Artes Mundi has officially opened nominations for its 12th edition, inviting the global art community to propose artists for the prestigious biennial exhibition and prize. Based in Cardiff, Wales, the organization seeks emerging to mid-career artists whose work engages with social reality and the human condition. Nominations are open until May 31, 2026, with the selected winner receiving a substantial prize of £40,000.
The Times Art Museum has launched a major retrospective of Henri Matisse’s printmaking, featuring 100 works that span his career from early line drawings to his iconic late-period cut-outs. Titled "Bathe in Color — A Journey of Lines, Body and Dreams," the exhibition includes significant collaborations with Paris-based workshops Mourlot Studios and Atelier Auval, highlighted by the vibrant composition La Gerbe.
South Korean artist Lee Bae has opened a major solo exhibition titled "En attendant" at Museum SAN in Wonju, marking the first time the institution has dedicated its entire grounds to a single Korean artist. The retrospective spans thirty years of Lee’s career, showcasing his deep engagement with charcoal as a medium that bridges his heritage as a farmer’s son with the traditions of East Asian ink painting. The exhibition features monumental sculptures, installations, and video works that transform the museum’s indoor and outdoor spaces into a meditative journey.
Artist Rina Banerjee has opened a major solo exhibition, "Make Me a Summary of the World," at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The immersive installation features fantastical sculptures and environments constructed from materials like blood-red resin, mud, feathers, and synthetic cobwebs, exploring themes of migration, colonialism, and diaspora.
Christie’s successfully transitioned its Middle Eastern Modern & Contemporary Art evening auction from Dubai to London, achieving a total of £5.2 million ($6.8 million). The sale boasted high sell-through rates of 85% by lot and 88% by value, driven by bidders from 23 different countries. Significant highlights included world auction records for Iraqi artist Jewad Selim, whose painting "The Watermelon Seller" fetched over double its estimate, and Mahmoud Sabri, whose work "Grief" sold for more than ten times its high estimate.
The Northern England-based charity New Light Art has announced the forced sale of its prestigious permanent collection due to a critical lack of funding. Comprising over 80 works by prominent Northern artists such as Norman Ackroyd and Anne Desmet, the collection will be auctioned at Anderson & Garland in Newcastle on April 2, 2025. The decision follows the departure of a long-term patron and rising logistical costs, with proceeds intended to keep the charity’s exhibition and education programs operational.
Saudi Arabia's art market reached a significant milestone with Sotheby’s second "Origins" auction in Riyadh, headlined by the $2.1 million sale of Safeya Binzagr’s painting "Coffee Shop in Madina Road." This record-breaking event, which nearly doubled its high estimate, underscores the rapid growth of the Kingdom’s art economy under the Vision 2030 plan. The auction saw a mix of local and international buyers, signaling that Saudi artists are increasingly being integrated into the global contemporary art dialogue.
Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA) is hosting a specialized sale titled "PRESENT TENSE: Ultra-Contemporary & Street Art" via the Artsy platform. The auction features a curated selection of works from high-profile contemporary and street artists, including Barry McGee, Shag, and RETNA. Bidders are invited to participate through pre-registered max bids or real-time live bidding as the sale concludes on March 17, 2026.
The statute of limitations has officially expired on the 2006 heist at the Museu da Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro, one of the most significant art thefts in Brazilian history. During the chaos of Carnival, armed thieves overpowered guards and stole masterpieces by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. Despite the works being valued at over $10 million and listed on international databases like Interpol and the Art Loss Register, the perpetrators were never identified and the art remains missing.
Hounslow Council has launched The Hogarth Prize, a new art competition inviting artists of all levels to submit wall-based works for an exhibition at Hogarth’s House. The winner will receive a £3,000 cash prize and a six-week solo exhibition at the historic venue in 2027. A selection panel including artists Robyn Graham, Hero Johnson, and Steven King will shortlist 80 works for an initial group show scheduled for July 2025.
The Wang Contemporary has officially opened its doors in a landmarked Beaux Arts building at 58 Bowery in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Founded by fashion designer Alexander Wang and his mother, Ying Wang, the cultural organization debuted with a site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based conceptual collective MSCHF titled '20,000 Variations On A Paper Plane In Flight.' The performance featured red and gold paper planes launched from the building's central oculus, blending traditional Lunar New Year symbolism with conceptual art in a space that formerly served as a bank.
