mrbeast mexico ancient mayan sites outrage

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has filed an administrative lawsuit against the production company of YouTuber MrBeast (James Donaldson) over a video titled “I Explored 2000 Year Old Ancient Temples,” uploaded on May 10, 2025. The video shows MrBeast and his companions exploring Mayan sites in Yucatán, including Chichén Itzá, Calakmul, and Balamcanché, and features a scene where he promotes his snack brand Feastables as “the only Mayan-approved snack on the planet.” INAH alleges that the permit granted to Full Circle Media did not authorize commercial advertising or false information, and it demands compensation and a public retraction. The controversy escalated after Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum called for further investigation into whether the permit was violated.

huge olmec heads mesoamerica

A farmer in southern Mexico discovered the first Olmec head in the late 1850s while clearing land for corn cultivation. Since then, 17 colossal stone heads have been unearthed, primarily at the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan archaeological site in Veracruz. Carved by the Olmec civilization between 1200 and 400 B.C.E., these basalt monuments range from 3.5 to 11.5 feet tall and weigh up to 45 tons. Each head features unique facial expressions and is thought to depict individual Olmec rulers, possibly serving as funerary monuments. The heads are now held by institutions such as the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology.

Body, Territory, and Food Sovereignty at MAMM

CUERPO, TERRITORIO Y SOBERANÍA ALIMENTARIA EN EL MAMM

The Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) has inaugurated a trio of exhibitions titled 'Nos habitan pájaros y montañas', 'La luz, el fuego y la ceniza', and 'El susurro del barro'. These shows collectively explore the intersection of the human body, territorial sovereignty, and food security, featuring a dialogue between the museum's permanent collection—specifically the work of Débora Arango—and contemporary artists. The exhibitions utilize diverse media, including sound and raw materials like clay and soil, to address environmental and social crises.

GRACIELA ITURBIDE: EYES TO FLY

GRACIELA ITURBIDE: OJOS PARA VOLAR

The C/O Berlin gallery is presenting "Eyes to Fly With (Ojos para volar)," the first major retrospective in Germany of renowned Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. The exhibition, curated by Sophia Greiff and Melissa Harris in close collaboration with Iturbide, runs from February 7 to June 10 and features her iconic works like "Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas" alongside lesser-known series on fashion, the cholo community in Los Angeles, and her travels in India and Bangladesh.

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.

Step Aboard the Superyacht Circling This Year’s Cannes Film Festival

Over the weekend of the Cannes Film Festival, director Ron Howard premiered his documentary *Avedon*, which traces photographer Richard Avedon's rise from a working-class Jewish immigrant background to a defining chronicler of American culture. The film received a second life aboard the Renaissance superyacht with a party hosted by editor Graydon Carter, Ancient chairman and CEO Alexander Klabin, and Burgess chief executive John Beckett. Guests included actors Natasha Lyonne and Rosemarie Dewitt, photographer Jean Pigozzi, model Eddie Mitsou, Avedon's grandchildren Michael, Matthew, and Caroline Avedon, and producers Courtney Kivowitz, Sara Bernstein, Darcie Reisler, Dallas Rexer, Chris St. John, and Justin Wilkes. The after-hours cocktail allowed attendees to relive the film's most impactful scenes while mingling with the producers and the photographer's family.

Can a Venice Biennale Pavilion Be Rock ‘n’ Roll? At the Belgium Pavilion, Miet Warlop Makes the Case.

Miet Warlop, a Belgian artist known for her avant-garde theater work, is representing Belgium at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a performance-installation titled "IT NEVER SSST." The project transforms the Belgian Pavilion into a chaotic, sensory-filled space where performers climb wooden structures, bang drums, and break plaster boards inscribed with multilingual text, reflecting the noise and misunderstandings of contemporary life. Curated by Caroline Dumalin, the pavilion blurs the line between theater and visual art, with live performances occurring only part of the time while sculptors continuously remake plaster reliefs throughout the Biennale's run.

literature james cahill the violet hour book

James Cahill's new novel *The Violet Hour* opens with a young man falling to his death from a London balcony, unraveling a mystery that draws readers into the lives of three figures in the global blue-chip art market: a tormented abstract painter, his estranged first dealer, and a billionaire collector. Cahill, a writer and critic who spent 12 years at Sadie Coles, explores the fraught relationships where creativity, money, friendship, and sexuality collide, offering a more empathetic take than typical satires of extreme wealth.

