Cornelia Stokes, the newly appointed assistant curator of the art of the African Diaspora at SFMoMA and MoAD, shares her top selections from Frieze Los Angeles. Her picks highlight a diverse range of artists including Narsiso Martinez, Ebony G. Patterson, Hugh Hayden, and Kenturah Davis, focusing on themes of migrant labor, the African Diaspora, and the intersection of personal history with material culture.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is preparing to open its new David Geffen Galleries in April, marking a major milestone in a two-decade transformation led by CEO and director Michael Govan. The opening coincides with the 20th anniversary of Govan's hiring and features Jeff Koons's outdoor sculpture 'Split-Rocker' as an anchor piece.
Auction sales for artists from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region rose 9.4% to $33.2 million in 2025, driven by increased activity from international auction houses and the emergence of new hubs like Riyadh. The Sotheby's 'Origins' sale in Saudi Arabia achieved $17.3 million, setting artist records, while works from Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq saw particularly strong gains, indicating a market rebalancing.
Art Basel has launched its first fair in Qatar, adopting a novel format distinct from its other global events. The fair, featuring 87 galleries, requires each to present only one artist and is spread across multiple venues in Doha's Msheireb cultural district, with an open-plan, museum-like layout and special commissioned projects. Artist Wael Shawky serves as artistic director, emphasizing curatorial coherence over commercialism.
The article highlights 11 major museum openings and expansions scheduled for 2026, including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (designed by Frank Gehry, focusing on modern and contemporary art from West Asia, North Africa, and South Asia), the New Museum in New York (reopening March 21 after a major expansion by OMA), the V&A East Museum in London (featuring a debut exhibition on Black British music history), and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Other notable projects include the Memphis Art Museum and the Drift Museum in Amsterdam, reflecting a global surge in cultural infrastructure.
The Studio Museum in Harlem reopened in November 2025 after a seven-year reconstruction, unveiling a new building designed by Adjaye Associates and Cooper Robertson that incorporates architectural elements of Harlem, such as masonry-framed windows and a staircase evoking brownstone stoops. The reopening featured a major exhibition highlighting alumni from its renowned artist-in-residence program, which began in 1968 with Tom Lloyd as the first recipient. Founded by Charles E. Innis and a coalition of artists, activists, and philanthropists, the museum has long served as a nexus for artists of African descent, expanding the canon of Black art during the civil rights and Black Power movements.
Tate Modern's exhibition "Nigerian Modernism" showcases over 300 works by 59 Nigerian modernist artists, curated by Osei Bonsu and Bilal Akkouche. The show follows the 2018 record sale of Ben Enwonwu's portrait "Tutu" at Bonham's for £1.2 million, which highlighted the neglect of modern African artists in art history. It features pioneers like Aina Onabolu, the first African student at an English art school, and Uche Okeke of the Zaria Art Society, whose work blends Western techniques with Nigerian traditions, Islamic aesthetics, and uli mural painting.
This article highlights eight museum exhibitions scheduled for fall 2025 that focus on historically overlooked women artists. Featured shows include "Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch" at Spelman College, "Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within" at the Chazen Museum of Art, and "Edmonia Lewis: Indelible Impressions" at the Cantor Arts Center, among others. Each exhibition aims to bring renewed attention to artists who faced racial and gender barriers, such as Afro-Indigenous sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu, and 19th-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
Christie's will host its 20/21 Marquee Week in London from October 8, 2025, featuring six live and online sales of Impressionist, Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary art during Frieze Week. Highlights include works by Lucian Freud, Peter Doig, Paula Rego, Yoshitomo Nara, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Louise Bourgeois, Chris Ofili, Paul Signac, Gerhard Richter, and Pablo Picasso, along with the Ole Faarup Collection. The event also includes a philanthropic initiative called Architects for the Birds, with birdhouses designed by architects including Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, and David Chipperfield, benefiting the Tessa Jowell Foundation; an exhibition of wearable sculptures and an installation by artist Natasha Wightman; and a continued partnership with the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.
The Studio Museum in Harlem, founded in 1968 in a rented loft above a liquor store, will open its first purpose-built 82,000-square-foot building on West 125th Street this fall, following a landmark $300 million capital campaign led by director and chief curator Thelma Golden. Designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson, the new facility doubles the exhibition and studio space and includes dedicated areas for performance, education, and public programs. The museum, which has operated without a permanent space since 2018, has been a pioneering platform for artists of African descent, launching the careers of figures like David Hammons, Kerry James Marshall, Glenn Ligon, and Simone Leigh through its groundbreaking exhibitions and artist-in-residence program.
