Art News. Vasari Codex

article news schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 13 link 1 artist

klaus biesenbach american art scene political correctness

Curator Klaus Biesenbach, now director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, gave a lengthy interview to Der Spiegel in which he explained his decision to leave the American art scene, citing what he described as an oppressive climate of "political correctness." He claimed that DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) initiatives in U.S. museums had become "unbearable" quota requirements, and recounted a story about mandatory Zoom meetings after George Floyd's murder where he felt pressured to share personal experiences of discrimination. He also referenced the resignation of SFMOMA curator Gary Garrels over "reverse discrimination" comments and acknowledged his own controversial tenure at MOCA Los Angeles, which saw two high-profile resignations and a leadership restructuring.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 6, 2025 visibility 16 link 12 artists

inside va east storehouse

The V&A East Storehouse, a new museum space in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, opens to the public on May 31, 2025, offering free admission seven days a week. Housed in the former London 2012 Olympics Media and Broadcast Centre, the 172,222-square-foot facility displays over 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 archives from the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection. Designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the Storehouse features a glass-floored Collections Hall where visitors can freely explore shelves and mini-curated displays, with objects changed frequently. Highlights include the Agra Colonnade (1630s) from Shah Jahan's bathhouse and a section of the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate by Alison and Peter Smithson.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 14 link 5 artists

ashmolean museum acquires fra angelico painting

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has raised $4.48 million ($5.8 million) to acquire Fra Angelico's early Renaissance painting "The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and the Magdalen" (1420s). The work had been in a private British collection for two centuries and was nearly sold to a foreign buyer until the U.K. government imposed an export deferral in January 2024, giving time for a domestic buyer to step in. The acquisition was completed via a private treaty sale at a discounted price, funded by over 50 donors including chairman Lord Lupton, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, and the Headley Trust.

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article news schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 9 link 4 artists

fight rages in norway over sale of barbara hepworth sculpture

A legal and public battle has erupted in Norway over Kunsthall Stavanger's decision to sell Barbara Hepworth's sculpture *Figure for Landscape* (1960) at Christie's London, with an estimate of £1-2 million. The sale is intended to fund the institution's operating and exhibition budget, as the Kunsthall faces potential closure without the proceeds. Local group Stavanger Byselskap filed a lawsuit to block the sale, which was settled in the Kunsthall's favor, but over 260 community members have signed a petition against the deaccession. The Hepworth estate has also condemned the sale as unethical, noting the work was sold to the institution at a reduced price due to Hepworth's wish to have her work in a Norwegian public collection.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 20 link 21 artists

old masters sales takeaways art detective

Sotheby's underperformed with the highly anticipated Saunders Collection of Old Masters, which was estimated at $80–120 million but sold for only $65.4 million, falling $14.6 million short of its low estimate. The sell-through rate was a dismal 58%, with 16 of 43 lots failing to sell in the standalone auction. Christie's also saw disappointing results, with a smaller sale totaling $6.89 million, 17% below its low target. The collection, amassed by the late banker Thomas A. Saunders III and his wife Jordan, was billed as the most valuable Old Masters collection ever to come to auction.

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article news schedule Jun 3, 2025 visibility 24 link 36 artists

whitney museum paused independent study program censorship

The Whitney Museum of American Art has suspended its storied Independent Study Program (ISP) for the 2025–2026 academic year, following widespread outcry over the censorship of a performance titled "No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance" by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi. The performance, scheduled for May 14, was canceled by museum leadership after reviewing a video in which Tbakhi made demands that supporters of Israel or America leave the venue. Director Scott Rothkopf informed the ISP community of the pause in an email, citing the need to search for a new director. The museum also confirmed that Sara Nadal-Melsió, hired in 2024 as the ISP's first associate director, will not retain her position. The cancellation drew condemnation from free speech advocates, including the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), which likened the museum's actions to an authoritarian approach.

