A new documentary film, 'All and Nothing,' profiles the life and legacy of Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia, who founded the influential LYC Museum and Art Gallery in rural Cumbria, England, in 1972. The film, directed by Liao I-ling and Chu Po-ying, uses his abstract art and archival materials to trace his journey from China and Taiwan to Italy and London, before he settled in Brampton.
Artist Rene Matić discusses their multidisciplinary practice and the personal history that informs their exploration of British identity, race, and subculture. The conversation highlights Matić’s deep connection to skinhead culture—inherited from their father—and their use of an "ethnographic methodology of the Self" to document queer BIPOC communities and personal memories.
Artist Mai-Thu Perret has organized a fundraiser called '100 Artists for Gaza,' bringing together over 170 artists to support humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The initiative includes an online auction and an exhibition at Doctors Without Borders’ Geneva location, culminating in a live auction on December 2. Proceeds benefit Doctors Without Borders. Co-organized by Vidya Gastaldon, Sarah Benslimane, and Anne Lamunière, the project features works by notable contemporary artists such as Kara Walker, Rosemarie Trockel, Peter Doig, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Camille Henrot, among others. Some works explicitly reference the conflict, while others gesture toward shared humanity.
On Saturday, the art world gathered in East Hampton for a special screening of the documentary *Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty*, which chronicles the artist's life from addiction to icon. The invite-only event included appearances by Jeff Koons, Jane Fonda, Monica Lewinsky, Cindy Sherman, and other notable figures, followed by a dinner at the home of co-producer and collector Debi Wisch. The film explores Minter's unflinching feminist commentary and her decades-long challenge to conventional beauty and desire in contemporary art.
Glasstire has released its weekly 'Top Five' list of essential art exhibitions across Texas for April 2026. The selection highlights a diverse range of regional talent, including a group show at the Rubin Center in El Paso focused on Chihuahuan Desert ecology, a 50-year retrospective of digital pioneers MANUAL at Moody Gallery in Houston, and a lifetime survey of Vietnam veteran and educator Hector Homero Rubio in Corpus Christi. Other featured shows include Freddy Ortega’s MFA thesis at TCU and Juan Pablo Hernandez’s multimedia glasswork.
Two East Carolina University professors have contributed to Smithsonian museum exhibits this summer. Photography professor Daniel Kariko from the School of Art and Design has a photograph titled "Last Camp on Isle Dernieres" (2017) on display in the Art x Climate exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The image documents a recreational fishing camp in South Louisiana that was completely gone by 2019, part of Kariko's ongoing 25-year project "Impermanence" capturing landscape changes in the Barataria-Terrebonne region. Additionally, Dr. Aleia Brown from the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences curated a collection of quilts by Black artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy proposes a radical departure from traditional filmmaking in his 1925 text, "Simultaneous or Poly-Cinema." He envisions a cinematic experience that moves beyond the static, rectangular screen, suggesting instead curved, spherical, or multi-planar surfaces that can accommodate multiple simultaneous projections. By utilizing rotating prisms and intersecting film strips, Moholy-Nagy describes a system where different narrative threads—such as the lives of multiple characters—can physically overlap and merge, creating a dynamic architectural arrangement of light and movement.
Stephanie Chernikowski, a photographer who documented the raw energy of New York City's punk scene in the 1970s, has died at age 84. She captured iconic images of bands like the Ramones, Blondie, and the Patti Smith Group performing at legendary clubs such as CBGB, preserving the "rough magic" of that era.
Sam Jacob's essay in ArtReview uses the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film 'EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert' (2026) as a springboard to explore the cultural and technical implications of digital restoration. The film, a spinoff from Luhrmann's 2022 Elvis biopic, draws on 59 hours of previously unseen footage from Elvis Presley's 1970 and 1972 Las Vegas performances, recovered from Warner's Kansas salt-mine archive. Using Peter Jackson's Park Road Post technology—including Machine Assisted Learning (MAL) for demixing audio and video—the damaged, fragmented material has been digitally scanned, reconstructed, and enhanced to 4k resolution with 12-channel sound, presented in IMAX cinemas.
