Jan 10th, 2026 - In 1973, when no gallery in New York would show her vivid paintings of bodies in various configurations of sex, Joan Semmel created her own space. She poured her savings into renting a unit on 141 Prince Street, called it a gallery and mounted her first solo show in the city. "I believed in the work, and I wanted it to be seen," she said in a recent conversation at the Jewish Museum. Her new exhibition, "Joan Semmel: In the Flesh" (on through May 31 and one of our picks for must-see exhibitions ...

Jan 9th, 2026 - It is one of the most tantalising – and entertaining – puzzles in art, stretching from the Louvre to the Loire via, well, Norfolk. And our critic thinks he has just worked it out ncreased security after the recent heist has made the queues at the Louvre even slower, yet on this rainswept, very wintry morning, no one grumbles. After all, the Mona Lisa is waiting inside for all these tourists who have come from the world over. Leonardo da Vinci's woman – swathed in dark cloth ...

Jan 9th, 2026 - The major survey repositions the French artist as more than a Neoclassicist, emphasising instead his realism and idealism Total star rating: ★★★★★ The works: ★★★★★ The show: ★★★★★ Neoclassicism is having a moment. Long regarded as the most predictable and least admired of the grand movements of Western art, it is turning out to be full of surprises. In 2023, Antonio Canova, the movement's pre-eminent ...

Jan 9th, 2026 - Welcome to One Fine Show , where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention. It feels like audiences are craving a sequel to the summer blockbuster that was last year's " Manet/Degas " show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The John Singer Sargent show had material that was just as good, but I doubt it was as popular, given the lack of the frenemies narrative that existed in the earlier ...

Jan 9th, 2026 - From the opening of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, New York, The Art Newspaper's editors look ahead to next year's biggest stories In the first episode of 2026 we look ahead at the next 12 months with a guide to big museum openings, biennials and exhibitions. Ben Luke is joined by Jane Morris, editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper and Cultureshock, and Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor at The Art Newspaper , to discuss the key art fairs, major museum building projects ...

Jan 8th, 2026 - In the close confines of an intimate gallery space at the Museum of Fine Arts, two titans of 20th-century art engage in an imagined pas-de-deux: Mark Rothko , the American Abstract Expressionist master of oblique, seething gloom, and Alberto Giacometti, the Italian sculptor of grizzled human figures largely in bronze. It's a counterintuitive match that illuminates both, a satisfying stretch of the imagination to see old standards in new ways. But the moody, low-lit space in the east wing of the ...

Jan 7th, 2026 - The standard story of 1960s arts is one of Abstract Expressionism leading into Pop Art and minimalism. A Whitney show proposes an altogether different one centered on surrealism. Bluesky There's a standard story about the development of American art in the 1960s that retains an almost biblical authority in some circles. It begins at the end of the 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism's power began to fade, which led to the ascendance of the so-called Neo-Dada of Jasper Johns and Robert ...

Jan 7th, 2026 - Picture: lacma Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be opening a new exhibition in February dedicated to the The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation which have been gifted to the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York respectively. The gift includes works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Degas, Soutine, Manet, Gauguin, Toulouse Lautrec, Sisley and more. According to their ...

Jan 6th, 2026 - The next 12 months promise blockbuster surveys of noted greats and introductions to intriguing lesser-known artists From old masters to pop artists, contemporary greats and even a major Mexican film-maker, art museums and galleries across the US have some dazzling shows coming up in 2026. Roy Lichtenstein Announced all the way back in 2023 , and currently just a mostly empty page on The Whitney's website, this major retrospective of one of the central creators of the pop art movement carries ...

Nov 20th, 2025 - A self-portrait by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million in New York on Thursday, setting a new record for the price of a painting by a woman, the auction house Sotheby's said. The sale of Kahlo's 1940 artwork, titled "El sueno (la cama)" — which translates to "The dream (The bed)" — breaks the previous record in this category, set by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, whose 1932 painting "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1," sold for $44.4 million in 2014. Kahlo's ...

Nov 13th, 2025 - From the Mona Lisa to the American Gothic, these famous paintings don't just grace museum walls; they offer a glimpse into the past and define entire generations. Although most of these masterpieces are centuries old, they continue to fascinate art buffs and collectors alike, with each piece telling a captivating story. Whether they're on display for the whole world to see or hidden behind closed doors, these paintings prove that art has the power to create and sometimes, even change history. ...

Oct 27th, 2025 - The momentum in Paris generated last week by Art Basel—and the strong sales and dynamic activity across all the fairs—culminated in the Paris evening auctions, where results exceeded estimates and expectations at both Christie's and Sotheby's. Buyers who seemed hesitant in the days leading up to the art weeks regained confidence after seeing the positive results in London. "They called back, asking for guarantees or pre-auction bids," Alessandro Diotallevi told Observer ahead of the ...

Oct 18th, 2025 - Morgan Library & Museum, New York Famed impressionist painter's lesser-seen drawings are the focus of a major new exhibition that invites us into the stages of his artistic process is luminous colours and sensual brushwork adorn countless mugs, posters and tote bags as well as blockbuster exhibitions . But the commodification of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his fellow impressionist painters has been missing something. Renoir was an accomplished draftsman who produced a distinguished but largely ...

Sep 16th, 2025 - With Sotheby's landing the $400 million Leonard A. Lauder Collection and the Pritzkers' modern masterpieces, and Christie's securing the Weis and Wynn estates, November's sales may yet rescue the slumping auction market. It has become clearer in these past few years that the real battle between auction houses isn't about results but in the race for consignments. Yesterday, Sotheby's landed a knockout: the $400 million Leonard A. Lauder Collection , set to hit the rostrum during November's New ...

Apr 11th, 2025 - Eugène Boudin at the Musée Marmottan Monet Video: Musée Marmottan Monet Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz: have just this week opened a new exhibition dedicated to Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) drawn in-part from a single private collection. According to their website: Collector Yann Guyonwarc'h has assembled a collection of works by Eugène Boudin (1824 – 1898) that is unrivalled in any museum in the world. Every facet of the artist's career is ...

Mar 28th, 2025 - Now owned by New York's MoMA, the painting of Joseph Roulin is the star loan for a major exhibition opening in Boston When Van Gogh's painting, the "Postman of Arles", was removed from the Tate Gallery just over a century ago, London's Weekly Dispatch was left baffled by the mysterious loss. On 25 May 1924 the newspaper reported that the portrait of Joseph Roulin had been hanging in "a place of honour in the Modern Foreign Art section"—but it had then disappeared. The Weekly Dispatch ...