Art Basel’s Parent Company Plans New ‘Ideas Festival’—and More Art Industry News

MCH Group, the parent company of Art Basel, is launching a new global ideas festival called the Futurific Institute in Basel in 2028, backed by billionaires James and Kathryn Murdoch. Art Dubai has postponed its 20th edition due to regional conflict, while several galleries are opening, closing, or changing locations, including Brooke Benington in London and Timothy Taylor in New York. Additionally, Mexico is demanding eBay remove listings for pre-Columbian artifacts, and institutions like the Royal Academy of Arts and MCA Chicago are announcing key leadership changes.

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British artist Thomas J Price has unveiled his largest sculpture to date, an 18-foot bronze titled 'A Place Beyond', outside the forthcoming V&A East in London. The monumental work depicts a fictional woman in everyday attire, continuing Price’s practice of using unidealized figures to critique the traditions of classical sculpture and challenge viewer biases. The installation serves as a public precursor to the museum's official opening on April 18, 2025.

Frida Kahlo: Making of an Icon

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has launched a major exhibition titled "Frida Kahlo: Making of an Icon," which explores the artist's transformation from a relatively unknown figure during her lifetime into a global cultural phenomenon. Curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez, the show features over 200 objects related to "Frida mania" alongside works by 80 contemporary artists who have been influenced by her legacy. The exhibition traces her life from her childhood in Mexico City and her tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera to her emergence as a symbol for various social movements.

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At 92 years old, Puerto Rican artist Carmen De Monteflores has emerged as a breakout star of the 2026 Whitney Biennial. Her inclusion in the prestigious exhibition was facilitated by her daughter, renowned performance artist Andrea Fraser, who urged curators to view her mother's vibrant, shaped canvases that had been sitting in storage for decades. De Monteflores, who studied at the Art Students League and the École de Beaux-Arts, abandoned her painting career in 1969 due to the lack of opportunities for women, eventually becoming a psychologist and novelist.

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The American Federation of the Arts (AFA) has launched a major touring exhibition titled "Abstract Expressionists: The Women," featuring nearly 50 works from the collection of Christian Levett. Currently on view at the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Virginia, the show highlights 32 artists who were pivotal to the movement but often overshadowed by their male peers. The exhibition includes masterpieces by celebrated figures like Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner alongside rediscovered works by lesser-known painters such as Emiko Nakano and Yvonne Thomas.

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A significant trend is emerging in the New York art scene this winter, as a wave of gallery and museum exhibitions highlights contemporary artists engaging deeply with European Old Masters. While some critics dismiss art historical references as "reference-baiting" to boost market value, artists like Émile Brunet and Eleanor Johnson are demonstrating a profound technical and intellectual commitment to these lineages. Their work moves beyond mere pastiche, utilizing traditional materials, Northern Renaissance aesthetics, and Baroque glazing techniques to address modern themes of labor, humanism, and information overload.

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Austrian-born, Netherlands-based performance artist Florentina Holzinger has joined the roster of blue-chip gallery Thaddaeus Ropac. This move comes just months before she is set to unveil her project "Seaworld Venice" for the Austrian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, marking a significant shift of her boundary-pushing, interdisciplinary practice from the theater and dance worlds into the commercial art gallery system.

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Mnuchin Gallery, a blue-chip art gallery on Manhattan's Upper East Side, will close at the end of February after 34 years, following the death of its founder Robert Mnuchin in December at age 91. The gallery, known for museum-quality exhibitions of Modern and postwar art, concluded its final show—a survey of Julian Schnabel's plate paintings—on Saturday. Partner Michael McGinnis said the decision to close was made to end on a high note, honoring Mnuchin's passion and vision.

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Jeffrey Deitch's gallery has apologized for hosting a performance by rapper Lexa Gates that was deemed an unauthorized derivative of performance artist Miles Greenberg's work. Gates's 10-hour piece, 'The Wheel,' involved walking inside a spinning wheel at the gallery to promote her new album, closely echoing Greenberg's 24-hour 2020 work 'Oysterknife,' which was previously screened at the same location. The gallery stated it had rented the space to Gates's record company and was unaware of the event's content.

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Nicolas Party's exhibition "Dead Fish" at Karma gallery in Chelsea, New York, features approximately 40 postcard-sized oil-on-copper works and a mural of three dead fish, a departure from his usual large-scale pastel paintings. Only 10 of the works were for sale, priced between $165,000 and $205,000, and all sold quickly. The show includes replicas of his earlier compositions, described as a "retrospective in miniature," with many pieces drawn from his archive and not available for purchase.

