The Harvard Art Museums have launched "Celtic Art Across the Ages," a first-of-its-kind exhibition that challenges traditional Eurocentric narratives focused on Greece and Rome. Spanning from the Iron Age to the modern Celtic Revival, the show features objects like the abstract Heidelberg sandstone head and the bronze Dea Artio sculpture to highlight a visual language defined by ornamentation and deconstruction.
The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is launching 'Ancient Splendor: Roman Art in the Time of Trajan,' a major exhibition featuring approximately 160 artifacts including imperial portraiture, mosaics, jewelry, and frescoes. Curated by Lucrezia Ungaro and Hannah Segrave, the show utilizes theatrical design and sensory elements like scents to immerse visitors in the Roman world. The exhibition is bolstered by significant loans from prestigious Italian institutions, including the Vatican Museums and the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
A new report from the National Audit Office (NAO) warns that state-funded UK museums are reaching a breaking point as they attempt to offset significant government funding cuts with self-generated income. Analyzing 15 major institutions including the British Museum and Tate, the report reveals that while self-generated revenue rose by 53% since 2021-22, it remains highly volatile and susceptible to external factors like tourism costs and membership churn. Despite a recent £31m funding boost from the DCMS, over half of these institutions report being in a worse financial position than they were three years ago.
The Phoenix Art Museum is hosting a talk by a fashion curator and author, focusing on the history of fashion. The event is part of a broader exhibition at the museum dedicated to fashion history.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced it will lay off 33 employees, representing 6.3% of its workforce. The cuts, which take immediate effect, include 16 unionized positions represented by United Auto Workers Local 2110, with the union claiming it received only one day's notice. The museum cites an "unsustainable deficit" and the need for a restructuring to achieve financial sustainability.
The Dishman Art Museum is hosting a new exhibition that centers on the experiences and perspectives of immigrants, drawing on their voices to shape the show's narrative and artworks. The exhibit features contributions from artists who explore themes of migration, identity, and belonging through various media.
The Dayton Art Institute has opened a new gallery dedicated to feminist art, featuring works by women artists and addressing themes of gender, identity, and social justice. The space aims to highlight underrepresented perspectives within the museum's collection and contemporary art discourse.
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has opened a new exhibition titled 'Show & Tell,' specifically designed for children. The show presents artwork from the museum's renowned collection in a child-friendly, interactive manner that encourages play, and will run through April 5th. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, with free admission on the first Saturday of each month.
The Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami has opened "MOSAICO: Italian Code of a Timeless Art," an exhibition featuring ancient Italian mosaics, including fragments from a ship belonging to Roman emperor Caligula and 11th-century stone slabs from the tombs of Saints Benedict and Scholastica. These artifacts, on view in the US for the first time, are loaned from the Capitoline Museums in Rome and are presented alongside immersive digital projections by Magister Art that recreate sites like the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and the Basilica of San Vitale. The exhibition is organized by region, highlighting Unesco World Heritage sites and spanning techniques from the Hellenistic period to Roman opus sectile.
The Louvre museum in Paris will increase ticket prices by 45% for visitors from outside the European Union, effective January 14, 2026. The cost for non-EU visitors from countries such as the UK, US, and China will rise from €22 to €32, generating an estimated €17.5 million in additional annual revenue. The decision comes as the museum faces significant budget cuts, including a 7% reduction in public subsidies, and seeks funding for a €1.1 billion renovation project. Staff unions have criticized the move as undermining the museum's universal mission since its founding in 1793.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is participating in an 18-month scientific study, funded by a $200,000 research prize from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, to investigate whether viewing art can reduce symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The study will compare three groups: people with Parkinson’s who experience the Rijksmuseum’s collection via digital tours and low-sensory evenings, those who actively make art, and a control group with no art engagement. The research builds on a pilot study showing that creative arts therapy reduced anxiety, stress, and tremors, and even decreased hospital visits.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, will host the West Coast debut of “Radical Histories: Chicano Prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” on November 16. The exhibition features 60 works by some 40 artists and collectives from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, spanning over six decades of Chicano printmaking as a form of resistance, community building, and cultural reclamation. It traces key moments from the late 1960s Delano Grape Strike to the present, using silkscreens, posters, and offset prints. The Huntington has also commissioned a mural by Los Angeles–based artist Melissa Govea in partnership with Self Help Graphics & Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched a new immersive virtual reality and online feature that showcases iconic works from its collection. This digital initiative allows users to explore selected artworks in a virtual environment, enhancing accessibility and engagement with the museum's holdings.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is opening "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times," an exhibition exploring the artistic and cultural legacy of Emperor Trajan (AD 98–117). The show features loans from major Italian institutions including the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli and the Vatican Museums, with standout works such as a 2-meter marble statue of Trajan and a colossal portrait of his wife Plotina. The exhibition, conceived in 2021 with Italian consultancy StArt, will travel to the Saint Louis Museum of Art in March 2026, with each venue offering a different focus—Houston emphasizing large-scale objects like a recreation of Trajan's Column, and St. Louis delving into the port city of Ostia.
