On July 24, President Donald Trump issued an executive order ordering the installation of temporary signs outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History alerting the public to the “ideological capture” of the institution. The order represents a marked escalation in the president’s sustained attack on the Smithsonian, which he sees as embodying ideals out of step […]

“Danger” is a word often associated with the candy-colored work of Los Angeles artist Kristen Liu-Wong. Her feminine tableaus, often rendered in a bright blend of acrylics, paint pen, and marker, have particularly veered into more menacing territory in recent years. “The world is a dangerous place,” Liu-Wong says, in a June interview. “I don’t […]
The post Dont Tempt Me: the Art of Kristen Liu-Wong first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

A UNESCO committee voted on Friday to add an archaeological site in the occupied West Bank and a complex of castles in southern Lebanon to its World Heritage List and List of World Heritage in Danger, despite objections from Israel. The vote took place at a meeting of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Busan, South Korea, as Israel’s Foreign Ministry urged the committee to reject calls to inscribe the West Bank town of Sebastia and five castles in Lebanon’s Mount Amel area, characterizing their nomination as a “weaponization of cultural heritage.” The committee voted to add both sites to the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing the emergency...

On paper, Nathan Reidt’s creatures sometimes reveal themselves through a fog of graphite. He may begin with a “vague, circle-y shape” and shade areas. “Then I just stare at it for a long time and wait for something to pop out and refine that a little and stare at it.” The Philadelphia-based artist explains by […]
The post Personal Growth: the Art of Nathan Reidt first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

RECLAIMING SEOUL’S DORMANT WATERFRONT
 
Snøhetta’s Banpo Ecological Playscape imagines the edge of Seoul’s Hangang River as a layered public landscape where wetlands, cultural spaces and elevated pathways overlap. Developed for the international Banpo–Hangang River Connection Park and Cultural Facilities competition in 2024, the proposal reached the final round but was not selected for construction. Its architectural afterlife therefore exists on paper, where roads are slightly easier to move and urban wounds rather more willing to heal.
 
Spanning 38,000 square meters beside the Hangang riverside park and above the Olympic-daero expressway, the design sought to reconnect the Banpo neighborhood with...

Lydia Yee, formerly chief curator at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, has just been appointed the artistic director of a new, nonprofit gallery in Kuala Lumpur. The gallery, Muara Arts, will be dedicated to celebrating modern and contemporary art from Southeast Asia. Muara Arts will open November 1 of this year, and the gallery will […]

Leonardo da Vinci could appear on the 100-euro banknote in a few years, and you can help make that happen. On Thursday, July 23, the European Central Bank (ECB) revealed 10 shortlisted design proposals for euro banknotes centered on either the theme of "European culture" or "rivers and birds" — marking the first full redesign of the bills since they began circulating in 2002. Selected by an independent jury from a pool of over 1,200 graphic designers, the chosen artists hail from countries scattered across the European Union (EU). Each proposal includes respective designs for the five, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200-euro banknotes, centered around two themes with strong public support, as determined by previous...

Researchers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) finished a holistic survey of an area beneath Mexico City’s Centro Historico that long ago served as the home of the sacred precinct of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. As reported by Heritage Daily, the project undertaken as part of INAH’s Urban Archaeology Program to identify buried pre-Hispanic structures beneath the city’s streets is “expected to improve the protection of archaeological remains during future infrastructure and construction projects.” Instead of excavation, the archaeologists studied changes in ground elevation, street gradients, building inclinations, and structural cracks to deduce where walls and...

Another day, another French jewelry heist. On Friday July 24 a 2,500-year-old gold collar was stolen from the archaeological museum, Musée du Pays Châtillonnais in Châtillon-sur-Seine.  According to Artnews, the collar was taken at 10:30 AM, after the thieves paid the admission fee and entered the museum as tourists. The burglars subsequently smashed the display case […]

More than 300 workers across London’s Victoria and Albert Museum are voting on whether to strike over salary, working conditions, and what unions describe as unsafe heatwave policies. According to the Guardian, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union launched the ballot on July 23, covering employees at the V&A’s flagship South Kensington museum, Young V&A in Bethnal Green, and the V&A East Museum and Storehouse in Stratford. The union said soaring temperatures, limited access to drinking water during shifts, and pay disputes have pushed staff to consider the strike.  The union’s demands include a minimum 4 percent pay increase, a policy requiring public areas to close when indoor temperatures...

