Art News. Vasari Codex

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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person people schedule May 6, 2025 visibility 15 link 5 artists

mara manus to depart inaugural ceo pioneer works

Mara Manus is stepping down as CEO of Pioneer Works, the Brooklyn arts and science non-profit founded by artist Dustin Yellin, after a brief tenure that began in 2023. Her departure comes after she met the organization's fundraising goals months ahead of schedule and completed the third phase of a $30 million capital campaign in early 2025. Gabriel Florenz, the founding artistic director since 2012, has expanded his role to executive director, while Stephanie Hemshrot was appointed Chief Operating Officer. Manus previously led the New York State Council on the Arts and the Public Theater.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 5, 2025 visibility 18 link 5 artists

tanda francis the met

Artist Tanda Francis created the bespoke mannequin heads for the Costume Institute's spring 2025 exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition, organized by guest curator Monica L. Miller in collaboration with Andrew Bolton, explores how Black communities across the Atlantic diaspora have used fashion and suiting as tools of self-definition, resistance, and storytelling from the 18th century to today. Francis based her mannequin on Congolese political thinker André Matsoua, a figure associated with militant Black dandyism and the Sapeur movement.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 3, 2025 visibility 16 link 14 artists

the first homosexuals queer art show

An exhibition titled "The First Homosexuals" has opened at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, curated by queer art historian Jonathan David Katz and associate curator Johnny Willis. Spanning over 300 artworks, the show traces how the coining of the term "homosexual" by Hungarian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1868 reframed artistic expressions of identity and sexuality, featuring works by artists such as Hokusai, Utamaro, Bertel Thorvaldsen, George Catlin, Saturnino Herrán, Richmond Barthé, Romaine Brooks, and Tamara de Lempicka. The exhibition includes sections on pre-colonial indigenous cultures, colonialism and resistance, and queer art icons.

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article news schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 10 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 12 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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trending_up market schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 18 link 17 artists

impressionism auction industry

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, which began in 1874 when 31 artists including Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Berthe Morisot staged a groundbreaking exhibition in Paris. To commemorate the sesquicentennial, international institutions are hosting exhibitions such as the Musée d'Orsay's "Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism," while Artnet and Morgan Stanley have collaborated to analyze auction data from 2014 to 2023, examining the market for works by approximately 120 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. Despite perceptions that Impressionism has lost its luster, the number of lots offered at auction has remained steady, averaging 6,091 annually over the decade.

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article news schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 11 link 5 artists

american civil liberties union of texas artists in residence

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (ACLU of Texas) has named Houston-based painter Vincent Valdez and Austin-based author KB Brookins as the recipients of its artists-in-residence program for 2025–26. Each artist will receive $30,000 to fund individual projects and will collaborate with the ACLU of Texas and community leaders to advocate for civil rights. Valdez plans to paint portraits of local community leaders and create poster packets combining Know Your Rights information with archival research for statewide distribution. Brookins will address pretrial detention in Texas jails through original compositions, workshops, and public presentations, focusing on mass incarceration issues in Harris County. The pair were selected from roughly 200 applicants following a statewide open call, succeeding artist Kill Joy, who led an immigrants' rights tour with large puppets.

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museum exhibitions schedule Apr 30, 2025 visibility 19 link 5 artists

kevin beasley storm king acoustic mirror

Kevin Beasley has created a large-scale acoustic mirror for Storm King Art Center, opening May 7. The 11-foot-tall, 100-foot-wide four-part sculpture is inspired by World War I–era concrete acoustic mirrors used for detecting enemy aircraft. Unlike those obsolete relics, Beasley's work is made from recycled clothes cast in resin and will amplify visitors' voices and outdoor sounds. The piece engages with the history of the Hudson River School painters and themes of colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and contested land, while also celebrating agricultural cycles through its seasonal titles: Proscenium| Rebirth, Growth, Harvest, and Dormancy.

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article news schedule Apr 29, 2025 visibility 18 link 3 artists

texas police new york spree sally mann

Texas police officers traveled to New York museums in February as part of a failed child pornography investigation against photographer Sally Mann and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The investigation stemmed from Mann's photographs of her nude underage children, displayed in the exhibition "Diaries of Home," which some local viewers and officials deemed harmful. The officers visited the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum, spending nearly $7,000 on the trip. A grand jury declined to take action in March, and the photos were returned. Museums reported no recent communication with the police and stated Mann's works had not been on view for years.

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article news schedule Apr 28, 2025 visibility 18 link 2 artists

fort worth police spent 7 k visiting new york for sally mann investigation

The Fort Worth Police Department spent nearly $7,000 to send five officers to New York City to investigate child pornography allegations against photographer Sally Mann. The officers visited four major museums—the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art—to examine Mann's photographs in their collections and speak with curators. The trip, which cost $6,988.77, came after Mann's works were seized from a group exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth following complaints from locals and elected officials who deemed the images "grossly inappropriate." The investigation was later dropped and the photographs returned.

