Latest

Stolen Italian landscape returned to Oxford's Christ Church Picture Gallery from Romania

Police are appealing for information about two other paintings stolen in the same 2020 burglary

Catherine Hickleyabout 3 hours ago

UBS Art Collection gives 166 photographs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC

Drawn from a 300-work sub-collection gathered by John Szarkowski in the 1990s, the gift includes images by 96 photographers—among them Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston

Israeli music festival that Hamas attacked on 7 October is re-created in New York exhibit

An immersive exhibition brings the Nova Music Festival’s campgrounds—including tents and burned-out cars—to Lower Manhattan

Jacoba Uristabout 19 hours ago

Private sellers in the UK must beware after High Court ruling

Findings in the Feilding vs Simon C. Dickinson Ltd case set worrisome precedents for British art trade on multiple levels

Rachel Kaminskyabout 3 hours ago

Unionised Guggenheim workers stage protests amid contract negotiations

Recent actions in front of and inside the Manhattan museum come as the workers are seeking their second contract since forming a union in 2019

Anni Irishabout 10 hours ago

Art market

Man who sold 145 fraudulent Peter Max paintings sentenced to 14 months in prison

More than 40 people bought what they thought were original paintings by Max, but were in fact prints to which the seller had added paint and signatures

Study for Winston Churchill portrait that was famously burned is up for sale

Destruction of final portrait by Graham Sutherland was captured in an episode of "The Crown". Now a study is being toured by Sotheby’s

Monira Al Qadiri exhibition to open Johann König’s new Munich gallery in a former power plant

König says the new space, König Bergson, is one of the largest commercial galleries for contemporary art in Germany

New York’s Meredith Rosen makes waves across the Atlantic

The dealer’s discovery-driven programme, which embraces both contemporary and unsung 20th-century artists, is finding outsize success in Europe

Four Joan Mitchell paintings could collectively bring more than $50m during New York's spring auctions

The four works, spanning nearly 40 years of the Abstract Expressionist’s career, will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s in May

Museums & Heritage

Social media backlash: how (and how not) to respond when your art organisation comes under fire

Lessons to be learnt after the British Museum misfired with a social media post branded as "sexist"

Aimee Dawson1 day ago

Will funding crisis in UK councils lead to art sell-offs?

Sales of art collections may be forced on English local authorities that are technically bankrupt following cuts in grants from central government

James Goodwin1 day ago

How Koyo Kouoh is getting Zeitz Mocaa museum back on track

Over the past five years Kouoh has been turning around the fortunes of one of Africa's biggest museums, focusing on its collection, governance and funding streams

John Kampfner1 day ago

Louvre acquires Chardin’s Strawberries painting thanks to 10,000 individual donors

Famous 18th-century work will tour France, heading to Lens and Brest

Will funding crisis in UK councils lead to art sell-offs?

Sales of art collections may be forced on English local authorities that are technically bankrupt following cuts in grants from central government

James Goodwin1 day ago

Exhibitions

War, refugees, destruction: how Venice Biennale 2024 will reflect our era

Thousands have called for Israel’s pavilion to be cancelled, a proposed Palestinian exhibition was rejected, while Ukraine’s pavilion deals with its ongoing war

On process: Refik Anadol seeks to demystify AI art by showing how it is put together

The media artist's "Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive" at Serpentine Galleries, London, goes for radical clarity on its raw data sources and the make-up of Anadol's artificial intelligence Large Nature Model

Secrets of Caravaggio’s last masterpiece revealed in new London show

The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula painting will take centre stage in a forthcoming show at the National Gallery

China, France and a unifying love of bling: Palace Museum show draws on parallels between cultures

The exhibition in Beijing of 17th- and 18th-century objects from the Forbidden City and the Palace of Versailles will look at how artisans on opposite sides of the world influenced each other

The Big Review: Joan Jonas at the Museum of Modern Art, New York ★★★★★

An arresting and endearing retrospective of the trailblazing performance artist that you will want to see again and again

Technology

News, background and analysis on the latest tech developments—artificial intelligence tools; Web3, the blockchain, NFTs; virtual and augmented reality; social media platforms—and how they affect the art market, museums, artists and curators.

