A landmark free David Hockney exhibition is opening in London this week

The Serpentine in London is set to open a major free exhibition titled 'David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting' on March 12, 2026. The centerpiece of the show is a 90-meter-long iPad painting composed of 220 panels that document the changing seasons in the artist's French garden during the pandemic. In addition to this monumental digital work, the exhibition will debut five new still lifes and five new portraits of the artist's inner circle.

Tomás Saraceno and Indigenous communities build art complex in Argentine salt flats

Artist Tomás Saraceno has begun construction on "El Santuario del Agua" (The Water Sanctuary), a monumental art complex in the Salinas Grandes salt flats of northern Argentina. Developed in collaboration with 11 Indigenous communities and the Red Atacama coalition, the project consists of five semicircular salt structures inspired by Andean cosmology. Scheduled to open in October, the site will function as a community-owned space where visitors can engage with the landscape through elevated viewing platforms while supporting a sustainable tourism model.

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The 2026 Whitney Biennial marks a shift in contemporary art from literal messaging toward atmospheric 'mood.' This edition is characterized by an immersive aural landscape of drones and whispers, moving away from the overt identity politics of previous years in favor of a 'sincerity first' credo. Key works include Emilie Louise Gosslaux’s emotional tribute to her guide dog, Mo Costello’s community-focused binders, and Nour Mobarak’s intimate recordings of internal bodily sounds.

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Zanele Muholi has been named the winner of the 2026 Hasselblad Award, widely considered the world’s most prestigious photography prize. The South African photographer and "visual activist" will receive approximately $218,000, a solo exhibition at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg opening in October 2026, and a dedicated publication. Muholi’s work is celebrated for its monumental grayscale portraiture that documents and honors the Black LGBTQIA+ community, challenging historical omissions and systemic oppression.

Strikes Damage UNESCO Sites in Israel and Iran; Cologne Cathedral to Charge Tourists Entry

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Escalating conflict in the Middle East has resulted in significant damage to UNESCO World Heritage sites in both Israel and Iran. In Tel Aviv, Iranian missile strikes damaged Bauhaus-style buildings in the White City district and the Habima National Theater, while Israeli and US bombings reportedly struck Tehran’s historic Golestan Palace. Meanwhile, the Cologne Cathedral announced it will begin charging tourists an entry fee in July to address a financial crisis, following a trend of European landmarks seeking new revenue streams for monument upkeep.

Michelangelo's Pietà Altarpiece for His Own Tomb Restored and Returned to Public View

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The Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence has unveiled the newly restored Bandini Pietà, a monumental sculpture Michelangelo carved for his own tomb between 1547 and 1555. The two-year conservation project, funded by the Friends of Florence Foundation, removed centuries of accumulated dust, wax, and plaster residue from the 5,900-pound marble block, which the artist famously left unfinished after discovering flaws in the stone.

LACMA’s Long-Awaited Geffen Galleries Are Set To Open This April, Featuring 3,000 Objects

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its highly anticipated David Geffen Galleries will officially open on April 19, 2026. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the 110,000-square-foot horizontal structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and represents the culmination of a multi-decade campus expansion. The inaugural installation will feature approximately 3,000 objects curated by a team of 45, showcasing a non-traditional, integrated approach to the museum's permanent collection.

Henry Moore's King and Queen leads Christie's 20th/21st Century London sales

Christie’s London evening sales achieved a combined total of £197.5 million ($263.8 million) on March 5, 2026, representing a 52 percent increase year-on-year. The night was headlined by Henry Moore’s monumental bronze sculpture 'King and Queen', which sold for a record-breaking £26.3 million after an eight-minute bidding war. The event also debuted a new auction rostrum designed by Sir Jony Ive’s creative collective, LoveFrom, marking the house's 260th anniversary.

‘There’s a bead connection to every place’: Wendy Red Star on exploring the real and symbolic currency of beads

Artist Wendy Red Star has launched a site-specific solo exhibition titled 'One Blue Bead' at Sargent’s Daughters in Tribeca, exploring the historical and symbolic weight of trade beads. The exhibition transforms the gallery into a simulated trading floor featuring monumental glass beads, over 100 watercolors, and Hudson’s Bay point blankets. The project originated from the artist's residencies at the Pilchuck School of Glass and the Tacoma Museum of Glass, where she researched the global circulation of glass beads from Europe to Africa and the Americas.

Patarei Prison Could Become Museum

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Estonia’s Minister of Justice, Urmas Reinsalu, has proposed transforming the historic Patarei Prison in Tallinn into an international museum and research center dedicated to the crimes of communism. The sprawling 10-acre seaside complex, which served as a site of political incarceration under Soviet rule until 2002, remains largely unrestored, containing haunting remnants such as surgical tools and tattered bunk beds. The proposal has gained significant diplomatic traction, receiving formal support from representatives of eight EU member states during a recent meeting in the Estonian capital.

