giulia cretulescu fiber art sexy

Giulia Crețulescu creates fiber art from synthetic fabric sourced from a Ford automotive factory near her hometown of Craiova, Romania. Her work features geometric, torso-sized wall-mounted shapes with bondage-like straps and repurposed industrial seatbelts, blending found and handmade elements. After completing a PhD in graphic arts in Bucharest, she turned to sewing to resist the speed of digital design, producing non-functional, armor-like abstractions. Her recent exhibition at Fragment Gallery in New York showcased her unique approach, which also incorporates inspiration from motorcycle gear and medieval armor.

napoleon sword could fetch 1 million auction

A ceremonial saber commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 sold for €4.6 million ($5.2 million) at Giquello auction house in Paris on May 22, far exceeding its estimate of €700,000–€1 million. The sword, made by master armorer Nicolas-Noël Boutet, was given to Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and remained in his family ever since. It features a curved Damascus blade, gold-plated silver mounts, and a stingray-skin sheath, with classical imagery including Medusa, Hercules, and Mars. The sale was part of a 20-lot auction at Hôtel Drouot that also included a 15th-century sword, a Gabonese mask, and a 17th-century tapestry.

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.

house democrats urge jd vance to stop smithsonian

Four Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives—Joseph Morelle, Terri Sewell, Norma Torres, and Julie Johnson—sent a letter to Vice President J.D. Vance on Thursday urging him to reject an overhaul of the Smithsonian Institution. The letter responds to President Donald Trump's March 27 executive order, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," which aims to eliminate "divisive" and "anti-American" content from Smithsonian exhibitions and restore removed monuments. The lawmakers argue that the order threatens the curatorial independence that has made the Smithsonian a globally respected cultural institution.

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Chicago-based collectors Mamadou-Abou and Catherine Sarr discuss their art collection, which spans works from West Africa, France, and the U.S., in an interview with Cultured. The couple, an investor and a jewelry designer, share how their collection began with Mamadou-Abou's discovery of contemporary African photography and emphasize a patient, conviction-driven approach to acquiring art. They also detail the SARR Prize, an initiative supporting emerging France-based artists with cash awards and a residency at Villa Albertine in Chicago.

fashion hermes boutique artist lisha bai

Korean-American painter and sculptor Lisha Bai unveiled a new window installation at Hermès Maison Madison in New York, created to coincide with New York Fashion Week. The installation features polychrome fabrics molded into geometric forms, drawing inspiration from the Korean patchwork tradition of bojagi and the quilts of Gee’s Bend, reflecting Bai’s experience growing up as a Korean-American in Alabama. A conversation between Bai and Cooper Hewitt curator Alexandra Cunningham Cameron explored how Bai translates textile techniques and light into immersive art. The event was attended by Hermès Americas President and CEO Diane Mahady and VP Diane Kruger, among other guests.

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The article reviews "A World in the Making: The Shakers," an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, running through August 9, 2026. It pairs Shaker material culture with works by seven contemporary artists, including Kameelah Janan Rasheed, who responds to the archive of Rebecca Cox Jackson, a Black Shaker leader. The exhibition explores how Shaker communal practices, craft traditions, and devotional art resonate in today's digital age, where handmade aesthetics often become lifestyle signals rather than shared experiences.

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Jonathan Anderson made his debut as the new men's artistic director of Dior with the Men's Spring/Summer 2026 collection, presented in June. The collection riffs on French history while incorporating Anderson's signature gestures: painstaking handiwork, reverence for craft, and touches of the absurd. Highlights include a collaboration with textile artist Sheila Hicks on the Lady Dior bag, literary tributes on the Book Tote (featuring works by Bram Stoker, James Joyce, and Charles Baudelaire), and intricate embroidery requiring up to 3,271 hours per coat. The collection also features Brandebourg detailing, sculptural silhouettes, and reimagined heritage pieces like a 1960s-inspired cape.

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Art advisor Rob Teeters opens his 1950s Sagaponack home to CULTURED magazine, revealing how he curates his personal collection alongside his husband, ceramicist Bruce M. Sherman. The home features a mix of ancient artifacts, such as a third-century Roman marble head, and contemporary works by Wade Guyton, Sherrie Levine, and Matias Faldbakken, alongside Sherman's own polychrome ceramics. Teeters, who founded Front Desk Apparatus in 2006 and leads the Dallas nonprofit art space the Power Station, discusses the nuanced process of living with art and how arrangement, lighting, and even the texture of a room affect the experience.

