Art News. Vasari Codex

article culture schedule Jan 15, 2026 visibility 15 link 6 artists

ls lowry ian mckellen documentary 2737539

A new BBC documentary, *L.S. Lowry: The Unheard Tapes*, will mark the 50th anniversary of the artist's death in 1976. The film features never-before-heard recordings of conversations between Lowry and a young fan, Angela Barratt, recorded in his living room—the last and longest interview he ever gave. These tapes will be brought to life through dramatic reenactments, with Ian McKellen lip-syncing Lowry's words and Annabel Smith portraying Barratt. The documentary is produced by Wall to Wall Media and aims to reveal intimate insights into Lowry's thoughts, ambitions, regrets, and humor.

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trending_up market schedule Jan 15, 2026 visibility 17 link 7 artists

art historical rediscoveries 2025 2733425

Seven notable art historical rediscoveries from 2025 are highlighted, including an early Eva Hesse painting found at a Goodwill thrift store that sold for $107,100 at Christie's, a previously unknown John Singer Sargent portrait unveiled at the Musée d'Orsay, a Salvador Dalí watercolor bought for $186 that fetched $61,400 at auction, and a John Constable drawing resurfacing after 200 years. Other finds include works by post-minimalist and old master artists uncovered in attics, estate sales, and private collections, often identified by sharp-eyed dealers or lucky amateurs.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 13, 2026 visibility 24 link 6 artists

caravaggio morgan library loan 2736822

The Morgan Library and Museum in New York will open "Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit in Focus" on January 16, centered on a landmark loan of Caravaggio's titular painting from the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The exhibition, organized through the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture (FIAC) led by Alain Elkann, features 13 artworks by artists who preceded and succeeded Caravaggio, curated by John Marciari to provide context on the artist's influences and legacy.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 13, 2026 visibility 23 link 4 artists

yoko ono art mca chicago review 1234769626

Yoko Ono's retrospective "Music of the Mind" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago showcases over 200 works, including word scores, ephemera, and performances from the 1960s and early '70s. Central to the show is Ono's aesthetic of refusal, exemplified by pieces like *Strip Tease for Three* (1966), where empty chairs await a dancer who never arrives, and *Smoke Painting* (1961), which instructs viewers to burn a canvas. The exhibition, which first appeared at Tate Modern in 2024 and travels to the Broad in Los Angeles after closing in Chicago on February 22, challenges viewers to find meaning in absence and denial.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 12, 2026 visibility 18 link 4 artists

van gogh yellow house museum 2735255

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has opened an exhibition titled "Van Gogh and the Roulins. Together Again at Last," which reunites 14 of Vincent van Gogh's 23 portraits of the Roulin family, painted during his 15-month stay in the Yellow House in Arles (1888–89). The show features a full-scale recreation of the Yellow House façade, the original chair used by postman Joseph Roulin during sittings, and costumed actors portraying family members. It traveled from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where it drew 280,000 visitors, and includes four additional paintings not shown in Boston, on loan from institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum, Kröller-Müller Museum, Kunst Museum Winterthur, and Museum Folkwang.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 12, 2026 visibility 16 link 3 artists

esphyr slobodkina louise nevelson arkansas museum 2733735

The Arkansas Museum of Art in Little Rock is presenting "Architects of Being," an exhibition pairing the work of Esphyr Slobodkina and Louise Nevelson through January 11, 2026. Slobodkina, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant and founding member of the American Abstract Artists, was a painter, sculptor, writer, and fashion designer who also authored the classic children's book *Caps for Sale*. Nevelson, also an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, is renowned for her monochromatic wood assemblages. The show juxtaposes their geometric abstractions, collages, sculptures, and personal fashion, curated as a hypothetical dialogue between two kindred spirits who never met. The exhibition will travel to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 12, 2026 visibility 21 link 5 artists

emily sargent exhibition metropolitan museum of art 2660505

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is hosting "Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family," its first exhibition of watercolors by Emily Sargent (1857–1936), the younger sister of famed portraitist John Singer Sargent. The works were rediscovered after a forgotten trunk of hundreds of paintings was found in storage by relatives, and in 2022, the family donated 26 pieces across seven museums in the U.S. and U.K. The show features about 20 of the Met's received works, rotating delicate pieces midway through its run, and includes a watercolor co-created by Emily and John.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 10, 2026 visibility 14 link 2 artists

vermeer girl with a pearl earring loaned osaka japan 1234769354

The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague has announced that Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" will be loaned to the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, for a temporary exhibition this fall. The loan occurs while the Dutch museum undergoes renovations in August and September. The painting was last lent to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for its 2023 Vermeer retrospective. The Asahi Shimbun Company is underwriting the presentation and will serve as a project partner to the Mauritshuis for four years, funding a new education center slated for 2028.