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French artist Claire Tabouret is currently the subject of a major career retrospective at Museum Voorlinden and a high-profile solo exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. The latter showcases her full-sized maquettes for six new stained-glass windows commissioned for Notre-Dame Cathedral, depicting the Biblical story of Pentecost. These works, created in collaboration with the historic Atelier Simon-Marq, represent a significant shift for the artist as she translates her signature fluid, figurative painting style into the medium of translucent glass.

Profile | Pierre Rosenberg, the former Louvre president, on his long-awaited four-volume Poussin catalogue—and forthcoming museum

Pierre Rosenberg, the 89-year-old honorary president-director of the Louvre, is set to release a definitive four-volume catalogue raisonné of the works of Nicolas Poussin. This monumental publication, weighing eight kilograms, represents over sixty years of scholarship and aims to provide a comprehensive update to the field, addressing previous research by figures such as Anthony Blunt and Louis Marin.

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Salvador Dalí’s largest ever painting, a monumental 13-panel stage set created for the ballet "Bacchanale," is set to lead Bonhams’s fourth annual Surrealist sale in Paris on March 26. Measuring 65 by 100 feet, the work was originally commissioned for the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo and features Dalí's signature paranoiac-critical imagery, including a central depiction of Mount Venus. The set, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1939, is estimated to fetch between $236,000 and $350,000.

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Vatican conservators are currently undertaking a delicate restoration of Michelangelo’s 16th-century masterpiece, The Last Judgement, to remove a white film caused by tourist sweat. The accumulation of lactic acid and calcium carbonate, exacerbated by record-high visitor numbers and rising temperatures, has created a "cataract" effect that obscures the fresco's original vibrancy. Using distilled water and Japanese rice paper, specialists are cleaning the monumental work to reveal long-hidden details in the figures of Christ and the surrounding saints.

A Francis Bacon self-portrait and a Surrealist avian painting: our pick of the March auctions

Major auction houses in London are preparing for a series of high-profile sales in March, featuring significant works by Francis Bacon, René Magritte, and Osman Hamdi Bey. Highlights include a 1972 Bacon self-portrait gifted to his doctor following a studio injury, a rare Magritte "leaf-bird" painting appearing at auction for the first time in 25 years, and a monumental 19th-century work by Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey being sold by the Penn Museum.

Egyptian Tour Guide Arrested for Drawing on Pyramid in Viral Video

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Egyptian authorities arrested a tour guide after a viral video showed him sketching a stick figure onto the 24th-century BCE Pyramid of Unas in Saqqara. The guide was reportedly using the drawing as a visual aid to explain the site's history to a group of tourists before attempting to wipe the mark away with his hands. Following a report from an antiquities inspector, the man confessed to the act, and the Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the drawing has since been removed.

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A bronze statue of Winston Churchill in London's Parliament Square was vandalized with pro-Palestine graffiti, including the phrases "Stop the Genicide" and "Globalise the Intifada." A 38-year-old man, identified by prosecutors as Caspar San Giorgio but identifying himself as Olax Outis, was arrested and charged with criminal damage. The activist claimed the act was a protest against the British government's alleged complicity in human rights violations and the legacy of Churchill himself.

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Takashi Murakami’s latest exhibition at Perrotin Los Angeles, titled “Hark Back to Ukiyo-e: Tracing Superflat to Japonisme’s Genesis,” marks a significant return to his academic roots in Nihonga (traditional Japanese painting). The show features 24 compositions, including four monumental canvases that took over three years to complete, blending Edo-period woodblock aesthetics with 19th-century Impressionism and contemporary Pokémon imagery. The artist describes this body of work as a reflection on the non-linear nature of time and the physical manifestation of memory.

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Michael Heizer has unveiled a major exhibition titled "Negative Sculpture" at Gagosian’s West 21st Street gallery in New York. The installation features two massive works, Convoluted Line A and Convoluted Line B, which consist of steel liners filled with crushed red granite embedded into a raised gallery floor. To achieve the artist's vision of negative space without excavating the building's foundation, the gallery undertook a complex two-year engineering project to elevate the entire floor surface, matching the specific concrete hue of Heizer’s Nevada studio.

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Artist Judy Baca and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) are facing allegations of financial misconduct from ten former employees. The whistleblowers claim that Baca improperly used a $5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund her private business operations and personal commissions. Specific concerns include a significant salary increase for Baca following the grant award and the blurring of lines between the nonprofit's staff duties and Baca's private studio work.