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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.

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A launch party for CULTURED at Home, the magazine's inaugural design issue, was held at the Paris home of collector and private art dealer Jim Hedges. The event, guest-edited by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, drew a cross-section of fashion, art, and design insiders, including Hermès’s Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, artist Mickalene Thomas, and collectors Michelle and Jason Rubell. The party took place during Art Basel Paris and Design Miami, with guests viewing Hedges’s personal collection featuring works by Jack Pierson and Andy Warhol.

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CULTURED magazine hosted a September issue launch party at FOOD, a revived 1970s art-world restaurant now run by artist Lucien Smith and the estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. The event, co-hosted by legendary model and activist Bethann Hardison and CULTURED Editor-in-Chief Sarah Harrelson, drew a crowd of fashion and art insiders including designers, stylists, artists, and editors. Guests enjoyed family-style dishes, Lagavulin cocktails, and left with copies of the magazine's latest covers featuring Julia Fox, Anthony Edwards, Vicky Krieps, Sophie Calle, and Lucien Smith.

food mina stone artists favorite food

CULTURED's food editor Mina Stone asked over two dozen artists to name their essential foods, from comfort dishes to simple staples. Responses range from Aya Brown's rice (rooted in her Black American and Japanese heritage) to Rob Pruitt's Caesar salad, Kaws's cheese, and Armando Nin's Dominican breakfast Mangú, with many artists citing coffee, eggs, and nostalgic family meals.

anna weyant tiffany and co hardwear

Tiffany & Co. celebrated its Hardwear Collection with an event at its Landmark flagship on Fifth Avenue, featuring painter Anna Weyant as the new face of the campaign alongside actors Greta Lee and Mikey Madison. The gathering included guests such as Phoebe Gates, Laura Harrier, Chase Sui Wonders, artists Chase Hall and Sasha Gordon, and chef Daniel Boulud, with music by Ruby Aldridge and Ruinart champagne.

Ex-Votos of Disobedience: Débora Arango in Dialogue with Alfonso Quijano

EXVOTOS DE LA DESOBEDIENCIA: DÉBORA ARANGO EN DIÁLOGO CON ALFONSO QUIJANO

The exhibition "Exvotos de la desobediencia: Débora Arango en diálogo con Alfonso Quijano" at the Claustro de San Agustín of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, curated by María Belén Sáez de Ibarra, brings together paintings and watercolors by Débora Arango (born 1907) alongside woodcuts by Alfonso Quijano (born 1927). The show proposes a dialogue that addresses persistent violence, inequality, and exclusion in contemporary life, with sacred symbols coexisting with bodies marked by desire, guilt, hunger, and resistance. Arango's work is presented as one of the earliest and most radical expressions of feminism in Latin American art, challenging patriarchal structures that have historically marginalized women and their images from public spaces.

WAYAMOU: LENGUAS DE LO COMÚN. LAURA ANDERSON BARBATA Y SHEROANAWE HAKIHIIWE

The exhibition "Wayamou: Lenguas de lo común" at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City presents the collaborative work of artists Laura Anderson Barbata and Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, whose artistic and political relationship spans over three decades. The show traces their shared history, beginning in the early 1990s when Barbata traveled to the Venezuelan Amazon and taught handmade papermaking using local plant fibers, introducing Hakihiiwe to a sustained visual exploration of Yanomami cosmology, oral tradition, and legacy. In 1992, they co-founded Yanomami Owë Mamotima ("Yanomami art of papermaking"), a project enabling the community to tell its own stories through its own visual and linguistic codes, exemplified by the handmade book "Shapono (Casa)" (1996).

