Art News. Vasari Codex

person people schedule Apr 14, 2026 visibility 21 link 4 artists

Nikyle Begay Resurrects Century-Old Diné Weavings

Nikyle Begay, a Diné shepherd and weaver based in the Navajo Nation, is revitalizing ancestral weaving techniques that were historically marginalized by the colonial trading-post economy. By breeding Navajo Churro sheep and mastering complex twill patterns once used for functional saddle blankets, Begay bridges the gap between traditional agricultural practice and contemporary fine art. Their work involves the entire lifecycle of the medium, from shearing and processing wool to reconstructing intricate designs that fell out of favor when commercial markets prioritized specific regional styles for non-Native buyers.

newspaper Hyperallergic open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Apr 12, 2026 visibility 10 link 1 artist

Wandering Star – a photo essay

Photographer Vanessa Vettorello explores the physical and psychological impact of strabismus, or eye misalignment, through her visual project "Wandering Star." Drawing from her personal childhood experience with diplopia (double vision), Vettorello combines intimate portraits of others living with the condition, medical reportage, and reconstructed memories to illustrate the struggle of navigating a world where depth and distance are distorted.

newspaper The Guardian open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Mar 18, 2026 visibility 13 link 1 artist

Archaeologists Identify Lost Medieval Village in Polish Forest

Archaeologists from Poland's Relicta Foundation have located the lost medieval village of Stolzenberg in a dense forest near Sławoborze in northwestern Pomerania. The 15-acre site, identified through a combination of historical research, metal detecting, and advanced geophysical surveys, has yielded 1,500 surface anomalies and 400 artifacts, including coins and belt buckles from the 13th-14th centuries, confirming its medieval origins. Radiocarbon dating places the height of its activity in the 14th century.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Mar 17, 2026 visibility 13 link 1 artist

Remnants of 3,400-Year-Old Loom in Spain Sheds Light on Bronze Age Textile Production

Archaeologists in Spain have published new research on a remarkably preserved 3,450-year-old wooden loom, discovered in 2008 at the Cabezo Redondo site. The loom survived because a fire destroyed the surrounding Bronze Age village and a roof collapsed on it, charring and protecting the wood from decay. This rare find includes over 200 lightweight loom weights, suggesting the community was engaged in intensive production of delicate wool textiles.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Feb 27, 2026 visibility 15 link 7 artists

trailer the christophers steven soderberghs film

Director Steven Soderbergh is set to release 'The Christophers', a new film centered on the London art world starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. The plot follows a faded 1960s Pop Art star whose estranged children hire a former art forger to secretly complete his unfinished canvases to secure a future inheritance. Following its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, the movie is scheduled for a theatrical release in April.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

gavel restitution schedule Jan 2, 2026 visibility 8 link 2 artists

erie art museum wont return abandoned painting daughter late artist

The Erie Art Museum has responded to a lawsuit filed by Georgia Heynes, the 82-year-old daughter of late artist George C. Demiel, who is seeking the return of her father's watercolor painting "House Boats." Demiel submitted the work to an annual juried show at what was then the Art Center of Erie in 1966, but the painting was not accepted and Demiel never reclaimed it before his death in 1967. The museum's December 2025 response argues the painting is "abandoned personal property" and was formally accessioned into its permanent collection in 1983. Heynes discovered the painting hanging in a 2019 exhibition at the museum and requested its return, but the museum has not relinquished it.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Dec 17, 2025 visibility 12 link 5 artists

bayeux tapestry canterbury mealtime reading

A new study by University of Bristol historian Benjamin Pohl, published in the journal *Historical Research*, proposes that the Bayeux Tapestry was originally designed as mealtime reading for monks in the refectory of St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury. Pohl argues that the tapestry’s moralistic episodes, inclusion of Aesop’s fables, and simple Latin text align with Benedictine rules requiring silent dining accompanied by edifying readings. The theory builds on earlier speculation that the tapestry once hung in a private school’s refectory, but Pohl provides documentary and archaeological evidence for the Canterbury location.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Dec 3, 2025 visibility 11 link 1 artist

lower pecos cave paintings radiocarbon date

Three Texas-based researchers have successfully radiocarbon dated ancient cave paintings in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands along the Rio Grande border between Mexico and West Texas, using a novel combination of technologies. By dating the deer bone marrow used as a paint binder—rather than the mineral pigments themselves—and employing plasma oxidation to extract carbon, the team analyzed 53 figures across 12 sites. Their findings, published in *Science Advances*, reveal that individual murals were created in single painting events, not accumulated over centuries, and that the paintings span four millennia, from about 5,760 to 1,035 years ago.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Nov 13, 2025 visibility 9 link 1 artist