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.

art shakers movement ica philadelphia religion

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.

art frieze la art production fund

Frieze Los Angeles has announced its 2025 public art program, titled "Body & Soul," developed in partnership with the Art Production Fund. Seven Los Angeles-based artists—including Patrick Martinez, Amanda Ross-Ho, Kelly Wall, Shana Hoehn, Polly Borland, Dan John Anderson, and Cosmas & Damian Brown—will present site-specific installations outside the fair's main venue at Santa Monica Airport. Works include a neon billboard by Martinez addressing ICE raids, a durational performance by Ross-Ho rolling a giant inflatable Earth, and a resurrected newsstand by Wall filled with disappearing glass magazines. The program also features youth art workshops and three prizes for emerging artists.

art eloise hess young artist

Eloise Hess, a 30-year-old artist based in Los Angeles and a 2024 Yale Painting/Printmaking MFA graduate, has developed a unique image-making process that blurs the line between photography and painting. Her technique involves transferring photographs wet onto absorbent paper, embedding the print in an encaustic surface, and then painting, carving, and manipulating the image to create records of landscapes, shadows, gestures, and time. She discusses her work "Early Morning Tomorrow," a screenprint of photographs taken with her father, and reflects on themes of time, resonance, and capacity.

art frida kahlo auction record sothebys

Frida Kahlo's painting *El sueño (La cama)* (1940) sold at Sotheby's for $54.7 million, setting a new auction record for Latin American art, for the artist herself, and for any work by a female artist. The sale surpasses Kahlo's previous record of $34.9 million set in 2021 for *Diego y yo* and eclipses the $9.76 million record for her husband Diego Rivera's *The Rivals* from 2018.

art storm ascher hamptons black arts council

Storm Ascher, an artist and curator who has spent years in the Hamptons, founded the Hamptons Black Arts Council in 2020 to support public programming for Black artists and arts organizations. This summer, the council is marking milestones including the "Mami Wata" benefit exhibition at the Eastville Community Historical Society, which explores themes of water, healing, and Black women's history, and the establishment of a permanent contemporary art collection at Eastville with works by artists like Sanford Biggers and Derrick Adams.

margherita maccapani missoni young collectors fashion

Margherita Maccapani Missoni, the 41-year-old granddaughter of the founders of the Italian fashion house Missoni and founder of her own brand Maccapani, discusses her art collection in an interview. She grew up surrounded by intense collectors, including her mother and grandmother, and her own collection now focuses on female painters whose work explores the cultural history of the body. She highlights a Caroline Walker painting in her home and credits Mariuccia Casadio, a Vogue Italia writer, with teaching her to navigate the art world. She names Corita Kent, Katherine Bradford, and Isabella Ducrot as artists she is particularly excited about.

Major art exhibition by Joe Lycett to come to city

Comedian Joe Lycett will present his first major solo art exhibition, titled EVERYTHING MUST GO, at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in July. The mixed-media show explores the theme of "things that are no longer with us," drawing inspiration from the city's collection and featuring subjects like deceased celebrities, discontinued products, extinct animals, and destroyed buildings, all presented in Lycett's signature colorful and humorous style. General admission will be free.

Art at Bartlett Presents BARTLETT ART TALK: Janice Kasper

Maine-based environmental painter Janice Kasper will headline the first Bartlett Art Talk of the 2026 season at Bartlett Woods Retirement Community on April 22. The event coincides with the exhibition "Chickadees, Alligators and Stonehenge," which features Kasper’s work alongside pieces by Cicely Aikman and Dirk McDonnell, all on loan from the Caldbeck Gallery. Kasper, whose work is held in major collections like the Portland Museum of Art, is known for dramatic oils that explore the tension between wildlife and human technology.

Ubuntu hosts Fellowship for Black Artists exhibition for a third year

Mural Arts Philadelphia, in partnership with Ubuntu Art Gallery, has opened its sixth annual Fellowship for Black Artists exhibition, featuring 30 works by 11 emerging artists from the 2025 cohort. The opening reception drew a crowd of fellows, collaborators, and art lovers to the gallery, where speeches highlighted the program's impact and mission.

Photos: Art Gallery "2.16 Contemporary" Grand Opening

On January 21, 2026, the 2.16 Contemporary art gallery opened at 325 Constitución Street in Puerto Vallarta's Zona Romántica with a gala event featuring the exhibition “Liberatio” by Guadalajara-based artist Victor Haro, celebrating his 40-year career. The ribbon-cutting ceremony included owners and gallerists Orlando Santamaría and Abrajam Romero, Culture Councilwoman Laurel Carrillo, and Haro himself, with the show presenting hyperrealistic works in acrylic paste and airbrushing that explore human liberation.

Vatican to open contemporary art gallery in historic papal library

The Vatican Apostolic Library has created a new exhibition hall for contemporary art, which will be inaugurated by Pope Francis on November 5. The first exhibition, titled "EVERYONE: Humanity on its way," features unpublished works by Roman artist Pietro Ruffo, including a site-specific installation in the Sala Barberini that transforms the space into a tropical forest. Historic treasures from the library, such as a 17th-century map of the Nile by Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi, will be displayed in dialogue with Ruffo's contemporary reinterpretations.

