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Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837–1898), known as Princess Sisi, has re-entered the cultural spotlight after eagle-eyed historians noticed a striking similarity between Franz Xaver Winterhalter's informal portrait of the Empress with her hair down and a bridal scene in Guillermo del Toro's new film *Frankenstein*, where actress Mia Goth appears with flowing auburn locks. The comparison, shared widely on social media by historian Rachael Gibson and others, gave Winterhalter's 19th-century portrait a new viral moment, sparking renewed interest in Sisi's life and the role of hair in Victorian Europe.

‘They tore up everything’: the wolf hunters of Kyrgyzstan – in pictures

Photographer Luke Oppenheimer traveled to the remote Kyrgyz village of Ottuk in 2021 for a short assignment on wolves preying on livestock, but ended up staying for four years. His project, titled 'Ottuk' and published by Aliens in Residence, documents the lives of shepherds who hunt wolves to protect their herds in the Tien Shan mountains, capturing their ancient way of life, harsh winters, and the legends that shape their community.

Homework till midnight and ‘one breakdown a week’: the mysterious art school keeping a forgotten style alive

The École Van der Kelen-Logelain, a unique and mythologized painting school in Brussels founded in 1892, continues to operate under strict, traditional methods. Students endure a rigorous six-month winter course, adhering to rules like mandatory white lab coats, silence, and no phones, to master specialized decorative painting skills, most notably the art of trompe l'oeil, or illusionistic painting.

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A Leonardo da Vinci mural undergoing restoration at Sforza Castle in Milan will be temporarily opened to the public for five weeks starting February 7, coinciding with the Winter Olympics in Italy. Visitors can climb a 20-foot scaffold inside the Sala delle Asse to observe conservators at work on the delicate tempera painting, which was begun shortly before Milan fell to France in 1499 and was later covered by plaster and lost for centuries. The mural was rediscovered in the late 19th century, with further sections uncovered in the 20th century, and the current restoration uses Japanese rice paper and demineralized water to clean the surface.

Opening of Berlin Modern postponed to 2030

L’ouverture du Berlin Modern repoussée à 2030

The opening of the Berlin Modern museum has been delayed to 2030 due to construction setbacks and cost overruns. According to German media outlet Monopol, the project has been plagued by humidity issues, including mold, algae, and bacteria on new surfaces, caused by winter dampness, concrete sensitivity, and faulty ventilation. Originally launched in 2019 with a planned opening in mid-2020, the museum's completion has been repeatedly pushed back, with costs soaring from an initial €200 million to over €500 million, making it the most expensive museum ever built in Germany. The building, designed by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, is located at the Kulturforum and will house 20th-century art collections from the Nationalgalerie, the Marx Collection, the Pietzsch Collection, and holdings from the Kupferstichkabinett and the Kunstbibliothek.

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U.S. Figure Skating commissioned athlete and artist Sonja Hilmer to create custom, elegant line-drawing portraits of each member of the 2026 Winter Olympic team. The black and gold ink portraits, inspired by Italian fashion drawings, were hung above the skaters' beds in the Olympic Village as a personal touch from home.

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The opening ceremony of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics featured significant art-historical references, including a flame cauldron inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's knot drawings and performances that brought to life the marble sculptures of Antonio Canova. Dancers animated recreations of works like 'Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss,' and the ceremony included symbolic representations of Italian architectural landmarks like the Colosseum and Florence's Duomo.

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Dorothy Waugh, a pioneering Modernist designer who created the U.S. government's first in-house National Parks poster campaign during the Great Depression, is the subject of her first-ever solo exhibition at New York's Poster House. Titled "Blazing a Trail: Dorothy Waugh's National Parks Posters," the show reunites all 17 posters Waugh designed for the National Park Service between 1934 and 1936, bold experimental works that helped define a new visual language for federal design. Guest curator Mark Resnick spent three decades tracking down Waugh's story, locating documents across the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts.

