The Bank of England has decided to replace historical figures, including painter J.M.W. Turner, with depictions of native UK wildlife on its next generation of banknotes. This follows a public consultation where 'Nature' was the most popular theme, selected by 60% of respondents. A panel of six wildlife experts will now create a shortlist of species for a further public vote this summer.
Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli has demanded the resignation of Tamara Gregoretti, the government's representative on the Venice Biennale board, accusing her of failing to alert the ministry to Russia's planned return to the 2026 exhibition. Russia announced it will reopen its national pavilion for the first time since 2019 with a presentation titled 'The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky,' curated by Anastasia Karneeva and featuring over 30 artists.
The Gaza Biennial, a major exhibition featuring 25 artists from Gaza, concluded its full run at the Brooklyn nonprofit space Recess, with an abbreviated version remaining on view until December 20. The show presents painting, video, drawing, and testimony created under siege, offering a powerful artistic response to the ongoing conflict and displacement.
In mid-December, Abby Jones, acting chief of protocol at the State Department, suggested during a tour of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery that the museum create a dedicated gallery featuring multiple images of President Donald Trump, in addition to his official portrait. The White House later noted it regularly receives artworks depicting Trump from supporters and proposed displaying some at the museum, though no formal request has been made. The discussion follows the gallery’s recent replacement of Trump’s official photograph with a more flattering image and the removal of wall text referencing his two impeachments, which the museum described as part of a broader exhibition update.
Soho Revue in London presents "Behind the Curtains," a group exhibition running from January 14 to February 29, 2026, featuring eight female artists—Lorena Lohr, Lucrezia Abatzoglu, Nettle Grellier, Drea Cofield, Kim Booker, Joline Kwakkenbos, Harriet Gillet, and Abigail McGinley—who reframe feminine sensuality outside the male gaze. The gallery is draped in deep red velvet, creating an intimate, private chamber that echoes Renaissance curtain conventions and the scale of 16th-century portrait miniatures, with each artist working in small formats to slow visual consumption and challenge who controls the frame.
Daniel H. Weiss, the new director of the Philadelphia Art Museum, gave his first extensive interview to the Philadelphia Inquirer, defending the museum's board after the controversial firing of his predecessor, Sasha Suda. Suda was terminated in November for alleged misappropriation of funds, including a $39,000 salary increase over two years, which she claims was authorized and is now the subject of a lawsuit. Weiss, formerly president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated the board does not need radical restructuring but acknowledged the museum faces a financial deficit and needs to address its widely ridiculed rebrand from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Philadelphia Art Museum (acronym PhAM). He has begun a listening tour with staff to assess problems, and the marketing chief who led the rebrand has since resigned.
The British Museum announced that 2024 was a record year for archaeological discoveries made by the public in the UK, with 79,616 finds recorded. Of these, 1,540 were classified as "treasure" under the 1996 Treasure Act, the highest number ever in a single year and the third consecutive record-breaking year. Ninety-four percent of the discoveries were made by metal detectorists. The figures come from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), a project jointly managed by the British Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru–Museums Wales. Notable finds include a hoard of silver pennies from Harold II's reign, a Roman vehicle fitting with a panther and severed human head, and early medieval gold and silver objects.
The Trump administration is considering West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., as the site for its proposed “National Garden of American Heroes,” a sculpture garden featuring statues of American historical figures. According to anonymous sources cited by the Washington Post, the park—located near the Jefferson Memorial and memorials to Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt—may require an exemption under the Commemorative Works Act if the southern tip is used. The project, first announced in January 2021, received $40 million in congressional funding through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, and the National Endowment for the Humanities launched a new grant program for statue design after canceling most of its existing grants.
Sotheby's will hold its first luxury marquee sales in Abu Dhabi from December 3 to 5 as part of Abu Dhabi Collectors' Week, featuring Formula 1 cars, an Aston Martin, diamonds, and rare Rolexes. The sales coincide with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and other major events, backed by a $1 billion investment from majority shareholder Patrick Drahi and Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund ADQ, along with support from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office. The auction house is focusing on luxury goods rather than fine art, with only a non-selling exhibition of Old Masters to contemporary works.
Unionized staff at the Louvre Museum in Paris voted unanimously to continue a strike that began on Monday, with hundreds of workers walking out to protest deteriorating working conditions, insufficient staffing, and a proposed dual pricing system for non-EU visitors. The strike has forced partial closures, with the museum offering only a limited 'masterpiece route' featuring works like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Unions rejected a Culture Ministry offer to cancel a planned €5.7 million budget cut, recruit more staff, and raise pay, deeming the proposals insufficient. Workers also oppose a plan to raise ticket prices for non-EU visitors from €22 to €32 to fund renovations, and criticize the use of funds from a brand licensing deal with Abu Dhabi.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has opened a major exhibition titled "Marie Antoinette Style," showcasing items from the French queen's life and death, including her final letter, a guillotine blade, and a plain linen chemise she wore in prison. The exhibition explores her legacy as a style icon and the public's enduring fascination with her execution during the French Revolution, featuring objects linked to her imprisonment and the macabre history of Madame Tussauds' Chamber of Horrors.
