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Artnet News's Wet Paint column announces Brian Belott's upcoming exhibition "Upside Down Zebra" at the Watermill Center in Water Mill, Hamptons, opening next week. The show features over 400 artworks made by children under age 6, including offspring of Willem de Kooning and Henry Miller, alongside 40 response pieces by contemporary artists like Robert Nava, Chris Martin, Darren Bader, Katherine Bernhardt, Carroll Dunham, and Christopher Wool. Belott draws from the archive of educator and psychologist Rhoda Kellogg, who collected over two million children's drawings, organizing works by her 20 types of scribbles.

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Joel-Peter Witkin, the controversial photographer known for his macabre and surreal imagery, is the subject of a new exhibition titled “Joel-Peter Witkin: The World Is Not Enough” at A Gallery for Fine Photography in New Orleans. The show features a wide cross-section of his work, from early pieces like the cadaver-based still life *The Kiss* (1982) to recent works such as *The Soul Has No Gender* (2016), a portrait of a transsexual woman posed as Mary Magdalene. Witkin, a mainstay on artnet’s Top 300 list, personally prints each photograph and continues to explore themes of death, beauty, and the marginalized in society.

Digital Art Pioneer Nancy Burson Collapses the Border Between Mysticism and Quantum Physics

Nancy Burson, a pioneering digital artist, presents her latest solo exhibition "Light Matter" at Heft Gallery in New York, featuring "Quantum Entanglement" paintings that appear as white dots on black canvases but reveal jittering forms and depth when viewed through a phone camera. The 78-year-old artist, known for her 1980s composite portraits blending faces of businessmen and movie stars, continues her exploration of perception and technology, claiming a special gift to perceive the universe's emergent energy grid. The exhibition runs through May 2.

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Kevin McGarry reviews the debut issue of *Even*, a new print art journal launched by *Guardian* contributor Jason Farago during Frieze New York. Named after a phrase from Marcel Duchamp's *The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even*, the magazine is a small, paperback-sized publication that prioritizes text over images, positioning itself as an antidote to market-driven art discourse. The first issue features a lengthy essay on artist Joan Jonas by Elisabeth Lebovici, timed to Jonas's U.S. pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, and a piece by Zachary Woolfe on the Björk exhibition at MoMA. McGarry critiques the journal's ambition to revitalize art criticism, noting that while its goals are lofty, the content sometimes falls back on familiar artspeak.

Big Crisis, Small Gestures

Große Krise, kleine Gesten

The article reviews the second edition of the Klima Biennale Wien, which opened in early April in Vienna. It notes that while the biennale aims to address the urgent triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, its execution falls short. The exhibition features symbolic works such as a beached whale, a broken boat, and a compostable SUV sculpture, but these motifs feel repetitive and lack the necessary impact. The author contrasts these with historical precedents like Menashe Kadishman's 1978 Venice Biennale installation and Joseph Beuys' "7000 Eichen" (1982), arguing that the themes of nature and sustainability are not new, only the urgency has intensified.

More Than Breakfast

Mehr als Frühstück

The article explores the enduring presence and symbolism of the egg as a motif throughout art history. It highlights works by artists from Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Salvador Dalí and Constantin Brâncuși, showing how the egg has been used in painting, sculpture, and photography to represent themes of origin, life, and perfect form.

At the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Infinite Poetry of Ruth Asawa’s Aerial Sculptures

Au Guggenheim Bilbao, l’infinie poésie des sculptures aériennes de Ruth Asawa

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is hosting the first major European retrospective of American artist Ruth Asawa, showcasing her signature hand-woven wire sculptures. These delicate, organic forms, which challenge gravity and play with transparency, are presented in dialogue with the museum's monumental architecture. The exhibition traces her journey from a childhood spent in Japanese-American internment camps during WWII to her formative years at the legendary Black Mountain College under the mentorship of Josef Albers.

8 Artists to Follow If You Like Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp’s legacy continues to shape contemporary art through his pioneering use of readymades, conceptual rigor, and institutional critique. This analysis identifies eight modern and contemporary artists whose practices echo Duchamp’s subversion of traditional aesthetics, ranging from his early experiments with found objects to his later explorations of gender and mechanical desire.

