Art News. Vasari Codex

article policy schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 15 link 1 artist

donald judd foundation marfa national historic sites

The Texas Historical Commission announced that buildings repurposed by minimalist artist Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas, have been added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Approved by the National Park Service in May 2025, the designation expands the existing Fort D.A. Russell Historic District to include 15 buildings and a large-scale installation, all altered or created by Judd between 1973 and his death in 1994. The properties are managed by the Chinati Foundation and the Judd Foundation, which operate as separate entities. This is the second Judd-linked historic district in Marfa, following the Central Marfa Historic District’s designation in 2022.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 11 link 4 artists

marlene dumas pushes the limits of portraiture at tate modern

Marlene Dumas's largest retrospective to date, "The Image as Burden," has opened at Tate Modern, showcasing her uncompromising approach to portraiture. The exhibition features over 200 works, including early ink drawings like "Rejects" (1994-ongoing), political pieces such as "Osama" (2010), and the "Magdalenas" series from the 1995 Venice Biennale. Dumas, a South African painter based in Amsterdam, explores themes of identity, politics, and the female body through her fluid, often dark palette and responses to mass media images.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 19 link 21 artists

10 nudes take home a nude benefit

The New York Academy of Art held its 26th annual "Take Home a Nude" benefit auction at Sotheby's Upper East Side headquarters, honoring artist John Alexander. The event featured 112 artists, including Ryan McGinness, Natalie Frank, Christo, Eric Fischl, and Kiki Smith, who each donated unique drawings made from the same nude models during Will Cotton's annual Drawing Party. The party, hosted at Cotton's studio, brought together New York artists to sketch live models, with this year's theme featuring the sons and daughters of art-world figures like Glenn O'Brien, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Anne Pasternak, and Barbara Gladstone posing alongside the nudes.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 18 link 11 artists

take home a nude new york academy of art

The New York Academy of Art held its 25th annual 'Take Home a Nude' fundraiser at Sotheby’s New York on October 24, featuring a live auction and party. Attendees included actresses Brooke Shields and Naomi Watts, who bid on artworks, along with dealers, artists, and collectors. Sotheby’s auctioneer Courtney Christensen led the sale, and 'Baby' Jane Holzer was honored for her collecting and Warhol-era legacy. Watts purchased four works, including a portrait by Liz Markus for $14,000, while Shields helped raise bids online.

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article local schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 23 link 16 artists

historic paris art schools risk development

The Académie de la Grande Chaumière, a historic Paris art school founded in 1904 that taught artists like Balthus, Joan Miró, and Louise Bourgeois, faces eviction by July 31 after its owner Alexandre Garèse declined to renew its lease. Garèse plans to redevelop the Montparnasse site into a mixed-use complex with commercial and cultural spaces, hiring architect Franklin Azzi for the project. Over 21,000 people have signed a petition to save the school, and local heritage groups SOS Paris and Monts 14 have rallied against the closure.

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article policy schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 20 link 4 artists

french museums hike ticket prices non european visitors

Several major French cultural institutions, including the Louvre, the Château de Versailles, and potentially the Arc de Triomphe, have implemented a "differential tariff" that raises ticket prices for non-European Union visitors. Starting January 1, 2026, non-E.U. tourists will pay €30 ($35) to enter the Louvre, up from €22 ($25). The policy, first reported by Le Monde, is expected to generate up to €20 million annually for the Louvre alone, helping to fund urgent renovations estimated at €400 million over 15 years. The move follows a leaked letter from Louvre director Laurence des Cars to culture minister Rachida Dati warning of severe building deterioration, including temperature fluctuations endangering artworks and water damage. French president Emmanuel Macron has announced a sweeping restoration, but state funding will cover only a fraction of the cost.

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article news schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 13 link 3 artists

rivera kahlo estate mismanagement allegations

Hilda Trujillo Soto, former director of the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera museums in Mexico City, has publicly accused the trust overseeing these institutions of years of mismanagement. In a blog post published in early April, Soto alleged that trustees failed to address discrepancies in records, with Kahlo and Rivera works possibly missing and later appearing in private U.S. collections. She also claimed that materials from Kahlo’s personal diary and artworks catalogued in 1957, including *Frida in Flames* and *The Abortion*, have been misplaced or illegally sold. The trust, established by Rivera in 1955 and now administered by Mexico’s central bank Banxico, denied Soto’s claims, stating she never officially reported concerns during her tenure from 2009 to 2020.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 15 link 5 artists

jennie c jones met roof commission

Artist Jennie C. Jones has unveiled "Ensemble" (2025), a rooftop commission at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring three monumental, wind-activated stringed instruments—an Aeolian harp, zither, and one-string—that visitors are asked not to touch. The sculptures, coated in deep red powdered aluminum and concrete panels, are designed to be played by the breeze, though wind did not cooperate during the press preview. Jones drew inspiration from the Met's collection of 5,000 musical instruments, African American folk instrument makers like Moses Williams and Louis Dotson, and Minimalist abstraction, creating a work that explores anticipation and the sonic potential of untouchable objects.

