Melvin Edwards, Sculptor Who Welded The African Diaspora, Has Died At 88
Melvin Edwards, the acclaimed African‑American sculptor who reshaped contemporary art with his welded‑steel series “Lynch Fragments,” died at 88. He first unveiled the series in 1963, using reclaimed steel to form chains, barbed wire and sharp tools that evoke the trauma of lynching. Edwards’ work has been acquired by major institutions such as MoMA and the Smithsonian, cementing his place in the canon of 20th‑century art. His death prompts renewed attention to his prolific oeuvre and its relevance to today’s cultural dialogues.
V&A Dundee Celebrates the History of the Catwalk, From Discreet Salons to Today’s Extravaganzas
The V&A Dundee has opened “Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show,” a sweeping exhibition that chronicles more than a century of runway history, from 19th‑century living mannequins to today’s immersive, livestreamed spectacles. It showcases over 100 artifacts, including Manolo Blahnik’s...
Move over, Easter Bunny: Cats Are the Stars in Hong Kong This Holiday
Hong Kong has swapped the Easter Bunny for a series of giant cat installations, from an eight‑metre interactive feline at the airport to inflatable cats at the West Kowloon Cultural District. Artists have also painted cat‑themed murals, including a van Gogh...
Art of Noise:How Design Shapes Music
The Cooper Hewitt’s “Art of Noise” exhibition explores how visual design has shaped music perception and memory, featuring archival posters, album art, and vintage playback devices. Spanning two galleries, the first highlights the evolution from early phonographs to modern Bluetooth...
Pioneering Gallerist Angela Westwater on New York’s 80s Art Scene
Angela Westwater recalls a legendary 1985 dinner at Mr. Chow that brought together icons like Basquiat, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe and David Hockney. At the time she was a decade into running the Sperone Westwater Gallery on Greene Street in...
Gisela Colón on Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny, and the Power Beneath the Island
Gisela Colón, a former environmental lawyer, is mounting two major solo shows—"Radiant Earth" at the Bruce Museum and "The Mountain, The Monolith" at Puerto Rico’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. The installations combine aerospace‑grade plastics, engineered pigments and stone sourced from California...
This Seattle Sidewalk Art only Appears when It Rains
Seattle artist Peregrine Church has created a water‑based, invisible spray that reveals colorful designs on sidewalks only when they get wet. The paint, called Rainworks, adheres to concrete and remains hidden in dry weather, activating for up to four months...
Inside Los Angeles Unified’s Hidden World of Art, Archives and Artifacts
Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second‑largest, maintains an Art & Artifact Collection of roughly 100,000 pieces ranging from 19th‑century paintings to 2,100 BCE Mesopotamian tablets. A 2008 appraisal placed the collection’s value at more than $12 million, and the district...
How Dalí’s Amber Varnish May Have Caused This Painting to Decay
Salvador Dalí’s 1946 painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony, owned by Belgium’s Royal Museums of Fine Arts since 1965, is showing localized transparency and texture loss. An international team used macro‑X‑ray fluorescence, digital microscopy and comparative photography to pinpoint the...
Schlock Jock: Joshua Citarella at the Whitney Biennial
Joshua Citarella’s podcast *Doomscroll* was presented as a live artwork at the 2026 Whitney Biennial, sparking debate over whether a market‑oriented video interview series belongs in a museum. Originally a net‑art project exploring fringe online politics, Citarella rebranded the show...
Canada Returns 11 Artefacts to Turkey in the First Repatriation Between the Countries
Canada returned eleven Ottoman‑era artefacts to Turkey, marking the first official repatriation between the two countries. The collection includes seven manuscript pages, two printed work pages and two modern calligraphy pieces dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, seized by...
Patron Gallery Adds Miao Wang to Its Roster, and More: Industry Moves for April 1, 2026
Patron Gallery announced the addition of Chinese painter Miao Wang, who will appear alongside Alice Tippit at Expo Chicago. Open Restitution Africa unveiled a bilingual, AI‑powered restitution data platform that lets researchers and communities query guidance on art return processes....
The Brooklyn Museum Is Building a New Home for Its African Art Collection
The Brooklyn Museum is constructing a new Arts of Africa wing, a $13 million, 6,400‑square‑foot exhibition space slated to open in fall 2027. The project repurposes underused third‑floor storage and will sit beside the Beaux‑Arts Court, linking to the Egyptian galleries....
