Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Kunstmuseum Basel reimagines its historical collection

Installation view. Kunstmuseum Basel, Schenkung der Prof. J.J. Bachofen-Burckhardt-Stiftung. Photo: Raphaela Graf.
BASEL.— In recent months, the Kunstmuseum Basel has undertaken a major reinstallation of its collection in the Hauptbau. The museum is rethinking how its world-renowned holdings—spanning eight centuries—are presented to the public. This effort is part of a larger vision led by Director Elena Filipovic to bring renewed attention to the museum’s historical collection, one of the most significant in Europe and the first in the world to be conceived as a truly public collection. The project is supported by the conservation and scientific research of the collection, as well as exciting stories about the history of the artworks and attractive public outreach. As part of the rehanging, bold new wall colors—carefully chosen to highlight details in the artworks—underscore the museum’s fresh approach. A collaboration with the design textile company Kvadrat and artist Nairy Baghramian has brought renewed life to the museum’s seating. Kvadrat contributed recycled RE-WOOL textiles, while Baghramian, in dialogue with Kunstmuseum Basel, selected the fabrics and colors and designed new feet for the existing seating, creating a cohesive visual language that echoes the building’s materials, the newly painted walls, and the artworks on view. 14th to 18th century: Holbein, Witz, and van Hemessen The rehang has unfolded in stages. Last June, the postwar collection in the Neubau was rehung, with an emphasis on highlighting the more diverse strands of the collection and bringing a wider range of artistic voices to the fore. In March of this year, the focus shifted to the collection from the 14th to the 18th century in the Hauptbau. Curator Bodo Brinkmann, shortly before his retirement, distilled decades of research into a new presentation that brings clarity and focus to key artists and themes. Entire rooms are dedicated to Konrad Witz and Hans Holbein the Younger, two artists of central importance to the museum’s founding history and ...
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University Archives announces online-only Rare Autographs, Manuscripts & Books auction

WILTON, CONN.— Items signed by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Disney, Napoleon Bonaparte and many more of history’s brightest luminaries – 437 lots in all – will come up for bid in an online-only Rare Autographs, Manuscripts & Books auction scheduled for Wednesday, August 27th by University Archives, beginning promptly at 10am Eastern Time. The catalog in its entirety is up for viewing and bidding now on the University Archives website, www.UniversityArchives.com, plus Invaluable.com, Auctionzip.com and LiveAuctioneers.com. Phone and absentee bids will also be accepted. “Our last auction of the summer will provide collectors with the opportunity to show off their latest acquisitions around Labor Day barbecue pits and swimming pools,” said John Reznikoff, the president and owner of University Archives. Lot 127 is a George Washington signed letter
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New book book traces the illustrious career of Valentino

NEW YORK, NY.— For almost half a century Valentino dominated Italian haute couture, dressing the world’s wealthiest and most glamorous women. Only a few years after opening his fashion house in Rome in 1959, Valentino could already count Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and Audrey Hepburn among his devotees. Despite his retirement in 2007 little has changed; his brand continues to thrive and prosper, and is worn by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez. Valentino has always designed magnificent gowns, never wavering from his signature style despite fads like grunge, deconstruction, and minimalism. This book traces Valentino’s illustrious career through copious images from his archives, including drawings, magazine editorial shoots, advertisements, portraits, and documentary photographs. Presented chronologically, the visual material is accompanied by a vast array of newspaper and magazine articles about Valentino throughout the years. Combined, they provide an in-depth look a
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Aztec skull rack reveals secrets through cutting-edge science

MEXICO CITY.— Ten years ago, archaeologists in Mexico City made a startling discovery: the Huei Tzompantli, a massive Aztec skull rack, buried beneath the modern capital. Now, a decade later, the skulls from this incredible find are revealing their secrets through cutting-edge science. For the first time, researchers are using advanced techniques like stable isotope and ancient DNA analysis to understand the lives of the individuals whose remains were part of this sacred structure. Instead of just seeing the skulls as a macabre monument, scientists are approaching them as people—asking where they were born, what they ate, and what their genetic history was. "We want to know where these people were born," explained anthropologist Jorge Gómez-Valdés, whose team is analyzing samples from 83 skulls at the University of Georgia in the United States. By studying isotopes in the teeth, which form in early childhood, they
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Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera

CHICAGO, IL.— The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has invited artist and educator Pablo Helguera to create an exhibition focused on its permanent collection. This exhibition, Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera, is informed by a series of conversations Helguera had with a group of Chicago artists, writers, activists, and educators in the fall of 2024 and winter of 2025 around the role of art in moments of uncertainty. Curated by Helguera and representatives from the MCA’s curatorial and learning teams, the exhibition spans all three floors of the museum’s iconic stairwell galleries and explores themes that emerged during Helguera’s conversations with participants. Accompanied by the voices of the individuals whose unique perspectives on the present informed the selection of works, Collection in Conversation with
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"The Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation Auction" results announced

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.— Julien’s Auctions announces the results from “The Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation Auction,” which was hosted live earlier today at The Peninsula Beverly Hills and online to a global audience. The event honors the enduring legacy of the global superstar while celebrating her philanthropy, raising awareness and generating vital support for the foundation’s diverse initiatives, scholarships, and services. Access all images from the event here. “Julien’s Auctions’ Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation Auction was a powerful reminder that the spirit of Whitney continues to move music, inspire generations, and define celebrity. The extraordinary response from fans and collectors around the world reflects her timeless voice, style, and compassion — and reaffirms why her influence remains as vibrant today as ever, keeping the love for Whitney alive and well.” – Martin J. Nolan, Executive Director & Co-Founder, Julien’s Auctions. This y
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Serpentine will present a new project by Peter Doig

LONDON.— Serpentine will present House of Music, a new project by one of today’s leading British artists: Peter Doig. The exhibition will be presented from 10 October 2025 to 8 February 2026 and marks a return to Serpentine South for Doig who first exhibited at the gallery in 1991 as a finalist in the Barclays Young Artist Award. Accompanying Doig’s paintings with sound for the first time, the exhibition will highlight the significance of other disciplines to the artist’s practice, including music and film, alongside the importance of sites of communal gathering and creative exchange. Envisaged as a multi-sensory environment, visitors are invited to pause and linger as they look and listen. House of Music will transform the gallery into a listening space, bringing together recent paintings by Doig and sound broadcast through two sets of rare, restored analogue speakers, originally designed for cinemas and large auditoriums. Music selected by
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Top copy of The Legend of Zelda offered at Heritage's August 22-23 Video Games Auction

DALLAS, TX.— The Legend of Zelda is widely hailed as one of the greatest games ever made and was the first entry in a franchise that would grow to more than 20 game titles along with spin-offs, manga adaptations and an animated series. In the seven-plus years Wata has been certifying video games, out of 143 total examples, across all original release variants, only a single copy of the massively influential 1987 NES game has merited a 9.8 A++ Sealed grade. That legendary top copy of the landmark game will be available to bidders at Heritage’s Video Games Signature Auction August 22-23. “For this to be the first Zelda graded a 9.8 A++ since 2018, that is a pretty remarkable achievement,” says Evan Masingill, Heritage’s Video Games Consignment Director. “This demonstrates the level of scrutiny Wata takes when evaluating games at the high end of their grading scale. With the announcement of a live-action Zelda film [also titled The Legend of Zelda, set for a 2027 release] and
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Martins&Montero to present works by Rebecca Sharp and Lydia Okumura at SP-Arte Rotas