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trending_up market schedule Jan 9, 2026 visibility 12 link 6 artists

rediscovered rubens brafa art fair 2736003

Belgian art dealer Klaas Muller purchased a painting at an online auction three years ago, identified only as a study by an unknown artist of the Flemish school. After research, he discovered the work is likely a rediscovered study by Peter Paul Rubens (circa 1609), featuring a hidden second image of a woman's face visible when the painting is turned upside down. The work will debut at the BRAFA art fair in Brussels, where Muller serves as chairman.

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article news schedule Jan 9, 2026 visibility 11 link 3 artists

rubens adam eve virginia prisons suit 1072511

An inmate in a Virginia prison has had the July/August issue of the Humanist magazine rejected by prison censors because it contains a reproduction of Peter Paul Rubens's painting of Adam and Eve, in which Eve's breasts are visible despite fig leaves covering the couple's genitals. Attorney Jeffrey E. Fogel filed a federal lawsuit on August 31 on behalf of the American Humanist Association, arguing that the rejection violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments and has caused financial harm to the publisher. The article in question, titled "Everything You Know about Sex is Wrong," aims to challenge binary gender concepts.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 8, 2026 visibility 12 link 3 artists

girl with a pearl earring travel to japan 2735694

Johannes Vermeer's iconic painting *Girl with a Pearl Earring* will travel to Japan for the first time in over a decade, on view at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka from August to September. The loan is necessitated by the closure of its permanent home, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, for renovations. The Mauritshuis had previously pledged not to lend the painting again after its 2012–2014 tour of Japan, Italy, and the U.S., making an exception only for the Rijksmuseum's 2023 Vermeer exhibition. Director Martine Gosselink called the trip a unique opportunity to share the work with the Japanese public, possibly for the last time.

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article news schedule Jan 8, 2026 visibility 25 link 2 artists

franco regime censored robert motherwell painting moma show 1234768998

Newly uncovered documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s archives confirm that the Franco regime in Spain attempted to censor Robert Motherwell’s painting *Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 35* (1954–58) before its scheduled 1958 exhibition in Madrid. The painting was part of MoMA’s traveling show “The New American Painting,” which introduced Abstract Expressionism to Europe. Spanish authorities demanded Motherwell remove the phrase “Spanish Republic” from the title, but the artist refused, leading to the work’s exclusion from the exhibition. The documents, reviewed by *El País*, also reveal that Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies boycotted state-sanctioned shows, calling the regime’s cultural propaganda “scandalous.”

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article news schedule Jan 7, 2026 visibility 15 link 2 artists

diana thater media art preservation cmacc 1234769025

When the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena in January 2025, artist Diana Thater lost decades of raw footage, master tapes, installation manuals, and ephemera stored in her garage. Her husband, artist T. Kelly Mason, managed to save a server and several hard drives, but much of her earlier archive—never digitized—was destroyed. In the aftermath, Thater began working with the Canyon Media Art Conservation Center (CMACC), a nonprofit conservation lab opening in 2026 that specializes in time-based media art. Led by conservator Cass Fino-Radin, CMACC is helping Thater locate surviving versions of her works in museums and private collections to rebuild and preserve her archive.

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article culture schedule Jan 7, 2026 visibility 18 link 4 artists

monas eyes book cover vermeer painting controversy 1234769003

Thomas Schlesser's novel *Mona's Eyes* has been named Barnes & Noble's book of the year for 2025, but its cover has sparked controversy online. The cover features Johannes Vermeer's *The Girl with the Pearl Earring*, even though the story is about a girl named Mona who visits Paris museums with her grandfather, and the painting is not held in Paris—it resides at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. A viral Reddit thread on an art history subreddit accused the publisher of "ragebait," noting the mismatch between the cover image and the book's content. Schlesser, an art historian who teaches at the École Polytechnique and runs the Hartung Bergman Foundation, defended the choice, saying he wanted an iconic work symbolizing light and darkness rather than highlighting any of the 52 artworks featured in the story.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 7, 2026 visibility 25 link 43 artists

diriyah contemporary art biennale 2026 artist list 1234769006

The Diriyah Biennale Foundation has announced the artist list for the third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, opening January 30 in the JAX District of Diriyah, near Riyadh. Titled “In Interludes and Transitions,” the biennale is curated by Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed and features over 65 artists, including more than 20 new commissions. Participants range from historic figures like Pacita Abad and Etel Adnan to emerging voices such as Raven Chacon and Dineo Seshee Bopape, working across painting, installation, film, sound, architecture, and publishing.

