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The opening ceremony of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics featured significant art-historical references, including a flame cauldron inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's knot drawings and performances that brought to life the marble sculptures of Antonio Canova. Dancers animated recreations of works like 'Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss,' and the ceremony included symbolic representations of Italian architectural landmarks like the Colosseum and Florence's Duomo.

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Artnet News has compiled a selection of artworks created in anticipation of Pope Francis's first visit to the United States. The works include Anthony VanArsdale's portrait for the North American College in Rome, a new addition to the 'Franks' mural at Philadelphia's Dirty Franks bar, a massive photo-realistic mural by Van Hecht-Nielsen overlooking Madison Square Garden in New York, a large-scale mural by Caesar Viveros for the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, and a controversial, officially licensed portrait by Perry Milou. Other featured pieces include an illustration by Omkar Shivaprasad and a vandalized mural in Bolivia by William Luna and Guillermo Rodriguez.

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French figurative painter Claire Tabouret has been awarded the commission to create new stained glass windows for Notre-Dame Cathedral, replacing 19th-century works by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus that survived the 2019 fire. Her designs, featuring multiethnic, multigenerational worshipers during Pentecost, were unveiled in the exhibition "Claire Tabouret: In a Single Breath" at the Grand Palais. The project, chosen by President Emmanuel Macron and Archbishop Laurent Ulrich from 110 candidates, has drawn criticism as an act of vanity and a possible violation of heritage guidelines, though Tabouret and Macron remain undeterred.

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The article recounts the creation and controversy surrounding Michelangelo's fresco of the Last Judgement on the west wall of the Sistine Chapel. While the chapel attracts 25,000 daily visitors and is celebrated as a pinnacle of Renaissance art, the west wall initially provoked scorn from church officials and critics like Biagio da Cesena and Pietro Aretino, who objected to its nudity, pagan imagery, and perceived idolatry. Michelangelo retaliated by painting his detractors into the fresco—Da Cesena as King Minos with donkey ears and a snake biting his genitals, and Aretino as Saint Bartholomew holding flayed skin resembling the artist.

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In 1995, artist Red Grooms created the Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel, a working carousel featuring 36 figures from Tennessee history, installed at the base of Nashville's Broadway. After financial troubles forced its closure in 2003, the Tennessee State Museum acquired and dismantled it in 2004, storing it for years. Though the museum moved to a new $160 million building in 2018, the carousel remained in storage. Now, the museum has issued a request for information seeking partners to restore and operate the carousel, as reported by the New York Times.

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Two French parliamentarians, Jean-Paul Matteï and Philippe Juvin, have proposed a new tax regime on art as part of France's 2026 budget, which would make France the only major art market to impose a wealth tax on the mere possession of artworks. The French art world has strongly opposed the proposal, with 27 signatories including Art Basel, auctioneer Drouot, visual artists' rights organization ADAGP, the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF), and the Comité Professionel des Galeries d’Art (CPGA). Critics argue the tax is technically unenforceable, would drive collectors away, and harm the broader art ecosystem.

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Three artists—Faith Ringgold, Jean Toche, and Jon Hendricks—organized "The People's Flag Show" at Judson Memorial Church in New York's Greenwich Village in November 1970, protesting the Vietnam War and challenging US flag desecration laws. The exhibition featured around 150 artists via open call, including Yvonne Rainer, Kate Millett, and the Guerrilla Art Action Group. On November 13, 1970, Ringgold, Toche, and Hendricks were arrested and fined $100 for flag desecration; their case was later dismissed with help from the American Civil Liberties Union. Now, 55 years later, Judson Commons—the church's nonprofit arts arm—is mounting a new version of the exhibition, again via open call, featuring over 60 artists and a week of programming in the Judson Gym.

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Phillips auction house announced a new fee structure for fall 2025 called "priority bidding," which offers lower buyer's premium rates to bidders who place written bids at least 48 hours before a live sale. The move aims to encourage early engagement and generate more spirited bidding, while also providing certainty for sellers. The house is simultaneously raising its standard buyer's premium to as high as 29 percent on works up to $1 million, making it the highest among major auction houses. CEO Martin Wilson, who took over in January, hopes the program will mitigate risk and shore up sales of mid-priced works.