The 11th edition of the Chobi Mela photography festival has opened in Dhaka, Bangladesh, under the curatorial direction of artists Munem Wasif and Sarker Protick. With the theme 'Re,' the festival presents work from 58 artists across nine exhibitions, aiming to explore renewal and tenacity in lens-based storytelling following the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the July 2024 uprising.
Tutta la poesia del cielo in mostra nel grand hotel di Roma per ricordarci la nostra stessa complessità
Artist Giovanni Ozzola has opened a solo exhibition titled 'Il Cielo Dentro' (The Sky Within) at the Galleria Continua's space within The St. Regis hotel in Rome. The show features works centered on the sky as a metaphor for the vastness both outside and within the human experience, exploring the tension between internal and external horizons through light and abandoned architectural spaces like bunkers.
Art21 has announced the premiere of "Human Nature," the next episode of its documentary series *Art in the Twenty-First Century*, set to air on PBS on June 10, 2026. The episode features artists Lenka Clayton, Josh Kline, Delcy Morelos, and Sin Wai Kin, and explores themes of humanity's impact on the environment, social and economic systems, and interpersonal relationships. Directed by Ian Forster and produced by Andrea Chung, the episode will also be available on Art21.org, YouTube, and PBS Digital Platforms, with an advance screening on May 28 at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation Robin Williams Center in Manhattan.
Adam Golfer, the director of the short film "Camille Henrot: In Movement," reflects on the process of creating the documentary. He describes following the artist Camille Henrot over a full year in New York and Paris, capturing her wide-ranging creative process from sketches to paintings, model-making to large-scale sculptures, and the evolution of her film work.
Art21 has announced the premiere of a new documentary titled "Camille Henrot: In Movement," scheduled for release on April 22, 2026. Directed by Adam Golfer, the film tracks the multidisciplinary artist over the course of a year as she prepares a new body of work, including paintings, bronze sculptures, and a new film titled "In the Veins" (2026). The production follows Henrot from her New York studio to a foundry in Paris, capturing her creative process leading up to a major presentation at the newly reopened New Museum.
Art21, in partnership with the CHANEL Culture Fund, launched its new "IRL/url" documentary series with a celebratory event at New York's Roxy Cinema. The series profiles eight contemporary artists—including Neïl Beloufa, Jacky Connolly, and Sara Cwynar—who navigate the blended realms of physical and digital creation. Art21's executive director emphasized the urgency of capturing this moment, as artists grapple with rapid technological advances, particularly in AI.
Director’s Notes with Andrew Nadkarni | Trey Abdella’s Miserable Dream
Director Andrew Nadkarni created a short film about artist Trey Abdella, titled "Trey Abdella's Miserable Dream." The film uses the metaphor of a Coney Island roller coaster to explore Abdella's artistic process, moving between his studio and the amusement park to show how he transforms personal memories and Americana into art.
Art21 will premiere a new documentary film, "Trey Abdella's Miserable Dream," online on December 10, 2025. The film, directed by Andrew Nadkarni, follows the artist as he draws inspiration from Coney Island and American middle-class aesthetics to create mixed-media paintings that blend skilled representation with unconventional materials.
Art21 + DOC NYC Filmmaker Celebration
Art21 and DOC NYC co-hosted their third annual Filmmaker Celebration on November 18, 2025. The in-person event brought together over 140 independent filmmakers, producers, and other production professionals who have contributed to Art21's films over the past year, providing a social and networking opportunity at the close of a challenging year for the documentary community.
Art21 successfully concluded its Fall 2025 festival season, with its films being screened at multiple international festivals including Artecinema in Italy, Bushwick Film Festival in New York, and others in Massachusetts, New Mexico, and North Carolina. The organization also participated as a sponsor and panelist at DOC NYC, and several of its recent films featuring artists like Sophie Calle, Dyani White Hawk, and Guadalupe Maravilla received recognition.
