Backed by an Expanding Collector Base, Old Masters Make a Quiet Comeback

Christie's London Classic Week generated a combined total of £60,844,240 ($83,660,830) between its Old Masters Evening Sale and The Exceptional Sale, led by a record-setting £31.9 million sale of a Canaletto masterpiece. The painting, once part of Sir Robert Walpole's collection, attracted five bidders from Asia, Europe, and North America. Sotheby's also saw strong results, with the two houses together achieving £58 million (excluding buyer's premium) in Old Masters evening auctions, a notable increase from 2024. Other highlights included Titian's Portrait of a nobleman, seated before a window selling for £3,428,000 and Jan Davidsz de Heem's still life achieving £3,670,000.

Why this WA artist has gained so much acclaim

Joe Feddersen, a 71-year-old artist and member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, has gained widespread acclaim for his prints, paintings, weavings, glass sculptures, ceramics, photography, and digital imagery. His work draws on the Plateau pictorial style and ancient petroglyphs, blending traditional Indigenous motifs with contemporary icons like chain-link fences and high-voltage towers. A traveling retrospective, a new book titled "Earth, Water, Sky," and a 2024 Governor's Arts & Heritage Award mark a particularly busy period, culminating in the exhibition "Past/Present" at studio e gallery in Seattle. Feddersen also addresses painful history, such as the 2021 discovery of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, through works covered with skull outlines.

È morto Bruno Bischofberger, il gallerista e collezionista svizzero che fece lavorare assieme Warhol e Basquiat

Bruno Bischofberger, the influential Swiss gallerist and collector, has died at age 86. A pivotal figure in the contemporary art market, he opened his first gallery in Zurich in 1963 and was instrumental in introducing American Pop Art to Europe, exhibiting Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rauschenberg. He later championed Minimalism, Land Art, and Neo-Expressionism, representing artists like Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, and Francesco Clemente. Most famously, Bischofberger discovered Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981 and orchestrated the legendary collaboration between Warhol, Basquiat, and Clemente. His close relationship with Warhol included a first-refusal agreement on future works and the suggestion of standardized portrait commissions that became Warhol's primary income source.

art tidawhitney lek young artist

Tidawhitney Lek, a 33-year-old first-generation Cambodian American artist based in Long Beach, CA, is profiled in CULTURED's 2025 Young Artists list. Her densely layered, brightly colored paintings collapse distinctions between interior and exterior, past and present, and foreground and background, reflecting her life and heritage. She gained attention at the Hammer Museum's "Made in L.A." biennial in 2023 and has upcoming shows at Victoria Miro in London and Art Basel Miami Beach with Night Gallery. The profile highlights her painting "Refuge," currently at the Henry Art Gallery, which depicts a bomb exploding outside a home and addresses themes of disconnect, erasure, violence, and generational trauma.

‘The Queen of the Ghetto’ Gave New York’s Immigrant Community a Voice. A Century Later, It’s Re-emerging

Anzia Yezierska, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who arrived in New York in 1890, defied traditional gender expectations to become a leading literary voice of the 1920s. Dubbed the 'Queen of the Ghetto,' she documented the raw struggles of immigrant women on the Lower East Side using a unique 'immigrant English' style that captured Yiddish idioms. After escaping a restrictive marriage and pursuing an education at Columbia University, she channeled her personal frustrations into stories of poverty, ambition, and the psychological toll of assimilation.

Mei Lanfang Was Famous for His Masterful Performances as Female Leads. In the 1930s, He Introduced American Audiences to the World of Chinese Opera

Mei Lanfang Was Famous for His Masterful Performances as Female Leads. In the 1930s, He Introduced American Audiences to the World of Chinese Opera

Mei Lanfang, one of China's most celebrated Peking opera stars famed for his masterful performances of female *dan* roles, embarked on a groundbreaking seven-month tour of the United States in 1930. His performances, which introduced American audiences to the elaborate art of Chinese opera for the first time, were met with critical acclaim and packed houses, earning him honorary doctorates from American universities and adulation from both Chinese American communities and the wider public.

