Latest

Moroccan pavilion cancelled at the 2024 Venice Biennale

Plans for country to make its Venice debut have been dropped, but no one—including the artists due to show there—knows why

Melissa Gronlundabout 4 hours ago

Nicholas Cullinan is appointed director of the British Museum

Cullinan, currently the director of the National Portrait Gallery, faces an array of challenges in rebuilding the oldest national museum in the world’s reputation

Catherine Hickleyabout 8 hours ago

British Museum’s legal action over thefts is ‘locking the stable door after the horse has bolted’, experts say

The museum's former acting head of the Greece and Rome department, Peter Higgs, is facing legal action after being accused of stealing up to 2,000 objects

Joe Wareabout 8 hours ago

Art Gallery of Ontario closes as more than 400 workers go on strike

The strike comes after a breakdown in negotiations between the workers’ union and museum administrators, and as the institution pursues a C$100m expansion

Visitor Figures 2023

The Art Newspaper’s Visitor Figures survey is conducted annually, and is the foremost authority on the attendance of art museums worldwide

US museums blame falling visitor numbers for staff redundancies

Institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have let staff go

The 100 most popular art museums in the world—blockbusters, bots and bounce-backs

Our exclusive Visitor Figures 2023 survey shows that many of the world’s leading art museums returned to their pre-pandemic attendance levels. But some, especially in the UK, are still missing millions of visitors

Lee Cheshire and José da Silva. Research by Lillie Ellen Moller and Robert Palk

Vermeer vs Pokémon: the double-edged sword of the blockbuster exhibition

Shows at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum were huge hits last year but managing visitors—and staff—proved challenging

Big brother is watching: museum visitors are being monitored by AI-powered cameras

Sophisticated technology is helping institutions count people but it also has the capability of tracking demographic data, ensuring people are well behaved and even detecting if visitors are enjoying themselves

Hong Kong Art Week 2024

West Kowloon mega arts hub races to find new source of funding

Hong Kong’s huge cultural quarter has been spectacularly successful at pulling in tourists and shows, but with its endowment running out, it needs to find new financial solutions

Gareth Harrisabout 9 hours ago

Hong Kong's M+ museum is among the 20 most visited globally

Other art institutions in the Special Administrative Region also enjoyed healthy figures in 2023, according to The Art Newspaper's annual attendance survey

Lee Cheshireabout 9 hours ago

Art Basel Hong Kong diary: Jeff Koons shakes it off, shopping mall is blooming lovely, and superheroes abound at M+

Plus: Wong Ping's bum note, puppy (and kitten) love at Square Street Gallery, and the Peninsula Hotel goes green

The Art Newspaperabout 9 hours ago

Glenn Ligon: 'The idea of coal dust being elevated into the space of art was something that interested me'

As his series of text paintings make their debut in Hong Kong, the US artist discusses his decades-long meditation on the words of James Baldwin

Gabriella Angeletiabout 9 hours ago

'I am looking forward to works that resonate with the concept of blackness': Wu Tiejun on his hopes for Art Basel Hong Kong

The founder of Nanjing’s Deji Art Museum describes his approach to collecting and his love of Taihu stones

Hannah McGivernabout 9 hours ago

Obituaries

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

The American sculptor received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale

Anny Shaw1 day ago

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

Remembering Pope.L, the self-proclaimed 'friendliest Black artist in America'

His 50-year career was filled with transgressive performances, including the Times Square Crawls, which interrogated race and class

Art market

Brazilian galleries Jaqueline Martins and Sé merge to form Martins&Montero

The new joint venture will operate in São Paulo and Brussels, opening with solo shows of 2024 Venice Biennale artist Jota Mombaça

Kabir Jhalaabout 8 hours ago

From museum to market in two years: Francis Bacon lover portrait to be auctioned in New York for $30m to $50m

A highlight of Sotheby's May evening sales, Bacon's first full-scale painting of George Dyer was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2022

Will Rybolovlev’s courtroom loss be the art market’s gain?

Experts predict few operational changes after Sotheby’s wins fraud trial

Is the art trade choosing to ignore a wider world in crisis?

Amid threats to freedom, career moves and censorship become hard to tell apart

Exhibitions

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

J.S. Marcusabout 24 hours ago

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

Taipei Biennial: a meditation on disease, loss and and the lasting impact of 'Covid toxicity'

Rooted in sound, the show offered a deep dive into the whole gamut of human experience

How Constantin Brâncuși shaped the course of sculpture in the 20th century

The Centre Pompidou in Paris is staging a huge exhibition of the Romanian artist’s work with a “lively and joyful” thematic hang

The best of the Flemish Masters come together in Ashmolean exhibition

Around 120 drawings will be on show at the Oxford museum for a limited time

Museums & Heritage

A major squawk-ing point: Māori parrot-feather cloak set to be star exhibit at Perth Museum

Following painstaking conservation, the delicate piece will go on show at the Scottish museum in its newly opened building, a £27m conversion of the Edwardian former city hall

Maev Kennedyabout 9 hours ago

Leading Ukrainian art academy devastated by Russian air strike

The Mykhailo Boichuk Kyiv State Academy of Decorative Applied Arts and Design reportedly sustained serious damage from falling fragments of a missile

The Reels deal: museums embrace Instagram’s video opportunities

While artists have decried the platform’s shift beyond still images, institutions are getting on board

New York museum's former chief financial officer claims in lawsuit she was fired for raising concerns about director’s expenses

Denise Lewis claims she was fired “without cause or warning” after she complained about the Museum of Arts and Design's director's alleged use of the institution’s funds for personal expenses during a vacation in Mexico

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.

