The Philadelphia Art Commission has approved a plan to relocate a statue of real-life boxer Joe Frazier to the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps. This move is intended to replace the iconic statue of fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, which is being moved to the top of the same steps.
Dasha Zhukova, the former fashion designer, magazine publisher, and museum founder, has launched a new real estate development company called Ray. Its first project, Ray Harlem, is a 21-story residential building on Fifth Avenue in Harlem, built in collaboration with the National Black Theatre (NBT). The development replaces NBT's original building and integrates a 27,000-square-foot theater as its centerpiece, with 222 apartments above, a quarter of which were offered through an affordable housing lottery. The building features site-specific commissioned artworks by emerging Black artists such as Jurell Cayetano, Freddy Carrasco, Nikko Washington, and Ellon Gibbs, and was designed by Frida Escobedo Studio with Handel Architects.
The Kosciusko, Mississippi, home of self-taught African American artist L.V. Hull has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Hull transformed her property into a vibrant art environment over decades, using found objects and her signature dot paintings, attracting international visitors. This marks the first home-studio of an African American woman visual artist, and the first such environment by any African American artist, to be listed at the national significance level.
TEFAF New York has announced the exhibitor list for its 2026 edition, set to take place at the Park Avenue Armory from May 15 to 19. The fair will feature 88 galleries from 14 countries, including nine new participants and 78 returning dealers, with a focus on modern and contemporary art, design, jewelry, and antiquities. Major international galleries like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner will be present.
A rare ancient Greek funerary sculpture, the Stele of Medeia (375-350 BCE), is being offered for sale at the TEFAF art fair by the London gallery David Aaron. The piece, priced at £450,000, depicts an unmarried young woman and retains significant original pigment. It has already attracted significant interest from a major US museum.
The Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art have announced they will cease contracting with the Minneapolis Police Department for security at events. The Walker's decision demands the MPD implement reforms, including demilitarizing training and holding officers accountable, stating 'George Floyd should still be alive.'
The Studio Museum in Harlem has temporarily closed due to water damage caused by a sprinkler emergency during a snowstorm. The incident, which affected the gift shop near the entrance, prompted an evacuation of staff and visitors. The museum will remain closed through February 7 for repairs, with all programs and events cancelled and refunds issued to ticket holders. No artworks or galleries were affected, according to a museum representative.
A group of 14 watercolors and drawings by Adolf Hitler, dated from 1904 to 1922, will be auctioned at the Weidler auction house in Nuremberg, Germany, between June 18 and 20. The works are expected to sell for between €1,000 and €45,000 each, following a previous sale of a Hitler watercolor that fetched €130,000 in November last year.
W. David Marx joins Artnet News senior editor Kate Brown on the podcast 'The Art Angle' to discuss his new book, *Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century*. The book argues that creativity across art, media, and popular culture has stagnated over the past 25 years, driven by commercialization, rapid technology shifts, and a preference for profit-driven formulas over experimentation. Marx identifies a 'conspicuous blank space where art and creativity used to be' and proposes five strategies to revive cultural inventiveness.
Seven museums in Florence have merged to form the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze e Musei del Bargello, creating the world's largest collection of works by Michelangelo. The new complex includes the Bargello National Museum, the Medici Chapels, Palazzo Davanzati, Orsanmichele, Casa Martelli, the former Church of San Procolo, and the Accademia, home to Michelangelo's David. Starting March 15, joint tickets will be available, with a system-wide pass costing €38 for 72 hours. Ticket prices at individual museums will rise on February 1, and three themed tours will launch in May, including one focused on Michelangelo's innovations.
Yasha Grobman, an architect and researcher, has been appointed director general of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, ending a prolonged leadership crisis. He succeeds Suzanne Landau, who stepped down after serving as interim director since September 2023. Grobman, a former dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, has been publicly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and has spoken at protests in Haifa opposing the war in Gaza. His appointment follows a discreet search by a board-appointed committee and comes as the museum faces financial strain, reduced hours, and a decline in international activity.
CULTURED reports that in 2025, nearly 50 percent of solo exhibitions at New York museums featuring modern and contemporary art focused on deceased artists, more than double the 18 percent share in 2019. Major institutions like MoMA, the Broad, ICA Miami, and the Whitney have programmed posthumous shows for figures such as Wifredo Lam, Helen Frankenthaler, Ruth Asawa, Robert Therrien, Joyce Pensato, Richard Hunt, and Roy Lichtenstein. The article traces this trend to a confluence of factors: ongoing scholarly revisionism, a cultural swing toward equity during the Biden administration, and the long lead times for museum exhibitions that have landed in a more polarized political climate under Trump II.
