Christmas Festival of Bad Habits by Peer Collective + Kateřina Šedá
 
The Christmas Festival of Bad Habits is a temporary public-space installation located on Římské náměstí in the historic center of Brno, Czech Republic. Developed by architectural studio Peer Collective in collaboration with artist Kateřina Šedá, the non-profit organization Renadi, and the Brno-střed Municipal District, the project reconsiders the spatial and social format of the traditional Christmas market. Instead of retail-driven programming, the installation introduces a structured environment for reflection, movement, and collective experience.
 
The project occupies a long-overlooked urban site adjacent to...

L’espressione Palmo Panorama suggerisce fin da subito un’immagine duplice, che partendo dal palmo della mano si dilata nell’ampiezza di un panorama. Un “titolo strano”, almeno inizialmente, per usare le parole di Saverio Verini, curatore della mostra personale di Marco Emmanuele presso la LABS Contemporary Art di Bologna.
Marco Emmanuele, installation view, 2025, ph. Manuel Montesano, courtesy of LABS Contemporary Art
Accostando le due misure l’artista ha generato una tensione concettuale divisa tra il micro e il macro cosmo, mondi apparentemente lontani ma che, a ben guardare, non sono poi così distanti, come ci ricordano le stesse leggi della natura. La doppia scala costituisce allora la chiave...

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VOGELFREI lands in Vienna for its tenth year
 
VOGELFREI is a seasonal pop-up restaurant and spatial installation by Taubenkobel, unfolding this winter inside Atelier Augarten in Vienna as a temporary convergence of art and cuisine. Each year, the team behind the two-Michelin-star restaurant relocates its kitchen and collaborators from rural Burgenland to the city, occupying sites that sit outside Vienna’s usual cultural circuits and reshaping them through food and atmosphere.
 
For this edition, the choice of Atelier Augarten brings the project into a former studio building set within the parkland of the Augarten. The setting offers a restrained architectural envelope with generous volume and daylight,...

Inaugurata il 15 novembre e aperta al pubblico fino all’8 marzo 2026, Da Gonzalo Borondo a He Wei. Nuove prospettive della pittura contemporanea dalle recenti acquisizioni della Fondazione THE BANK ETS, a Bassano del Grappa apre, presso la Fondazione THE BANK – Istituto per gli Studi sulla Pittura Contemporanea, è una mostra che intende porsi come osservatorio privilegiato sulla scena artistica contemporanea globale, con particolare attenzione alla pittura figurativa. La raccolta esposta, denominata “The Bank” per via dell’ex filiale della Banca Commerciale Italiana che ospita le opere, comprende oltre 1.200 dipinti che documentano la pluralità delle ricerche pittoriche dagli anni ottanta del...

Mónica Alcázar-Duarte is a Mexican-British multi-disciplinary visual artist, whose work explores current ideals of progress while acknowledging her Indigenous heritage. Her Aesthetica Art Prize-shortlisted piece, Space Nomads, explores human origins through a dual narrative: one grounded in ancient ecological knowledge, the other in advanced astronomical research. Focusing on the Mayan stingless honeybee – essential to the Yucatán Peninsula’s ecosystem – and the James Webb Space Telescope, she contrasts two modes of understanding the universe. These bees, referenced in the Mayan Popol Vuh, symbolise continuity and life. In contrast, the telescope offers a cosmic view into the past. This work...

BUREAU Redefines the Lighthouse in an Urban Harbor Context
 
PHARE YLLIAM is a lighthouse developed by BUREAU architecture firm for the waterfront of Geneva, Switzerland. Lighthouses carry a clear functional purpose and a distinct spatial presence. As singular vertical structures positioned at the edges of landmasses, they serve as navigational markers and contribute to the reading of the surrounding landscape. The project works within this typology while adapting it to the specific conditions of Geneva’s harbor.
 
Unlike traditional coastal sites often associated with dramatic cliffs or exposed terrain, the Geneva waterfront presents a calm, controlled environment. The project responds by reinforcing its...

