Art News. Vasari Codex

article news schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 11 link 8 artists

kids damage art

A child under the age of five recently scratched a Mark Rothko painting at a museum in the Netherlands, forcing its removal for restoration. The article compiles several notorious incidents of children accidentally damaging artworks, including a 12-year-old boy punching a hole through a $1.5 million Baroque painting by Paolo Porpora in Taipei, a 4-year-old shattering a 3,500-year-old vase at the Hecht Museum in Israel, a girl climbing a Donald Judd sculpture at Tate Modern, and kids breaking a glass artwork by Shelley Xue at the Shanghai Museum of Glass. In most cases, the damage was accidental, driven by curiosity or misinterpretation, and often involved lapses in adult supervision.

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article culture schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 18 link 13 artists

leonardo da vinci existing paintings ranked

Artnet News has published a ranking of Leonardo da Vinci's surviving paintings, focusing on completed, stand-alone works and excluding frescos like *The Last Supper* and unfinished pieces. The article evaluates paintings such as *Annunciation* (c. 1472–76), *Madonna of the Carnation* (1478–80), and *Ginevra de' Benci* (c. 1474–78), considering factors like attribution certainty, historical context, and unique traits—for instance, *Ginevra de' Benci* is the only Leonardo painting in a public collection in the Americas.

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trending_up market schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 13 link 4 artists

len riggios mondrian christies auction

A 1922 painting by Piet Mondrian, *Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue*, sold at Christie’s New York for $47.6 million, falling short of its $50 million-plus estimate and the artist’s auction record of $51 million set in 2022. The work was the highlight of the “Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works” sale, a 39-lot trove from the late Barnes & Noble founder and Dia Art Foundation chairman, estimated at up to $326 million. The painting sold to a single phone bidder, likely the guarantor, with no room action.

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article news schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 11 link 5 artists

last known painting gauguin authenticity

The Kunstmuseum Basel has launched a fresh scientific investigation into a painting long believed to be Paul Gauguin's final self-portrait, *Self-Portrait with Glasses* (1903), after amateur art sleuth Fabrice Fourmanoir raised doubts about its authenticity. Fourmanoir claims the work may have been painted not by Gauguin but by a Vietnamese revolutionary named Ky Dong, a close acquaintance of the artist, after Gauguin's death. The museum, which has owned the painting since 1945, confirmed it is re-examining the work using modern techniques like infrared reflectography and radiology, with results expected by June or July.

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article culture schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 16 link 10 artists

michelangelo 550 birthday headlines

Artnet News rounds up recent headlines involving Renaissance master Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni as institutions prepare to celebrate his 550th birthday in 2025. The article highlights three stories: a scene in HBO's *The White Lotus* season three finale that echoes Michelangelo's *Pietà*; the ongoing scholarly debate over whether Michelangelo himself forged the ancient sculpture *Laocoön and His Sons*; and the restoration of Michelangelo's family tomb at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence ahead of his birthday.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 22 link 7 artists

olga de amaral wove her own path at 92 the art world is catching up

The nonagenarian Colombian fiber artist Olga de Amaral, now 92, is the subject of a major retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, following its debut at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris in 2024. The exhibition, on view through October 12, 2025, features works spanning her entire career, from the 1950s to the present, and includes pieces that blend ancient and futuristic aesthetics, often incorporating gold shimmer and woven density. Curated by Marie Perennès and Stephanie Seidel, the show highlights Amaral's pioneering role in textile art, a medium historically marginalized as craft rather than fine art.

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article culture schedule May 15, 2025 visibility 15 link 9 artists

theophile alexandre steinlen tournee du chat noir

The article explores the life and work of Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859–1923), the Swiss-born artist who created the iconic 1896 poster *Tournée du Chat Noir* for Rodolphe Salis’s legendary Parisian cabaret Le Chat Noir. It details how Steinlen, a resident of Montmartre, was introduced to the cabaret’s circle by fellow artist Adolphe Willette and went on to produce numerous commercial works featuring cats, including advertisements, exhibition announcements, and the artists' book *Des chats, dessins sans paroles*. The piece also highlights Steinlen’s involvement in leftist politics and his broader artistic output, which included landscapes, still lifes, and nudes shown at the Salon des Indépendants.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 17 link 14 artists

lupe fiasco ghotiing mit public art

Lupe Fiasco, the Grammy-winning rapper and MIT visiting scholar, has created "GHOTIING MIT," an audio tour featuring seven tracks improvised and recorded on-site at public artworks around the MIT List Visual Arts Center campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using an iPad, microphone, and solar panels, Fiasco responds to sculptures by Alexander Calder, Antony Gormley, Jacques Lipchitz, and Jaume Plensa, among others, blending rap with field recordings to capture the immediacy of each piece. He terms this spontaneous creative process "ghotiing" (pronounced "fishing"), likening it to the Impressionist practice of painting en plein air.