Hounslow Council, in partnership with arts agency Parker Harris, has launched the Hogarth Prize, a new national art award based at Hogarth’s House in Chiswick. The competition is open to UK-based artists of all career stages working in any wall-hanging medium, with a judging panel featuring artists Robyn Graham, Hero Johnson, and Steven King. The winner will receive a £3,000 cash prize and a solo exhibition at the historic site in 2027.
Curator Donny Caltrider recently concluded "Magic: The Gathering in Miniature III" at Gallery Nucleus in Los Angeles, a specialized exhibition featuring 333 artist proof cards. The show brought together original sketches, inks, and paintings from 111 global artists associated with the iconic trading card game. Marking the third iteration of this series, the event saw record-breaking attendance and a significant commercial reception, with over 70% of the works sold during its two-week run.
The Julia Stoschek Foundation has launched its first major U.S. exhibition at the historic Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Curated by Udo Kittelmann, the show features over 40 time-based works ranging from early cinematic pioneers like Georges Méliès and Alice Guy-Blaché to contemporary icons such as Arthur Jafa and Doug Aitken. The exhibition utilizes the labyrinthine spaces of the 1924 Italianate theater to create a dialogue between the history of Hollywood and the evolution of media art.
South Korean artist Kim Hankyul has unveiled a major immersive installation titled 'Shore' at MUNCH in Oslo. The exhibition, which serves as the fifth edition of the museum’s SOLO OSLO series, features a subaquatic landscape constructed from motorized sculptures, holograms, and Foley-inspired soundscapes. Hankyul’s work draws on the personal testimonies of North Korean defectors, female free divers, and rescue teams to explore the ocean as a site of both survival and memory for those marginalized by land-based social structures.
The Hanwha Foundation will present a solo exhibition by Korean American artist Michael Joo titled 'Sweat Models 1991-2026' at its New York space, Space Zero One, from February 20 to April 18, 2026. This marks the first exhibition of the year for the Tribeca-based platform, which opened in November with a mission to support emerging artists internationally.
The WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, is presenting "TIERRA FUTURA: Boricua Land Futures," a dual exhibition featuring a solo show by Shey Rivera Ríos and a group exhibition of 22 Boricua (Puerto Rican) artists from both Puerto Rico and its U.S. diasporas. The exhibition, curated by Rivera Ríos with co-curators Ruchika Nambiar and Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, runs from March 5 to March 29, 2026, and explores themes of land-based memory, eco-feminism, queer joy, and cultural sovereignty through diverse media.
Artist Princess Pea, the alter ego of Natasha Preenja, has won the first-ever Swali Craft Prize. The award, presented by the Chanakya School of Craft in partnership with India Art Fair, includes a cash prize of 1.1 million rupees and an exhibition slot at the fair for a large embroidered wooden sculpture created during a residency at the school.
The historic Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles is reopening after decades for a six-week exhibition titled "What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem." The show, running through March 20, presents a non-linear, late-night experience featuring over 120 years of moving images, from early cinema to contemporary video art, allowing visitors to wander freely from 5 p.m. to midnight.
Sotheby's second auction in Saudi Arabia, 'Origins II,' concluded with strong results, achieving a hammer total of $15.4 million and an 89% sell-through rate. The sale demonstrated robust demand for regional artists, particularly Arab Modernists, while some high-profile Western works were withdrawn or failed to sell. The standout lot was a 1968 painting by the late Saudi pioneer Safeya Binzagr, titled 'Coffee Shop in Madina Road,' which sold for $1.1 million, significantly outperforming a Picasso work in the same sale.
A painting by Saudi artist Safeya Binzagr, 'Coffee Shop in Madina Road' (1968), sold for $2.06 million at Sotheby's Origins II auction in Diriyah, shattering its high estimate of $200,000. The sale set a new auction record for Binzagr and is the third-highest price ever achieved by an Arab artist at auction.
The Ceramic Brussels art fair in January showcased a wide range of ceramic works, from monumental sculptures by Jun Kaneko to tiny food renditions by Nellie Jonsson. The fair highlighted emerging talent through its Jury Prize and laureate program, with 10 new artists selected for their innovative approaches. Among the eight standouts profiled are Danny Cremers, who creates colorful, reassembled porcelain vases; Marie Pic, a French artist making 2D decorative panels inspired by Art Nouveau; and Faye Papargyropoulou, an Athens-based former advertising creative director exploring fragility and strength. Other notable artists include Kira Fröse, Lorie Ballage, Angelika Stefaniak, Ninon Hivert, and Walter Yu, each bringing unique perspectives to clay as a medium.
