Thomas Bangalter, formerly of the electronic music duo Daft Punk, is scheduled to co-headline an immersive experience called 'WAREHOUSE ARTEFACTS' at the Art Basel fair in Basel, Switzerland. The event, produced by Nordstern Basel nightclub in cooperation with Art Basel and Fondation Beyeler, will also feature house music producer Rampa and conceptual artist Julian Charrière.
Karen Archey, the head of curatorial at Düsseldorf's K20 and K21 museums, shares personal insights in an interview format. She reveals her obsession with painter Alice Neel, discusses a formative 2007 summer touring major European art events, and lists the poetry and audio currently occupying her attention.
Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 showcased a vibrant array of talent, with standout presentations across its curated sectors like Discoveries and Insights. Highlights included Vin Gallery's ceramic skeleton shadow puppets by Ako Goto, Lucie Chang Fine Arts' case for the late painter Zhu Xinjian, and gdm's pairing of Kongkee's lightbox sculptures with abstract works by Thai modernist Tang Chang. The fair also featured a monumental, self-sabotaged neon sign by Kongkee reading "Price / Value."
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has launched a major retrospective of Carol Bove, filling the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda with approximately 100 works spanning her career. The exhibition showcases Bove’s evolution from her early assemblages of driftwood, peacock feathers, and vintage books to her more recent large-scale, brightly colored steel sculptures. A defining feature of the show is Bove’s inclusion of "para-artworks"—pieces by other artists such as Lionel Ziprin, Agnes Martin, and Arnaldo Pomodoro—integrated into her own installations to highlight the influences and histories that inform her practice.
The Venice Biennale is facing intense international backlash following its decision to allow Russia to return for the 2026 edition after a hiatus caused by the invasion of Ukraine. High-ranking politicians from 22 European nations, along with thousands of artists and curators, have signed open letters condemning the move as a platform for state-directed cultural diplomacy and war-crime whitewashing. The Biennale has defended its stance by claiming a policy of non-censorship, asserting that it accepts any nation recognized by the Italian government.
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Artist Julia Sherman and urban farmer Camilla Hammer have transformed the rooftop of MoMA PS1 into a functional salad garden and social space. The initiative recently celebrated its launch with a rooftop party featuring herb-infused cocktails and fresh produce grown on-site. The garden serves as a platform for Sherman’s "Artist-Made" salad series, where notable figures from the art world collaborate on culinary creations.
Kim Gordon, the co-founder of Sonic Youth, is currently the subject of two major exhibitions at Amant in Brooklyn. The first, a solo survey titled "Count Your Chickens," showcases two decades of her multidisciplinary practice including painting, ceramics, and film, while the second, "Folded Group," is a group show she co-curated with Bill Nace featuring artists who bridge the gap between music and visual art.
Nifty Gateway, a once-prominent curated NFT marketplace, has announced its closure after failing to achieve its ambitious goal of converting one billion people into NFT owners. The platform, which initially succeeded by focusing on digital art sales, leveraged social media metrics like Instagram popularity to select artists such as Kenny Scharf, Filip Hodas, and FVCKRENDER, favoring a pop-centric, visually digestible aesthetic.
The National Gallery in London has partnered with LG Electronics to make over 4,000 images from its collection available on the LG Gallery+ digital platform. Users can now display high-quality digital reproductions of masterpieces by artists like Monet, Gauguin, and Seurat on their LG OLED screens at home, using a curated, playlist-like interface called LG Gallery+ Shelves.
Nifty Gateway, a major NFT marketplace launched in 2020, permanently shut down in February 2026. Its closure coincided with a severe cryptocurrency market sell-off, adding to a list of defunct NFT exchanges and contributing to the perception of a market collapse.
The fifth edition of the Every Woman Biennial, titled "I Will Always Love You," concludes its run at La MaMa Galleria in New York. Featuring over 200 female and non-binary artists, the salon-style exhibition showcases a diverse range of media including neon sculpture, textiles, and video, alongside a series of high-energy performances. Notable participants include Michele Pred, Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, and Swoon, with the event maintaining its tradition of honoring the legacy of Whitney Houston while providing an inclusive platform for contemporary creators.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is reportedly planning a major retrospective of the American artist Cy Twombly, scheduled for 2029. Evidence of the exhibition surfaced through a job posting for a researcher, which describes a comprehensive show featuring paintings, sculptures, and drawings that explore Twombly’s career across two continents and the influence of ancient myths and literature on his work. While the Met and the Cy Twombly Foundation have not yet officially confirmed the exhibition, the listing remains active on several professional platforms.