40 year old sculpture demolished battery park city resiliency project

Crews have begun demolishing Ned Smyth's 40-year-old sculpture *Upper Room* in Battery Park City, New York, to make way for the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency (NWBPCR) project. The 20-column concrete colonnade, commissioned in 1986 as the neighborhood's first public art piece, features an elongated table with inlaid chessboards and was appraised at $1.5 million. The demolition is part of a larger plan to install a coastal flood barrier system along the Hudson River waterfront, intended to protect against storms like Hurricane Sandy.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Nov 11, 2025 visibility 10 link 2 artists

egyptian ceramic vessel ancient pompeii canteen

A nearly 2,000-year-old Egyptian ceramic vessel, a bucket-shaped situla, was discovered during conservation work at the Thermopolium of Regio V in Pompeii. The faience pot, decorated with Egyptian-style hunting reliefs, was found in the kitchen of a well-preserved fast-food restaurant that served the working- and middle-class residents of the Roman city before its destruction by Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The discovery was published by the Pompeii Archaeological Park’s online journal.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article policy schedule Oct 21, 2025 visibility 15 link 1 artist

trump demolishes east wing of the white house

President Donald Trump has demolished a portion of the East Wing of the White House to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, despite earlier claims that the addition would not impact the historic structure. The demolition began on October 20, with a backhoe tearing through the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that will nearly double the size of the main building and accommodate 650 people. The $250 million project, which Trump says is privately funded, marks one of the most significant changes to the White House in over a century.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Oct 6, 2025 visibility 13 link 4 artists

a new study conducted the most comprehensive survey of egypts karnak temple revealing unprecedented detail

A new study published in the journal Antiquity reveals that Egypt’s Karnak Temple was originally built on a small island, or “fluvial terrace,” surrounded by river channels. The research, led by Ben Pennington of the University of Southampton, is the first comprehensive geoarchaeological survey of the site, analyzing 61 sediment cores and thousands of ceramic fragments. It dates the earliest occupation of Karnak to around 2520 BCE, with ceramics from 2305–1980 BCE, and shows that ancient Egyptians geo-engineered the landscape by dumping desert sand into channels to create new building land.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Jul 3, 2025 visibility 12 link 2 artists

remnants enaissance equestrian statue french dig

Archaeologists from INRAP (the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research) have unearthed a Renaissance-era limestone equestrian statue in Toul, northeastern France. The statue, broken into 27 pieces, was found buried under a roadway among the remains of a medieval gate demolished around 1700. The largest fragment measures about three-and-a-half feet, and the intact work would have stood over five feet high. The horse's trunk and head are preserved, along with the rider's hips and upper thighs, but the rider's head and limbs are missing, making identification uncertain. INRAP suggests the rider may have been Henry II, King of France, or more likely John III of Lorraine, Cardinal of Lorraine and Bishop of Toul, and that Italian artists may have been involved in its creation.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article policy schedule Jul 2, 2025 visibility 12 link 5 artists

germany colonial restitution conduct

Germany's culture minister Monika Grütters has released a 130-page code of conduct for museums, titled "Guide to Dealing With Collection Goods From Colonial Contexts," which outlines methods for identifying and confronting colonial-era artifacts in German collections. The guidelines, published by the German Association of Museums, include best practices for provenance research, a list of former and current colonies, and alternatives to full restitution such as long-term loans and joint custody agreements. The release coincides with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation's official ceremony returning nine artifacts to Indigenous Alaskan communities, and follows increased pressure from public outcry over the Humboldt Forum and similar restitution efforts by French president Emmanuel Macron.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

trending_up market schedule Jun 30, 2025 visibility 15 link 2 artists

phillip hoffman ed dolman patti wong consultancy new perspectives

A group of high-profile art market veterans—Ed Dolman, Alex Dolman, Brett Gorvy, Philip Hoffman, and Patti Wong—have launched a new collaborative consultancy called New Perspectives Art Partners (NPAP). Unlike traditional advisory firms, NPAP operates on a flexible, project-based model where partners retain their existing roles and assemble only for high-level, specialized challenges. The consultancy aims to advise collectors, fiduciaries, and family offices on managing, growing, or dispersing significant collections, leveraging the partners' deep experience across auction houses, galleries, institutions, and advisory, with a global footprint spanning Hong Kong to Doha.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Jun 19, 2025 visibility 11 link 3 artists