Art Basel has announced details for its inaugural edition in Qatar, set to take place from February 5 to 7, 2026, at the M7 creative hub in Doha's Design District. Departing from the traditional booth model, the fair will introduce an open-format exhibition centered on the theme 'Becoming,' with solo presentations by galleries responding to a central curatorial framework. Egyptian-born artist Wael Shawky has been appointed Artistic Director for the first edition, working alongside Art Basel's Chief Artistic Officer Vincenzo de Bellis to shape the curatorial vision and guide gallery selection. The fair will span two key venues—M7 and the Doha Design District—as well as public sites in Msheireb, and plans include transforming Qatar Museum's Fire Station into a platform for educational programs.
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park has opened "William Kentridge: The Power of Gravity," the first major survey of the South African artist's sculptural work outside his home country. The exhibition spans multiple decades and includes large-scale film installations, about three dozen sculptures, and four of his largest bronzes to date. It features pieces like the "Singer Trio" (2019) and works from his film series "Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot" (2023), with exhibition design by his long-term collaborator Sabine Theunissen.
Southwest Florida museums, from Sarasota to Naples, present a robust July lineup: two exhibitions open, one closes, and 24 continue. Highlights include Chris Friday's first solo museum show "Where We Never Grow Old" at Sarasota Art Museum, featuring large-scale chalk drawings and a site-specific installation exploring safe havens. Other notable shows include "Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press," with works by Martin Puryear and Kerry James Marshall; Jillian Mayer's interactive sculpture series "Slumpies"; Lillian Blades' immersive mixed-media maze "Through the Veil"; and Molly Hatch's site-specific ceramic installation "Amalgam" (2023-24). The Ringling Museum also highlights a newly acquired painting by Juana Romani.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has opened "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the first full-scale retrospective of the pioneering abstract artist Jack Whitten (1939-2018). The exhibition features over 175 works spanning six decades, including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, alongside archival materials. Whitten, known for his inventive techniques such as using squeegees, rakes, and Afro combs to manipulate paint, explored themes of race, identity, history, and technology. Key works include "Birmingham 1964," inspired by the 1963 church bombing, and "9.11.01," responding to the September 11 attacks. The show runs from March 23 to August 2, 2025, exclusively at MoMA.
The May 2025 roundup of Black art news reports the deaths of two influential figures: international curator Koyo Kouoh and artist-curator Evangeline J. Montgomery, who died at 94. Montgomery's career spanned metalwork, fiber art, and photography, and she was a key advocate and mentor in the African American art community, later working at the U.S. Information Agency. Other highlights include historian Edda L. Fields-Black winning a Pulitzer Prize for her book on Harriet Tubman, the acquisition of Adam Pendleton's entire "Who is Queen" installation by MoMA, and Kapwani Kiwanga winning the Joan Miró Prize. The Met Gala also featured Black dandy style inspired by the Costume Institute's exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style."
Los Angeles art institutions are presenting a diverse array of summer exhibitions, ranging from career-spanning surveys to historical reassessments. Highlights include Jeffrey Gibson's beadwork at the Broad, a survey of Barbara T. Smith's early Xerox works at the Marciano Art Foundation, a retrospective of Noah Davis at the Hammer Museum, and a group show at the California African American Museum addressing the legacy of Altadena's Black community after the Eaton Fire. Other notable shows include Nancy Buchanan's retrospective, Will Rawls at the ICA LA, Karl Haendel at the Weisman Museum, and a Jack Kirby exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center.
Precious Okoyomon's major installation for the 2024 Whitney Biennial, titled 'Everything wants to kill you and you should be afraid,' opened after a brief delay. The work, featuring around 50 stuffed animals and racist dolls suspended by nooses, was moved from the museum lobby to the eighth floor to provide more space for viewers to engage with its disturbing yet beautiful mix of childhood nostalgia and violence.
American artist Lauren Halsey’s “sister dreamer” sculpture park opens in Los Angeles.
American artist Lauren Halsey has opened a new public sculpture park titled "sister dreamer" in Los Angeles. The installation, located in the city's historic West Adams neighborhood, features a series of large-scale, fantastical architectural forms that draw on Afrofuturism and the visual culture of the local community.
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) has launched "Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California," the first major thematic exploration of the 3,000-piece Eli Leon bequest. Curated by Elaine Yau, the exhibition features over 100 quilts by approximately 80 artists, tracing the migration of improvisational textile traditions from the American South to the Bay Area. The show highlights how these portable objects served as both functional necessities and vital forms of self-expression for Black women during the mid-20th century Great Migration.
A critical essay by Ayọ̀ Akínwándé performs a forensic 'autopsy' of the Tate Modern exhibition 'Nigerian Modernism: Art and Independence.' The review dissects the show's structure, arguing it fails in its curatorial framework by isolating Nigerian artists within a regional category, using ethnographic display methods, relying on incomplete research, and excluding key artists and historical context.
