The Art World This Week: Impressionist Masterpieces Stolen, Picasso’s Guernica to Travel, UK Weighs Visitor Fees, and More
A three‑minute heist at Italy’s Magnani‑Rocca Foundation saw priceless works by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse disappear, underscoring museum security gaps. Meanwhile, Picasso’s iconic "Guernica" is slated for a rare loan to the Guggenheim Bilbao, its first move from Madrid in over three decades. The UK government is debating a visitor levy for national museums to bolster arts funding, while Munich’s Pinakothek restitutes a Nazi‑looted Lesser Ury painting to heirs. Additional headlines include a Rembrandt attribution breakthrough, Steve McQueen’s €150,000 (≈$163,500) Erasmus Prize, and the Dalí Museum’s acquisition of the artist’s largest work.
A Brief But Spectacular Take on Channeling Identity Through Art
Multimedia artist Wendy Red Star, a Crow Nation native from Montana, discusses how her work channels Indigenous identity through diverse mediums. Drawing on personal memories of Crow Fair, family regalia, and historic photographs, she creates installations that map tribal territory...
Could Colorado Create the Country's First Artist Corporation?
Colorado legislators are reviewing SB26, a bipartisan bill that would create the nation’s first Artists Corporation (A‑Corp), a specialized limited‑liability entity exclusively for artists. The proposal aims to simplify incorporation, lower formation costs, and eventually grant group health‑insurance access for...
New York City Blur as Method: Memory, Perception, and the Instability of the Present by Shuhan Zhang
The Nugyen Wahed Gallery’s exhibition "When Blurry Memories Awaken" reframes memory as a fluid, ongoing process rather than a static archive. Curated by Jinyi Freya Xu, the show dissolves boundaries between painting, photography and installation, using blur to activate perception...
AVL Releases Public Art RFQ
Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) has issued a Request for Qualifications to commission permanent public‑art installations as part of its AVL Forward terminal modernization. The airport seeks artists for two large‑scale works—one in the grand hall and another in the airside...
Eddie Kang at Gana Art Los Angeles
Eddie Kang’s solo exhibition, "Tale of Tales," opens at Gana Art Los Angeles from February 21 to April 11, 2026. The show presents whimsical, pastel‑toned comic‑style paintings and sculptures that deliberately avoid narrative continuity. A highlight is the "Draw your own map" series,...
Tristan Unrau at David Kordansky Gallery
Tristan Unrau’s debut solo exhibition, *Hopes and Fears*, opens at David Kordansky Gallery, showcasing oil paintings that originate from AI‑generated reinterpretations of art history, cinema and children’s imagery. The artist feeds hundreds of AI outputs into his process, hand‑picking the...
New York City Eva Petric Talks with Whitehot About Bird of Hope For Peace by Noah Becker
Artist Eva Petric unveiled “Bird of Hope for Peace” at the Narthex Gallery of St. Peter’s Church in Manhattan, a stone’s throw from the United Nations. The sculpture, composed of nearly a thousand hand‑stitched lace roses contributed by artisans from eleven...
A New Immersive Art Exhibition on the Sistine Chapel Is Coming to New Jersey Mall
An immersive "Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition" will debut at New Jersey’s Westfield Garden State Plaza on April 10. The traveling show reproduces all 34 of Michelangelo’s ceiling and altar frescoes using licensed high‑resolution imagery and advanced printing techniques. Rated...
Caravaggio Documentary Will Premiere on Marquee TV Next Week
The feature‑length documentary *Caravaggio* will debut on the arts‑focused streaming service Marquee TV on April 6, expanding its reach beyond the limited theatrical run last fall. Directed by Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaff after five years of research, the film spotlights the...
New York’s Jewish Museum Opens Paul Klee Exhibition without Its Centrepiece
The Jewish Museum in New York opened its Paul Klee exhibition on March 20, but the centerpiece, Angelus Novus, is absent because the original remains in Israel amid disrupted air transport caused by the Iran war. An authorized facsimile now occupies a recessed...