SAO PAULO.— Martins&Montero will present a solo project by artist Rebecca Sharp. In this new series of paintings, Rebecca Sharp explores how the forces of desire and love, destruction and death, manifest and reveal themselves in the human body. The works investigate the battle—both subtle and explicit—between the drives of Eros and Thanatos; the tension between the control of bodies and voices; between the dominance of life and the wild magnetism of freedom and spontaneous creation. In her poetic-spiritual process, she combines pictorial and meditative practices. Her work explores a variety of subtle and mundane planes, and currently, the encounter between them: unusual worlds covered by vivid-hued abysses that coexist vibrantly. The canvases function as coded messages, stemming from her internal and external perception. Her delicate and surreal compositions appear almost instinctively as soon as the initial theme is revealed. According to Rebecca, “What I perceive today is that the
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The National Gallery builds on success of 200 Creators Network with launch of year two

LONDON.— The 200 Creators Network brought together a dynamic mix of digital voices to connect the nation’s paintings with new audiences. At the heart of the initiative were 20 Creative Collaborators - a small group of hand-selected creators who worked closely with the Gallery to co-create bold, original content. Their work reimagined not only the Gallery’s collection, but also the history of the building itself, conservation and staff through personal, playful, and often surprising perspectives. Posts from the Creative Collaborators alone generated over 21 million views across Gallery channels. Standout moments included Howard Lee’s take on Holbein’s The Ambassadors (6.2 million views on Instagram), Sophia Smith Galer’s colour story on blue (1.2 million views on TikTok, 2.1 million on Instagram), and HRH Georgiana’s reflections on looking time and The Arnolfini Portrait (over 1 million views on both
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Roman Polanski's historical thriller An Officer and a Spy opens at Film Forum

NEW YORK, NY.— Film Forum presents the US premiere of An Officer and a Spy, directed by Roman Polanski. Paris, 1895: Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) is ceremoniously stripped of his status and sentenced to life on a penal colony for passing secrets to Germany. Officer George Picquart (Jean Dujardin), appointed head of military counter-intelligence, discovers that the Germans continue to receive secrets, and that a mole is still at large. Polanski and Harris (Conclave) – who also collaborated on THE GHOST WRITER – forge a historical thriller from deeply researched details of the Dreyfus Affair, a scandal that divided French society for 12 years, elicited Émile Zola's famed "J'accuse...!" open letter, and remains a monumental case of institutional injustice and antisemitism. More than a century after Dreyfus' conviction, the case continues to reverberate in France. On June 3, 2025, Roger
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New Tom Nussbaum exhibition coming to the Montclair Art Museum this fall

MONTCLAIR, NJ.— This fall, the Montclair Art Museum will present Tom Nussbaum: But Wait, There’s More!, the first full-career retrospective of American artist Tom Nussbaum (b. 1953), opening September 13, 2025. Featuring more than 80 works spanning six decades, the exhibition showcases Nussbaum’s distinctive use of vibrant color, richly varied forms, and his fluid movement between figuration and abstraction. Across sculpture, drawing, and design, his inventive body of work invites curiosity, interpretation, and personal connection. As he has observed, “Much of my work is open to interpretation, and as such it welcomes viewers to find their own stories in it.” At the heart of Nussbaum’s work is a deeply humanistic, psychological focus. His art explores relationships between family members and friends, the individual and society, and between the conscious and subconscious. These themes resonate throughout his distinct visual language, which expresses
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Daniel Muzyczuk appointed Director of Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz

LODZ.— The Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, one of the oldest modern art museums in the world, enters a new chapter in its nearly century-long history. In July 2025, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland officially appointed Daniel Muzyczuk as Director of the institution, following a unanimous recommendation by the selection committee. Muzyczuk, a curator and art historian, has been affiliated with the museum since 2011. He served as Chief Curator from 2015. Over the years, he has significantly contributed to shaping the museum’s international profile, curatorial direction, and critical engagement with contemporary art. As Director, Muzyczuk aims to reaffirm the museum’s role as a space of critical engagement, experimentation, and solidarity, building on the legacy of the a.r. group and the international avant-garde. He envisions the museum as a “place of research and friction,” where collections, exhibitions, and educational practices are
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I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
Pablo Picasso

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Faktura 10 presents Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

