The Denver Art Museum has announced a major touring exhibition of Australian Indigenous Art, set to open in April 2026. The show is a collaborative effort organized by the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and will also travel to the Portland Art Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum.
The Portland Art Museum has opened a new permanent gallery dedicated to Black artists, named for local artist, dancer, and educator Thelma Johnson Streat. The gallery, which opened on the first day of Black History Month, features a variety of works by Black Oregon artists, including multimedia installations, paintings, drawings, and a large photographic grid.
The Galerie Lelong in New York is presenting the first U.S. solo exhibition of Argentine-Italian artist Elda Cerrato, who died in 2023. The show features two distinct series: abstract "cosmovision" paintings from the 1960s exploring invisible energies, and more overtly political map-based works from the 1970s created in response to authoritarian regimes in Latin America.
The Studio Museum in Harlem was forced to evacuate visitors and close for the weekend after a sprinkler emergency caused water to leak from a ceiling near the gift shop. The incident occurred on Friday, January 24, 2025, during preparations for a winter storm that brought heavy snow and freezing temperatures to Manhattan. A museum spokesperson confirmed that no artworks or galleries were affected, and the museum planned to reopen on Wednesday, January 28. The museum had recently reopened in November 2024 in a new building designed by David Adjaye's firm.
Artist Ai Weiwei returned to his native China after 10 years in exile, making a quiet three-week trip to Beijing last month. It was his first visit since authorities returned his confiscated passport in 2015, allowing him to leave China and live in Europe. During the trip, Ai was briefly interrogated at the airport but otherwise faced no interference. He shared photos and videos on Instagram, and told CNN the visit felt like a reconnection after a decade-long disconnection. The trip was partly motivated by a desire for his 17-year-old son and 93-year-old mother to meet.
A significant number of American art museums are currently without a permanent director, or will soon be. Recent departures include Sally Tallant from the Queens Museum to lead London's Hayward Gallery, and David Brenneman from Telfair Museums due to a medical condition. Other high-profile vacancies include the National Portrait Gallery, MOCA Los Angeles, the New Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Clark Art Institute, the Newark Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many others across various budget sizes and regions.
The FOG Design+Art fair in San Francisco opened with a glitzy preview gala at Fort Mason Center, serving as a fundraiser for SFMOMA's education initiatives. VIP tickets started at $10,000 for the first hour, and by 7 p.m., the event filled to capacity as prices dropped to $250. Dealers reported a different energy this year, partly due to the recent Los Angeles wildfires affecting many participating galleries. Sales were strong, with New York dealer Ales Ortuzar selling multiple works by Suzanne Jackson in the first few hours. Local collector Sonya Yu, a recent ARTnews Top 200 listee, highlighted the resilience and sophistication of the Bay Area art community.
A long-lost portrait of Scottish poet Robert Burns by Sir Henry Raeburn has been rediscovered and is now on display at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. The painting was found at a London house sale last year, consigned to Wimbledon Auctions with a low estimate of £300–£500, but sold for £68,000 after intense bidding. It was purchased by Edinburgh-based art collector William Zachs, who had it restored and brought to Scotland, where experts confirmed it as an authentic Raeburn. The work is a copy Raeburn made in 1803 of a 1787 portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, commissioned by London publishers Cadell & Davies but lost shortly after completion.
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.
Lorena Levi, a British artist known for her narrative portraits painted on wood, died on January 8 at age 29 after battling pancreatic cancer. Her death was announced via Instagram. Levi gained rapid momentum in the UK art scene over the past few years, staging a show in Milan with M+B gallery, participating in the V.O. Curations program, and being added to Marlborough Gallery's roster shortly before it closed in 2023. Her work is held in the British government's national collection. She was born in Istanbul in 1997, raised in Tel Aviv and the UK, and studied at Art & Guilds in London and Edinburgh College of Art.
A charity art auction in London is bringing together works by Brian Eno, Antony Gormley, and other prominent artists to raise funds for medical aid in Gaza. The auction, organized by the platform Shortlist, features a range of contemporary pieces donated by artists and collectors to support emergency healthcare for Palestinian medics and civilians affected by the conflict.
Peruvian artist Antonio Paucar has won the 11th Artes Mundi Award, receiving £40,000 to support his performance, sculpture, and video practice rooted in Andean culture and his Peruvian heritage. The award ceremony took place on January 15 at Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum in Cardiff, where a group exhibition of the six shortlisted artists runs through March 1. Paucar plans to use the prize money to convert his family's ancestral adobe home in the central highlands of Peru into a combined museum and art school, addressing the lack of such institutions in the region.
Montreal-based Galerie de Bellefeuille, a commercial gallery founded in 1980 that represents over 100 artists including Damien Hirst, Robert Indiana, Jeff Koons, and Alexander Calder, has announced it will open a 4,000-square-foot location at 136 NW 25th St. in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood this summer. The expansion comes shortly after the gallery's planned U.S. flagship in Midtown New York, and marks the latest in a wave of international galleries establishing a presence in Miami.