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American artist Alan Sonfist, a pioneer of the Land Art movement known for his 1978 work "Time Landscape" in New York City, has opened a solo exhibition titled "Seeds of Time" at Parco Arte Vivente (PAV) in Turin, Italy. Curated by Marco Scotini, the show features a new installation, "Growth Between the Cracks" (2025), for which Sonfist collaborated with local residents to collect soil samples from overlooked urban spaces across Turin. The exhibition revisits Sonfist's early ecological works and includes a conversation between the artist and curator about the evolution of environmental art.

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Billionaire collector Ronald Perelman's $410 million insurance trial has finally begun after seven years of litigation, over 1,500 court filings, and a 2018 fire at his East Hampton estate. The dispute centers on five paintings by Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol that survived the fire but were exposed to smoke and sprinklers. Perelman claims the works lost their market appeal—their "oomph"—while insurers at Lloyd's of London dispute any detectable damage and allege Perelman quietly tried to sell some of the pieces. The trial has also revealed that Perelman sold over 70 works from his collection after a margin call from Deutsche Bank, with some contested paintings used as collateral.

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Jeffrey Deitch, former dealer and ex-director of MOCA LA, has partnered with property developer Thor Equities to create "Coney Art Walls," a summertime display of street art murals on concrete slabs in Coney Island, New York. Located on a vacant lot at 1320 Bowery Street owned by Thor Equities, the project features works by over a dozen artists including Lady Pink, Daze, Lee Quiñones, Swoon, and Mister Cartoon, and shares space with Smorgasburg, a food and drink pop-up village. The article criticizes the venture as a real estate marketing ploy rather than a genuine art exhibition.

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An Oklahoma bankruptcy court ruled on April 28 that Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, will be sold for $1.4 million to McFarlin Building LLC. The sale concludes a two-year legal saga involving previous owner Cynthia Blanchard, who acquired the building for $10 in 2023 but failed to follow through on promised renovations, leading to a bankruptcy auction with no additional bids beyond McFarlin's baseline offer. The new owner, Macy Snyder-Amatucci, plans to revive the building as a hotel and residences.

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A rare 16th-century mural has been discovered on an apartment building near the Rialto Bridge in Venice, hidden for centuries beneath layers of plaster. The painting, featuring three life-sized allegorical figures by an unknown artist, was uncovered during a routine restoration of the building on Riva del Ferro. After being reported to Venice’s Superintendency for Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape, a major restoration project was undertaken by the private company Seres srl. Conservators cleaned the heavily deteriorated work, removing dirt, calcium oxalates, and a modern convenience store sign, revealing the mural's vivid palette and dynamic composition.

‘It has become a symbol of hope’: the epic journey of Ukraine’s origami deer to the Venice biennale

Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova's concrete origami deer sculpture, originally installed in Pokrovsk in 2018, has been evacuated from the war-torn Donetsk region and transported across Europe to become the centerpiece of Ukraine's national pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The sculpture, which replaced a Soviet fighter-bomber monument in a local park, was rescued in August 2024 by co-curator Leonid Marushchak amid intensifying Russian attacks, with the help of city authorities and museum staff.

Has the world grown weary of art biennials? In search of an antidote, a Portuguese festival turns to anarchism

Anozero, a biennial art festival held in Coimbra's Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova, has opened a ghostly edition that uses installations—including Taryn Simon's sound piece of laments in multiple languages—to protest plans by the Portuguese government to redevelop the 17th-century convent into a hotel under its Revive programme. Festival co-founder Carlos Antunes threatens to cancel the biennial if the development proceeds, framing the event as a warning to the developer about the spirits that haunt the building.

Tyler’s reimagined Pyramid Club gallery enters final exhibition month

Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University opened an archive exhibition at the Tyler Contemporary Art Gallery on September 5, reimagining the historic Pyramid Club, a cultural hub for Black professionals in North Philadelphia from 1937 to 1963. Curated by Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta, the show features 34 paintings and 35 photographs by John Mosely, alongside works by contemporary artists like Shawn Theodore, and draws from archives by William Dodd, Leslie Willis-Lowry, and the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection. The exhibition runs through its final month, with events drawing over 200 attendees.

