Pathbreaking artist Betye Saar, whose powerful assemblages of racist memorabilia served up scorching commentary on the condition of the Black American—particularly the Black American woman—died on July 26 in Los Angeles. She was ninety-nine. Saar’s longtime gallerist Julia Roberts, of Roberts Projects, confirmed her death, which occurred at home, in the artist’s sleep, four days […]

Japan's historic Kumamoto Castle was damaged after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit the country today, July 28. Video footage on X shows a section of the moat wall tumbling down onto the lawn and into the water, near the entrance from the castle's Ninomaru Plaza in Kumamoto Prefecture on the southwest island of Kyushu.

Two activists affiliated with Youth Demand, a group calling for the British government to end economic trade with Israel as well as the cessation of new licenses for fossil fuels, were found guilty of criminal damage after covering a Picasso painting with an image of a mother and child in Gaza. Jai Halai, age 25, and Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, 23, were convicted by a jury over the incident at the National Gallery in London in October 2024.   As reported by Jewish News, “During the protest, they placed a large photograph of a mother and child from Gaza over the protective glass protecting Picasso’s 1901 painting Motherhood before pouring water-based paint onto the gallery floor and chanting slogans calling...

There is a new development in an ongoing fraud lawsuit against the leader of the collapsed Vancouver-based developer Coromandel Properties, whose chief executive allegedly misappropriated funds to acquire an art collection, reports The Vancouver Sun. In 2023, Junchao Mo, a Chinese seed investor and part-owner of Coromandel Properties, and his two sons, Zhao Ming “Robert” Mo and Zi Hao “Calvin” Mo, filed a lawsuit now headed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia against Jerry Zhong, the company’s chief executive and co-owner. They allege that Zhong deceived them into investing over $100 million in the company’s Vancouver-area real estate projects, and deliberately misused those funds to purchase...

Betye Saar died on July 26, four days before her 100th birthday, to the shock and sadness of an art world preparing to celebrate the centennial of the singular assemblage artist. Born in Los Angeles in 1926, Saar spent six decades excavating the American sediments of race and politics through found objects, from the innocuous—furniture, feathers, birdcages—to the insidious. Saar’s groundbreaking 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima depicted the eponymous “Mammy” figure bearing a toy rifle and broom, with a Black Power fist rising before her. “She is going to liberate herself at all costs,” ARTnews wrote in its obituary yesterday, echoing Saar’s own words: “Take a woman who was a victim...

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), “Portrait of Marchesa Casati” (1927), gelatin silver printWalter Benjamin could’ve told us the problem with AI about a century ago. In 1931, before the technology could even be dreamed of, the German and Jewish philosopher and media theorist was becoming concerned with a different emerging medium: photography. With eerie prescience, Benjamin wrote that he feared that it could “endow any soup can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists.” Photographs that aestheticize things while erasing their meaning are dangerous, he argued. Practitioners can bathe the chimneys of a steel factory in the same soft light as the...

A Boston exhibition this fall will reveal works by New York–based artist Robert Lazzarini that were intended to represent the country at the hotly contested US Pavilion at the current Venice Biennale. The show, as yet untitled, opens on September 30 at Boston’s MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and will allow the public to see works that employ the artist’s trademark distortions to comment on American symbolism.  The current US Pavilion is one of the most talked-about in art circles in recent memory, having been arranged by a newly formed organization headed up by a Donald Trump–supporting former pet food purveyor with no art world experience. The process that...

The Biennale of Sydney has appointed Low Kee Hong artistic director of its 26th edition, which will be on view in and around the city in 2028. This year’s Biennale, directed by Hoor Al Qasimi and titled “Rememory,” closed last month. “The 2028 Biennale will embrace participation and discovery, inviting people from all walks of life to share in the experience. I look forward to spending time with artists, communities and cultural leaders across Australia and the wider region,” Hong said in a statement. Various venues around New South Wales typically host the three-month-long Sydney Biennial. The 25th edition was headquartered at the White Bay Power Station; other locations included the...

a 1951 le mans idea returns in aluminum
 
Thornley Kelham begins its Porsche 356 European SL with a familiar silhouette, then draws out the speed and lightness of Porsche’s earliest racing cars. The Cotswolds workshop restores the original 356 chassis and wraps it in a broader, lower body formed by hand in aluminum. Stretched surfaces and tight panel gaps sharpen the car‘s teardrop profile while preserving the rounded character of the original.
 
