Art News. Vasari Codex

trending_up market schedule Jul 27, 2025 visibility 27 link 29 artists

figurative painting trend boom bust market politics zombie jennifer packer salman toor louis fratino 1234747400

The article examines the narrative that figurative painting died and made a comeback, arguing instead that it never truly disappeared. It traces the art market's pendulum swing from zombie formalism around 2014 to a surge in figurative painting by 2015, fueled by collectors seeking new, affordable works to flip quickly. The piece highlights emerging painters like Gina Beavers, Mira Dancy, Jamian Juliano-Villani, and Greg Parma Smith, and notes that the boom created auction stars whose prices later crashed, as reported in a 2024 New York Times article.

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museum exhibitions schedule Apr 3, 2026 visibility 15 link 1 artist

A New Exhibition at the British Museum Dismantles the Popular Understanding of Samurai

The British Museum has opened a major exhibition titled 'Samurai,' which challenges the widespread, simplified portrayal of samurai as solely honor-bound, hyper-violent warriors. The show, curated by Rosina Buckland, presents them as a complex social class who were also bureaucrats, administrators, and cultural figures, emphasizing their roles during periods of peace and governance.

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museum exhibitions schedule Apr 13, 2026 visibility 17 link 2 artists

The Academy Museum Reclaims the Real Marilyn Monroe

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is launching a major exhibition to mark the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, seeking to re-examine her complex legacy. Moving beyond the simplified tropes of the tragic starlet, the show investigates whether Monroe was a passive victim of the Hollywood studio system or a savvy, self-aware architect of her own public persona.

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article culture schedule Aug 12, 2025 visibility 16 link 4 artists

Comment | US museums are finally going bilingual: here's why it matters

US museums are increasingly adopting bilingual and multilingual programming, primarily adding Spanish translations to wall texts, websites, and catalogs. Institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) and MoMA PS1 in New York have led this shift, with MCA hiring bilingual staff and developing a bilingual website, while MoMA PS1 offers texts in Spanish, simplified Chinese, Arabic, Tagalog, and Bisaya for specific exhibitions. This trend responds to the fact that 14% of the US population speaks Spanish at home, and Latinx people represent a growing demographic in cities like Chicago.

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rate_review review schedule Mar 23, 2026 source 2 sources visibility 25 link 4 artists

White Girls and the Global South

The article is a curated list of art books for spring reading, featuring a diverse range of subjects. It highlights two main critical reviews: one critiques a new novel, *Flat Earth* by Anika Jade Levy, as another navel-gazing story about disaffected white women, while the other praises a scholarly work, *Non-Aligned: Art, Decolonization and the Third World Project in India* by Atreyee Gupta, which examines the international solidarity networks of Indian modernist painters long before the term "Global South" became popular.

newspaper Hyperallergic open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Apr 29, 2025 visibility 8 link 2 artists

suffering life models in florence are threatening legal action over working conditions 1234740099

Life models at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (Florence Academy of Fine Arts) are threatening legal action and a potential nude protest over poor working conditions. They complain of exhausting work, insufficient breaks, and renewable annual contracts offering 500 hours over 11 months with no insurance, holidays, sick leave, or timecards. The models argue that a 2024 Italian ministry law requiring permanent contracts for those with three years of service does not apply to them because the academy claims they were hired under simplified procedures. Union president Giancarlo Iacomini met with academy director Gaia Bindi on April 9 to seek a resolution, calling the situation "deeply contradictory."

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museum exhibitions schedule Apr 22, 2026 visibility 25 link 5 artists

Art: Passion is Volcanic – Desire in Southeast Asian Art at National Gallery Singapore

National Gallery Singapore has opened a major exhibition titled 'Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art.' The show, which carries an unprecedented R18 rating and prohibits photography, presents a comprehensive exploration of eroticism, pleasure, and the body through a wide range of artworks from the region's collection and loans. It is curated by Dr. Patrick Flores, Dr. Adele Tan, and Dr. Kathleen Ditzig, who frame desire as a culturally specific yet universal force shaped by history and power.

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article culture schedule Mar 26, 2026 source 2 sources visibility 21

Required Reading

This week's cultural roundup connects diverse stories from art conservation to literary analysis. Novelist Karma Brown draws parallels between restoring artworks and revising novels, inspired by visits to the Art Gallery of Ontario, while an interview with Namwali Serpell examines the complex "monumentalization" of Toni Morrison's legacy. The column also includes a poignant image from Tehran—a framed artwork hanging in a bomb-damaged apartment—and touches on topics ranging from celebrating Eid in Gaza to discussions about "girl games" and the Lindy West drama.