justin allen new language wendys subway

Justin Allen celebrated the launch of his debut book *Language Arts* (2024), published by Wendy’s Subway, with a live reading at Performance Space in New York’s Lower East Side. The book merges music, dance, performance, and language, including a poem "140 BPM" that recreates nights at Bushwick’s Bossa Nova Civic Club. Allen, who grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to New York City, draws on influences from experimental punk, indie sleaze artists like Santigold and M.I.A., and his own invented language, Hatnahans, to craft a work that blends leftist critique with speculative fiction and club culture.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

trending_up market schedule Jun 18, 2025 visibility 15 link 1 artist

international art finance adam chinn nahmads

Adam Chinn, former chief operating officer at Sotheby's, has been quietly building International Art Finance (IAF), a boutique art lending firm backed by the billionaire Nahmad family. In a recent interview with ARTnews, Chinn revealed that IAF has disbursed nearly $400 million in loans and is on track to reach $500 million by the end of 2025. The firm offers short-term, non-recourse loans with an average size of $8 million, claiming an edge in speed and scale, with loans disbursed in as little as 10 days. The Nahmad family, prolific collectors and dealers, provides funding and conducts internal artwork valuations, a practice that has drawn scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 8 link 1 artist

how nebra sky disc made study

Researchers from Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Saxony-Anhalt-State Museum of Prehistory, in collaboration with engineering firm DeltaSigma Analytics and coppersmith Herbert Bauer, have successfully replicated the manufacturing process of the Nebra Sky Disk, a 3,600-year-old bronze artifact depicting the cosmos. By analyzing a small sample of the disk using advanced techniques like energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and electron backscatter diffraction, the team determined the disk was cast and then forged at least 10 times through repeated heating and hammering. Bauer replicated this by annealing a similar metal mixture 55 times, revealing that the disk's microstructure matches a stage after 10 forging cycles, not the final 55, indicating the original preform was thinner and wider than assumed.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 12 link 2 artists

scientists recreate egyptian blue pigment

A team of researchers has successfully recreated Egyptian blue, the world's oldest synthetic pigment, which was used by ancient Egyptians from as early as 3100 B.C.E. The study, published in NPJ Heritage Science, was led by John S. McCloy of Washington State University and Edward P. Vicenzi of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute, in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The researchers experimented with various minerals, heating them in ovens at around 1,000 degrees Celsius for up to 11 hours, and used modern microscopy and analysis techniques to compare their results with ancient artifacts from the Carnegie Museum's collection.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule May 27, 2025 visibility 10 link 1 artist

the new rules of subculture

Writer and theorist Nadia Asparouhova has published a new book titled *Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading*, which introduces the concept of "anti-memes"—cultural phenomena whose influence derives from being hard to find or difficult to understand, rather than from popularity and visibility. The book is released by the Dark Forest Collective, a group of artists and thinkers inspired by Yancey Strickler's metaphor of the internet as a "dark forest," where meaningful exchange retreats to private spaces away from commercial and contentious public platforms. Artnet News critic Ben Davis reviews the book, connecting its ideas to contemporary art that deliberately operates below the radar.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

article news schedule May 27, 2025 visibility 14 link 3 artists

venice biennale koyo kouoh 2026 in minor keys

The Venice Biennale will proceed with its 2026 edition despite the unexpected death of its curator, Koyo Kouoh, earlier this month. The Biennale announced on Tuesday that it will realize Kouoh's exhibition, titled "In Minor Keys," which she had already begun planning before her passing. Kouoh had selected artists, developed commissions, and established the central concept. The show will be carried forward by a team of five advisers she personally chose: curators Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, and Rasha Salti; critic Siddartha Mitter as editor; and Rory Tsapayi as assistant. The exhibition remains scheduled to open on May 9, 2026, with the full support of Kouoh's family.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule May 16, 2025 visibility 13 link 1 artist

parthenon dark lighting effects

Archaeologist Juan de Lara of Oxford University has published a paper challenging the long-held belief that the Parthenon in Athens was a brightly lit, open space. Using a 3D model that simulates natural and artificial light, Lara argues the temple was actually dark and dim, with sunlight barely reaching the statue of Athena's waist and a wooden ceiling blocking any translucency from marble roof tiles. He also suggests that hand-held torches, rather than numerous lamps, were used for artificial light, and that the reflective pool in front of Athena's statue did little to illuminate the space.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

trending_up market schedule May 1, 2025 visibility 16 link 1 artist

frieze sale ari emanuel

Endeavor Group Holdings has sold Frieze, the company behind the influential art magazine and several international art fairs, to a new company formed by former Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. The deal, valued at nearly $200 million, is expected to close by the third quarter of this year. Frieze's current leadership, including CEO Simon Fox, will remain in place. The sale follows Endeavor's full privatization by Silver Lake and marks the end of a long-rumored ownership transition. Notably, two tennis tournaments initially bundled in the negotiations—Miami Open and Madrid Open—are not included in this deal.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule May 7, 2026 visibility 16 link 1 artist

