Today's Art Pulse
Art Students League launches program to nurture next‑gen public artists
The Art Students League announced a new program aimed at discovering and supporting emerging public artists. The initiative seeks to broaden the League’s community engagement and provide resources for artists working in public spaces.
Johny Pitts’ Poetic Photos Captures the Realities of Being Afropean
Johny Pitts, a Sheffield‑born photographer, spent 2010 traveling across Europe to explore the term ‘Afropean’, which he later defined as a positive, unhyphenated identity for Black Europeans. His research culminated in the 2019 book *Afropean: Notes from Black Europe*, pairing essays with striking photographs. The companion series “Black Bricolage” visualizes everyday Black experiences in European cities, and has been exhibited in multiple galleries. Pitts’ work is praised for reframing diaspora narratives into a hopeful, utopian vision of belonging.
Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, Dorothea Tanning Book, Leonora Carrington at the Freud Museum, London—Podcast
The Museum of Modern Art opens the first major U.S. survey of Marcel Duchamp’s career since 1973, with a later run at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Yale University Press releases a new monograph, *Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World*, priced at $45....
Jamie Luoto Fuses Gothic Pin‑Ups with Freudian Surrealism
Good morning from @jamie_luoto - a woman who is trying to meld the illustrational, the figurative, calendar art, pin-ups, the gothic and horror, with an under win of Freudian surrealism and self-consciousness.
Sarah Miriam Peale: Forgotten Trailblazer of America's First Art Dynasty
Why Was Sarah Miriam Peale, Pioneering Member of America’s First Art Dynasty, Left Behind? https://t.co/Wy8NF0acAo
Cyrus Poonawalla Pays $20 M for Raja Ravi Varma’s ‘Yashoda and Krishna’, Setting Indian Art Record
Vaccine magnate Cyrus Poonawalla and his son Adar purchased Raja Ravi Varma’s 1890s masterpiece ‘Yashoda and Krishna’ for Rs 167.2 crore (about $20 million), establishing a new price ceiling for modern Indian art. The work will be displayed at AstaGuru’s ShowKeen exhibition in Mumbai on...
Elisa Jensen’s Expansive Interiors
Elisa Jensen’s solo show at Astor Weeks in New York spotlights a series of large oil‑on‑wood interiors that echo the luminous color palettes of Pierre Bonnard while asserting a distinctly contemporary voice. The exhibition features works such as “Candle on...
What's up in NY This Weekend?
The weekend’s New York cultural calendar is anchored by the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair and the IFPDA Print Fair, both showcasing emerging and established print artists. Christie's will debut its Prints and Multiples preview on Friday, while Acquavella Galleries...
An Intimate Portrait of Basquiat’s Early Life Returns to Brooklyn
The Bishop Gallery will bring back the “Our Friend, Jean” exhibition to Brooklyn on May 16, coinciding with Frieze Week. The show presents twenty early works, photographs, and ephemera from the late 1970s, largely drawn from biologist Alexis Adler’s collection of...
Guggenheim Names Melissa Chiu Director as Museum Faces Financial Strain and Abu Dhabi Controversy
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announced that former Hirshhorn Museum director Melissa Chiu will take over as its new director on September 1. Chiu arrives after a 12‑year tenure that lifted fundraising by 75% and doubled attendance, but she inherits a...
Patterns without Desires
The art market thrives on the certainty of attributions, yet values hinge on fragile expert consensus. High‑profile disputes—like Leonardo’s *Salvator Mundi* potentially dropping from $450 million to $450 thousand—show how a name can swing millions. New AI image‑analysis tools, exemplified by Art Recognition’s...
MoMA PS1’s Free 50th Anniversary Block Party, and Other News.
MoMA PS1 will mark its 50th anniversary with a free, day‑long block party on April 18, coinciding with the opening of its “Greater New York” exhibition. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announced Melissa Chiu as its new director, succeeding Mariët Westermann who will oversee...
Anne Hardy’s Hollow Humanoids
Anne Hardy’s latest exhibition Interloper at Visual, Carlow showcases a series of hollow, humanoid sculptures titled “Beings.” Constructed from cast metal, found objects, rusted wire and Jesmonite, the figures rest on soil‑filled plinths and wear the artist’s own clothing and bric‑a‑brac. The...