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article culture schedule May 30, 2025 visibility 17 link 8 artists

the phoenician scheme wes anderson renoir art collecting

Wes Anderson's new film *The Phoenician Scheme* features a protagonist, Zsa-Zsa Korda (played by Benicio del Toro), who is a jet-setting high roller with a vast but neglected art collection housed in a 16th-century palazzo. The collection includes authentic masterpieces such as an 1889 Renoir portrait once owned by Greta Garbo, a 1942 Magritte, and a 17th-century van Schooten still life, alongside replicas like a Peter Paul Rubens. The film, now playing in New York and Los Angeles, uses these artworks as props and backdrops, reflecting the protagonist's indifference to his possessions amid his shady business schemes and fractured family relationships.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 30, 2025 visibility 15 link 10 artists

met museum rockefeller wing renovation review

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, closed since 2021, reopens after a $70 million renovation. The redesign by architect Kulapat Yantrasast transforms the previously dark and cramped galleries into airy, energizing spaces, with a major rehang that reconfigures the Oceania galleries. Notable changes include the repositioning of a Kwoma ceremonial house ceiling in collaboration with descendants of the original painters, the relocation of Asmat funerary poles to a dedicated gallery, and the addition of newly acquired works by Ömie artist Ilma Savari. The renovation also features revised wall texts that better contextualize the objects.

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article culture schedule May 30, 2025 visibility 18 link 8 artists

5 rediscoveries transforming black art narratives

Artnet News highlights five recent rediscoveries and reinterpretations that are reshaping narratives around Black artists and sitters in art history. These include Gustav Klimt's long-lost portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, an Osu prince exhibited in a racist "human zoo" in Vienna, which resurfaced in 2023 and was shown at TEFAF Maastricht with a $16.4 million price tag. Also featured are Edvard Munch's dual portrayals of Sultan Abdul Karim—one intimate, one stereotyped—on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and new research identifying James Cumberlidge, a Black servant in a Jean-Baptiste van Loo portrait, correcting a historical misattribution.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 29, 2025 visibility 15 link 5 artists

how did hiroshige become an international sensation

A new exhibition at the British Museum, “Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road,” showcases over 100 works by the Japanese ukiyo-e master Utagawa Hiroshige, including a landmark gift of 35 prints from U.S. collector Alan Medaugh. Many of the prints have never been publicly displayed before, and some are believed to be the only surviving examples of their kind. The show runs through September 7 and features landscapes, bird-and-flower prints, fan prints, and an immersive digital experience created with Outernet London.

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article news schedule May 29, 2025 visibility 10 link 1 artist

development of rice noodle like glue for historical paintings puts art conservators fears to rest

Art conservators faced a crisis after two key ingredients for Beva 371, a glue used to line historical canvases, were discontinued—first the resin Laropal K-80 in 2005 and then the tackifier Cellolyn 21E in 2020. Researchers from the University of Akron and New York University's Conservation Center, funded by a Getty Foundation grant, developed a new version called Beva 371 Akron. The adhesive is less toxic, less vulnerable to supply-chain issues, and available in three forms: a pre-mixed heat-seal variant, solid spaghetti-like pellets for easy transport, and a solvent-free pure adhesive.

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article local schedule May 28, 2025 visibility 21 link 7 artists

camden art centre gets 99 year lease

Camden Art Centre in London has secured a 99-year lease on its current home after raising £1.9 million. The lease was previously set to expire in 2027. The effort was led by director Martin Clark and board chair Guy Halamish, with contributions from artists including Kara Walker and Alvaro Barrington.

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candle obituary schedule May 23, 2025 visibility 14 link 5 artists

sebastiao salgado photographer dead

Sebastião Salgado, the acclaimed Brazilian photographer known for his powerful black-and-white images documenting worker exploitation, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses, has died at age 81. His death was announced by Instituto Terra, the organization he co-founded with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado. Salgado had been in declining health since contracting malaria in the 1990s. His work spanned decades and continents, from the Sahel desert to the Amazon rainforest, and he was widely regarded as one of the most beloved photographers of his generation.

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article culture schedule May 22, 2025 visibility 18 link 21 artists

art in america new talent issue 2025

Art in America's 2025 "New Talent" issue features 20 emerging artists chosen by the magazine's editors, including Nico Williams, Bint Mbareh, Justin Allen, Agnes Questionmark, and Brooklin A. Soumahoro. The issue also includes a postmortem on figurative painting by Barry Schwabsky, an essay on spiritual art by Eleanor Heartney, a symposium on art's purpose with seven artists, and a tribute to the late Jaune Quick-to-See Smith by Emmi Whitehorse. Other sections cover Suzanne Valadon, Hito Steyerl's book, and a debate between art fairs and biennials.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 21, 2025 visibility 14 link 11 artists

suzanne valadon post impressionist painter

Suzanne Valadon, a self-taught French post-impressionist painter known for her brash, unflinching style and commitment to representation, is the subject of a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris through May 26. The exhibition, simply titled "Suzanne Valadon," features 200 works and is part of a recent swell of attention that includes six major exhibitions in six years, highlighting her self-portraits, nudes, and depictions of the human body with unidealized realism.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 21, 2025 visibility 11 link 7 artists

