The Marcel Duchamps That Got Away: On Collecting His Work and the Sprawling MoMA Show

The article recounts the author's personal experience as a collector who passed up the opportunity to buy a complete set of Marcel Duchamp's readymades at a 2002 Phillips de Pury and Luxembourg auction. The set, editioned by dealer Arturo Schwartz in 1964, included iconic works like *Fountain* and *Bicycle Wheel*, but the sale was a financial failure, with many pieces bought-in or selling for far below expectations. The author later acquired some of the unsold works privately. The piece is framed around the concurrent Duchamp exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and Gagosian.

7 New Art Books to Step Into Spring

Artnet News has curated a selection of seven significant new art book releases for the spring season, highlighting diverse subjects from historical archives to contemporary memoirs. Featured titles include a deep dive into Frida Kahlo’s private sanctuary, 'Casa Roja,' authored by her descendants; a curatorial history of Hong Kong’s avant-garde art scene by Oscar Ho Hing-kay; and a vibrant exploration of color in contemporary art featuring works by Yayoi Kusama and Tomás Saraceno.

Why Contemporary Artists Are Raiding the Renaissance Toolkit

Three contemporary artists—Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Bühler-Rose, and Nick Doyle—are reviving the Renaissance woodworking techniques of intarsia and marquetry in their current exhibitions. Taylor is showing marquetry hybrid paintings at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco, Bühler-Rose is presenting a solo booth with Stems Gallery at Independent, and Doyle is also participating in the trend. Their work draws inspiration from the Gubbio Studiolo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a 15th-century trompe-l'œil room that exemplifies the decorative inlay tradition.

‘It was life-changing’: the celebrated art historian who spent 46 years sitting for Frank Auerbach

Art historian and curator Catherine Lampert is the subject of a career-spanning profile following the opening of her latest exhibition, 'Euan Uglow: An Arc from the Eye,' at MK Gallery. The article details her deep personal and professional relationships with giants of British figurative painting, including Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and Euan Uglow. Lampert, who served as the director of the Whitechapel Gallery for over a decade, continues to be a prolific force in the art world, recently co-authoring Freud’s catalogue raisonné and curating major retrospectives.

Chernobyl 40 years on, Paula Rego at Munch in Oslo, Gluck’s flower painting—podcast

This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast 'The Week in Art' covers three distinct exhibitions. Host Ben Luke discusses the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with organizer Olha Kovalevska, whose exhibition at Nikolaikirche in Potsdam runs until 27 April. He also explores a new show at Munch in Oslo, 'Paula Rego: Dance Among Thorns', with curator Kari J. Brandtzæg, focusing on Rego's engagement with Edvard Munch. Finally, the episode features 'Convolvulus' (1940) by Gluck as the Work of the Week, part of the group exhibition 'Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today' at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, discussed with co-curator Naomi Polonsky.

$102 Million Verdict Over Robert Indiana Artwork May End Years-Long Legal Battle

A Manhattan federal jury awarded $102 million in damages to the Morgan Art Foundation in its lawsuit against art publisher Michael McKenzie, finding him guilty of making and selling unauthorized Robert Indiana artworks. The verdict, delivered on April 23, follows a complex legal battle that began just before Indiana's death in 2018, involving accusations of exploitation, fraud, and copyright infringement. McKenzie and caretaker Jamie Thomas were also accused of taking advantage of the elderly artist. The case has cast doubt on the authenticity of some late Indiana works and affected his market, with his auction record remaining at just over $4 million since 2011.

Beer With a Painter: Keith Mayerson

Hyperallergic interviews Los Angeles-based painter Keith Mayerson, who discusses his ongoing 'My American Dream' series—a cosmology of paintings blending American identity, activism, and popular culture. The conversation covers his early influences from comics, the Muppets, and Hunter S. Thompson, his transition from cartooning to painting, and his vibratory, swirling brushwork. Mayerson's work has been featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and is currently on view at the Aspen Art Museum and the Pollock-Krasner House.

‘They accomplished so much, even as they were dying’: the groundbreaking gay art of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek

Author and Frieze Magazine editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin has released a dual biography titled 'The Wonderful World That Almost Was,' chronicling the lives and creative partnership of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. The book focuses on their relationship from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, detailing their collaborative influence and the development of their respective practices in photography and sculpture before both died of AIDS-related complications in the late 1980s.

