Installation of Buddha Seated Under the Hood of a Seven-Headed Nāga, Thailand, 12th–13th century. Photo: Rijksmuseum/Kelly Schenk.
AMSTERDAM.- In the exhibition Asian Bronze. 4,000 years of beauty, the Rijksmuseum brings together more than 75 bronze masterpieces, from prehistoric artefacts to contemporary artworks, from India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal and Korea. Most of these works are on display in the Netherlands for the first time and more than 15 of them have never been shown in Europe before. Statues of the Buddha, Shiva and Vishnu, among other images, impressively show how heaven was often depicted in bronze on earth. All the senses are stimulated by bronze mirrors, weapons, bells, wine vessels and incense burners, often spectacularly depicted in the shape of lions, elephants or mythical creatures. The exhibition runs until January 12, 2025 in the Rijksmuseum. ... More
When Stan Lee first pitched the idea of Spider-Man in 1962, his boss was full of objections: People hate spiders.
NEW YORK, NY.- Marvel Comics fans and collectors, rejoice! The Marvel Comics Library: Spider-Man. 1962–1964 is an extraordinary celebration of the birth of everyone’s favorite wall-crawling hero. Published by TASCHEN, this meticulously crafted volume compiles the first 21 Spider-Man stories, delivering an intimate and nostalgic dive into the teenage superhero’s origins. With a hefty 710 pages of stunning remastered artwork, original essays, and rare ephemera, this $80 hardcover is worth every penny. Spider-Man’s journey from a single issue in Amazing Fantasy No. 15 to becoming Marvel’s flagship character is a story for the ages. In 1962, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko challenged comic book conventions, creating a hero who was far from the polished and infallible archetype. Peter Parker was a broke, awkward teenager from Queens, navigating everyday struggles while moonlighting as Spider-Man. This relatability became the cornerstone of Spider-Man’s enduring appeal. The collectio ... More
1912 Mardis Gras Mystic Krewe of Comus Cup (theme Cathay), set with paste “jewels”, 6 inches tall (est. $7,000-$10,000).
NEW ORLEANS, LA.- A vintage 1958 Chevrolet Apache ’31 truck with just 251 miles on the odometer, a dazzling 5.03 carat lady’s 18k two-tone gold canary diamond dinner ring, and an oil on board painting by the acclaimed Louisiana folk artist Clementine Hunter (1886-1987) are just a few of the expected headliners in an Important Estates Auction planned for the weekend of January 17th-18th by Crescent City Auction Gallery, online and live in the New Orleans gallery. The auction – packed with 860 lots, mostly pulled from prominent estates and collections throughout the South – will feature property from The Merrill House, a large estate home built in 1869 in Natchez, Mississippi; as well as a wide range of French, English and American furniture; original paintings and watercolors; well-known prints and etchings; Oriental carpets; a large gun and rifle collection; and fine decorative art items. Start times both days are 10 am Central time. With a robust but appropriate pre-sale estimate of ... More
The restoration process unveiled three distinct layers of artwork. The oldest, dating back to the 16th century, features intricate tempera paintings of saints, including St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Agatha of Catania.