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gavel restitution schedule Apr 25, 2025 visibility 18 link 3 artists

fort worth police return photographs seized from sally mann exhibition

Fort Worth police have returned photographs by Sally Mann that were seized from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in January. The artworks were taken from the group exhibition “Diaries of Home” following complaints from locals and elected officials who characterized Mann’s work as “grossly inappropriate” and “child porn.” The seizure sparked national condemnation, with the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (ACLU of Texas) intervening to demand the works’ return. Charges against the museum were dropped, and the photographs have now been returned, bringing closure to the investigation.

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trending_up market schedule Apr 23, 2025 visibility 11 link 5 artists, 3 galleries

mexico francisco toledo dobel tequila

Francisco Toledo, the renowned Mexican artist, collaborated with Maestro Dobel Tequila on a limited-edition luxury tequila vessel before his death. The Dobel Tequila Grandes Maestros Collection: The Francisco Toledo Edition features the world's first extra añejo tequila finished in mezcal barrels, housed in a hand-engraved bottle with a sculptural wooden cube display. Only 15 of the 281 editions are available in the U.S. market, each priced at $5,000, and are now being auctioned via Artnet.

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article culture schedule Apr 23, 2025 visibility 10 link 8 artists

lucy dacus singer art museums barnes foundation interview

Singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus discusses her new album "Forever Is A Feeling" and its deep connections to visual art, including a cover portrait by artist Will St. John and a song titled "Modigliani" inspired by visits to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. In an interview with ARTnews at the Barnes, Dacus explains how museums serve as creative spaces for her songwriting and how the Barnes's unique salon-style arrangement without title cards allows her to make personal connections with artworks.

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article news schedule Apr 22, 2025 visibility 9 link 5 artists

kehinde wiley new sexual assault complaint

Artist Ogechi Chieke has filed a legal complaint against Kehinde Wiley, accusing him of sexual assault stemming from an incident in 2007. Chieke alleges that after a New York exhibition she was included in, Wiley groped her and made unwanted sexual advances, causing her to leave New York and abandon her art career. Wiley denies the allegations, calling them a "blatant money-grab" and stating he has never met Chieke. The suit was filed under New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law just before the statute of limitations window closed on March 1, 2025.

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article culture schedule Apr 22, 2025 visibility 15 link 14 artists

brutalist adrien brody architect

Adrien Brody won the Best Actor Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards for his role in *The Brutalist*, a film directed by Brady Corbet that premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion for best director. The epic, three-and-a-half-hour film follows Bauhaus-trained Hungarian Jewish architect László Toth, a Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America and struggles to rebuild his career, drawing on the lives of real architects like Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer. Shot in Budapest on celluloid for under $10 million, the film was acquired by A24 after a 12-minute ovation at Venice.

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article news schedule Apr 21, 2025 visibility 12 link 4 artists

kehinde wiley sexual assault ogechi chieke lawsuit

Artist Kehinde Wiley has been accused of sexual assault by fellow artist Ogechi Chieke in a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court on February 28, just before the expiration of an amendment to New York’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. Chieke alleges that Wiley assaulted her at a New York restaurant in 2007, including grabbing her buttocks and vagina and making a lewd comment. Wiley denies the allegations, stating he has never met Chieke and calling the lawsuit a "blatant money-grab." This is the first legal filing among multiple sexual assault allegations against Wiley, which previously surfaced on Instagram from several men, including Joseph Awuah-Darko and Terrell Armistead.

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article local schedule Apr 18, 2025 visibility 12 link 7 artists

canada giant van gogh easel fate

In 1997, artist Cameron Cross installed The Big Easel, a 75-foot-tall sculpture of an easel displaying a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh's sunflower paintings, in Altona, Canada, to honor the town's status as the Sunflower Capital of Canada. After a windstorm on February 28 blew off a panel of the painting and further damage occurred on March 15, the town removed the four-ton painting and conducted a survey to gauge public support for restoration. A majority of respondents (68%) voted to save the artwork, with 60% preferring a hand-painted canvas over a printed replica and 61% wanting to keep the Van Gogh sunflowers. Cross plans to rebuild the fiberglass canvas from scratch and repaint the image in 2026, with costs estimated at CA$70,000 ($50,500) for a durable marine-grade plywood version.

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rate_review review schedule May 20, 2026 visibility 2 link 4 artists

Fantastic visions and cosmic rhythms: how Whistler is making me see – and hear – differently

The article explores how the James McNeill Whistler exhibition at Tate in London prompts a reconsideration of the relationship between music and visual art. Whistler titled his works using musical terms like "Arrangement," "Symphony," and "Nocturne," arguing that painting should be abstract and independent of narrative, much like instrumental music. The exhibition, reviewed by Jonathan Jones, highlights Whistler's radical art-for-art's-sake philosophy, which influenced composer Claude Debussy, whose orchestral Nocturnes were directly inspired by Whistler's paintings of light and atmosphere.