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candle obituary schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 18 link 10 artists

koyo kouoh dead zeitz mocaa venice biennale

Koyo Kouoh, the celebrated Cameroonian-born curator known for championing African contemporary art, has died unexpectedly at age 57. She passed away in a hospital in Basel, Switzerland, due to cancer, just months after being appointed curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale—making her only the second African-born curator to lead the prestigious exhibition, following Okwui Enwezor in 2015. Kouoh was executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town since 2019, where she organized landmark shows like "When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting" (2022), and founded RAW Material Company in Dakar in 2008, an independent art center now considered a top space in West Africa.

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candle obituary schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 19 link 8 artists

venice biennale curator koyo kouoh dies

Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroonian-born curator appointed to lead the 2026 Venice Biennale, has died unexpectedly at age 57. The Venice Biennale announced her passing on Saturday, describing her as a figure of “passion, intellectual rigor, and vision.” Her husband, Philippe Mall, stated that a recently diagnosed cancer was the cause of death in a hospital in Basel, Switzerland. Kouoh had served as executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town since 2019, and was the second African-born curator to lead the Venice Biennale.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2025 visibility 24 link 21 artists

superfine met museum costume institute black dandy

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" on May 10, an exhibition tracing over 300 years of Black dandyism. The show features around a dozen paintings, fashions, works on paper, photography, sculpture, and decorative objects, including a 1758 portrait of Roch Aza, a ten-year-old enslaved boy from Martinique, depicted in elegant livery alongside his enslaver. The exhibition examines how well-dressed Black figures appeared in European art as symbols of their owners' wealth and status during the transatlantic slave trade, and how subsequent generations have reappropriated and subverted that imagery.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 10, 2025 visibility 22 link 22 artists

national gallery sainsburg wing reopening gabriele finaldi

London's National Gallery has reopened its Sainsbury Wing after a three-year, $113 million renovation, timed to the museum's 200th anniversary. Director Gabriele Finaldi, who was knighted this year, oversaw the project, which was designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf and faced criticism from original architect Denise Scott Brown. The revamped wing features a light-filled foyer, 17 galleries with no prescribed route, and a rehang titled “The Wonder of Art.” The museum also acquired a mysterious painting by an unknown artist, The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels (1500–10), for $20 million through Sotheby's.

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trending_up market schedule May 9, 2025 visibility 19 link 8 artists

sothebys sets new world record for photography auction

Sotheby's New York held a single-owner auction titled "175 Masterworks To Celebrate 175 Years of Photography: Property from Joy of Giving Something Foundation" on December 11 and 12, achieving a world record for a photography auction. The sale grossed $21,325,063, surpassing its presale estimate of $13–20 million and beating the previous record of $15 million set by a Sotheby's sale in 2006. The collection came from the late American financier Howard Stein, who founded the Joy of Giving Something Foundation in 1999. The auction had a strong sell-through rate of 90.3 percent by lot and 94.9 percent by value, with top lots including Alvin Langdon Coburn's "Shadows and Reflections, Venice" (1905) at $965,000 and August Sander's "Handlanger" at $749,000. Several female photographers set new records, including Tina Modotti, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Lee Miller.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 8, 2025 visibility 15 link 2 artists

aia new talent event 2025

Art in America hosted a launch event for its 2025 "New Talent" issue at PMC's headquarters in New York, bringing together 20 emerging artists and two established luminaries—Carroll Dunham and Rochelle Feinstein—for a panel discussion moderated by senior editor Emily Watlington. The conversation explored the art world's current shift from figuration to abstraction, with Dunham and Feinstein reflecting on their own careers and the evolving dynamics of painting.

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article news schedule May 7, 2025 visibility 11 link 3 artists

femen stage protest musee dorsay

The feminist activist group FEMEN staged a topless protest at Paris's Musée d'Orsay on Saturday, September 12, 2020, after the museum barred a woman named Jeanne from entering the galleries unless she covered up her low-cut dress. About 20 activists gathered in the sculpture gallery, removed their shirts, and painted slogans such as "obscenity is in your eyes" and "this is not obscene" on their torsos, standing alongside classical nude statues. They chanted in protest and later moved outside the museum. The museum issued an apology to Jeanne but did not address accusations of sexism or discrimination.