Collaborative art exhibition at Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design explores the weight and wonder of ordinary things

A new collaborative exhibition titled *Tension & Tenderness: The Domestic Surreal* has opened at Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The show unites artists Michael Pfleghaar and Lisa Walcott, who explore the hidden forces within everyday domestic life. Pfleghaar’s paintings blend queer-coded interiors and still-life scenes with abstract elements, while Walcott’s kinetic sculptures repurpose household objects like brooms and drying racks to evoke gravity, breathing, and tension. The exhibition is curated by KCAD Exhibitions Director Michele Bosak and runs through November 15 in the KCAD FLEXgallery.

This is fucking Disneyland

"Das ist fucking Disneyland"

The article surveys recent German cultural commentary, highlighting three main stories: art historian Bénédicte Savoy's warning in the FAZ about the physical decay of German universities, particularly the Technical University of Berlin, as a threat to democratic culture; Berlin artist Charlie Stein's essay on anxiety as a pervasive contemporary condition and art's role in making it visible; and critic Rachel Wetzler's harsh review of the Venice Biennale in Artforum, calling it an overwhelming 'theme park' version of the art world. Additionally, Nikolaus Bernau defends expert juries in the Tagesspiegel, using the Biennale's jury crisis as a case study.

The Many Sheddings of Valie Export

Die vielen Häutungen der Valie Export

Valie Export, the Austrian media and performance artist known for using her body as a site of social critique, has died at age 85 in Vienna. Her final works include a black-and-white photo series of her forearm resting on a stone snake sculpture at the University of Vienna, exploring themes of skin, transformation, and mimesis. From the 1970s onward, she created iconic "Body Configurations" in which she placed her body on streets and against buildings along Vienna's Ringstrasse, tracing architectural forms to expose institutional power and patriarchal authority.

And who are you?

Und wer seid ihr?

The article is a brief interview conducted at the Venice Biennale, where a visitor named Franzi explains her presence at the event and discusses her favorite pavilion. She cites the Austrian Pavilion by Florentina Holzinger as her absolute favorite after five days of art, and clarifies that her bare chest is not a political protest against Putin but a homage to Holzinger's work. She also mentions missing the Vatican Pavilion due to long queues.

Monuments in Motion

Denkmäler in Bewegung

Berlin-based artist Sarah Ama Duah, who transitioned from fashion to sculpture, creates works that explore Afro-German memory culture. Her practice includes beeswax portraits, found objects like Delft porcelain and baroque vases, and performances at venues such as the Humboldt Forum. In 2025, she received the Wolfram Beck Prize for Sculpture. Duah's early fashion work, including silicone garments shown at the Fashionclash Festival in Maastricht, evolved into sculptural investigations of clothing, body, and space, leading her to study performance and sculpture at the Berlin University of the Arts under Jimmy Robert.

The Great Shitshow

Die große Shitshow

Florentina Holzinger has transformed the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale into a radical performance installation titled "Seaworld Venice." The piece features naked performers suspended from meat hooks, a performer ringing a bell while dangling upside down from a crane, a woman on a jetski circling inside a flooded pavilion, and a system where visitors are invited to urinate into portable toilets, with the waste processed and recirculated into the water. The work combines extreme physical stunts, nudity, and bodily fluids to create a visceral, immersive experience that has drawn long queues and stunned reactions from the art world.

Shit has the power to destabilize systems of order

"Scheiße hat die Kraft, Ordnungssysteme zu destabilisieren"

Aline Bouvy, the artist representing Luxembourg at the Venice Biennale, has created a film essay titled "La Merde" that centers on excrement as its main character. Originally conceived as a performance, the work explores themes of bodily circulation, transformation, and the grotesque, using feces to challenge societal taboos and systems of order. Bouvy discusses the film's development with curator Stilbé Schroeder, noting that the Biennale provided the resources and time to realize the project, which will later travel to the Kunstverein in Salzburg.

The Backlash Is Here

"Der Backlash ist da"

Kathleen Reinhardt, the curator of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, has announced her concept featuring artists Sung Tieu and Henrike Naumann under the title "Ruin." The exhibition will use East Germany as a prism to explore themes of power, history, and the present. Reinhardt was invited to submit a concrete concept and specific artists for this edition of the pavilion.

History Made Material

Material gewordene Geschichte

The German Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale has been transformed by artist Sung Tieu, who clad its Nazi-era facade with millions of small marble tiles to replicate the look of a prefabricated East German apartment block—specifically the Gehrenseestraße housing complex in Berlin where she spent part of her childhood. Inside, the exhibition features glass casts of her mother's limbs, aluminum beams evoking cramped living quarters, and works by the late Henrike Naumann, all curated by Kathleen Reinhardt to explore bureaucracy, migration, and systemic violence.

I Try to Allow Chaos

"Ich versuche, Chaos zuzulassen"

Florentina Holzinger presents her exhibition "Seaworld Venice" at the Austrian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, a spectacular underwater-themed installation that combines a theme park, sacred building, and sewage treatment plant. The work explores transformation from dirt to cleanliness, featuring water, dolphins in the lagoon, and boundary-pushing performance elements.