Southbank Centre’s outdoor art trail is back for 2025, uniting international artists to rethink the idea of what traditional festive illuminations can look like. A highlight is David Batchelor’s Sixty Minute Spectrum (2017), which turns the roofs of the Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall into an enormous colourful clock. Pyramid-shaped lights move gradually through the entire visual spectrum – beginning the hour as a vivid red, then changing to appear orange, yellow, green, blue, purple or pink. Also featured is Liz West, the Aesthetica Art Prize finalist whose work, Our Spectral Vision, is currently part of the immersive Future Tense show at York Art Gallery. In York, West’s...

french creek workshop house: living in washington wetlands
 
Washington-based architecture studio Wittman Estes completes its French Creek Workshops House among the sprawling, forested area of Snohomish. The a four-and-a-half-acre site is located alongside a wetland once used as an animal sanctuary. Conceived as a year-round retreat for a newly retired couple, the project balances shelter during the long, wet season with openness during warmer months.
 
The single-level home is arranged for aging-in-place and multigenerational use, with a plan that follows the gentle slope of the land through subtle terracing. Wide doorways, flush thresholds, and sandblasted concrete floors support steady movement throughout...

I just bought a $117 raffle ticket in the hope of winning a $1 million Picasso painting. It's for a good cause, okay? I've never won a single prize in my life, but I can't stop thinking about how good that little Picasso would look on my living room wall, and how humble I'd be when guests asked about it. I guess I paid for the fantasy, more than anything.Sonya Yu, a Bay Area art collector and entrepreneur, is someone who probably can afford a Picasso without a raffle. She has written off three years of admission fees for MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York, making entry to the museum free for everyone. How kind.Less fortunate are faculty members at the New School in Manhattan. A staggering...

Chaume Sublimé Transforms Reed Grass into Sensory Architecture
 
Chaume Sublimé is an ephemeral installation by COAT – conditions atmosphériques d’espaces, created for the Festival des Architectures Vives 2025 in Montpellier, France. The project investigates the spatial and sensory potential of reed grass, using the material to form an atmosphere-driven architectural intervention that examines craftsmanship, sustainability, and the transformation of everyday resources.
 
The installation is composed of two opposing walls placed within the courtyard of the Hôtel des Trésoriers de la Bourse. Each wall presents two contrasting sides, interpreting both the external street-facing facade and the internal...

Across three evenings at the 92nd Street Y, Konstantin Krimmel and Ammiel Bushakevitz traversed all of Schubert's major song cycles with stark intensity.

«Noi facevamo la cultura; era l’autorità, a fare la controcultura.». Tamás St. Auby, artista ungherese tra i più radicali delle neoavanguardie esteuropee, fissa con queste parole, contenute nel commentario del 2013 alla performance Il pasto – In memoriam Batu Khan del 1966, un orientamento che potrebbe essere esteso a molta della produzione artistica contenuta nell’esibizione Poetry and Performance. The Eastern European Perspective, a cura di Tomáš Glanc e Sabine Hänsgen, con la co–curatela di Diego Giannettoni e Valentina Parisi, in mostra a Fabbrica del Vapore dal 5 al 17 dicembre 2025.
Orbitā, “Fm slow show”, 2012, colore, suono, 04:57 min., still da video, courtesy: Orbitā
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Dear Joan with her trills and ornaments brings "Joy to the World" every holiday season. Wishing a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

According to the 2021 British Census, 18.5% of Coventry’s population identify as Asian or British Asian. A new exhibition at Herbert Art Gallery, funded by National Lottery Heritage fund, traces the experiences of a South Asian family in the city, following their lives from 1968 to 2010. The show takes a unique perspective, using the personal history and archive of curator Hardish Virk to explore universal themes of migration, activism and cultural identity across generations. At its centre are two films written and directed by artist and filmmaker Manjinder Virk, who is also the curator’s sister—adding an intimate, first-hand perspective to the narrative. The first film recreates their 1970s living...