ELENA DAMIANI, XIMENA GARRIDO-LECCA AND ISHMAEL RANDALL-WEEKS: SIGNAL AND STRATA

ELENA DAMIANI, XIMENA GARRIDO-LECCA E ISHMAEL RANDALL-WEEKS: SIGNAL AND STRATA

An exhibition titled 'Signal and Strata' featuring Peruvian artists Elena Damiani, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Ishmael Randall-Weeks was presented at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts from February 5 to April 5, 2026. The show, examined in an accompanying essay by curator Madeline Murphy Turner, focuses on how the artists use materials like travertine, copper, and concrete to interrogate narratives of modernity, resource extraction, and the climate crisis.

QUISQUEYA HENRÍQUEZ: THE CENTER CAN BE EVERYWHERE

QUISQUEYA HENRÍQUEZ: EL CENTRO PUEDE ESTAR EN TODAS PARTES

A major retrospective exhibition titled "El centro puede estar en todas partes" (The Center Can Be Everywhere) for artist Quisqueya Henríquez has opened at the Centro de Arte Complutense in Madrid. Curated by René Morales with Isabella Lenzi and Alfonsina Martínez, the show presents the most comprehensive European review of Henríquez's multidisciplinary work, spanning photography, video, collage, and installation, and is organized thematically rather than chronologically.

Dolce Vita is Over

Dolce Vita war gestern

Andrea Modica's new photobook "Italian Story" collects four decades of photographs taken in Italy, beginning with her first trip there in the late 1980s. Born in 1960 to a family with roots in Sicily and Naples, Modica received a Fulbright scholarship to travel to Sicily and photograph the origins of the Catholic imagery, gender roles, and family structures she experienced growing up in New York. The book, however, is not a documentary of her heritage; instead, it presents dreamlike, surreal images—motionless bodies in water, dead fish, figures behind mosquito nets, Madonna statues—that resist clear narrative or identity politics. Modica works with an 8x10 large-format analog camera and prints using the historic platinum-palladium process, giving the images a timeless, collaborative quality.

Nasan Tur Collects Contributions for 'Archive of Feelings' for Manifesta 16

Nasan Tur sammelt Beiträge für "Archiv der Gefühle" zur Manifesta 16

Berlin-based artist Nasan Tur is calling on people from the Ruhr region and beyond to submit contributions to his "Archive of Feelings" via an online portal. The project is part of his commissioned work for the 16th edition of the nomadic biennial Manifesta, which opens on June 21 across several cities in the Ruhr area. Tur's installation, titled "Elevation," will be housed in St. Gertrud Church in Essen, where excerpts from anonymous submissions—expressing hopes, fears, wounds, ideas, wishes, and everyday observations—will be carved into old church pews.

At a Difficult Time, a Minnesota Museum Offers Respite to Somalis

The Somali Museum of Minnesota has emerged as a vital cultural sanctuary and community hub for Somali immigrants in Minneapolis. By preserving traditional nomadic artifacts, textiles, and contemporary artworks, the museum provides a space for the diaspora to reconnect with their heritage and find solace amidst social and political challenges.

Changes at Manifesta as Hedwig Fijen steps down

Hedwig Fijen, founding director of Manifesta, the European Nomadic Biennial, will step down on October 5. Emilia van Lynden and Catherine Nichols will succeed her as general director and artistic director respectively, as announced by the supervisory board of the International Foundation Manifesta. Fijen, who was commissioned by the Netherlands Office for Fine Arts in 1991 to develop a pan-European platform, has led Manifesta through editions in Palermo, Pristina, Barcelona, and the upcoming 2026 edition in the Ruhr region. Van Lynden has served as deputy director since 2019, while Nichols, a Berlin-based curator, contributed as creative mediator for the 2022 edition and artistic board member for 2026. The new leadership will begin with Manifesta 17 in Coimbra, Portugal, in 2028.

Michael Fullerton: The Politics of Portraiture

Glasgow-based painter Michael Fullerton is presenting a two-part exhibition that critically examines the politics of portraiture. The first section features 11 oil portraits of male asylum seekers he lived alongside while working as live-in staff at the Hilltop Hotel in Carlisle. These works, painted in a traditional style, depict the men with care against ambiguous landscapes, deliberately restricting personal information to names and origins, highlighting their status within systems of power.

