Jean-Michel Basquiat’s monumental 1983 painting 'Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)' is set to headline Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction in May 2026. Estimated to fetch in excess of $45 million, the work is appearing at auction for the first time in over a decade. Before the sale, the canvas will undergo a global tour with stops at the Breuer building in New York, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and London.
The 12th edition of Fog Design+Art in San Francisco opened with a record-breaking preview gala on January 21, drawing over 2,700 guests. The fair features 65 presentations from local and international dealers, with standout booths including Jessica Silverman's blue-hued works and Hauser & Wirth's $1m sale of Jack Whitten's 'Solar Space' (1971). Large-scale paintings dominate, alongside a notable abundance of botanical imagery, while geometric abstractions outnumber representational works. The fair's director, Sydney Blumenkranz, noted a particularly buoyant mood and strong attendance from tech industry leaders.
Pablo Picasso remains one of the most prolific and studied artists in history. This article presents a curated reading list of five essential books focused on the second half of his career, timed to coincide with the exhibition 'Late Picasso' at Stockholm's Moderna Museet. The books, selected by curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, include 'Picasso: Painting Against Time' (2006), 'A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932' (2008), 'Picasso: Endlessly Drawing' (2024), 'Picasso's Animals' (2014), and 'Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective' (1980), each offering unique insights into his later works, personal life, and artistic evolution.
The Ali Forney Center (AFC), an LGBTQ+ youth organization facing a funding drop of over $400,000 from lost corporate sponsors, is holding a benefit exhibition titled "Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center" at David Zwirner’s West 19th Street gallery in Chelsea from October 28 to November 1. Organized by art adviser Stephen Truax for the second year, the show features 38 works by artists including Doron Langberg, Jenna Gribbon, Jake Grewal, Ilana Savdie, Anthony Cudahy, Wolfgang Tillmans, Julie Mehretu, and Katherine Bradford, with proceeds supporting AFC’s housing and care for over 2,000 queer youth. Previous editions with Sotheby’s raised over $350,000 and $370,000 respectively.
A new $100 million art center dedicated to Alexander Calder, called Calder Gardens, opens on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia on Sunday, September 21. Designed by architect Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron with landscape by Piet Oudolf, the building features underground galleries, sunken gardens, and no wall text, encouraging visitors to have a personal, sacred experience with Calder's sculptures, paintings, and works on paper. The Calder Foundation built the space, and the Barnes Foundation administers it in partnership.
Calder Gardens, a $70 million space dedicated to Alexander Calder, will open on September 21 in Philadelphia, the artist's hometown. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the complex features subterranean galleries and open-air pavilions surrounded by gardens, with no wall labels and rotating works from the Calder Foundation, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum. The project, led by Calder's grandson Alexander S. C. Rower and philanthropist Joseph Neubauer, revives a plan that stalled in the mid-2000s.
Artist Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, born in 1982 and based in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala, presents his solo exhibition “Umbilical Cord” at Elizabeth Xi Bauer gallery in London. The show, on view through August 2, 2025, features new and recent works that explore Maya visual culture, Indigenous craft traditions, and the knot as both a formal element and a metaphor for connection, life, and time. A 3:22-minute video from 2021 shows the artist in a forest with traditional weaving materials, while the exhibition also marks the gallery’s announcement of representing the artist.
Gallery Weekend Berlin, one of Europe's most significant contemporary art events, is set to take place from May 1-3, 2026. Over 50 selected galleries across the city will simultaneously open new exhibitions, featuring works by established and emerging international artists, with free admission to most venues. The event transforms Berlin into a decentralized, walkable open-air gallery.
Six notable projects at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 are highlighted, including presentations by Chicago-based galleries Document, Gray, moniquemeloche, and Patron, which showcase artists who experiment with material form and lived experience. Other featured works include Aleksandra Waliszewska's cat-centered paintings at Dawid Radziszewski, Myungmi Lee's vibrant game-inspired works at Wooson, Etel Adnan's rare 1960s drawings at Galerie Lelong, and Mary Bauermeister's newly discovered 1950s works on paper at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.
