Latest

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

Louis Jebbabout 15 hours ago

Tate Modern, the ‘cathedral to contemporary art’, celebrates 25 years

Artists and curators look at the London museum’s achievements, and the challenges ahead

Gareth Harrisabout 22 hours ago

‘Life is truly catastrophic’: as the humanitarian crisis worsens, Gaza's artists and cultural figures are losing hope

Artists say conditions are becoming desperate against the backdrop of Israel's ongoing blockade of the strip

Sarvy Geranpayehabout 21 hours ago

Artists and architects shortlisted in Queen Elizabeth II memorial design competition

Designs by five teams have been shortlisted to create the proposed memorial in St James’s Park, with the winning entry due to be announced this summer

Gareth Harrisabout 22 hours ago

Tschabalala Self sculpture of two Black lovers will adorn exterior of New York's New Museum when it reopens

“I wanted to show an aspiration for better times to come,” the artist says of her commission

Taylor Dafoe2 days ago

Art market

New Manhattan gallery slips into historic property

The founders of Slip House have taken over a historical building where they will showcase an intergenerational programme and host an artist residency

Tirzah Garwood's archive of work worth £30,0000 to be sold at auction

Group of wood engravings and sketches will be sold at Cheffins this month, just before acclaimed retrospective of the artist's work closes at Dulwich Picture Gallery

‘Everything was fake but the money’: forgers in Versailles chair scandal await sentencing

Antiques dealer Bill Pallot and accomplice Bruno Desnoues sold €3.7m worth of counterfeit royal furniture

Marlene Dumas painting set to break auction record for a work by a living woman artist

'Miss January' comes to market from the holdings of the influential collectors Mera and Don Rubell

Ari Emanuel to buy Frieze from Endeavor

The entertainment company’s former chief executive has signed a deal reportedly worth $200m to acquire the leading art fair and media brand

Frieze New York 2025

Frieze VIP day defined by dealers’ resilience

A strong influx from Asia, plus stands devoted to smaller works by emerging artists, got the fair off to a smashing start despite economic headwinds

How can art fairs become greener?

Tight timelines for set-up, shipping and deinstallation, plus often extensive travel for staff and clients, make the sector stubbornly unsustainable

In pictures: Rujeko Hockley’s Frieze favourites

The associate curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art takes us on a tour of her top picks

Torey Akers1 day ago

Esther fair brings global galleries to Manhattan’s Estonian House

Boutique fair, now in its second edition, has taken over two additional spaces in the historical building, with 25 exhibitors and a custom fashion pop-up

Whitney Museum of American Art invites visitors to take in the river view

Mary Heilmann’s fifth-floor installation creates a calm space of refuge amidst the frenetic pace of Frieze week

Museums & Heritage

Arts organisations defend the National Endowment for the Arts amidst its proposed elimination

As Donald Trump attempts to eliminate the NEA from the US federal budget, arts groups voice their support for it

‘It’s a dream vessel for me’: Defne Ayas appointed new director of the Van Abbemuseum

Ayas replaces Charles Esche, who has been in post for two decades, taking the reins ahead of the museum’s 90th anniversary in 2026

Gareth Harris2 days ago

Iraq's important archaeological sites under threat from real-estate development

Tell Al Sayyagh, in the heart of the ancient city of Kufa, is in danger because of the country’s investment law, which many say is being abused

Water leaks into the Louvre’s Cimabue exhibition, landing close to the master’s greatest early painting

A violent hailstorm on Saturday caused water to drip into the room hosting the important show, but “no works were damaged”, a spokesperson says

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

Exhibitions

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

The future is sexy—at least in Syd Mead’s visionary science-fiction art

The late artist’s first retrospective, at a pop-up space in Manhattan, offers an idealised, futuristic take on the 21st century

Yinka Shonibare’s first major solo show in Africa opens in Madagascar

The exhibition at the Fondation H in Antananarivo includes the British Nigerian artist’s 6,000-book installation The African Library

Opinion

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

Comment | Trims to Sotheby's African Modern and contemporary art department are just one unwelcome sign for this previously healthy market

Auction sales for contemporary and Modern African art have declined—but African art fairs are still going strong

Comment | Trump's 100 days should remind us to be brave—because in an autocracy there is no safety

The Trump administration has taken aim at numerous arts bodies. Elizabeth Larison, the director of the Arts and Culture Advocacy Program at the National Coalition Against Censorship, argues they need to remain steadfast in their missions—and consider strategies for survival

Elizabeth Larison

Comment | Art world attitudes towards the climate emergency are changing, but the time to secure a viable future is now

After three years spent critiquing the art world's response to the climate crisis for this column, Louisa Buck takes stock of what's been achieved—and what remains to be done

Comment | Perhaps artists do have only ‘ten good years’—but they can happen at any time in their career

A true critical consensus about the merits of different stages in an artist's journey is rarely possible

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

The Week in Art

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

Frank Auerbach’s Berlin homecoming, human remains and museums, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s ‘Republic’—podcast

Exploring Frank Auerbach's first-ever Berlin exhibition, plus Dan Hicks discusses the origins of contemporary debates around colonialism, art, and heritage, and an expert on Ian Hamilton Finlay reflects on the artist's work ahead of a run of centenary exhibitions

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

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by David Clack
Sponsored by Bloomberg Connects

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.

Technologyfeature

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

Technologyfeature

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

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

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

No one wants my art, sulks Hunter Biden

Sales of Joe Biden’s son’s artworks have nosedived since his father left office

Obituaries

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

Remembering Jack Vettriano, an immensely popular artist whose market success reflected 'an appetite for the glamorous'

The sale of “The Singing Butler” at Sotheby’s in 2004, for a record price for a painting by a Scottish artist, caused a sensation and turned attention on Vettriano's critical and institutional neglect

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.

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