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trending_up market schedule Jan 6, 2026 visibility 21 link 8 artists

unseen jean antoine watteau christies paris 2734820

A rare Jean-Antoine Watteau drawing, never before publicly exhibited, and a major Jean-Honoré Fragonard painting will be auctioned at Christie’s Paris on March 25. The works come from the collection of the late Arthur Georges Veil-Picard, a banker and absinthe magnate who assembled a world-class trove of 18th-century French art over 40 years. The Watteau, *Actor Holding a Guitar Under His Arm*, was previously known only from a black-and-white photograph in the artist’s catalogue raisonné and is estimated at €600,000–800,000. The Fragonard, *The Happy Family*, from the 1770s, carries an estimate of €1.5–2 million. The sale also includes works by Hubert Robert, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Marie-Suzanne Roslin, with total estimates reaching €5–8 million.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 6, 2026 visibility 19 link 4 artists

jan van eyck portraits london 2734536

The National Gallery in London will host "Van Eyck: The Portraits" in November, a landmark exhibition uniting all nine of Jan van Eyck's surviving portraits for the first time. This includes masterpieces like *The Arnolfini Portrait* (1434) and loans from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, alongside the recently conserved *Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)* (1433).

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article culture schedule Jan 5, 2026 visibility 18 link 4 artists

suprising history behind whistlers mother 2723534

The article explores the enduring appeal of James McNeill Whistler's 1871 painting commonly known as "Whistler’s Mother," officially titled "Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.1." It recounts how the painting was acquired by the French state in 1891 and became the first American painting in the Louvre, now housed at the Musée d'Orsay. The piece also reveals little-known facts: the sitter's full name was Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, who wore mourning clothes for 31 years after being widowed and moved in with her son in London, displacing his mistress. The article includes her recipe for a dessert called Floating Island and notes that Whistler incorporated his earlier etching "Black Lion Wharf" into the portrait.

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article culture schedule Jan 5, 2026 visibility 17 link 8 artists

curators reveal their favorite artworks of all time 2717382

Artnet News asked leading curators and museum directors to share their favorite artworks of all time. Connie Butler of MoMA PS1 chose David Hammons's "Bliz-aard Ball Sale" (1983), praising its connection from Duchamp to AI. Julieta Gonzalez of the Wexner Center selected Hans Holbein the Younger's "The Ambassadors" (1533), highlighting its anamorphic skull as a metaphor for viewing modernity from the margins. Madeleine Grynsztejn of MCA Chicago picked Francisco Goya's "A Pilgrimage to San Isidro" (1819–23) from his Black Paintings cycle, calling it a metaphor for fanaticism.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 3, 2026 visibility 20 link 10 artists

an indigenous takeover of the met asks who should be writing art history 1234757699

An unsanctioned augmented reality exhibition titled “Encoded” has taken over the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featuring works by 17 North American Indigenous artists. The exhibition, organized by the nonprofit media lab Amplifier and co-curated by Tracy Rector, overlays digital artworks onto iconic paintings and sculptures, including a piece by Josué Riva that replaces Thomas Sully’s portrait of Queen Victoria with a moving image of Acosia Red Elk (Umatilla, Cayuse & Nez Perce) delivering the message “Be a Good Ancestor.” The intervention launched on Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day, October 13, 2025, and runs through December 13, without the Met’s permission.

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 31, 2025 visibility 24 link 13 artists

tony shafrazi independent art fair return 1234751032

Tony Shafrazi, the legendary and controversial New York art dealer, is returning to the art fair circuit for the first time since 2012 with a booth at the Independent 20th Century fair in New York. He is presenting works by Armenian sculptor Zadik Zadikian, whose installation of gold bricks Shafrazi first exhibited in Tehran in 1978 before they were lost in the Iranian Revolution, alongside paintings by Brandon Deener. Shafrazi, now in his 80s, closed his New York gallery in 2011 and was banned from Art Basel in 2012 for breaking the fair's rules.

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article culture schedule Dec 31, 2025 visibility 14 link 8 artists

art bites robert rauschenberg talking heads album cover 2709771

Robert Rauschenberg designed the cover for Talking Heads' 1983 album *Speaking in Tongues*, creating a limited-edition LP package with three plastic discs featuring cyan, magenta, and yellow designs that produced a full-color, kinetic composition when overlaid on the spinning record. The project stemmed from a friendship between Rauschenberg and frontman David Byrne, who met after Byrne saw Rauschenberg's photo collages in a New York gallery. Despite production challenges that limited the design to a special edition, the album won a Grammy for best album cover.

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article culture schedule Dec 29, 2025 visibility 22 link 23 artists

art pop culture crossover 2025 2729394

Artnet News recapped nine notable art and design crossovers in pop culture from 2025. These include a Renoir painting spotted in a Wes Anderson film, a John Everett Millais reference on a Taylor Swift album cover, and a Dieter Rams chair appearing in the TV show "Severance." The article also highlights painter Ronan Day-Lewis bringing his visual world to film with his debut "Anemone," Spike Lee incorporating his art collection into the film "Highest 2 Lowest," and Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park home being featured on the TV series "The Bear."