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Bucharest-based gallery Arsmonitor is presenting the second installment of a four-part curatorial program dedicated to Romanian artist Florin Mitroi (1938–2002). Titled "Florin Mitroi: Ch.II: Autumn," the exhibition is curated by Erwin Kessler and is anchored by the recent rediscovery of over 600 previously unseen works—files, notebooks, drawings, and pieces on wood and metal—that had been forgotten in storage for nearly two decades. The show frames these recovered materials as foundational, expanding the known oeuvre of an artist who exhibited only a small fraction of his production and later regretted even those works. The program, structured around the four seasons, includes chapters titled "Winter," "Autumn," "Summer" (planned for 2027), and "Spring," aligning with the season of Mitroi's death.

Fred Sandback “The Complete Multiples, 1968–94” at Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna

Galerie Hubert Winter in Vienna is presenting an exhibition titled "Fred Sandback: The Complete Multiples, 1968–94." The show features the artist's entire series of multiples—smaller works made from steel, elastic cord, and acrylic yarn in various colors—created over a 26-year period.

Nashville International Airport® Unveils Winter/Spring Flying Solo Exhibition Showcasing Nashville Artists

Nashville International Airport (BNA) has launched its Winter/Spring installment of the Flying Solo exhibition series, featuring works by Nashville-based artists Amber Lelli, Kymberlee Stanley, Yanira Vissepó, and David Wilson. The seasonal installation, on display through April 19, 2026, includes mixed media, oil paintings, acrylics, and collages across airport concourses, with Lelli's "Rest in Pieces" on Concourse D and Stanley's "Windows of Wonder" near Gate D2. The exhibition is part of BNA's Arts at the Airport program, established in 1988, which rotates local artists and arts organizations to engage travelers.

Alfa Art Gallery presents "Reflections of the Living World"

Alfa Art Gallery in New Brunswick, New Jersey, presents "Reflections of the Living World," its Winter 2026 Photography Exhibition running from January 20 to March 21, 2026. The free exhibition features thirteen artists—including Alan Chimacoff, Arik Gorban, Barry Rosenthal, and Jeremy Dennis—whose works explore perception, memory, and storytelling through contemporary photography. The show is available both in-person and virtually, with opening receptions on January 30 and February 6.

An Early Winter Gallery Guide

A guide lists galleries in Wellfleet and Provincetown, Massachusetts, that plan to remain open during December, some through New Year's, with winter hours and by-appointment visits. Featured galleries include AMZehnder Gallery, Farm Projects, Jeff Soderbergh Gallery, Left Bank Gallery, Wellfleet Preservation Hall, Alden Gallery, Bakker Gallery, Berta Walker Gallery, Four Eleven Gallery, and Gary Marotta Fine Art, each offering exhibitions of contemporary paintings, ceramics, photography, and works on paper. The Provincetown Art Gallery Association and Provincetown Business Guild are hosting gallery strolls every Saturday in December from 1 to 4 p.m.

Nashville International Airport Debuts Fall/Winter Flying Solo Exhibit Featuring Nashville Artists

Nashville International Airport (BNA) has launched the fall/winter edition of its Flying Solo exhibit, featuring works by six Nashville-based artists: Omari Booker, Tamla Boone, Chalet Comellas, Heather Hillhouse, Brian Tull, and Taylor Walton. The exhibit, on display through January 5, 2026, includes oil paintings, acrylics, and ceramic sculptures placed throughout the airport terminals. The show is part of BNA's Arts at the Airport program, established in 1988, which rotates seasonal exhibits to showcase local creative talent.

Australia’s first National Centre for Environmental Art to open in Gariwerd/Grampians

The Wama Foundation has announced the launch of the National Centre for Environmental Art in Halls Gap, Victoria, set to open this winter. It will be Australia's first gallery dedicated solely to environmental art, located at the foothills of the Gariwerd/Grampians National Park. The inaugural exhibition will feature a major work by artist Jacobus Capone, titled 'End & Being', and the gallery will eventually form part of a larger art and ecology precinct.