AI Slop Attracts 109k Followers, Joins AI Artists List
109,000 people are following an account named "AI Slop." I love it. Added to my AI Artists' list.
5 Photo Books by Women Interrogating Ideas of Beauty
Dazed Digital spotlights five recent photo books authored by women that interrogate contemporary ideas of beauty and body image. The selections range from Harley Weir’s “Beauty Papers,” which blends portraiture with fashion critique, to Francesca Woodman’s posthumous collection of intimate...
Illustrator Shunpei Kamiya on Process and Industry Changes
Tokyo-based illustrator Shunpei Kamiya describes the challenge of keeping a consistent visual voice while juggling analogue and digital methods. He notes that Japan’s prolonged economic stagnation has hit the publishing sector hard, driving down illustration fees, especially for book covers....
‘Rapid Response’ Exhibition Spotlights Displacement and Ecocide In War-Torn Lebanon
Artist Ieva Saudargaitė Douaihi launched a rapid‑response exhibition, *Uprooted*, at Norwich’s Outpost Gallery to confront Lebanon’s escalating war. The show features large‑format photographs of native Lebanese plants torn from the ground, presenting them against stark white backdrops to highlight displacement and ecocide....
Art Paris 2026 Draws Record Participation as Argo Fine Arts Launches Debut Gallery
The 28th Art Paris fair opened at the Grand Palais with a packed roster, highlighted by the Fonds d’art contemporain’s second‑ever stand focused on “La réparation” and the high‑profile debut of Argo Fine Arts. The fair’s robust attendance underscores Paris’s...
Vietnam's Comic Book Boom Hits New Heights with First Francophone Festival
Vietnam's comic book sector marked a milestone this week with the inauguration of the country's first Francophone Comic Festival in Ho Chi Minh City. The event underscores a decade‑long shift from foreign‑dominated shelves to a thriving ecosystem of homegrown storytellers and international...
Playwright S Shakthidharan Wins $250,000 Windham‑Campbell Prize for Drama
Sri Lankan‑Australian playwright S Shakthidharan has been awarded the $250,000 Windham‑Campbell Prize for drama, recognizing his multigenerational works on Tamil migrant experiences. The win underscores the prize’s role in giving writers financial freedom to pursue ambitious projects.
‘Fully Immersive’ Beeple Survey Lands in Silicon Valley
Artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, is presenting a two‑decade survey titled _BEEPLE: / INFINITE_LOOP_ at Node, a new nonprofit space in Silicon Valley, opening 18 April. The fully immersive show features kinetic pieces like _Human One_, the three‑storey _Diffuse Control_,...
Agnes Denes's Wheatfield: An Impossible Confrontation
In 1982 artist Agnes Denes transformed Manhattan’s Battery Park landfill into a three‑acre wheatfield that directly faced the World Trade Center and Wall Street. Funded by a $10,000 Public Art Fund grant, the project imported 200 truckloads of soil, planted and...
Good Morning
The Getty Center will shut for a full year of renovations, targeting a spring 2028 reopening just before the Los Angeles Olympics, while LACMA prepares to debut its $724 million Geffen Galleries, a project long in the making. Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn director...
Seoul Gets an Intriguing New Art Fair—Plus, a Rundown of the Latest in Asia’s Art World
The Hive Art Fair debuted in Seoul from May 21‑24, offering 50 exhibitors a booth‑fee‑free, B2B‑oriented platform where galleries purchase client tickets and select locations. Meanwhile, South Asian art commanded record prices, with Saffronart’s spring auction achieving $32.4 million and Raja Ravi Varma’s *Yashoda...
The Philosopher Who Predicted Our Post-Literate Art Moment
Philosopher Vilém Flusser, who foresaw an image‑driven consciousness, is gaining renewed attention as media consumption skyrockets. His 1980s concepts like the “technical image” and “apparatus” have shaped media studies but remain niche. MIT Press just released Martha Schwendener’s book, “The...
