Art News. Vasari Codex

museum exhibitions schedule Jun 1, 2026 visibility 13 link 11 artists

The 2026 Whitney Biennial in five key themes

The 2026 Whitney Biennial, the 82nd edition, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York during a politically volatile period, just a week after the US and Israel began a coordinated attack on Iran. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the exhibition features 56 artists, duos, and collectives, with works that explore themes of American identity, US imperialism, and the lasting effects of American power abroad. Artists from Afghanistan, Chile, Iraq, Okinawa, Palestine, the Philippines, and Vietnam are included alongside American peers, often addressing politics subtly through abstract, poetic, or ambivalent approaches.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 31, 2026 visibility 14 link 1 artist

Elizabeth Blackadder exhibition reveals wintry Tuscan landscapes and minimalist still lifes

A new exhibition at the Jenna Burlingham Gallery in Kingsclere, Hampshire, showcases early works by Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder (1921-2021), focusing on wintry Tuscan landscapes and minimalist still lifes from the 1950s through the 1970s. Most pieces are exhibited for the first time, revealing a less familiar side of the artist known for her accessible paintings of flowers and cats. The show includes gouache and watercolour landscapes Blackadder painted after winning a travelling scholarship, as well as pared-back oil still lifes from the 1960s and 1970s.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 28, 2026 visibility 14 link 3 artists

Ken Griffin’s Other Copy of the U.S. Constitution Makes Its Museum Debut

Billionaire financier and art collector Ken Griffin has lent his second privately held first printing of the U.S. Constitution to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York for the exhibition "The Promise of Liberty: Words That Shaped a Nation," marking the country's 250th anniversary. The document, known as the Adrian Van Sinderen copy, was pulled from a Sotheby's auction in 2022 after institutional interest emerged; Griffin acquired it for an undisclosed sum. The exhibition also includes a local copy of the Declaration of Independence, an early printing of the Bill of Rights, and other historic documents tracing America's pursuit of liberty.

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article culture schedule May 28, 2026 visibility 15 link 2 artists

French Filmmaker Romain Gavras Is Turning the $102 M. Louvre Heist Into a Movie

French filmmaker Romain Gavras is set to direct a film adaptation of the Louvre heist, in which thieves stole $102 million in jewels from the museum in broad daylight. The film will be based on the book "Main Basse sur le Louvre" (A Grab at the Louvre), released Wednesday in France by publisher Flammarion, written by journalists from Le Parisien, Le Monde, and Paris Match. Film rights were sold to Iconoclast, the production company behind Harmony Korine films and Gavras's previous works like "Athena" (2022). A separate documentary series about the heist is also in development with a British producer.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 28, 2026 visibility 23 link 17 artists, 106 galleries

Art Basel Paris Releases 2026 Exhibitor List: Who’s In? Who’s Out?

Art Basel Paris has released its 2026 exhibitor list, revealing over 200 galleries from 41 countries will participate in the fair at the Grand Palais from October 23 to 25, with preview days starting October 21. This edition marks the first led by Karim Crippa, the fair's former head of communications. Notable newcomers include Luxembourg + Co, Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries, and Tina Kim Gallery, while several galleries from last year are absent, including Andrew Edlin Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Balice Hertling, which recently admitted to payment delays. A record 12 galleries are forming joint booths, a trend Crippa says creates "a genuine curatorial dialogue."

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person people schedule May 27, 2026 visibility 14 link 1 artist

Christie’s Names Billionaire François-Henri Pinault Chairman, Signaling End of Tenure for Guillaume Cerutti

Christie’s has appointed François-Henri Pinault, son of billionaire François Pinault and president of Groupe Artémis, as board chairman and non-executive director. The move signals the end of Guillaume Cerutti’s tenure as chairman, a role he held since 2023 after serving as CEO from 2017 to 2025. Cerutti also recently left his position as president of the Pinault Collection, which is now led by François Pinault. The announcement came without mention of Cerutti’s departure, and his LinkedIn profile indicates his chairmanship ended last month.