The LA Art Show will launch its 31st edition from January 7–11, 2026, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, directed by Kassandra Voyagis. Featuring over 90 exhibitors, the fair introduces a new Latin American Pavilion curated by Marisa Caichiolo, focusing on memory, migration, and identity. It also returns with its non-commercial platform DIVERSEartLA, titled “The Biennials and Art Institutions in the Contemporary Art Ecosystem,” which examines the roles of biennials and museums through five installations and a video presentation. Participating galleries include Rehs Galleries, Inc., Gallery Artwall, Teranarva, and Oliver Sears Gallery, the first Irish gallery to join the fair.
The Victoria & Albert Museum in London removed an image of an artwork depicting the Prophet Muhammad from its website due to security concerns following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. The artwork, a poster made by an Iranian artist around 1990, remains in the museum's collection and is available to scholars by appointment. The decision has drawn criticism from experts who view it as self-censorship that could undermine the study of Islamic art.
Artist Gail Morris presents "Blue Note," a solo exhibition at Bonner David Galleries in New York, featuring bold abstract paintings that explore the emotional and psychological experience of light, space, and music. The show's title references the musical concept of a "blue note," which Morris reinterprets as a compositional strategy to create tension and balance in her works. While starting from physical landscapes—such as natural sites, urban parks, or islands—Morris obscures specific details, using titles like "Down By the River" (2025) and "Bird of Paradise" (2025) to evoke universal moods rather than literal scenes. The exhibition runs through November 29, 2025.
The American Numismatic Society (ANS), a 166-year-old organization dedicated to coin collecting and research, is relocating from Lower Manhattan to the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. The move, set for 2028, will see the ANS occupy a four-story Art Deco building on the museum's campus, where it will establish a new home featuring a library, auditorium, and education center. The partnership will integrate the ANS's collection of 800,000 coins, medals, and monetary objects into the museum's reinstallation of its collection galleries in 2027, with the ANS mounting its own exhibitions starting the following year.
Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares inaugurated an exhibition titled “Half the World: Women in Indigenous Mexico” at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, featuring over 400 works on loan from the Mexican government. At the press conference, Albares acknowledged that Spain's colonization of Mexico caused “pain and injustice” toward indigenous peoples, but stopped short of issuing a full apology. This follows a 2019 letter from former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador demanding an apology from Spain and the Catholic Church for the conquest, which Spain rejected. Current Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has reiterated the demand, calling the original letter “very diplomatic” and criticizing Spain's response as “undiplomatic.”
British artist and designer Mason Newman is selling limited-edition silkscreen prints of his artwork "Prince of Darkness," which was gifted to the late Ozzy Osbourne just before the Black Sabbath vocalist's death. The prints, featuring goldleaf detail and limited to an edition of 76, are priced at £850 and benefit Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorns Hospice, and Cure Parkinson’s, in line with the Osbourne family’s wishes. The release coincided with the airing of two documentaries about Osbourne on BBC and Paramount+.
Claudia Gould, who left the Jewish Museum in New York in 2023 after a twelve-year tenure, has been appointed director of the Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York. The museum, which holds one of the world's most significant collections of Shaker material culture, is building a new $30 million flagship space designed by Selldorf Architects, known for recent work on the Frick Collection. Gould expressed excitement about building a museum from the ground up, a challenge she described as different from restructuring an existing organization.
James Sundquist and Jack Chase founded U-Haul Gallery in May 2024, a commercial art space operating out of rented U-Haul trucks to bypass New York's high real estate costs. The gallery mounts pop-up exhibitions in unconventional locations, such as public parks and sporting events, and recently staged a performance titled "Show of Stolen Goods" by artist Victoria Gill. This September, the duo will launch the U-Haul Art Fair, running concurrently with the Armory Show in West Chelsea, featuring 10 exhibitors each stationed in their own U-Haul truck.
Lumin Wakoa, a rising painter known for her hazy, memory-based works that blurred abstraction and figuration, has died at 43 after battling brain cancer. Her death was announced by her gallery, Harper’s, on Monday. Wakoa had solo shows last year at Various Small Fires in Seoul and Harper’s in New York, and her work was featured at Frieze art fair. She studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of Florida, and earned an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.
The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Cairo has delayed its official opening again, now expected in the fourth quarter of 2025, due to regional conflicts including the Israel-Iran war. Originally proposed in 1992 and under construction since 2002, the $1 billion museum has faced repeated setbacks from the Arab Spring, the pandemic, and wars in Gaza and Sudan. When it opens, it will showcase over 100,000 artifacts, making it the largest archaeological museum in the world, with the Tutankhamun galleries as its centerpiece featuring over 5,398 objects from the pharaoh's tomb.