The Disobedience Archive, a mobile video archive initiated by Marco Scotini in 2005, is presented in dialogue with Raqs Media Collective at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich. The archive contains over one hundred documentary and art films at the intersection of art and activism, documenting forms of resistance, social struggle, and collective self-organization.
Leah Ke Yi Zheng, a Chinese-born painter based in Chicago, is the subject of a feature interview discussing her first solo institutional exhibition at the Renaissance Society, on view through April 12. Zheng, who earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2019, has developed a distinctive practice that moves beyond traditional canvas to Chinese silk and explores asymmetric forms. Her exhibition comprises 64 paintings rooted in the I Ching, the ancient Chinese text, featuring motifs of machine gears, haunting absent faces, and hexagrams. The show is designed in dialogue with the Renaissance Society's architecture, with modified windows and wall proportions to create a recursive, reflective experience.
The Wisconsin Artists Biennial exhibition opens at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend from February 7 to April 19, featuring 52 works by 50 Wisconsin artists. Selected from nearly 500 artists who submitted over 1,200 entries, the show was juried by Nicole Jacquard, Taylor Jasper, and Melissa Oresky. The biennial awards $10,000 in cash prizes, including the MOWA Prize of $5,000 and a solo museum exhibition. An opening party on February 7 includes a reception, juror talk, and award presentation.
Researchers from Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Saxony-Anhalt-State Museum of Prehistory, in collaboration with engineering firm DeltaSigma Analytics and coppersmith Herbert Bauer, have successfully replicated the manufacturing process of the Nebra Sky Disk, a 3,600-year-old bronze artifact depicting the cosmos. By analyzing a small sample of the disk using advanced techniques like energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and electron backscatter diffraction, the team determined the disk was cast and then forged at least 10 times through repeated heating and hammering. Bauer replicated this by annealing a similar metal mixture 55 times, revealing that the disk's microstructure matches a stage after 10 forging cycles, not the final 55, indicating the original preform was thinner and wider than assumed.
Nine Fathom Deep, a new gallery in Wellington, New Zealand, is opening its latest exhibition "Soft Cycle" on May 15, 2026. The group show features works by local artists Ruth Thomas-Edmonds, Noa Noa von Bassewitz, and Kate Woods. The gallery, directed by Susanna Bauer, operates on a model that does not seek exclusive artist representation, allowing for a more dynamic exhibition program that focuses on mid-career artists with established practices. Bauer, who has a background as an artist, academic, and arts advisor, emphasizes building genuine relationships, professional integrity, and creating a welcoming space for all visitors.
Dealers Matteo Consonni and Dawid Radziszewski have merged their respective galleries, Madragoa in Lisbon and Galeria Dawid Radziszewski in Warsaw, to form a single entity: Consonni Radziszewski. The new gallery launched with a third physical space in Milan, timed to coincide with the city's art week and the Venice Biennale. This merger follows a three-year period of collaboration on art fair booths and joint artist representation, specifically for photographer Joanna Piotrowska.
Christie's achieved a rare 'white-glove' sale in its Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art auction, selling all 84 lots for $12.38 million—150% above the low estimate. The sale was led by Vasudeo Gaitonde's *Untitled (1984)* at $2.4 million, with strong bidding from India, the US, the UK, the UAE, and Singapore. New artist records were set for Sheikh Mohammed Sultan and Ivan Peries, while works by Rashid Choudhury and Biren De also drew intense interest. The auction, overseen by Nishad Avari, head of Christie's Indian art department, signals a broadening of the market beyond established modernists like M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza.
This article from Rough Draft's Sketchbook newsletter highlights two Atlanta-focused art stories. Painter Carlos Solis, who left Venezuela for Kennesaw nearly two decades ago, curates "In the Beginning," a group exhibition opening May 9 at the Hudgens Center's Fowler Gallery in Duluth, featuring 15 artists from around the world who now call Georgia home. Separately, designer and illustrator George F. Baker III, originally from Nebraska and shaped by Detroit, was commissioned by the Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs to create the key art for the 49th annual Atlanta Jazz Festival, and he discusses how the musical souls of both Detroit and Atlanta influenced his design.