A First Look at the $720 Million Overhaul of Lacma, L.A.’s Buzziest Museum
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) reopened on April 19, 2026 after a six‑year, $720 million renovation that added the 110,000‑square‑foot David Geffen Galleries designed by Peter Zumthor. The new glass‑and‑concrete complex houses roughly 2,500 works, ranging from ancient artifacts to modern...
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos Wins Schering Stiftung Award
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, a Tehuacán‑based film collective, has been named the 2026 winner of the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research. The prize includes €15,000 (approximately $16,500) and a solo exhibition at Berlin’s KW Institute of Contemporary Art, featuring a...
Met Museum’s First-Ever Native American Curator Resigns
Patricia Marroquin Norby, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first Native American art curator, left the institution in December 2025, officially citing health issues. Her departure follows years of contested claims about her Indigenous ancestry, which tribal groups and the Tribal...
Han Ishu and Yang02 Win Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2026
Han Ishu and yang02 have been named winners of the sixth Tokyo Contemporary Art Award, each receiving a $19,800 cash prize and up to $13,200 for overseas research. The award, founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and TOKAS, supports mid‑career...
Shifting Crossroads – Beirut Contemporary
The Saikalis Bay Foundation opened "Shifting Crossroads – Beirut Contemporary" at its CIRCOLO space in Milan, showcasing ten artists who explore Lebanon’s ongoing political and infrastructural turmoil. Curated as a response to the country’s unfinished crises, the show replaces the...
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Language of the Dispossessed
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s posthumous retrospective, Multiple Offerings, opens at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, showcasing her pioneering 1970s feminist conceptual works that interrogate language, displacement, and nationalism. The show features seminal pieces such as the print...
How Mexico’s Art World Is Fighting to Keep Frida Kahlo
Mexico’s art community is mobilising to prevent a flagship Frida Kahlo painting from leaving the country after a private collector agreed to sell it to a European museum. The work, estimated at roughly $12 million, triggered a legal petition by the...
‘Star Spangled to Death’: Ken Jacobs’s History of the United States
Ken Jacobs’ 6½‑hour assemblage “Star Spanged to Death,” finished digitally in 2004, is now screening as an installation at the Museum of Modern Art through April 7, 2026. The work stitches together a chaotic mix of vintage cartoons, soft‑core porn, educational...
Two Monet Paintings, Unseen for a Century, Resurface at Auction
Two previously unseen Claude Monet paintings are slated for Sotheby’s Paris auction in April, marking their first public appearance in over a century. The 1883 riverboat work *Les Îles de Port‑Villez* is estimated at $3.5 million to $5.8 million, while the 1901...
Teresinha Soares, Artist Who Brought Sex and Feminism to Pop Art, 1927–2026
Teresinha Soares, the Brazilian Pop artist who fused sexual politics with avant‑garde imagery, died at 99. Educated during Brazil’s early military dictatorship, she produced provocative paintings and shaped wooden panels that tackled Vietnam, American imperialism, and gender oppression. After an...
‘The Sharp Perception only a Woman Can Bring to Observing Other Women’: Dorothy Bohm’s Photographs Go on Show at Lee...
Dorothy Bohm’s photography will be showcased in the new "About Women" exhibition at Farleys House & Gallery, opening on 2 April and running through 26 July. The show presents seven decades of her female‑focused black‑and‑white and colour work, tracing a career that...
Mongolia Pavilion Announces Artistic Team for 2026 Venice Biennale
Mongolia’s pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale has been announced, featuring artists Nomin Bold, Dorjderem Davaa, Gerelkhuu Ganbold and Tuguldur Yondonjamts. The exhibition, titled “Entanglements: Connectivities Across Borders,” is curated by Uranchimeg Tsultem with Thomas Eller and will explore interspecies relations, spirituality...
Hong Kong Auction Results Show Big Wins for Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, and Other News.
Spring 2026 auctions in Hong Kong rebounded, with Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips reporting stronger bidding and improved sell‑through rates, driven by Asian collectors seeking blue‑chip modern and contemporary works. Meanwhile, the Art Newspaper’s 2025 museum attendance data shows the Louvre...