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article culture schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 14 link 3 artists

rodins the thinker history

Auguste Rodin's iconic sculpture *The Thinker* was originally conceived in 1880 as part of a larger project—a decorative doorway for a planned Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Palais d'Orsay in Paris. Rodin later exhibited the figure independently, and after his wife Rose Beuret died in 1917, he placed a bronze cast on her grave in Meudon, where he was buried months later. The article reveals lesser-known facts about the work, including that the first cast (1884, now at the National Gallery of Victoria) originally wore a Florentine cap identifying it as the poet Dante Alighieri, and that the plaster version of *The Gates of Hell* now sits at the Musée d'Orsay, the very site where the doorway was originally intended.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 16 link 4 artists

a dessert themed exhibition lets you have your art and eat it too

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands is presenting "Grand Dessert," an exhibition that explores the social significance of sweets through a mix of historical artifacts, contemporary painting, video, and sculpture. Guest curated by dessert expert Janny van der Heijden—host of the Great Dutch Bake Off—alongside curator Suzanne Lambooy, the show features works by Wayne Thiebaud, Piet Mondrian, and Natasja Sadi, among others, and includes sections on pudding, chocolate, cake, and ice cream. The exhibition has been extended by six months due to its popularity, drawing over 250,000 visitors.

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article news schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 14 link 1 artist

klaus biesenbach american art scene political correctness

Curator Klaus Biesenbach, now director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, gave a lengthy interview to Der Spiegel in which he explained his decision to leave the American art scene, citing what he described as an oppressive climate of "political correctness." He claimed that DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) initiatives in U.S. museums had become "unbearable" quota requirements, and recounted a story about mandatory Zoom meetings after George Floyd's murder where he felt pressured to share personal experiences of discrimination. He also referenced the resignation of SFMOMA curator Gary Garrels over "reverse discrimination" comments and acknowledged his own controversial tenure at MOCA Los Angeles, which saw two high-profile resignations and a leadership restructuring.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 6, 2025 visibility 16 link 12 artists

inside va east storehouse

The V&A East Storehouse, a new museum space in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, opens to the public on May 31, 2025, offering free admission seven days a week. Housed in the former London 2012 Olympics Media and Broadcast Centre, the 172,222-square-foot facility displays over 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 archives from the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection. Designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the Storehouse features a glass-floored Collections Hall where visitors can freely explore shelves and mini-curated displays, with objects changed frequently. Highlights include the Agra Colonnade (1630s) from Shah Jahan's bathhouse and a section of the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate by Alison and Peter Smithson.

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person people schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 18 link 10 artists

robert de niro presents catherine murphy with the robert de niro sr prize 3236

Academy Award-winning actor Robert De Niro hosted a reception on February 25, 2014, honoring painter Catherine Murphy as the third recipient of the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize, a $25,000 annual award for mid-career American painters. The event took place at De Niro's Greenwich Hotel in New York, with previous winners Stanley Whitney (2012) and Joyce Pensato (2013) in attendance, along with jury members including Lindsay Pollock, Susan Davidson, Peter Plagens, and Robert Storr.

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article news schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 20 link 7 artists

pacita abad archives stanford university

Stanford University's libraries and Cantor Arts Center have acquired the archives of Filipina American artist Pacita Abad, who died in 2004 at age 58. The 120-foot-long collection, a gift from her estate managed by her husband Jack Garrity, includes correspondence with artists like Faith Ringgold, photographs from her childhood in Manila, and materials from her global travels and exhibitions. The acquisition comes with a donation to support processing, and is seen as a homecoming for Abad, who left the Philippines in 1969 after student protests and later settled in the Bay Area, where she studied and began her art career.

