Raphael Fonseca has been appointed as the new visual arts programmer at Culturgest in Lisbon, the cultural foundation of the Portuguese bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos. He will relocate to Lisbon in June while transitioning to a curator-at-large role at the Denver Art Museum, where he currently serves as curator and head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art.
The article lists January 2026 art exhibitions across multiple venues in Charlottesville, Virginia, including Ruffin Gallery at the University of Virginia, Crozet Artisan Depot, The Fralin Museum of Art, The Gallery at Studio IX, IX Art Park, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, and Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. Highlights include the Ruffin Distinguished Artist-in-Residence exhibition “We Dream of Life” by Paula Wilson and iris yirei hu, featuring a monumental 56-foot textile; “Haiti’s Time” at The Fralin Museum; and “In the Beginning” at Kluge-Ruhe showcasing Spinifex Arts Project artists. Other shows include “INSTRUMENTAL” by Rich Tarbell, “The Looking Glass” immersive space, and “Finally Remembered: The Black Patriots of Central Virginia” at the Heritage Center.
Ferris State University's Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD) alumni, faculty, and students have been recognized in the 2025 West Michigan Area Show, a juried exhibition hosted by the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. The 64th annual competition drew nearly 500 entries from 14 Michigan counties, with 64 selected for inclusion. Eleven pieces by artists with KCAD connections were featured, and three received distinguished awards from juror Hubert Massey, a Detroit-based artist and educator. Notable winners include Lee Ann Frame, who won the Ward H. and Cora E. Nay Director’s Purchase Prize and the Southwest Michigan Printmakers Excellence in Printmaking Award, and Tatsuki Hakoyama, who received The Martin Maddox Prize for Imaginative Realism. Other participants include professor emeritus Jay Constantine, alumni Beth Purdy and Jackson Wrede, and students Sydney Donath and Kaylee Dirkmaat.
Unseen photo fair is returning to Amsterdam under new management and in a new venue, five years after its commercial entities filed for bankruptcy in early 2020. Founded in 2012 by Foam photography museum, Vandejong Creative Agency, and Platform A, the fair was acquired later in 2020 by Art Rotterdam, with its director Fons Hof now overseeing the relaunch. The 13th edition will take place from 18 to 21 September at the NDSM Loods, a 20,000 sq. m former shipyard in Amsterdam Noord, featuring expanded curated sections and a new contemporary art segment called Unfold.
Les Yeux du Monde presents 'GROUNDING,' the final show of 2025 featuring new oil paintings by Annie Harris Massie that explore light, memory, and place through landscapes and botanical studies of her Lynchburg, Virginia surroundings. Other December exhibitions include Randall Stoltzfus's 'To Hold The Light' at Angelo Jewelry, Judith Ely's paintings at Botanical Fare, and 'All That Glitters' by Natalie Darling at C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery. The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA hosts three shows: 'Haiti’s Time' from the Sullivan collection, 'In Feeling: Empathy and Tension Through Disability,' and 'The World Between: Egypt and Nubia in Africa.' The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection features works from the Spinifex Arts Project and Robert Fielding, while the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center presents 'Finally Remembered: The Black Patriots of Central Virginia.'
Egyptologist Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, a lecturer at Sorbonne University, discovered hidden cryptographic messages on the Luxor Obelisk in Paris's Place de la Concorde. During the pandemic, he noticed unusual hieroglyphs while walking past the 3,000-year-old monument. After scaffolding was erected for renovations ahead of the 2024 Olympics, he obtained permission to study the obelisk up close, becoming the first person in over a century to climb it. He identified seven crypto-hieroglyphs—encoded messages using puzzles and wordplay—that only a few experts can read. These inscriptions, set to be published in the journal ENiM, reveal that Pharaoh Ramses II used the obelisk as a propaganda tool to assert his divine right to rule, targeting the intellectual elite who approached the Luxor Temple by boat.