PATZCUARO.- After 80 years in obscurity, the original paintings depicting saints and martyrs that adorn the presbytery of the Temple of Our Lady of the Assumption in Santa María Huiramangaro, Michoacán, have been revealed. Thanks to a skilled team of restoration professionals, these four-century-old artworks have been painstakingly restored, bringing their vibrant history back to life. The restoration project was a collaborative effort between the Mexican Government’s Ministry of Culture, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the INAH Michoacán Center, the Pátzcuaro City Council, the Adopt a Work of Art Committee, and the local community. This partnership exemplifies the commitment to preserving the country’s cultural heritage. Laura Elena Lelo de Larrea López, a restoration expert from the INAH Michoacán Center and supervisor of the project, emphasized the significance ... More
PARIS.- At the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, visitors are transported to the Jurassic Era in an extraordinary, immersive experience. “Jurassic Illuminated” invites the public to explore the world as it existed 200 million years ago through a nighttime exhibition celebrating the biodiversity of the Jurassic Period. During the Jurassic Period (201–145 million years ago), the supercontinent Pangaea was breaking apart, reshaping the planet and its ecosystems. Marine organisms spread across emerging oceans, pterosaurs ruled the skies, and early birds, mammals, and plants underwent remarkable diversification. The exhibition captures this era’s essence through a series of life-sized, illuminated structures depicting marine reptiles, terrestrial dinosaurs, flying creatures, and early mammals. The exhibition showcases the intricate details of these creatures, many of whose fossils are part of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle’s extensive collection of over 10 million ... More
PARIS.- The Rodin Museum in Paris invites visitors to delve into the story behind Auguste Rodin’s search for the essence of Balzac, one of the 19th century’s most iconic writers. The ongoing exhibition, Corps In.visibles, explores Rodin's creative process, his groundbreaking use of clothing in sculpture, and broader questions about the representation of bodies in public art. At the heart of the exhibition is Rodin’s Study of Dressing Gown for Balzac, a rarely exhibited piece that showcases the sculptor's unconventional approach to portraying the celebrated author. Rodin’s effort to sculpt a monument for Balzac began nearly fifty years after the novelist's death, when he was commissioned by the Société des Gens de Lettres. This commission sparked an extraordinary artistic journey as Rodin sought to reconstruct Balzac's image and essence. Rather than relying solely on idealized portrayals or generic depictions ... More
Courtesy of the artist.
CHICAGO, IL.- Across a growing body of work, Isabelle Frances McGuire turns to figures that loom large in the cultural imagination or those that keep reappearing, sometimes against all odds, whether a president and moral exemplar such as Abraham Lincoln, classic monsters like Frankenstein, or the fame-destined ingénue of A Star is Born, a movie that has been remade many times. McGuire embraces these apparent archetypes and the stories they keep generating, often giving them a new uncanny life or a kind of feral energy. McGuire’s exhibition at the Renaissance Society began by thinking about the lasting lionization of Lincoln and the symbolic relics associated with him, but it expands from there to thinking about other origin stories and different forms of re-enactment. Picking up on the looping repetitions and regressions in today’s culture and politics—populated by characters both real and imagined—McGuire tests out different approaches to recreating the past, re-animating old mo ... More
BREGENZ.- With its atmospherically open spaces, Kunsthaus Bregenz offers ideal conditions for a new way of thinking about and presenting art. The building designed by Peter Zumthor prompts a shift in how we perceive art. Art is not just viewed here; it is vividly and physically experienced. Precious Okoyomon, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, an anonymous artist, as well as a project by Michael Armitage with Chelenge Van Rampelberg and works by the late Maria Lassnig take up this approach in 2025. They invite us to rethink the relationship between humans and the world. Precious Okoyomon investigates the connection between poetry, nature, and robotics. Nature, art, and literature merge in Okoyomon’s art, addressing inner feelings and interaction with nonhuman beings. For Kunsthaus Bregenz, Okoyomon is creating works and installations that confront visitors with their dreams and humanity. Mirga-Tas takes up a feminist perspective in her art, derived from her cultural affiliation with an ethnic minor ... More
Arno Henschel, Dame mit Maske (detail), 1928. Kulturhistorische Museen Görlitz. Photo: Görlitzer Sammlungen.
MANNHEIM.- With the show he curated in 1925, The New Objectivity: German Painting since Expressionism, Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub (1864–1963), the second director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, famously lent a succinct name still used today to a whole current in twentieth-century painting. Far beyond its art-historical significance, the term has become synonymous with the cultural dawn of the 1920s and the rationality and functional precision that can be observed in painting and the graphic arts as well as in architecture, design, photography, and literature. At the same time, rarely has an artistic development and the term found for it been as controversial or subsumed artistic positions so difficult to reconcile. Even the distinction Hartlaub introduced between a “left” and a “right” wing failed to adequately reflect the entire spectrum. There was agreement that the new art should be defined as a consequence of Expressionism and in distinction from it. At the same time, the ... More
Alice Rekab, Scene/Seen III (Through the Window) (detail), 2024. Vinyl on wall, dimensions variable. Commissioned by Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, County Cork, Ireland. Courtesy of the artist.