Gallery Fumi Just Opened a New York Residency with a Joyful Celebration of Material and Craft
Gallery Fumi has opened a three‑month New York residency at Tribeca’s Galerie56, a Herzog & de Meuron‑designed space that marks the London design gallery’s longest‑ever U.S. show. The first phase, "Materials of Joy," runs through May 23 and presents 51 handcrafted works by more...
Amir Zaki’s “Building + Becoming” Wins Gold Design Award
Building + Becoming by Amir Zaki. Co-published with DoppelHouse Press, Building + Becoming brings together 272 pages of full color work by the Orange County, CA–based hyperrealist photographer, accompanied by an interview with curator and writer Corrina Peipon and an essay co-authored by critics...
How to Extract the Story of Appalachia
The Queens Museum’s exhibition "The Great Society" by Swedish artist Fia Backström presents West Virginia as a landscape of perpetual trauma, using inverted photography, quilts, and text that omit local voices. The GRIT collective—artists raised in Appalachia—argues the show extracts...
Avoid Listing Unsellable Art to Prevent Buyer Confusion
Artists sometimes show art they don't want to sell, usually marking it NFS or pricing so high that no one will buy. If you love it that much, best not to show it in for-sale settings. Why? People can get...
Jean Paul Gaultier Tied to Mesh‑Heavy "Fashion Is Art" Theme for 2026 Met Gala
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2026 Met Gala will revolve around the Costume Institute’s new "Costume Art" exhibition and a "Fashion Is Art" dress code that emphasizes the dressed body. Designers and insiders anticipate that Jean Paul Gaultier will provide...
Italian Winemaker Ornellaia Reveals Marina Abramović’s Designs for Its 2023 Vintages
Italian super‑Tuscan producer Ornellaia unveiled its 2023 vintage bottles featuring designs by performance artist Marina Abramović. The collaboration, part of the Vendemmia d’Artista project, includes artwork on standard 750 ml bottles and ultra‑rare 3 L, 6 L and 9 L formats, of which only...
The Met Hires Star Photography Curator for the Museum’s New Wing
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has hired Oluremi C. Onabanjo, previously MoMA’s Peter Schub Curator, as the new curator of its Department of Photographs. Her primary task is to manage the 6,500‑photograph Walther Collection gift received in 2025 and to...
2025 Photo Awards Winner: Victor Cambet
The fourth annual Photo Awards, backed by online portfolio builder Format, announced winners in five categories—Colour, Nature, Portrait, Street and Student. Victor Cambet, a self‑taught photographer who moved from Lyon to Montreal, captured the Street award with images that celebrate...
Required Reading
Beloved painter Mr. Wash is spearheading a Morphosis‑designed arts center in Compton that will house three artist studios, a supply store and a small‑business incubator for formerly incarcerated creators. Across the globe, artist Abed Al Kadiri is running mural workshops for...
A Piece of the Eiffel Tower Is Heading to Auction
A 14‑step fragment of the Eiffel Tower’s original spiral staircase will be auctioned in Paris on May 21, with estimates ranging from $140,000 to $175,000. The piece, nearly nine feet tall, was installed for the 1889 Exposition Universelle and removed in...
The Fight To Keep A Collection Of Landmark Art From Leaving Mexico And Going To Spain
A collection of 20th‑century Mexican masterpieces, featuring works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is slated for export to Spain under an agreement with Banco Santander. Mexican cultural leaders argue the pieces should remain in the country, fearing a permanent...
Rose Wylie at 91: Three Must-See Works From a Joyfully Unruly Retrospective
Ninety‑year‑old British painter Rose Wylie is headlining a 90‑work retrospective at London’s Royal Academy, slated to run through 19 April 2026. The show, titled “The Picture Comes First,” has drawn record‑breaking visitor numbers, underscoring Wylie’s late‑career surge. Curated in partnership with Jari Lager Gallery,...
What The Ambitious New LACMA Building Is Trying To Do
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is preparing to open its new David Geffen Galleries, a 347,500‑square‑foot, $724 million project designed by Peter Zumthor after two decades of planning. The curvilinear structure stretches across Wilshire Boulevard and will anchor a new subway...