Christopher Green, a leading scholar of Cubism, has published a new book titled *Cubism and Reality*, which reexamines the origins and intentions of early Cubism through the works of Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Juan Gris. The book focuses on the years immediately before World War I, arguing that Cubism was not a step toward abstraction but a deliberate reinvention of reality based on lived visual experience. Green draws on decades of research, including his own earlier works and the foundational 1959 study by John Golding, and contrasts the movement with mass-produced imagery in chapters on Roy Lichtenstein and Francis Picabia.
The World Monuments Fund and Knoll have awarded the 2026 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize to the Australia-based architecture firm Architectus for its conservation of Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The building, completed in 1961 and designed by Italian architect Arturo Mezzedimi, serves as the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and was commissioned by Emperor Haile Selassie. The decade-long, $57 million restoration project, completed in October 2024, involved local experts, restored original furniture and stained-glass windows by artist Afewerk Tekle, and modernized the structure while preserving its modernist vision. The jury also awarded its first Stewardship Award for Modernist Homes to the Umbrella House in Sarasota, Florida, designed by Paul Rudolph.
The Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, has opened two new exhibitions, “Returning To Wonder” and “All Sketches Wish To Be Real,” featuring international and local artists. Among the featured artists is Alexandra Fuller, a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes cyanotypes of wildlife and who has ties to the Sundance Film Festival—her short film “Sister Wife” was accepted at the 2009 festival. The exhibitions also include works by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, American artist Lia Halloran, and Utah-based artist Antra Sinha. The center will host a series of public programs, including artist talks, workshops, and a book discussion, to engage the local community.
Guild Hall in East Hampton is opening two exhibitions on Sunday: “Jason Bard Yarmosky: Time Has Many Faces,” a decade-long series of meticulously rendered portraits focusing on the artist’s aging grandparents, and “Liberty Labs: A Decade of Design,” featuring furniture, lighting, and objects by 33 current and former members of the Liberty Labs Foundation design collective. The portraits blend 17th- and 18th-century painting techniques with contemporary, often playful imagery, while the design show highlights collaborative experimentation. Museum director Melanie Crader, who curated both shows, notes that the artists share Brooklyn bases and East End ties.
Sotheby’s is returning to Riyadh for the second edition of its Origins sale, titled Origins II, with a live auction scheduled for 31 January. The sale will feature over 70 lots spanning Modern and Contemporary Art, Ancient Sculpture, and 20th-Century Design, including works by Saudi pioneer Safeya Binzagr, Iraqi artist Mahmoud Sabri, and Pablo Picasso. The auction coincides with the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale and the debut of Art Basel Doha, and will be preceded by a public exhibition at Diriyah’s Bujairi Terrace from 24 to 31 January.
Sotheby’s resumed Modern & Contemporary Art auctions in Singapore in 2022 after a 15-year hiatus, signaling renewed confidence in the region. In an interview, Jasmine Prasetio, Managing Director for Southeast Asia at Sotheby’s, discusses how Singaporean and Singapore-based collectors are increasingly active in both local and global sales, actively bidding on and acquiring works by Singaporean artists such as Georgette Chen, Kim Lim, and Jane Lee. Notable auction results include Georgette Chen’s “Lychees and Peaches” achieving $1.5 million in July 2023 and Jane Lee’s “Melt VII” selling for $140,877.
The group exhibition "Electric Dreams" is now on view at isnotgallery in Nicosia, Cyprus, running until January 6. The show expands on the earlier summer exhibition "In Paradise I Have Marked an Island" held at the Almyra Boutique Hotel, bringing many of the same works into a new curatorial framework in the capital. Sixteen Cypriot and international artists participate, including Elysia Athanatou, Savvas Christodoulidis, Alekos Fasianos, and Fikos, among others.
Sotheby's will hold its second auction in Saudi Arabia, Origins II, on January 31 in Diriyah, featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, and Middle Eastern artists including Safeya Binzagr and Mohammed Al Saleem. The sale spans categories from ancient sculpture to contemporary South Asian art, with highlights including Picasso's 'Paysage' (1965, est. $2-3 million) and Binzagr's 'Coffee Shop in Madina Road' (1968, est. $150,000-200,000).