Tate Modern's Light & Magic reconsiders Pictorialism as a global movement through 200 rare vintage photographs from around the world.

More than three hundred unionized workers at the Victoria & Albert Museum are set to vote on a strike action spurred by the broiling heat that has enveloped the city in recent weeks, The Guardian reports. Staffers from across the institution’s four London sites—the museum in South Kensington, V&A East Museum and V&A East Storehouse in Stratford, and […]

We may be nearing the halfway point of summer, but Helen Levitt’s tender snapshots of New York City keep the humor and poetry of the streets alive year-round. A comprehensive book on the late photographer, who spent nearly seven decades documenting moments of levity and communion in the city’s working-class neighborhoods, is a perfect companion to ward off the mid-summer scaries — a reminder that the quiet joy of the everyday doesn’t rise and fall with the seasons. Critic Natalie Weis offers a reflection on the new tome today.Also in this edition, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and translator Benjamin Moser considers a biography of the intrepid Hudson River painter Frederic Edwin Church. He writes that...

It should come as no surprise that the term “outsider art” was coined not by any of the artists it applies to but by an “insider” academic, Roger Cardinal, in 1972. This explains why the concept was limited to late 19th and early 20th-century “Sunday painters" like Henri Rousseau, William Doriani, and Morris Hirshfield rather than any of the preceding millennia of artists. Museums, too, have played a role in limiting how “outsider art” has been traditionally understood. Collectors and curators like Jean and Howard Lipman helped introduce European-American self-taught artists into the collections of North American art institutions like the Whitney and High Museums during the mid-20th century. But...

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) has revealed the 63 participant galleries selected for the inaugural ADAA Fair at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The fair, which is set to run from November 13–16 this year, represents a new chapter for the ADAA, a nonprofit membership organization which comprises approximately 200 fine […]

The Barbican is inviting designers from around the world to reimagine its public furniture as part of its landmark £231 million Renewal programme.

world heritage list 2026
 
UNESCO’s newest World Heritage inscriptions stretch across very different ideas of what architecture can preserve. One nomination gathers thirteen buildings by Alvar Aalto and his collaborators across Finland. Another follows porcelain from clay extraction to kiln innovation in Jingdezhen. Elsewhere, entire city centers, theater networks, fortified ridges, and colonial plantation settlements enter the list as connected systems.
 
The World Heritage Committee added twenty-five sites during its 48th session, held in Busan from July 19th — July 29th, 2026. Nineteen are cultural sites. Five are natural, while the wider area of Mount Olympus is the sole mixed property. For an...

The Detroit Institute of Arts has received one of the largest gifts in its history: more than 2,000 modern and contemporary artworks from the estate of Detroit collectors Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman. The donation, which includes nearly 500 artists, will begin going on public view in November when the museum reopens its newly renovated Modern and Contemporary Art galleries.  The gift expands the museum’s holdings across six curatorial departments, including modern and contemporary art, African American art, American art, European sculpture and decorative arts, Native American art, and prints, drawings, and photographs. It encompasses artists’ books, paintings, sculpture, photography, furniture, jewelry,...

Since 1998, Fumiaki Aono has been interested in how objects circulate and what happens when they appear in new contexts. Questions of restoration and regeneration naturally followed, and wood became a prime medium for exploring these themes. Today, Aono continues to revitalize found objects, particularly discarded furniture. Dressers, chests, and cabinets stack into towering assemblages and become the imaginative backdrop for the artist’s constructed scenes. Converted drawers appear like apartment buildings on a summer day, with tenants leaning out windows and hanging out at street level. Several works also depict box trucks and other vehicles emerging from wooden furnishings, while bicycles, hats, and shoes...