going beyond fashion with charles james at the met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Anna Wintour Costume Center opens with the exhibition "Charles James: Beyond Fashion," showcasing the work of the mid-century couturier often called "America's First Couturier." The show presents James's sculptural gowns—made of silk, tulle, and taffeta—on pedestals, accompanied by quotations that frame his designs as art. Highlights include the famous 10-pound "Clover Leaf Gown" and the "Taxi dress," a precursor to the wrap dress. The exhibition features animated video imaging by Diller Scofidio + Renfro that uses robotic cameras to reveal the architectural layers within the garments. The show runs from May 8 to August 10, 2014.

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trending_up market schedule May 21, 2025 visibility 16 link 12 artists

lalanne ostrich bar sothebys paris

François-Xavier Lalanne's functional sculpture "Ostrich Bar" (1965) sold for €11.1 million ($12.5 million) at Sotheby's Paris on May 20, far exceeding its €3–4 million estimate after an 11-minute bidding war. The piece, one of only six ever produced, features two porcelain ostriches gripping a metal shelf with a central egg for ice cubes; it was the artist's personal favorite, kept in his bedroom for over four decades. The sale took place within Sotheby's Important Design sale curated by model Betty Catroux.

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article culture schedule May 20, 2025 visibility 13 link 6 artists

vincent van gogh news

Artnet News highlights the enduring public fascination with Vincent van Gogh, 135 years after his death, by compiling 10 recent stories that demonstrate "Van Gogh Mania." Examples include the National Gallery in London's major exhibition "Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers," the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston's "Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits," and a legal dispute over the garden that inspired his final painting, Tree Roots (1890). Other stories cover a van Gogh portrait kept in a chicken coop for over a decade and Lego's release of a Sunflowers-themed building set in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 20, 2025 visibility 14 link 7 artists

new portraits of historys black revolutionaries

The article reports on the exhibition “Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition” at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, which highlights overlooked figures of the transatlantic abolitionist movement. It features contemporary portraits by British-Nigerian artist Joy Labinjo, including her 2022 works depicting Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley, alongside historical paintings like Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of Charles Ignatius Sancho. Labinjo’s paintings fill gaps where no visual records of these revolutionaries exist, drawing on historical sources to create accurate, vivid representations.

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trending_up market schedule May 19, 2025 visibility 12 link 3 artists

leonard blavatnik james dyson idan ofer rich list uk 2025

The Sunday Times's 2025 'Rich List' shows that Top 200 collector and art patron Leonard Blavatnik's net worth fell by more than £3.5 billion to £25.725 billion, dropping him to #3 on the UK wealth ranking. The list includes over a dozen collectors from ARTnews's 2024 Top 200 Collectors list, such as James Dyson, Idan Ofer, Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, Alan Howard, and Mohammed Mahdi al-Tajir, with Ofer noted as one of the top five individuals whose wealth rose most. Other figures mentioned include Simon Reuben, John Fredriksen, Sri Prakash Lohia, Lakshmi Mittal, Elton John, and former Christie's stakeholder Joe Lewis.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 19, 2025 visibility 19 link 4 artists

impressionist masters manet morisot major museum show

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will present "Manet and Morisot," the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between French Impressionists Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. Opening October 11 at the Legion of Honor, the show traces their relationship from 1868 to 1883, pairing works to reveal mutual influence. Lenders include the National Gallery of Art, Musée d'Orsay, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Cleveland Museum of Art, where the exhibition will travel next year.

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article news schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 11 link 8 artists

kids damage art

A child under the age of five recently scratched a Mark Rothko painting at a museum in the Netherlands, forcing its removal for restoration. The article compiles several notorious incidents of children accidentally damaging artworks, including a 12-year-old boy punching a hole through a $1.5 million Baroque painting by Paolo Porpora in Taipei, a 4-year-old shattering a 3,500-year-old vase at the Hecht Museum in Israel, a girl climbing a Donald Judd sculpture at Tate Modern, and kids breaking a glass artwork by Shelley Xue at the Shanghai Museum of Glass. In most cases, the damage was accidental, driven by curiosity or misinterpretation, and often involved lapses in adult supervision.