At 930 kilograms, the coupe’s low mass shapes its proportions and performance. It sits close to the road with a wider stance, giving the compact body a firmer presence from every angle.
 
The design refers to Porsche’s Type 514, the all-aluminum 356 SL...

The Detroit Institute of Arts has received a major gift of over 2,000 contemporary and modern artworks from the estate of Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman, two prominent Detroit art collectors. The gift includes artwork made by nearly 500 different artists, including Diane Arbus, Jenny Holzer, Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Bruce Nauman, Diego Rivera, Bill […]

Why are there so many toxic people in the art world, and how do I protect myself — professionally and emotionally — from them? —A. Goodman, NY Every industry has toxic people, but desperation gives the art-world toxicity its particular flavor. The field is full of people making and supporting art, but the money available from collectors, grants and philanthropy combined can’t sustain most of them. We fight over the scraps. Some of us handle scarcity better than others, but nobody is their best self.When I worked as an art critic, people often asked me to write pieces exposing the bad behavior of professionals they didn’t like. Often the targets deserved a takedown, but the requests never sat well...

The Art Institute of Chicago has announced it will lay off its entire in-house custodial staff, and subsequently outsource the positions to private contractor. This decision has caused severe backlash from the museum’s unionized staff.  On June 29, an initial announcement detailing the plan was released: 23 unionized custodial workers responsible for cleaning the galleries […]

I can’t say I’ve ever dreamed of watching a recreation of Curtis Sliwa’s infamous 1992 kidnapping and assassination attempt in front of a 65-foot hot dog in Times Square, but that’s just because of a lack of imagination. Our Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian found all the above and then some — drag Melania, Epstein file cumshot, etc. — during a visit to The Most American Pageant Ever!, an absurdist performance event that felt like an elegy during this national moment.  Also in this issue, we unpack a quieter though no less symbol-laden event a ways uptown. In May, a quill snapped off a nearly two century-old statue of Thomas Jefferson that once stood in City Hall, while it was being moved at the...

At the 48th session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in Busan, South Korea, 13 works by Finnish modernist architects Aino, Elissa, and Alvar Aalto were added to the organization’s World Heritage List. The projects, which are collectively known as the “Aalto Works,” are the first collection of Finnish modernist architecture to achieve such a designation. […]

Low Kee Hong has been named as the artistic director of the 2028 Biennale of Sydney. Hong was formerly the creative director of the Manchester-based arts organization Factory International at Aviva Studios, and served as the founding director and general manager of the Singapore Biennale. “My hope is to create an edition that feels generous, […]

The German publishing giant Steidl Verlag, known for photobooks by leading artists including Nan Goldin, Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, and Joseph Beuys, is facing an uncertain future after coming close to bankruptcy.The publisher has recently resolved insolvency proceedings that were opened against it after the company allegedly withheld employee salaries and failed to make social security contributions. Founded by Gerhard Steidl in 1968, the publisher had faced preliminary insolvency proceedings after a German agency that regulates part-time employment filed a claim against the company earlier this month. According to Der Spiegel, the company had allegedly owed outstanding wages to numerous employees, some of...

The Ritual of Daily Baking informs Achime Bagel’s interior design
 
JOJOWORKSHOP takes over the design of Achime Bagel, a neighborhood bakery located in Munjeong-dong, Seoul. The project aims to create a small space that could gently accompany the beginning of each day. The bakery follows a daily production and sales system, preparing and selling fresh bagels within the same day. The architects’ straightforward and diligent approach is expressed throughout the interior. Rather than creating a highly decorative bakery, the design focuses on revealing the daily process of making bread and the people who prepare it. An open kitchen forms the central scene of the space. The movements of preparing ingredients,...

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Mr Doodle has taken over London's West End

What best represents European life? The eternal dichotomy of nature vs. culture structures the Central Bank’s quest for a new banknote design, and now, the public can vote and offer feedback on ten proposals. A panel of jurors selected the designs, which follow one of two themes: European places and ideas or birds and rivers, the latter of which is meant to symbolize freedom and unity. While the basic elements are the same—all collections devoted to culture feature the same six figures, including Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, composer Ludwig van Beethoven, scientist Marie Curie, opera singer Maria Callas, and authors Bertha von Suttner and Miguel de Cervantes, for example—individual approaches...