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The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced the artist lineup for the 82nd edition of its prestigious biennial, scheduled to open on March 8, 2026. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the exhibition will feature 56 artists, duos, and collectives selected after more than 300 studio visits. The upcoming edition is currently untitled and focuses on the theme of "relationships," exploring everything from family ties and technology to geopolitical entanglements and interspecies connections.
DePaul University has announced the permanent closure of the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) in Chicago, effective June 30. The decision comes as the private university faces severe financial strain, including a $27.4 million budget deficit that has already led to significant staff layoffs. While the university plans to convene discussions on how the museum's building and its 4,000-object collection might serve future academic needs, the institution as a public-facing museum will cease operations following its final exhibitions in March.
Marilyn Minter has been named the 28th recipient of the International Artist Award by the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. The artist, celebrated for her feminist works that merge painting and photography, will be honored during the center's annual Ranch Week in July. The selection highlights Minter's meticulous technical process and her long-standing commitment to art education as a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts.
High Line Art has announced its 2026 season of public art commissions for New York's elevated park. The program includes a billboard work by Katherine Bernhardt and three major installations by Patricia Ayres, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Derek Fordjour, alongside video works for the High Line Channel by Saba Khan and a film grouping by Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman.
The House of Electronic Arts (HEK) in Basel and the Tezos Foundation have announced a year-long partnership to integrate blockchain technology into museum experiences. The collaboration includes virtual and physical exhibitions, workshops, and preservation initiatives, featuring six international digital artists. Exhibitions will be hosted on HEK's online platform virtual.hek and outdoors during Art Basel, with artworks released via the Tezos-based marketplace Objkt. The partnership also involves on-site kiosks and educational workshops on NFTs and digital ownership, as well as HEK's participation in the EU COST Action EMBARK training school on NFT preservation at ZKM in Karlsruhe.
Artnet News is searching for a permanent writer for its Wet Paint gossip column, with guest writers like Janelle Zara filling in temporarily. The column focuses on speculating about the identity of the anonymous Instagram account @artnotnet, which posts humorous, all-caps commentary on art world headlines, and notes the rise of art sales on platforms like Facebook Marketplace.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco announced a major public art commission by Jeffrey Gibson for Super Bowl LX festivities. The work, an adaptation of Gibson's 2022 video installation "THIS BURNING WORLD," will be installed as a 433-foot-long vinyl mural on the former Bloomingdale's building at San Francisco Centre, wrapping an entire city block. It will be fully unveiled on February 2, 2026, coinciding with the FOG Design+Art Fair. The project is funded by the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation and the Yerba Buena Partnership, which have previously supported public art by Sarah Sze and Hank Willis Thomas.
A new TV series titled "The Artist" on The Network offers a chaotic, irreverent take on art history, centering on a widow (Janet McTeer) who may have murdered her robber-baron husband. The show features historical figures like Edgar Degas and Thomas Edison, blending campy soap-opera drama with accurate art-historical references, including real artworks by Monet, Manet, Cassatt, and Degas. The final episodes air December 25 on a free ad-sponsored platform created by director Aram Rappaport.
Artissima, Italy's only contemporary art fair, closed its 32nd edition on November 2, 2025, at the Oval Lingotto Fiere in Turin, drawing 34,500 visitors and 176 galleries from 36 countries. Directed by Luigi Fassi for the fourth year, the fair ran from October 30 to November 2, featuring 63 monographic presentations and 26 first-time exhibitors. The edition introduced a new 5% VAT rate on artworks in Italy, awarded 13 prizes including the new Vilnius Residency Prize, and saw the Fondazione Arte CRT Acquisition Fund acquire 26 works for GAM Torino and Castello di Rivoli, marking its 25th anniversary. Special projects included "From Japan: Anonymous Art Project" and a film screening by Basim Magdy at Parco Michelotti.
Konstantin Akinsha, a prominent curator and art historian of Russian and Ukrainian art, has identified 14 artworks in the collection of the Palazzo de Nordis museum in Cividale del Friuli, Italy, as likely forgeries. In a Substack post and interview with ARTnews, Akinsha scrutinized the De Martiis Collection, donated in 2015 by the late collector Giancarlo De Martiis, which includes works attributed to Russian and Ukrainian modernist painters. He points to suspicious provenances involving Jean Chauvelin, a disgraced French art dealer, and Boris Gribanov, a convicted forger. A specific still life attributed to Olga Rozanova (1915-17) is nearly identical to a 1999 painting by contemporary Russian artist Andrei Saratov, who confirmed he did not paint the museum's version. Elisabetta Gottardo, the municipal head of culture, acknowledged Akinsha's authority and pledged further investigation.