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article culture schedule May 27, 2026 visibility 18 link 1 artist

Ren Light Pan Dramatizes the Dilemma of the Trans Artist.

Ren Light Pan, a transgender artist working in a tiny New York studio, creates striking duotone images using a self-invented process involving ink, water, heat lamps, and transparent film. Her recent works center on the classical figure of Sleeping Hermaphroditus, a marble Roman copy of an ancient Greek bronze, which she reproduces from a photograph that includes spectators' legs. Pan's method, which she developed to circumvent perfectionist tendencies, involves suspending a primed canvas over a mixture of ink and water, then applying heat to transfer the image over one to two hours. She has also made works based on her own body, though she has abandoned the durational performance aspect since transitioning.

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article culture schedule May 27, 2026 visibility 13 link 3 artists

‘Writing is exactly like love – you need to do it in the dark’: novelist Leila Slimani on why literature is erotic

French-Moroccan novelist Leïla Slimani discusses her residency at Madrid's Museo del Prado, where she draws inspiration from Francisco Goya's Black Paintings for her writing. She reflects on her career, including winning the Prix Goncourt for her novel *Lullaby*, her appointment by French President Emmanuel Macron as a representative for Francophone culture, and the personal trauma of her father's imprisonment that fueled her early writing. The article explores her views on literature, painting, and the erotic nature of writing.

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trending_up market schedule May 26, 2026 visibility 12 link 4 artists

U.K. Museum Races to Acquire 18th-Century Portrait of Black Gardener

The Garden Museum in London has launched a campaign to raise £420,000 ($560,000) to acquire the earliest known portrait of a Black British gardener, John Ystumllyn. Painted by an unknown artist in 1754, the work depicts Ystumllyn as a young man in a blue suit and waistcoat. He was abducted from West Africa as a child, trained as a gardener on the Ystumllyn estate in Wales, and later became a renowned horticulturist. The painting has been on loan to the museum since 2023, and the institution aims to permanently display it alongside another portrait of a Black gardener from 1905.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 26, 2026 visibility 12 link 3 artists

Hole in one: artist-designed mini golf course heads to London

A playable exhibition titled 'The Art of Mini Golf' will open at Battersea Arts Centre in London from 17 June to 26 July, featuring nine interactive golf hole artworks. The show includes contributions from Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas, US filmmaker Miranda July, Japanese artist Saeborg, and Berlin-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, who created the ninth hole artwork 'Enough is Enough'. The UK iteration of the touring show, originally organized by the Rising festival in Melbourne, offers playful twists such as a square ball in Le Bas' hole and a strap-on latex animal tail in Saeborg's 'Animal Golf'.

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person people schedule May 26, 2026 visibility 28 link 2 artists

A brush with... Elyse Gonzales, director of San Antonio's Ruby City art centre

Elyse Gonzales, director of San Antonio's Ruby City art centre, is featured in The Art Newspaper's 'A brush with...' interview series. She discusses her formative experience working at Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston as a high school senior, which led to an internship at the Menil Collection and a master's degree at Williams College. Gonzales also shares her curatorial interests, including a forthcoming show of Tracey Rose's drawing and video works, and reveals that Ruby City was born from founder Linda Pace's dream of the building, which she sketched and commissioned David Adjaye to realize in 2007.

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trending_up market schedule May 25, 2026 visibility 13 link 1 artist

What New York’s $2.1B Auction Week Means for the Market

New York’s spring auction week generated $2.1 billion in sales, with major auction houses posting dramatic gains over the previous spring. The results were driven by trophy artworks, high-profile collections, and a renewed willingness among top collectors to spend at the highest level, signaling a robust rebound in the art market.

