María Berrío’s mixed-media masterpiece "La Cena" (2012) is returning to the auction block at Christie’s post-war and contemporary day sale on May 17. The work, which draws inspiration from Da Vinci’s "The Last Supper" and features Berrío’s signature intricate collage style, is being sold by New York collector Dow Kim. Kim acquired the piece just two years ago for $1.56 million, significantly exceeding its initial estimate.
Artist Mia Westerlund Roosen is currently presenting a solo exhibition titled "Then and Now" at Nunu Fine Art in New York, on view through February 21. The show spans her work from the 1970s to the present, featuring sculptures and drawings that explore materiality and the human body, including her notable 1981 phallic forms *Heat* and *Conical*.
British artist Lincoln Townley has launched a new series titled "Success," which explores the psychology of ambition and achievement through gestural, abstract portraits. The collection, available through his partnership with the Prague-based Eclipse Art Group, expands his market into Eastern Europe, following successful sell-out exhibitions at the London Art Fair 2025 and a planned presentation at the Palazzo Bembo during the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Galerie Michael Haas in Berlin is presenting "André Thomkins: Lackskins," a focused exhibition on the Swiss artist's experimental technique developed in the 1950s. Thomkins (1930–1985) created these works by dripping varnish onto water and transferring the floating pigment to paper, a process blending controlled manipulation with chance. The show, running through March 6, 2026, highlights a body of work rediscovered only in the last 15 years, including pieces like "Astronauten" (1962).
Mnuchin Gallery, a prominent Upper East Side gallery founded by former Goldman Sachs executive Robert Mnuchin, will permanently close at the end of February. The closure follows the death of its founder in December 2025, with the gallery stating its program was an expression of his singular vision.
Dealer Gordon VeneKlasen has announced plans to open his own eponymous gallery after separating from Michael Werner Gallery, where he ran the New York space for over 30 years. As part of the agreement, VeneKlasen will take over Werner's New York and London locations, while the short-lived Los Angeles branch of Michael Werner Gallery will close. Two longtime employees, Justine Birbil and Kadee Robbins, have been promoted to partners at VeneKlasen Gallery. The gallery will debut at the inaugural Art Basel Qatar with a solo presentation of works by Issy Wood, followed by exhibitions of Sigmar Polke's paintings in New York and London.
Artist Gabrielle Goliath was dropped by her South African representative, Goodman Gallery, before the cancellation of her proposed Venice Biennale pavilion, according to a report by Daily Maverick. Goliath was one of around a dozen artists who exited the gallery between last fall and the present. The gallery clarified that it did not end representation because of her pavilion, citing a structural business review and market contraction. Goliath had been with the gallery for over a decade and will continue to be represented by Galleria Raffaella Cortese. After her representation ended, South African culture minister Gayton McKenzie canceled her pavilion, which was to address killings of women and queer people in South Africa, a genocide in Namibia, and Israel’s war in Gaza. McKenzie denied censorship, claiming interference by an unnamed foreign country, later reported by Ynetnews to be Qatar.
Laura Footes, a British artist living with chronic illness, opened her solo exhibition “Anamnesis” at Shrine NYC in early December 2024. Her paintings feature translucent, ethereal bodies in hallucinogenic landscapes, exploring themes of entrapment, escape, and the porous, temporal nature of the body. Footes, who has Crohn’s disease, draws on her hospital experiences and was discovered by Tracey Emin in 2022 after Emin saw her work on social media. Emin later mentored Footes at TKE Studios in Margate and curated her solo show “A Healing Dream” at Carl Freedman Gallery in late 2024.
Soho Beach House in Miami has reoriented its art collection around photography in late 2025, featuring works by established figures like Isaac Julien, JR, Laurie Simmons, Marilyn Minter, and Ming Smith alongside emerging artists such as René Matić, Caroline Allison, and Walead Beshty. The rehang, overseen by chief art director Kate Bryan, spans polaroids, performance-derived imagery, collage, and cameraless prints, with a focus on artists who use photography as a tool for broader inquiry.
A new exhibition titled “Drop, Cloth,” co-curated by Glenn Adamson and Severin Delfs, explores how contemporary artists have reimagined drapery over the past 50 years. The show features 30 works by 25 artists, spanning two Chelsea galleries—Hollis Taggart (through January 10, 2026) and Susan Inglett Gallery (through January 30, 2026). Works range from Sam Gilliam’s seminal *Little Dude* (circa 1972) to recent pieces by Kennedy Yanko, Jenny Morgan, and Chellis Baird, alongside historical pieces by Nina Yankowitz, Lynda Benglis, and Rosemary Mayer. The exhibition traces a lineage of drapery as both subject and material, including shaped canvas, paint skin, ceramic, metal, embroidery, and weaving.