Inside LACMA’s 2026 Reopening: What to Know About the New David Geffen Galleries

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its highly anticipated David Geffen Galleries will officially open to the public on April 19, 2026. Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Peter Zumthor in collaboration with director Michael Govan, the new facility features a horizontal, elevated design that spans Wilshire Boulevard. The structure will house 26 galleries on a single level, representing the culmination of a nearly two-decade redevelopment project.

At a Powerful Carnegie International, Solidarity Is a Means of Survival

The 2026 Carnegie International, titled “If the word we,” opened at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, featuring 61 artists from around the world. Curated by Ryan Inouye, Liz Park, and Danielle A. Jackson, the exhibition emphasizes collective survival and interdependence, with works including Khalil Rabah’s video about Palestinian resilience, Shala Miller’s abstraction inspired by Toni Morrison, and a performance by Brooke O’Harra and collaborators celebrating teamwork through a historic basketball dunk by Julius Erving. The show extends to three other venues, including the Mattress Factory, where married artists Claudia Martinez Garay and Artur Kameya present a sprawling installation.

The Big Review | Venice Biennale 2026: In Minor Keys ★★★½

The Venice Biennale 2026, titled "In Minor Keys," was curated posthumously following the death of artistic director Koyo Kouoh in May 2025. A team of five curators and advisors—Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi—executed her vision across the Giardini and Arsenale venues. The exhibition features 110 artists, with a strong emphasis on new commissions, and is structured around themes of procession, resistance, and joy. Key works include Big Chief Demond Melancon's "Amistad Takeover" (2026), Nick Cave's "Amalgam (Origin)" (2025), and Otobong Nkanga's rewilded columns at the Central Pavilion.

In Venice, Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince Ask: What Is Appropriate to Appropriate?

Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince are showing their work together in a joint exhibition titled "Helter Skelter" at the Fondazione Prada in Venice. Curated by Nancy Spector, the show explores the artists' shared practice of appropriation, a connection that began when Prince attended the debut of Jafa's video work AGHDRA (2021) and later deepened through conversations about race, property, and self-authorization. Jafa has long admired Prince's approach, calling him "the blackest white artist I know," and the exhibition pairs their works to examine how appropriation functions differently for a Black artist versus a white artist.

Think you have strong opinions about the 2026 Archibald prize? Check out the portraits that didn’t make the cut | Dee Jefferson

The article explores the annual ritual of the Archibald Prize, Australia's most famous portrait competition, through the lens of the 2026 edition. The author, Dee Jefferson, describes the predictable cycle of public enthusiasm, critical disdain, and media coverage that surrounds the prize, noting recurring trends like brown suits, oversized heads, and the dominance of male artists painting male subjects. The piece highlights specific works in this year's exhibition, including a portrait of musician Keli Holiday by Sindy Sinn that the author finds disorienting, and contrasts the main exhibition with the Salon des Refusés, the showcase of rejected entries, which includes a provocative portrait of Patricia Piccinini by Wendy Sharpe featuring exaggerated anatomy.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries reframe 6,000 years of history

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is preparing to open its new $720m David Geffen Galleries, a massive undulating concrete structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor. Spanning Wilshire Boulevard, the new building adds 110,000 square feet of gallery space and 3.5 acres of public parkland, marking the completion of a two-decade capital project led by Director Michael Govan. The facility will house the museum’s permanent collection, which has been largely out of public view for seven years, and features innovative exhibition strategies such as hanging artworks directly onto concrete walls.

New catalogues reveal Royal Collection's vast sculpture holdings—and Queen Victoria's acquisition spree

A new four-volume catalogue, authored by former royal surveyor Jonathan Marsden, documents approximately 1,800 sculptures in the Royal Collection. The publication reveals the unsystematic nature of the collection's growth, driven by royal tastes and historical opportunities, and highlights significant discoveries like a previously unknown bronze satyr by Benvenuto Cellini.

