Art News. Vasari Codex

person people schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 21 link 8 artists

ralph lemon artnews awards 2025 lifetime achievement

Ralph Lemon has been awarded the 2025 ARTnews Lifetime Achievement Award for his multidisciplinary practice spanning dance, drawing, painting, installation, sculpture, and writing. The article highlights his career trajectory from founding the Ralph Lemon Dance Company to disbanding it in 1995 to focus on broader artistic collaborations. Central to his work is the Geography Trilogy (1996–2004) and his long-term collaboration with Walter Carter, a former Mississippi sharecropper, whose life and family became a recurring subject. Lemon's recent exhibition "Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon" at MoMA PS1 (November 14, 2024–March 24, 2025), curated by Connie Butler and Thomas Lax, featured videos, found African sculptures, drawings, and a four-channel performance piece, Rant (redux), with Kevin Beasley and Okwui Okpokwasili.

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 18 link 4 artists

legacies asian american artists 2025 artnews awards 80wse

The article reviews "Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City," an exhibition at 80WSE in New York, curated by Howie Chen, Jayne Cole Southard, and christina ong, running from September 11 to December 20, 2024. Billed as the first institutional survey of Asian American artists in New York City, the show features 90 artists and spans the period from 1969 to 2001, centering on three key organizations: Godzilla: Asian American Art Network, the Basement Workshop, and the Asian American Arts Centre. The exhibition highlights how many of these artists did not solely make work about their race, complicating the link between identity and art, and includes lesser-known pieces such as David Diao's 1974 painting "Odd Man Out" and a provocative 1985 photograph by Hanh Thi Pham.

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article culture schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 21 link 6 artists

burton the meeting on the turret stairs

The article explores Frederic William Burton's iconic Victorian watercolor *Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs* (1864), held at the National Gallery of Ireland. It recounts the tragic medieval Danish ballad that inspired the painting, in which the noblewoman Hellelil and her guard Heldebrand are doomed lovers. Burton, an Irish painter influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, worked exclusively in watercolor and gouache, making this delicate piece a technical marvel. The museum displays it only one hour twice weekly to protect it from light damage.

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article news schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 20 link 11 artists

chief curator leaves george lucas museum

Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, has left the museum less than a year before its scheduled September 2026 opening. The museum stated it has no immediate plans to replace her, with George Lucas continuing to oversee curatorial direction. This departure follows a series of staffing issues, including the exit of director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont in March 2025, layoffs of 22 staff members in May, and the earlier losses of curator Amanda Hunt and curator-at-large Dan Nadel. The $1-billion museum, first announced in 2017, has faced repeated delays due to the pandemic and supply-chain shortages.

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article culture schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 14 link 11 artists

art bites facts holiday small talk

Artnet News offers a lighthearted holiday guide with seven art-historical conversation starters designed to deflect awkward family small talk. The article reveals quirky facts such as a secret apartment atop the Eiffel Tower, the Surrealists' party game 'Exquisite Corpse,' Leonardo da Vinci's role as a wedding planner for Milan's nobility, Marcel Duchamp paying his dentist with a fake check, and Frank Lloyd Wright inspiring Lincoln Logs.

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article news schedule Dec 5, 2025 visibility 15 link 5 artists

lucas museum of narrative art pilar tompkins rivas departs

Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, has left her post, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times. Her departure is the latest in a series of leadership exits at the institution, which is set to open on September 22, 2026. The museum was founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, and Rivas was one of six women of color appointed to high-ranking roles in 2020 by then director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who left in February. The museum laid off 15 employees in May, and CEO duties are now held on an interim basis by Jim Gianopulos, while Lucas himself oversees curatorial content.

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article culture schedule Dec 4, 2025 visibility 19 link 13 artists

art nouveau renaissance mucha jugendstil paris metro

The article recounts the author's personal rediscovery of Art Nouveau, sparked by encountering an iron doorknob shaped like a Belgian endive at the Bröhan Museum in Berlin. It explores the movement's history, its German variant Jugendstil, and the philosophical debate between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno over its merits—Benjamin criticizing it as a superficial escape from industrial reality, Adorno defending its utopian desire to reconcile art, nature, and technology. The piece also notes a contemporary resurgence of interest in the style.

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article news schedule Dec 2, 2025 visibility 17 link 4 artists

jennifer gilbert lumana detroit

Entrepreneur and art collector Jennifer Gilbert has founded Lumana, a new non-profit arts organization in Detroit's Little Village neighborhood. Housed in a repurposed 21,000-square-foot former shipbuilding and storage facility at Stanton Yards, the space is being adapted by SO–IL architectural firm with landscape design by OSD. Slated to open in Fall 2027, Lumana will feature two exhibition halls, a café, bookstore, auditorium, and educational spaces, and will house Gilbert's foundation. Gilbert plans to draw on her private art collection for exhibitions, including an inaugural show focused on Cranbrook Art Museum's Detroit collection, and is considering curatorial fellowships to commission new site-specific work.

