The Art That Made Me: Thelma Golden
The video features an in‑depth conversation with Thelma Golden, the longtime director and chief curator of New York’s Studio Museum, tracing her trajectory from early curatorial work at the Studio Museum and a decade at the Whitney to her current role shaping a global platform for artists of African descent. Golden emphasizes that exhibitions are narrative tools that both ask and answer questions, citing the 1994 “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art” as a watershed show that launched dozens of Black artists. She describes her guiding principle as a “deep passion for the power and possibility of art,” which she applies across museum leadership, foundation work, and civic institutions. Personal anecdotes illustrate her cultural formation: visits to the Negro Ensemble Company, Alvin Ailey, and hip‑hop‑laden streets; a formative classroom with James Baldwin; and the impact of the TV series “Good Times” and the film “The Wiz.” These experiences inform her belief that art must reflect and amplify Black cultural history. As the Studio Museum reopens after a major renovation, Golden frames the new building as a space for “complex community conversations” that honor the institution’s 1968 activist roots while charting new futures. Her vision signals a broader shift in museums toward inclusive narratives and sustained dialogue with diverse audiences.
Frank’s Files: Inside Star Auctioneer Phyllis Kao’s Ultimate Jewelry Wishlist | Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s senior auctioneer Phyllis Kao previews the house’s luxury jewelry lineup for June’s New York sales, highlighting a Harry Winston necklace chosen as the catalogue cover, a convertible 1938 Cartier necklace/tiara, rare natural-pearl pieces and a 1972 Van Cleef &...
What Do Wrestling, Photography, and Acting Have in Common?
The video explores how professional wrestling, photography, and acting intersect through shared reliance on staged performance. The narrator recounts visiting his cousin, an entertainment wrestler in the Bronx, to photograph a show, discovering that the spectacle is meticulously choreographed rather...
The Greatest of All Dutch Still-Life Artists: Two Flower Paintings by Jan Van Huysum
Jan van Huysum, a leading Dutch still-life painter, developed a distinctive, highly refined technique in his Amsterdam studio that produced luminous, highly detailed floral arrangements unmatched in his era. Trained in a family workshop, he broke with traditional Dutch styles...
In the Gallery: Louise Neri on El Anatsui at White Cube Hong Kong and White Cube Seoul
White Cube has launched El Anatsui’s first solo exhibitions in Hong Kong and Seoul, titled “MivEvi” (Fragrant Harbour) and “LuwVor” (Soul City), respectively. The shows mark the Ghanaian‑born sculptor’s debut in the two Asian markets and underscore his lifelong engagement...
The Modigliani Nude That Shocked Paris | Sotheby’s
Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier, shown in Paris in 1917, caused immediate scandal and had its exhibition shut by police because its frank, unmediated depiction of the female nude broke with accepted conventions. While rooted in classical precedents —...
How Christie’s Made over $1 Billion in One Evening #auction #business
On May 18, Christie’s hauled in more than $1 billion in a single evening, underscoring a rebound in the auction market driven by fierce competition for a tiny pool of headline-making masterpieces. After years of sluggish sales, demand has resurged...
The Women Behind Tiffany's Most Celebrated Glassworks | Christie's
In the late 19th century, Tiffany Studios employed a pioneering cohort of women—notably Agnes Northrop and Clara Driscoll—in a dedicated glass cutting department where they selected, cut, and assembled glass by hand to create the studio’s most celebrated windows and...
BACKROOMS Director Kane Parsons on Using Generative AI for Creative Works of Art.
Kane Parsons, director of BACKROOMS, said he is personally opposed to using generative AI in the creative process, arguing it undermines intentionality in art. He explained that when generative tools are used to fill details, his impulse to closely examine...
George Lovett Kingsland Morris, Munition Factory
The video examines George Lovett Kingsland Morris’s 1943 painting “Munition Factory,” created amid World War II. Though a relatively small canvas, it epitomizes Morris’s decades‑long commitment to synthetic cubism, drawing on the visual vocabularies of Braque, Picasso, Léger, Delaunay, Arp, and...
Annual Distinguished Lecture: Gods at the Gate of Modernity—Religious Arts in Colonial Calcutta
The Metropolitan Museum’s Distinguished Lecture, titled “Gods at the Gate of Modernity,” examined the rise of mass‑produced Hindu devotional prints—often called “god prints”—in colonial Calcutta and their display in the new “Household Gods: Hindu Devotional Prints, 1860‑1930” exhibition. Professor Richard Davis...