When Fashion Meets the Body, Can a Whole Museum Come Alive?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open its latest fashion exhibition, "Costume Art," in a new gallery space adjacent to the Great Hall, formerly the museum's gift shop. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show features 400 objects from the permanent collection, organized thematically around the dressed body—exploring the naked, classical, anatomical, and mortal body—rather than chronologically. The exhibition aims to connect artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form.

George Morrison painting highlights May 7, 2026 Heritage sale

Heritage Auctions will offer George Morrison's painting *Palisade* (1958) as the highlight of its May 7, 2026 Modern & Contemporary Art Signature Auction. The 76-lot sale features a global survey of postwar and contemporary abstraction, including works by Takeo Yamaguchi, Fritz Winter, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Wayne Thiebaud, Fernando Botero, David Bates, KAWS, and George Rickey.

3 Art Exhibitions to Enjoy this Winter at the Petit Palais

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.

Two Exhibitions of Impressionist and Postimpressionist Art Coming to LACMA

Two winter exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will highlight the institution's Impressionist and Postimpressionist holdings. Opening December 21, 2025, "Collecting Impressionism at LACMA" traces the evolution of the museum's collection through early donations of California and American Impressionist works, strategic acquisitions, and recent gifts including Claude Monet's *The Artist’s Garden, Vétheuil* (1881) and Vincent van Gogh's *Tarascon Stagecoach* (1888). A second exhibition, "Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA," opens February 22, 2026, featuring nearly 50 works by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Édouard Manet from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection. After LACMA, the Pearlman works will travel to the Brooklyn Museum and later to the Museum of Modern Art.

What’s new this season at Stanford art museums

Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center and the Anderson Collection are opening a diverse slate of exhibitions for fall and winter. Highlights include "Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior," the first major solo show of the museum's Asian American Art Initiative, featuring 44 works spanning the Pakistani-American artist's 30-year career, including mosaics, paintings, sculptures, and a digital animation. The Anderson Collection presents Alteronce Gumby's first West Coast museum exhibition, showcasing nine mixed-media works that use paint, glass, and semi-precious stones to create cosmic perspectives. Other shows include "Edmonia Lewis: Indelible Impressions" and "Cunning Folk: Witchcraft, Magic and Occult Knowledge."

The Art Newspaper and L'OFFICIEL to launch Frieze week pop-up at historic London newsagent

The Art Newspaper, in collaboration with L'Officiel, is launching a pop-up takeover at Shreeji, a historic newsagent on Chiltern Street in Marylebone, London, during Frieze week. The pop-up will run from 8:30am to 6pm on Saturday 18 and 8:30am to 4pm on Sunday 19, offering free copies of The Art Newspaper's daily Frieze papers, the October issue with a special supplement on the British Museum, the autumn/winter issue of Art of Luxury magazine, and the latest L'Officiel. Visitors can also enjoy L'Officiel coffee and complimentary drinks on Saturday evening.

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Three original paintings by beloved American television icon Bob Ross were auctioned at Bonhams on Tuesday, selling for a combined total of $600,000. The works—Cliffside (1990), Home in the Valley (1993), and Winter's Peace (1993)—were among the top lots in a California and Western art sale. Proceeds from this and future sales of 30 Ross canvases will benefit American Public Television, a nonprofit syndicator affected by federal budget cuts. The idea originated with Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross Inc., after earlier Ross paintings sold well above estimates at Bonhams.

At the Galleries for April 9, 2026

The Hamptons art scene is entering the spring season with a diverse array of gallery openings across Montauk, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Bridgehampton. Key highlights include Timothy Tibus’s abstract retrospective at The Lucore Art, a Matisse-centered group show at The Drawing Room featuring rare etchings, and Kristy Gordon’s myth-inspired "Primavera" at Grenning Gallery. Other notable exhibitions include a showcase of artists from the Cold Castle collective at Keyes Art and a curated group show titled "Connections" at Dan Welden Studio/Gallery.