How a Remote California Artists’ Retreat Inspired Vhernier’s Latest Ring Collection

Italian jewelry maison Vhernier has collaborated with artist Pae White to create a 10-design limited-edition ring collection inspired by White's childhood memories of Sea Ranch, a remote artists' retreat in Sonoma County, California. The collection translates the architecture of crustaceans and abalone into precious materials, using sapphires, diamonds, and rock crystal set in white or rose gold, with only two versions of each design produced.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Mar 26, 2026 visibility 12 link 4 artists

literature darkology rhae lynn barnes blackface minstrelsy

Rhae Lynn Barnes, a scholar at Princeton, has published a new book titled "Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment," which examines the pervasive history of amateur minstrelsy in American life from the 19th through 20th centuries. Drawing on two decades of archival research, Barnes reveals how blackface performances were not confined to professional theaters but were common in living rooms, schools, USO shows, fraternal lodges, and even Japanese internment camps, involving figures like Shirley Temple, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Feb 26, 2026 visibility 17 link 13 artists

literature ann rower lee and elaine autofiction

Ann Rower's novel "Lee & Elaine," originally published in 2002 by Serpent's Tail, is being reissued next month by Semiotext(e). The autofictional work follows a narrator—a lightly fictionalized version of Rower—who, after learning of the death of her friend, artist Hannah Wilke, becomes obsessed with the graves of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning at Green River Cemetery. The narrator imagines these two women, known primarily as wives of famous male painters, as secret lovers or comrades, and attempts to write a joint biography that doubles as a journey of self-discovery.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Nov 17, 2025 visibility 18 link 10 artists

design literature best books of 2025

Cultured magazine has published its annual list of the best design and architecture books of 2025, featuring ten titles that span cookbooks, travelogues, political design history, photography, and architectural theory. Highlights include "Campania: Recipes & Wandering Across Italy’s Polychromatic Coast" edited by Apartamento, "Furnishing Fascism" by Ignacio G. Galán, "Synthesis" by Mari Katayama, and "Monumental" by Cat Dawson, which examines how contemporary artists are reshaping memorial landscapes.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Nov 14, 2025 visibility 18 link 11 artists

ira sachs director peter hujars day interview

Ira Sachs's new film *Peter Hujar's Day* dramatizes a 1974 interview in which photographer Peter Hujar recounted his day to journalist Linda Rosenkrantz. The transcript, originally intended for a book project, was rediscovered and published by Magic Hour Press in 2021. Starring Ben Whishaw as Hujar and Rebecca Hall as Rosenkrantz, the film is set entirely in a Westbeth apartment, capturing the texture of New York's downtown art scene through Hujar's anecdotes about figures like Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Oct 6, 2025 visibility 16 link 6 artists

fashion versace embodied dario vitale spring summer 2026 2

Versace has appointed Dario Vitale as its new Chief Creative Officer, and under his direction, the house launched the Spring/Summer 2026 collection at Milan Fashion Week alongside a new initiative called Versace Embodied. This series commissions photographers, painters, filmmakers, and poets to reinterpret Versace’s visual language through their own mediums. The first chapter features contributions from photographer Stef Mitchell, poet Eileen Myles, artist Collier Schorr, photographer Camille Vivier, and photographer Andrea Modica, whose works range from motorcycle portraits to hand-drawn nudes and regional Italian portraiture.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

article culture schedule Sep 26, 2025 visibility 15 link 18 artists

fashion dior lady art handbag

Dior has launched the 10th edition of its Lady Art initiative, inviting a new roster of artists to reimagine the iconic Lady Dior handbag. The project, which began nearly a decade ago, has previously featured artists like Judy Chicago, Jack Pierson, and Mickalene Thomas. This year's participants include Jessica Cannon and Ju Ting, who discuss their creative processes, material explorations, and the dialogue between their artistic practices and Dior's heritage. The handbags incorporate sculpted tulle, pleated silk, stones, glass beads, and pearlized elements, blending fine art with fashion.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original