Niklaus Stoecklin at Hauser & Wirth, Basel

Hauser & Wirth Basel is presenting a focused exhibition of works by Swiss artist Niklaus Stoecklin (1896–1982), featuring paintings and drawings spanning from the 1920s to the 1970s. The show includes several rarely seen pieces, highlighting Stoecklin's distinctive approach to depicting life—people, animals, trees, stones, and space—as he described it.

Where to go this weekend?

Wohin am Wochenende?

Major international exhibitions and events are launching this week, headlined by a massive Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first of its scale in the U.S. since the 1970s. In Milan, Cao Fei debuts a research-heavy project at Fondazione Prada exploring the intersection of high-tech agriculture and tradition, while Berlin’s Georg Kolbe Museum recovers the legacy of British constructivist Marlow Moss. Additionally, the inaugural Art Cologne Palma Mallorca art festival opens in Spain, attempting to stimulate the market during a challenging economic period.

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Three art-world professionals—adviser Sarah Galender Meyer, gallerist Yng-Ru Chen, and artist Crystalle Lacouture—have launched Arrival Art Fair, a biannual, invitation-only event in North Adams, Massachusetts, at the Tourists hotel. The fair features 36 exhibitors selected by curators with regional ties, including galleries such as Jane Lombard, Sears Peyton Gallery, Jessica Silverman, Abattoir Gallery, and Wolfgang Gallery. Programming includes outdoor sculpture, museum talks, and an acquisition prize from the Williams College Museum of Art, with booth fees supplemented by philanthropic support to keep the fair free for visitors.

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Ching Ho Cheng (1946–89), a Chinese-American artist who described himself as working "with paper, instead of on it," is the subject of a revival of interest, including a current solo show at Bank gallery's New York outpost featuring his airbrushed gouache works from the mid-to-late 1970s. Cheng, who lived and worked in Suite 903 of New York's Chelsea Hotel, created spiritual, experimental works ranging from psychedelic paintings to torn-paper pieces and monumental oxidized sculptures, before his career was cut short by AIDS-related complications. His papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art were digitized in 2024, and his work will be included in a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a major institutional retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2027.

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Japanese art collective teamLab is opening its first custom-built museum on April 18 in Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Cultural District, near the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the forthcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. The 183,000-square-foot waterfront building, designed with MZ Architects, features a new series titled "Phenomena" that harnesses wind, water, and light to create immersive, kinetic environments. Highlights include installations like "Morphing Continuum," where floating silver balls form tornado-like formations, and a "wet zone" with glowing ovoids that respond to touch. The museum represents teamLab's most ambitious and technically challenging artworks to date.

art collector questionnaire geoff snack rare books design

Geoff Snack, a brand strategy director and paper dealer, shares his approach to collecting rare books, design objects, and paper ephemera in an interview with CULTURED. His collection includes a signed copy of Andy Warhol's "Exposures," works by Barbara Kruger, Lawrence Weiner, and Chris Burden, and flyers from the 1980s New York art scene. Snack sources his finds through flea markets, Craigslist, and instinctive hunts, and runs the consultancy Wrong Answer and co-organizes the book fair Available Works at WSA in downtown New York.

art calvin tompkins new yorker dies

Calvin Tomkins, the longtime New Yorker writer known for his intimate profiles of modern and contemporary artists, has died at age 100 in his home in Middletown, Rhode Island. Over more than six decades, Tomkins profiled giants of the art world including Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kerry James Marshall, and Rashid Johnson, beginning with a 1959 assignment on Duchamp that launched his career. He continued writing sweeping profiles as recently as 2024.

Are We Too Reverent of Marcel Duchamp?

The Museum of Modern Art has launched a major retrospective of Marcel Duchamp, co-organized with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition tracks the artist's evolution from his early Cubist experiments and the scandal of 'Nude Descending a Staircase' to his radical invention of the readymade, exemplified by the infamous urinal, 'Fountain'. The show presents a comprehensive look at 'The Duch' through a reverential, church-like atmosphere, concluding with his later years as a dapper, enigmatic figure of the avant-garde.

