The Art of ‘The Christophers’: How the Film Created an Artist’s Fabled Oeuvre

Steven Soderbergh’s new film, The Christophers, explores the complexities of artistic legacy and authenticity through the story of Julian Sklar, a fictional washed-up artist played by Ian McKellen. The plot follows Sklar’s children as they hire an art restorer, played by Michaela Coel, to secretly finish their father’s legendary unfinished series to capitalize on his market value. To ground the film in reality, screenwriter Ed Solomon consulted with art world figures like dealer George Barker and artists Jann Haworth and Derek Boshier, while production designer Antonia Lowe and painter Barnaby Gorton created the physical artworks seen on screen.

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A 1977 Andy Warhol portrait of Muhammad Ali, priced at $18 million, will be the centerpiece of Lévy Gorvy Dayan's booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. The 40-inch acrylic and silkscreen canvas, featuring a royal purple background, was previously purchased for $18.1 million at Christie's in 2021. The work is part of a series of 10 Warhol portraits of sports stars commissioned by collector Richard L. Weisman, and is autographed on the back by Ali.

Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice has announced a major exhibition for 2026 titled "Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector." The show focuses on the pivotal period between 1938 and 1939 when Guggenheim operated her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, on Cork Street. It will feature approximately 100 works by avant-garde masters such as Vasily Kandinsky, Jean Cocteau, and Yves Tanguy, alongside archival materials documenting her early career as a gallerist and patron.

Gagosian to open new ground-floor space at 980 Madison Avenue with major Duchamp presentation

Gagosian is set to expand its footprint at 980 Madison Avenue by opening a new ground-floor gallery space on April 25, 2026. The inaugural exhibition features a landmark presentation of Marcel Duchamp’s iconic readymades, including "Fountain" and "Bicycle Wheel." This selection specifically highlights the 1964 editions produced with Arturo Schwarz, returning these works to the exact building where they made their American debut at the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery over sixty years ago.

'Marcel Duchamp' at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York, United States on 25 Apr–27 Jun 2026

Gagosian is set to inaugurate its new ground-floor gallery space at 980 Madison Avenue with a major exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s work, opening April 25, 2026. The presentation features the artist’s iconic 1964 readymade editions, including "Fountain" and "Bicycle Wheel," returning them to the exact historic location where they made their American debut at Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery sixty years prior. The show coincides with a major Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Michael Armitage in Venice, monumental and disturbing. What the exhibition at Palazzo Grassi looks like

Michael Armitage is the subject of a major solo retrospective at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, marking his largest exhibition in Europe to date. Organized by the Pinault Collection, the show features monumental paintings that blend African identity, local Kenyan chronicles, and mythological narratives. Armitage’s work is noted for its physical scale and its ability to transform the chaos of human affairs into a syncretic epic, utilizing traditional materials like Lubugo bark cloth to ground his contemporary subjects.

8 Must-See Solo Gallery Shows in April

Galerie has curated a selection of eight essential solo gallery exhibitions across the United States for April, highlighting diverse practices from New York to Los Angeles. Key features include David Smalling’s debut at Templon, where he employs Old Master techniques to critique gender expectations and social hierarchies, and Zhang Huan’s first New York solo show in over a decade at 125 Newbury, which pairs his legendary 1990s performance documentation with his signature incense ash paintings.

How taboo-breaker Robert Crumb’s surreal cartoons mock an absurd world—and himself

A new biography, *Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life* by Dan Nadel, examines the life and work of Robert Crumb, the taboo-breaking underground cartoonist who rose to fame in the 1960s with surreal, satirical comics like *Head Comix*. The book details Crumb's troubled family history, his early career at American Greetings, and his creation of iconic characters such as Fritz the Cat and the Keep On Truckin' images, while also addressing persistent criticisms of sexism and racism in his work.

Andrew Lloyd Webber Says He's Writing a New Musical About the Time the 'Mona Lisa' Vanished Without a Trace in 1911

Andrew Lloyd Webber, the legendary composer behind 'The Phantom of the Opera,' has announced he is developing a new musical centered on the 1911 theft of Leonardo da Vinci’s 'Mona Lisa.' The production will dramatize the true story of Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian glazier who stole the masterpiece from the Louvre, leading to a two-year international search before the painting was recovered in Italy.

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The Gardiner Museum in Toronto has reopened after a 15-month, CA$15.5 million renovation of its ground floor spaces. The overhaul, led by Montgomery Sisam Architects and Andrew Jones Design with studio:indigenous, includes new collection galleries, a reworked entrance hall, a ceramics studio, and a community learning center. The renovation was funded by public and private gifts, including a CA$9 million donation from the Radlett Foundation that also added over 250 ceramic objects. A key addition is "Indigenous Immemorial," a permanent gallery dedicated to Indigenous clay art, developed by the museum's first curator of Indigenous ceramics, Franchesca Hebert-Spence, in collaboration with Indigenous artists and advisors.