Monumental commissions and pioneering women artists take centre stage at Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026

The third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale has opened in Riyadh’s JAX District under the title 'In Interludes and Transitions.' Curated by Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition features over 65 artists from 35 countries, focusing on themes of migration, oral storytelling, and the movement of ideas across borders. The show is housed in repurposed 1970s industrial warehouses with a scenography designed by Formafantasma that emphasizes intimacy despite the monumental scale of the venues.

‘Painting continues to be viable’: Enrique Martínez Celaya on his sugar-coated show at the Wende Museum

Enrique Martínez Celaya has unveiled "The Sextant" at the Wende Museum in Culver City, marking the final installment of a decade-long trilogy exploring his Cuban childhood. The immersive installation features a full-scale recreation of his family’s Modernist home, entirely coated in 6,500 pounds of sugar to symbolize the industrial history of his hometown. Accompanied by paintings and sculptures, the exhibition uses personal artifacts, such as letters to his exiled father, to navigate themes of memory and displacement.

Why Robert Therrien is a big deal

The Broad in Los Angeles is hosting the largest museum retrospective to date for the late conceptual artist Robert Therrien. Curated by Ed Schad, the exhibition features over 125 works, including his iconic oversized sculptures like the 10-foot-high "Under the Table" and a massive stack of plates. The show aims to elevate the profile of an artist who was a fixture of the Los Angeles art scene for five decades but often remains less of a household name than his contemporaries.

Michaelina Wautier Market Appraisal

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The 17th-century Flemish Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier is experiencing a significant rediscovery following centuries of obscurity and misattribution. Long overshadowed by her male contemporaries and her brother Charles, Wautier's diverse oeuvre—ranging from still lifes to monumental allegorical scenes—is being re-evaluated through major exhibitions at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This scholarly revival is correcting the historical record, as works previously attributed to artists like Artemisia Gentileschi are being rightfully returned to her catalog.

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Alexander Calder’s monumental sculpture "Mountains and Clouds," located in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., is finally undergoing a full restoration. The 75-foot-wide "clouds" component of the mobile was dismantled in 2016 due to structural safety concerns, leaving only the stationary "mountains" portion on display for nearly a decade. Supported by private funding secured by the Calder Foundation, the project will refabricate the suspended elements and reinstall the computer-controlled motor system that allows the sculpture to rotate.

Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles acquires Kara Walker sculpture made from dissected Confederate monument

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles has acquired "Unmanned Drone" (2023), a significant bronze sculpture by Kara Walker. The work was created by dissecting and reassembling a decommissioned 1921 monument of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, which was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, following the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally. The acquisition was announced alongside more than 150 other new additions to the museum's permanent collection, including major works by Cynthia Daignault and Paul Pfeiffer.

Twenty Billion Won for a Single Dot: Lee Ufan Masterpieces Head to Auction

South Korea’s leading auction houses, K Auction and Seoul Auction, are headlining their February sales with monumental works by Lee Ufan. Two rare, large-scale 'Dialogue' canvases featuring the artist's signature minimalist dots are expected to fetch significant sums, with estimates reaching up to 2.4 billion won. The auctions also feature major works by other Korean masters, including an early 1955 painting by Kim Tschang-yeul and a blue monochrome piece by the late Chung Sang-Hwa.

12 must-see exhibitions in and around Los Angeles during Frieze

Los Angeles is hosting a series of major exhibitions to coincide with the Frieze Los Angeles art fair, highlighting both historical activism and contemporary social critiques. Key shows include Judith F. Baca’s exploration of her iconic 'Great Wall of Los Angeles' mural at Jeffrey Deitch, a massive survey of time-based media from the Julia Stoschek Foundation at the Variety Arts Theater, and a collaborative project between MOCA and The Brick titled 'Monuments' that recontextualizes removed Confederate statues through the lens of contemporary Black artists.

Jasmine Little, Los Angeles Painter and Ceramicist, Dies at 41

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Los Angeles-based artist Jasmine Little has passed away at the age of 41, as confirmed by her gallery, La Loma. Known for her versatile practice that spanned lush still-life paintings and intricate sgraffito ceramic vessels, Little's work often blended historical references with personal mythology. Her gallerist, Kirk Nelson, remembered her as a "force of nature" who produced monumental sculptures and detailed narratives through intense, dedicated periods of creation.

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Isaiah Zagar, the visionary mosaic artist behind the landmark Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, died on February 19 at age 86 due to complications from heart failure and Parkinson’s Disease. A Pratt Institute graduate and former Peace Corps volunteer, Zagar transformed Philadelphia’s South Street neighborhood over five decades, creating more than 200 public murals and a sprawling, immersive environment of tunnels and grottos made from glass, tile, and found objects.