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Palm Beach is emerging as a major art destination, bolstered by Miami's growing art scene. The article highlights key cultural attractions including the Norton Museum of Art, which underwent a Norman Foster-designed expansion in 2019 and features Dutch Golden Age masterworks from the Leiden Collection, as well as a growing contemporary collection. Other notable sites include the Flagler Museum (Whitehall), a Gilded Age mansion showcasing historic interiors and a private railcar, and the Bunker Artspace, a private museum founded by collector Beth Rudin DeWoody in a converted toy factory, displaying over 600 works from her collection.

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Hundreds gathered on a cold Monday night in New York at Phillips auction house and the Metropolitan Club to celebrate the life and legacy of Walter Robinson, the beloved art-world figure who died in February 2025. The event, organized by the New York Academy of Art as part of its annual “Take Home a Nude” fundraiser, featured silent and live auctions, a posthumous honorary doctorate awarded to Robinson, and the announcement of the Walter Robinson Scholarship funded by auction proceeds. The evening raised over $800,000, with works by students and acclaimed artists like Richard Prince and Kiki Smith on offer, and Robinson’s painting *Blood on the Sun* (2018) selling for $35,000.

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Two concurrent exhibitions in New York explore the intersection of art and UFOs, paranormal phenomena, and extraterrestrial life. "Voice of Space: UFOs and Paranormal Phenomena" at the Drawing Center (through February 1, 2026) features some three dozen works from artists including René Magritte and Isa Genzken, with Magritte's 1931 painting "Voice of Space" as the conceptual centerpiece. Meanwhile, "Paintings Made for Aliens Above" at P.P.O.W (through December 20, 2025) presents new works by Romanian artist Hortensia Mi Kafchin, probing technofuturism's promises and failures. The shows include historical pieces like Paulina Peavy's multimedia works co-credited to her personal UFO, and contemporary works by Char Jeré that interrogate technology and consumerism.

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The article highlights four must-see fall gallery shows in New York City for September-October 2025. It features Mercedes Matter's first solo show at Berry Campbell, reviving the overlooked Abstract Expressionist; Julio Torres's theatrical debut "Color Stories" at Performance Space New York; Gabrielle Garland's first New York solo exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery, showcasing surreal suburban paintings; and Omar Ba's exhibition "Promises and Glory" at Templon, presenting fantastical mixed-media works.

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In September 1945, exiled Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington completed her masterpiece *Les Distractions de Dagobert* (also known as *The Pleasures of Dagobert*), a densely layered canvas teeming with mythical figures, ritual fires, and medieval references. The painting, loosely inspired by the 7th-century Merovingian king Dagobert, depicts the monarch in a red robe on a cow-headed cart surrounded by enigmatic scenes. After a fierce 10-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s New York in May 2024, the work sold for $28.5 million to Argentine collector Eduardo F. Costantini, shattering Carrington’s previous auction record of $3.3 million. The painting is now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the exhibition “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100,” the show’s only North American stop.

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Spanish Surrealist Joan Miró created the "Constellations" series of 23 paintings on paper between January 1940 and September 1941, during the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Fleeing to Normandy and later Palma de Mallorca, Miró used oil and tempera on small sheets, producing joyful, abstract works filled with floating forms reminiscent of music and the cosmos. The series was shipped to New York in 1944 and exhibited in 1945 at Pierre Matisse's gallery, where it captivated exiled European artists and may have influenced Jackson Pollock's all-over drip painting style.

Miami Beach’s Bass Museum picks architect for new pavilion

The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach has appointed the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee to design a new 22,000-square-foot pavilion. The expansion, funded in part by a $20.1 million municipal bond, will occupy a site currently used for parking and will feature an elevated gallery designed to withstand South Florida’s environmental challenges, alongside an outdoor patio and performance stage.

As Cuban crisis deepens, diaspora artists have a message of compassion

Artists Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares are showcasing a salvaged, bullet-ridden Cuban migrant vessel at Miami’s Piero Atchugarry Gallery. The exhibition, titled 'Exile', serves as a visceral focal point for the escalating humanitarian crisis in Cuba, where citizens face systemic collapse, starvation, and political imprisonment. Through the concept of 'embodiment' rather than mere empathy, the artists confront the harrowing 93-mile journey across the Straits of Florida undertaken by those desperate to escape the island's dictatorship.

What Is a "Post-Duchamp" Art World?

Scholar Thierry de Duve discusses the legacy of Marcel Duchamp in conjunction with a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) featuring seven of the artist’s “boîtes-en-valise.” These portable miniature museums, created decades before Duchamp’s first formal retrospective, are framed as evidence of his genius in anticipating the institutional logic of the modern museum. The conversation explores how Duchamp’s provocative works, such as the readymade "Fountain," fundamentally altered the trajectory of art history and defined the "post-Duchamp" era.