COBH.- Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland, presents an exhibition by the Irish Sierra Leonean artist Alice Rekab. Clann Miotlantach / Mythatlantics features commissioned, newly made works engaging with the gallery’s location in Cork Harbor along with a comprehensive selection of works previously exhibited at The Douglas Hyde, Dublin, in 2022, and the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, in 2023. The exhibition is a special opportunity to survey Rekab’s practice. Rekab uses their identity as a starting point to examine the intersection of personal and shared historical and cultural narratives. They trace fragments of their mixed-race experience through body and mind, geographies and politics. They address themes of familial and artistic connections, migration, and sense of place and belonging. Rekab makes sculptures, expanded paintings, digital collages, and films that are composite interactions with subject ... More
Sayre Gomez, Behind Door #8 (detail), 2018. Acrylic on canvas; 84 × 120 in. (213.3 × 304.8 cm). Collection of Rebekah and Ilan Shalit. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.
CHICAGO, IL.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago opened The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020, an international, intergenerational group exhibition running through March 16, 2025, in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art. The exhibition examines the different methods artists have used to challenge or intervene in the practice of painting and the role of painters over the past 50 years. Countering the recycled discourse that “painting is dead,” the exhibition suggests that painting remains in a constant state of renewal and rebirth. The Living End considers the impact of various representational technologies and production methods, such as the use of video and still cameras; computers, the internet, and screens; automation; and the performing body. Comprising paintings, performance, and video, the exhibition examines the ways artists working across media have challenged ... More
MUNICH.- Around 1900, young visionary artists in Munich set out to revolutionize art and to reform life. Facing a time of rapid scientific as well as technical innovation and social upheaval, they joined the quest for a fairer and more sustainable way of life, turning their backs on historical models in order to find a new art that permeated life down to the smallest detail. Their ideas and designs formed the foundation for modern art and design. With objects from design, sculpture, painting, graphic art, and photography, to fashion and jewelry, this exhibition sheds light on Munich’s role as the cradle of Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) in Germany and shows how highly topical the issues of life discussed back then still are today. Munich’s reputation as a cosmopolitan cultural metropolis with exceptional opportunities in terms of training and exhibiting attracted artists from all over Europe at the ... More
Installation view of Flowers Forever at Bucerius Kunst Forum. Photo: Ulrich Perrey.
HAMBURG.- The Bucerius Kunst Forum is currently presenting Flowers Forever. Flowers in Art and Culture, an extraordinary exhibition that takes visitors on a journey through the artistic and cultural history of flowers from antiquity to the present day. Open now, the exhibition offers a rich display of artworks, sculptures, photographs, media art, and objects from the realms of design and natural sciences. The exhibition uniquely juxtaposes established positions in art and design history with innovative and emerging artistic approaches, creating a vibrant dialogue between past and present. Visitors gain insight into the profound role flowers play across diverse domains, including culture, mythology, religion, politics, economics, and ecology. Through this lens, the exhibition highlights the flower's omnipresence as a symbol and natural phenomenon. Featuring works from international collections and specially commissioned installations, Flowers Forever presents the diverse history ... More
Quote A man like Picasso studies an object as a surgeon dissects a corpse. Guillaume Apollinaire
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New York City's Museum of Arts and Design presents Barbie®: A Cultural Icon NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Arts and Design presents Barbie®: A Cultural Icon, in collaboration with Illusion Projects and Mattel, Inc., a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. The major exhibition first debuted in 2021, welcoming thousands of visitors in both Phoenix and Las Vegas. Barbie®: A Cultural Icon marks its exclusive East Coast engagement at MAD, celebrating the 65th Anniversary of Barbie. On view from October 19–March 16, 2025, the exhibition charts the 65-year history of Barbie and the doll’s global impact on fashion and popular culture through an expansive display of more than 250 vintage dolls, life-size fashion designs, advertisements and other ephemera, exclusive video interviews with the doll’s designers, and narrative sections that highlight ... More
