Jackson Pollock's painting *Number 7A, 1948* sold for a record $181.2 million at Christie’s in New York, becoming the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction. The sale also saw record prices for works by Constantin Brâncuși, Mark Rothko, and Joan Miró, with Brâncuși's bronze head *Danaïde* fetching $107.6 million and Rothko's *No 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)* selling for $98.4 million.
The Guardian published a photo essay featuring Harry Gruyaert's vibrant street photography of New York City, spanning over 50 years. The Belgian Magnum photographer captures the city's energy through bold color and candid moments—children playing in fire hydrants, yellow cabs, neon-lit diners, and diverse neighborhoods. The images are accompanied by text from French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch, who provides fictional vignettes that blur reality and imagination.
Radiohead has launched a multimedia installation, exhibition, and screening experience titled "Motion Picture House KID A MNESIA" at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, running through June 28. The immersive event features artwork related to the band's albums Kid A and Amnesiac, including screenprints, a video array with vintage TVs, and a 25-foot-tall sculpture of the band's recurring "Stickman" figure. The centerpiece is a hour-plus film set in a black-and-white woods, accompanied by the band's music, with no dialogue or wall text, allowing visitors to freely explore the darkened space. Tickets are $72, and the experience will travel to Chicago, Mexico City, and San Francisco.
The US Marshals Service is auctioning four artworks by Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Diane Arbus that were surrendered to the US Department of Justice in connection with the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal. The online-only auction, run by Gaston and Sheehan auction house in Texas, began on July 16 and closes on September 4, with no buyer's premium. The works include Basquiat's *Self Portrait* (1982) and *Red Man One* (1982), Picasso's *Tête de taureau et broc* (1939), and Arbus's *Child with a Toy Hand Grenade* (1962). The pieces were linked to fugitive financier Jho Low and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who surrendered them after they were located in Switzerland.
Valentina Akerman, an art director and architect, opened Sardine gallery in a weathered Amagansett rental last summer with her husband, artist Joe Bradley. What began as an improvised experiment has grown into a Hamptons success story, now in its second season with a Summer 2025 program featuring film series, residencies, dinners, and four exhibitions pairing painters with sculptors. The gallery also hosted a pop-up in Paris during Art Basel Paris and is organizing a group show at Le Consortium Museum’s summer space in Burgundy.
Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich has opened "Franz West, Die Frühen Werke / Early Works," the gallery's twelfth exhibition dedicated to the late Austrian artist Franz West (1947–2012). The show surveys West's output from 1975 to 1990, highlighting his early sculptures, drawings, collages, and his signature interactive "Passstücke" (Adaptives)—pieces designed to be moved, worn, or played with by viewers. The exhibition runs through October 3, 2025.
Artist Heidi Hahn discusses her recent exhibition "Not Your Woman" and the emotional journey behind the paintings in an interview with Thalia Stefaniuk. Originally scheduled to open at Mitchell-Innes & Nash's Chelsea gallery, the show was cancelled when the gallery suddenly closed, leaving Hahn feeling discarded and forcing her to rethink the work. The resulting large-scale canvases feature abstract, monumental female bodies rendered in muted oranges, reds, and blues—figures that are faceless, exaggerated, and more like totems or memories than recognizable women. The conversation explores themes of disappointment, failure, and the tension between wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear.
Poppy Jones presents "Frozen Sun," a solo exhibition at Towner Eastbourne featuring her signature still lifes on repurposed textiles. The show includes a concise selection of her aluminum-framed works that blur the line between painting and object, alongside several new, larger pieces she has been developing in her studio.
The article announces a photo exhibition titled "Melting Glaciers, Water Futures from the Alps to the Nile" at the Goethe Institute in Cairo, featuring Swiss photographer Pierre Jeanneret and Egyptian documentary photographer Roger Anis. Jeanneret's work documents the rapid melting of Swiss glaciers and its impacts on hydroelectric dams, tourism, and new landscapes, while Anis explores water, climate, and human resilience along the Nile. The exhibition is part of SABBART, a cultural initiative by EUNIC Cluster Egypt focusing on climate and environmental issues, and runs from 17 May to 4 June.
Andrew Durham Gallery in Houston announces "Vestiges of Existence," a solo exhibition of multi-media works by artist Jill Bedgood, running from June 6 to August 1, 2026. The show explores how physical remnants—such as worn jewelry, handwritten letters, and natural anomalies—carry memory and document human presence, functioning as contemporary memento mori. An opening reception on June 6 and an artist talk on July 11 accompany the exhibition.