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

Technologyfeature

Ten years on: art world is still in search of its virtual reality Eden

In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus VR, heralding a new era in extended reality. Will the arrival of the Apple Vision Pro move the medium from artistic experiment to widespread use?

Ten art world things that have happened in VR since Meta bought Oculus 10 years ago

Virtual reality has not taken the art world by storm in the past decade, despite the attention given to the format during the global pandemic of 2020-21, but the advent of powerful new mixed-reality headsets, led by the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest, promise a new experience for creators and users

Harold Cohen's pioneering AI works provide essential context for conversations about generative art

The Whitney Museum of American Art is spotlighting the late art and technology innovator's prescient "AARON" series

Tipping point: how new immersive institutions are changing the art world

Digital art venues are a global phenomenon, attracting massive audiences with radical new forms of immersive experiences. Are they a threat or an opportunity for traditional galleries and museums?

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

The rise of a queer art history: three new publications and the stories behind them

Recently published books aim to bring a deeper understanding of the canon, from the work of LGBTQ+ photographers to the pioneers who paved the way for later generations

‘Have you ever been sat on before?’ What it's like taking part in a (surprisingly) private view

An exclusive extract from a new book by Bianca Bosker that lifts the lid on the secret life of the art world

Bianca Bosker. With an introduction by Gareth Harris

An expert's guide to Constantin Brâncuși: five must-read books on the Romanian sculptor

All you ever wanted to know about Brâncuși, from a landmark catalogue to a comic retelling of his run-in with US Customs—selected by the Centre Pompidou curator Ariane Coulondre

Dora Budor’s anti-urine deflectors make a splash in Nottingham

Croatian artist examines how ‘hostile architecture’ is slowly changing our cities (and where we wee)

Caravaggio, Holbein and Botticelli through 'the lens' of glaucoma

UK optician Specsavers and National Gallery team up for campaign to highlight effects of eye condition

A snapshot of Rocket Man at the V&A

A sneak peek into the mammoth photo collection of Elton John and David Furnish

We could weep—Francesco Vezzoli to unveil teary masterpieces in Venice

Museo Correr will be filled with works embroidered by the Italian maverick

Israel-Hamas war

‘Met Museum, you’re complicit’: artists and activists take over museum’s front steps with giant pro-Palestine quilt

A two-hour rally at the New York museum drew many supportive cheers and honks, plus a handful of antagonistic shouts

Israel in contravention of UN court ruling as it carries out ‘genocidal military campaign’ in Gaza, new Forensic Architecture report says

Report refutes Israel’s claims in The Hague that it has implemented "humanitarian measures" to prevent the loss of civilian life

German museum director at centre of row over cancelled Candice Breitz exhibition steps down

Andrea Jahn will leave her post four months after Breitz's show was cancelled over her views on the conflict in Gaza

Neon work in Whitney Biennial features unexpected ‘free Palestine’ message

The biennial’s curators were unaware of the statement in a work by Demian DinéYazhi’ prior to the exhibition preview

More works pulled from Barbican show over Gaza 'censorship' row

Artists Yto Barrada and Cian Dayrit will remove their work from major textile survey, after two collectors withdraw their loans over centre's decision to not host talk on Palestine and the Holocaust

Opinion

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

How much should museums pay artists for events such as the Whitney Biennial?

Compensating participants for group exhibitions is an important but taboo subject, as is the fee amount institutions provide

Keith Piper's thoughtful response to Tate Britain's racist mural avoids the usual get-out clauses

The artist's research-based video exploring Rex Whistler's The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats benefited from the museum's collaborative approach

Is the Royal Academy's 'Entangled Pasts' exhibition radical? Yes—for the Royal Academy

The London institution may have woken up to its responsibility of presenting its role in Britain’s imperial past. But please don't go back to sleep...

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.

Van Gogh’s potatoes: few artists would choose this subject for a still life

Vincent borrowed a casserole from his brother’s kitchen for the painting, which has just been acquired by Rotterdam’s art museum

The Week in Art

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

The 2024 Whitney Biennial: our review

Plus, an analysis of our museum visitor figures survey and a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

A brush with... podcast

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

A brush with… Shahzia Sikander

An in-depth interview with the artist on her cultural experiences and greatest influences, from time spent in Mogadishu, Somalia, to the work of the artist Eva Hesse

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by David Clack1 day ago
Sponsored byBloomberg Connects

Jacob Rothschild (1936-2024)

The banker, philanthropist and collector was one of the most consequential figures in the British art world for the last five decades of his life

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

Louis Jebb26 February 2024

Photography and feminist activism, Jacob Rothschild remembered and Robert Ryman

We speak to the curators of the South London Gallery's latest show and to our founding editor about the legacy one of the UK's leading philanthropists. We also discuss Robert Ryman's work Adelphi on show at the Musée de l’Orangerie

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by David. Clack, Julia Michalska and Alexander Morrison8 March 2024

From the archive | Jacob Rothschild retires from banking in a flurry of art projects

The Waddesdon Treasury opens at the Buckinghamshire family mansion managed and financed since 1988 by Rothschild—a man who has been an eminence grise of the British art world for the past 30 years

Anna Somers Cocks1 September 2019

From the archive | Jacob Rothschild restores Spencer House, the Princess of Wales’s family house in London

Some of the house's 18th-century furniture has been lent back by the Victoria & Albert Museum but other pieces and paintings integral ot its design have left Britain for good

Susan Moore1 October 1990

From the archive | A shared pride: the Rothschilds yesterday, today and tomorrow

Jacob, Lord Rothschild, is one of the great benefactors of the English museum scene in both time and money

Anna Somers Cocks30 June 2015