The Triumphant New LACMA Has the Potential to Rewrite Art History

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is set to open its new $724 million David Geffen Galleries, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The building features a radical, non-linear layout that eschews traditional chronological and geographical hierarchies, allowing artworks from 15 different curatorial departments to be displayed in conversation with one of another. Despite years of controversy regarding its concrete design and a 10 percent reduction in exhibition space, the museum is positioning the new structure as a flexible "laboratory" for global art history.

Here’s What LACMA’s Lavish New Building Looks Like

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has finally unveiled its new flagship building, the David Geffen Galleries, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The concrete-and-glass structure famously straddles Wilshire Boulevard, featuring a continuous glass facade that offers panoramic views of the Los Angeles landscape and newly installed outdoor sculptures. Inside, the layout encourages a non-linear experience, moving visitors through varying light conditions and diverse gallery sizes that house a mix of contemporary and classical works.

‘Designed to disorient’: LA art museum unveils enormous concrete gallery, 20 years in the making

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unveiled the David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million concrete structure designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Spanning Wilshire Boulevard, the building features 110,000 square feet of elevated gallery space characterized by curving walls and massive windows. The project marks the culmination of a nearly 20-year revitalization effort led by director Michael Govan, replacing several older buildings with a single, fluid architectural statement.

Tate Britain will Exhibit ‘90s Art and Fashion, and Other News.

Tate Britain will stage "The 90s: Art and Fashion" in autumn 2026, guest curated by Edward Enninful, featuring nearly 70 artists, designers, and photographers including Steve McQueen, Damien Hirst, Alexander McQueen, and Vivienne Westwood. The exhibition explores how the decade reshaped British cultural identity through art, fashion, and social commentary, highlighting DIY anti-fashion aesthetics and themes of identity, race, class, and representation. Separately, Gagosian opened a new ground-floor flagship at 980 Madison Avenue in New York, replacing its longtime sixth-floor space after 37 years. A rare 17th-century Mughal astrolabe is heading to Sotheby's London with a £1.5–2.5 million estimate. Fondazione Sozzani launched an award for emerging creative talent. A Manhattan federal jury ordered art publisher Michael McKenzie to pay $102.2 million in damages to the Morgan Art Foundation for producing unauthorized works by Robert Indiana.

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit reopens, with the local community front and centre

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Mocad) reopened on 25 April after over a year of renovations, unveiling upgrades to its 22,000-square-foot Midtown space—including a new learning space, air conditioning, and a large street-facing window—just in time for its 20th anniversary. The main building has been renamed after co-founder Julia Reyes Taubman. Co-directors Marie Madison-Patton and Jova Lynne have repositioned the institution as a civic space, emphasizing community engagement and local artists, with exhibitions such as Olayami Dabls: Detroit Cosmologies, Martha Mysko's Retail Therapy, and Carole Harris's This Side of the River.

LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries offers a seductive art-viewing experience

The article discusses the newly opened David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), describing the viewing experience as seductive. The galleries are a major component of LACMA's ongoing transformation, designed by architect Peter Zumthor.

The Big Review | Lacma's David Geffen Galleries ★★★★

The Swiss architect Peter Zumthor's new $724 million building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), now called the David Geffen Galleries, has opened after nearly two decades of anticipation. The swooping concrete-and-glass structure is praised for its harnessing of natural light and horizontality, creating a stunning showcase for antiquities and inviting the city inside with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the La Brea Tar Pits and Wilshire Boulevard. The building performs best with sculpture and decorative objects, with standout works including Liz Glynn's "The Futility of Conquest" (2023) and Manjunath Kamath's "Vikatonarva" (2024).

Refik Anadol’s Dataland Museum Sets an Opening Date

Refik Anadol's Dataland, billed as the world's first A.I. art museum, will open on June 20 in Los Angeles after more than two and a half years of planning. Founded by Anadol and his partner Efsun Erkiliç, the museum is housed inside the Frank Gehry-designed Grand L.A. complex and features five galleries. Its debut exhibition, "Machine Dreams: Rainforest," uses ecological data processed through Anadol's Large Nature Model to create digital sculptures simulating possible rainforests. The museum, designed by Gensler, dedicates nearly a third of its 35,000 square feet to operational hardware and runs on 87 percent carbon-free energy.