Maria Balshaw, who has led London’s Tate group of museums since 2017, has announced that she will step down as director in spring 2026. Balshaw, who previously served as director of the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery, was the first woman to lead the organization, succeeding Nicholas Serota, who helmed Tate for nearly three decades. […]

The artefacts, most dating from the 4th century BC, include a terracotta statue of a woman and elaborate red-figure vessels

The HeadlinesCALLING TIME. The director of Tate in London, Maria Balshaw, will step down in spring 2026 after nearly a decade in the role, the institution said in a press release. Balshaw, who joined in 2017 after leading Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth, succeeded Nicholas Serota following his 29-year tenure. She called her time at Tate a privilege and said the institution is well positioned for new leadership. During her directorship, Balshaw oversaw major exhibitions including “Van Gogh and Britain,” “Yoko Ono,” and “Sargent and Fashion.” Her final project will be a large-scale Tracey Emin survey at Tate Modern next year. Tate highlighted Balshaw’s efforts to diversify the collection...

TIME Magazine announced that its 2025 Person of the Year is the collective “Architects of AI.” But Chicago-based illustrator Jason Seiler's representation of a handful of those honored for the magazine cover has generated more ire than the selection itself. While none of us are happy to see Elon Musk's face associated with the award for the second time, many are taking aim at Seiler's reimagining of one of the most famous historical photographs in the world. “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” taken in 1932 by an unknown artist, depicts 11 construction workers seated along a steel beam, part of the skeletal framework of what we now know as 30 Rockefeller Plaza, suspended some 850 feet (~259m) in...

The CEO of a Canadian national stepped down on Thursday following a special commissioner’s determination that she had mistreated staff throughout her decade-long tenure, using slurs and misogynistic language to refer to senior leadership. “In early December as the board was gaining a better understanding of the report—its timing, content and the expectations of government—the board confirmed CEO Marie Chapman’s decision to retire, and effective today, she has stepped away from her role,” Cynthia Price Verreault, chair of the Museum of Immigration at Pier 21’s board of trustees, wrote in a letter to stakeholders and staff on Thursday. The Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner released...

Joan Semmel’s paintings of contorted women — sometimes realist, sometimes surreal or abstracted — are mesmerizing and beautiful, but they are also disturbing. When her work is framed as such, the focus is typically shifted to the viewer: It unsettles because we’re used to media depictions of young, taut bodies, or it forces us to confront our own relationship with beauty standards and aging. I think that flattens her work. These paintings are far weirder than they get credit for.The 16 paintings in the one-room exhibition Joan Semmel: In the Flesh at the Jewish Museum constitute a sampling of various series from her half-century career, with a section in the center dedicated to works the artist...

Sylvia Snowden in 2024 (photo by Nick Singleton, courtesy White Cube)Sylvia Snowden has a curiosity about the human condition that begets active, engrossing paintings. Her canvases hover delicately between figuration and abstraction, evoking abundant movement and energy. Standing before the artworks feels electric — like something in you is being activated, previously suppressed emotions riled to attention.Snowden and I met in November, after her solo exhibition opened at White Cube New York. On the Verge gathers 20 of her paintings across two floors, on view through December 19. Our conversation began with her affinity for color and its potency, a lesson from childhood imparted by her beloved mother, who...

LONDON — Who was Lee Miller? There were two of her, really.One was the photographer featured in a current retrospective at Tate Britain, who was born in New York in 1907, moved to Paris in 1929, and then to London. She went to Europe in restless pursuit of the desire for others to believe in everything she had to offer — her multiple gifts as an artist, for example.The other was a model. Modeling in New York in the 1920s was her opening gambit. She had the looks and poise to succeed and her talents were quickly recognized. She arrived in Paris in the flapper era — sinuously tall, her hair close-cropped. My goodness, that wonderful androgynous look! She seemed made for the part — and the historical...

“Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center,” an exhibition at David Zwirner gallery in New York, was only on view at the gallery for four days, but during that short time, it raised $950,000 for the Ali Forney Center, a nonprofit that runs a 24-hour drop-in center for queer youth and offers assistance with housing, education, job training, and medical care. Its curator, art adviser Stephen Truax, initially had the goal of raising $350,000, slightly more than was raised at last year’s benefit exhibition. He more than doubled that amount. The previous two iterations of this event were co-organized with Sotheby’s auction house, and were smaller in scope, with six works by six artists available...

What do you want to express that you feel you can’t in everyday life? That’s the question composer and producer Max Cooper posed to his audience in hopes of unearthing some of the hidden parts of our shared emotional landscape. In return, he received more responses than expected, many of which tapped into passionate displays of pleasure and pain. “It was like finding a secret window into our collective psyches,” he writes. These submissions spawned a tender project in collaboration with musician Félix Gerbelot and animator Masanobu Hiraoka. A multi-part endeavor spanning an album and digital installation, On Being opens with a poignant music video. “It started from the sound of Felix Gerbelot’s...

The Taichung Green Museumbrary—new contemporary art museum and public library complex in Taichung, Taiwan, that may count as the first institution ever to have a portmanteau for a name—opens tomorrow. The long-awaited institution houses both the Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library, both of which will be connected by a roof garden known as the Culture Forest. “This integrated design reflects the museum and library’s vision of learning as a shared, living practice,” Yi-Hsin Lai, the inaugural director of the Taichung Art Museum, told the Art Newspaper. The complex, set within the city’s 165-acre Central Park, is on the site of a former military base and airport. The Museumbrary was...

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND—Te Ao Māori News reports that an eighteenth-century Maori war cloak, or pauku, gifted to Durham University’s Oriental Museum in 1971 and held in storage there for decades, has been repatriated to the Auckland Museum. The pauku was spotted in the Oriental Museum’s collection by visiting Maori experts, who worked with museum staff to ensure its safety. Only five such cloaks are known to exist. Densely woven with single-pair, weft twining, the thick textile would have been hardened with water, mud, and other substances. It could then be held against the torso or arm during combat to help absorb strikes, explained master Maori weaver Kahutoi Te Kanawa. Staff members at the Auckland...

After years of negotiations starting with a visit by the late Pope Francis in 2022, the Vatican repatriated a wealth of Indigenous cultural treasures that were unveiled this week in a warehouse belonging to the Canadian Museum of History. The institution in Gatineau, Quebec—around a 2.5-hour drive west of Montreal—is currently storing the 62-object handover while Indigenous elders and experts take stock of each piece and investigate its origins. As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), Vancouver Archbishop Richard Smith, representing the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said at a news conference on Tuesday, “We recognize that reconciliation is not a single event but a long...

KARABUK, TURKEY—According to a Türkiye Today report, a mosaic floor dated to the fourth century A.D. has been uncovered in northern Turkey’s ancient city of Hadrianopolis. Ersin Celikbas of Karabuk University said the floor was found in a large chamber in a palace complex. Identifying the chamber as a reception hall helped Celikbas and his colleagues clarify the structure’s architectural layout. The human figures in the mosaic are heavily damaged, but the remaining 80 percent of the floor is made up of images of peacocks drinking from a fountain, geometric patterns, ribbon motifs, and an eight-pointed star. Some of these images have not previously been found in the Black Sea region, he added. To read...

Caulking fragment with a fingerprint (left) and a high-resolution X-ray tomography scan of fingerprint region (right) COPENHAGEN, DENMARK—According to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, a new study of the 2,400-year-old Hjortspring boat, discovered with a cache of weapons in the early twentieth century on Denmark’s island of Als, suggests that it may have been constructed in the Baltic Sea region. First, Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University and his colleagues radiocarbon dated cording and caulk found with the boat to the fourth or third century B.C. Then, they used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine that the caulk had likely been made of animal fat and pine pitch. At...

