The British Museum has revised labels for ancient Middle Eastern artifacts in its Levant and Egypt galleries, removing the term 'Palestine' from descriptions of ancient civilizations. The institution states the changes are part of an ongoing review, driven by audience feedback and a recognition that the term is no longer historically neutral due to contemporary political sensitivities.
A self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi sold for $5.69 million at Christie’s New York, setting a new auction record for the artist. The painting, *Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria*, is one of only five self-portraits by Gentileschi and is believed to be the earliest, painted when she was around 20 years old in Florence. It far exceeded its presale estimate of $2.5–$3.5 million. On the same day, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., announced its acquisition of another Gentileschi work, *Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy* (circa 1625), funded by a gift from Nina J. Cohen and the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.
A rediscovered painting by Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, titled 'Lucretia,' sold for €4.8 million ($5.28 million) at an Artcurial auction in Paris, shattering the artist's previous auction record. The price soared to six times its high estimate, reflecting intense market competition for the rare work.
London's National Gallery has acquired a recently rediscovered self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi, 'Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria' (c. 1615–17), for £3.6 million ($4.7 million). The painting was purchased from a London dealer who had secured it at a Paris auction in December, where it set a new auction record for the artist. The acquisition marks a significant addition to the museum's holdings, as it is only the 21st work by a female artist in its collection of over 2,300 pieces.
Artnet News reports on the rediscovery of Colombian artist Luis Fernando Zapata (1951–1994), whose solo booth at Art Basel Miami Beach features works from 1988 to 1994 that resemble ancient artifacts. The booth, titled “The Immemorial: The Transcendence of Luis Fernando Zapata,” is presented by Bogotá’s Galería Elvira Moreno in the fair’s Survey sector, which highlights historically significant art made before 2000. Zapata’s pieces—including totemic shields, a mud-brown sarcophagus with cuneiform-like glyphs, barques, steles, and his “excavaciones”—are mostly hand-sculpted papier-mâché, evoking ritual and imagined cosmologies. Diagnosed HIV+ in the mid-1980s, Zapata died in 1994, leaving a body of work that has remained largely absent from the queer canon and art-world consciousness until now.
A previously unknown Renaissance portrait attributed to Hans Baldung Grien, executed in silverpoint in 1517 and depicting Susanna Pfeffinger, is expected to sell for up to $3.5 million at a Paris auction on March 23. The drawing, which measures just four by six inches, has remained in the Pfeffinger family for 500 years and was only recently discovered by Old Master drawings expert Patrick de Bayser. It is being offered by French auction house Beaussant Lefèvre and Associés and Paris gallery Cabinet de Bayser at Hôtel Drouot.
Two nearly identical portraits of George Washington by Charles Peale Polk, depicting him after the 1777 Battle of Princeton, will be auctioned on consecutive days in New York. Christie’s offers a 1793 version (number 53) on January 23, estimated at $200,000–$300,000, which was selected by Jackie Kennedy for the White House in 1962 and remained there until 1992. Sotheby’s offers a 1790–93 version (number 30) on January 24, estimated at $400,000–$600,000, previously sold at Christie’s in 1971 and at Sotheby’s in 2010 for $458,500. Both paintings have passed through Hirschl and Adler Galleries and depict Washington in uniform with Princeton’s Nassau Hall in the background.
Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, joined Ben Davis on the Artnet News podcast "The Art Angle" to discuss his work and the evolving perception of digital art. Beeple first gained global attention in 2021 when his NFT artwork "Everydays, The First 5,000 Days" sold for $69 million at Christie's, making him a symbol of the NFT boom. Since then, he has continued to experiment with new media, including interactive video sculptures shown at LACMA and robot dogs with human heads displayed at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has updated its 2026 fiscal year grant guidelines, cancelling the Challenge America grants that targeted underserved communities and replacing them with a focus on projects celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States (America250). The changes, announced in response to executive orders by President Donald Trump, eliminate DEI-related funding and require applicants to have a five-year history of arts programming. Organizations that had applied for the $10,000 Challenge America grants must now resubmit under the broader Grants for Arts Projects category, with extended deadlines.
Marie Antoinette, the final queen of France, is the subject of a blockbuster exhibition titled "Marie Antoinette Style" at London's V&A museum, running through March 22. The show highlights her boldly modern taste, her patronage of women artists like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Anne Vallayer-Coster, and her role as the first French queen to own and redecorate her own palace, the Petit Trianon. The article details how she used her influence to secure Vigée Le Brun's admission to the Académie Royale and pressured the Louvre to exhibit Vallayer-Coster's work, while also exploring how her extravagant spending earned her the epithet "Madame Déficit" and contributed to her downfall during the French Revolution.