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trending_up market schedule Dec 2, 2025 visibility 23 link 8 artists

paula modersohn becker degenerate doubles auction record

A 1906 self-portrait by German modernist Paula Modersohn-Becker, titled *Selbstbildnis nach halblinks (Self-Portrait Looking Slightly Left)*, sold for €1.3 million ($1.5 million) at Berlin's Grisebach auction house on Thursday—more than quintupling its low estimate and more than doubling the artist's previous auction record. The work was acquired by an unnamed European private collector. The painting had previously been seized by the Nazis as "degenerate" art from the St. Annen Museum in Lübeck and was later acquired by the collector Bauer, who aimed to rehabilitate persecuted artists.

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 2, 2025 visibility 15 link 11 artists

christo and jeanne claude 90th

A wave of exhibitions and projects is celebrating the 90th anniversary of the births of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the late husband-and-wife duo known for monumental environmental installations. Their nephew Vladimir Yavachev, who directs their foundation, is overseeing the realization of their final permanent work, *The Mastaba* in Abu Dhabi, while temporary works like *The Gates* in Central Park are being revived through augmented reality. The anniversary also marks 30 years since *Wrapped Reichstag* and 20 years since *The Gates*.

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article culture schedule Dec 1, 2025 visibility 23 link 22 artists

art in america winter collaborations issue

The winter collaborations issue of Art in America explores the often unglamorous, slow-paced nature of creative work, challenging the social-media-driven perception of art-making as fast and dramatic. The issue features pieces on Ira Sachs's film *Peter Hujar's Day*, which depicts the artist's mundane daily routine, and an interview with Chicago-based artists Nick Cave and Bob Faust, who discuss their collaborative practice and the perceived lack of drama in their process. Other highlights include features on Talia Chetrit's fashion-art boundary work, Mernet Larsen's multi-perspective paintings, and the role of licensing agreements with artists' estates.

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trending_up market schedule Nov 28, 2025 visibility 21 link 3 artists

christies london to sell third part of sam josefowitzs rembrandt print collection in december

Christie’s London will auction the third and final part of Sam Josefowitz’s Rembrandt print collection on December 3, featuring 101 etchings by the Dutch master. The sale, titled “The Sam Josefowitz Collection: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part III,” follows two previous installments that together brought £13.5 million. A highlight is the rare portrait *Arnout Tholinx, Inspector* (circa 1656), estimated at up to £2.5 million, described as the last impression in private hands. The collection was amassed by Josefowitz, a Lithuanian-born entrepreneur who built a mail-order business before his death in 2015.

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museum exhibitions schedule Nov 27, 2025 visibility 16 link 5 artists

roni horn mca denver

The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has organized the first exhibition dedicated to conceptual artist Roni Horn's long-standing engagement with water. Titled "Roni Horn: Water, Water on the Wall, You're the Fairest of Them All," the show spans sculpture, photography, drawing, and bookmaking, exploring water's mutability, ecological resonance, and paradoxical purity. Horn, who has received a Ford Foundation grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, and three NEA fellowships, has shown at major institutions including the Menil Collection, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, and Tate Modern, and is represented by Hauser and Wirth.

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article policy schedule Nov 26, 2025 visibility 18 link 14 artists

museums finances

Museums worldwide are urgently searching for new financial models as government funding declines, wealthy patrons pull back, and corporate sponsors face pressure. A global study published in January by the International Research Alliance on Public Funding for Museums found that in 37 percent of responding countries, 71 to 100 percent of museums now receive most funding from private sources. Institutions are exploring endowments, new revenue streams, and collaborative approaches, with the Louvre becoming the first French museum to create an endowment fund in 2009, raising €175 million. The $85 trillion Great Wealth Transfer offers hope, but next-generation donors prioritize transparency and meaningful engagement over prestige.

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museum exhibitions schedule Nov 26, 2025 visibility 19 link 9 artists

performa 2025 aria dean diane severin nguyen sylvie fleury

The article recounts the author's experience at the 2025 Performa biennial in New York, beginning on November 4 with the death of Dick Cheney and the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor. The author attended Diane Severin Nguyen's performance "War Songs," which restaged historical protest concerts from the Vietnam War era, blending anti-war anthems with pop music. The piece also highlights missing performances by Lina Lapelytė and Ayoung Kim, and expresses anticipation for Aria Dean's play "The Color Scheme."