An unwavering desire to play with scale, permanence, and fragility recurs in Rebecca Manson’s practice. The New York-based artist (previously) is known for magnifying the minuscule and preserving fleeting lifeforms in porcelain, a material regarded for both its resilience and delicacy. These dichotomies emerge through dynamic sculptures of butterflies and moths that drape down walls and across floors in dramatic displays. Each wing is comprised of tens of thousands of small, hand-crafted pieces Manson and her team refer to as “smushes.” Layered into undulating compositions, these individual pieces mimic the lush texture of scales and the protective patterns of disguise some species use to hide from...

Slab of the top section of a stalagmite DUBLIN, IRELAND—According to a Live Science report, declining rainfall and a volcanic eruption some 50,000 years ago may have led to the extinction of Homo floresiensis. This small hominin, also called a "hobbit," is known from fossils discovered in Liang Bua, a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. To track the amount of rainfall on the island, a team of researchers including Nick Scroxton of Maynooth University analyzed a stalagmite from Liang Luar, a cave near Liang Bua. Created by dripping water, stalagmites tend to form with less calcium carbonate and more magnesium during times of water shortage. The scientists were therefore able to determine that 76,000...

The Pakistani-British artist rose to fame in the 1990s with her “concise humour and profoundly understated visual language”

At Art Basel Paris, “the art world seemed to be staging a rally for art created by flesh-and-blood people”

At 51, Maryam Rohani Vakili is exploring the symbolism of Iranian doors and knockers in increasingly abstract ways. They've been experimenting with layering, texture, and color, especially red and turquoise, to express the tension between memory, silence, and identity. The studio feels vibrant and alive with this dialogue between tradition and contemporary abstraction. They're also deeply engaged with a smaller ongoing project, Care & Share, where they create tiny traditional ceramic shoes....

When designer Pedro Neves was an undergraduate student, he attended an advanced seminar during which students were charged with creating an alphabet using modular elements. “As someone with minimal experience with type design, I was struck by the excitement of generating letterforms simply by using pre-existing modules,” he says in a statement. Little did he know that the assignment would spur an international participatory and educational project. In his faculty role at the University of Illinois Chicago’s School of Design, Neves organized a graduate course emphasizing modularity for letterform design and typographic compositions. LEGO turned out to be an ideal system, comprising individual elements...

This spring's Talk of the Town is craving your operatic dominance and your submissions by January 15.

From raunchy Tom of Finland merch to a sponsorship deal for a Victorian loo—here are some of the arty items that have caught our eye this season

Ben Luke talks to the architecture critic and Gehry biographer Paul Goldberger, to the FLAG Art Foundation's founder and to Rebecca Shaykin, curator at New York's Jewish Museum

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In recital for the Los Angeles Opera, tenor Ben Bliss makes the case for the next stage of his career.

Reporting from concurrent openings at Asia's legacy biennials

Christmas kitsch is great fun, of course, but Christmas can be just as wonderful without it, as this great singer proves.

This winter, Tate St Ives presents a major new exhibition from Lithuanian-born artist Emilija Škarnulytė, best-known for moving-image works that blur the boundaries between documentary and the imaginary. The show features films and immersive installations that explore the fluidity of time and the invisible systems shaping contemporary life. The building’s size allows Škarnulytė’s work to unfold as a fully immersive environment. Architectural structures in the gallery will invite visitors to view a single film from a series of different perspectives and scales, from the macro to the micro. Here, Škarnulytė foregrounds the ways mythology and technology can intertwine as a transcendental force. Each...

Bart Nelissen is a visual artist whose work explores how we make sense of an increasingly overwhelming digital world. In his Aesthetica Art Prize-shortlisted series Datascapes, Nelissen takes cloud-like digital images and breaks them down into small geometric fragments – tiny squares that act like pieces of data. He layers and recombines these fragments, building new visual structures that reveal hidden patterns, echoing the human effort to find meaning in the chaos of information that surrounds us. Nelissen is fascinated by our instinctive drive for progress and our belief that innovation and technology can solve the problems we face. At the same time, he critically examines the darker side of...

