Public art

US artist transforms former Confederate monument into heartfelt symbol

With a gesture of love, Raúl de Nieves has altered a New Orleans space once described as ‘the most racist’ in the city

Hew Locke to ‘disrupt’ statue of Belgium monarch who oversaw brutal Congo regime

The British-Guyanese artist will place five masts in front of the depiction of Leopold II, whose administration was characterised by “systematic brutality and atrocities”

Sportfeature

The beautiful game? Untangling the tricky relationship between art and football

The sport has a rich historical connection to visual culture but a new trend to immortalise the living presents interesting challenges

Indigenous mound in St Louis is transferred to the Osage Nation

Along with the land transfer, the city of St Louis acknowledged the Osage Nation’s tribal sovereignty and their ancestral rights to the site

New public art partnership will link New York and Toronto

The forthcoming Lassonde Art Trail is teaming up with both the Public Art Fund and York University’s L.L. Odette Sculptor in Residence programme

Out with the Astors, in with the Calders: revisiting Newport, Rhode Island’s 1974 public sculpture extravaganza

Fifty years later, Monumenta’s organisers and attendees reflect on what was arguably the most ambitious school project ever

Remembering Hanif Kureshi, the artist credited with popularising street art in India

Kureshi decorated India’s public spaces with beautiful, provocative and socially engaged murals

Shepard Fairey murals of Kamala Harris go up in battleground states as early voting begins in US presidential election

One of the murals, in Durham, North Carolina, brought together Fairey, cultural organiser Wyatt Closs, gallery owner Linda Shropshire and the local community

Court pauses eviction of popular New York sculpture garden

Elizabeth Street Garden can stay open for two more weeks as volunteers try to prevent its demolition

Artist-designed billboards opposing Donald Trump and supporting Kamala Harris go up in battleground states

The campaign, organised by the non-profit People For the American Way, includes images by Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Kass, Alyson Shotz, Christine Sun Kim, Hank Willis Thomas and others

Filmsreview

New Niki de Saint Phalle documentary chronicles her personal struggles and aesthetic triumphs

Michiko Matsumoto’s film “Viva Niki”, which recently premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival, also attests to the artist’s enduring popularity in Japan

Avoiding the mistakes of the past: symbolic sculptures by Indigenous artists unveiled at site of historic Canadian battlefield

The permanent sculptures by Chief 7IDANsuu James Hart and Wendat Nation artist Ludovic Boney were unveiled in Québec City’s Cap Diamant on Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

New York arts non-profit launches three-year programme celebrating the city’s Latinx community

The Clemente’s ambitious ‘Historias’ project officially begins this weekend with a block party on the Lower East Side

Olafur Eliasson will blur advertising billboards in London, Seoul, New York and Berlin

The Danish-Icelandic artist is unveiling a series of out-of-focus videos, Lifeworld, on 1 October

Cree artist Kent Monkman commissioned to create large outdoor work for new Toronto art trail

The Lassonde Art Trail will launch along the city’s waterfront in 2026

Los Angeles authorities criticised for art project to ‘beautify’ areas after unhoused people living in vehicles moved

In a city facing an acute housing crisis, and where around 14,000 people live in their vehicles, the initiative sparked a swift backlash from artists and housing advocates

Diaryblog

Subversive art hidden in plain sight in Times Square

Patrick Amadon slipped a message about Gaza into his New York billboard

‘Symbols of innocence and comfort’: Qatar art installation brings together 15,000 teddy bears in tribute to children killed in Gaza

The work, by the Lebanese artist Bachir Mohamad, was inspired by footage of a child in Gaza crying while holding a cuddly toy

Glenn Ligon in Cambridge, new Gauguin biography, Teresa Margolles’s Fourth Plinth commission — podcast

The American artist on his interventions at the Fitzwilliam Museum, a chat about a new publication exploring Gauguin’s complex character, and the details on a new London sculpture paying tribute to trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming communities

Latest Fourth Plinth sculpture pays tribute to transgender communities

The work by Teresa Margolles is made up of casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people from the UK and Mexico

Public artcomment

Bizarre optics at Cai Guo-Qiang’s fiery kick-off event for Getty’s PST Art initiative

Fireworks by the Chinese artist ran counter to the point of many PST Art projects

Dulwich Picture Gallery makes first acquisition in 12 years—purchasing bronze installation for £176,500

The artists Rob and Nick Carter sold Bronze Oak Grove to the London institution for just the price of the materials they used to make it

Refik Anadol's AI tribute to Czech composer Antonín Dvořák takes the stage in Washington, DC

The work, on view this month at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Reach Plaza, is “not about replacing or erasing him, about remembering him”, Anadol says

Julie Mehretu creates towering glass mural for Obama Presidential Center in Chicago

The artist's 83ft-tall work, “Uprising of the Sun”, is the most prominent of many art commissions for the centre

Truck-based exhibition on bodily autonomy kicks off US tour in New York

The project “Body Freedom for Every(body)” will spend the next three months touring the country in a truck emblazoned with Barbara Kruger’s famous message: “Your Body is a Battleground”

High Line Art resurrecting commissioned billboard series with new Glenn Ligon work

An image of one of the artist's celebrated neon pieces will restart a rotating series of commissions for a Manhattan billboard at 18th Street near 10th Avenue

In Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, artist Autumn Breon's neon-pink vending machine proffers free self-care

Breon’s free installation is one of several activations coinciding with the convention in the city that are co-organised by For Freedoms, the artist-led civic engagement group

After decades of neglect, public Amelia Toledo sculpture in Rio will finally be restored

The giant rose-quartz work at a metro station in Copacabana will get a much-needed makeover