From China to Canada Untold Stories of the Chinese Art Collection at ROM
Speakers at the Royal Ontario Museum outlined the century-long formation of the ROM’s Chinese art holdings, tracing key roles played by donor-dealers such as George Crofts and institutional figures like Charles T. Currelly and Sir Edmund Walker. The panel—comprising ROM...
Artist Rose Wylie: ”Contrast Gives Life. I Think a Painting Needs Life.”
British painter Rose Wylie, now 91, continues to work by instinct, embracing contrast and contradiction in every canvas. Her practice blends discarded materials, vivid colour, and typographic elements, treating words as visual shapes rather than narrative tools. Recent highlights include...
William Kentridge on Max Beckmann’s 1938 Painting ‘Death (Tod)’
William Kentridge examines Max Beckmann’s 1938 canvas “Death (Tod)”, painted as the German artist fled Nazi persecution and after the death of fellow expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. He notes Beckmann’s interest in Gnosticism but focuses on the painting’s visual puzzles. Kentridge...
Don't Look at These Paintings, Move Around Them
The video explores a series of paintings that change as the viewer moves, allowing shadows and blurs to intersect across the front and back surfaces. The artist emphasizes that the work’s dual sides expose early marks and erasures, creating a...
Leonora Carrington: Navigating a World Down Below
The second day of the "Leonora Carrington: Navigating a World Down Below" symposium was organized by four MA curating students from the Courtauld, in partnership with the Freud (Ford) Museum. The event built on the museum’s current exhibition, "The...
Mediations on the Sacred: Ritual and Contemporary Practice
An MA curating panel at St Mary the Strand convened curators and artists to discuss Gala Poris Kim’s exhibition Searching for Lost Rain, which presents two works made from artifacts dredged from a sacred cenote in Mexico and material from...
Mel Chin, Revisitation
The video examines Mel Chin’s four‑panel installation Revisitation, a monumental work that reunites a 1980s Gulf Coast memory with the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Displayed in the Art Bridges Foundation, the canvases are arranged across three...
Photographer Paul Graham on the Statue of Liberty
British-born photographer Paul Graham, an immigrant living in the U.S., describes the Statue of Liberty as a powerful, welcoming symbol of American idealism. He emphasizes its origins as a gift from France and its inscription "bring me your poor, your...
Anya Hindmarch: The Portraits That Shape Us
Anya Hindmarch reflects on a portrait of her husband’s grandfather, Horus Seymour, photographed by Walter Stman, describing him as a distinguished diplomat born in 1885 who served in Tehran and as ambassador in China during the tumultuous rise of Mao....
Inside The Emmanuel De Bayser Collection: Living With Art From Prouvé to Lalanne | Sotheby’s
Emmanuel de Bayser’s private collection, celebrated for its seamless blend of post‑war French design and contemporary art, was unveiled at Sotheby’s during New York Design Week. The exhibition, titled "Of Form and Color," features iconic pieces by Jean Prouvé, Charlotte...
Close Looking: Allegory of Avarice (a Fancy Word for Greed)
Stephanie Schrader, Curator of Drawings at the Getty, discusses Jacques de Gheyn’s circa-1608 drawing Allegory of Avarice, a compact five-by-seven inch work that blends life observation with imaginative exaggeration. De Gheyn renders an unattractive, anthropomorphic frog—elongated limbs, a humped back,...
Artist Eva Schlegel: Breaking Perception
Austrian artist Eva Schlegel describes her practice of destabilizing perception through photographic and installation work that blurs the boundary between image and text, material and space. Raised drawing in solitude, she turned from painting to experimental darkroom photography and architectural...
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21
Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Still #21” is part of her seminal 1977‑78 series that recreates mid‑century movie publicity stills. By dressing herself in period wigs, makeup and costumes, Sherman stages a self‑portrait that looks like a discarded film frame, inviting...
🎻🧑💻 Exploring Movement, Sound and Technology in Royal College of Art Snap Visualisation Lab #Shorts
Drawing Lines is a collaborative project developed at the Royal College of Art’s Snap Visualisation Lab that pairs sensing technologies with live performers to create a responsive, low-profile interface for movement-driven sound and visuals. Partners include Kingston School of Art,...