421 Arts Campus presents its winter 2025 program ABU DHABI.- 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi’s independent platform dedicated to supporting emerging creative practices, presents its winter 2025 program. Running from January 23 to March 21, this season features two major exhibitions and over 30 workshops and special events that focus on gentle and tactile activities that foster spaces of togetherness, restoration, and a collective sense of renewal. Opening on January 30 are the exhibitions Abdullah Al Saadi: Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia, an exhibition presenting over 40 years of the Emirati artist’s practice curated by Tarek Abou El-Fetouh; and Alla Abdunabi: Are your memories of me enough for you, a solo exhibition by artist who is part of the 2025 Artistic Development Program. Alla Abdunabi’s first solo exhibition presents a new body of work that critiques and engages with simulacra, ... More
Exhibition reveals the dynamic ways nature communicates through colour TORONTO.- Nature in Brilliant Colour, an exhibition revealing the dynamic ways nature communicates through colour, opened at ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) on December 14. Created by the Field Museum in Chicago and newly enhanced with highlights from ROM collections, Nature in Brilliant Colour takes visitors on a kaleidoscopic journey through the vibrant hues of our planet. Anywhere you look in nature, colour holds meaning. From the fiery reds of warning signals to the soothing greens of plant life, Nature in Brilliant Colour alters the perception of guests as they travel through a series of spaces, each dedicated to a colour of the rainbow. Through over 300 specimens, grand projections, and shifting soundscapes, this exhibition provides a transformative experience that deepens appreciation for the complex artistry of our world and celebrate ... More
New Field Museum exhibition explores the curious world of cats CHICAGO, IL.- Throughout history, felines have interested people as beloved pets, powerful deities, and ferocious predators. Cats: Predators to Pets explores the world of cats, shedding light on the physiological nature and cultural significance of this mysterious family of mammals. Striking videos paired with open-air taxidermied specimens show leopards, wildcats, lions, and more in a new light. This exhibition was created by the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, France. It explores the world’s 38 species of wild cats. A pageant of mounted specimens accompanied by films and touchable casts follows the past, present, and uncertain future of the world’s wild cats. “It shows the Museum’s cats in a different way, moving many out of their normal locations in the museum and places them in a different context.” says project manager, Lauren ... More
Walk&Talk - Bienal de Artes in the Azores announces its first edition AÇORES.- Walk&Talk announced the inaugural edition of its biennial in the Azores, titled Gestures of Abundance. Taking place across the island of São Miguel between September 25 and November 30, 2025, this new iteration of Walk&Talk invites audiences to explore the abundant intersections of culture, ecology, and spirituality. Drawing inspiration from the unique landscapes and layered histories of the Azores, this first edition poses a transformative question: how might we shift our perception of scarcity to one of cooperative abundance? The biennial looks into commonality and other ways of engaging with the political: dreaming, collaborating, instituting, negotiating spaces to live, and revealing concrete possibilities, myths, and hopes. These notions will guide the curatorial research and shape the programmatic structure of the biennial, ... More
Associazione Culturale Dello Scompiglio presents Nexaris Suite by Agnes Questionmark CAPANNORI LUCCA.- Agnes Questionmark’s research envisages a society in transition that pushes beyond evolutionary limits, hoping for new forms of biologically and technologically hybridised and fluid humanity that reinvent their own body, rendering it malleable and reversible. The artist brings to the foreground a trans body (transspecies, transgender, transhuman) as a body that is often pathologised, mechanised and hospitalised, shedding light on the patriarchal biopolitics at stake in the fields of science and health. The theoretical focus of her works is the reflection on a new form of humanity, able to emerge from a context where the environment and species are evolving and where human identity and morphology are preparing to diverge from the essential and unique traits that have characterised it so far. In this context, technology, human ... More