David Nott’s Textured Abstractions Go Digital With LG Gallery+
Contemporary artist David Nott has partnered with LG Gallery+, the visual curation service of LG Electronics, to bring his latest "Color Riddle VI" textile abstraction to digital screens. The piece joins a library of over 5,000 curated images that can be...
Two of Keith Haring’s Painted Cars Roll Into New York for the First Time
Two of Keith Haring’s hand‑painted automobiles—a 1963 Buick Special and a 1971 Series III Land Rover—are debuting at the Free Parking gallery in New York’s West Village. The exhibition, “Keith Haring: In The Street,” runs April 10‑19 and coincides with the release of...
Max Levai Bets on Scale—And Himself—With New Chelsea Gallery
Former Marlborough Gallery president Max Levai is launching a 7,000‑square‑foot flagship at 529 West 20th Street in Chelsea, slated to open this fall. The ground‑floor space will host two independent programs—Levai’s own and a co‑located 47 Canal gallery—allowing him to...
New York City Pushing Open the Door of Yesterday: Xiangjie Rebecca Wu at LATITUDE Gallery by Ruichao Jiang
Xiangjie Rebecca Wu’s solo exhibition "A Room Rehearses Its Own" opens at LATITUDE Gallery in New York, running March 18‑April 26, 2026. Curated by Xiaojing Zhu, the show presents oil paintings that transform domestic interiors into memory‑laden spaces, echoing the artist’s rural Chinese...
How an Overlooked Printmaker Became a Hero of Mexican Cultural Identity
José Guadalupe Posada, a 19th‑century Mexican printmaker, created the iconic calavera illustrations that have become synonymous with Mexican cultural identity. Working for publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, he mass‑produced satirical broadsides using early photomechanical techniques, embedding skeletal motifs into popular consciousness....
Santiago Museum, Set on Fire During 2020 Protests, Reopens
Chile’s Violeta Parra Museum reopened on March 24 after a $1 million restoration funded by its fire‑insurance policy. The guitar‑shaped building suffered three arson attacks during the 2020 nationwide protests, though its structure remained intact. Director Denise Elphick oversaw the rehabilitation, adding...
Rare Zaha Hadid Pavilion Comes to Auction
World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid’s VOLU Dining Pavilion is set to auction on April 8 through Hermitage Fine Art in Monaco, with an estimated price of €900,000‑€1.1 million (approximately $1.03‑$1.2 million). Only two editions of the clamshell‑shaped pavilion were ever produced, and this...
Selling Collectibles Is Big Business. Heritage Auctions’s Joe Maddalena Says It’s Just Getting Started
Heritage Auctions reported over $2 billion in sales for 2025, the highest in its history, driven by booming pop‑culture collectibles. The firm set auction records, including $9 million for a Superman comic and $3.8 million for a Star Wars poster artwork. CEO Joe Maddalena...
AI Art Is Human Art
A recent study published in *Advanced Science* compared visual creativity across four groups: professional artists, the general public, generative AI operating alone, and generative AI guided by human prompts. Artists achieved the highest creativity scores, followed by the general population,...
In Minor Keys: Art as a Sensory Ecosystem at the 61st Venice Biennale by Margherita Artoni
The 61st Venice Biennale, curated posthumously as Koyo Kouoh’s final project, showcases 111 artists across the Giardini, Arsenale and satellite venues. Titled *In Minor Keys*, the exhibition foregrounds low‑frequency, sensory‑driven experiences that treat space, artwork and visitor as a mutable...
Should English Museums Charge Tourists? Plus, Raphael at the Met and Senga Nengudi at the Whitechapel Gallery—Podcast
The UK government responded to a report proposing that England’s national museums charge tourists for entry, sparking a heated debate over free access versus new revenue streams. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," the first...
William N. Copley "X-Rated (1972–1974)" @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin is hosting William N. Copley’s solo show “X‑Rated (1972–1974)”, on view until April 22, 2026. The exhibition revisits Copley’s provocative series that merges Surrealist concepts, pop‑art aesthetics and explicit erotic imagery drawn from 1970s adult magazines. It...