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person people schedule Nov 25, 2025 visibility 13 link 1 artist

keith haring foundation simon castets

The Keith Haring Foundation has appointed Simon Castets, a French American curator formerly of Luma Arles and the Swiss Institute, as its next executive director, effective January 12. Castets will oversee the foundation's collection of Haring's work, its archives, and its grant-making program, which disbursed $7.7 million in 2025, including major gifts to the Studio Museum in Harlem and Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies. Upcoming exhibitions include a Brant Foundation show on Haring's early work and Crystal Bridges Museum's "Keith Haring in 3D."

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article culture schedule Nov 25, 2025 visibility 14 link 9 artists

secrets of the metropolitan museum

The article reveals little-known secrets about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including that its first home was not on Fifth Avenue but at 681 Fifth Avenue, and later the Douglas Mansion, before moving to its current location in 1879. It also notes that the museum's original red-brick facade is barely visible today, hidden within the Robert Lehman Wing, and that its first director, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, controversially mixed and matched parts of ancient sculptures to create composite works, while also misrepresenting their provenance.

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museum exhibitions schedule Nov 19, 2025 visibility 25 link 11 artists

costume art met museum 2026

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its Spring 2026 Costume Institute exhibition, “Costume Art,” which will open on May 10, 2026, inaugurating the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast gallery designed by Peterson Rich Office. The exhibition will feature artworks from across the Met’s collections in dialogue with garments from the Costume Institute, focusing primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present. Major sponsors include Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, with additional support from Saint Laurent and Condé Nast. Curator Andrew Bolton and museum director Max Hollein spoke at the press conference, where preview objects included Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons ensemble and Hans Bellmer’s "La Poupée."

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article culture schedule Nov 19, 2025 visibility 21 link 7 artists

peter hujar day biopic ira sachs

Filmmaker Ira Sachs has released a new film titled *Peter Hujar's Day*, based on a 1974 audio recording and subsequent book by writer Linda Rosenkrantz. The film captures a single day in the life of photographer Peter Hujar, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1987, as he recounts mundane details and artistic anxieties to Rosenkrantz. Starring Ben Whishaw as Hujar and Rebecca Hall as Rosenkrantz, the movie adapts a transcript Rosenkrantz rediscovered and published in 2021. Sachs describes the project as an exploration of portraiture, light, and emotion, contrasting with his earlier, more turbulent film *Passages*.

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museum exhibitions schedule Nov 17, 2025 visibility 12 link 7 artists

auguste rodin egyptian collection exhibition nyu isaw

A new exhibition titled “Rodin’s Egypt” opens November 19 at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), exploring how ancient Egyptian art influenced Auguste Rodin’s sculptures. Guest curated by Bénédicte Garnier of the Musée Rodin in Paris, the show features 65 objects, including Rodin’s rarely seen assemblages that combine his plaster casts with Egyptian antiquities from his personal collection of over 1,000 Egyptian items. This marks the first US exhibition of Rodin’s Egyptian holdings.

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article news schedule Nov 14, 2025 visibility 13 link 4 artists

pioneer works choke hole performance

At Brooklyn's Pioneer Works, a drag queen professional wrestling event called Choke Hole, part of artist Raúl de Nieves's exhibition, was disrupted when audience member and performer Chiquitita stormed the stage. She objected to a skit that made light of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations, shouting that 'ICE is not entertainment!' and hurling the microphone into a video screen. The performance, titled ARMAGEDDON, featured an alien queen plot involving nuclear codes and ICE, and Choke Hole later apologized, removing the segment from subsequent shows.

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person people schedule Nov 14, 2025 visibility 17 link 12 artists, 2 galleries

friedrich kunath

Artist Friedrich Kunath, known for his sincere yet absurd paintings, discusses his unlikely friendship with tennis star Reilly Opelka, who is also an art collector. The two share a mutual obsession with each other's crafts—Kunath coaches Opelka in tennis, while Opelka seeks Kunath's insights on artists like Philip Guston. Kunath is preparing for his solo debut at Pace Gallery in New York this November, following his move from Blum Gallery, which closed shortly after. He reflects on the loneliness of both tennis and art, and his creative process, which draws heavily from music and film.

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article news schedule Nov 13, 2025 visibility 17 link 5 artists

tate staff vote strike inadequate pay

More than 150 unionized workers at Britain's Tate museums, represented by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), will strike from November 26 to December 2 over what they call inadequate pay raises. The strike follows a vote where 98% of members supported action, with 88% turnout. Staff at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St. Ives were offered a 2-3% salary increase, which the union argues is below the government's Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance maximum of 3.25%. The action coincides with the opening of the major exhibition "Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals" at Tate Britain on November 27.