Louisville’s Speed Art Museum shines a light on the women of Abstract Expressionism

The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, will host "Abstract Expressionists: The Women" from May 16 to August 30, 2026. This is Kentucky's first exhibition devoted to Abstract Expressionism, featuring over 30 major female artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Vivian Springford, Grace Hartigan, and Lee Krasner. The show includes works like Frankenthaler's *Circus Landscape* (1951) and Springford's *Scuba Series* (1972–1984/5), along with archival materials and a timeline of women's artistic achievements. Organized by the American Federation of Arts from the Christian Levett Collection and FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum), France, the exhibition is curated by Dr. Ellen G. Landau and presented locally by Tyler Blackwell.

An outsider artist takes the world's biggest stage with the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

U.S. artist Alma Allen, a self-taught sculptor from Utah who works in Mexico, has been selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale with his exhibition "Call Me the Breeze" at the U.S. Pavilion. The selection process was fraught and opaque, with institutions declining to bid for the commission due to concerns about administration politics after the open call removed diversity, equity and inclusion language in favor of promoting "American values." A prior proposal for artist Robert Lazzarini fell apart after its institutional sponsor backed out, and Allen's project was quickly assembled with the American Arts Conservancy as sponsor and Jeffrey Uslip as curator. Allen, who has lived outside the critical art world for three decades, created a bronze evil eye for the pavilion's exterior and a headless sheep sculpture as a self-portrait of an outsider.

The message behind the US pavilion at the Venice Biennale

The article previews the 61st Venice Biennale, opening May 9 and running through November 22, highlighting early controversies. The five-person Golden Lion jury, led by Brazilian curator Solange Farkas, resigned after declaring they would not consider pavilions from countries under International Criminal Court investigation, targeting the Israel pavilion and its artist Belu-Simion Fainaru. Separately, the US pavilion has drawn scrutiny from the New York Times over its selection process, with commissioner Jenni Parido (a former pet food store owner) tapping curator Jeffrey Uslip and sculptor Alma Allen, bypassing traditional funders like the Ford and Mellon foundations.

What to Look for at Frieze New York 2026

Frieze New York 2026 returns to The Shed in Hudson Yards from May 13–17, featuring over 65 international galleries in its 15th edition. The fair emphasizes Latin American art with new committee members Fátima González and Omayra Alvarado, and includes highlights such as Southern Guild's expansion into Tribeca and Yeni Mao's cyborg sculptures in the Focus section. Collectors and enthusiasts can explore a diverse range of contemporary and blue-chip works across multiple fairs during Art Week.

The FLAG Art Foundation Named Founding Sponsor of Alchemy with Anthony Mason, Launching May 6

The FLAG Art Foundation has been named the founding sponsor of "Alchemy with Anthony Mason," a new long-form interview series launching May 6, 2026. Hosted by CBS News special correspondent Anthony Mason, the series features intimate 45-minute conversations with artists such as Hozier, Paul Simon, Nile Rodgers, Violet Grohl, and Taj Mahal, focusing on the transformative creative process rather than the finished work. The partnership is integrated into the series' identity, with each episode presented under FLAG's support and connecting viewers to contemporary art exhibitions, including Ellsworth Kelly: Eight Decades at the Parrish Art Museum and the reopening of the David Geffen Galleries at LACMA.

Top 5 Art Exhibits in Orange County This Spring

The article appears to be a security verification page from modernluxury.com, blocking access to its content due to bot detection. The intended article, titled "Top 5 Art Exhibits in Orange County This Spring," could not be accessed because the website requires JavaScript and cookies to be enabled and performs a security challenge.

National Museum of Asian Art Opens New Exhibition in June About Its Origin Story

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art will open a new exhibition titled "A Museum in the Making" on June 27, 2026, running through August 8, 2027. The show explores the origin story of the Freer Gallery of Art, America's first national art museum, by examining how collector Charles Lang Freer used his Detroit home as a living laboratory for museum design. It highlights collaborations with artists and architects, including James McNeill Whistler, Stanford White, and Mary Chase Perry Stratton, and features a video walkthrough of the Freer House. The exhibition is part of the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations and the Smithsonian's broader "Our Shared Future" initiative.

Landmark Exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Unites U.S. Bicentennial Photography Surveys for the First Time

The Smithsonian American Art Museum will present "Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial," a landmark exhibition opening September 18, 2026, that brings together for the first time photography surveys created through a federally funded grant program by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) around the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial. Featuring 225 photographs by more than 70 photographers, the show draws on the museum's holdings and collections nationwide, including previously unseen works, and places them in the context of federal survey photography dating back to the 19th century.

