Latest

Former Tate chief appointed inaugural chair of Gallery Climate Coalition

Frances Morris says she will be regaining a climate advocacy role at a crucial moment

Gareth Harrisabout 16 hours ago

Nine astonishing places to see Van Gogh's paintings

Around the world, they are in unusual venues ranging from a Japanese museum in a mountain forest to a Warsaw church dome

Martin Baileyabout 18 hours ago

Seoul museums shut their doors as court removes President Yoon

Downtown commercial galleries were also among those to make the decision as police prepared for potential political violence

Lisa Moviusabout 20 hours ago

‘We cannot remain silent’: Museums in Los Angeles brace for Trump’s immigration crackdown

Faced with anti-immigrant policies, institutional leaders are providing “know your rights” guidance

Stacie Stukinabout 22 hours ago

The Week in Art

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

Art market

‘We haven’t stopped a minute’: foreign collectors and curators fuel buoyant start at SP-Arte, Brazil's biggest fair

The São Paulo fair is benefiting from renewed interest in art from the Global South, says founder Fernanda Feitosa, thanks in part to Adriano Pedrosa’s 2024 Venice Biennale

Lise Alves1 day ago

Could the future of the art market lie in antiques?

There was an uptick in sales of traditional art at last month's Tefaf Maastricht fair

Georgina Adamabout 22 hours ago

In a rare interview, Khaled Sabsabi speaks of his ‘devastation’ after being dropped as Australia’s representative at the 2026 Venice Biennale

The artist criticises Australia’s arts funding body for failing to allow him to defend “misinformation” about his art, and says he hopes to take his planned work to Venice independently

Gagosian to stage first Willem de Kooning show in 12 years

The gallery brought on Cecilia Alemani to curate the show, which will span five decades

Long undervalued, Bangladeshi artists begin to rise at auction

Modernist paintings by artists such as Zainul Abedin and Mohammad Kibria soared past their estimates at recent sales in New York

Museums & Heritage

National Endowment for the Humanities cancels grants as Trump administration redirects agency’s resources

State humanities councils and other grantees received notices from the NEH and Doge this week that their grants were being cancelled immediately

Benjamin Suttonabout 10 hours ago

Patti Smith plays rally at Elizabeth Street Garden to protest imminent eviction

The Manhattan sculpture garden was denied protections under the Visual Artist Rights Act

Miami collecting couple gift multi-million pound Joan Mitchell work to Tate

Jorge and Darlene Pérez will also fund curatorial endowment and have pledged to make a donation of African art

Gareth Harris2 days ago

Smithsonian leader: institution will continue to operate ‘free of partisanship’ following Trump attack

Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III has affirmed in a memo to staff that the institution will “remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research and the arts to all Americans”

Benjamin Sutton2 days ago

Museu de Arte de São Paulo traces its own history and evolution across exhibitions in its new tower

The museum’s inaugural programming in its new 14-storey wing chronicles and builds on the museum’s 78-year legacy

Exhibitions

Visitor Figures 2024

Insights from The Art Newspaper's annual, exclusive and worldwide visitor figures survey

Exclusive | The world’s most-visited museums 2024: normality returns—for some

A new museum in Shanghai leaps into our top ten and European museums continue their strong performance, but our exclusive annual survey finds that some British institutions are still lagging behind

How many visitors is too many? Paris museums confront ‘over-attendance’

Visitors have streamed back after Covid-19, but the influx has been a double-edged sword, forcing some institutions to consider their long-term sustainability

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

Museums in southern Brazil still recovering after last year’s floods

Damage and destruction decimated visitor numbers to cultural events and institutions last year but optimism is high they will return in 2025

Comment | Scrapping DEI initiatives could damage US museums’ visitor numbers

As art institutions—particularly in Washington, DC—succumb to the White House’s anti-diversity directives, a veteran of the museum world warns of the dangers of giving in to the whims of the Trump administration

Art Week Riyadh

Art Week Riyadh will ‘bring together the many layers of Saudi Arabia's art scene’

The inaugural event will take place from 6 to 13 April across the city

In partnership with Art Week Riyadh

Opinion

Comment | The 1930s all over again? Trump and ‘Entartete Kunst’ revisited

There are alarming echoes of the notorious Nazi-organised exhibition in America today—but we also need to acknowledge the differences between the world today and 1930s Europe

Comment | Why Edinburgh was the obvious location for the Palestine Museum's first satellite branch

While many jurisdictions are making it increasingly hard for Palestinian artists, Scotland's hospitality has been heartwarming, says the Connecticut-based institution's director

Comment | Works of art are living things—so should we let them die?

The cost—financially and environmentally—of preserving works of art can be huge. Perhaps it is time to rethink how we look after them

Comment | Balanchine is Modern master whose impact on contemporary art should not be overlooked

The choreographer’s formal gestures and patterns make him crucial to contemporary performance art

Comment | The UK is attempting to pry open a notorious data ‘backdoor’—here's why that's alarming for artists

Emma Shapiro on the UK government's secret order to break end-to-end encryption and allow access to all citizens’ Apple iCloud data

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.

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

Did AI just authenticate a version of one of Rubens’s most famous works?

A Swiss company has examined a version of Rubens’s ‘The Bath of Diana’, which was long thought to be a copy, and believes it could be authentic—the leading authority on the artist takes a different view

RedNote and TikTok: what is social media like in the Chinese art world?

Killer algorithms, a huge influencer culture and the 'sweet spot' of RedNote

Technologyanalysis

Here's how the EU is aiding artists in tackling social media moderation issues

Out-of-court dispute settlement bodies are an important development in supporting creative expression

Books

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

A new monograph places the writing, painting and archive photographs of Aubrey Williams in thrilling conversation

The publication about the Guyanese-born artist includes diary entries and several works that have been photographed for the first time

New book celebrates William Butterfield, a master of High Victorian Gothic architecture

Nicholas Olsberg’s publication offers a learned analysis of the architect’s work, which includes Oxford’s Keble College and central London’s All Saints church

A new volume explores the intimate art of drawing, as seen through a wider lens

This “alternative” history navigates the medium through artists on the margins, as well as established practitioners

A brush with... podcast

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

A brush with… Celia Paul — podcast

In this first episode of the new series of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to the painter Celia Paul about her influences—including writers as well as contemporary and historic artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work

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

Obituaries

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

Jack Vettriano, immensely popular artist whose market success reflected 'an appetite for the glamorous', has died, aged 73

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

Serge Lasvignes, former president of Centre Pompidou, has died aged 70

The Centre Pompidou extended its international reach during Lasvignes's tenure

Mel Bochner, conceptual artist known for text paintings and wry humour, has died, aged 84

Bochner was a pioneer of conceptual art, creating works rooted in information systems and decontextualised language

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.