Brittany Invites Itself to the Venice Biennale: An Unusual Pavilion Dedicated to Breton Creation Moors in the Lagoon

La Bretagne s’invite à la Biennale de Venise : un insolite pavillon dédié à la création bretonne s’est amarré dans la lagune

For the 61st Venice Biennale, a group of artists and art figures from Brittany have created an unofficial "Breton pavilion" in the form of a spectacular sailboat moored on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The boat, designed by artist Joachim Monvoisin, features contributions from Morgane Tschiember (who sewed a sail with a black cross, the 11th-century Breton flag) and master glassmaker Andrew Erdos (who made the navigation lights). Performances during the opening week included readings by Breton authors and traditional music concerts with binious and bombardes on the Via Garibaldi.

La Rocabella : une résidence d’artistes paradisiaque qui croise les disciplines près de Toulon

La Rocabella, a Belle Époque villa near Toulon, France, has been transformed into an interdisciplinary artist residency by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, co-founder of Criteo. Built in 1898 by architect Hans-Georg Tersling, the estate now hosts ceramic sculptors, comic artists, documentary filmmakers, and musicians in two-month sessions, with themes like 'Les Gardiennes de la mer' linking their work. The residency, funded entirely by Rudelle, aims to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration in a serene Mediterranean setting.

Hedwig Fijen to Depart as Founding Director of Manifesta

Hedwig Fijen, the founding director of Manifesta, the nomadic European biennial launched in 1996, has announced she will depart on October 5. Fijen began working on the platform in 1991 under a commission from the Netherlands Office for Fine Arts, and oversaw editions in cities including Rotterdam, Palermo, Pristina, and Barcelona. The supervisory board has appointed Emilia van Lynden as general director and Catherine Nichols as artistic director to lead future editions, starting with Manifesta 16 in Germany’s Ruhr Valley this year and Manifesta 17 in Coimbra, Portugal, in 2028.

SILENCE HAS MATTER ETHIOPIA BRINGS THE WORK OF TEGENE KUNBI TO THE VENICE BIENNALE

The Ethiopia Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale presents "Shapes of Silence," an exhibition by artist Tegene Kunbi, curated by Abebaw Ayalew, running from May 9 to November 22, 2026, at Palazzo Bollani. The show marks the culmination of Kunbi's thirty-year practice, exploring silence as a social and political condition through abstraction, textiles, and assemblage, drawing on Ethiopian folkloric traditions and material histories.

EFG LATIN AMERICA ART AWARD PRESENTS THE NOMINATED ARTIST AT SP ARTE 2026

The EFG Latin America Art Award, in partnership with ArtNexus, has named Brazilian artist Cristiano Lenhardt as the nominated artist at SP-Arte 2026. Lenhardt, represented by Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, was selected for his work *Lieoe* (2025), a mixed-media piece combining ceramic and embroidery on cotton that responds to the devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul in May 2024. The selection was made with input from Fernando Oliva, curator of MASP, and Celia Sredni de Birbragher, director and editor of ArtNexus.

EFG LATIN AMERICA ART AWARD PRESENTA AL ARTISTA NOMINADO EN SP ARTE 2026

The EFG Latin America Art Award, in partnership with ArtNexus, has named Brazilian artist Cristiano Lenhardt as its nominee from SP-Arte 2026. Lenhardt, represented by Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, was selected for his work *Lieoe* (2025), a mixed-media piece combining ceramic, embroidery, and cotton fabric dyed by floodwaters from the Guaíba River. The work responds to the environmental tragedy of the May 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul, transforming trauma into a tactile, intuitive object. The nomination was made with input from Fernando Oliva, curator of MASP, and Celia Sredni de Birbragher, director of ArtNexus.

Suzanne Perrottet with Tarren Johnson & Joel Cocks, OOR Saloon & Elaine Mitchener, New Kyd, Thibault Lac at Cabaret Voltaire

An exhibition titled "Suzanne Perrottet with Tarren Johnson & Joel Cocks, OOR Saloon & Elaine Mitchener, New Kyd, Thibault Lac" is on view at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich from December 19, 2025, to May 17, 2026. The show features works by multiple artists including Suzanne Perrottet, Tarren Johnson, Joel Cocks, OOR Saloon, Elaine Mitchener, New Kyd, and Thibault Lac, with images courtesy of the artists and the venue, and photos by Cedric Mussano, Romain Mader, and Johanna Bommer.