November Book Bag: from a tome of Japanese printmakers to the first Nina Chanel Abney monograph

The article reviews four new art books released in November. It covers 'Modern Japanese Printmakers: New Waves and Eruptions' by Malene Wagner (Prestel), a survey of 44 Japanese printmakers from the early 20th century to today; the debut monograph on Nina Chanel Abney (Monacelli) with contributions from Thelma Golden and Jazmine Hughes; 'Massimo Listri: Italian Palaces' (Taschen), a photographic tour of grand Italian palaces; and 'Strange Discoveries: The Art of Denton Welch' (John Swarbrooke Fine Art), a catalogue accompanying the first solo exhibition of Welch's work in over 40 years.

A Mural by the Painter of ‘American Gothic’ Gets New Life

Grant Wood's 1926 mural "Corn Room" has been restored and will serve as the centerpiece of a centennial exhibition at the Sioux City Art Center in Iowa. The mural, created by the painter best known for "American Gothic," depicts a vibrant interior scene dominated by corn motifs, reflecting Wood's regionalist style and his deep connection to the American Midwest.

Dialing Up the Dollars: Giorno Poetry Systems Names Inaugural Recipients of New Need-Based Grant

Giorno Poetry Systems (GPS), the New York-based nonprofit founded in 1965 by artist John Giorno, has announced the twelve inaugural recipients of its new need-based grant, the Treat a Stranger grants. Each recipient receives an unrestricted grant of $4,545 to cover daily expenses like food, housing, health care, and emergencies. The grants are a relaunch of GPS's AIDS Treatment Project grants from 1984–1994, and are named after Giorno's mantra, “Treat a complete stranger with the same compassion you would treat a lover or a good friend.” Winners are selected by a rotating anonymous jury of LGBTQIA+ artists, poets, and musicians through a multi-meeting nomination and voting process.

One of the most important galleries in Brazil is in Rome these weeks with an exhibition. The interview

Una delle più importanti gallerie del Brasile in queste settimane è a Roma con una mostra. L’intervista

Brazilian gallery A Gentil Carioca has brought the first Italian solo exhibition of artist Miguel Afa to the Fondazione Capitolina in Rome, in collaboration with the Rhinoceros space. Titled "Il tempo che vive in me" (The Time That Lives in Me), the show features works created during Afa's residency in Rome, exploring themes of time, memory, and light through oil paintings that blend Brazilian and Roman imagery.

Cambodian Artist Sopheap Pich Shares in an Exhibition how He Conceives Sculptures

Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich is presenting an exhibition at Meta House in Phnom Penh that reveals his creative process, showing how he conceives sculptures from initial drawings and woodblock prints to works in bamboo and metal. Born in Battambang, Pich survived the Khmer Rouge regime as a child and later immigrated to the U.S., earning an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before returning to Cambodia in 2002. The exhibition includes early rattan pieces and recent metal sculptures, reflecting his intuitive, memory-infused approach to making art with a team of ten assistants in his Phnom Penh studio.

Tirzah Garwood's archive of work worth £30,0000 to be sold at auction

Cheffins auction house in Cambridge, UK, will sell the first archive of work by artist Tirzah Garwood to come to the market, in its Art & Design Sale on 22 May. The archive, estimated to fetch around £30,000, includes wood engravings, pencil sketches, and a sketchbook, and has been consigned by the granddaughter of artist Frederick Austin, a friend of Garwood and her husband Eric Ravilious. The sale coincides with the first major retrospective of Garwood's work, "Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious" at Dulwich Picture Gallery, which has helped revive interest in her career.

India pavilion returns to the Venice Art Biennale 2026 with a bang after seven-year hiatus

India has returned to the Venice Art Biennale with a national pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition, after a seven-year hiatus. The pavilion, titled "Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home," is presented by India's Ministry of Culture in partnership with the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre and Serendipity Arts Foundation, curated by Amin Jaffer. It features five artists—Alwar Balasubramaniam, Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Skarma Sonam Tashi, and Asim Waqif—whose works explore themes of home, loss, displacement, and cultural memory through materials like soil, thread, bamboo, and clay.