Masumi Shinohara, a Japanese-born, French-bred former luxury executive who joined Sotheby's Japan in April 2024 to lead its operations, has been promoted to managing director for Asia within his first year. He succeeded Nathan Drahi, son of majority owner Patrick Drahi, and now oversees Sotheby's expansion across the region amid a recovering global art market. The article features an interview with Shinohara discussing his transition from luxury brands (Valentino, L'Oréal, Ermenegildo Zegna) to the auction world, his childhood immersion in art through his father, and the strategic benefits of Sotheby's new permanent Hong Kong premises, Sotheby's Maison, which allows year-round auctions and thematic sales.
The Barbican in London will present a major commission by Colombian artist Delcy Morelos, her first in the United Kingdom, from May 15 to July 31. The centerpiece is an oval-shaped pavilion measuring roughly 78 feet in circumference, constructed from soil, clay, spices, and plant materials, sited in the Barbican's outdoor Sculpture Court. It is the third public-realm commission by the Barbican and the first in its Sculpture Court. The project is supported by the London-based Bukhman Foundation, founded by Anastasia Bukhman, a new addition to ARTnews's Top 200 Collectors list.
The National Portrait Gallery in London has acquired the only surviving photographs of 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, a group of three daguerreotypes that were originally offered at Bonhams in June 2025 with an estimate of £80,000 to £120,000. The lot was withdrawn from auction and the museum secured it via a private treaty sale, a confidential negotiation process that allows institutions to purchase significant artworks directly from private owners. Two of the daguerreotypes were taken by French photographer Antoine Claudet around 1843, the year Lovelace published her foundational paper on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, while the third, by an unknown photographer, reproduces an 1852 portrait by Henry Wyndham Phillips showing Lovelace near the end of her life.
Marie Antoinette, the final queen of France, is the subject of a blockbuster exhibition titled "Marie Antoinette Style" at London's V&A museum, running through March 22. The show highlights her boldly modern taste, her patronage of women artists like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Anne Vallayer-Coster, and her role as the first French queen to own and redecorate her own palace, the Petit Trianon. The article details how she used her influence to secure Vigée Le Brun's admission to the Académie Royale and pressured the Louvre to exhibit Vallayer-Coster's work, while also exploring how her extravagant spending earned her the epithet "Madame Déficit" and contributed to her downfall during the French Revolution.
Tristram Hunt, director of London's Victoria & Albert Museum, has been knighted by King Charles III on the UK's 2026 New Year Honors list for his "services to museums." Hunt, a former Member of Parliament and shadow education secretary, has led the V&A since 2017, overseeing major exhibitions and expanding the museum's international presence through initiatives like V&A East. Other arts figures recognized include Ekow Eshun (OBE), art historian Marcia Pointon (OBE), Jo Quinton-Tulloch (OBE), Janet Blake (OBE), Susan Bowers (MBE), and Hilary McGrady (CBE).
A new study published in *Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts* by French researcher Temenuzhka Dimova uses eye-tracking technology to examine how pointing fingers in Old Master paintings affect viewer attention. Conducted through the University of Vienna’s Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA), the study compared participants' eye movements when viewing original paintings—such as Theodor Rombouts's *The Card Players*—and digitally altered versions where the pointing gestures were removed. Results showed that viewers focused more on the faces of pointing figures and the narrative context, not just the target of the gesture, and that removing the finger fundamentally changed how the story was perceived.
Chris Kraus, the influential contemporary art writer, co-editor of Semiotext(e), and novelist best known for her 1997 autobiographical novel *I Love Dick*, has released a new novel titled *The Four Spent the Day Together*. The book follows a character named Catt Greene, who closely mirrors Kraus's own life: a childhood in Connecticut, later success as an art critic and novelist with *I Love Dick* (adapted into an Amazon series), a marriage to an addiction counselor struggling with his own addiction, and online backlash for being a landlord. In the third part, Greene investigates a real-life murder in rural Minnesota, seeking new material as her own life feels depleted.
The Guggenheim Bilbao has canceled its planned expansion in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-designated site in Spain's Basque country, citing territorial, urban planning, and environmental constraints. The project, first announced in 2022, faced fierce opposition from activists, environmental groups like Greenpeace, and over 1,000 Basque creatives who signed a petition. The expansion would have included a facility in Guernica and a net-zero exhibition space in Murueta, but legal disputes and public pressure led the museum's Board of Trustees to terminate the plan. Local group Guggenheim Urdaibai Stop celebrated the decision as a victory and plans a festival in February 2026 to mark the project's demise.
Christie’s is launching its largest-ever Americana Week in January, featuring a George Washington portrait by Gilbert Stuart that inspired the dollar bill. The painting, commissioned by James Madison, is expected to fetch between $500,000 and $1 million. The auction includes 700 lots across nine sales, with highlights such as a signed Emancipation Proclamation and the contract that created Apple. The portrait, a Vaughn-type from 1795, was consigned by Clarkson University and has a provenance tracing back to Madison, confirmed by a 19th-century catalog and a note from Madison’s secretary.