The Neue Galerie Graz is presenting 'Art space Styria,' an exhibition running parallel to the Promotion Prize of the Province of Styria for Contemporary Arts. The show features Styrian participants from the 2023/24 studio programs and foreign scholarships offered by the Department of Culture, showcasing work by over 30 artists including Ace, Joerg Auzinger, Veronika Eberhart, and others. The exhibition highlights contemporary art from artists who either come from Styria or have close ties to the region.
An abandoned office floor in Manila's RCBC Plaza has been transformed into a raw exhibition space for a group show titled "Audacity," curated by Chloe Magpayo. Featuring over 20 artists, the show includes works by Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan's Fruitjuice Factory Studio, Matt Trinidad, Kristoffer Ardeña, Christina Lopez, Marty Carsi Cruz, Hideki Ito, Bienvenido Tamayo, Mano Gonzales, Marionne Contreras, Luis Antonio Santos, James Clar, Doktor Karayom, Denver Garza, and Maricar Tolentino. The exhibition runs through October in the same space that previously hosted "Here & Now & Now & Then" curated by Nilo Ilarde.
Chilean artist Catalina Bauer presents her exhibition "El volcán, la ballena y otros mundos" at the Sala Capilla of Centro Cultural Montecarmelo in Santiago de Chile, 2026. The show features an immersive installation centered on a whale-like sculptural form that has beached inside the chapel, surrounded by cosmic and natural elements such as stars, ferns, and maranta plants, creating a dreamlike ecosystem that invites tactile and contemplative engagement.
Bloch Bauers Gallery of Fine Art has officially opened in downtown North Bay, Ontario, at 222 McIntyre St. W. The new space features regional, Indigenous, and Inuit art, along with works from private estates and consignments. The opening event included speeches, a ribbon cutting, and the unveiling of the "Lawrence Nickle Collection." A self-portrait by longtime local art teacher Ernest "Ernie" Taylor drew particular attention from attendees, including Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli and Mayor Peter Chirico, who praised the gallery's connection to the city's artistic heritage. Co-owner and curator Joey Nadeau noted the months of preparation behind the opening and emphasized the importance of showcasing Indigenous art, including works by painter Stephen Snake.
Seven local female artists have launched 'Gossip,' a self-produced group exhibition at Union Hall Gallery in San Diego’s Golden Hill neighborhood. Curated by Scarlett Baily, the show features a diverse array of disciplines including ceramics by Amber Schnitzius, oil painting by Baily Ludwick, and photography by Sarai Elguezabal. The exhibition emerged from the artists' shared desire to bypass the restrictive thematic requirements often found in San Diego’s limited gallery scene, opting instead for a space that prioritizes personal storytelling and creative intuition.
The Cedarburg Art Museum in Wisconsin has announced its summer exhibition lineup, running from April 30 through October 4. Featured shows include "Deeply Rooted: Small Family Farms," a photography exhibition by Cedarburg native Leslie Witte documenting life on her family’s farm; "This is Cedarburg," a display of landscape and plein air works from the museum’s permanent collection; the annual juried exhibition "America: A Wisconsin Perspective," showcasing artists from across the state; and outdoor sculptures by local artist Dan Grunst on the museum grounds.
Quincy Art Center is celebrating the grand opening of its new downtown space, Quincy Art Gallery on 6th, on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 127 N. Sixth St. The debut exhibit features works by five regional artists, who will give talks about their work and process throughout the day. Activities include a pottery wheel throwing demonstration, and neighboring businesses are offering specials such as themed cocktails, lattes, and desserts to mark the occasion.
The Art Association of Jacksonville has announced its 69th annual Beaux Arts Ball, titled "Liberty in Bloom," scheduled for April 25 at Illinois College’s Rammelkamp Chapel. As the association’s primary fundraiser, the event supports the operations, educational programming, and maintenance of the historic David Strawn Art Gallery, which has served the community since the association's founding in 1873.