A new documentary from Art21 offers an inside look into artist Tomás Saraceno's Berlin studio, highlighting his collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. The film explores several of his projects, from large-scale suspended installations to community-focused works, all centered on how humans inhabit space and relate to other species.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has acquired a major 19th-century painting, *L’homme est en mer* by French artist Virginie Demont-Breton, for a price between €500,000 and €1 million. The museum purchased the work, which depicts a woman holding a child awaiting a sailor's return, from Gallery 19C at the TEFAF Maastricht fair, where it had been held in a private Dallas collection for two decades.
Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has won the 2026 Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor. The award, which had been delayed due to the Pritzker family's past associations with Jeffrey Epstein, recognizes Radic's lyrical and experimental designs that embrace fragility and dialogue with natural environments, creating what the jury described as "optimistic and quietly joyful shelter."
Chilean artist Tohé Commaret has opened her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, "Mala Onda," at the ZOLLAMT MMK, a project space of the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. The exhibition features a new body of work, including large-scale paintings and a site-specific installation, that explores themes of memory, cultural displacement, and the lingering psychological effects of political violence.
A small non-commercial gallery in Brooklyn, Subtitled NYC, is championing the concept of "friction" through an exhibition by artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré. The space intentionally cultivates a slow, intimate, and sometimes uncomfortable experience as a direct rejection of the art world's and society's prevailing culture of optimization and efficiency.
Lawrence Leaman has opened a solo exhibition of new photoprints at the Roland Ross gallery in Kent. The show, which runs from February 21 through March 29, 2026, is comprehensively documented with fourteen installation photographs, providing a detailed visual record of the presentation.
An Hoang has opened a solo exhibition titled "Garden Poems" at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton. The show, running from February 7 through March 29, 2026, features a collection of new works, documented by 33 images in the announcement. This presentation marks a continued collaboration with the gallery, highlighting Hoang's latest artistic developments.
Artist Alexander Endrullat has created a new series of intaglio prints by running discarded laptops through a century-old printing press. The process, discovered impulsively, physically deforms the devices with each pass, revealing worn keys and internal damage while transferring their textures and residues onto paper.
Over 200 artists and cultural groups, led by musician Brian Eno, have published an open letter demanding the British Museum stop what they call the "erasure of Palestine." The letter accuses the museum of altering wall texts in its Middle East Galleries, such as replacing "Palestinian descent" with "Canaanite descent," following pressure from the pro-Israel group UK Lawyers for Israel. The signatories also criticize the institution's past ties to the Israeli embassy and sponsor BP, issuing demands for an expert review of labels and an apology for hosting an Israeli embassy gala.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has banned press photographers from Pentagon briefings on the U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran. The reported reason for the ban is Hegseth's displeasure over "unflattering" photographs taken during a recent press address, with the Pentagon stating it will now release official photos online instead.
The French mega-gallery Perrotin has added sculptor Alma Allen to its roster. Allen, a Utah-born artist based in Mexico, previously sparked controversy when he accepted a nomination to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale during the Trump administration, a decision that led to his departure from his former galleries. In other industry news, the Brooklyn Museum awarded its 2026 UOVO Prize to emerging artist Keisha Scarville, and performance artist Marina Abramović is preparing a new installation of inflatable grass for New York's Balloon Museum.
Thousands marched in Buenos Aires on March 9 for a 24-hour women's strike, with one group staging a symbolic artwork by wrapping a continuous blindfold across their faces to protest patriarchal control. This followed a UN report urging Argentina's government to address gender-based violence. Separately, a *Guardian* investigation revealed UK museums hold over 260,000 human remains, many taken from former colonies, which MPs have condemned as a barbaric legacy of imperialism.
Subtitled NYC, a small non-commercial project space in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, is mounting exhibitions that actively resist the sleek, market-driven norms of the contemporary art world. Its current show, "On Other Terms," features immersive, maximalist installations by artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré that create a deliberately overwhelming, multisensory environment filled with repurposed objects, handcrafted elements, and technological critiques, forcing visitors to navigate and engage with their own physical presence in the cluttered space.
Artist Lusmerlin, who works between studios in Maryland and Philadelphia, describes a creative process that begins with physical and mental alignment through activities like stretching and singing before painting. Their flexible studio spaces, which open onto a garden, directly influence ambitious projects, including a 28-foot painting titled "The Big Rip" that investigates the theoretical collapse of the universe.
The Italian government has purchased Caravaggio's *Ecce Homo* for $34.7 million, preventing the 17th-century masterpiece from leaving the country. The painting, which depicts a bound Christ presented to the crowd, was sold by its private owners after its rediscovery and authentication in 2021. The state exercised its right of first refusal to match a sale agreed with an unnamed foreign buyer, securing the work for public ownership.
