Latest
Behind the scenes of the Met’s revamped Rockefeller Wing with its acclaimed architect
Kulapat Yantrasast has a design philosophy of “cultural Pad Thai”—multiple perspectives combined into something unique and approachable
Mexican authorities decry 'distorted information' in MrBeast video filmed at ancient Mayan sites
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History released a statement praising MrBeast's mission while correcting some moments of "theatricality" in his video
British MP Patrick Spencer charged with sexual assaults at London art world haunt the Groucho
The Metropolitan Police say the charges are unrelated to accusations of a “serious criminal offence” at the club that resulted in it having its licence suspended in November
For its 10th edition Photo London aims to look beyond the notorious ‘Kate Moss Index’
Opening later this week with new leadership, the photography fair is determined to move away from the clichés of supermodels, artful murmurations of birds and majestic beasts
In Rotterdam, a new art museum explores the city's rich history of migration
Opening on 16 May, Fenix addresses the arrivals and departures that have given the Dutch port its energy and modernity
Art market
Record-breaking female Surrealists spice up underwhelming Christie’s New York sales
Last night’s low-risk, low energy auctions made $489m in total, including $272m for the collection of Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio, along with new records for Dorothea Tanning and Remedios Varo
The Waverley rules were designed to protect UK cultural heritage—are they having unintended consequences on the art market?
The scheme, introduced in the 1950s, is meant to help keep important works of art in Britain
Justin Sun and David Geffen's legal feud over $78m Giacometti sculpture expands
In a countersuit stand-off, the two parties are broadening the scope of their allegations beyond the disputed sculpture
A young Richter’s painting of an even younger Polke and a once-grimy Brazilian landscape by Frans Post: our pick of the May auctions
Plus, Andy Warhol's “Big Electric Chair” and a Fernando Botero nude
Marquee May auctions in New York come at a volatile moment
As tariffs and stock-market fluctuations unsettle consignments for the spring sales, the trade awaits signs of what to expect in the next four years
Museums & Heritage
5,000-year-old woman uncovered in Peru with hair and nails still intact
The exceptional find at Áspero reveals women’s high status in the ancient Caral civilisation
Chile to get a new contemporary art museum
The New Museum of Santiago will highlight Latin American artists with more than 1,000 works from the Chilean businessman Claudio Engel’s private collection
UK government bans export of £10m Botticelli painting
The work was previously held in a private collection for 120 years
SFMoMA lays off 29 employees amid $5m structural deficit
The Bay Area institution announced another round of surprise layoffs in a public letter from the director
Robert Francis Prevost has been elected Pope Leo XIV—why does this matter to the worlds of art and heritage?
The Chicago-born pontiff—the new spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics and the proprietor in trust of the great art and architecture treasures of the Vatican—has publicly supported his predecessor Pope Francis's lead on climate change
Exhibitions
Folk is having a revival—in the art world too
The Neo Ancients festival in the small Gloucestershire town of Stroud featured artists whose works have a more "pastoral" approach towards art production
Bauhaus thread weaves through expansive textile show at MoMA
Around 150 woven works by artists around the globe tell the story of abstraction through a new, craftier lens
May's must-see exhibitions: ancient Indian religions, Rebecca Horn's legacy and the artists who paint their peers
The Art Newspaper's pick of the top shows to see around the world this month
Left at the altar: Luc Tuymans's paintings to replace Tintoretto works at Venetian church
The Belgian artist’s works will hang in place of “The Last Supper” and “The People of Israel in the Desert” while the masterpieces undergo restoration
Yayoi Kusama survey at National Gallery of Victoria becomes best-selling art exhibition in Australian history
The museum reported that 570,537 tickets were purchased for the show, which closed in April
Opinion
Comment | The greatest failure of PST Art: its successes are not travelling
As the Getty wraps up its third edition of this initiative, it is time to address a persistent problem
Comment | Why a country should invest in art—even when it’s under attack
While physically defending their country, Ukrainian artist’s work provides oxygen for urgent issues that demand attention and dialogue, writes Björn Geldhof, the artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv
Why dealers play the waiting game before exhibiting a newly signed artist
Michael Armitage, for example, had his first show at David Zwirner three years after being signed to the gallery
Comment | Muted grey, bloody red, or dark blue—here’s why the colour of museum walls matters more than you might think
As London’s National Gallery launches its “once-in-a-lifetime” rehang, Ben Luke asks: what is the right shade behind the art?