'Bruno Zhu: License to Live' on view at Chisenhale Gallery LONDON.- Influenced by fashion design, publishing, and scenography, Bruno Zhu’s object-led installations explore notions of agency, authorship, consumption, and power. License to Live marks Zhu’s first institutional UK solo exhibition which centres a written licence agreement as his response to the invitation to develop a new commission. Authored by Zhu, the agreement details a step-by-step guide to exhibition design that traverses colour, display, ornamentation, and orientation. Specific tones of red, green, yellow, blue, and purple have been selected by Zhu based on their histories of toxic production and relationship to applied arts. When painted across walls and doors, they create a colour code that draws attention to surface as site. Cabinets with openings shaped like playing card symbols – motifs that recur across Zhu’s practice – point to the abstraction ... More
Kunstmuseum Magdeburg presents Leyla Yenirce: SPLITTER MAGDEBURG.- Leyla Yenirce’s SPLITTER (2023) transforms the historic architecture of the Magdeburg monastery church, part of a Romanesque monastery complex that today houses the Museum of Contemporary Art, into a space of tension between visibility and concealment, image and sound. Through a large-scale video and immersive soundscape, Yenirce stages a portrait that challenges conventional representation. A young woman is shown, holding a reflective object. By moving it, she controls her own visibility—alternately shielding herself from the gaze of the viewer and becoming enveloped by a blinding golden light. While SPLITTER ostensibly offers a portrait, it radically subverts the genre. The subject is not passive but actively determines her relationship to the camera, negotiating between exposure and protection. Yenirce’s ... More
Joris Van de Moortel's new exhibition on view at Galerie Nathalie Obadia BRUSSELS.- Galerie Nathalie Obadia is presenting L’apocalypse excite les nerfs de la nef, Joris Van de Moortel's new exhibition at its Brussels gallery. A corpus of recent works—some of which were recently showcased in the Fragmenten, Doorgangen, Afdaling en Terugkeer (Fragments, Passages, Descent and Return) exhibition at the cultural centre De Warande near Antwerp— is displayed throughout the gallery. This collection invites visitors on a journey into the heart of the Apocalypse1 and the human condition, exploring themes of destruction and rebirth through a deeply personal artistic language. For more than twenty years, Joris Van de Moortel has developed a dynamic and diverse body of work. His paintings, watercolours, drawings, videos, sculptures, and models—often presented as substantial installations—are sometimes marked ... More
'Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery' on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) presents Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery, a loan exhibition featuring a large selection of remarkably beautiful and well-preserved samplers and silk-on-silk embroideries produced by American girls and young women in the colonial and early national periods. Comprising 69 embroideries and one painting, Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery will be on view from December 13, 2024 through June 15, 2025. From the early 1700s until about 1830, the education of American girls from well-to-do families emphasized reading, writing, simple arithmetic, and needlework. For these girls, a finely worked embroidery worthy of being framed in their homes served as a kind of diploma. The samplers and silk-on-silk embroideries demonstrated both their mastery of an important ... More
PILAR at the VUB presents 'Nom de Dieu: criticism, blasphemy, satire...?' BRUSSELS.- The title Nom de Dieu refers to the initial ban within monotheism on uttering or portraying God. Worshipping the one, true God was always accompanied by criticising false gods. Only God is God, ‘I am who I am’, he makes himself known in the Old Testament. Therefore, we should distrust anything that presents itself as divine and guard against making false images of God and worshipping them. Christianity was less dismissive of making (religious) images than Judaism and Islam due to the doctrine of the incarnation. Because God in the form of Christ became a flesh-and-blood man, people were allowed to portray him as a mortal being and worship him in impermanent images. What one understands by blasphemy can be interpreted differently depending on the historical, cultural, ideological and philosophical background. The term ... More
Iwan Wirth on Jason Rhoades’ ‘Illastrations’
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Flashback
On a day like today, Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh was born
December 23, 1908. Yousuf Karsh, CC (December 23, 1908 - July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian photographer best known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. In this image: Yousuf Karsh, Ford of Canada (surgeons), 1951.
