The Wichita Art Museum (WAM) has opened a major exhibition titled 'Alex Katz: Theater and Dance,' focusing on the celebrated American artist's decades-long engagement with performing arts subjects. The show features over 50 works, including paintings, collages, and prints, that capture the energy and aesthetics of theater and dance, highlighting Katz's distinctive style of flat planes and bold color.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has unveiled "Nick Cave: Mammoth," a major new commission by artist Nick Cave. The exhibition, which opened on February 13, 2026, is the museum's largest-ever commission by a single artist and marks Cave's first solo show in Washington, D.C. It transforms a suite of galleries into immersive environments featuring a massive hand-beaded tapestry, towering sculptures incorporating mammoth skulls, and a large light table displaying thousands of found objects.
The Musée de la Vie romantique in Paris has reopened on February 14th following a €3.8 million renovation. The project, funded by the City of Paris and private donors, restored the 19th-century building—once the home and studio of painter Ary Scheffer—focusing on its timber framework, roof, and façades using traditional techniques. The museum's exhibition has been completely renewed, featuring 300 works from its collection, including 70 recently restored pieces, and incorporates new multimedia elements to immerse visitors in the Romantic period.
LACMA has announced that its David Geffen Galleries, the centerpiece of a two-decade campus transformation, will open to the public on April 19, 2025, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and priority member access, followed by general admission starting May 4. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the $720-million Brutalist building spans Wilshire Boulevard and houses 110,000 square feet of exhibition space across 90 galleries, organized thematically rather than by medium or chronology. The inaugural installation will use global bodies of water as an organizing framework, featuring works such as Georges de La Tour's "The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame," Vincent van Gogh's "Tarascon Stagecoach," and Henri Matisse's "La Gerbe." The project was funded largely by private donors, including a record $150-million donation from David Geffen, with $125 million from L.A. County.
A touring survey of the late American painter Noah Davis (1983-2015) is making its final stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, following presentations at Das Minsk in Potsdam, the Barbican in London, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition features 60 works from Davis's oeuvre of 400 paintings, showcasing his skill as a colourist and storyteller who balanced social relevance with artistic independence. Davis, who died of cancer at age 32, founded the Underground Museum in Los Angeles with his wife Karon, and his work has gained significant market momentum, with his 2008 painting *The Casting Call* selling for $2 million at Sotheby's in November 2024.
The article highlights five notable artworks heading to auction in January 2025, spanning sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams Skinner, and Heritage Auctions. Featured lots include Winslow Homer’s *A Mountain Climber Resting* (est. $1.5–2.5M) from the Max N. Berry Collection, Otobong Nkanga’s tapestry *The Pursuit of Bling: The Transformation* (est. £20,000–30,000), Bob Ross’s *Valley View* (est. $30,000–50,000), and Claes Oldenburg’s lithograph *Three Way Plug* (est. $3,000+). Each work comes with distinct provenance—from a Standard Oil heiress to a hardware pioneer—and reflects diverse market segments from blue-chip American painting to contemporary African art and pop-culture collectibles.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers have opened the seventh annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: New York City Regional Exhibition at The Met’s Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education. Running through May 21, 2021, the free exhibition features over 200 works of art and writing by New York City-based Gold Key recipients in grades 7–12, selected from more than 10,000 submissions across 28 categories. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the works are displayed as framed prints to ensure equitable access.
The Petit Palais in Paris is hosting three winter exhibitions: a retrospective of 18th-century portraitist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (until January 25), a tribute to Finnish landscape painter Pekka Halonen (until February 22), and a solo show of contemporary artist Bilal Hamdad (until February 8). The Greuze exhibition is the first full retrospective dedicated to the artist, featuring around 100 works on loan from major collections. The Halonen show, the first major tribute to the Finnish painter in France, highlights his modernist snowy landscapes. Hamdad’s exhibition presents 20 large-scale paintings exploring urban solitude, drawing inspiration from Old Masters like Rubens and Manet.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has opened a major exhibition titled "Surrealism at 100," marking the centennial of the Surrealist movement. The show brings together a vast array of works from the movement's key figures, including Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Max Ernst, alongside lesser-known artists, aiming to capture the full breadth and subversive spirit of Surrealism across painting, sculpture, photography, and film.