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article news schedule May 7, 2025 visibility 17 link 7 artists

met gala 2025 rosa parks underwear k pop henry taylor

At the 2025 Met Gala, K-Pop star Lisa of Blackpink faced backlash after social media users claimed her Louis Vuitton outfit, designed by Pharrell Williams, featured Rosa Parks's face embroidered on her underwear. A representative for artist Henry Taylor clarified that the pattern actually depicts Taylor's neighbor, not Parks, and that all faces on the garments come from Taylor's personal life and existing artworks, which he provided to LVMH for Williams's debut collection in 2023.

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article culture schedule May 7, 2025 visibility 17 link 5 artists

eva hesse documentary

A comprehensive new documentary on Eva Hesse, the innovative 1960s artist, will premiere in New York in April. Directed by Marcie Begleiter, the film explores Hesse's life as a German-born American who fled Nazi Germany, her difficult childhood as an immigrant, and her rise in New York's art scene. It features interviews with artists like Robert Mangold and examines her pioneering use of materials such as plastic, latex, and fiberglass. Hesse's career was cut short when she died of a brain tumor at age 34 in 1970, but her legacy has grown through posthumous retrospectives at major museums.

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article culture schedule May 5, 2025 visibility 13 link 6 artists

art bites frank lloyd wright imperial hotel lincoln logs

Lincoln Logs, the iconic wooden construction toy that has entertained American children for over a century, was designed by John Lloyd Wright, the second-eldest son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. John conceived the toy while in Japan with his father between 1916 and 1917, inspired by the interlocking wooden foundation Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to make it earthquake-resistant. The toy, named after Abraham Lincoln, went on to become a classic, inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.

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article news schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 11 link 1 artist

the ashes tudor lodge wall paintings

Rare 16th-century wall paintings depicting fantastical beasts, heraldic rabbits, and Grotesque heads have been uncovered at the Ashes, a Tudor hunting lodge in Inglewood Forest, Cumbria, U.K. Built in the 1560s during Elizabeth I's reign, the two-story building originally housed William Simpson, a bailiff of Castle Sowerby Manor. The paintings, created using the secco technique on dry plaster, were found in stages—first on the second story in the 1970s, then on the ground floor during excavations in the 2010s and 2020s. The most recent discoveries, made by owners Jen and Richard Arkell, reveal elaborate decorative panels likely inspired by textile designs, reflecting the cosmopolitan tastes of the period.

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trending_up market schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 14 link 7 artists

rachofsky house dallas for sale

The Rachofsky House, a landmark contemporary art residence in Dallas designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier, has been quietly listed for sale off-market by Compass agent Faisal Halum. The 9,000-square-foot home at 8605 Preston Road has been owned for decades by prominent collectors Howard and Cindy Rachofsky, who annually hosted the Two x Two gala there, raising over $130 million for amfAR and the Dallas Museum of Art. Howard Rachofsky confirmed the sale, citing his age (81) and ongoing estate planning.

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person people schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 22 link 17 artists

collector reinhard ernst on championing the legacy of helen frankenthaler

German collector Reinhard Ernst, 79, opened Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden last year to house his collection of nearly 1,000 abstract works. The museum recently launched “Helen Frankenthaler. Move and Make,” the first major solo show of the Abstract Expressionist painter in Germany in two decades, featuring works from Ernst’s extensive Frankenthaler holdings. Ernst, who built his wealth through high-precision gear manufacturing, discusses his collecting journey, noting that 80% of his purchases come from auctions.

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article news schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 12 link 8 artists

howard castle completes restoration

Castle Howard, the historic North Yorkshire estate known for its role in Netflix's *Bridgerton* and the 1981 film *Brideshead Revisited*, is reopening to the public after major restoration work. The centerpiece is the tapestry drawing room, which had stood as an empty shell since a 1940 fire devastated much of the house. The room has been fully reconstructed with a new ceiling, floor, fireplace, paneling, and window casings, overseen by architect Francis Terry. Four 18th-century tapestries by John Vanderbank, depicting the seasons, have been restored and reinstalled in their original locations for the first time since the early 1700s. The restoration also prompted a rehang of the Long Gallery and a reimagining of the grand staircase, which now displays artifacts collected by the earls of Carlisle.

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article culture schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 14 link 6 artists

why did leonardo and michelangelo have beef

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, two of history's most celebrated artists, had a well-documented rivalry rooted in competition for commissions, class differences, and artistic disagreements. Their first known encounter occurred when Leonardo served on a committee deciding the placement of Michelangelo's *David* (1501), where Leonardo reportedly mocked the sculpture by sketching it as the sea god Neptune. Their rivalry escalated when both were commissioned to paint opposing murals in Florence's Salone dei Cinquecento—Leonardo's *Battle of Anghiari* and Michelangelo's *Battle of Cascina*—neither of which was completed. The artists traded insults over the years, with Michelangelo criticizing Leonardo's view of sculpture as inferior to painting, and Leonardo deriding Michelangelo's muscular figures as resembling "a bag of walnuts."

