Latest

From politics to painting: works by Albanian prime minister Edi Rama are new art fair favourites

The politician, whose administration has been dogged by accusations of corruption, has signed to Berlin gallery Société and is showing at Art Basel Miami Beach

James Imamabout 1 hour ago

Venice, Sydney, Gwangju: the most interesting biennials to visit in 2026

Plus, full listings of the biennials, triennials and festivals taking place throughout the year

Gareth Harris32 minutes ago

Despite Putin’s repressive regime, a new private museum opens in Moscow

Zilart will house the huge collection of St Petersburg property developer Andrey Molchanov and his wife, Yelizaveta Molchanov

Sophia Kishkovskyabout 24 hours ago

Sixteen must-see exhibitions in South Florida during Miami Art Week

From the late greats Richard Hunt and Joyce Pensato at the Institute of Contemporary Art to Hiba Schahbaz at Moca North Miami, Jack Pierson at the Bass and a look back at the futurism of World’s Fairs at the Wolfsonian

Jorge Pérez donates more than 80 photographs to the Pérez Art Museum Miami

The works by Marina Abramović, Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, Vik Muniz and others are the subject of an ongoing special exhibition

Gareth Harrisabout 24 hours ago

Art market

A crystal Fabergé egg set to break records and a hippo with a bar in its belly: our pick of the December auctions

Plus, versions of famous images by Bruegel and L.S. Lowry are on sale this month

More than 160 artists selling their work to raise funds for medical, humanitarian aid in Gaza

Kara Walker, Wolfgang Tillmans, Peter Doig and Olafur Eliasson are among the artists raising funds for Médecins Sans Frontières' efforts in Gaza

Guido Reni painting sells for €12.4m in Paris, smashing artist's auction record

‘David and Goliath’ went to auction with an estimate of just just €2m–€4m

Bob Ross painting sells for record $1m at auction to benefit US public broadcasters

Four original canvases by the late television painting instructor have been sold lately to raise funds for US public broadcasting following slashes by the Trump administration, and dozens more will be offered in 2026

Barely worth its weight in gold: can art still be considered an asset class?

As Maurizio Cattelan's toilet sells to its gold spot price, experts question just how secure of an investment art really is

Museums & Heritage

Louvre to raise ticket prices by 45% for most non-EU visitors

The Château de Versailles and the Château de Chambord have also announced new pricing structures

Giant holes near Stonehenge were carved out by humans 4,000 years ago, new studies reveal

Pit diggers may have been trying to connect with the underworld, archaeologist Vincent Gaffney says

New UK law makes restitution easier—but excludes national museums, such as the British Museum

Legislation allows non-national museums established as charities to transfer property on a “moral basis” depending on its value

Courtauld launches art history teaching fund amid £82m redevelopment

The announcement follows a new report which revealed a sharp decrease in the numbers of schools teaching art history

Palazzo of Pop Art: new gallery in Italy will house major collection of 20th-century art

Sonnabend Collection in Mantua—home to the collection of the late dealer Ileana Sonnabend—includes works by Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol as well as contemporary artists

Exhibitions

New exhibition explores how Max Beckmann's hard-edged signature style first emerged in his drawing

Show at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt also demonstrates how the German artist's practice was altered radically by his experiences during the First World War

J.S. Marcus1 day ago

A vocabulary of touch: exhibition of sculpture by blind and partially blind artists opens in Leeds

The Henry Moore Institute's new show, ‘Beyond the Visual’, unpacks the value of the haptic and how perception involves all the senses

The Big Review | Fra Angelico at Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco, Florence ★★★★★

This two-venue show in Florence makes clear that the “angelic” early Renaissance artist was as lucid and inventive a storyteller as he was dazzling

‘We are living through an extremely traumatic moment’: Adrián Villar Rojas's new sculpture explores ‘existential anxieties’

Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary and the Aspen Art Museum, the work will be on display at the watchmaker's Swiss headquarters until spring 2026 then will travel to Colorado

‘We need to rethink’: new exhibition revisits an Israeli conceptual art project, 53 years on

The show complicates and expands on the legacy of the 1972 exhibition “Metzer-Meiser”, which explored the seamline between the titular Israeli and Arab communities

A brush with... podcast

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

A brush with… Mary Kelly—podcast

Mary Kelly talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by Philippa Kelly, David. Clack and Aimee Dawson
Sponsored by Bloomberg Connects

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.

Book reviews

Comrades in art: meet the artists who fought against fascism

This study of the first decade of the Artists International Association, set up in the years before the Second World War, focusses the group’s impact as well as its lesser-known figures

Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander navigates her country’s complex past—a new monograph tells her story

An art historian’s book on the Lahore-born artist does justice to both her beautiful paintings and the history that informs them

The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s brief but dazzling life, as told by an art-world insider

A former Christie’s president examines the meteoric rise of the “radiant child”, and his legacy following his untimely death

How the Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti spoke truth to power

A new book explores Siena's heyday—the good, the bad and the sceptical

New book highlights Vorticism’s toxic side—and puts its women pioneers back in the frame

James King’s study places Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders at the centre of the movement

Opinion

Comment | Turner gets all the kudos, but it was Constable who was the truly radical painter

John-Paul Stonard argues the case for honouring Constable at London's soon-to-be expanded National Gallery

Comment | Want to truly read a painting? Forget the present, and focus on the past

To read a painting is to understand the context in which it was made, not the context in which we see it, writes Bendor Grosvenor

Comment | Fifty years on, John Berger’s writing is still relevant—and troublingly prescient

The writer went beyond the noble occupation of the art critic, smuggling hope into our lives

Comment | A spate of dealer anniversaries offers hope amid art market doomerism

Several New York galleries have hit major milestones in recent months—what lessons can those in charge impart?

No such thing as bad press: makers of lift used in Louvre theft launch ad campaign

Social media users have been left—largely—amused by the German company's tongue-in-cheek approach

Francis Bacon’s Paris pad honoured with plaque

The artist had “a very full existence” in the French capital during the 1970s

Look what she made them do: Taylor Swift fans descend on German museum

Swifties have been arriving in droves to catch a glimpse of Friedrich Heyser's Ophelia, which appears in a recent music video by the showgirl superstar

Talking point: visitors to Versailles can now meet the AI Apollo

An new app allows visitors to ‘speak’ with 20 statues in three languages

Despite past legal drama, Madonna still seems hung up on the V&A

The Queen of Pop’s 2003 visit sparked a lawsuit—but she was spotted there again just last month

Obituaries

Llyn Foulkes, art world iconoclast, has died, aged 91

An anti-establishment fixture of the Los Angeles scene, Foulkes leaves behind a long legacy of furious expression spanning painting, sculpture, animation, music and more

Remembering John Morgan, radical typographer and designer who transformed the Church of England's books

From the signage of HMS Victory and Tate Britain, to the graphic identities of galleries and biennials, his designs can be found across contemporary British culture

Carla Stellweg, influential critic, gallerist and scholar of Latin American art, has died, aged 83

The founding editor-in-chief of the bilingual Artes Visuales magazine, Stellweg ran galleries in new York and was also a prolific critic, scholar and curator

Tony Fitzpatrick, indefatigable artistic polymath from Chicago, has died, aged 66

A beloved figure in the Windy City art scene, Fitzpatrick was an artist, author, actor, curator and more

Agnes Gund, collector and philanthropist who helped transform MoMA, has died, aged 87

In addition to supporting many art institutions, Gund was a passionate funder of arts education and criminal justice reform initiatives