Kenny Schachter's column reveals that Jeff Bezos secretly bought Frida Kahlo's 1941 painting *Me and My Parrot* for over $130 million in a private auction hosted by Christie's in 2021, and that Mark Zuckerberg recently purchased René Magritte's 1964 painting *Le fils de l'homme* (The Son of Man) for roughly $150 million in another private treaty sale negotiated by Christie's. The article also discusses a new private auction Christie's is organizing for a major Magritte work valued north of $50 million, and critiques the growing influence of tech billionaires—the "Magnificent 7"—on the art market.
The second annual ARTnews Awards have announced their 2025 winners, selected by a jury of five esteemed US-based curators: Ryan N. Dennis (Co-Director & Chief Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston), Anne Ellegood (Executive Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), Rosario Güiraldes (Curator of Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis), Ruba Katrib (Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1, New York), and Victoria Sung (Phyllis C. Wattis Senior Curator, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). These jurors reviewed exhibitions held between August 2024 and July 2025, meeting twice alongside two ARTnews senior editors to nominate and select winners across six categories.
Claes Oldenburg's 1969 sculpture *Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks* was vandalized in October when the letters "ATB" were etched into its metal base. Yale University is relocating the 24-foot-tall work from the Morse College courtyard to the Yale University Art Gallery for conservation and care, following the discovery of the defacement. The sculpture, a beloved campus landmark originally installed in Beinecke Plaza, has a history of being removed and restored due to weather damage and graffiti.
Komal Shah, a prominent art collector, announced the renaming of her Shah Garg Foundation to the Making Their Mark Foundation, coinciding with a three-day forum in Washington, D.C., scheduled for March 2025. The foundation takes its name from the traveling exhibition "Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection," curated by Cecilia Alemani, which highlights women artists from Shah and her husband Gaurav Garg's collection. The forum, held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, will feature panels, keynotes, and performances organized around themes like Visionary Voices and Changemakers, with Alemani as curatorial director and Loring Randolph as director.
A new experimental space called Padimai Art & Tech Studio will open in November 2025 at Tanjong Pagar Distripark in Singapore. The launch features a VR work by artist Olafur Eliasson titled "Your view matter" (2022/25), commissioned by the studio's founder, technologist and collector Vignesh Sundaresan (also known as Metakovan). Sundaresan made headlines in 2021 with his record-breaking $69.3 million purchase of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days." The work guides participants through six geometric virtual environments, with each visitor's trajectory and point of view recorded as a unique data file stored in a blockchain-based archive.
Singer-songwriter Jewel, a Grammy nominee and former sculpture student, will debut her first solo exhibition titled "Matriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost" at Salone Verde in Venice from May 10 to November 22, 2025, coinciding with the 62nd Venice Biennale. The show, presented by Crystal Bridges Museum of Art and organized by curator-at-large Joe Thompson, features new paintings, sculptures, tapestries, installations, and sound works exploring feminine power, climate change, and universal connection. Highlights include a massive plaster sculpture of a pregnant woman created with artist Patrick Bongoy, a glass installation produced at the Toledo Museum of Art, and works incorporating data from NASA, NOAA, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley.
Shanghai Art Week 2025 is underway, anchored by two major concurrent art fairs: Art021 Shanghai and West Bund Art and Design, running from November 13 to 16. West Bund has relocated to a new venue, the West Bund Convention Center designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, featuring over 200 participants including 106 galleries in its main sector. Art021 returns to the Shanghai Exhibition Center with 139 galleries from 22 countries, including 33 first-time participants. The Shanghai Biennale opened early at the Power Station of Art, curated by Kitty Scott under the title "Does the Flower Hear the Bee?" featuring 67 artists and collectives. Meanwhile, alternative events like "Artist's Treat," launched by Xu Zhen in collaboration with Hol Platform and ShanghArt Gallery, are drawing attention in repurposed local spaces.
At Brooklyn's Pioneer Works, a drag queen professional wrestling event called Choke Hole, part of artist Raúl de Nieves's exhibition, was disrupted when audience member and performer Chiquitita stormed the stage. She objected to a skit that made light of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations, shouting that 'ICE is not entertainment!' and hurling the microphone into a video screen. The performance, titled ARMAGEDDON, featured an alien queen plot involving nuclear codes and ICE, and Choke Hole later apologized, removing the segment from subsequent shows.