The Institute for Primary Facts has transformed New York's Mriya Gallery into the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Reading Room, a pop-up exhibition displaying all 3.5 million pages of the released Epstein files in 3,437 bound volumes. Open from May 8 to May 21 in Tribeca, the installation is the group's first live project, requiring visitors aged 16 and over to book appointments via a platform called Trumpsonian. Only accredited press, Congress, law enforcement, and victims' advocates may open the volumes, due to the Department of Justice's failure to properly redact victims' names.
Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, revealed the cover of his new album "Cuck" earlier this month, featuring an unauthorized photograph by acclaimed photojournalist Peter van Agtmael. The image depicts two Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia embracing, with one holding a bouquet, originally titled "The wedding of two members of the KKK in a barn in rural America." West altered the photo to make one Klansman appear Black and removed a dog with a "White Power" cape. Van Agtmael confirmed that neither West nor his team sought permission, and a legal process is now underway.
Palestinian photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf has won the 2025 World Press Photo award for her image of Mahmoud Ajjour, a 9-year-old Gazan boy whose arms were mutilated by an Israeli airstrike. The photo, taken for the New York Times, was honored at a ceremony in Amsterdam. Abu Elouf, herself from Gaza and now living in Qatar, captured the boy in a shaft of sunlight that gives the image the quality of a classical bust. The award, now in its 70th year, drew nearly 60,000 entries from 4,000 photographers across 141 countries.
Hoffman Donahue in Los Angeles presents a dual exhibition featuring works by Rhonda Saboff and Parker Pine, curated by Sula Bermúdez-Silverman. Running from April 25 to May 23, 2026, the show brings together two distinct artistic practices, with 48 images documenting the installation on the gallery's Contemporary Art Library page.
Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris is presenting an exhibition of silverpoint drawings by artist Daniel Blumberg, running from March 26 to May 16, 2026. The show features 57 images documented by photographer Aurélien Mole, with no accompanying videos or text descriptions in the visual record.
John Riepenhoff's solo exhibition "Out of Mind" is on view at Cooper Cole in Toronto from March 28 to May 2, 2026. The presentation includes 80 images documenting the show, with press release, checklist, and venue details available through the gallery's website and the Contemporary Art Library.
Photographer Zora Sicher releases her first monograph, *Geography*, published by Dashwood Books, which compiles her personal archive from 2011 to the present. The book features intimate images of friends, tattoos, and everyday life, including a closing photograph of her and Eden with matching ink from 2012. Sicher, who has worked with figures like Paloma Elsesser and brands like Marni, describes the project as a reflection on time, friendship, and the act of making, rather than technical perfection. The book coincides with a show at Dashwood Projects opening on October 3.
The Indian art market has undergone a dramatic transformation, shifting from a selective market with works priced between Rs 5-25 crore to a high-stakes arena where record-breaking sales are now common. Between 2023 and 2025, multiple works crossed the Rs 50-100 crore threshold, with M.F. Husain's 'Gram Yatra' (1954) achieving the highest price to date at approximately Rs 118 crore, acquired by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. The market has expanded to over Rs 3,000 crore, with projections of Rs 10,000 crore by 2030.
Dean Sameshima's solo exhibition "Wonderland" opened at Soft Opening gallery in London, running from March 27 to May 23, 2026. The show features 31 images documented on Contemporary Art Daily, with photography by Eva Herzog and images courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
The Green Gallery in Milwaukee is presenting a two-person exhibition featuring works by artists Sahar Khoury and RJ Messineo, running from April 10 to May 16, 2026. The show includes 31 images documenting the exhibition, with no videos or text descriptions provided in the press release.
Announcement
The Contemporary Art Daily has released the full digital archive of artist SoiL Thornton's solo exhibitions. The comprehensive collection, published in their Contemporary Art Quarterly, documents Thornton's work dating back to 2017, providing centralized access to years of the artist's major projects and installations.