Outdoor chandeliers and a thought chamber: Must-see satellite exhibitions beyond the Venice Biennale

The 61st Venice Biennale is accompanied by a wide array of satellite exhibitions across the city, from noble palazzi to canals. Highlights include a showcase of Pichwai textile art at Palazzo Barbaro, curated by Pooja Singhal; a return of Dale Chihuly with outdoor glass chandeliers along the Grand Canal; and Nalini Malani's "Of Woman Born" at Magazzini del Sale, a multimedia installation exploring myth and conflict.

What’s on now at San Francisco museums, May 2026

San Francisco museums are navigating a mix of upcoming exhibitions and financial challenges in May 2026. SFMOMA is closing "KAWS: Family" on May 3 and opening "Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal" from May 16 to September 13. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts has suspended operations due to funding issues, and SOMArts is also facing a budget gap. Meanwhile, the Museum of Craft and Design presents "Video Craft" through August 16, and the Letterform Archive hosts "Black Memory Scholar: The Language of Storytellers" and "Piet Zwart: Brand Architect." SFMOMA has announced three SECA award winners—CrossLypka, Em Kettner, and Chanell Stone—who will exhibit from December 2026 to May 2027, and the museum continues to showcase "Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10" and new installations by Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg + Coosje van Bruggen, and Rose B Simpson.

Forgotten 'environment' of 11 women artists brought back to life at Leeum

The Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul has opened "Inside other spaces: Environments by women artists 1956-1976," an exhibition restoring immersive artworks by 11 women artists from Asia, Europe, and South America, including Jung Kang-ja, Judy Chicago, Tsuruko Yamazaki, and Aleksandra Kasuba. The show revives pieces that were often dismantled after their original displays, such as Jung Kang-ja's "Incorporeal Exhibition," which was destroyed in 1970 after being deemed political propaganda under South Korea's authoritarian regime. Curators Andrea Lissoni and Marina Pugliese, who first organized the project at Haus Der Kunst in Munich, worked with researchers to reconstruct the works using archival materials, correspondence, and blueprints.

Important Early Works from the Cy Twombly Foundation

Gagosian Gallery will present an exhibition of six early works by Robert Rauschenberg from the Cy Twombly Foundation, opening April 25 at 980 Madison Avenue. The show coincides with the centennial of Rauschenberg’s birth and runs alongside a Marcel Duchamp exhibition in the gallery’s new ground-floor space. The featured works, including a rare 1950 sculpture and the photogram *Untitled (1950)*, were preserved by Cy Twombly, reflecting the close friendship and artistic exchange between the two artists who met in 1951 at the Art Students League of New York and later traveled together through Europe and North Africa.

The Celts in Art and Imagination

The Harvard Art Museums have launched "Celtic Art Across the Ages," the first major exhibition of its kind in the United States. Spanning over 2,500 years, the show features nearly 300 objects including ceremonial pony caps, banqueting vessels, and jewelry crafted from amber and jet. The exhibition is organized into four thematic sections—Archaeology, Art, Encounters, and Reception—highlighting the functional nature of these highly decorative objects and their roles in trade and daily life from the first millennium BCE to the present.

Dozens of Artists Bring Their Studios to Hauser & Wirth New York

Hauser & Wirth New York has launched "Studio Visit," a sprawling group exhibition co-curated by artists Anicka Yi and Josh Kline in collaboration with Performance Space New York. Featuring works by 27 international artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Huma Bhabha, and Wolfgang Tillmans, the show pairs physical artworks with AI-generated "machine-generated memories" based on the artists' written recollections of their early workspaces. The project revives the spirit of Circular File, an experimental collective formed by Yi and Kline in the late 2000s.

When The Gallery opened, it sparked a revival that changed Pioneer Square forever

Foster/White Gallery is celebrating its 60th anniversary as a cornerstone of Seattle’s Pioneer Square, a neighborhood it helped transform from a derelict district into a thriving arts hub. Founded by Richard White in 1966, the gallery became a pioneer in the area, representing legendary Northwest School artists like Morris Graves and Mark Tobey. Despite the recent closure of other long-standing neighborhood staples like Davidson and Linda Hodges galleries, Foster/White remains a symbol of continuity and resilience.