Exhibition Walkthrough + Interview with Tony Cragg / Ocean of Drops, Venice 2026
The video documents a walkthrough of Tony Cragg’s impromptu Venice Biennale 2026 exhibition, titled “Ocean of Drops,” and features an in‑depth interview with the artist. Cragg explains that the show emerged from a last‑minute invitation to use a vacant Berengo...
Art Market Resilience: Insider Perspectives From the Gulf and Beyond
Christie’s hosted a webinar spotlighting renewed momentum across global art seasons, with speakers reporting energized markets in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong and a resilient Middle East scene. Ridda, speaking from Art Dubai, described a downsized but well-attended...
Kira Nam Greene on The Bennett Prize
Kira Nam Greene, a Brooklyn-based painter with nearly 30 years of practice, describes her shift from food-based imagery to figurative portraiture focusing on women, minorities and immigrant perspectives. She outlines her mixed-media process—collage, ink, oil and pastel—driven by what she...
Performance: "Bruce Goff—Rolls and Reimaginations" By Third Coast Percussion
At the Art Institute of Chicago, curator Alison Fisher introduced Third Coast Percussion’s performance “Bruce Goff—Rolls and Reimaginations,” presented alongside the museum’s first large-scale Bruce Goff retrospective in 30 years, “Bruce Goff: Material Worlds.” Fisher framed Goff as an idiosyncratic,...
Paul Delaroche, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, painted in the early 1830s, depicts the Protestant noblewoman moments before her 16th-century beheading with a tightly staged, emotionally exacting scene. The work’s polished finish, close-cropped figures and narrative clarity immerse viewers...
In Colorado, Sculptor James Surls Connects with Nature via Raw Materials to Create Vast Wooden Forms
The video profiles James Surls, a Colorado‑based sculptor famed for turning colossal, raw logs into towering wooden installations. It follows his latest project—a 36,000‑pound log he rescued from a field—highlighting his reliance on serendipitous material finds and his determination to...
Aboriginalia Show and Tell with Tony Albert #contemporaryart #art #aboriginalhistory
Artist Tony Albert surveys everyday objects—from a 1956 Melbourne Games souvenir scarf to a Bible-inscribed boomerang and a prize-winning 1971 embroidered panel—highlighting how Indigenous iconography has been repurposed across Australian material culture. He notes the curious fusion of motifs, including...
The Asymmetry International Symposium 2026: Ecologies of Attention: Sensing at the Edge
The Asymmetry International Symposium 2026, co-hosted by Asymmetry and the Cotto Institute, convened researchers, curators and artists to interrogate “Ecologies of Attention: Sensing at the Edge.” Organizers Michelle Landov and postdoctoral fellow Li Jung framed attention not as a scarce...
In Focus: Alia Ahmad, ‘In Time, A Bloom 2’ (2026) | ﻣﻊ اﻟﻮﻗﺖ ﺗﺰﻫﺮ ٢, at White Cube Hong Kong
Alia Ahmad’s solo show “In Time, A Bloom 2” opened at White Cube Hong Kong, centering on a large horizontal canvas that references the scroll format of traditional Chinese landscape painting. The work unfolds in layered pastel washes that generate a fluid,...
Harvard GSD Class of 2026: Eric Rannestad (MDes Mediums)
Eric Rannestad, an MDes Mediums student in Harvard GSD’s class of 2026, drew on a background in art and environmental conservation to develop programmable tanks as exploratory research tools. He uses the tanks to model landscapes and atmospheres—testing hydrologic flows,...
Zineb Sedira Brings a 1960s Parisian Cinema Café to Tate Britain 🍿📽️
The Tate Britain exhibition, curated by Algerian‑French artist Zineb Sedira, reconstructs a 1960s Parisian cinema café to showcase militant African and anti‑colonial films. Titled “When the world was silent, cinema speaks,” the installation invites visitors to sit among books and vintage...
Two Matildas, One Extraordinary Collecting Legacy | Christie's
The video profiles the Stream Family Collection, assembled by two visionary women named Matilda—Matilda Geddings Gray and her niece Matilda Gray Stream. It highlights how their independent spirit transformed a family fortune into one of America’s most celebrated private art...