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 29, 2025 visibility 17 link 9 artists

she is an icon of finnish art now modernist helene schjerfbeck takes a global stage 2728018

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has opened "Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck," the first major U.S. survey of the Finnish modernist painter. The exhibition features approximately 60 works spanning Schjerfbeck's entire career, drawn primarily from the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, as well as other Finnish and Swedish collections. Curated by Dita Amory of the Met and Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff of the Ateneum, the show takes a thematic rather than chronological approach, highlighting Schjerfbeck's evolution from academic realism to a distinctive, introspective modernism.

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article culture schedule Dec 26, 2025 visibility 18 link 5 artists

art bites mona lisa louvre heist 2708512

On October 19, 2025, thieves disguised as construction workers stole $102 million in French crown jewels from the Louvre, but the article contrasts this with the far more infamous 1911 heist of Leonardo da Vinci's *Mona Lisa*. The 1911 theft was carried out by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman and museum employee who hid in a supply closet, removed the painting's glass casing (which he had installed), and fled with two accomplices via subway. The theft went unnoticed for 28 hours, and the French press sensationalized the story, even accusing figures like J.P. Morgan and Pablo Picasso.

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article culture schedule Dec 26, 2025 visibility 16 link 12 artists

10 art historical deep dives 2715835

Artnet News published a roundup of 10 art historical deep dives from 2025, curated by an editor who expresses a deep passion for art history. The article highlights several featured stories, including the eccentric tale behind Carl Kahler's monumental cat painting "My Wife's Lovers" (1891), commissioned by Gilded Age patron Kate Birdsall Johnson; the record-breaking sale of Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" for $236.4 million at Sotheby's New York, with its rich symbolism and Imperial Chinese motifs; the online resurgence of August Friedrich Schenck's obscure 19th-century painting "Anguish" (ca. 1878), popularized by TikTok; and the centenary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" with a deep dive into Francis Cugat's iconic cover art "Celestial Eyes" (1924).

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 23, 2025 visibility 24 link 9 artists

jack whitten 2025 artnews awards historical artist 1234762878

Jack Whitten is the recipient of the 2025 ARTnews Award for his retrospective "Jack Whitten: The Messenger" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, running from March 23 to August 2, 2025. Curated by Michelle Kuo with Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge, the exhibition features 175 works spanning Whitten's six-decade career, highlighting his innovative use of acrylic paint, his custom squeegee-like tool called the Developer, and his mosaic-like paintings made from dried acrylic chips. The show includes early works from the civil rights era, mid-career homages to Black thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison, and a monumental abstraction memorializing 9/11.

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article news schedule Dec 22, 2025 visibility 18 link 10 artists

10 art restorations in 2025 2725850

In 2025, a series of major art restorations unveiled transformative discoveries in masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raphael, and Artemisia Gentileschi, among others. Caravaggio's final work, *The Martyrdom of St. Ursula* (1610), owned by Intesa Sanpaolo, was cleaned ahead of Rome's "Caravaggio 2025" exhibition, revealing hidden faces and a soldier's helmet previously only visible by x-ray. At the Vatican Museums, a decade-long restoration of the Raphael Rooms concluded with the revelation that two allegorical figures in the Hall of Constantine were painted by Raphael himself, not just his assistants, rewriting art history. Meanwhile, Artemisia Gentileschi's *Hercules and Omphale* (ca. 1635–37), damaged in the Beirut explosion, underwent emergency conservation by the Getty.

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 22, 2025 visibility 18 link 6 artists

this artemisia gentileschi painting is unlike any of her others heres why 2727951

A previously unknown painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, *Hercules and Omphale* (ca. 1635–37), was identified after being damaged in the 2020 Beirut port explosion. The work, which hung in Beirut’s Sursock Palace, underwent a three-year conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum and is now on view at the Columbus Museum of Art in the exhibition *Artemisia Gentileschi: Naples to Beirut*. It depicts the Greek myth of Queen Omphale enslaving Hercules, a rare subject for Gentileschi that subverts traditional gender roles.

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trending_up market schedule Dec 19, 2025 visibility 12 link 8 artists

bing crosby collection sothebys auction 2697814

The private collection of Hollywood icons Kathryn and Bing Crosby sold at Sotheby's for $6.7 million on December 18. The white-glove auction, held at Sotheby's new Breuer Building location on Manhattan's Upper East Side, surpassed its pre-sale high estimate of $6.3 million, with two-thirds of the lots exceeding their high estimates. The nearly 200-lot sale featured fine art, furnishings, and collectibles, with the top lot being Alfred James Munnings' painting *On the Moors* (1914), which sold for $1.2 million. Other highlights included works by Charles Marion Russell, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Corot, as well as nearly 50 lots of Fabergé items that achieved $2 million in sales.

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