Works by the London-based Iraqi artist and 29 other artists from the Arab world will be sold to help humanitarian organisations working in Beirut and beyond

The New York fair is coming back to the Park Avenue Armory with 63 exhibitors after a 'strategic pause', as executive director Kinsey Robb says the focus is on value for galleries rather than scale

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Luke Jerram's seven-metre Earth artwork GAIA will transform the Royal Festival Hall during a weekend of BBC Concert Orchestra performances.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds return to Brighton for their only UK show of 2026, with a weekend of special events across the city

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. Good Morning! Staffers at London’s V&A Museum are voting on possible “heatwave” strike action. A Vancouver real-estate collapse has exposed an alleged art-fraud dispute involving artworks worth almost $5 million. A new Art in Embassies exhibition is set to open in Washington, D.C. The Headlines GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN. Staffers at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum are voting on possible “heatwave” strike action over concerns about workplace temperatures, access to drinking water, and low pay. The Guardian reported  that more than 300 staff across the V&A’s four London sites are...

Fredrik Paulsen Brings Skateboarding culture into Chair Design
 
Swedish designer Fredrik Paulsen creates the limited-edition Vauhtikisat Chair One in collaboration with Finnish Design Shop to mark Helsinki’s annual Vauhtikisat skateboarding festival. The chair features the event’s illustration and was skated and gifted during the July 2026 edition of the event. Vauhtikisat is an annual skateboarding event held in Helsinki, Finland, each July. What began as a DIY gathering in 2014 has grown into a major skateboarding event in Europe, bringing more than 4,000 skateboarders to the city’s highest hill park.
 
Paulsen grew up within the Swedish skate scene, an environment that influenced his approach to...

Low, who is the creative director of Factory International in Manchester, will lead the artistic team for the prominent Australian biennial’s 26th edition

João Daniel Pereira  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
João Daniel Pereira’s Website
João Daniel Pereira on Instagram

Wolf Trap Opera presented a lovely Eugene Onegin with particularly noteworthy performances by Magdalena Kuźma and Daniel O’Hearn.

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Harley Weir's portrait of Charli xcx has gone on display at the National Portrait Gallery as the latest acquisition through the Collecting the Now fund.

Founded in 1980, the organisation has also developed a Green Manifesto to guide artist members toward a more environmentally responsible practice

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The portrait of the pop star, who released her latest album earlier this month, can be found in the museum's History Makers space

architect Cedric Price and the Fun Palace
 
In 1960s London, architect Cedric Price worked on a very fun project that would never get built. Approached by radical theater practitioner Joan Littlewood, the Fun Palace project was set into motion as a way of animating defunct public spaces. Together they created an ambitious, utopian plan for highly adaptable spaces, built to encourage learning, creativity, and knowledge creation. Looking at the trove of drawings, schemes, and pontifications left by Price, it looks like the Fun Palace could carry any dream and realize the greatest creative project. Although it never came to fruition, the project was foundational in pushing the boundaries of the relationship...

Sri Lankan architecture inspires the Temple Lighting Collection
 
The architecture of Sri Lankan temples and the ascent of Adam’s Peak inform the Temple lighting collection by Bouti Studio, a series of architectural ceramic lighting objects defined by geometric forms, integrated openings, and a restrained material language.
 
At Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, approximately 5,000 steps lead to a summit where visitors from different backgrounds gather to watch the sunrise. The ascent culminates at a large bell that visitors ring upon reaching the top. The sequence of climbing, gathering, and quiet observation provides the conceptual starting point for Temple, designed by Clément Boutillon. Rather than...

Four decades ago, the Guerrilla Girls changed the museum landscape for good. The collective has fought against sexism and racism in the art world ever since, all while keeping their identities anonymous — until now. Staff Writer Rhea Nayyar reports on artist Joyce Kozloff’s decision to reveal her role as a founding Guerrilla Girl last week.Also in the news, a MAGA-friendly artist’s sculpture of Thomas Jefferson is the latest addition to the Rose Garden, part of Trump’s plan to restructure the White House grounds. Further down the rabbit hole of technocracy, AI company Nvidia has stamped its CEO’s name onto the next iteration of San Francisco’s California College of the Arts, which will reopen as a...

Lorenzo Molajoli is a mysterious figure.