The Ruth Foundation for the Arts has named five artists as recipients of its 2026 Ruth Awards: Yuji Agematsu, Ranu Mukherjee, Will Rawls, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Anna Martine Whitehead. Each winner receives an unrestricted $100,000 grant disbursed over two years. The artists work across diverse media—from Agematsu's miniature street-detritus sculptures and Rawls's multidisciplinary choreography to Mukherjee's painting and film installations, Sebastian Chang's decades-spanning theater and film work, and Whitehead's performance art. The awards are open to artists across North America and are now in their third year.
The Stahl House, the iconic midcentury modern home in the Hollywood Hills also known as Case Study House No. 22, has been listed for sale for the first time in its 65-year history. The property, designed by architect Pierre Koenig and immortalized in a famous photograph by Julius Shulman, is priced at $25 million. Siblings Shari and Bruce Stahl, who grew up in the house, are selling it due to the challenges of maintaining it as they age. The home was originally built for $37,651 as part of Arts and Architecture magazine's Case Study program and remains the only one in the program still under original family ownership.
A new exhibition at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York, titled "Spanish Style: Fashion Illuminated, 1550–1700," explores how 17th-century Spanish fashion was governed by strict moral and legal codes. Curator Amanda Wunder highlights that garments like the guardainfante hoop skirt and the ruffled collar were regulated by kings and clergy, with women fined or barred from church for revealing shoulders or wearing lace, and men criticized for effeminate styles. The show features portraits and artifacts that reveal how clothing was used as a tool of social control, power, and gender policing in Habsburg Spain.
Hong Kong will send two artists, Angel Hui and Kingsley Ng, to represent the special administrative region at the 2026 Venice Biennale, marking the first time a duo has been selected. The Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) are collaborating for the first time on the presentation, which will take place at the Campo della Tana as a collateral event. Hui, a gongbi ink painter born in 1991, and Ng, a media artist and associate professor born in 1980, will explore "the poetic rhythms of daily life" in dialogue with the Biennale's main exhibition theme, "In Minor Keys." The selection follows HKADC's decision in April to oust M+ museum as the exhibition's organizer, a role it had held since 2013, without citing a reason.
Conservators at Blenheim Palace in the U.K. have discovered a mysterious dossier of names and phrases scratched into the ceilings of the Great Hall and Saloon by past workers, dating back to the 19th century. The graffiti was found during a £12 million ($15.9 million) restoration project led by OPUS Conservation, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Blenheim Foundation, which is also repairing paintings by Baroque artists James Thornhill and Louis Laguerre. The palace is now asking the public for help identifying the individuals behind the markings, which include names like "W Smith 1888" and "T Harwood Plasterer 1843."
This episode of the podcast series "How to Get Ahead in the Art World" features Loïc Gouzer, the former Christie's executive known for orchestrating the record-breaking $450 million sale of Salvator Mundi. Gouzer discusses his career risks, including pioneering the curated sale format and launching Fair Warning, a private auction app that has achieved new price records. He emphasizes trusting instinct over data in the art market and offers advice on spotting opportunities, mastering skills before breaking rules, and building an authentic personal brand.
New York-based artist Saya Woolfalk is the subject of her first retrospective, "Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe," at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York. The exhibition, curated by Alexandra Schwarz, runs from April 12 to September 7, 2025, and surveys two decades of Woolfalk's multidisciplinary practice, which blends science fiction, fantasy, and critical examinations of race, science, anthropology, and identity. The show is organized into chapters highlighting major projects, including her fictional "Empathics"—a race of women who can fuse with plants—and features sculptures, video, painting, works on paper, a commissioned audio drama, and live dance performances.
First Presbyterian Church in Topeka, Kansas, is selling one of its ten Tiffany stained-glass windows at Sotheby's Design sale on December 10. The Jonathan Thomas Memorial Window, a rare medallion window designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself in 1910, carries an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million. The church cites the high cost of maintaining its historic building and the Tiffany windows—sending just one window for repair cost over $50,000—as the reason for the sale. The auction also features a magnolia floor lamp designed by Agnes Northrup, estimated at $2 million to $3 million.
Artist Jack Butcher (b. 1988) debuted his first-ever booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, titled *Self Checkout*, where he sells art—literally receipts—on a pay-what-you-wish model. Each receipt includes a seed phrase creating a custodial Ethereum wallet holding a digital copy, but the NFT cannot be sold; it merely proves ownership of the physical receipt. The project features a real-time tracker showing his progress toward recouping the $74,211 total cost of the booth, with purchases made at self-checkout kiosks or online in Ethereum. By the fair's second day, the amount needed had dropped to $33,103.56, and Butcher was optimistic about breaking even. If the countdown hits zero, he will auction the flip board and receipt case as a one-of-one sculpture.