Faktura 10, a core initiative of RIBBON International, announces Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In a major new work, Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy revives the musical life of one of Eastern Europe’s oldest academic institutions, founded in 1632, through a contemporary chamber song cycle conceived as a draft for a future opera. Commissioned by Faktura 10, a core initiative of RIBBON International, and curated by Marta Kuzma, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of Faktura 10, the music is composed by Maxim Kolomiiets, with concept and texts by Sasha Andrusyk, and performed by Ukho Ensemble Kyiv & friends with conductor Olga Prykhodko. The project unfolds in dialogue with Untitled, 1997/2025 by Jannis Kounellis, a seminal work first realized nearly three decades ago and, in June, reinstalled

From t-shirts to art: A new exhibition explores the sounds and sights of excess

The roar of a construction site and a pile of old jeans don't typically inspire a trip to an art gallery. But for Stuttgart-based artist Clemens Schneider, they are the very soul of his work. The exhibition at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, "Excess. Sounding Paper by Clemens Schneider," which opened on International Museum Day, invites visitors to see, hear, and feel the creative potential of what our society discards. The exhibition centers on Schneider's large-scale installation, Überfluss ("Excess"). Acquired by the Staatsgalerie in 2023, the piece is the culmination of the artist’s unique journey. After training as a stone sculptor and painter, Schneider found his true calling in the humble material of paper. Unable to find the specialized paper he needed, he turned to an old craft, making his own rag paper from recycled jeans and T-shirts with custom-built tools. But Schneider didn't

The Listening Biennial presents its third edition

The third edition of The Listening Biennial invites us to tune into the humming stars above and the countless voices they carry. These are voices of love and loss, voices that hold the past while evoking a future, and that resound with mystery and force, threading cosmic matter and embodied life with their potent stories. While our terrestrial, material existence demands increasingly committed forms of engagement, the cosmic voices above may continue to offer guidance in becoming-relatives. To look up is to listen out for a plurality of life-forms as well as pathways of connection found between here and there. The Listening Biennial aims at fostering a time and space in which such interstitial listenings may flourish. Presented across a constellation of partner institutions and venues in different regions of the world, The Listening Biennial takes shape through

Frick announces 2025-26 concert season

The Frick Collection today announced its 2025–26 concert season, marking the return of its longstanding annual classical performance series following the museum’s April 2025 reopening. With twenty-five concerts running from October 10, 2025, through May 22, 2026, the inaugural season more than doubles the number of performances offered in previous years. Concerts will be held in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, an intimate, 218-seat new venue designed by Annabelle Selldorf as part of the recently completed renovation. The series’ expanded focus includes the Frick’s first ever ensemble-in-residence, rich dialogues with the museum’s permanent collection and special exhibitions, and a new lunchtime concert series fostering the next generation of classical artists. Presentations will feature diverse musical styles spanning the Renaissance

François Ghebaly now representing Brooklin A. Soumahoro

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From SoHo Wall to Manila's Elite: The Remarkable Journey of Susana Aldanondo

For five years, Argentine-American contemporary artist Susana Aldanondo established an unconventional and deeply personal studio practice in the streets of SoHo, New York. Transforming a public wall into her “street studio,” Aldanondo produced large-scale abstract works that subtly engaged the urban passerby. Her compositions—rooted in music, geometry, and emotional resonance—quietly captivated the public, dissolving the boundaries between the artist, artwork, and audience. However, the impact of her work extended beyond spontaneous street engagement. Among the anonymous onlookers was a discreet observer: a key figure in global art collecting—The Virata Collection, led by a prominent Filipino collector and the founder of Asia Society Philippines. Over several months, the collector closely observed Aldanondo’s working process, returning frequently to witness her consistency, discipline, and intention. Struck by the originality and authenticity of her practi

The Politics of Intimacy: A Subtle Reclamation of Female Identity

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Flashback: On a day like today, American photographer Herb Ritts was born
Herbert "Herb" Ritts (August 13, 1952 - December 26, 2002) was an American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture. He took many photos of famous actors, models, and more.

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