Avvicinarsi all’atmosfera della mostra Rivers and Rooftops, la prima personale di Alfie Caine da Massimo De Carlo London, è come sfogliare una cartolina d’infanzia ritagliata e ricomposta: il cornicione di una casa, la strada che scende verso il mare, la tovaglia con le arance tornano alla memoria, familiari ma rinnovati da una cromia che li rende apparizioni sospese, lucide e insieme sottilmente irreali. Alfie Caine, formatosi nell’architettura e poi ritrovatosi alla pittura, lavora con lo spazio come fosse materia prima del desiderio; le sue tele non registrano soltanto un luogo, ma lo costruiscono come una condizione del sentire.
Alfie Caine, “Rivers and Rooftops”, 2025. Installation view,...

Frank Gehry, a towering figure in the worlds of architecture and design, died at his home in Santa Monica, California, on December 5, after a brief respiratory illness. Over the course of his eight-decade career, Gehry altered the look of modern cities with his ebulliently sculptural public buildings, becoming one of the best known and […]

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard), in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has named curator, writer, and educator Hamza Walker the winner of the 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. The honor, presented annually since 1998, recognizes “outstanding curatorial achievements of individuals bringing innovative thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to the field of exhibition-making,” per […]

The UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum has named Kathryn Kanjo as its new director. Kanjo, who for nine years has served as director and CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, will be the first leader of the institution, formed this past October when the University of California, Irvine, took over the Orange County Museum of Art and […]

It’s somehow been more than a year already since we launched Colossal’s new site design, and it’s spectacular to hear your feedback about how you peruse and use the site. Whether you click on things of interest in our newsletters or encourage your students to explore thousands of articles about artists, nature, science, and visual culture, we want you to keep coming back—and learning—again and again. That’s why we’re continuing to build out the Colossal Art Glossary! This month, we’ve added 10 new entries: Activist Art Bauhaus Brutalism Community Art / Social Practice Dutch Golden Age painting Land Art / Environmental Art Magical Realism Tondo Vanitas WPA / Federal Art Project Teachers...

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SUFFOLK, ENGLAND—A hearth dated to 400,000 years ago has been unearthed near the village of Barnham in eastern England, CNN reports. Heat-shattered flint axes and two pieces of pyrite, thought to have been used to create sparks, were also uncovered. Iron pyrite is not available in the area and would have been brought to the site. Nick Ashton of the British Museum said that the hearth, which contains hydrocarbons from burned wood and signs of repeated burning, is the earliest evidence for the controlled use of fire in the world. No hominin remains have been found in Barnham, so it is not clear who started the fires in the hearth. However, Neanderthal fossils dated to the same time period have been unearthed...

From sequins, glass beads, rhinestones, plaster, paint, and more, Jorge Mañes Rubio sculpts new narratives from ancient tales. Drawing on the motifs of Spanish illuminated manuscripts, as well as family heirlooms and pop culture, the artist explores the relationship between past and present, reinterpreting religious imagery into unexpected forms like beaded basketballs and other functional objects. One recent work, “La Noche que Desvela una Luz sin Medida,” fashions a black safety glove used by motocross racers into a form that evokes a medieval gauntlet. It’s embellished with flame motifs, twisted cord, glass, and tiny medallions that the artist’s great-grandmother collected at monasteries across...

Head of Research at Framer Framed Emily Shin-Jie Lee reflects on how ‘Shapeshifters’ rethinks museological conventions, foregrounds opacity and care, and gathers artists whose practices challenge inherited colonial frameworks. Installation view of ‘Shapeshifters: On Wounds, […]

A landmark recognition for the neurodivergent artist whose dynamic sculptures and drawings reshape contemporary abstraction The winner of the Turner Prize 2025, Nnena Kalu, in their exhibition at Cartwright Hall. The winner was announced at […]

Bringing together works that orbit around the sun as image, index, and metaphor, curator Murtaza Vali offers a compelling lens on ten years of experimentation at 421. SUN™ becomes an elemental archive through which the […]