Paying tribute to storied printmaker Kenneth Tyler at the IFPDA Print Fair

The International Fine Prints and Drawings Association (IFPDA) Print Fair at the Park Avenue Armory is honoring the legacy of master printer Kenneth E. Tyler. A central highlight of the event is the presentation by the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) of a new three-volume catalogue raisonné documenting Tyler Graphics from 1986 to 2001. The 94-year-old Tyler, a foundational figure in American printmaking, collaborated with titans of Modern art including Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, and Roy Lichtenstein across his storied career at Gemini GEL and Tyler Graphics.

Collaborations: Robert Rauschenberg, Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, and Merce Cunningham at BAM

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The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is hosting "Dancing with Bob," an international tour celebrating the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg’s birth. The program features restagings of seminal avant-garde dance collaborations, most notably the 1983 masterpiece "Set and Reset," which combined the choreography of Trisha Brown, the music of Laurie Anderson, and the visual design of Rauschenberg. The tour also includes a rare professional restaging of the 1977 piece "Travelogue," a collaboration between Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham.

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Alma Allen, a sculptor known for sleek, abstract works, has been selected to represent the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale, marking the country's 250th anniversary. The selection process, run by the US State Department and funded by the newly formed American Arts Conservancy—which the article notes is stocked with Trump allies—has drawn criticism for favoring politically neutral art. Allen's sculptures, often made of marble and wood with digital technology, are described as aesthetically inoffensive and reminiscent of Constantin Brâncuși, with no apparent commentary on current US issues.

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Sotheby's held a marathon evening sale in New York on Tuesday night, achieving $706 million in total sales—the highest single-evening total in the auction house's history. The standout was the collection of Leonard A. Lauder, which alone brought $527.5 million, led by Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer* (1914-16) that sold for $236.4 million after a 20-minute bidding war. A second sale of contemporary and ultra-contemporary works added $178.5 million, with Jean-Michel Basquiat's *Crowns (Peso Neto)* (1981) topping that session at $48.3 million. Notably, no lots were withdrawn across both sales, and Asian collectors drove bidding on many high-value lots. Maurizio Cattelan's gold toilet *America* (2016) sold for $12.1 million, drawing only one bid.

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The late Toronto collectors Morton and Carol Rapp have donated over 450 artworks by 203 artists to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) from their estates. The gift includes major Pop art works: 13 screen prints by Andy Warhol, including four Marilyn Monroe portraits (1967); works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg (including the sculptural print 'Teabag' from 1966), David Hockney, and Roy Lichtenstein; plus Barnett Newman's 1964 lithograph 'CANTO XVIII', marking the Abstract Expressionist's debut in the collection. The donation also features photography by Yinka Shonibare and Kara Walker. The couple, who began supporting the AGO in 1966, had previously donated 474 works, bringing their total contribution to nearly 1,000 pieces.

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Barbara Jakobson, a prominent art collector and longtime trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), died at age 92 on August 25 in Manhattan due to pneumonia. Known for her extensive network of relationships with artists, dealers, and curators, she was a central figure in the New York art world for decades. Jakobson served on MoMA's board since 1974, helped found the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1968, and persuaded dealer Leo Castelli to donate Robert Rauschenberg's iconic work "Bed" (1955) to MoMA. Her Upper East Side townhouse, filled with works by artists such as Matthew Barney, Diane Arbus, and Robert Mapplethorpe, was a testament to her lifelong engagement with contemporary art.

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Over 100 contemporary artists, including Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Julie Mehretu, Camille Henrot, Claire Tabouret, and Julien Creuzet, were invited to create copies of masterpieces from the Louvre's collection. Their works are now on view in the exhibition "Copyists" at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, a satellite of the Pompidou in northeastern France. The show features reinterpretations of iconic paintings such as Eugène Delacroix's *Liberty Leading the People* (1830), Giovanni Bellini's *Portrait of a Man* (ca. 1475–1500), and Théodore Géricault's *The Raft of Medusa* (1818–19), among others. Co-curators Donatien Grau and Chiara Parisi emphasize that the exhibition is about the act of copying itself, not just the resulting copies, and that it creates a dialogue between contemporary artists and historical masters.