The 2026 Venice Biennale, opening May 9 and running through November 22, features a main exhibition titled "In Minor Keys" organized by the late Koyo Kouoh, alongside 99 national pavilions. The event spans the Giardini and Arsenale sites, with concurrent shows across the city, including a group exhibition at the Fondazione Dries Van Noten, Melissa McGill's installation "Marea" at Corte Nova, Illy's artist-designed espresso cups at Giardini Reali, and a solo exhibition of Hernan Bas's paintings at Ca' Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art.
The Contact Photography Festival, Canada's largest photography event, opens Friday in Toronto with over 160 exhibitions across eclectic venues including artist-run centers, commercial galleries, cafes, and a laundromat. Highlights include a towering portrait by Haitian-born artist Thandiwe Muriu on Spadina Ave., and a multi-site exhibition by Turner Prize-nominee Sin Wai Kin, featuring billboards and a two-channel video titled 'The Time of Our Lives.' The festival lost its long-time lead sponsor Scotiabank in 2024, resulting in a reduced budget and less public programming, but organizers remain committed to championing lens-based art.
An auction listing for KAWS's "Beautiful Losers Exhibition Poster" (2004) is featured on a digital marketplace, with bidding having ended. The work is an offset lithograph in color, measuring 17 × 11 inches, published by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. The listing includes a detailed biography of KAWS (born Brian Donnelly), highlighting his career from street art subversion in the 1990s to high-profile brand collaborations with Nike, Uniqlo, and Dior, and his record auction sale of $14.8 million at Sotheby's in 2019.
The article reviews two major New York exhibitions opening in 2026: the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, featuring over fifty artists, and "New Humans: Memories of the Future" at the newly expanded New Museum, with over a hundred artists. Both shows are described as enormous and defiant, responding to a distracted public and financial pressures. The reviewer notes that both exhibitions juxtapose large-scale immersive works with tiny, intimate pieces, and finds the Whitney Biennial lacking urgency, while preferring the New Museum's historical narrative about technology and modernity.
The Brooklyn-based artist KAWS has listed an offset lithograph titled 'The Nature of Need' (2012) for sale through Kumi Contemporary. The work, priced at £350, features the artist's signature synthesis of pop culture animation and street art aesthetics, presented as an unsigned edition on smooth paper.
Contemporary Calgary has announced the details for its upcoming LOOK2026 auction fundraiser, featuring a prestigious selection of works by Canadian masters and contemporary stars. The auction will include pieces by Group of Seven member L.L. FitzGerald, Maxwell Bates, and Chris Cran, alongside contemporary works by artists such as Kablusiak. The event was bolstered by a significant contribution from Calgary-based philanthropist and collector John Lacey, who reached out to CEO David Leinster to support the institution's mission.
The New Museum's latest exhibition explores the evolving definition of humanity through the lens of technological advancement and ancestral wisdom. The show juxtaposes the anxieties of modern machine labor—exemplified by Simon Denny’s Amazon worker cage—with Indigenous epistemologies and animist traditions that offer alternative ways of inhabiting the world. By featuring artists like Jaider Esbell and Santiago Yahuarcani, the exhibition highlights how hybridity and relationality can resist the rigid hierarchies of Western modernity.
The Los Angeles-based collective Diva Corp is challenging traditional art world hierarchies through a series of provocative interventions and exhibitions. Their recent solo show at Pio Pico, titled 'The Meeting,' gained notoriety for requiring visitors to surrender their phones before viewing a single painting, 'Untitled (Young adults are having less sex than ever), 2026.' This practice, alongside performances designed to circulate through digital retelling and social rumor, highlights the group's focus on the 'afterlife' of an artwork and the social friction it generates.
Pittsburgh’s art scene is preparing for a busy spring season with a diverse array of exhibitions opening across the city’s galleries and public spaces. Highlights include Hugh Watkins’ multi-disciplinary retrospective at Christine Fréchard Gallery, Dale Lewis’s massive "Scraposaurs" sculptures made from recycled metal at the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, and a unique exhibition of hand-painted baseballs by the late umpire George Sosnak. These shows serve as a creative prelude to major upcoming regional events like the 59th Carnegie International and the Three Rivers Arts Festival.
Acclaimed Canadian abstract artist Julia Dault is shifting her focus from the international blue-chip art circuit toward community-based engagement. Following a period of personal reflection, Dault established Hot Pizza, a community art studio in Toronto dedicated to the motto "art for everyone," while simultaneously debuting her latest solo exhibition, "Primary Information," at Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal.