Who are the members of the Venice Biennale jury?

Qui sont les membres du jury de la Biennale de Venise ?

The 61st Venice Biennale, opening May 9, 2026, has announced its international jury, which is composed entirely of women. The five members are Solange Oliveira Farkas (president), Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma, and Giovanna Zapperi, hailing from Brazil, Thailand, Spain, the United States, and Switzerland. Their backgrounds span the Global South, feminist studies, and transnational curatorial practices.

Toleen Touq to curate next MOMENTA Biennale

MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain in Montreal has appointed curator and educator Toleen Touq to organize its 20th edition, scheduled for 2027. The biennial will be titled 'The Long Now' and will focus on interrogating concepts of time and duration.

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The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery has opened "State Fairs: Growing American Craft," the first exhibition since the Trump administration's August 2025 audit of all Smithsonian exhibitions, didactics, and collections. The audit, based on an executive order to "restore truth and sanity to American history," condemned discussions of racism, sexism, and oppression as revisionist history. The exhibition features over 250 works from across the United States, spanning the 19th century to the present, arguing that regional state and tribal fairs are essential sites for the development of American craft. It includes spectacular pieces like a 12-foot pair of Lucchese boots, a life-size butter sculpture, and works by artists such as Morgan Hill, Kelly Bohnenkamp, Betty Spindler, Linda Nez, Kaye D. Miller, and Peggie Hartwell.

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The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) has awarded its annual Pérez Prize to New York–based artist Javier Téllez, accompanied by an unrestricted $50,000 grant. The prize was presented at the museum's Art of the Party Fundraiser on November 15. Téllez, known for film, installation, and collage works addressing marginalization of immigrants and people with disabilities, was recognized for his empathetic and imaginative practice. His recent film "Amerika" (2024) responds to the displacement of Venezuelans, reflecting his own background as a Venezuelan-born artist living in New York.

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The editor's letter for the 2025 ARTnews Top 200 Collectors issue recounts a cinematic moment at Art Week Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where a government-affiliated collector described their role as "everyone and no one," reflecting the behind-the-scenes, museum-focused art acquisitions under Vision 2030. The issue features a report by Melissa Gronlund on the Gulf art scene, noting that Saudi Arabia is prioritizing museums and noncommercial programming before an independent market can emerge, while private collectors and foundations are also gaining ground. The article also highlights the cooling art market in Europe and the US, with collector Christen Sveaas criticizing blue-chip galleries for over-commercial pricing strategies.

Inside LACMA’s Visionary New Galleries Floating Above Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unveiled the David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million concrete-and-glass structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor. Spanning Wilshire Boulevard, the 110,000-square-foot horizontal gallery space floats 30 feet above ground and features a non-chronological layout intended to encourage wandering. The interior is characterized by pigment-infused concrete walls, floor-to-ceiling windows with specialized metal curtains by Reiko Sudō, and a lack of traditional white-cube galleries.

Sculptor Sahar Khoury, Collection Exhibition at the Manetti Shrem Museum Offer New Views of California Art

Two exhibitions opening in January at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis explore themes of cultural origins, legacy, and preservation in California art. "Sahar Khoury: Weights & Measures" (Jan. 7–June 20) is the Bay Area sculptor's largest solo show to date, featuring works in ceramics, metal, papier-mâché, and found objects that interrogate value systems, personal and political symbols, and site sensitivity. The emotional centerpiece, "The Elephant in the Room," evokes ruins and marketplaces of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Concurrently, "Backstory: Digitizing the Museum Collection" (Jan. 21–May 2) turns the museum into a working digitization lab, displaying signature works from UC Davis’ Fine Art Collection while revealing the process of preserving art for posterity.

Paris exhibition provides a new canon-busting vision of Minimalism

The Bourse de Commerce in Paris hosts "Minimal," a groundbreaking exhibition curated by Jessica Morgan, director of the Dia Art Foundation. The show centers on five large-scale natural-material works by 81-year-old US artist Meg Webster, while featuring over 100 works by more than 50 artists to challenge the traditional narrative that 1960s-70s Minimalism was exclusively a white, male, American movement. It includes thematic sections on light, balance, and monochrome, a gallery devoted to Japan's Mono-ha movement, and retrospectives of Agnes Martin and Lygia Pape, drawing largely from the Pinault Collection with international loans.

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Two nearly identical portraits of George Washington by Charles Peale Polk, depicting him after the 1777 Battle of Princeton, will be auctioned on consecutive days in New York. Christie’s offers a 1793 version (number 53) on January 23, estimated at $200,000–$300,000, which was selected by Jackie Kennedy for the White House in 1962 and remained there until 1992. Sotheby’s offers a 1790–93 version (number 30) on January 24, estimated at $400,000–$600,000, previously sold at Christie’s in 1971 and at Sotheby’s in 2010 for $458,500. Both paintings have passed through Hirschl and Adler Galleries and depict Washington in uniform with Princeton’s Nassau Hall in the background.