Venice Biennale Artists Call to Bar Israel, Russia, and the US From 2026 Edition
Over 70 artists and curators signed an urgent open letter demanding that the Venice Biennale bar official delegations from Israel, Russia and the United States for its 2026 edition. They argue that hosting governments accused of war crimes and genocide...
Kyle Cobban Draws From The Unknown
Kyle Cobban, a Chicago‑based artist, gained notice at the 2022 Bulls Fest with a graphite drawing that fuses a 1990s Bulls starter jacket and neighborhood imagery. He creates small, detailed works by first assembling digital collages in Photoshop, then rendering...
Your Art Can Go in This San Francisco Alley
A trio of Silicon Valley engineers bought an 82‑foot easement in San Francisco for $26,000 and launched Paint a Street, a website that lets anyone submit and vote on digital tiles for a sidewalk collage. The project, inspired by Reddit’s r/place, will...
“Where There Is Colour, There Is Imagination”: Painting the Dream, and the Persistence of Surrealism
Opera Gallery’s "Dreaming in Colour" exhibition opened in London on March 5, 2026, featuring twenty‑five contemporary artists who fuse vivid palettes with surrealist motifs. The show positions colour as a narrative engine, allowing works by Gustavo Nazareno, Xevi Solà, and Oh de Laval to reinterpret...
Who Was Pehr, the Swedish Hunting Dog?
The Yale Press book *Noble Beasts* examines 18th‑century French hunting art, centering on Jean‑Baptiste Oudry’s 1740 portrait of Pehr, a Swedish basset hound owned by envoy Carl Gustav Tessell. The vertical canvas, gifted to Tessell, highlighted the dog’s vitality while...
Knight of the Museum
The Abiera Museum, a privately‑run cultural hub in Maasin City, Philippines, showcases archaeological finds, scientific specimens and historical replicas collected over decades by 79‑year‑old curator Salvador “Boy” Abiera. Abiera, a former self‑taught architect and municipal councilor, built the collection despite...
Gagosian Chooses Paris Location to Present Three Important Late Paintings by Francis Bacon
Gagosian will showcase three late Francis Bacon paintings—*Study from the Human Body — Figure in Movement* (1982), *Study from the Human Body* (1986) and *Man at a Washbasin* (1989‑1990)—at its Paris gallery from April 11 to May 30, 2026. The...
Dazed Club Is Taking over Selfridges for Four Nights of Club Culture
Dazed Club is commandeering Selfridges' London car park for a four‑night series of art‑focused events, culminating in a one‑off Magazine Club showcase in the store’s cinema. The program features life‑drawing sessions with Charles Jeffrey Loverboy and Daisy Collingridge, an art...
2025 Photo Awards Winner: Sima Choubdarzadeh
Sima Choubdarzadeh, an Iran‑born documentary photographer based in Berlin, won the Portrait category of the 2025 Photo Awards, supported by Format. Her award‑winning image captures the aftermath of acid attacks targeting women in Isfahan, reflecting a decade‑long focus on migration, identity...
Art Lovers Movie Club: Gê Viana, ‘Radiola De Promessa’, 2025
Brazilian artist Gê Viana’s 2025 film "Radiola de Promessa" showcases the massive, custom‑built radiolas that dominate Maranhão’s public celebrations. The work frames these sound systems as altars, capturing pre‑festival rituals such as dough kneading, woodcutting, and communal singing before the...
Melvin Edwards, Sculptor of Searing “Lynch Fragments,” Dies at 88
Melvin Edwards, the Baltimore‑based sculptor famed for his “Lynch Fragments,” died at 88. He began welding small, table‑sized metal assemblages in 1963 that confront America’s history of racial violence, later expanding to monumental stainless‑steel works. In 1970 he became the...
These Photos Capture the Vibrant Spirit of Nepal’s Youth Culture
Photographer Tirtha Rabin Lawati, joined by Sam Thapa, released a visual series that documents the burgeoning skate‑boarding and punk‑inspired youth culture in Kathmandu and surrounding regions. The collection, titled “Where We Meet,” showcases street‑level fashion, music, and communal spaces that...