Comment | Losing federal funding for emergency heritage conservation in the US is a disaster
The Foundation for Advancement in Conservation’s National Heritage Responders programme has channelled federal funding and support from local organisations to help communities struck by natural disasters to preserve their culture
The Sainsbury Wing reopening
After a two-year project, led by the architect Annabelle Selldorf, to remodel the wing as the main entrance to London's National Gallery, the reopening of its early Renaissance galleries forms part of C C Land: the Wonder of Art, a complete rehang of the museum's collection
The Big Review | The reopening and rehang of the Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London ★★★★★
The two-year remodelling of the Sainsbury Wing as the National Gallery's main entrance has allowed for new restorations and fresh curation of the museum's unrivalled collection of early Renaissance pictures. The effect is revelatory
First look: the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ rehang at London's National Gallery
The reopening of the Sainsbury Wing on 10 May will allow the gallery to show nearly 40% of its collection. The Art Newspaper took an early tour
Comment | Muted grey, bloody red, or dark blue—here’s why the colour of museum walls matters more than you might think
As London’s National Gallery launches its “once-in-a-lifetime” rehang, Ben Luke asks: what is the right shade behind the art?
London's National Gallery buys mysterious altarpiece for $20m
The museum has acquired a 16th-century work by an unknown artist from a family collection
New perspectives: Annabelle Selldorf brings a fresh angle to the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing
A tour of the remodelled building, five months before its reopening, shows the New York architect has created a spectacular main entrance closely integrated with the rest of the London institution and with the public space of Trafalgar Square
Pope Leo XIV
Robert Francis Prevost, the US-born former head of the Augustinian order of friars, was elected Pope Leo XIV on 8 May. He becomes the proprietor in trust of the art and architecture riches of the Vatican and inherits his predecessor Pope Francis's concern for peace and for addressing climate change
The art of being Pope Leo: from a Raphael portrait to the first pontiff to be captured on film
Cardinal Prevost's choice of the name Leo links him to Leo XIII, a 19th-century champion of social justice. It also recalls Leo I, Leo III and Leo IV, whose diplomatic and military achievements are depicted in Raphael's “stanze” frescoes, completed for Pope Leo X
Robert Francis Prevost has been elected Pope Leo XIV—why does this matter to the worlds of art and heritage?
The Chicago-born pontiff—the new spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics and the proprietor in trust of the great art and architecture treasures of the Vatican—has publicly supported his predecessor Pope Francis's lead on climate change
The original ‘Conclave’? How commercial engravings grew global interest in papal succession
Downloads of the 2024 film have surged since the death of Pope Francis—but in the 16th and 17th century, it was etchings that drove public fascination with the historic process
Pope Francis (1936-2025)
Pope Francis, for 12 years the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's great art treasures and its liturgical and built heritage, died on 21 April 2025, aged 88
The original ‘Conclave’? How commercial engravings grew global interest in papal succession
Downloads of the 2024 film have surged since the death of Pope Francis—but in the 16th and 17th century, it was etchings that drove public fascination with the historic process
Remembering Pope Francis, for 12 years head of the Catholic church and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's library and art collections
The Argentinian pontiff was a powerful progressive voice in world politics, the first Jesuit priest to be spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics and the first from the Americas or the southern hemisphere to hold the office
Holy ground: why Persian carpets played an important symbolic role in the funeral of Pope Francis
For over 600 years carpets from Turkey and Iran have been used in Catholic ceremony and religious paintings by artists, including Andrea del Verrochio, to indicate a carefully defined, sacred space
From the archive | Pope Francis, his crucifix and the Virgin Mary: miraculous or merely traditional?
Art history removes the numinous from art. At the Vatican’s Covid-19 blessing we saw it invoked again
One of Pope’s favourite paintings is looking refreshed after restoration
Icon’s first major intervention since 1931 brings back original colours
The Week in Art
A podcast bringing you the latest news from the art world, every week
Refurb and rehang at London's National Gallery, Tate Modern turns 25 and Inge Mahn's ‘Balancing Towers’—podcast
Exploring an exhibition in an island castle, plus a tour of the newly remodelled National Gallery with director Gabriele Finaldi, and expert reflections on Tate Modern's first, seismic quarter of a century
A brush with... podcast
A podcast that asks artists the questions you've always wanted to
A brush with… Salman Toor — podcast
Salman Toor talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work
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.