2026 Walter Annenberg Lecture: Lynn Hershman Leeson
In the 2026 Walter Annenberg Lecture, artist Lynn Hershman Leeson stages a first-person AI narrative tracing artificial intelligence from Enigma and wartime code-breaking through Deep Blue and predictive policing to contemporary deepfakes and surveillance technologies. The AI narrator recounts its...
The Festival Where Artists Burn $250,000 Masterpieces
Las Fallas is a five-day Valencian festival where over 700 towering, often costly satirical sculptures called ninots—some costing as much as €125,000—are displayed across the city and ceremonially burned on the final night in an event called the crema. The...
Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future / Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart
The Kunstmuseum Basel’s Gegenwart wing hosts Cao Fei’s first solo Swiss exhibition, a sprawling, city‑like installation that reimagines museum space as public streets, parks, factories and playgrounds. Curated with Beijing‑based architects Small Production, each room is uniquely designed, color‑coded, and signed...
Karmapa, the Great Precious Dharma King
A monumental 15th-century gilt-bronze sculpture of the Karmapa—titled the Great Precious Dharma King—combines spiritual iconography, imperial luxury and refined craftsmanship. The figure’s serene, resolute expression and Bhumisparsha mudra evoke the moment of Buddhist enlightenment, while an inscribed identification and a...
Oscar Winner Explains This Artworks Hidden Meaning
The video features an Oscar‑winning filmmaker discussing an artwork that evokes Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour, the Dora Milaje and other icons of Black empowerment, interpreting its visual language through the lens of Afrofuturism. He notes the figure’s shimmering tights, paillettes‑covered corset and...
"Nowdays, when I Do Things, All I Think About Is My Younger Self."
A musician reflects on how her decisions are guided by the image of her younger self—aiming to prove that dreams are attainable and to reassure that validation will come. She says leaning into her authentic identity has yielded both personal...
WE ARE HERE: Remembrance, Resistance, and the Public Space
Artist and Halle attack survivor Talia Feldman presented We Are Here at the East Wing Biennial, unveiling a four-year, time-based digital mapping project that links the 2019 Halle attack to a global pattern of racially motivated far-right violence and online...
ICMA Annual Lecture: Judgments in Nuremberg
William J. Debold’s ICMA lecture, “Judgments in Nuremberg,” examines the post‑medieval reception and trade of two medieval Christian and Jewish manuscripts in Nuremberg between 1950 and 1957. Drawing on archival evidence, Debold situates these transactions within the city’s fraught recent...
Home on the Waves: Museum Collections and Caribbean Tidalectics with Professor Marsha Pearce
Professor Marsha Pearce’s lecture, “Home on the Waves: Museum Collections and Caribbean Tidectics,” reframes the museum as a living, fluid home for Global Majority artists. Drawing on Caribbean‑rooted philosophies, she introduces the concept of “tidelctic” thinking—a mode that embraces paradox,...
Artist Gets Away From Image.
In a reflective video, an artist describes shifting away from image-driven work toward material-focused practice, inspired by memories of their mother and prayer. They explain embracing repetitive, tactile techniques—specifically an acrylic mosaic approach—that guide composition organically as layers accumulate. The...
Jack Levine, Witches' Sabbath
Jack Levine’s 1963 canvas Witches’ Sabbath is a large, expressionistic political indictment that reconvenes figuration against the era’s dominant abstraction to attack McCarthyism and systemic corruption. The painting clusters recognizably grotesque portraits—Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, a Southern congressman flanked by...
How Lucian Freud Turned Flesh Into Architecture | Sotheby’s
The video examines Lucian Freud’s monumental painting *Sleeping by the Lion Carpet*, completed between 1995 and 1996. The eight‑foot‑tall canvas depicts Sue Tilley, a frequent model, reclining on a lion‑patterned carpet. Over nine months, Freud transformed the traditional nude into...
From Fruit to Artworks | Hành Trình Tái Sinh Sợi Chuối Thành Nghệ Thuật
A Vietnamese craft collective is transforming agricultural waste—especially banana fiber—into durable, contemporary artworks and materials by refining traditional handcraft techniques. They process harvested banana pseudostems into long, resilient fibers, treat them (including lime baths and sun-drying) to enhance sheen and...