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Esistono immagini che non si limitano a rappresentare il reale, ma ne sospendono la consistenza fenomenica per restituirlo come esperienza critica dello sguardo. Mediterraneo, il progetto che Mimmo Jodice torna a consegnare al pubblico nella grande mostra curata da Carlo Sala a Palazzo Lanfranchi (Matera), la prima ampia esposizione istituzionale a lui dedicata dopo la sua scomparsa, appartiene a questa rara condizione dell’immagine: non descrive il passato, ma ne riattiva la presenza, trasformando l’archeologia in una pratica della contemporaneità.
Mimmo Jodice, “Mediterraneo”, installation view at Palazzo Lanfranchi, Matera, ph. Antonello Di Gennaro, courtesy Musei Nazionali di Matera – Palazzo...

Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's bubbly The Judgement of Paris brings a distinctly Californian terroir to operatic comedy.

Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman's Lili Elbe receives its first recording ahead of its stateside transition.

After five years in a maximum-security prison outside Havana, Cuban dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was released and exiled to Miami. He's a free man now, but there's not much to celebrate. The US continues to choke the island, driving its people into despair. Justice is scarce both here and there.Meanwhile, everyone's talking about Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey, so we got a certified Homerist to review the film for us. "As a spectacle, the movie is a fantastic success," writes Joel P. Christensen of CUNY Graduate Center. "As a reflection of us, it fails."Now to a delicate subject: the late David Hockney's iPad paintings. Yes, the tablet device...

Based on exactly one recording, Maurice Abravanel is my favorite opera conductor.

Lo scorso 12 dicembre è scomparso all’età di 89 anni l’artista e fotografo emiliano Franco Vaccari (Modena, 1936-2025); per ricordarlo, Museion, il museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Bolzano, ha allestito una mostra, la prima in assoluto dopo la sua morte, intitolata “Feedback. Gli Ambienti di Franco Vaccari”, a cura di Frida Carazzato e Luca Panaro, visitabile fino al 13 settembre 2026.
“Feedback. The Environments of Franco Vaccari”, exhibition view at Museion, 2026. Photo: Luca Guadagnini, courtesy Museion, Bolzano
Mosso dall’iniziale interesse verso la “poesia visiva” e per quelle che amava definire “forme anonime di poesia”, Franco Vaccari era attratto dai segni apparentemente...

The small settlement of Pyramiden on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is literally frozen in time. A former mining outpost for the Soviet Union, industrial operations ceased in 1998, and residents relocated. It wasn’t until 2007 that a handful of new inhabitants made the settlement home. Because Pyramiden was abandoned in a cold climate, it remains impeccably preserved, with remnants of its once-thriving settlement still visible. French photographer Damien Aubin visited the Arctic region and documented the still, serene environment blanketed in snow. “The place has not been abandoned. It has been left in suspension,” he says. Classroom, Pyramiden Pyramiden’s buildings and the objects inside are...

“When I was really little, I wanted to be one of those stackable chairs you’d see in like a school auditorium,” Felicia Chiao says. “I thought they looked cozy.” This childhood memory is the basis for a playful drawing in which Chiao’s signature characters mound atop one another. Layering reigns in this imagined world as calendars and clocks emerge from the wall in dense piles, while stacks of books and dishes rest on the floor. Chiao is known for her warm illustrations that capture emotion and the variances of mental health through surreal, flower-filled scenes. Working in pencil, ink, and watercolor, the artist renders compositions that feel both timeless and indicative of our current age, in...

Colossal has always called Chicago home. We love highlighting artists and designers in our own community, and the Colossal Shop’s newest collection brings our creative neighbors to a wider global audience. This selection features one-of-a-kind and handmade objects from Chicago-based artists we’re excited to share a city with. From unique ceramic forms to thoughtfully designed apparel, there’s something exciting for everyone. Shop the collection now. Periwinkle Ripple Mugs With rhythmic, stacked silhouettes and looping handles, these one-of-a-kind mugs turn morning coffees into a sculptural experience. Created as a series of 8 exclusively for Colossal, each retro-futuristic mug is uniquely hand-thrown...

Julian Adon Alexander  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Julian Adon Alexander’s Website
Julian Adon Alexander on Instagram

Nella cultura odierna orientata all’immagine, gli artisti sono costantemente circondati da riferimenti visivi – dai feed dei social media, alle scene cinematografiche, dalla storia dell’arte e dagli archivi personali. Il curatore e critico francese Nicolas Bourriaud ha descritto questo approccio come “postproduzione”: gli artisti non creano più da zero, ma rimescolano e reinterpretano immagini e simboli culturali esistenti. L’ascesa di Internet ha solo intensificato questo processo. Gli artisti contemporanei ora lavorano con flussi infiniti di immagini online, fotografie trovate e materiali d’archivio, citandoli, rimescolandoli e riappropriandosene mentre li caricano di significati...