Readymades, replicas, reiterations: MoMA show explores Marcel Duchamp the inventor

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is launching the first major U.S. survey of Marcel Duchamp in over 50 years, organized in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition features approximately 300 works, including iconic pieces like "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" and "Fountain," organized in a strict linear chronology. This approach highlights Duchamp’s practice of remaking and replicating his own work, presenting replicas only at the point in time they were physically created rather than as stand-ins for lost originals.

A renewed focus on rigour and connection at Expo Chicago

The 2026 edition of Expo Chicago marks a strategic shift under the leadership of new director Kate Sierzputowski, featuring a leaner roster of 130 galleries at Navy Pier. The fair has introduced a more spacious layout and a new curatorial role, filled by Essence Harden, to deepen institutional ties and scholarly rigor. Notable participants include local mainstays like Monique Meloche Gallery and Gray, alongside international exhibitors from South Korea, South Africa, and Nigeria, as well as high-profile New York newcomers like Karma.

Comment | Beryl Cook UK retrospective shows there is much more to the artist than amazing bums

A major retrospective of Beryl Cook's work, titled "Pride and Joy," is on view at The Box in Plymouth, UK. The exhibition showcases the self-taught artist's vibrant paintings of plus-sized, joyful women in social settings, challenging the long-held art-world snobbery that previously excluded her work from major institutions like the Tate.

Shreg the green ogre, a grey obsessive and Vermeer’s boiled egg – the week in art

This week's art roundup from The Guardian highlights a range of exhibitions across the UK, including Bruce Asbestos's 'Bootleg Shreg 2' at Exeter Phoenix Gallery, a playful show featuring a green ogre that parodies copyright rules. Other notable shows include Roy Oxlade's primitive paintings at Alison Jacques, May Morris's craft legacy at Lady Lever Art Gallery, a 30-year anniversary group show at Timothy Taylor, and Alan Charlton's monochrome grey works at Annely Juda Fine Art. The article also features an image of a naturally sculpted rock on Kangaroo Island, a review of the Turner Prize nominees, and a masterwork analysis of Vermeer's 'The Guitar Player' at Kenwood House, which was stolen in the 1970s and recovered with the help of a clairvoyant.

Isaac Julien review – Gwendoline Christie meets a cyborg starfish in a pleasure-seeker’s postmodern parlour

A new film by artist Isaac Julien, featuring actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie as science-fiction deities, is on view at the Cosmic House in London. The 25-minute work, which incorporates themes from Octavia E. Butler's novel *Parable of the Sower*, explores concepts of change, interconnectedness, and fluid identity through a visually rich, postmodern lens.

Martin Parr: Global Warning review – the great photographer in all his gluttonous, giddy glory

A major retrospective exhibition of photographer Martin Parr's work, titled 'Global Warning,' has opened at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris. The show, which Parr helped plan before his death in December 2023, is on track to become the museum's most visited exhibition, showcasing his signature saturated, ironic, and unflinching observations of global tourism and consumerism.

‘They accomplished so much, even as they were dying’: the groundbreaking gay art of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek

Author and Frieze Magazine editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin has released a dual biography titled 'The Wonderful World That Almost Was,' chronicling the lives and creative partnership of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. The book focuses on their relationship from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, detailing their collaborative influence and the development of their respective practices in photography and sculpture before both died of AIDS-related complications in the late 1980s.

Nature by the uncool YBA, armoured ceramics and dizzying Aussie abstraction – the week in art

The article is a weekly art roundup highlighting several major exhibitions opening in London and Cambridge. It spotlights a new show of nature-themed paintings by Cecily Brown at the Serpentine Gallery, ceramics by Phoebe Collings-James at Pitzhanger Manor, a career survey of Turner Prize-winner Veronica Ryan at the Whitechapel Gallery, a Frank Bowling retrospective at The Fitzwilliam Museum, and a presentation of Aboriginal Australian art at Edel Assanti. The piece also features a powerful war photograph from Iraq and includes brief news items on topics ranging from a Matisse retrospective to potential museum entry fees.

Dark Mofo: 2026 festival to show Willem Dafoe film that can only be watched by one person at a time

Tasmania's Dark Mofo festival for 2026 will feature an exclusive, single-viewer experimental film titled 'Sculpt: Eye of the Duck,' starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Rampling. Created by French artist Loris Gréaud, the 50-minute film will be shown to only 90 individuals at a secret, remote location outside Hobart, with viewers transported to the site after securing one of nine daily slots.

‘What a fascinating challenge for an artist’: how Monet captured Venice in his twilight years

A major exhibition at San Francisco's de Young Museum, titled 'Monet and Venice,' brings together over 100 works, focusing on the two dozen paintings Claude Monet created during his only visit to the city in 1908. The show contextualizes his Venetian output with works by contemporaries like J.M.W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, revealing that the trip was almost cancelled and was initially planned as a brief holiday.

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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.