The article reports on the outlook for the art market in 2026, following a difficult 2025. It notes signs of recovery, including decent sales in Miami and $2.2 billion in marquee New York auctions, but warns of a K-shaped recovery where some sectors will bounce back while others continue to struggle. The piece also highlights a major shift toward the Gulf region, with Art Basel launching in Qatar, Art Dubai celebrating its 20th anniversary, Frieze debuting in Abu Dhabi, and the long-awaited opening of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, all signaling commercial maturity in the area.
Workers at two major museums, the Tate in the U.K. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are taking labor action to demand higher wages and job security. Over 150 Tate staff from the PCS Tate United union went on strike across four locations, with picketing at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and Tate Liverpool, disrupting the opening of the exhibition "Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals." Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 employees at the Met have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, which would be one of the largest museum unions in the U.S.
Conservators at Blenheim Palace in the U.K. have discovered a mysterious dossier of names and phrases scratched into the ceilings of the Great Hall and Saloon by past workers, dating back to the 19th century. The graffiti was found during a £12 million ($15.9 million) restoration project led by OPUS Conservation, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Blenheim Foundation, which is also repairing paintings by Baroque artists James Thornhill and Louis Laguerre. The palace is now asking the public for help identifying the individuals behind the markings, which include names like "W Smith 1888" and "T Harwood Plasterer 1843."
Diego Marcon, a Milan-based artist working primarily in moving image, is gaining international attention for his unsettling and emotionally charged video installations. His work *Fritz* (2023), featuring a computer-generated boy slowly dangling from a noose while singing, exemplifies his method of dissecting genre cinema through animation, prosthetics, and pop culture references. Marcon has been featured in major exhibitions including the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), Fondazione Between Art and Film in Venice, and Kunsthalle Basel, with a new commission *Krapfen* touring internationally after premiering at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. His upcoming solo exhibition at the Consortium Museum in Dijon opens December 5, 2025.
Argentinian artist Pilar Zeta has unveiled 'The Observer Effect', a monumental public sculpture installed on Miami Beach during Art Basel Miami Beach. The work, presented by the Shelborne by Proper, features a colonnade of columns and arches with a matte automotive paint finish that shifts appearance with light and weather. Zeta activated the piece with sunrise and sunset performances by musician Laraaji. The self-taught artist, who moved to Miami at 19 and previously created album art for Coldplay, has also announced a follow-up installation opening next month at Place du Louvre in Paris.
Björk, the Icelandic pop icon and multidisciplinary artist, is opening an exhibition of immersive works titled "Echolalia" at the National Gallery of Iceland, coinciding with the 2026 Reykjavik Arts Festival. The show features installations tied to her forthcoming album and her 2022 album Fossora, including "Ancestress" and "Sorrowful Soil," the latter a tribute to her late mother. Simultaneously, the museum will host "Metamorphlings," the first museum retrospective for James Merry, the embroiderer behind many of Björk's masks, presenting over 80 works from the past decade.
French artist JR is presenting two solo exhibitions in China: “La Vie en Mouvement” at Perrotin Shanghai and “Kaleidoscope” at Galleria Continua in Beijing. The shows feature works from the past two decades, including photographs of ballerinas in unexpected urban settings and an installation that appears to crack open the gallery wall to reveal a Summer Palace pavilion. In an interview, JR discussed how architecture shapes his images, his resistance to being labeled an activist, and his reflections on past projects in Shanghai’s now-vanished shantytowns.
Michelangelo, best known for masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Pietà, also served as the governor and procurator general of fortifications for Florence in 1529, tasked with designing military defenses against the Medici family. After the Medici were expelled in 1527, Michelangelo joined the "Nine of the Militia" committee, but his overly complex drawings were so impractical that almost none were built. The Medici, backed by Pope Clement VII, successfully besieged Florence in 1529–30, forcing Michelangelo into hiding in a secret chamber beneath the Medici Chapel, where he drew figurative works rediscovered in 1975. He was eventually pardoned and went on to create major commissions like the tomb of Pope Julius II and The Last Judgement, but left Florence for Rome in 1534.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned a late-18th century Buddhist painting, *The Tenth King of Hell* (1798), to the Sinheungsa Temple in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, South Korea. The work is believed to have been taken by U.S. troops during the Korean War. The repatriation was celebrated at a ceremony in Seoul attended by Met Director and CEO Max Hollein, Korean government officials, and religious leaders. The painting is part of a larger series of ten scrolls depicting the Ten Kings of the Underworld; three remain abroad, while six others previously at LACMA have already been returned.
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.
The Great Elephant Migration, a public art project featuring 100 life-size elephant sculptures, has concluded its cross-country journey in Beverly Hills, California. The sculptures, crafted by Indigenous artisans of the Coexistence Collective in India from the invasive lantana camara weed, represent real elephants from the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. The herd traveled 5,000 miles via electric trucks, making stops in Newport, New York, Miami, Houston, Jackson Hole, and Montana, before arriving at Beverly Gardens Park. The artworks are for sale, with prices ranging from $8,000 to $22,000, and sales have exceeded $3 million, with proceeds supporting 22 conservation NGOs.