For Donna Wilson, there’s no reason that knitwear and home decor shouldn’t incorporate a lot of color and elicit joy. From patterned towels and socks to blankets and hot water bottle sleeves, the London-based designer celebrates vibrant patterns and playful creatures, especially in her series of cushions. What’s not to love about a pillow with personality? The soft objects ranging from bolsters to floor cushions to throw pillows are covered in knitted lambswool. Current designs include a larger-than-life banana, a whale, a toadstool, and more. The objects are produced in small batches in what Wilson describes as a “micro-factory” called the Knit Shop in Scotland, where vibrant flora and fauna, not to...

By Betty Ann Brown "Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation — I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances."—Henri Matisse Jill sykes by Eric Minh Swenson Jill Sykes creates beautiful paintings of botanical phenomena. Like Matisse, she translates three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional images, occupying the territory between abstraction and representation to achieve balance and equilibrium. From a very early age,...

C’è una linea invisibile ma potentissima che unisce la frazione di un secondo in cui scatta l’otturatore di una macchina fotografica e la durata temporale di una nota musicale. Luigi Ghirri, tra i più grandi maestri della fotografia contemporanea, definiva questo legame una «strana e misteriosa parentela». Per esplorare questa sinergia profonda, Palazzo dei Musei di Reggio Emilia ha inaugurato la mostra Luigi Ghirri. A Series of Dreams. Paesaggi visivi e paesaggi sonori, un ambizioso percorso espositivo curato da Ilaria Campioli e Andrea Tinterri, con la curatela musicale di Giulia Cavaliere.
Luigi Ghirri, “A Series of Dreams”, installation view, photo Iacopo Pasqui, courtesy Musei Civici di Reggio...

All images courtesy of CHOI&CHOI Gallery and the artist Sculptor Yu Jinyoung garnered international acclaim for her striking figures, whose bodies are often partially transparent. These are individuals “who wish to become invisible,” she says: “those who exist free from external attention and interference.” These explorations of both intentional isolation and somber loneliness have always […]
The post The Once Invisible Figures of Yu JinYoung first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Aaron Agosto  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Aaron Agosto’s Website
Aaron Agosto on Instagram

La giovane e promettente artista Georgia Gardner Gray dipinge Stonehenge. Se il visitatore si aspetta quadri grigi, si sbaglia completamente: i dipinti esplodono di colore e tensione. A prima vista, i dipinti di Georgia Gardner Gray sembrano provenire dalla galleria di uno smartphone. Foto di un tempo recente, memorie di momenti vissuti. Ma, aspetta, c’è Stonehenge sullo sfondo? Una donna guarda il visitatore, i suoi tatuaggi sulla caviglia e sulla spalla sono come un codice sconosciuto allo spettatore. Le sue mani toccano appena una corona di fiori. Questa non è affatto la vita quotidiana! Il visitatore è forse entrato in un rituale, dove si fanno verticali sulla testa?
GENERATOR #5: Georgia Gardner...

By Victoria Thomas There's something about a hanging. Whether legal or not, the visual experience seems mythic, supernatural, theatrical, and ritualistic, versus the efficiency of a swift kill. If local authorities greenlight the killing, it's called a hanging. If they don't, the hanging is extrajudicial, and it's called a lynching. Anyone with even the scantiest grasp of American history will know that our country has a sordid romance with lynching — a romance which persists. And unless...

Common Objects brings together the work of 97 photographers from across the globe to explore the role of the image and its ability to shape perception. Organized not by theme or geography but by visual association, the book draws on the logic of the reference catalog—a structure built for sustained, democratic looking. Within it, photographs from vastly different cultures and contexts find themselves in unexpected proximity, generating connections and contrasts that no single image could produce alone. In this format, the photographs enter into a subtle dialogue with one another, revealing how context, sequence, and framing shape interpretation and inform visual experience.  
   
   
   
   
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Claudia Koh  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Claudia Koh on Instagram