It’s not all movies: LA’s art, museums and exhibitions are world class

Los Angeles is expanding its cultural offerings with several new and renovated art institutions. The Museum of AI Arts, called Dataland, is set to open this spring at the Grand L.A. complex, created by artist Refik Anadol. It claims to be the world's first museum dedicated to AI art, featuring immersive installations like an Infinity Room with AI-generated scents. Meanwhile, the Natural History Museum completed a $75 million renovation in 2024, adding a 60,000-square-foot wing and displaying a unique green-boned dinosaur named Gnatalie, along with Barbara Carrasco's previously censored mural. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is opening the David Geffen Galleries on May 4, a 110,000-square-foot space for its permanent collection.

Self-Made at the American Folk Art Museum explores a century of artists inventing themselves

The American Folk Art Museum has launched "Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists," an exhibition exploring the work of self-taught creators who operated outside traditional institutional frameworks. Featuring a diverse array of drawings, paintings, and sculptures by figures such as Henry Darger, Bill Traylor, and Sister Gertrude Morgan, the show examines how these artists used their practice to construct identities and narratives in environments that often offered little formal recognition.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Spring 2026 Exhibition Program

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled its extensive exhibition schedule through June 2026, headlined by the first comprehensive U.S. retrospective of the Renaissance master Raphael. This landmark show will feature over 200 works, including rare loans and masterpieces. Other major highlights include the spring Costume Institute exhibition, "Costume Art," which will inaugurate a new 12,000-square-foot gallery suite, and "Musical Bodies," an interdisciplinary look at the relationship between instruments and the human form.

Indigenous Artists Infiltrate the Met With a Guerrilla A.R. Project

On Indigenous Peoples' Day, nonprofit media lab Amplifier launched an unsanctioned augmented reality exhibition titled “Encoded” at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The project features 17 Native artists who have digitally altered 25 iconic American artworks from the Met's collection—such as Thomas Cole's *View on the Catskills – Early Autumn* and Emanuel Leutze's *Washington Crossing the Delaware*—overlaying Indigenous perspectives onto the museum's American Wing. Visitors can view the AR works on smartphones or iPads, and Amplifier representatives are on-site to distribute guides and offer tours through the end of the year.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto)To Star in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1981 painting *Crowns (Peso Neto)* will headline Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale this November, carrying an estimate of $35–45 million—the highest ever for a Basquiat work from that year. The painting, never before offered at auction, debuted at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1982 and was later shown at documenta 7. It will be publicly exhibited in London, Paris, and New York before the sale, which coincides with the opening of Sotheby's new global headquarters in the former Whitney Museum's Breuer Building.

Venture Forward gifts name Wilmerding Pavilion and Anschutz Galleries in Princeton University Art Museum

Two major gifts from Louisa Stude Sarofim and The Anschutz Foundation, part of Princeton University's Venture Forward campaign, will name the Wilmerding Pavilion and the Anschutz Galleries in the new Princeton University Art Museum. The pavilion honors the late John Wilmerding, a pioneering American art historian and professor at Princeton, while the galleries within it will showcase the museum's American art collections. The museum opens on October 31, 2025, and the new space will allow a nearly five-fold increase in displayed works, including a broader definition of American art encompassing Spanish Colonial and Native American art.

In Surprising Twist, ADAA Art Fair Will Now Benefit the Whitney Museum

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) has named the Whitney Museum of American Art as the new philanthropic beneficiary of its annual fair at the Park Avenue Armory. This decision follows the ADAA's abrupt termination of a 30-year partnership with the Henry Street Settlement, a social services nonprofit that relied on the fair's preview gala for approximately $1 million in annual unrestricted funding. The new event, rebranded simply as the ADAA Fair, will direct its gala proceeds toward the Whitney’s educational and artistic programming.