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museum exhibitions schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 16 link 4 artists

renaissance painting feast of the gods

The article examines Giovanni Bellini's painting *The Feast of the Gods* (1514–29), a mythological scene depicting Roman deities at a feast, which was later reworked by Dosso Dossi and Titian. Commissioned by Duke Alfonso d'Este for his private gallery, the work is notable for including what is believed to be the earliest painted example of Chinese porcelain in European art. The painting draws from Ovid's 'Fasti' and was Bellini's last completed work, finished when he was in his 80s.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 22 link 1 artist

megastar artist kent monkman is rewriting colonial narratives on canvas

Kent Monkman, a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation and a leading contemporary painter based between Toronto and New York, is the subject of a feature article discussing his career and his first major U.S. museum exhibition, "History is Painted by the Victors," opening at the Denver Art Museum. Monkman is known for epic, genre-bending canvases that subvert classical European painting traditions, particularly 19th- and 20th-century history painting, to expose colonial distortions and omissions. Central to his work is Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, his time-traveling alter ego who queers history and repositions Indigenous presence and agency. The article includes an interview where Monkman reflects on his upbringing in Winnipeg, his relationship to museums, and how painting serves as both a political tool and a method for processing historical trauma.

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article news schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 11 link 10 artists

top 6 accidents in museums

This article from Artnet News compiles a list of notable accidents in museums, where visitors, children, or even curators have inadvertently damaged valuable artworks and artifacts. Incidents include a four-year-old boy shattering a $15,000 Lego sculpture of a Zootopia character, a 12-year-old boy punching a $1.5 million Baroque painting by Paolo Porpora at Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei, a Cy Twombly sculpture knocked over at the Menil Collection in Houston, and a visitor breaking a 4,000-year-old Minoan vase at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete. The article is framed as a lighthearted yet cautionary look at the fragility of museum objects and the human errors that lead to their damage.

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article news schedule Apr 28, 2025 visibility 14 link 6 artists

vatican museums sistine chapel closed conclave new pope

The Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel, have closed to the public as Vatican City prepares for a conclave to elect a new pope following the death of Pope Francis on April 28. The reopening date is uncertain, as conclaves have historically lasted from days to weeks, though modern elections for Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI closed the city for less than a week. The Museums house a vast collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as modern works by artists like Paul Gauguin, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso, and attracted 6.8 million visitors in 2024.

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trending_up market schedule Apr 23, 2025 visibility 13 link 14 artists, 3 galleries

lawrence watson oasis paul weller photographer print sale

Lawrence Watson, a British music photographer who has captured icons like David Bowie, Morrissey, Oasis, and Run-D.M.C. over four decades, is releasing exclusive signed prints through the platform Print Matters. The collection includes previously unseen images of David Bowie, Pulp, the Clash, and Oasis, with prices starting at £575 ($762). Twenty percent of net sales will benefit the mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness. Watson's career began in 1988 when Paul Weller chose his black-and-white photos for the Style Council's album 'Confessions of a Pop Group,' leading to a long collaboration.

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article news schedule Apr 23, 2025 visibility 8 link 2 artists

mauritshuis museum rembrandt paintings copies

The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague has reclassified three paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt as copies or studio works: *Portrait of Rembrandt with a Gorget* (ca. 1629), *Study of an Old Man* (ca. 1655–60), and *‘Tronie’ of an Old Man* (ca. 1630). The first was identified as a copy in 1999, the second was found to be by a student despite a genuine signature, and the third may have been painted by a student or Rembrandt himself. The museum now lists 11 works as authentic Rembrandts, including *The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp* (1632), and seven works whose authenticity has been questioned.

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article news schedule Apr 21, 2025 visibility 9 link 2 artists

roman villa villajoyosa wall fragments

Archaeologists in Villajoyosa, Spain, have uncovered over 4,000 fragments of painted wall plaster from the Roman villa of Barberes Sud, a palatial complex dating to the reign of Emperor Trajan (98–117 C.E.). The fragments were found in a collapsed room, and the team from the Alebus Historical Heritage Company and the Municipal Archaeology Service has catalogued and photographed each piece to enable digital reconstruction. At the Vilamuseu restoration laboratory, 22 fragments have already been reassembled into a panel featuring floral garlands, birds, and painted moldings.

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