Aleksandra Artamonovskaja is appointed head of arts for TriliTech, the entrepreneurship team supporting Tezos blockchain

Artamonovskaja, a leading consultant and moderator in the Web3 world, will oversee development of opportunities for artists across the Tezos ecosystem

Technologyfeature

On process: Refik Anadol seeks to demystify AI art by showing how it is put together

The media artist's "Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive" at Serpentine Galleries, London, goes for radical clarity on its raw data sources and the make-up of Anadol's artificial intelligence Large Nature Model

Robert Alice breaks new ground with auction of generative art NFTs on Christie's 3.0

Auction house sees maturing of market since the heady days of 2021 as works by the digital art pioneer are sold in combination with launch of their catalogue raisonné-like historical survey "On NFTs"

Technologyanalysis

Quantum leap: how a decade of NFTs has changed digital art

Two books take a look at the past and future of the non-fungible token. Once seen as the creature of market hype, the NFT now promises the first shared technical standard for the digital art world

London's Serpentine Galleries calls for artists and institutions to become ‘stewards’ of data in face of rising interest in AI

The London gallery's fourth annual Future Arts Ecosystems report addresses a pressing need for bodies to address the use of artificial intelligence, for their own benefit and for the public good

Books

New book reveals how art dealer Léonce Rosenberg trod the line between salesman and Modern art's great champion

He declared the auction to be art’s true benchmark, but Rosenberg was also a committed promoter of the avant-garde

Book Club

A golden age for photobooks? As publishers join forces we find out what the future holds

The London-based publisher Mack is acquiring smaller firms and widening its visual culture coverage

An expert's guide to Frank Auerbach: three must-read books (and a film) on the German-British painter

All you ever wanted to know about Auerbach, from a biography by one of his sitters to a collection of essays about his drawings—selected by the Courtauld Gallery curator Barnaby Wright

Former Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis on why she became a novelist

As the art historian makes the move into fiction writing, she tells us how learning about her family history inspired her

The Week in Art

A podcast bringing you the latest news from the art world, every week

The Week in Art podcast | Venice Biennale 2024 special

We review the international exhibition, talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions and take an exclusive look at Titian’s newly conserved Assunta

A brush with... podcast

A podcast that asks artists the questions you've always wanted to

A brush with... Kapwani Kiwanga

An in-depth interview with the artist on her cultural experiences and greatest influences, from residencies in Paris to the jazz legend Sun Ra

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by David Clack

Opinion

'UK school art curriculum should reflect diversity efforts in our institutions'

Research by the Runnymede Trust found that only 2.3% of artists named in GCSE Art papers over the last five years were Black or Asian

'Building your way to sustainability is a bad idea, no matter how green your new building is'

Renovations need to win out over new extensions, says sustainability professor Martin Müller, and museums need to 'get back to basics'

Being ‘discovered’ late in life can be maddening—but it can have advantages

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum just opened a Stanley Whitney retrospective—the 77-year-old artist's first museum survey

It’s time to end the predatory practices of 'sleeper hunters'

Sleeper hunter dealers must recognise they have an asymmetrical relationship to vulnerable people pressured by circumstance to sell off their treasured heirlooms

Proud mum Madonna drops in on son Rocco’s Miami show

His "Pack a Punch" paintings are inspired by Thai boxers

Museum employee hangs his own art in Munich institution—and gets the chop

Budding artist surreptitiously displayed his work alongside art by Andy Warhol

The Birth of Venus in bottle tops—courtesy of Bottlecelli

Supermarket chain Lidl commissioned a new version of the 15th-century masterpiece

The show to see in Venice with your bosom buddy

Exhibition 'celebrates the iconography and symbolism of breasts', with works by Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marcel Duchamp and Laure Prouvost

The business of Basquiat—Taylor Swift's beau produces new documentary while Gagosian shows LA works

Travis Kelce, the American football star who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, is making a programme about the late street artist

Obituaries

Dinh Q. Lê, master of multimedia art and mentor to fellow artists across southeast Asia, has died, aged 56

Vietnamese-American artist, best known for his distinctive photo-weaving works, made powerful statements in photography, video, sculpture and installation that challenged politics, history and memory

Richard Serra, creator of audacious steel sculptures, has died aged 85

The American sculptor received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale

Antoine Predock, architect of distinctive museums in the US and Canada, has died, aged 87

His Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Tang Teaching Museum and Tacoma Art Museum were typical of an approach that melded modernism and post-modernism into a characteristically unpredictable aesthetic

Lucas Samaras, tirelessly adventurous New York artist, has died, aged 87

The Greek American artist was always willing to try new forms and materials, working across sculpture, photography, performance, installation and more

Remembering Jacob Rothschild, banker, collector, philanthropist, and a towering figure in the British art world

A scion of the famous banking dynasty, he led the National Gallery, the Heritage Lottery Fund and Waddesdon Manor

Adventures with Van Gogh

Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on the artist. Published every Friday, his stories range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist to scholarly pieces based on his own meticulous investigations and discoveries.

The fate of a Van Gogh flower painting destined for Japan’s 'Sheer Pleasure' pavilion

Kojiro Matsukata’s still life was destroyed in a London fire and his “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” was seized during the Second World War