 objects, including masterworks by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georgia O'Keeffe, set across 25 acres of landscaped gardens.
The Surrey Art Gallery has launched "In the Shadow of the Pavilions," an exhibition exploring the complex artistic legacy of Vancouver’s Expo 86. Curated by Jordan Strom, the show features works and archival materials from over 50 artists, including those officially commissioned for the world’s fair and those who were excluded or responded critically to the event. Highlights include documentation of Michael Snow’s pioneering holography and Bill Reid’s Haida canoe, Loo Taas, alongside works by Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham.
Major U.S. museums are launching a series of high-profile exhibitions this spring, headlined by a massive Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other key highlights include the North American debut of Iris van Herpen’s technologically-driven fashion at the Brooklyn Museum and a focused look at Peter Hujar’s photography of the New York underground at the Morgan Library & Museum.