Timor-Leste Pavilion Reveals Details for 2026 Venice Biennale
Timor‑Leste announced its 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion, titled “Across Words,” curated by scholar Loredana Pazzini‑Paracciani. The exhibition features textile artist Verónica Pereira Maia, sound‑performance creator Etson Caminha, and video artist Juventino Madeira, foregrounding the nation’s ethnolinguistic diversity and the memory of the 1991...
Chris “Daze” Ellis "Orchid Rain on the Underground" @ PPOW Gallery, NYC
Chris “Daze” Ellis opens his third solo show at PPOW Gallery, titled *Orchid Rain on the Underground*, running April 1‑25, 2026. The exhibition features new paintings, a site‑specific mural, and an immersive multimedia installation that references the artist’s graffiti roots and 1980s...
Woman With Her Back to the Viewer in Gallery Photos Speaks Out
In a tongue‑in‑cheek Hyperallergic interview, the anonymous figure known as "Woman With Her Back to the Viewer in All Those Gallery Photos" finally speaks, insisting the camera stay behind her. She describes a grueling daily regimen of 100 deadlifts and...
Aloha as Method: Curating the Hawai‘i Triennial
Wassan Al‑Khudhairi, a partner at C/O: Curatorial Office, is co‑curating the Hawai‘i Triennial 2025, grounding the project in the concept of “ALOHA NŌ.” The theme reframes aloha from a greeting to a practice of deep care, resistance to extraction, and relational...
Can the Biennial Serve a City, or Just “Big Art”?
The essay examines the rise of regional triennials such as FRONT International, highlighting how they emerged to replace historic juried shows and to capitalize on the "creative class" narrative. While these large‑scale exhibitions attract institutional funding by promising economic impact,...
Whither Biennials? On the Crisis of Global Art
Artforum’s 2003 roundtable on large‑scale exhibitions resurfaced this spring as the Whitney Biennial, Carnegie International and Venice Biennale opened, highlighting a two‑decade evolution of the biennial model. The format has multiplied worldwide, prompting talk of "biennial fatigue" and new critiques...
Biennials and the Environmental Cost of Global Art
The article examines how biennials, as itinerant art events, rely on carbon‑intensive shipping and travel, exposing a paradox between their climate‑focused themes and the environmental cost of their circulation. It argues that criticism of biennial mobility often overlooks similar ecological...
These Photos From Ukraine Capture the Absurdity of Life in Wartime
British‑Iranian artist Aria Shahrokhshahi’s new photo book *Wet Ground* documents life on the Ukrainian front, capturing surreal scenes such as a youth military camp’s nightclub with dancing podiums. The images were shot just 30 km from active combat zones, juxtaposing ordinary...
Rare Rauschenberg Experimental Dance Revived at Brooklyn Roller Rink
The Trisha Brown Dance Company will resurrect Robert Rauschenberg’s only choreographed work, *Pelican*, for a one‑night gala at Brooklyn’s vintage Xanadu roller rink next month. The event, timed with the centennial of Rauschenberg’s birth, also presents two historic pieces by...
Art Smith, Modern Cuff, c.1948
Art Smith’s Modern Cuff, featured in Elephant’s March column, showcases cold‑flat brass sheets linked by thin twisted rods, creating a sculptural, wearable piece. Smith, a Black gay artist active in New York’s Greenwich Village from the 1940s‑1970s, helped define the studio...
I Founded Australia’s First Silo Art Trail – Here’s Why the Movement Now Needs to Evolve
The Creative Director of Juddy Roller, who launched Australia’s first curated Silo Art Trail in 2015, has overseen more than 45 silo murals nationwide. While the movement has boosted regional tourism and community pride, the author warns that artistic ambition...
Getty Museum Acquires Two Significant Dutch Still Lifes
The Getty Museum announced the acquisition of two Dutch Baroque still lifes, including Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s *Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit*—a work the museum has pursued for over twenty years. The de Heem painting, newly emerged from a German private...
Pinakothek in Munich Returns Nazi-Looted Painting by Lesser Ury to Jewish Heirs
The Alte Pinakothek in Munich has returned Lesser Ury’s painting “Interior with Children (The Siblings)” to the heirs of its original Jewish owner, Berlin banker Curt Goldschmidt. The work, forced into a 1930s auction under Nazi duress, sold then for about 800...