The Corporeal, Bizarre Photography of Torbjørn Rødland
Norwegian photographer Torbjørn Rødland debuted his new show, “Bones in the Canal and Other…,” after a Berlin Callie’s residency sparked a craving for grainy, analog imagery. He abandoned his detailed paintings in favor of sketch‑like, tactile photographs that emphasize the...
Keep It in the Family: How Johannes Vermeer’s Paintings Remained Out of View for so Long
Andrew Graham‑Dixon’s new biography reveals that Maria de Knuijt and Pieter Claesz van Ruijven commissioned most of Johannes Vermeer’s output, amassing a collection of about 20 of his paintings. After their daughter Magdalena died in 1682, a notary inventory showed the...
An Expert's Guide to Alexander Calder: Six Must-Read Books on the US Sculptor
The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is hosting a major exhibition of nearly 300 Alexander Calder works, tracing the evolution of his iconic mobiles and broader practice. Curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer paired the show with a curated...
Iconic 19th Century Painting Sets Indian Art Record with $17.9m Sale
Iconic 19th‑century painting *Yashoda and Krishna* by Raja Ravi Varma sold for 1.67 bn rupees (≈ $17.9 million) at a Saffronart auction in Delhi, breaking the previous Indian art record set by M.F. Husain. The buyer, billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla, called the work a national treasure and...
The Painter’s Shadow World
Morgan Meis’s three‑book *Three Paintings Trilogy*—covering Peter Paul Rubens, Franz Marc and Joan Mitchell—posits that a painting functions as a "second world" or shadow realm distinct from life and death. He argues that artists shift in and out of this existential space, using the...
A Brush with… Karen Archey, Head of Curatorial at Düsseldorf's K20 and K21 Museums
Karen Archey, head of curatorial at Düsseldorf’s K20 and K21 museums, highlighted the recent acquisition of Alice Neel’s politically charged 1965 painting “The Great Society.” She reflected on her 2007 “Grand Tour” of the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, Documenta, and Skulptur Projekte,...
UCCA to Launch New Outpost in Guangzhou
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art announced its first South China outpost, UCCA OneM, in Guangzhou. The venue will occupy the OneM Center’s Pazhou CBD complex, famed for a Guinness‑record 31‑meter red steel staircase. Partnering with local nonprofit OneM, the space...
Art Lovers Movie Club: The Archive
Art Review has launched an online archive for its Art Lovers Movie Club, cataloguing monthly artist video screenings from 2020 through 2026. The collection features works by a diverse roster of international creators, ranging from emerging talents like Gê Viana...
Princeton University Art Museum Spotlights Willem De Kooning’s Breakthrough Years
On March 15, the Princeton University Art Museum opened “Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50,” a focused survey of the artist’s formative post‑war period. The show assembles eighteen works—including Princeton’s own Black Friday and pieces from MoMA, the Anderson...
8 Best Nights Out In London’s Galleries, Museums & Theatres
London’s major cultural institutions are expanding their programming into the night, offering a mix of music, dance, and interactive experiences. Venues such as the Barbican, Royal Court, Tate Modern, Natural History Museum, Christie’s, V&A, and Science Museum now host regular...
Last Days to See Kate Meissner's New Paintings @ Lyles & King's Project Space, NYC
Lyles & King’s Project Space in New York is showcasing Kate Meissner’s latest paintings through April 4, 2026. The works delve into the human body’s elasticity and metamorphosis, drawing directly from Meissner’s recent experience of pregnancy and motherhood. The Los Angeles‑based artist,...
A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying Review: Dark, Bold and Playfully Queer
Cassie Hamilton’s new musical *A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying* opened at Sydney’s Old Fitz Theatre, marrying hyper‑pop, drum‑and‑bass soundscapes with a rom‑com structure to explore trans identity in the digital age. Developed through ATYP’s Fresh Ink and previously...
Yoshitomo Nara Painting Sells for £7.5 Million in Seoul, Setting New Korean Auction Record
Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s 2016 canvas *Nothing about it* hammered at KRW 15 billion (£7.5 million, about $9.4 million) at Seoul Auction, establishing a new domestic auction high. The sale was followed by Yayoi Kusama’s *Pumpkin (MBOK)* fetching KRW 10.45 billion (£5.25 million, roughly $6.6 million). Both pieces broke...