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trending_up market schedule May 22, 2026 visibility 17 link 8 artists

Rediscovered Old Master Painting Eclipses Estimate at Auction

A rediscovered portrait of Prince Rupert, long attributed to the studio of Anthony van Dyck and later to Jacob Huysmans, sold for CA$217,250 ($153,000) at Heffel Fine Art Auction House’s Spring Sale on May 21, more than double its low estimate. New research identified the work as by Peter Lely, court painter to King Charles II. The painting had belonged to the Hudson Bay Company for centuries and was part of a court-approved sale of the company’s collection following its 2024 bankruptcy. The 80-lot sale also saw a record for E.J. Hughes’s "Coastal Boats Near Sidney, BC" (1948), which sold for CA$5.7 million ($4.1 million), and strong results for Group of Seven artists Arthur Lismer, A.J. Casson, and Lawren Harris.

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gavel restitution schedule May 22, 2026 visibility 16 link 3 artists

Fifty years after Franco, Spain begins to give back art seized during the Civil War

A 2022 Spanish law has quietly triggered a wave of restitutions of art looted during the Spanish Civil War, more than 50 years after dictator Francisco Franco's death. The Museo del Prado has identified 166 confiscated artworks in its collection, including works by Joaquín Sorolla and Pedro Atanasio Bocanegra, and has begun returning pieces such as a panel painting by Maestro de Lupiana to the parish of Yebes. Scholar Arturo Colorado Castellary has uncovered over 26,000 confiscated objects, with around a third never returned to their owners, many deposited in museums, churches, and public administrations.

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candle obituary schedule May 22, 2026 visibility 13 link 3 artists

Muriel Hasbun, Artist Whose Work Poignantly Recounted the Salvadoran Diaspora and the Fraughtness of Memory, Dies at 64

Muriel Hasbun, a multidisciplinary artist known for exploring themes of memory, migration, and the Salvadoran diaspora through photography, video, and installation, died on May 13 from ovarian cancer in Silver Springs, Maryland, at age 64. Born in El Salvador in 1961, she left during the country's civil war in 1979 and settled in Washington, D.C. Her work, including series like "Santos y sombras / Saints and Shadows" (1990–97) and the 2023 survey "Tracing Terruño" at the International Center of Photography, poignantly combined archival family photos with new imagery to examine loss, exile, and the complexities of identity.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 22, 2026 visibility 16 link 4 artists

Mexican filmmakers to co-host Serpentine Summer Party

The Serpentine Summer Party, a major fixture in London's art calendar, will take place on 23 June, co-hosted by Mexican actress Salma Hayek Pinault and celebrated filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The event, an invite-only fundraiser, celebrates the Serpentine pavilion, which this year is titled 'a serpentine' and designed by Mexico City-based architecture firm Lanza Atelier. Last year's co-host was movie icon Cate Blanchett.

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article culture schedule May 22, 2026 visibility 14 link 3 artists

How Is Arts Patronage Changing?

At TEFAF New York, Artnet News editor Andrew Russeth moderated a panel titled “Who Supports Art Now? Patronage in a Shifting Cultural Landscape” featuring two prominent figures in American arts philanthropy: Sarah Arison and Michi Jigarjian. Arison, who became the youngest president of the Museum of Modern Art’s board in 2024 at age 39, also leads the Arison Arts Foundation and chairs YoungArts. Jigarjian, CEO of Work of Art Holdings and a partner at 7G Group, has led Baxter St at CCNY for 15 years and serves on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA PS1. The discussion took place during fair week in mid-May at the Park Avenue Armory.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 21, 2026 visibility 18 link 4 artists, 1 gallery

A Roma c’è la mostra di un’artista 40enne californiana che ci racconta il valore della lentezza

Erica Mahinay, a 40-year-old California-born artist based in Los Angeles, is the subject of a solo exhibition titled "Rhythms" at T293 gallery in Rome. The show presents 24 intimate-scale works that explore the artist's physical, process-driven approach to abstract painting, where she manipulates pigment through pouring, dripping, and erasing to create layered, luminous surfaces. Mahinay, who holds degrees from the Kansas City Art Institute and Cranbrook Academy of Art, has work in the Marciano Art Foundation and Pinault Collection, and was included in the Hammer Museum's 2023 biennial "Made in L.A.: Acts of Living."

