Articles

There is a long history of doctoring photographs, routinely altered for political, ideological and personal reasons. Soviet-era retouching famously erased inconvenient figures from history, while countless family albums quietly omitted estranged relatives through scissors, cropping and careful selection.

Chinese artist Liu Wei (born 1972, Beijing) has transformed the niches of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s iconic Fifth Avenue facade with a suite of new sculptures that confronts the constant state of shift in society. 

The third edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale will be led by an international curatorial team whose expertise spans Islamic arts, contemporary art, architecture, and transcultural histories.

For generations, the jewelry industry treated precious metals as a fairly
narrow visual language. Gold suggested warmth and tradition, platinum
conveyed permanence and expense, and silver offered a cooler, more
accessible variation on the same familiar theme. Black rings disrupted that
pattern by introducing an aesthetic that felt noticeably less conventional
without abandoning the symbolism associated with fine jewelry. Their
appeal lies partly in contrast, because a dark band draws attention
precisely by refusing the bright metallic finish people have learned to
expect. The result is a piece of jewelry that can look restrained from a
distance yet distinctive when viewed closely. In a category historically
shaped by continuity, black rings have created room for buyers who want
symbolism without visual predictability.

The daughters of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt have filed a lawsuit in California against the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, seeking the return of seven watercolors that their mother created while imprisoned in the Nazi camp.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, is facing a lawsuit to recover a pair of Renaissance paintings stolen by the Nazis when the Jewish owners fled the Netherlands in 1940.

In 2027, Tate Modern will present its first ever exhibition focusing on the work of Claude Monet (1840-1926). Staged 100 years after the artist’s death and featuring more than 60 paintings, it will be the UK’s largest presentation of Monet’s work in nearly a decade, offering a chance to revisit the life and legacy of a master of impressionism through the lens of time, tracing his lifelong entanglement with nature.

UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany has named Abdul Latif Hashim and Haneen Al-Amassi as the laureates of the 2026 UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize, following the recommendation of an international jury of experts.

The TIME100 Art issue's worldwide cover features a portrait of painter Amy Sherald, photographed by Tyler Mitchell, who is also featured on the TIME100 Art list. 

In his paintings, Shaqúelle Whyte constructs imagined spaces charged with ambiguity, exploring the human condition through expressive brushwork, loosely rendered figures, and expansive compositions. His scenes hover between recognition and invention, creating worlds whose logic remains deliberately elusive.

The Head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, handed over a funerary mask from the 2nd century BC to the Egyptian Ambassador to Switzerland. The restitution underscores Switzerland's commitment to combating the illegal trafficking of cultural property.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art formally broke ground today on the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing.

Over 22,000 tickets (22,033) have been booked for the National Gallery’s Renoir and Love exhibition opening 3 October 2026, beating previous box office records set by the Gallery’s 2024 blockbuster exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (15,654 tickets booked over the same period).

A 16th-century Flemish panel painting depicting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint Joseph has been officially transferred to the Fine Arts Museum of La Coruña, Spain, joining its permanent collection.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is welcoming a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, the world’s first true operational stealth combat aircraft, into the national collection. 

The Mauritshuis and the Rijksmuseum have jointly acquired Hendrick Avercamp’s Colf Players on the Ice, painted c. 1625.

​In a recent post on Truth Social, Trump outlined a vision that includes bringing an 11-foot George Washington statue to the National Museum of American History's Flag Hall for dedication on Constitution Day, September 17, 2026.

The Holy Father inaugurated the first chapter of the exhibition cycle “Catastrophe and Wonder”, titled “AQVA”. 

The UK government has temporarily blocked ‘The Resurrection of the Good and the Bad’ by Stanley Spencer, a painting considered pivotal in the development of British Modernism, from being taken out of the UK permanently.

Sedrick Chisom’s practice explores painting as a space where history, mythology, speculative imagination and visual memory converge.