Nigel Peverett, a former staffer in the British Museum’s prints and drawings department, stole over 350 artworks during his tenure in the 1970s and 80s. The thefts, detailed in Barnaby Phillips’s upcoming book 'The African Kingdom of Gold', involved Peverett smuggling prints out of the museum, altering them with razors to remove catalog numbers, and selling them at London’s Portobello Road market. Although he was caught in 1992 with 35 prints in his possession, nearly 100 items remain unrecovered.
South African video game studio Nyamakop unveiled its latest project, Relooted, at the Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles. The game is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer where players join a crew of thieves to steal back African artifacts from Western museums and repatriate them to their original communities. The artifacts in the game are based on real looted objects, such as the Ngadji drum held by the British Museum, and the missions involve heists from fictionalized museums. The studio spent two years researching artifacts with compelling stories of looting.
Beginning January 1, 2026, major French museums including the Louvre and the Château de Versailles will charge non-European Union visitors €30 (about $35), up from €22 ($25). The new "differential tariff" is driven by cultural budget cuts, waning corporate sponsorships, and rising restoration costs. Versailles, where 42 percent of 8 million annual visitors come from outside Europe, sees the funds as a lifeline for repairs, while the Louvre faces €400 million in renovation needs over 15 years. The policy is expected to spread to other sites like the Arc de Triomphe and Château de Chambord, and more institutions may adopt it in 2027.
Open Restitution Africa (ORA), an African-led research organization, has compiled case studies including the Ngadji drum, a sacred instrument confiscated from Kenya's Pokomo people by British colonial officers in 1902 and now held by the British Museum. With a $600,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, ORA provided microgrants to scholars like William Mutta Tsaka of the National Museums of Kenya, who documented the drum's cultural significance and the community's ongoing struggle for repatriation. The project aims to fund independent researchers and community activists across Africa, covering fieldwork costs often neglected by larger provenance grants.
The Smithsonian Institution faces a deadline to submit internal communications and exhibition materials to the White House as part of President Donald Trump's review aimed at eliminating so-called 'woke' ideology. Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III has begun turning over documents from several galleries on a rolling basis, and the National Portrait Gallery has already complied by replacing Trump's portrait with a new photograph and removing mentions of his two impeachment trials from the wall text. The review, launched in August 2025, targets eight museums including the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Hirshhorn Museum, following an April executive order titled 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.'
A late 18th- or early 19th-century Quran from Ottoman Syria, held by the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, was used to swear in Zohran Mamdani as New York City's first mayor to take the oath on the Muslim holy book. The ceremony took place just after midnight on New Year's Day 2026 at the decommissioned City Hall station, administered by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The Quran is now on display at the library's main branch in an exhibition titled "The People's Quran: Making History at City Hall."
The Aya Kese, a massive 16th-century northern European brass basin, is currently on display at the British Museum while its complex history remains under scrutiny. Looted by British officer Robert Baden-Powell in 1896 from the Asante kingdom’s royal mausoleum in present-day Ghana, the object was long sensationalized by colonial accounts as a vessel for human sacrifice. Recent scholarship and historical records from Asante King Prempeh I contest these claims, asserting the basin’s sacred role as a spiritual repository for the souls of the Asante people.
Goodman Gallery presents Carlos Garaicoa's first solo exhibition at its New York viewing room, titled 'Rituals and Liberty.' The show features eight works, including five reliefs that blend painting and photography, and sculptural models incorporating 19th-century French engravings. The exhibition precedes Garaicoa's solo show at Museo La Tertulia in Cali, Colombia, in May. Garaicoa, a Cuban-born artist based in Madrid, explores urbanism and how architecture reflects and shapes society, continuing his long-standing interest in decoding urban infrastructures.
Goodman Gallery is celebrating its 60th anniversary with a high-profile collaborative exhibition at Pierre Yovanovitch Mobilier in Paris. Running from April 17 to August 29, the showcase features major works by leading artists from the African continent and the diaspora, including El Anatsui, William Kentridge, and Kapwani Kiwanga. The presentation places contemporary African art in direct dialogue with the high-end furniture and interior architecture of Pierre Yovanovitch, marking the start of a series of international events for the gallery this summer.
Artist Wendy Red Star has launched a site-specific solo exhibition titled 'One Blue Bead' at Sargent’s Daughters in Tribeca, exploring the historical and symbolic weight of trade beads. The exhibition transforms the gallery into a simulated trading floor featuring monumental glass beads, over 100 watercolors, and Hudson’s Bay point blankets. The project originated from the artist's residencies at the Pilchuck School of Glass and the Tacoma Museum of Glass, where she researched the global circulation of glass beads from Europe to Africa and the Americas.