In 1986, divers recovered ancient fragments from a lake in Longford County, Ireland, which were later identified as the Lough Kinale Book Shrine, the largest and oldest book shrine in Ireland. After a 39-year conservation process at the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), the 9th-century oak and bronze container is now on public display. The shrine, featuring intricate metalwork, snake-head hinges, and a permanently sealed interior, was reconstructed using photogrammetry and 3D modeling. It is part of the NMI exhibition "Words on the Wave," which showcases over 100 early medieval artifacts, including manuscripts on loan from the Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland.
The Trump administration laid off approximately 100 employees from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on June 10, part of a broader reduction in force that has left fewer than 60 staff remaining at the agency. The cuts follow earlier funding freezes and a $65 million budget reduction by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with funds redirected to President Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes. The NEH’s union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, has condemned the restructuring as an existential threat to institutions that rely on NEH grants for research, preservation, and education.
Maura Brewer, a Los Angeles-based artist and academic, creates video works that expose the role of art in money laundering. Her 2021 piece *Private Client Services* demonstrates the laundering process, while *Offshore* (2024) serves as a satirical guide for artists navigating global finance, featuring locations like the Cayman Islands and Geneva Freeport. Her ongoing project *Leverage* examines art-backed loans through the case of collector Daniel Sundheim. Brewer also works as a private investigator and recently lost her home in the Eaton Fire.
Tony Karman, the longtime director of Expo Chicago, will step down from his role at the end of June, remaining as president in an advisory capacity while the fair searches for a new director. Karman founded Expo Chicago in 2011, succeeding Art Chicago, and has led the fair through 14 editions, including its most recent one last month with 170 exhibitors and over 35,000 visitors. The transition follows Frieze's acquisition of Expo Chicago and the Armory Show in July 2023, and comes amid broader ownership changes at Frieze itself, which was recently sold to a company founded by Ari Emanuel and is now fully owned by private equity firm Silver Lake.
The inaugural VIMA contemporary art fair opened in Limassol, Cyprus, at a former SODAP winery industrial site. Co-founded by Lara Kotreleva, Edgar Gadzhiev, and Nadezhda Zinovskaya, the fair aims to spotlight Cypriot and Mediterranean art, featuring a curated outdoor exhibition titled 'The Posterity of the Sun' with 17 artists, including Valentinos Charalambous, Monia Ben Hamouda, and Adrian Pepe. Curator Ludovic Delalan emphasized the site's historical and natural context.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles has laid off 15 full-time employees (14% of its full-time staff) and seven part-time workers, primarily affecting its Learning & Engagement and Museum Services teams. The cuts also include Regan Pro, deputy director of public programs and social impact, and Bernardo Rondeau, curator of film programs. The museum, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, has faced multiple delays due to supply-chain issues, pushing its opening from 2023 to 2026, and recently underwent a leadership transition with director Sandra Jackson-Dumont stepping down.
Jongjin Park won the 2026 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize and €50,000 for his work "Strata of Illusion, 2025," which combines glassblowing and bookbinding techniques using porcelain-coated paper layers. The ceremony took place at the National Gallery Singapore, with a jury led by Loewe's new creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, alongside architects Minsuk Cho, Frida Escobedo, Wang Shu, and Patricia Urquiola. Special mentions went to Graziano Visintin for his necklace "Collier" and a collaborative piece by Baba Tree Master Weavers and Álvaro Catalán de Ocón. The exhibition of 30 finalists, selected from over 5,100 applicants across 133 countries, runs at the National Gallery Singapore through June 14.
TEFAF New York returns to the Park Avenue Armory from May 15-19, featuring 88 dealers and galleries from 14 countries across four continents. The fair distinguishes itself from competitors like Frieze, NADA, and Independent by offering an unusually broad range of works—from Modernist paintings and contemporary sculpture to ancient artifacts, fine jewelry, and design. Notable exhibitors include Gagosian showing Kathleen Ryan’s bejeweled fruit sculptures, Thaddaeus Ropac presenting newcomer Eva Helene Pade, and Belgian dealer David Lévy pairing Keith Haring with Willem de Kooning. Design is a particular highlight this year, with galleries such as Sarah Myerscough, Gomide&Co, and Modernity Stockholm showcasing everything from Shaker-inspired chairs to Brazilian modernist furniture and Scandinavian classics.
Cultured magazine profiles artist Nicole Eisenman as part of its 2026 CULT100 honorees, featuring a short interview accompanied by photography by Lee Mary Manning. Eisenman discusses her daily life, creative influences, and art-world politics, mentioning her sofa, friends, and a hypothetical obituary headline. The piece highlights her role in the revival of figurative painting and her work in large-scale public sculpture.