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article news schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 10 link 4 artists

fight rages in norway over sale of barbara hepworth sculpture

A legal and public battle has erupted in Norway over Kunsthall Stavanger's decision to sell Barbara Hepworth's sculpture *Figure for Landscape* (1960) at Christie's London, with an estimate of £1-2 million. The sale is intended to fund the institution's operating and exhibition budget, as the Kunsthall faces potential closure without the proceeds. Local group Stavanger Byselskap filed a lawsuit to block the sale, which was settled in the Kunsthall's favor, but over 260 community members have signed a petition against the deaccession. The Hepworth estate has also condemned the sale as unethical, noting the work was sold to the institution at a reduced price due to Hepworth's wish to have her work in a Norwegian public collection.

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article policy schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 14 link 5 artists

more italians take avantage of art for taxes scheme

The Italian government has successfully revived a program allowing citizens to use cultural treasures, fine art, antique books, and villas to satisfy tax bills. Culture and Tourism Minister Dario Franceschini named a panel to tally the value of works offered for income and inheritance taxes, aiming to reinvigorate a scheme established in 1982 that previously attracted little interest. The program mirrors similar initiatives in other EU countries, notably Britain, where a comparable plan drew works worth $80.4 million in 2012–13.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 22 link 9 artists

museum launches public appeal to buy rare barbara hepworth sculpture

The Hepworth Wakefield museum, supported by the Art Fund, has launched a public appeal to raise £3.8 million ($5 million) to acquire Barbara Hepworth's rare 1943 sculpture *Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red*. The work was purchased by a private collector at Christie's London in March 2024 for the same amount, but the UK government imposed a temporary export ban in December 2024, citing its outstanding historical and aesthetic significance. The museum has until August 27 to raise the remaining £2.9 million; the Art Fund has already contributed £750,000. If the goal is not met, the collector may export the piece.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 5, 2025 visibility 23 link 5 artists

sir joshua reynolds portrait inheritance tax

The Tate in London has acquired a full-length portrait by Joshua Reynolds of the 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748–1825) through the UK's Acceptance in Lieu scheme, which allows art to be transferred to the nation in place of inheritance tax. The painting, valued at $6.1 million (£4.7 million), was painted in 1769 and had hung at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire for over 200 years. It will remain on public display there but will also travel to other venues including Tate Britain.

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article policy schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 17 link 8 artists

natural history museum will remove human remains from display

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City will remove human remains from its public displays over the next eight weeks and update its policies regarding the collection. The decision follows an investigation by Erin Thompson, a professor of art crime at John Jay College, whose report for Hyperallergic raised ethical and legal concerns about the acquisition of approximately 12,000 individuals' remains held by the museum. Museum president Sean Decatur announced the removal as the "right course of action," acknowledging that the remains were collected without consent and often used to advance racist scientific agendas.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 14 link 3 artists

adam pendletons hirshhorn museum exhibition

Adam Pendleton's exhibition "Love Queen" is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., through January 3, 2027. The show features his distinctive abstract works that blend mark-making, pictographs, and all-caps texts, including pieces from his "Untitled (Days)" series and "Black Dada" series, as well as a single-channel video titled "Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?)" that documents the 1968 Poor People's Campaign.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 20 link 21 artists

old masters sales takeaways art detective

Sotheby's underperformed with the highly anticipated Saunders Collection of Old Masters, which was estimated at $80–120 million but sold for only $65.4 million, falling $14.6 million short of its low estimate. The sell-through rate was a dismal 58%, with 16 of 43 lots failing to sell in the standalone auction. Christie's also saw disappointing results, with a smaller sale totaling $6.89 million, 17% below its low target. The collection, amassed by the late banker Thomas A. Saunders III and his wife Jordan, was billed as the most valuable Old Masters collection ever to come to auction.

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article culture schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 15 link 6 artists

how to look at art

Art critic Ben Davis shares a personal three-and-a-half-step method for getting the most out of visiting an art exhibition alone. The process begins with a quick walkthrough of the entire show to build a cognitive map of the space and note artworks that immediately stand out. The second step involves a systematic, slower tour to read wall texts, examine individual works, and uncover connections and hidden details, with special attention to time-based media like video art.