Artnet News critic Ben Davis presents his annual "art words of the year" for 2025, a curated list of terms that capture prevailing moods and ideas in the art world. The list includes "antimemetics" (from writer Nadia Asparhouva and internet fiction), "cyniserity" (coined by art writer David Colman to describe Anne Imhoff's work), "delightmare" (a horror-adjacent feeling linked to overconsumption and AI art, exemplified by Beeple's Art Basel installation), "elite capture" (from philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's book, now a tool for critiquing identity politics in art), and "K-shaped" (an economic term describing divergent recovery, applied to gallery closures versus record auction sales).
Alex Prager has created "Mirage Factory," an immersive installation inside a former Miami Beach cinema that pays tribute to her hometown of Los Angeles while critiquing its illusions. The installation features meticulously crafted sets, a new photograph, and a dining experience by chef Dave Beran, alongside a live performance by Diana Ross. It opened with private events for Capital One cardholders and the Cultivist art club, and is now public through December 4, with proceeds benefiting Heal the Bay.
Design Miami 2025 preview drew a bustling crowd with over 70 exhibitors under the theme "Make Believe." Highlights included Katie Stout's whimsical carousel featuring marine animals, Roham Shamekh's biomorphic "Roots" sofa with integrated headphones, and ATRA's futuristic "Intelligence of Evolution" seating system upholstered in Hermès fabric. The Spanish silver brand Garrido showcased collaborations with Peter Marino, while the fair's 20th anniversary edition embraced a carnivalesque atmosphere with popcorn and mirrored walls.
Several galleries withdrew from Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 amid rising costs and a contracting art market, leaving some like San Francisco's Altman Siegel facing cancellation fees despite closing. Claudia Altman-Siegel, who shut her gallery, owed $22,000 after missing the free-cancellation deadline. Other dealers, including Miguel Abreu, Tilton Gallery, and Sperone Westwater, navigated the fair's strict payment terms for different reasons—some pulling out early to avoid penalties, others proceeding despite business challenges. The fair proceeded with 283 exhibitors and reported strong sales, including an $18.5 million Joan Mitchell painting, signaling a potential market upturn.
Chinese artist Yun-Fei Ji presents a new body of work in the exhibition “Riding the Tiger” at James Cohan Gallery in New York. The paintings draw on archetypes from Chinese folklore and the 16th-century novel *Journey to the West*, blending fantastical imagery with recognizable human scenes to explore the psychological and spiritual dimensions of migration. Works such as *The Sweep Up of Animal Spirits* and *The Round Up #1* directly reference the persecution of immigrants by government agencies, using symbols like tigers, buddhas, and livestock to critique power structures.
Es Devlin's *The Library of Us*, a 20-foot-tall rotating bookshelf containing 2,500 books, debuted as a major spectacle during Miami Art Week. Installed on Miami Beach within a circular pool of water, the sculpture invites visitors to step onto a rotating platform, creating shifting social encounters with strangers. By day it towers over the sand, and by night it glows like a beacon. The work also includes an audio track of quotes from the books, some of which have been banned by Florida schools, and Devlin plans to donate all volumes to Miami public schools and libraries after the installation ends.
Ayoung Kim's video "Delivery Dancer's Sphere" (2022) captures the experience of delivery workers during the Covid-19 pandemic in Seoul, following two female riders navigating the city via app-based systems. Kim shadowed real delivery workers to create the work, which blends documentary footage, anime-style animation, and AI-generated imagery. The video is part of a series that will be featured in Kim's first US solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York, opening this week, and she will also debut a new motion-capture piece at the Performa festival later this month. Kim recently won a $100,000 award from the Guggenheim Museum and LG.
French artist JR has announced plans to wrap the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in June 2025, as a tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The project, titled "Pont Neuf Cavern," marks the 30-year anniversary of the couple's original wrapping of the same bridge in 1985. JR was approached by Christo's nephew Vladimir Yavachev, director of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, to take on the challenge. The 761-foot bridge will be swathed in fabric, recalling the couple's signature monumental interventions.
Tristan Unrau, a 36-year-old Los Angeles-based painter originally from Canada, creates works that deliberately avoid a singular style, instead copying or channeling a vast range of art historical sources—from Old Masters and Modernists to cartoons and photorealism. His pluralistic approach has earned him a dedicated following, and David Kordansky Gallery announced representation of the artist this fall, planning a major solo exhibition in Los Angeles in March 2026. Unrau, who earned his MFA at UCLA, is currently preparing for that show in his East Hollywood studio, producing paintings that reference artists such as Bruegel, Jean-Luc Godard, František Kupka, Emil Nolde, and Willem de Kooning.
Miami Art Week 2025 features three interrelated fairs—Art Miami, Context Art Miami, and Aqua Art Miami—running from December 2–7. Art Miami, celebrating its 35th year at One Herald Plaza, hosts over 160 galleries from 24 countries with blue-chip and emerging works, including a never-before-seen Alex Katz piece and Keith Haring's Subway Drawings. Context Art Miami returns for its 13th edition as a platform for emerging and mid-career artists with nearly 70 galleries, while Aqua Art Miami on Miami Beach transforms the Aqua Hotel into an intimate fair space for its 19th year.