Around 300 workers at the British Library in London have gone on strike from 27 October to 9 November over a pay dispute, organized by the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS). The strike threatens to disrupt the opening of the major exhibition "Secret Maps" (until 18 January 2026). Meanwhile, more than 100 PCS members across Tate's four sites are being balloted for possible strike action, with a postal ballot closing on 11 November. The unions demand inflation-proof pay rises, citing low wages that force employees to take second jobs and loans, while management offers increases of 2.4% at the British Library and 3% at Tate.
Emory University undergraduate students are exhibiting their artwork at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta through November 2, in the museum's Greene Family Education Center. The exhibition, the first of a planned annual show, features 18 pieces by six students, three of whom curated the show after being selected by a panel of judges from Emory Libraries and the Michael C. Carlos Museum. Students worked with faculty sponsors and High Museum staff to install the work, gaining hands-on experience in exhibition planning, artist statements, and professional presentation.
At Frieze Masters, dealer Peter Finer presents a stand filled with historical arms and armour, including a gilded horse-and-rider suite priced at £1.8 million, an Italian Renaissance sword with a Medusa hilt, and a late 16th-century crossbow. Prices range from £6,500 to seven figures. Finer, whose dealership was founded in 1967, is the sole specialist in this category at the fair, with clients ranging from major museums to niche collectors, such as a Viking sword enthusiast. Other scattered examples include a silver-gilt Shield of Achilles at Koopman Rare Art and Bronze Age spearheads at Rupert Wace.
The Arlington Museum of Art has opened "Game of Thrones™: The Exhibition," an immersive display featuring over 60 original costumes, props, and behind-the-scenes materials from HBO's epic fantasy series. Curated in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Experiences and the show's production archives, the exhibit showcases costumes worn by iconic characters such as Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, alongside design sketches and insights into the craftsmanship of the series' award-winning costume designers and artisans.
During Alberta’s province-wide teachers’ strike, the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, TELUS Spark science centre, and Contemporary Calgary are offering special programs for students. TELUS Spark is providing first-come, first-served camps for grades 1-6, with registration opening weekly, while the zoo highlights new animal additions. Contemporary Calgary is offering a $20-per-child art field trip on color theory and painting for students aged 5-13, with a maximum of 30 children per session.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is leveraging its extensive digitization program to apply artificial intelligence to new fields, including pain management. Through partnerships like the PHAROS consortium and a collaboration with McGill University researcher Hannah Derue, the museum's open-access collection of over 61,000 high-resolution images is being used to train AI models for PAin+, a software platform that helps chronic pain patients articulate and track their experiences using art-based mindfulness and machine learning.
The Geneva Museum of Art and History (MAH) coordinated a frantic evacuation of thousands of archaeological artefacts from Gaza’s main storage facility on 9 September, ahead of an Israeli strike that destroyed the Al-Kawthar residential tower housing the repository. The facility, operated by the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), contained finds from key sites including the fourth-century Saint Hilarion Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site. MAH staff, led by curator Béatrice Blandin, negotiated with Israeli authorities, Swiss diplomats, UNESCO, and the Aliph Foundation to secure a brief window for removal. Despite the operation, 30% of the artefacts—mostly ceramics and lapidary objects—could not be saved.