A new exhibition, "A Language We Share," opens this month at the Center for Art and Advocacy, placing the work of photographer Beverly Price in direct conversation with the legendary Gordon Parks. The show highlights their shared focus on social advocacy through imagery, particularly documenting the lives of children and communities in areas like Southeast Anacostia in Washington D.C., a location both photographers have captured across different eras.
TEFAF Maastricht 2026 has unveiled a selection of standout acquisitions, with six artworks drawing particular attention from collectors and critics. Among them are a rediscovered Baroque painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, a monumental contemporary sculpture by Kapwani Kiwanga, and a rare set of ancient Roman mosaics in pristine condition. These pieces, presented by leading international galleries, highlight the fair's ongoing role as a premier marketplace for top-tier art and antiquities.
A new exhibition at Ehrlich Steinberg gallery in Los Angeles presents "Nature Morte, 1982–1988," a focused survey of still-life paintings from a pivotal period in recent art history. The show brings together works from the 1980s by a generation of artists who reinvigorated the traditional genre during a decade defined by explosive art market growth and the rise of Neo-Expressionism.
Sculptor Matthew Simmonds meticulously carves miniature, hyper-realistic architectural interiors—including gothic cathedral arches, vaulted ceilings, and stairwells—directly into hunks of Carrara marble and limestone. His recent works, often based on real sites like Bamberg Cathedral or Tuscan cities, reveal ornate, smooth interiors that contrast with the stone's raw exterior, and he is currently using a quieter period to experiment with how light and space within the sculptures can express a sacred quality.
LA Timpa has opened a new solo exhibition, "Come Back," at Cell Project Space in London. The show features a multi-channel video installation and sound work that continues the artist's exploration of the body, technology, and queer identity through digitally manipulated and visceral imagery.
Uzbek artist Saodat Ismailova has opened a major solo exhibition, "When the Water Turns to Wind," at Portikus in Frankfurt. The presentation features a new, immersive film installation that weaves together ancestral myths, sonic landscapes, and the ecological history of Central Asia, focusing on the region's disappearing rivers and steppes. The work continues her long-term exploration of memory and cultural preservation.
The global art market rebounded strongly in 2025, reaching an estimated $59.6 billion in sales according to the annual Art Basel and UBS report. This figure represents a significant 12% increase from the previous year, signaling a recovery from recent stagnation. The growth was primarily driven by the high-end sector, with auction sales of works over $10 million jumping by 32%, and a robust performance in the dealer segment, particularly in the United States which solidified its position as the world's largest art market.
Zin Taylor has opened a solo exhibition titled "Propylon Stela" at Quartz Studio in Turin, running from January 21 to March 31, 2026. The exhibition features new work, documented extensively through images on the platform, though specific details about the medium or themes are not elaborated in the provided text.
Artist Anna-Sophie Berger has opened a solo exhibition titled "Two Fixed Ideas Will Unite" at art hall in Baltimore. The show, featuring new work, will be on view from January 31 through March 21, 2026.
The Trump administration's 2025 decision to rescind $9 billion in public media funding led to the dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a key funder for NPR and its member stations. In response, NPR has launched a bold new advertising campaign with agency Mischief, transforming its iconic logo into urgent public questions like "How does AI affect my electric bill?" to champion curiosity and investigative journalism.
A cannabis industry CEO is applying the aggressive, data-driven tactics of his business to the art market, building a significant collection focused on underrepresented artists. Steve DeAngelo, co-founder of Harborside Inc., leverages his company's analytical approach to identify value and emerging trends, targeting works by artists of color, women, and LGBTQ+ creators that he believes are undervalued by the traditional market.
Spanish artist Dani Guindo has released a striking new aerial photography series titled *Terminus*, which captures the Múlajökull glacier in Iceland. Using a drone, Guindo documented the glacier's intricate rivulets and, more significantly, a ghostly semi-circular outline etched into the rocky landscape below, revealing the glacier's former, much larger footprint.
A set of robotic dog sculptures by digital artist Beeple, which became a viral sensation online, have been acquired by Berlin’s König Galerie for its permanent collection and will go on public display. The four lifelike, animatronic canines, titled "S.2122," are modeled on Boston Dynamics' "Spot" robots but are weathered and decaying, with exposed wires and organic growths. This marks Beeple's first major physical sculpture series to enter a prominent institutional collection, following his landmark $69 million NFT sale in 2021.
New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington will present her photographic series *Taharaki Skyside* in the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The large-scale, spectral portraits depict preserved specimens of endemic birds, including extinct and critically endangered species like the huia and the South Island Takahe, captured from within the country's natural history collections.
The group exhibition *Taiyo to Ame no Melody (Melody of Sun and Rain)* opened at PALAS in Sydney, featuring new and recent works by artists Maureen Gallace, Trevor Shimizu, and Kazuyuki Takezaki. Curated by the Tokyo-based gallery Misako & Rosen, the show presents a contemplative dialogue between the three artists' distinct approaches to landscape and domestic scenes, running from February 7 through March 28, 2026.