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article culture schedule May 18, 2026 visibility 5 link 7 artists

Let’s dress like a Mark Rothko! How gen Z fell for the king of colour field paintings

Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionist known for his color field paintings, is experiencing a cultural resurgence among Generation Z on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Videos inspired by his work amass hundreds of thousands of views, with creators styling outfits based on his canvases, assigning his paintings to personality archetypes, and comparing his palettes to dream pop bands like the Cocteau Twins. The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, has also seen a wave of curious young visitors drawn to the meditative, confrontational experience of his art.

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article culture schedule May 18, 2026 visibility 4 link 3 artists

After dinosaurs, it’s spot the dog! But can a child really learn anything in a gallery?

Neil Osborne and his three-year-old daughter Daisy visit the National Museum Cardiff (NMC), where they explore both dinosaur exhibits and art galleries. Daisy, like many toddlers, engages with paintings by describing what she sees—calling a JMW Turner seascape "a fish." The article follows the author as she investigates whether children under five can learn from art in museums, speaking with parents and Catrin Rowlands, head of learning at NMC. NMC is one of 15 UK museums participating in Mini Wonders, a fully funded program by Art Fund and Nesta that offers eight-week courses for families from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing digital cameras and scrapbooks to encourage repeated museum visits and school readiness.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 17, 2026 visibility 11 link 12 artists

Printmaking skills of Manet, Van Gogh and more celebrated in Bath show

An exhibition titled *Beyond Impressionism* at the Holburne Museum in Bath showcases over 50 prints by artists such as Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, James McNeill Whistler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso. The show, running from 23 May to 13 September, highlights how impressionist, post-impressionist, and cubist painters revived printmaking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, elevating it from commercial reproduction to a respected artistic medium. Works are drawn from public collections including the Courtauld Gallery and Ashmolean, as well as private collections.

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rate_review review schedule May 13, 2026 visibility 14 link 5 artists

Zineb Sedira review: A chic ode to revolutionary cinema, brainy boozers – and exceptional berets

Zineb Sedira's exhibition at Tate Britain presents a cinematic and sculptural homage to La Cinémathèque Algérienne, the Algerian film archive founded in 1965 that became a hub for leftist African filmmakers. The show recreates a 1970s Algerian cafe in Paris, complete with a jukebox, books on revolutionary cinema, and a model movie theater screening a documentary about the archive's director, Boudjemaâ Karèche. Sedira, born in Paris to Algerian parents and based in London, weaves personal and political narratives to explore identity, diaspora, and the role of art in social change.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 12, 2026 visibility 22 link 10 artists, 5 galleries

‘I shared a single bed with my mother for three years’: Sung Tieu on her monument to immigrant workers in Venice

Artist Sung Tieu has clad the German pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale with a mosaic replica of the Gehrenseestrasse complex, a now-abandoned housing estate in Berlin where she lived as a child. The work, titled "Human Dignity Shall Be Inviolable," uses three million mosaic stones to recreate the facade of the prefabricated blocks that housed Vertragsarbeiter—contract workers from Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, and Cuba who bolstered East Germany's economy. Tieu, who shared a single bed with her mother in the complex for three years, conceived the pavilion alongside the late artist Henrike Naumann.

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article culture schedule May 8, 2026 visibility 14 link 5 artists

Story of enslaved boy featured in 1748 Joshua Reynolds portrait emerges in new study

A research project by the National Trust, the National Gallery in London, and Royal Museums Greenwich has uncovered new details about the identity of an enslaved boy known only as “Jersey,” who appears in a 1748 portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The painting, which hangs at Saltram in Devon, depicts Jersey with his enslaver, naval officer and MP Paul Henry Ourry. Through admiralty records, muster books, and baptismal certificates, researchers identified the boy as “Boston Jersey,” later baptised as George Walker, and found evidence of his naval service and possible path to freedom.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 4, 2026 visibility 20 link 9 artists

Sketches of Spain at arms: Sim, the anarchist illustrator who drew the civil war from the frontline

The Guardian reports on José Luis Rey Vila, known as Sim, an anarchist illustrator who documented the Spanish Civil War from the frontlines in Catalonia. His bold, colorful sketches captured street battles, militias, nurses, and milicianas, and were widely reproduced in booklets and exhibitions, raising international awareness before Picasso's Guernica. After the war, Sim fell into obscurity and died in near-anonymity in 1983. Now, on the 90th anniversary of the conflict, Barcelona's Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) is exhibiting 40 recently acquired Sim illustrations, highlighting his role as a key visual chronicler of the conflict.

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