The Vatican Museums have completed the decade-long restoration of the Hall of Constantine, one of the Raphael Rooms, revealing that Renaissance master Raphael himself painted two figures—Justice and Friendship—in the hall, contrary to the long-held belief that the entire room was executed solely by his assistants after his death. Conservators identified Raphael's hand by his distinctive oil-on-resin technique, which differed from the traditional fresco methods used by his assistants Giulio Romano, Gianfrancesco Penni, and Raffaellino del Colle. The discovery was made during a meticulous restoration that began in March 2015 and finished in December 2024.
Maya Man, an artist who earned her MFA from UC's Media Art program in 2023, is the subject of a conversation with critic Ben Davis. Her work *A Realistic Day in My Life Living in New York City* is the first commission for the Whitney Museum's 'On the Hour' program, appearing on the museum's website for 30 seconds each hour. Man also founded the experimental art space HEART in New York City, which operated briefly but left a significant impact on the online/offline art scene before closing earlier in 2025.
A painting by Emily Carr, titled *Fir Trees* (ca. 1935), sold for CA$576,000 ($418,370) at Cowley Abbott’s live auction of Canadian and international art in Toronto on May 28, more than doubling its low estimate. The work is a vivid example of Carr’s signature forest scenes, reflecting her deep connection to the British Columbian landscape and her association with the Group of Seven. The auction also saw strong results for other Group of Seven artists, including Franklin Carmichael’s *Old Orchard* (1940) at CAD$768,000, and for Marcelle Ferron’s untitled 1964 abstract painting at CAD$696,000.
A 17th-century British portrait at Claydon House, a National Trust property, depicts Mary Lawley and Peregrine Tyam, a Black enslaved attendant whose identity is known—one of the earliest such examples. Historian Hannah Lee published research in British Art Studies revealing new details about Tyam, including a rediscovered letter he wrote in 1699 to his enslaver John Verney, offering rare firsthand insight into the lives of enslaved people in aristocratic households. The portrait, attributed to the little-known artist Lenthall, was commissioned by Verney to mark his marriage in 1692 and shows Tyam wearing a silver collar, a symbol of enslavement.
Artnet News profiles five ultra-contemporary artists working in China today, highlighting their practices amid shifting cultural narratives, economic pressures, and technological change. Featured artists include Xia Yu, known for tempera paintings of everyday life, and Ye Linghan, who creates monumental "data portraits" from smartphone screenshots. The article details their backgrounds, notable exhibitions, market prices, and upcoming projects, emphasizing their growing appeal to collectors and curators.
New York's American Museum of Natural History is launching a new film at the Hayden Planetarium titled "Encounters in the Milky Way," narrated by actor Pedro Pascal. Opening June 9, the 30-minute show uses data from the European Space Agency's Gaia observatory and contributions from over 20 academic institutions to map the sun's journey through the Milky Way over billions of years. The project involved astronomers, artists, and science visualization experts, with a score by composer Robert Miller and direction by museum trustee Shawn Levy.
The article examines the use of two iconic minimalist designs—the Vitsœ 620 chair and a Braun wall-mounted hi-fi system—in the Apple TV+ series *Severance*. Both objects were designed by German industrial designer Dieter Rams in the 1960s and appear in the show's dystopian corporate setting, specifically in the lower levels of Lumon Industries where experimental subject Gemma undergoes tests. The production team intentionally selected these pieces to convey themes of power, control, and commerce.
Writer and curator Laura Raicovich is organizing a weekend-long festival called the "Circus of Life" in St. Louis, Missouri, taking place October 24–26 at the Big Top circus grounds in the Grand Center Arts District. The event is part of Counterpublic, a triennial civic exhibition founded in 2019 by James McAnally, and will feature artists, writers, theater groups, performers, and activists. Raicovich leads a team of four "ringleaders" including Kenneth Bailey, Galen Gritts, Jeanne van Heeswijk, and Nontsikelelo Mutiti, with additional participants such as Chloë Bass, Hilma's Ghost, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed. The program includes performances by Bread and Puppet Theater, conversations with Roxane Gay and Nermeen Shaikh, workshops, a parade, and communal meals, all free and open to the public.
The article examines how gender pay disparities and the fear of a "pink-collar" profession persist in the art museum world, triggered by comments from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about "masculine energy" in the workplace. It recounts a 2020 forum where National Gallery of Art director Kaywin Feldman expressed concern that art museums becoming predominantly female could lower salaries, a remark initially seen as sexist but later contextualized by the author's investigation into the origins of such fears. The author traces the concept to a 2016 New York Times article citing research on how female-dominated fields see pay drops, and explores how even progressive leaders like Feldman can inadvertently perpetuate gender bias.