Can graphic imagination wake audiences up to the climate emergency? This multimedia artist believes so
Berlin-based Michael Najjar has been working with scientists in Greenland to tell stories with images designed to replace familiar memes of environmental journalism
An inside track on the Huntington’s rapid social media growth
The California institution is one of the top five museums for social media growth in the world in the past year. We spoke to the museum's director of digital and social content strategy
How AI models are helping to reveal South America's archaeological sites
Analysis of aerial and satellite images has rapidly identified ancient sites, but human expertise is still essential in refining the outcomes
Jeu de Paume puts on wide-ranging survey of work created by artists working with artificial intelligence
With “Le Monde Selon L’IA”, the Paris media art centre takes a broad look at work made using both analytical AI and generative AI
Museums are losing social media followers amid users' mass X-odus
Some institutions have ditched their accounts in protest, while others have chosen to “quiet quit” and stopped posting on the Elon Musk-owned platform
Book Club
Sex, beauty and the body: how Helen Chadwick shaped British contemporary art
The “provocative, punky, perverse” artist died far too young but her work’s influence endures, argues a new biography
The Voynich Manuscript revealed: five things you probably didn't know about the Medieval masterpiece
Scholars have speculated for centuries about the meaning behind the 15th-century codex and its peculiar illustrations
May Book Bag: from a comic compendium inspired by MoMA to a turning point in the history of photography
Our round-up of the latest art publications
An expert's guide to artists' books: four must-read publications on the genre
All you ever wanted to know about artists' books on the eve of a major exhibition at London’s Warburg Institute—selected by the show's co-curator Arnaud Desjardin
The trials and tribulations of putting together Lucian Freud’s catalogue raisonné
The forensically researched volume on the British artist's oil paintings offers a depth of scrutiny that he himself was famous for
Books
A new ‘anti-biography’ rips apart the myth of Leonardo as a solitary genius
The new study of the Da Vinci brand uses historical context to debunk the artist’s cult status and present him as a man of his time
East meets West in Venice: the unlikely love affair between a Hermitage curator and a Cambridge don
A new volumes details a chance meeting that liberated art scholars Francis Haskell and Larissa Salmina in very different ways
Japan is opening its eyes to women photographers—and to the female gaze
Denied recognition and even credit for their work until recent times, Japan’s women photographers are challenging and subverting traditional assumptions about the female body
Review | ‘An utterly positive and dangerously irrelevant’ book written by the chief executive of Arts Council England
This journey through the UK’s publicly funded arts carefully averts its eyes from the many signs of crisis
Edward Gorey’s surreal back-of-the-envelope illustrations tell a moving story
The writer and artist’s delightful illustrated correspondence chronicle a long friendship
Diary
Wes Anderson’s priceless ‘Renaissance portrait’ to go on show in London
A new exhibition includes the fictional masterpiece ‘Boy With Apple’, which appeared in the Anderson classic, ‘the Grand Budapest Hotel’
Let him entertain you: Robbie Williams gets honest in latest Moco exhibition
Last night the star—and subject of a recent, monkey-themed biopic—unveiled works that seem to strip away any last remaining filters
The story of the Met’s ‘missing’ Banksy
The New York museum’s former security head admits to taking the street artist's work after it was illicitly hung on the wall in 2005
Howay man, that was one hell of a night! Antony Gormley's Angel of the North celebrates Newcastle United's victory
The Gateshead sculpture was dressed up in a Newcastle United football shirt for the Carabao Cup final at Wembley, drawing fans to the site when the team won 2-1 against Liverpool
King Charles III gets busy with his pencil
The monarch will unveil one of his own drawings in a special exhibition marking the 25th anniversary of the Royal Drawing School
Obituaries
‘An immense void in the world of contemporary art’: Koyo Kouoh, curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale, has died, aged 57
The acclaimed curator was due to present her plans for the exhibition next week
Zurab Tsereteli, Georgian-born artist and Russian patriot, has died aged 91
Artist, who also ran museums and institutions in Russia, was best known for his monumental sculptures, including a 30m-high memorial to victims of 9/11 in the US
Guy Ullens, collector and patron of Chinese contemporary art, has died, aged 90
The Belgian businessman co-founded Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in 2007 with his wife Myriam Ullens
Remembering Pope Francis, for 12 years head of the Catholic church and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's library and art collections
The Argentinian pontiff was a powerful progressive voice in world politics, the first Jesuit priest to be spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics and the first from the Americas or the southern hemisphere to hold the office
Remembering Rosalind Savill, the porcelain expert who transformed the Wallace Collection
During her 19-year tenure as its director, she turned a sedate institution into a vibrant tribute to the culture of 18th-century France
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.
Korea’s first privately owned Van Gogh unveiled at newly opened museum
The painting of a Nuenen woman, on loan from Hong Gyu Shin, is the first Van Gogh ever exhibited on loan from a Korean collector