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Marie Antoinette, the final queen of France, is the subject of a blockbuster exhibition titled "Marie Antoinette Style" at London's V&A museum, running through March 22. The show highlights her boldly modern taste, her patronage of women artists like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Anne Vallayer-Coster, and her role as the first French queen to own and redecorate her own palace, the Petit Trianon. The article details how she used her influence to secure Vigée Le Brun's admission to the Académie Royale and pressured the Louvre to exhibit Vallayer-Coster's work, while also exploring how her extravagant spending earned her the epithet "Madame Déficit" and contributed to her downfall during the French Revolution.

George Costakis, collector and saviour of Soviet avant-garde art, celebrated with Athens exhibition

The National Gallery in Athens is hosting a major exhibition celebrating the legacy of George Costakis, the visionary collector who rescued thousands of Russian and Soviet avant-garde works from state-sponsored oblivion. Born in Moscow to Greek parents, Costakis spent decades acquiring pieces by artists like Kazimir Malevich and Liubov Popova at a time when such art was vilified by the Soviet regime. The new exhibition reinterprets these works through the lens of humanity's relationship with the environment, marking 30 years since the collection was first shown in Greece.

13 Nudes That Changed Western Art History

The article presents a curated list of 13 seminal Western artworks featuring the nude form, highlighting how each piece shifted artistic conventions and cultural perceptions. It begins with the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf and moves chronologically through works by artists including Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Lavinia Fontana, and Édouard Manet, analyzing their groundbreaking approaches to depicting the human body.

The Pet Food Store Owner Behind the Venice Biennale’s US Pavilion, 400-Year-Old Pendant in English Painting Resurfaces, and More: Morning Links for April 20, 2026

The New York Times profiled Jenni Parido, the 37-year-old commissioner of the upcoming US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, who has no professional arts background and previously ran a luxury pet food store in Florida. She selected Jeffrey Uslip as curator, and artist Alma Allen will represent the US after other artists reportedly declined.

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President Donald Trump has unveiled a rendering for his planned presidential library in downtown Miami, envisioned as a 47-story skyscraper. The proposal features a gold entranceway, a 20-foot-tall golden statue of the former president, and a replica of the Oval Office, alongside a hotel and office space. The project is being designed by architecture firm Bermello Ajamil and is reportedly seeking to raise nearly $1 billion in donations to fund the construction on highly valuable waterfront land.

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A replica of a Christopher Columbus statue was installed on the White House grounds under the direction of the Trump administration. The sculpture is a reproduction of a monument that was toppled and thrown into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor by protesters during the 2020 racial justice movements. Created by artist Will Hemsley using scans of the original fragments, the project was previously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and has now been placed near the West Wing as part of preparations for the 250th anniversary of American independence.

Eugenio Viola, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá

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The Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) terminated the contract of its artistic director, Eugenio Viola, earlier this month. Viola claims his dismissal came after he raised concerns with the board in September 2025 about deteriorating working conditions at the museum, concerns he says were shared by other staff. The museum stated the decision resulted from a comprehensive review and that it has begun searching for a new artistic director.

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The Intuit Art Museum in Chicago has received a major gift of 61 artworks through two donations, one from the estate of founding supporter Jan Petry and another from scholar and collector Gordon W. Bailey. The works, by artists like Emery Blagdon and Mose Tolliver, will help the museum expand its presentation of works by women artists of color.

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Martin Puryear's 1978 sculpture *Self* opens a survey of his work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, titled “Martin Puryear: Nexus,” which runs through Sunday before traveling to the Cleveland Museum of Art in April. Curated by Emily Liebert, Reto Thüring, and Ian Alteveer, the exhibition argues that Puryear's abstract, craft-intensive sculptures—like *A Column for Sally Hemings* (2021)—are not merely formalist exercises but carry political and historical meanings that are deliberately withheld, challenging viewers to read beyond elegant surfaces.

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Newly released documents from the Department of Justice, part of the Jeffrey Epstein case, contain email exchanges from 2013 that reference prominent art collectors Steve Tisch and Jean Pigozzi. The emails show Epstein facilitating introductions between Tisch and multiple women, with discussions about their backgrounds and travel arrangements. Tisch has stated the association was brief and expressed regret.

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New York University has appointed Alison Weaver as the next director of its Grey Art Museum, effective May 26. Weaver, who has served as founding executive director of the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University since 2015, succeeds Lynn Gumpert, who retired last year after leading the museum since 1997. At Rice, Weaver oversaw the completion of a new building for the Moody Center, launched an artist-in-residence program, curated over 25 exhibitions, and expanded the university's art holdings. She previously taught art history at the City University of New York and served as director of affiliate museums at the Guggenheim Museum, overseeing its outposts in Bilbao, Venice, Berlin, and Las Vegas.