Sam Falls has created two paintings, "Rewilding" (2024) and "King's Crossing" (2024), for Ruinart's "Conversations with Nature" program, following a residency at the Champagne house's Taissy vineyard near Reims. The works, which incorporate natural materials and ecological processes, will debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2024 before traveling to Ruinart's headquarters. Falls's practice involves arranging plants on canvas and using pigment that reacts to humidity and sunlight, reflecting a collaboration with the environment.
Claudia Altman-Siegel closed her San Francisco gallery, Altman Siegel, in November 2025 with a farewell party, handing out beers to friends, artists, and visitors. She aimed to provide closure and avoid the sudden, chaotic closures that have become common in the mid-tier art market, which often leave artists unpaid, works unreturned, and staff in limbo. Other dealers, including Tif Sigfrids and Rena Bransten, shared strategies for ethical closures, such as continuing to support artists through networks, paying them on time, and returning all works. Bransten's gallery, after 50 years, is shifting to a nomadic model rather than fully closing.
Jacob Pabst, CEO of Artnet, reflects on the company's transformation since taking the helm in 2012, including the launch of Artnet News in 2014 as a digital-first publication. In an interview, he discusses how the platform grew to become the most-read art publication globally, with over 200 million annual page views, by prioritizing real-time news and market analysis over traditional print cycles.
Fiber artist Gary Tyler, who spent nearly 42 years on death row in Louisiana's Angola prison after being falsely convicted as a teenager, has published a memoir titled "Stitching Freedom" and opened his first Los Angeles gallery show, "Illuminations from a Captured Soul," at Official Welcome in MacArthur Park. The exhibition, on view through December 20, features quilts Tyler learned to make while working in the prison's hospice program, depicting scenes from his life and symbols of freedom like butterflies and birds.
British artist David Shrigley has created "Exhibition of Old Rope," a work consisting of 10 tons of salvaged rope arranged on the floor of Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, priced at £1 million ($1.3 million). Shrigley and assistants spent months collecting discarded rope from beaches, cruise ships, climbing schools, tree surgeons, and wind farms, then cleaned and assembled it into a large pile. The work plays on the English idiom "money for old rope," which originally referred to the resale value of used ship rope in early 19th-century Britain.
Artist Fulton Leroy Washington, known as Mr. Wash, is establishing the Art By Wash Studio & Community Center, a 13,000-square-foot campus in Compton, California, to serve recently incarcerated individuals and local youth. Released in 2016 after President Barack Obama commuted his life sentence for nonviolent drug offenses, Mr. Wash taught art in prison for 18 years and later gained recognition in the art world, including a breakout appearance at the 2020 Made in L.A. biennial. The center, designed pro bono by Morphosis Architects and The NOW Institute, will offer art-making instruction, studio space, materials, and exhibition opportunities, with the goal of connecting emerging artists to curators and galleries. The project is currently fundraising $100,000 for its first phase, with completion targeted for 2028.
The estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat is releasing a new screenprint titled *King Alphonso*, available from Pace Prints starting November 5. Produced in an edition of 60, the print reproduces a 1982–83 drawing in acrylic and charcoal, referencing the Spanish monarch Alfonso XIII, known as “El Africano.” The work will be stamped and signed by Basquiat’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, administrators of his estate. The announcement follows recent estate activities, including the 2022 “King Pleasure” exhibition in New York and the designation of Great Jones Street as “Jean-Michel Basquiat Way.”
Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 has lost at least eight exhibitors from its main sector since the fair released its initial list over the summer. Among the dropouts are blue-chip galleries including Miguel Abreu, Chantal Crousel, Alison Jacques, Peter Kilchmann, Edward Tyler Nahem, Luisa Strina, and Lia Rumma, as well as Shanghai's BANK gallery. Two galleries, Altman Siegel and Tilton, closed entirely between the list's release and the present. Kasmin changed its name to Olney Gleason and will still participate. Reasons for withdrawal vary: Miguel Abreu chose a solo presentation at Frieze Masters over Miami, citing a "less than stellar" experience the previous year and the burden of three fall fairs. The fair's contract imposes escalating financial penalties for late withdrawals, with galleries owing 50% of their fee after August 1 and 100% after October 1.
London's The Gallery of Everything is presenting the first survey of Haitian painter Hector Hyppolite in a European commercial setting at Art Basel Paris, opening October 24. The solo booth in the fair's Premise sector features works by Hyppolite, including three pieces from the historic 1947 exhibition "Le Surréalisme en 1947," along with documentation, photos, and an essay by Manthia Diawara and Terri Geis. Hyppolite, a self-taught vodou priest who died in 1948, was championed by Surrealist founder André Breton after Breton encountered his work in Haiti in 1945.