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article culture schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 17 link 13 artists

leonardo da vinci existing paintings ranked

Artnet News has published a ranking of Leonardo da Vinci's surviving paintings, focusing on completed, stand-alone works and excluding frescos like *The Last Supper* and unfinished pieces. The article evaluates paintings such as *Annunciation* (c. 1472–76), *Madonna of the Carnation* (1478–80), and *Ginevra de' Benci* (c. 1474–78), considering factors like attribution certainty, historical context, and unique traits—for instance, *Ginevra de' Benci* is the only Leonardo painting in a public collection in the Americas.

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person people schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 18 link 4 artists

v a c foundation ex director teresa mavica interview

Teresa Iarocci Mavica, former director of the Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation, which she co-founded with Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, has resurfaced after three years of silence. She resigned from V-A-C in November 2021, just before the opening of GES-2 House of Culture, Russia's largest contemporary art museum, and left Russia shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now based in Naples, she has curated "The Sun to Come" at Made in Cloister, launching her biennial program "REBIRTH." The exhibition includes three Russian artists, reflecting her continued commitment to cultural dialogue between Russia and Europe despite the war.

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article culture schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 19 link 19 artists

7 art history facts

Frieze Week in New York has arrived, drawing tens of thousands of visitors to The Shed for displays from over 65 international galleries. The article offers a collection of art historical trivia to help attendees impress peers, including tales of a potentially fake Picasso gifted to Robin Williams by Disney, Piet Mondrian's fondness for Disney's *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, and a legend that Raphael's pupil Giulio Romano created erotic frescos in the Vatican's Sala di Constantino out of anger over delayed payment from Pope Clement VII.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 24 link 21 artists

superfine met museum costume institute black dandy

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" on May 10, an exhibition tracing over 300 years of Black dandyism. The show features around a dozen paintings, fashions, works on paper, photography, sculpture, and decorative objects, including a 1758 portrait of Roch Aza, a ten-year-old enslaved boy from Martinique, depicted in elegant livery alongside his enslaver. The exhibition examines how well-dressed Black figures appeared in European art as symbols of their owners' wealth and status during the transatlantic slave trade, and how subsequent generations have reappropriated and subverted that imagery.

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article news schedule May 10, 2025 visibility 18 link 16 artists

kim kardashian art world

Kim Kardashian, the media personality and billionaire entrepreneur, has increasingly intersected with the art world through high-profile purchases, legal disputes, and controversial photo shoots. She bought Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting "Both Poles" (1982) for $5 million at Christie's in 2017, later confirmed in 2024. She faced a lawsuit from the Donald Judd Foundation in 2024 for falsely claiming two tables were authentic Judd works. She also sparked outrage with a Tesla Cybertruck photoshoot for Perfect magazine during the "Tesla Takedown" protests, and engaged in a bidding war with Tom Brady over a George Condo artwork.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 10, 2025 visibility 22 link 22 artists

national gallery sainsburg wing reopening gabriele finaldi

London's National Gallery has reopened its Sainsbury Wing after a three-year, $113 million renovation, timed to the museum's 200th anniversary. Director Gabriele Finaldi, who was knighted this year, oversaw the project, which was designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf and faced criticism from original architect Denise Scott Brown. The revamped wing features a light-filled foyer, 17 galleries with no prescribed route, and a rehang titled “The Wonder of Art.” The museum also acquired a mysterious painting by an unknown artist, The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels (1500–10), for $20 million through Sotheby's.

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article news schedule May 9, 2025 visibility 18 link 3 artists

britain royal coronation portraits charles iii camilla

The United Kingdom unveiled official coronation portraits of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, painted by artists Peter Kuhfeld and Paul Benney respectively, to commemorate the 2023 coronation. Charles is depicted in a red room wearing coronation regalia beside the Imperial State Crown, while Camilla is shown in photorealistic detail in a powder blue silk dress. The portraits are on view at the National Gallery in London.

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gavel restitution schedule May 8, 2025 visibility 13 link 7 artists

32 million klimt sale falls through

The record-setting $32 million sale of Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Fräulein Lieser" (1917) has fallen through after a restitution settlement failed to resolve gaps in its provenance. The painting, discovered in early 2024 and sold at Im Kinsky auction house in Vienna to an anonymous Hong Kong buyer in April, was mired in controversy over its history during the Nazi era. The work's whereabouts between 1925 and 1961 were unknown, a period including Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany. The auction house proposed the work was commissioned by Henriette Lieser, who was deported and murdered at Auschwitz, but conflicting theories about the sitter's identity and the painting's path through a Nazi party member's family complicated restitution efforts. A new potential legal heir emerged after the sale, and the buyer ultimately pulled out.

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