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museum exhibitions schedule May 21, 2026 visibility 13 link 4 artists

Venice show brings together two leading figures from the Polish avant-garde

A collateral exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale, titled "Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) Emballage Cricotage and Madame Jarema," brings together two towering figures of the Polish avant-garde: Tadeusz Kantor and Maria Jarema. Organized by the Starak Family Foundation at the Procuratie Vecchie, the show features over 60 works spanning paintings, monotypes, sculptures, theatre props, and costumes, culminating in a room dedicated to Kantor's seminal theatre piece "The Dead Class" (1975). Jarema's work was shown at the 1958 Venice Biennale, and Kantor exhibited in the Polish pavilion in 1960; the exhibition highlights their intertwined, interdisciplinary practice and their foundational role in post-war Polish avant-garde art.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 21, 2026 visibility 14 link 4 artists, 1 gallery

Christo: Air review – surprisingly profound manifestation of the wrapper’s impossible dream

Christo's posthumous exhibition "Air" at Gagosian in London finally realizes a 1960s concept to contain air within a room, using a massive polyethylene sack suspended from the ceiling that forces visitors to physically engage with the space. The show also includes early wrapped bubble works and a preserved wrapped Volvo, tracing the artist's lifelong fascination with making the invisible tangible.

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article news schedule May 21, 2026 visibility 18 link 4 artists

Chanel Expands Support for Centre Pompidou Amid $535 Million Renovation

Chanel has announced a new five-year partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, expanding its support for the museum during its landmark €460 million ($535 million) renovation. The fashion house, which has backed the Pompidou since 2019, will help preserve access to modern and contemporary art while the museum is closed to the public until its scheduled reopening in 2030. This follows a separate three-year deal in 2025 to grow the museum's collection of contemporary Chinese art by 30 percent, with a focus on women artists, and a 2024 acquisition of 21 works by 15 Chinese artists tied to an exhibition co-organized with Shanghai's West Bund Museum.

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rate_review review schedule May 19, 2026 visibility 16 link 2 artists

Winston Churchill: The Painter review – We will daub them on the beaches

The Guardian reviews "Winston Churchill: The Painter," an exhibition of nearly 60 paintings by the former British prime minister, curated by Xavier Bray and Lucy Davis. The show assembles works from across the UK and private collections, depicting scenes from Churchill's travels, stately homes, and leisure moments, painted as an amateur Sunday painter for stress relief rather than artistic acclaim. The review notes Churchill's use of techniques borrowed from Walter Sickert, including projectors and monochrome underlayers, and describes his style as charmingly amateurish with a vivacity in seascapes but weakness in figures and architectural luminosity.

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article news schedule May 19, 2026 visibility 15 link 3 artists

Dubai Plans a Massive New Museum for Digital Art

Dubai has announced plans for a new Museum of Digital Art (MODA), a major institution dedicated to digital and tech-driven art. The museum is part of a $27 billion transformation of Dubai's financial district into a technology hub, and will feature immersive and interactive experiences. No budget or completion date has been set, but Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, chairperson of Dubai Culture, stated the museum advances the city's commitment to converging creativity and technology. The museum will be designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the firm behind the Burj Khalifa.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 15, 2026 visibility 19 link 2 artists

Es Devlin Is Creating a Living Portrait of the Entire U.K.

British artist Es Devlin has launched a participatory public artwork titled "A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery," inviting all 69 million U.K. residents to upload selfies that are transformed into charcoal-and-chalk-style portraits using an AI model trained on Devlin’s drawings. The portraits appear on a framed screen in the museum’s History Makers gallery, and the project runs through October 27, accompanied by online and onsite drawing classes.