Pittsburgh’s art scene is set for a diverse series of openings this March, ranging from historical sports photography to contemporary textile art. Highlights include Michael Zagaris’s 60-year retrospective of NFL photography at the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, the first U.S. solo exhibition for English photographer Ajamu X at Silver Eye Center for Photography, and solo shows by Nicole Renee Ryan and Abby Franzen-Sheehan. The month also features collaborative exhibitions like "What We Carry," which pairs Penny Mateer’s political quilts with Dante Campudoni’s psychological paintings.
India's art market experienced a major resurgence in 2025, driven by record auction sales for modernists like M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, and V.S. Gaitonde. Husain's 'Gram Yatra' became the first Indian painting to sell for over USD 10 million, setting a new benchmark. The boom is fueled by India's strong economy, rising private wealth, digital platforms, and increased global recognition. The India Art Fair in Delhi and the launch of India Art Fair Contemporary in Mumbai highlighted strong sales, with galleries selling 90% of their stands on preview day. A reduction in India's goods and services tax on art from 12% to 5% further boosted the market, while independent reports estimate Indian art auctions reached Rs 2,456.7 crore, up over 20% from the previous year.
San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) has reopened its renovated ground-floor lobby to mark its 20th anniversary, alongside two new exhibitions. The larger show, "Unbound: Art, Blackness & the Universe" (on view until 16 August 2026), explores Blackness and the cosmos through painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. Curated by MoAD's first full-time curator Key Jo Lee, the exhibition features 17 artists including Torkwase Dyson, Barkley L. Hendricks, Lorna Simpson, Oasa DuVerney, and Mikael Owunna, organized under three themes: "Geo-Cartographic," "Religio-Mythic," and "Techno-Cyborgian." The $500,000 renovation also upgraded lighting and HVAC systems.
NEXTpittsburgh's September art guide highlights a packed month of gallery shows, art fairs, and festivals across Pittsburgh. Key events include A Fair in the Park (Sept. 5-7) featuring 101 artists, the Firebox Art Party in Carnegie, the Pittsburgh Latin American Art Festival, and the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair at Carnegie Museum of Art. Major exhibitions opening include Yasmine El Meleegy's 'Red Gold' at the Mattress Factory, which examines Egypt's sun-dried tomato industry, 'Black Photojournalism' at Carnegie Museum of Art showcasing 60 pioneering Black photojournalists, and 'Forum 91: Charles Harlan' featuring the Georgia-born sculptor's work with found objects.
The article reports on the impact of President Javier Milei's anarcho-capitalist economic policies on Argentina's cultural sector since his December 2023 election. Public museums like the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes face frozen budgets and loss of autonomy, the cultural ministry has been shuttered, and a climate of fear and retribution has led many in the art world to speak anonymously. The piece focuses on artist Liv Schulman's film and exhibition "Un círculo que se fue rodando" (2024) as a psychological portrait of the nation under Milei, and includes observations from a Buenos Aires gallerist and journalist about the dismantling of civic institutions.
Bruno Birmanis and the artist duo Mareunrol’s (Mārite Mastiņa-Pēterkopa and Rolands Pēterkops) will represent Latvia at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, with their pavilion located in the Arsenale. Their project draws on memories of Latvia in the 1990s, particularly the avant-garde fashion event The Untamed Fashion Assembly (UFA), conceived by Birmanis, which took place two months after Latvia regained independence from the Soviet Union. The installation is not a nostalgic archive but a space of dialogue and reflection, using the visual codes of a fashion show backstage to explore themes of memory, freedom, and utopian intentions.
Anuar Maauad and Roger Muñoz have cocurated the exhibition "La Alegría de Vivir" at Estudio Anuar Maauad in Mexico City, featuring works by Jorge de León, Benjamin Orlow, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Berenice Olmedo, Miguel Ventura, Paul McCarthy, and Teresa Margolles. The show confronts themes of necropolitics and systemic violence through sculptures, photographs, and installations that depict war, state power, and human suffering as ongoing, normalized conditions.
Fundación Casa Wabi and ArtReview have announced the ninth annual open-call residency prize for three artists or collectives, offering a residency at Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. The residency includes lodging, studio space, meals, and support for a community project, with applications due by 14 June 2026 and winners notified in July 2026. The prize aims to foster cultural cross-pollination between artists and local communities, with past winners including artists from Australia, the UK, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Time Out has published a list of the 10 best art galleries in the U.S., highlighting commercial spaces that offer free, museum-quality experiences. The article features blue-chip giants like David Zwirner, Gagosian, and Pace Gallery in New York, as well as regional gems like Conduit Gallery in Dallas, emphasizing that visitors can enjoy world-class contemporary art without a collector's budget.