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museum exhibitions schedule Nov 12, 2025 visibility 16 link 5 artists

wifredo lam moma retrospective surrealism review

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has opened a major retrospective of Afro-Cuban Surrealist painter Wifredo Lam, featuring over 200 works. The exhibition highlights Lam's masterpiece *Grande Composition* (1949), a 14-foot-wide painting recently acquired by MoMA after years of negotiation with a Paris collector. Curated by MoMA's new director Christophe Cherix and Beverly Adams, the show reexamines Lam's career, emphasizing his Afro-Cuban heritage and his use of hybrid figures like the femme-cheval, which reference Lucumí spiritual traditions.

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gavel restitution schedule Nov 11, 2025 visibility 18 link 4 artists

stolen painting saint francis returned mexico church

A painting of Saint Francis of Assisi, stolen from the Church of San Francisco de Asis in Teotihuacán, Mexico, in 2001, has been recovered and returned to the church. The six-foot-tall work, painted in 1747 by an unknown artist, was among 18 artworks taken in a nighttime theft. It resurfaced in 2018 when it was consigned to Mexico City auction house Morton Subastas, whose due diligence with the Art Loss Register flagged it as stolen. The painting, valued at 280,000 Mexican pesos ($15,000), was returned to the church in a ceremony led by Padre Teodoro García Romero.

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article news schedule Oct 28, 2025 visibility 12 link 4 artists

gauguin self portrait kunstmuseum basel authenticity report

The Kunstmuseum Basel has confirmed that a Paul Gauguin self-portrait, titled *Portrait de l’artiste par lui-même* (1903), is an authentic work by the French painter, despite decades of scrutiny. The painting, held by the museum since 1945, was subjected to scientific analysis—including pigment testing, radiography, and infrared reflectography—at the Bern Academy of the Arts after amateur art sleuth Fabrice Fourmanoir claimed it was actually painted by Gauguin’s friend Ky-Dong Nguyen Van Cam. The tests showed the pigments date to Gauguin’s era, but also revealed overpainting on the face, possibly done between 1918 and 1926, though the museum found no evidence of intentional forgery.

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trending_up market schedule Oct 28, 2025 visibility 26 link 13 artists, 6 galleries

altman siegel closes gallery san francisco

Altman Siegel, a key gallery in San Francisco's art scene, will close in November 2025 after 16 years. Founder Claudia Altman-Siegel attributed the closure to a challenging market for mid-size galleries, stating it became too difficult to scale in the current climate. The gallery's final show is a solo exhibition by Shinpei Kusanagi, ending November 22. Its roster included artists such as Simon Denny, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, and others. The closure follows a trend of galleries shutting down or scaling back, including Blum and LA Louver in Los Angeles, and Clearing and Venus Over Manhattan in New York.

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museum exhibitions schedule Oct 24, 2025 visibility 17 link 6 artists

oliver jeffers praise shadows

Artist and children's book illustrator Oliver Jeffers held a dip performance two days before the opening of his solo show at Praise Shadows gallery in Boston, where he destroyed a portrait of Japanese artist and cancer survivor Yuri Shimojo by submerging it in enamel paint. The invite-only audience watched in silence as the image disappeared, a ritual Jeffers describes as both a death and a birth, exploring themes of memory, loss, and hidden variables. His exhibition also features his "Disaster Paintings," which treat serious subjects like climate change and violence with absurdist humor.

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article news schedule Oct 24, 2025 visibility 14 link 5 artists

chris levine rob munday queen portrait lawsuit

British artist Rob Munday has filed a lawsuit against Chris Levine in the High Court, claiming he is the co-creator of two iconic holographic portraits of Queen Elizabeth II—Equanimity and Lightness of Being (2004). Munday alleges that Levine and his company Sphere 9 violated his moral rights by failing to credit him as a co-author, despite a 2005 agreement recognizing joint authorship. The works, commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust and held in London’s National Portrait Gallery, were created using holography technology. Levine denies the claims, calling Munday a "technical subcontractor," and says he will fiercely defend his sole authorship. The case follows a separate 2023 dispute between Levine and the trust over unauthorized copies, which was settled with a statement naming Levine as the sole artist commissioned.

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museum exhibitions schedule Oct 24, 2025 visibility 21 link 14 artists

symbolism art institute chicag van gogh munch redon

The Art Institute of Chicago has opened an exhibition titled 'Strange Realities: The Symbolist Imagination,' drawn entirely from its own collection. The show features works by Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, and lesser-known artists like Gustaf Fjaestad, aiming to present Symbolism through its visual output rather than its often vague literary manifestos. The exhibition sidesteps strict definitions of the movement, instead offering a broad range of works from the late 1880s to early 1900s that evoke mystery, doubt, and inner realities.

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