No Need to Shed a Tear for the Jury

"Man muss der Jury keine Träne nachweinen"

The entire jury of the Venice Biennale resigned shortly before the opening, prompting criticism of Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli accused Buttafuoco of pursuing a misguided "pacificist fantasy" by readmitting Russia to the six-month exhibition, calling it failed "side foreign policy." Commentators in German media, including Niklas Maak (FAZ) and Marcus Woeller (Die Welt), see the resignation as a symptom of a crisis in the art world, with the jury having acted as a "political tribunal" by pre-judging artists based on nationality, particularly regarding Israel. The Biennale leadership defended inclusion, but the standoff has caused significant "image damage." Separately, Dirk Knipphals (wochentaz) delivers a scathing review of Wolfram Weimer's first year as cultural policy commissioner, accusing him of empty rhetoric and failing to counter right-wing cultural politics. Juliane von Mittelstaedt (Der Spiegel) reports on Saudi Arabia's use of a spectacular new art museum in Riyadh as a stability narrative amid regional conflict.

Look Inside the Art-Filled Home of New York City's Cultural Crusaders

This profile explores the Upper West Side residence of Crystal McCrary McGuire and Raymond J. McGuire, a power couple deeply embedded in New York City’s cultural and financial sectors. Their home serves as a private gallery for a significant collection of African American art, featuring masterworks by Norman Lewis, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden. The couple’s shared passion for collecting began independently, sparked by their formative years studying in France, and has since evolved into a joint mission to preserve and live alongside Black artistic heritage.

Tiny Cranach Painting That Vanished During WWII Returns to Dresden

A miniature portrait of Friedrich III (Frederick the Wise) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, missing since World War II, has been returned to the State Art Collections of Dresden, Germany. The painting was last documented in May 1945 in a limestone quarry shelter near Pockau-Lengefeld before vanishing. It resurfaced in 2024 when consigned to Parisian auction house Artcurial, whose provenance investigation revealed a matching inventory number from 1722–1728. The Dreyfus family in France, the modern owners, returned the work after negotiations and a financial agreement. It is now on view at the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Palace in a special exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Friedrich III's death, and will later be permanently displayed in the Semper Gallery.

Authorship Dispute Erupts Over ‘Hair Dress’ at the Met’s Costume Institute

British artist Anouska Samms has publicly claimed that the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute exhibition "Costume Art" includes a dress, Corpus Nervina 0.0 (2023-24), that was based on her collaborative work with Israeli fashion designer Yoav Hadari. Samms alleges that she co-created the original "Hair Dress" with Hadari in 2023 while both were residents at the Sarabande Foundation, and that the Met initially sought to acquire that piece. After negotiations fell through, Hadari instead provided a similar garment attributed solely to him, prompting Samms to demand proper credit via Instagram posts and through her lawyer.

Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles presents "Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials," a spring 2026 exhibition running from April 5 to August 23. Curated by Jill Spalding, the show features works by artists including Edgar Calel, Guadalupe Maravilla, Carmen Argote, and others, exploring the concept of "Brownness"—a fluid identity rooted in ancestral memory, animal kinship, and a profound connection to living materials. The exhibition is organized into three acts: large-scale installations, paintings and works on paper, and ceramics, offering a visceral and immersive experience that draws on precolonial traditions across the Americas.

art venice faustin linyekula the galeazze project dance

Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula is staging "The Galeazze Project," a performance commissioned by the Venice-based nonprofit Scuola Piccola Zattere (SPZ) in the 16th-century Galeazze shipyard complex, which has been inaccessible since World War II and never open to the public. The performance, a collateral event of the 2026 Venice Biennale, brings up to 500 people into the 32,291-square-foot open-air ruin for two nights, featuring local students, musicians from the Venetian label Cosmogram, and trumpeter Heru Shabaka-Ra, with a soundtrack composed collaboratively.

Delayed by War in Iran, Paul Klee Painting from Israel Finally Joins New York Show

A long-delayed loan of Paul Klee's painting *Angelus Novus* (1920) has finally arrived at the Jewish Museum in New York, completing the exhibition "Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds." The work, on loan from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, was stuck in Israel due to the ongoing war in Iran, which began with joint US-Israeli bombardments on February 28. Until its arrival, the painting was represented by an authorized facsimile with a note citing transport delays. The exhibition, which opened March 20, focuses on Klee's final decade and runs through July 26.