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article news schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 19 link 6 artists

Is This a JMW Turner Self-Portrait? One Scholar Has Doubts

Art historian James Hamilton has published a paper in the JMW Turner Society’s magazine arguing that a famous portrait long believed to be a self-portrait by JMW Turner was actually painted by John Opie, a British portrait artist 14 years Turner’s senior. Hamilton notes that the work is an anomaly in Turner’s oeuvre, which is dominated by landscapes and seascapes, and that its dramatic lighting closely resembles Opie’s style. He suggests Opie may have given the painting to Turner, and that its authorship became misattributed after Turner’s death when his vast bequest of artworks was transferred to the nation and eventually housed at the Tate.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 33 link 7 artists, 6 galleries

The Best Booths at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, From Surrealist Fantasias to Afro-Brazilian Imaginings

The 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair has returned to the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea, New York, featuring over 20 galleries from Africa and the diaspora, with a special focus on Brazil and Afro-Brazilian perspectives. The fair, running through Sunday, includes first-time participants from Lagos, São Paulo, Nassau, and New York, and highlights five standout booths: Sulette van der Merwe's surrealist paintings at Blond Contemporary, Modou Dieng Yacine's Senegalese wrestler-inspired works at 193 Gallery, Ekene Ijeoma's Black Forest Library community project, Rommulo Vieira Conceição's aluminum works at Aura, and the curated section "Brazil Beyond Brazil" featuring 10 artists selected by Igor Simões.

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article news schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 24 link 3 artists

Frick Inks Three-Year Partnership with Louis Vuitton, with Support for Exhibitions and Free Fridays

The Frick Collection in New York has announced a three-year partnership with Louis Vuitton, under which the fashion house will sponsor three upcoming exhibitions, a curatorial research associate position, and a year of the museum's free First Fridays program. The partnership launches with Louis Vuitton's Cruise 2027 collection show, designed by Nicolas Ghesquière, held in the Frick's first-floor galleries on May 20. The sponsored exhibitions include “Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500” (fall 2025), “Painting with Fire: Susanne de Court and the Art of Enamel” (spring 2027), and a third exhibition on 19th-century paintings (late 2027). The Louis Vuitton Curatorial Research Associate will be Yifu Liu, currently a curatorial fellow at the Frick, who will research Asian porcelain and cross-cultural exchange between Europe and China.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 17 link 1 artist

‘Blood can either be a connective tissue or something used for division’: Jordan Eagles on his show a Pioneer Works

Jordan Eagles presents "Bases Loaded," a solo exhibition at Brooklyn's Pioneer Works that explores his lifelong fandom of the New York Mets through works made with donated blood and medical waste. The show features three bodies of work: large-scale reproductions of New York Post covers about the team, cast-resin sculptures of home plate filled with blood and family artifacts, and T-shirts given to blood donors at the Mets ballpark that Eagles cropped and splashed with blood from HIV-positive gay men, arranged by color into orange and grey factions.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 14 link 1 artist

Sophie Rivera's first survey focuses on experimentation

El Museo del Barrio in New York has opened "Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures," the first career survey of the Puerto Rican American photographer (1938-2021). The exhibition reassesses Rivera's practice, highlighting her experimental work beyond her well-known 1978 series "Nuyorican Portraits," which depicted Puerto Rican sitters in Manhattan's Morningside Heights. Curated by Susanna V. Temkin, the show features works across portraiture, photojournalism, and experimental image-making, including the color photograph "Alternators" (1975, printed 1986), which Rivera donated to the museum in the late 1980s.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 17 link 3 artists

‘We can all coexist’: artist Es Devlin uses selfies to unite UK in portrait of a nation

Artist Es Devlin has created a new installation at the National Portrait Gallery in London titled 'A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery,' made in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab. The work invites people across the UK to upload selfies, which are transformed into charcoal-and-chalk-style portraits using an AI model trained on Devlin's own hand-drawn works. These portraits then appear on a constantly evolving projected carousel, blending and dissolving into one another. Devlin, known for designing visual worlds for Beyoncé, Adele, and the London Olympics closing ceremony, describes the piece as a non-verbal space for coexistence amid national division.

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