The global art market continued to contract in 2025, with prominent galleries such as Blum, Clearing, Sperone Westwater, Tilton, Kasmin, TJ Boulting, Project Native Informant, Nir Altman, and Altman Siegel closing due to challenging macroeconomic conditions. However, a rebound emerged at the top end by autumn, driven by Sotheby's white-glove sale of the Pauline Karpidas collection, strong VVIP sales at Art Basel Paris, and New York's November auctions, where Klimt's *Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer* (1914-16) sold for $236.3 million and Frida Kahlo's *El Sueño (la cama)* (1940) for $54.7 million. Christie's and Sotheby's reported increased sales from 2024, with second-half auctions up 26% year-on-year, though recovery remains uneven and concentrated in classic secondary-market tastes.
In 2025, the art market faced significant challenges, including gallery closures and unfavorable auction results in the first three quarters, driven by geopolitical pressures such as US President Donald Trump's tariffs. However, a rebound occurred in autumn, with buoyant fairs like Frieze London and Art Basel Paris, and strong November auctions in New York totaling over USD 2 billion, carrying momentum to Art Basel Miami Beach. Key events included Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer* selling for USD 236.4 million at Sotheby's, a record for a Modern work, and a Frida Kahlo self-portrait setting a new record for a work by a woman. Meanwhile, several galleries closed, including Blum, Venus Over Manhattan, Clearing, Kasmin Gallery, Tilton Gallery, and Perrotin and Pace's Hong Kong outposts, while others expanded, such as Thaddaeus Ropac in Milan and Hauser & Wirth in Sicily.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art announces a landmark survey of the late American artist Noah Davis (1983–2015), bringing together over 60 works across painting, sculpture, works on paper, and curating. The exhibition marks the final stop of an international tour organized with DAS MINSK in Potsdam, the Barbican in London, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Highlights include "40 acres and a unicorn" (2007), "Isis" (2009), "Savage wilds" (2012), and the "Pueblo del rio" series (2014). Curated by Eleanor Nairne and Wells Fray-Smith, the show is accompanied by a catalog co-published by Prestel with contributions from Tina M. Campt, Claudia Rankine, and others.
Rigo Peralta Art Studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania, opened the "Hyperrealism & Realism" exhibition on a Friday night, featuring a diverse group of artists from the United States, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Curated by Peralta and Ruddy Tavera, the show juxtaposes hyperrealistic and academic realist works, including pieces by Ismael Checo, Francisco Collado, Juanairis Collado, and others. The exhibition runs through February and aims to present a fresh artistic experience for the local community.
Ben Luke hosts an episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast 'The Week in Art' covering three major stories. First, architect Frank Gehry, known for the Guggenheim Bilbao and Fondation Louis Vuitton, died at age 96; Luke discusses his legacy with architecture critic and Gehry biographer Paul Goldberger. Second, London's Serpentine and New York's FLAG Art Foundation announced a new £1 million prize for artists, awarding £200,000 each to five recipients over ten years—the largest contemporary art prize in the UK for a single artist. Third, the episode features Joan Semmel's painting 'Sunlight' (1978), which is part of a new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York, with curator Rebecca Shaykin.
The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has opened the seventh edition of its Made in LA biennial, running until March 1, 2026. Curators Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha selected 28 artists from over 200 studio visits, with no predetermined theme. The exhibition features works that respond to the city's recent challenges, including the January wildfires and ongoing ICE raids, as seen in pieces like Alonzo Davis's 'Eye on ’84' and Patrick Martinez's neon sign reading 'Agua Is Life; NO ICE'.
The Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst in Bremen has announced its 2026 exhibition program, featuring three major shows. The collection exhibition "The Way We Are" (February 21, 2026–January 30, 2028) presents an updated survey of contemporary art from the 1960s to the present, with new thematic areas exploring self-portraiture, power and empowerment, patriarchal structures, and representations of the body, featuring works by over 100 artists. A solo exhibition, "Anys Reimann: Mirrorball" (May 2–October 4, 2026), marks the first museum show dedicated to the Düsseldorf-born artist, known for her works addressing identity, Black womanhood, and postcolonial themes through collage-paintings, leather sculptures, and an immersive black garden installation. Additionally, "Edition S Press" (September 12, 2026–August 29, 2027) at the Centre for Artists’ Publications examines the experimental publisher's output of concrete poetry, Beat poetry, and acoustic art from 1970 to 2005, featuring works by over fifty artists including John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, and John Giorno.
Photographer Anastasia Samoylova presents her latest exhibition and photobook, "Atlantic Coast," at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. The project documents a road trip along the old US Route 1 on the East Coast, inspired by Berenice Abbott's 1954 journey. Through her lens, Samoylova captures a country in transition, juxtaposing decaying Americana with modern structures and political commentary, including images of a statue of John C. Calhoun being removed after the George Floyd protests and the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. She draws parallels between her work and Paul Thomas Anderson's film "One Battle After Another," both centering on road trips and shared anxieties.
Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) opens amid a still-sluggish global art market, with sales at live events yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Director Bridget Finn expresses optimism following strong sales at Art Basel Paris in October, noting that gallerists and collectors were energized. The fair introduces structural changes, including relocating the Nova and Positions sections to the east entrance to spotlight emerging galleries, and launching Zero 10, a platform for digital art. Seven local Miami galleries are participating, with Nina Johnson making her ABMB debut. Despite a few longtime exhibitors withdrawing, Finn attributes this to galleries being more selective across Art Basel's five global fairs, including a new Qatar edition in 2026.
The Cleveland Museum of Art has opened a major fall exhibition titled "Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses," featuring roughly 80 garments and accessories from top Italian fashion houses such as Gucci, Pucci, Armani, Versace, Valentino, Ferragamo, Max Mara, and Missoni. The show juxtaposes these modern and contemporary designs with over 40 Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque artworks from the museum's collection, exploring how Italian couture has drawn inspiration from art history. A digital video installation by filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini and photographer Henry Hargreaves, using AI technology, humorously depicts models "invading" the museum, underscoring fashion's disruptive cultural power. Despite some pacing and spatial choreography issues, the exhibition makes a compelling case for fashion as high art.
A commentary argues that John Constable, not J.M.W. Turner, was the truly radical painter, despite Turner receiving far greater public recognition through a museum, a prize, and a place on the £20 note. The article highlights a new exhibition, "Turner and Constable," opening at Tate Britain (until 12 April 2026), which recreates their 1831 Royal Academy display and contrasts Constable's English pastoral scenes with Turner's dramatic, un-British visions. It contends that Constable's full-size oil sketches, such as those at the Victoria and Albert Museum, had a deeper and more lasting effect on modern painting than Turner's work.
The Studio Museum in Harlem reopened its newly renovated space in Harlem on November 15, 2025, marking a new chapter for the 57-year-old institution. The article highlights archival gems from the museum's history, including the 1969 exhibition "Harlem Artists 69," which featured over 100 works by 53 local Black artists, and the long-running Artist-in-Residence program launched in 1969. These moments underscore the museum's role in championing Black artistic innovation and community engagement, supported by partnerships with Columbia University and local nonprofits.
A new exhibition titled 'Resonant Histories' has opened at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) museum, running until 16 February 2026. It is the first show to focus on the relationship between Indian and Arab Modernism, featuring over 40 works lent by the Sharjah-based Barjeel Art Foundation alongside pieces from Mumbai's Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF). The exhibition highlights visual and thematic resonances between artists from both regions, such as Syrian painter Marwan Kassab-Bachi and Indian master Francis Newton Souza, and addresses shared post-colonial struggles through works by artists like Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, Krishen Khanna, Abdul Qader Al Rais, and Naim Ismail. It also explores direct cultural exchanges, for example Egyptian artist Nazek Hamdi's adaptation of Bengali folk-art.