Arizona State University's Barrett, The Honors College is partnering with Phoenix Art Museum to host a one-day symposium titled "MARS: Revisited" on September 20, 2025, at the museum. The event revisits the legacy of El Movimiento Artístico del Río Salado (MARS), a Chicano arts collective founded in the late 1970s that provided a platform for Mexican American artists excluded from major Arizona museums and galleries. MARS operated for over two decades, helping launch the First Fridays on Roosevelt Row arts event and shaping Phoenix's cultural identity before closing in the early 2000s. The symposium, co-organized by professor Mathew Sandoval and curator Christian Ramírez, will feature archival research and oral histories conducted by Barrett students, with a major MARS exhibition and scholarly monograph planned for 2028.
London's National Gallery is launching NG Citizens, a citizens' assembly that will advise the museum on its future policy and direction. Starting next month, 15,000 households across the UK will receive invitations, from which 50 participants will be selected via a civic lottery, eventually narrowing to 20 individuals who will serve on the panel for five years. The gallery states the initiative places audiences at the heart of decision-making, aiming to shape programs around the needs of diverse UK communities, though the assembly will not directly choose exhibitions or acquisitions but will produce recommendations on purpose, priorities, and public value.
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) announced its first major Native American exhibition in 30 years, titled "The Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation," opening September 28, 2025. The show will feature 60 U.S.-based Anishinaabe artists and include jewelry, basketry, painting, pottery, and woodworking, with gallery text in Anishnaabemowin. The exhibition was curated with an advisory council of Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi artists.
A new EU regulation (2019/880) taking effect on 28 June aims to prevent trafficking of looted antiquities by requiring importers to provide extensive provenance records and export permits for cultural goods over 200 years old or worth more than €18,000. While the law includes an exemption for temporary exhibitions, implementing rules limit this exemption to loans from museums outside the EU, excluding private collectors. Museum directors and art fair officials warn that the administrative burden may discourage private lenders from participating in temporary exhibitions, potentially reducing the diversity of cultural offerings in the EU.
A Christian group, Stichting Civitas Christiana and TFP Student Action Europe, is protesting the Rijksmuseum's display of a 1830s condom made from a sheep's appendix, featuring an erotic etching of a nun and three clergymen. The condom, acquired at auction, is part of a small exhibition on 19th-century prostitution and riffs on the judgment of Paris myth. The group has distributed flyers and launched a petition calling the display a sacrilege, while the museum defends it as historically significant and humorous.
The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has opened 'Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists From Japan,' an exhibition featuring sculptural ceramics by 36 contemporary female Japanese artists. The works, drawn from the collection of noted art collector Carol Horvitz, honor centuries-old Japanese ceramic traditions while employing modern techniques to push beyond conventional vessel forms. Highlights include Kawaura Saki and Tanaka Yu, whose piece 'Bag Work' exemplifies the shift from functional pottery to purely sculptural expression. The exhibition runs through August 31 and is only the third U.S. museum to host it.
The British Museum (BM) in London hosted a private event on 16 May marking the anniversary of the founding of Israel, organized by the Israeli embassy. Speakers included Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and UK minister Maria Eagle, with attendees such as comedian Jimmy Carr and politicians Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage. The event has sparked anger among museum staff and external critics, who argue it is insensitive given the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which has led to widespread famine and civilian deaths. Staff have organized a petition demanding the museum cease relations with Israeli cultural institutions, gathering 250 signatures.
Since early April, employees of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art have been staging a daily 30-minute protest outside the museum's two public entrances before opening hours. Initiated by senior curator of Israeli art Dalit Matatyahu, the protest brings together staff with diverse stances on the war, the hostage crisis, and the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The demonstration takes place at the intersection of the museum and Hostages Square, a site already central to hostage-family activism. Participants include chief curator Mira Lapidot and contemporary art curator Shahar Molcho, who describe the protest as a moral response to the unbearable transition from the charged square to museum work.
Fullerton College Art Gallery is currently hosting its 2025 Student Art Exhibition, showcasing 210 selected works from 316 submissions. The free exhibition, open until May 21, features student work across drawing, painting, illustration, printmaking, graphic design, 3D modeling, sculpture, and ceramics. Gallery Technician Seija Rohkea and Adjunct Professor Jasmine McNeal collaborated with student artists and gallery assistants to install and curate the show, highlighting the college's Museum Studies program—one of few at the community college level in California.