Jeff Koons Designs Two Bottles for Evian’s 200th Anniversary
Evian is commemorating its 200th anniversary with a limited‑edition partnership with artist Jeff Koons, releasing clear glass bottles for still and sparkling water that showcase his iconic pink and blue balloon‑dog designs. The still bottle features a pink cap, while the...
Sacramento Ballet Appoints A New Artistic Director
Tiit Helimets, former San Francisco Ballet principal, has been appointed artistic director of Sacramento Ballet, effective the 2026‑27 season. Helimets brings two decades of performance and choreography experience, including work with Balanchine, Forsythe and Nureyev repertoire. The board highlighted his artistic...
The Sistine Chapel Is Coming to a Mall in Suburban New Jersey
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition opens April 10 at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, offering all 34 ceiling and altar frescoes recreated with advanced printing. Priced at $28, the immersive show lets visitors view the works eye‑level with...
Very Strange Days: The Paintings of Jenny Morgan
Jenny Morgan, a Brooklyn‑based painter, creates large‑scale oil portraits that hover between realism and abstraction, using the nude body as a vulnerable canvas. Her process involves photographic references, layered glazing, blurring, and sanding to transform flesh into color‑driven forms. Influenced...
François-Xavier Gbré Uses His Photography to Fill in History’s Gaps
French‑Ivorian photographer François‑Xavier Gbré debuted his "Radio Ballast" series at the International Center of Photography, pairing it with fellow Ivorian Nuits Balnéaires. The body of work documents Côte d’Ivoire’s century‑old railway, tracing colonial extraction, post‑independence modernization, and contemporary landscapes. Gbré spent 2024...
Tonika Lewis Johnson: Segregation and How to Disrupt It
Tonika Lewis Johnson, a 2025 MacArthur Fellow and Chicago‑based social‑justice artist, will discuss her work on racial segregation in a free online event on April 15. The conversation will spotlight her Folded Map Project, which pairs residents living on opposite...
1-54 New York Lines-Up More Than 20 Exhibitors, with a Special Focus on Brazil
The 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair will return to New York’s Starrett-Lehigh Building from May 13‑17, featuring more than 20 galleries. The lineup blends returning exhibitors such as 193 Gallery and Galerie Myrtis with newcomers from Lagos, São Paulo and the...
Mexico’s Art Community Calls for Greater Transparency in Management of Treasured Collection
The Gelman Collection, one of the world’s most significant 20th‑century Mexican art holdings, was purchased by the Monterrey‑based Zambrano family in 2023 and placed under Banco Santander’s stewardship as the Gelman Santander Collection. An open letter signed by 350 cultural...
Gladstone Gallery Now Represents the Estate of Pope.L, Boundary-Crossing Performance Artist
Gladstone Gallery announced it will represent the estate of performance artist Pope.L, planning its first solo exhibition in New York for 2027. The representation joins Modern Art in London and Vielmetter Los Angeles, both of which handled the artist before...
The Epstein Marbles
In 2018 Christie’s featured a Roman‑era marble Hercules in its Exceptional Sale, a piece that had been used by Jeffrey Epstein as collateral for a $500,000 loan to real‑estate developer David Mitchell. Epstein secured the sculpture through a shaky provenance...
Michael Fullerton: The Politics of Portraiture
Glasgow painter Michael Fullerton’s new exhibition at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre juxtaposes eighteenth‑century portraiture with contemporary political subjects, including eleven oil portraits of male asylum seekers from the Hilltop Hotel in Carlisle. The works blend warm, meticulous rendering with muted,...
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Focus & Desire
Fotomuseum Winterthur is presenting Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s first major solo exhibition in Switzerland, "Focus & Desire," which runs through 14 June. The show assembles early and recent photographs alongside archival ephemera, revealing Sepuya’s signature practice of exposing the act of image‑making....
The Beauty and Violence of Steve McQueen’s Flower Photographs
Steve McQueen’s new monograph "Bounty" showcases a series of Grenadian flower photographs that explore the paradox of abundance and violence. Published by Mack and exquisitely designed by Irma Boom, the book pairs striking botanical imagery with historical references to colonial...