The Royal Academy revisits Peggy Guggenheim's groundbreaking London gallery with a major exhibition of more than 80 works.

climbing across the remains of narva, estonia
 
In Estonia’s Narva Castle Park, a child reaches for the cast of an angel’s head and pulls upward, using a fragment of carved stone under one foot. The holds are bright enough to belong in a climbing gym, yet their shapes come from a city that largely disappeared during World War II. Families gathered around Pavel Rotts’ installation throughout its run, and children climbed so often that the grass surrounding the wall wore away. What begins as a familiar and playful encounter soon turns into contact with the broken architecture of Baroque Narva.
 
Pavel Rotts made molds of architectural fragments held by Narva Museum and recast them in the plastic resin...

A new public work by Alan Michelson and an exhibition by Leslie Wayne explore climate change and fragile ecosystems

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The French Culture Ministry has budgeted €30m over three years to improve security at local museums and has issued a 33-point action plan

The latest museum in the Guggenheim network will open on 11 December 2026, twenty years after its original 2006 announcement

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Undergraduate art students will be able to study for the jointly awarded degree based at the Norwich University of the Arts from September 2027

The statue, which has drawn hordes of onlookers, will remain in St James's for at least the next few weeks, with the council aiming to make a decision on its longevity by the end of summer

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi announces december 2026 opening date
 
More than two decades after the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi was first announced, the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi confirms that the museum is set to open to the public on December 11th, 2026. Designed by the late Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, the museum arrives as one of the most significant cultural projects completed in recent years, adding another landmark to Saadiyat Cultural District.
 
Located within Saadiyat Cultural District, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi joins an expanding constellation of institutions that includes Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, and teamLab Phenomena Abu...

The Royal College of Art and Norwich University of the Arts are partnering to launch jointly awarded undergraduate degrees from 2027.

The V&A and Burberry explore the history of the iconic trench coat in a free exhibition marking the fashion house's 170th anniversary.

SUTYO’S SUNGLASSES HIDES COMPLEX ELECTROCHROMIC INNOVATION   
Sutyo, an independent eyewear brand based in Austin, Texas, transforms smart glasses into an adaptable canvas. Tailored for quiet fashion, the eyewear features a touch-controlled temple that allows users to actively shift their perspective. With a simple slide, color changes between two distinct hues, while light opacity can be modulated in seconds, acting as an instant physical filter from bright streets to muted interiors. Housing advanced electrochromic technology within hand-polished, bio-based frames, its sunglasses embody a form-first concept. 
Sutyo Lens System | all images courtesy of Sutyo
 
 
STRUCTURAL DEPTH THROUGH HANDWORK AND...

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Factory International's Low Kee Hong will lead the 26th Biennale of Sydney, bringing a multidisciplinary vision to the 2028 edition.

Da oltre quarant’anni Antony Gormley assume il corpo come punto di partenza della propria ricerca, senza mai ridurlo a una semplice figura. Lo considera piuttosto una misura attraverso cui interrogare spazio, materia e condizione umana. In What Holds Us, la mostra presentata da Galleria Continua a San Gimignano, questa riflessione trova una formulazione particolarmente essenziale. Più che introdurre nuovi temi, il progetto approfondisce una domanda che attraversa l’intero lavoro dell’artista: quali relazioni rendono possibile la presenza di un corpo nello spazio?
Antony Gormley, “What Holds Us”, 2026, installation view at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, photo Ela Bialkowska – OKNO Studio,...

A nude Black woman lies on a stark white chaise, her head propped up by her thin arm. She’s surrounded by flat, abstracted color in the form of fruits and fabrics, and a glass coupe and bottle on a nearby table offer a clear, rather than refracted, view of the vibrant scene. Rendered in oil on burlap, the painting by William H. Johnson is commanding in its palette and subject matter and an exemplary work in a new book by art historian Richard J. Powell. Forthcoming this fall from Princeton University Press, Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect delves into the ways that color and social, political, and cultural forces intersect in Black American art. Powell takes an expansive approach to each of the three...

“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.

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.

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...

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.

Lorenzo Molajoli is a mysterious figure.

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.

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...

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...

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

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