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article culture schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 14 link 6 artists

three things hokusai great wave

Katsushika Hokusai's iconic woodblock print "The Great Wave" (officially *Under the Wave off Kanagawa*) is examined through three lesser-known facts. The article notes that the print, created between 1830 and 1832, is surprisingly small—less than 15 inches wide—and that its vivid blue pigment, Prussian blue, was a recent European import that revolutionized Japanese ukiyo-e prints. It also highlights Hokusai's practice of adopting over 30 different names throughout his career, which now helps scholars periodize his work.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 4, 2025 visibility 18 link 9 artists

manet paintings reunited

Two halves of an Édouard Manet painting, originally a single canvas that the artist split in 1874, have been temporarily reunited at London’s National Gallery for the first time in over a century. The works, *Au café* (1878) and *Corner of a Café-Concert* (probably 1878-80), depict different sides of the same bar at the Brasserie Reichshoffen in Montmartre. They were separated after the death of collector Étienne Barroil in 1887, with *Corner of a Café-Concert* entering the National Gallery in 1924 and *Au café* acquired by Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart in 1953. The reunion, on view through December 15, includes a display of Manet’s original sketch and explores his evolving creative process.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 3, 2025 visibility 11 link 3 artists

rijksmuseum condom erotic print

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has announced that a rare condom dating from 1830 will go on display in its print room as part of an exhibition on 19th-century sex work and sexuality. The nearly 200-year-old condom, likely made from a sheep's appendix and featuring an erotic image of a nun and three clergymen with the inscription "Voilà mon choix" ("This is my choice"), is one of only two such surviving objects and was purchased by the museum at auction six months ago.

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article culture schedule Jun 3, 2025 visibility 16 link 12 artists

phoenician scheme wes anderson art curator jasper sharp

Wes Anderson's new film *The Phoenician Scheme* features a rogue businessman named Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) who, after surviving a plane crash, decides to make his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) his heir. The film's art collection, curated by Jasper Sharp, includes authentic masterpieces such as René Magritte's *The Equator* (1942), Pierre-Auguste Renoir's *Enfant Assis en Robe Bleue (Portrait of Edmond Renoir Jr.)* (1889), and a 17th-century still life by Floris Gerritsz van Schooten. Sharp, a long-time Anderson collaborator, selected and loaned original works to reveal aspects of Korda's character, noting that the real paintings transformed the energy on set.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 3, 2025 visibility 18 link 12 artists

ruba katrib moma ps1 the gatherers exhibition interview

MoMA PS1 has opened its marquee spring exhibition, “The Gatherers,” a group show featuring 14 artists from around the world who explore the psychic and material burdens of climate change, globalization, and neoliberalism. Curated by Ruba Katrib, the exhibition includes works in sculpture, video, assemblage, and installation, spanning regions from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Lithuania, and is on view through October 6. Katrib, PS1’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, emphasizes that the show lets the artworks speak for themselves through form and material rather than delivering a direct lecture.

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article news schedule Jun 3, 2025 visibility 24 link 36 artists

whitney museum paused independent study program censorship

The Whitney Museum of American Art has suspended its storied Independent Study Program (ISP) for the 2025–2026 academic year, following widespread outcry over the censorship of a performance titled "No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance" by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi. The performance, scheduled for May 14, was canceled by museum leadership after reviewing a video in which Tbakhi made demands that supporters of Israel or America leave the venue. Director Scott Rothkopf informed the ISP community of the pause in an email, citing the need to search for a new director. The museum also confirmed that Sara Nadal-Melsió, hired in 2024 as the ISP's first associate director, will not retain her position. The cancellation drew condemnation from free speech advocates, including the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), which likened the museum's actions to an authoritarian approach.

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article news schedule Jun 3, 2025 visibility 25 link 14 artists

isp alumni open letter whitney museum palestine performance

On Monday, Whitney Museum director Scott Rothkopf announced via email that the museum would "pause" the 2025–26 academic year of its Independent Study Program (ISP), citing a lack of a director and strained operations. The announcement coincided with an open letter from high-profile ISP alumni—including artists Emily Jacir, Andrea Fraser, Mark Dion, and others—denouncing the museum's cancellation of a pro-Palestine performance titled "No Aesthetics Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance" by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi. The performance was canceled two days before it was to be part of an ISP curatorial exhibition, after the museum accused the artists of "valorizing specific acts of violence" and singling out community members based on belief systems. The letter also referenced the earlier demotion of ISP director Gregg Bordowitz in February.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 2, 2025 visibility 20 link 9 artists

castle where renoir summered hits market

The Château de Wargemont, a 19th-century seaside castle in Normandy where Pierre-Auguste Renoir summered and painted, has been listed for sale by Sotheby’s International Realty for €4 million ($4.5 million). The 17-room property, set on 25 acres, is the last great Impressionist site still in private hands and retains original features including Renoir’s dining room mural The Two Hunts, the only in-situ decor by an Impressionist. Renoir was invited there by diplomat and banker Paul Bérard, and the estate appears in several of his works, including Les rosiers à Wargemont (1879), which sold for $7.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2004.

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