The US Venice Biennale saga, Queer Islamic art in Oslo, Duane Linklater in Ottawa—podcast

The US has finally appointed artist Alma Allen to represent the country at next year's Venice Biennale, following a delayed application process and an aborted initial commission. The Art Newspaper's Ben Sutton discusses the saga with Ben Luke. Additionally, the National Museum of Norway in Oslo opens 'Deviant Ornaments,' an exhibition exploring queerness in Islamic art over a millennium, curated by Noor Bhangu. The podcast also features Duane Linklater's work 'wintercount_215_kisepîsim' (2022), part of 'Winter Count: Embracing the Cold' at the National Gallery of Canada, which addresses the deaths of First Nations children in the Residential School system.

New Manhattan gallery slips into historic property

Slip House, a new Manhattan gallery co-founded by Ingrid Lundgren and Marissa Dembkoski, has opened in a historic carriage house on East 5th Street. Its inaugural group exhibition, "As if a line" (9 May–14 June), features a cross-generational lineup of painters including Jack Whitten, Claude Viallat, and emerging talents like Lizzy Gabay and Alix Vernet. The show was organized with former Sprüth Magers director Jessica Draper, and the space also includes lamps by ceramicist Gordon Moore on consignment. The building, built in the 1880s, once belonged to fashion designer and artist Charles Kritsky, who allegedly had Jean-Michel Basquiat contribute to its penny mosaic facade.

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Nick Merriman has stepped down as chief executive of English Heritage, the British conservation charity, after just over a year in the role. He resigned for personal reasons related to family health, effective immediately. Merriman’s tenure was marked by a controversial restructuring plan that proposed cutting 7 percent of the workforce (189 jobs), reducing opening hours by 10 percent across its 400 sites, and closing 21 sites over winter. The charity had begun consulting staff and unions on the proposals, which were not finalized before his departure. Interim chief executive Geoff Parkin has been appointed to replace him.

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The Winter Show returns to New York's Park Avenue Armory for its 72nd edition, running from January 23 to February 1, 2026. The fair brings together over 70 international dealers offering a wide range of collecting categories including jewels, antiques, design, and fine art. Highlights include returning exhibitors such as A La Vieille Russie, Ralph M. Chait Galleries, and Joan B Mirviss, alongside newcomers like Galerie Cahn, Greg Pepin Silver, and Rose Uniacke. The fair also features a Design Council co-chaired by Noz Nozawa, Ben Pentreath, Jane Keltner de Valle, and Giancarlo Valle, and includes benefit events like Opening Night Preview and Young Collectors Night.

Art Museum and Galleries at W&L: Winter 2026 Programs and Exhibitions

Washington and Lee University's Art Museum and Galleries is hosting five temporary exhibitions through Winter Term 2026, including "Edward Burtynsky: Taking Place" at the Reeves Museum of Ceramics, "Moffat Takadiwa: Recoded Memories" at the Watson Galleries, and "Luminous Layers: Glazed Surfaces and the Art of Reflection" alongside "Points of Exchange: Asian Ceramics in the Reeves Collection" at the Reeves Museum, plus "Expressions of Color: Paintings by Evelyn Dawson" at the McCarthy Gallery. The museum is also offering free public programming such as Artful Yoga sessions and an MLK Week Open House featuring artworks connected to the Civil Rights movement.

Fall and Winter 2025 Programming at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., has announced its fall and winter 2025 programming lineup. Highlights include the monthly after-hours series NMWA Nights, the landmark exhibition "Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750" opening September 26, and a mixed-media photography show by Baltimore-based artist Tawny Chatmon. The season also features hands-on workshops in paper-cutting with Janelle Washington, Pilates sessions in the museum's Great Hall, Fresh Talk discussions on fashion and the gender pay gap, Free Community Days, and a holiday Makers' Market.

Maitland Regional Art Gallery turns up the heat this winter

Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) is launching its winter exhibition season with a free public event on Friday 25 July, featuring seven new exhibitions. Highlights include a solo show by Hunter-based artist Rebecca Rath, a video art collection from ACMI, and the exhibition '9.5 – The Elliott Eyes Bequest,' which celebrates a major donation of over 460 contemporary artworks from collectors Gordon Elliott and Michael Eyes. Other exhibitions include works by local artist Steffie Yee and Ken Unsworth, with guided tours and artist talks scheduled throughout the season.