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Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, has sold its Freedman Gallery collection for $995,000 to address budget deficits, despite immediate pushback from faculty, community members, and the Freedman family. The Reading Public Museum acquired more than 250 works through a pre-sale agreement, selecting pieces that enhance its holdings, include renowned masters, or have local resonance. The remaining works were auctioned online by Pook and Pook on July 16, surpassing presale estimates, with top lots by Salvador Dalí and Leonid Sokov.

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The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is launching a global centenary celebration for the artist's 100th birthday, spanning 2025–2026. The program includes major exhibitions at seven institutions across five countries, such as "Five Friends" at Museum Brandhorst in Munich and Museum Ludwig in Cologne, photography shows at the Museum of the City of New York and Fundación Juan March in Madrid, and an exhibition at M+ in Hong Kong focusing on Rauschenberg's ROCI program. The foundation is also initiating grant-making initiatives to highlight Rauschenberg's legacy in art, technology, environmentalism, and social justice.

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Sotheby's London modern and contemporary evening sale brought in $85.7 million, down from $105 million last year, with highlights including a $10 million Tamara de Lempicka and a record $9.6 million auction result for Jenny Saville's drawing 'Mirror'. In other market news, a crowdfunding campaign raised over £100,000 to help Bristol Museum acquire a rediscovered J.M.W. Turner painting, and a Tiffany Studio window sold for $4.2 million at Christie's. Galleries announced new representation deals: James Cohan now represents Ranti Bam, Maruani Mercier represents Kate Gottgens, and Yancey Richardson represents Karen Gunderson; Ronchini gallery is moving to a new Mayfair location. Tate launched a £150 million endowment fund, the Louvre announced an international architectural competition to address overcrowding, the Uffizi imposed selfie restrictions after a tourist damaged a painting, the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired a rare Giambologna marble, and Italy's culture minister pledged support for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

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Art Basel in Basel has concluded, with galleries reporting hundreds of sales despite low expectations set by lackluster New York auction results. Dealers shared prices ranging from $1 million to $17 million, with top sales including David Hockney's *Mid November Tunnel* (2006) at Annely Juda Fine Art ($13M–$17M), a Ruth Asawa sculpture at David Zwirner ($9.5M), and a Gerhard Richter painting at David Zwirner ($6.8M). Other notable transactions include works by Keith Haring, Mark Bradford, Georg Baselitz, and George Condo, though many galleries provided only price ranges and withheld exact titles or mediums.

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Art Basel 2025 in Switzerland, now in its 55th edition, opened with 289 exhibitors amid a soft and unpredictable art market. Major sales included a Ruth Asawa sculpture for $9.5 million at David Zwirner, a Gerhard Richter painting for $6.8 million, and a Keith Haring from 1983 for $3.5 million at Gladstone. The top reported sale was David Hockney's 'Mid November Tunnel' (2006) for $13-17 million at Annely Juda Fine Art. Hauser & Wirth headlined with a moody Mark Rothko from the early 1960s, while galleries adopted strategies of offering wide price ranges and diverse styles to hedge against market uncertainty.

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A judge has sentenced two men for stealing Maurizio Cattelan's 18-carat gold toilet, titled "America," from Blenheim Palace in England during a 2019 raid. Michael Jones received 27 months in prison for burglary, while James Sheen was sentenced to four years, added to his existing 19-year term for other crimes. The theft took less than five minutes, causing major flooding and water damage when the toilet was ripped from the plumbing. Police arrested four men in November 2023, with evidence including DNA, phone messages, and CCTV footage leading to convictions. Fred Doe received a suspended sentence, and Bora Guccuk was found not guilty. None of the gold has been recovered and is believed to have been chopped up and sold.

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Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, is quietly selling off the Freedman Gallery collection, which includes works by Romare Bearden, Salvador Dalí, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, to address a budget shortfall that recently reached $23 million. Art preparator Rich Houck discovered the storage space emptied without notice and was fired after reporting the move; the college has cut 53 positions, canceled academic majors, and considered selling real estate as part of a broader cost-cutting campaign. Former gallery staff are no longer employed, and major donors were not informed of the sale.