Nikita Kadan's 'A New Integrity' Opens on Limb Loss at Kyiv's Pavilion 13
Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan launched his exhibition 'A New Integrity' on April 11 at Kyiv’s Pavilion 13. The show features a floating prosthetic installation, a soundscape by Clemens Poole, and recorded testimonies from amputee veterans, aiming to make limb loss...
Proposed Restitution Law in France Advances in National Assembly
The French National Assembly’s Cultural Affairs Committee approved a restitution bill that the Senate’s counterpart cleared in January, setting a plenary debate for April 13. The draft empowers the Minister of Culture to order the return of African artifacts by decree,...
No Dust to Settle: Amir Zaki at Diane Rosenstein Gallery
Photographer Amir Zaki presents *No Dust to Settle* at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, his third solo show with the space. The exhibition features black‑and‑white photographs of Orange County public libraries, many designed by mid‑century architects such as Richard Neutra, William Pereira...
Latina Poet’s Verse Now Circles Jupiter on Europa Clipper
With all this beautiful talk about poets & the current Artemis II mission, I’m reminded that our first Latina U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote an original poem, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," which is engraved (in...
K-POP, FUNGI, AND TERRACE RAVES: Art Basel Hong Kong 2026
Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 unfolded amid geopolitical tension and market uncertainty, yet the week featured a surge of new venues and alternative fairs. New spaces like GOLD and Antenna Space HK opened, while three debut fairs—Art House Tai Hang, Checkin...
French Senate Unanimously Passes Bill to Protect Artists From AI Data Scraping
The French Senate voted unanimously to adopt a landmark bill that flips the burden of proof onto AI developers, obligating them to demonstrate that copyrighted artistic works were not used to train their models. The legislation also requires transparency about...
5 Photographers Redefining Womanhood in the Middle East
The Middle East Archive, founded by curator Romaisa Baddar, has issued its eighth publication, shifting from domestic interiors to a deep dive on women’s evolving definitions of femininity. Titled “Al Nisa,” the book spotlights five photographers—Myriam Boulos, Rania Matar, Farah Al Qasimi,...
You Can Become an Artwork at This New York Museum—Thanks to Piero Manzoni
Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, NY, will reactivate Piero Manzoni’s 1961 conceptual piece “Magical Base” as part of its “Piero Manzoni: Total Space” exhibition. On April 10‑11 visitors can stand on a wooden pedestal, be photographed, and receive a participation...
Marian Goodman’s Prized $65 Million Collection Lands at Christie’s
Christie’s announced a three‑day auction of Marian Goodman’s personal art collection, valued at roughly $65 million, slated for May 2026 in New York. The centerpiece will be seven Gerhard Richter paintings, including a 1982 candle work estimated up to $50 million. Additional pieces...
Radiohead Unveil ‘Kid A Mnesia’ Touring Audiovisual Installation
British rock group Radiohead announced a touring audiovisual installation titled Motion Picture House, built around their 2021 Kid A Mnesia reissue. The 75‑minute experience will premiere in a 17,000‑square‑foot underground bunker at Coachella and then travel to venues in Brooklyn,...
YouTube Report Details Animation Industry Indie Wave, Reveals Viewership Trends (Exclusive)
YouTube’s Culture & Trends team released the "Animation’s New Wave" report, showing a surge in independent digital animation as traditional studio output declines. The study, based on creator interviews, viewership data for 16‑49‑year‑olds, and a U.S. survey, finds that half...
Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center Has Art at Its Core
The Obama Presidential Center, a $850 million eight‑storey museum on Chicago’s South Side, will open on Juneteenth, June 19, 2026. Designed vertically to preserve Jackson Park’s landscape, the campus integrates a new library branch and public spaces. Ahead of the opening, the Center...
Readymades, Replicas, Reiterations: MoMA Show Explores Marcel Duchamp the Inventor
The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Art Museum have opened a long‑awaited retrospective on Marcel Duchamp, the first major U.S. survey of his work in 53 years. Curated by Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo and Matthew Affron, the show presents...