Collector Vignesh Sundaresan, known as Metakovan and famous for purchasing Beeple's NFT artwork "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" for $69.3 million in 2021, has launched a new project space called Padimai Art & Tech Studio in Singapore's Tanjong Pagar Distripark. The venue opens with an Olafur Eliasson exhibition titled "Your view matter," an adaptation of a 2022 virtual reality work that records visitors' experiences on a blockchain system. Sundaresan describes Padimai as a heritage, contemporary art and research institution focused on technology as cultural infrastructure, exploring digital creation, preservation, circulation, and collective memory.
Phillip Bahar has been appointed as the fourth director of the Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, succeeding previous leadership since the museum opened in 2012. In an interview with WKAR's Inside The Arts, Bahar discussed his vision for the museum, emphasizing his role as an institutional curator rather than a hands-on curator of exhibitions, and his commitment to supporting artists at all career stages, from established figures like Zaha Hadid to emerging and mid-career artists such as Diana Al-Hadid.
The World Economic Forum and the J. Paul Getty Trust co-hosted a "cultural table" dinner for art world leaders on 23 October at the Hotel Le Meurice in Paris, themed "Bridging Worlds: Culture as a Force for Connection in Times of Division." The event, held in the Pompadour Room—where Pablo Picasso celebrated his 1918 wedding—was co-hosted by Getty president Katherine Fleming and WEF arts head Joseph Fowler, and marked the first collaboration between the two organizations. Fowler described the initiative as a global movement to place culture at the heart of systemic change, while Fleming emphasized art's unifying power and its measurable health benefits.
Performa, New York's performance art biennial, returns for its 20th anniversary edition with a main slate of eight commissions, seven by women artists and one by a male-female duo. Projects include Ayoung Kim's live motion capture choreography exploring body doubles and digital avatars at Canyon, Diane Severin Nguyen's remix of Vietnam War-era protest songs with an 11-person supergroup at Bric, and Tau Lewis's staging of the Sumerian epic 'The Descent of Inanna' using textile sculptures and experimental opera at Harlem Parish. The biennial also features a Lithuanian Pavilion with Augustas Serapinas's mobile wooden shack and Lina Lapelytė's piece 'The Speech,' in which 270 children perform animal vocalizations at Federal Hall.
A spate of New York galleries are celebrating significant anniversaries—Pace Gallery (65 years), Sperone Westwater (50), Hal Bromm (50), Albertz Benda (10), Jane Lombard (30), Yancey Richardson (30), and James Cohan (25)—mounting special exhibitions that mark their longevity. These milestones come amid widespread anxiety about the traditional dealer model, with headlines suggesting the sector is in crisis.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is presenting "High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100," a centennial exhibition celebrating Alexander Calder's iconic work "Calder’s Circus" (1926-31). The show brings together the miniature circus figures, wire sculptures, drawings, archival materials, and early abstract works, exploring how the circus inspired Calder's lifelong exploration of balance and movement, leading to his invention of the mobile. The exhibition runs from October 18, 2025, to March 9, 2026, and is co-curated by Jennie Goldstein and Roxanne Smith.
This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast 'The Week in Art' covers three main stories. Host Ben Luke discusses the mood at the Frieze art fairs in London with art market editor Kabir Jhala, amid ongoing debate about the health of the art market. The episode also explores Hypha Studios, a UK initiative that provides free exhibition and studio space to unrepresented artists in vacant properties, which has just launched an online sales platform called Hypha Curates. Finally, the podcast features a 'Work of the Week' segment on a Renoir drawing from the 1880s, a study for 'The Great Bathers,' now on view at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York as part of the exhibition 'Renoir Drawings.'
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) has announced its two opening exhibitions for the newly rebuilt museum, set to debut on October 31. The inaugural shows are “Princeton Collects,” featuring approximately 150 works donated over the past four years including the largest piece by Irish-American artist Sean Scully, and “Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay,” a ceramics exhibition highlighting the late artist’s closed-form works and her connections to teachers, peers, and students. The museum, described by Director James Steward as a “once-in-a-century remaking,” will open with a 24-hour public open house after student and member previews.