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museum exhibitions schedule Apr 7, 2026 visibility 24 link 2 artists

Exploring the magical colors of Matisse

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.

newspaper China Daily open_in_new Read original

museum exhibitions schedule Mar 27, 2026 visibility 17

“Land. Sea. Sugar. Salt.: Terrestrial and Aquatic Contemplations of the Caribbean” at Art Museum at the University of Toronto

The Art Museum at the University of Toronto has opened a new exhibition titled "Land. Sea. Sugar. Salt.: Terrestrial and Aquatic Contemplations of the Caribbean." The show features works by contemporary artists from the Caribbean and its diaspora, exploring the region's complex geography, layered histories, and cultural intersections through themes of land, water, and the legacies of colonial industries like sugar production.

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museum exhibitions schedule Dec 10, 2025 visibility 15 link 9 artists

Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck

This article introduces the work of Finnish modernist painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946), whose career spanned eight decades and evolved from naturalism to near abstraction. Born in Helsinki, she studied in Paris under French naturalist painters and initially gained recognition for history paintings celebrating Finnish heritage. Later, retreating to Hyvinkää to care for her mother, she abandoned naturalism, paring down her figure paintings and still lifes to simplified, materially intense compositions. The exhibition features key works such as 'View of St Ives' (1887) and 'Clothes Drying' (1883), highlighting her shift toward ethereal, boundary-testing imagery that early Finnish critics dismissed.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 16, 2026 visibility 2 link 1 artist, 4 galleries

Exhibition | Tang Maohong, 'Simplified' at ShanghART, Singapore

ShanghART Singapore presents 'Simplified', a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Tang Maohong opening on 16 May 2026. The show features paintings developed over the past two years since his relocation to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and marks his return to Singapore after a 2019 solo exhibition and twenty years since his participation in the first Singapore Biennale. Tang's new works explore a technique of mixing colors directly on the painting surface rather than using a palette, collapsing the image and the palette into a single pictorial space.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jan 25, 2026 visibility 10 link 2 artists

Upcoming Exhibitions

Bellarmine Hall Galleries at Fairfield University Art Museum will host an exhibition from September 18 to December 12, 2026, exploring 'Egyptomania'—the 19th-century European fascination with ancient Egyptian art and culture. The show features paintings, prints, photographs, and decorative art from the early 19th century to the present, including works like Charles-Théodore Frère's *Along the Nile* (ca. 1870). Curated by Megan Paqua, the exhibition examines how Egyptian symbols and motifs were adopted, exoticized, and commercialized, often erasing the ancient Egyptian people themselves. It aims to contrast simplified or stereotypical narratives with current archaeological understanding.

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article news schedule Apr 29, 2025 visibility 8 link 2 artists

‘Exhausted’ life models at Florence art academy threaten nude protest

Life models at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (Florence Academy of Fine Arts) are threatening legal action and a nude protest in the academy's courtyard over poor working conditions. They describe their work as “exhausting,” involving eight-hour sessions with minimal breaks, and say their renewable annual contracts—offering 500 hours over 11 months—lack insurance, paid leave, sick days, or a digital timecard. The dispute centers on Italy’s ministry of universities and research rules introduced last year, which the academy interprets as excluding models hired more than three years ago under simplified procedures from permanent contracts. Union president Giancarlo Iacomini has met with academy director Gaia Bindi to seek a resolution, while the academy says it will publish a new public recruitment notice that counts previous contracts as qualifications.

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article policy schedule Jan 13, 2026 visibility 18 link 5 artists

Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery removes wall text mentioning Trump’s impeachments

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, has removed wall text accompanying a portrait of Donald Trump that mentioned his two impeachments. The text, part of the America's Presidents exhibition, listed Trump's achievements and noted he was impeached for abuse of power and incitement of insurrection, then acquitted by the Senate. The portrait by Matt McClain was replaced with a black-and-white photo by Daniel Torok, with a simplified label stating only Trump's birth year and status as the 45th and 47th president. The museum says it is beginning a planned update of the gallery, which will close from April 6 to May 14.

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article policy schedule Apr 30, 2026 visibility 17

Aumenti salariali e welfare per i lavori della cultura. È stato firmato il nuovo Contratto Nazionale di Lavoro. L’intervista

A new national labor contract for Italy's cultural sector has been signed. The Federculture National Labor Contract, finalized on April 30, 2026, includes a 7.5% increase in minimum wages (effective December 1, 2024), doubled welfare contributions for healthcare, and a simplified job classification system. The agreement was reached between Federculture and major unions including FP CGIL, CISL FP, UIL FPL, and UIL PA, with negotiations for the 2025-2027 term set to resume on May 26.

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rate_review review schedule May 12, 2026 visibility 11

Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism review — eye-opening show sets the record straight

The article reviews the exhibition "Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism," which presents a historical survey of artists who actively resisted fascist regimes through their work. The show features a range of pieces from the early 20th century to the present, highlighting lesser-known figures and movements that opposed authoritarianism. It aims to correct oversimplified narratives about art and politics during periods of fascist rule.

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