How Photography Helped Build the Atomic Bomb

The feminist artist collective Slow War Against the Nuclear State (SWANS) presents the exhibition "Atomic Dragons" at Pitzer College Art Galleries. The show features works by seven intergenerational artist-academics, focusing on photography's historical role in developing atomic weapons and the enduring human and environmental costs of nuclear politics.

art mfa students risd saic calarts yale

Cultured magazine invited seven MFA students from CalArts, Columbia, RISD, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Yale to share recent works and discuss their artistic concerns. The students—Sascha Huth, Martha Estrella, Wenqing Zhai, Yehwan Song, Ricky Vasan, Virginia Hanusik, and Khidr Joseph—work in painting, photography, and sculpture, addressing themes such as commodity culture, Mexican American identity, China's one-child policy, digital inequality, personal yearning, ecological collapse, and grief.

henry street settlement independent art fair

The Henry Street Settlement, a nonprofit social-service organization on New York's Lower East Side, lost its primary annual fundraiser when the Art Dealers Association of America canceled The Art Show in July 2025. After months of uncertainty, Henry Street has partnered with Independent, the art fair that recently relocated to Pier 36, to host its 37th gala preview on May 14, 2026. The collaboration was brokered by art dealer James Fuentes, a Henry Street board member and longtime Lower East Side gallerist. The gala had raised over $38 million since 1989, and the cancellation left a budget gap that forced the organization to launch a virtual campaign raising only $600,000—half the usual amount—while federal cuts compounded the financial strain.

art moma new photography exhibition

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is launching its latest New Photography exhibition, “Lines of Belonging,” on September 14, marking the series’ 40th anniversary. The show features 13 international artists and collectives from four cities, including Sandra Blow, L. Kasimu Harris, and Prasiit Sthapit, who each reflect on their contributions. Blow captures Mexico City’s queer nightlife, Harris documents Black Masking Indian traditions in New Orleans, and Sthapit photographs the changing landscape of Susta, Nepal.

takako yamaguchi moca los angeles show

Takako Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born artist based in Los Angeles since 1987, will receive her first solo museum show in the city at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) starting June 29, 2025. The exhibition will feature 10 new seascapes in MOCA's Grand Avenue space, following a period of heightened attention including a 2023 show at Ortuzar gallery, inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, and record-breaking auction sales. In an interview with Cultured, Yamaguchi discusses her ambivalent relationship with the actual sea—she lives near the coast but rarely visits—and explains that her seascapes are inspired by other artists' depictions, such as Marsden Hartley and Rockwell Kent, filtered through her own lens of "semi-abstraction in reverse."

photographer maryam eisler alexei riboud interview

Photographers Maryam Eisler and Alexei Riboud, former high school classmates in Paris nearly 40 years ago, reunited in 2023 through a WhatsApp group and embarked on a creative challenge: photographing the same American Southwest landscapes side by side without sharing their images until the trip ended. The result is "West West," a book and exhibition at Pierre Yovanovitch's Manhattan gallery (June 12–July 11), curated by historian Carrie Scott and gallerist Howard Greenberg, featuring their work alongside iconic photographers like Diane Arbus, Joel Meyerowitz, and Ansel Adams.

2025 06 03 painter chase hall studio interview

American painter Chase Hall opens his first exhibition since becoming a parent, titled “Momma’s Baby, Daddy’s Maybe,” at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Vienna (through July 19). The show features his signature acrylic works on raw canvas with coffee stains, exploring American archetypes like cowboys, tennis players, and musicians. In a new CULTURED column called Studio Frequencies, Hall shares insights into his creative process, studio rituals, and the tools he relies on, including a hand-held staple remover from Japan and an espresso machine. He discusses working with one assistant, Kelsey, and the influence of his wife Lauren Rodriguez Hall as his first critic.

adrien brody art exhibition eden gallery

Two-time Academy Award winner Adrien Brody has opened a solo art exhibition titled “Made in America” at Eden gallery on Madison Avenue, running through June 28. The show features collages, paintings, and a gum wall installation that reflect on Brody’s New York youth, with themes of fast food, gun violence, and industrial decay. Brody discusses his inspirations, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Hieronymus Bosch, and describes his artistic process as akin to acting—distilling human behavior into a personality.

BLANCA DE LA TORRE Y EL “MUSEO ANFIBIO”: “A MÍ ME INTERESA EL PÚBLICO, NO NECESARIAMENTE LAS MASAS”

Blanca de la Torre, director of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), discusses her concept of the "Museo Anfibio" (Amphibious Museum) in an interview for Artishock Revista's series on Ibero-American museum leaders. She proposes reimagining the museum as a relational institution that mediates between physical and symbolic territories, communities, and ecosystems, structured around two axes: Territories-Earth and Aquatic Environments. The interview is part of a series leading up to International Museum Day, with previous entries including Nicolás Gómez Echeverri of the Banco de la República de Colombia.