Spending most of his life in slavery, David Drake was denied the right to benefit from his own creativity and so to be an artist in every sense—until now

The repatriations are linked to long-running investigations into looting at Bubon and other archaeological sites, as prosecutors in New York step up pressure on museums and collectors

The new union, which 96% of eligible employees voted for, will represent more than 300 employees

For his new show at the Joslyn, the multidisciplinary artist drew inspiration in part from 19th-century watercolours of Indigenous communities by the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer

It is estimated to fetch more than double the category's existing record for a collection at auction

Dear Mayor-Elect Mamdani and members of the Arts & Culture Transition Team:As you remake New York into a better home for all those forgotten by the politics of our city, a place where working people and immigrants truly feel the power that belongs in their hands, remember this: Arts and culture are the very vehicles through which we express the power to shape our destinies. We must ensure that every member of our communities can actively participate in artistic and cultural creation and access affordable, local arts programs.Tragically, artists in all disciplines (be it visual arts, dance, film, music, theater, or writing) who are recognized and fairly compensated for their work increasingly come from rich and...

The US Senate on December 19 confirmed Mary Anne Carter as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. Carter occupied the role during the first Trump presidency. During her first term, she expanded Creative Forces (a creative arts therapy program for US service members and veterans recovering from psychological health conditions) and elevated initiatives […]

The Las Vegas Museum of Art on December 17 released updated renderings of its future home, designed by the office of Pritzker Prize–winning Burkinabé architect Diébédo Francis Kéré. New York–based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is serving as the architect of record on the project. Influenced by southwestern Nevada’s Mojave Desert, the African savanna’s […]

The British Museum is sending some of its prized art and artifacts on long-term loan to countries that the British Empire previously colonized. While those nations have long called for the repatriation of objects they consider stolen, the institution may be hoping to blunt some of those criticisms by sending valuable historical items—though not always those that come from the recipients of the loans.  A Mumbai museum, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), is now host to a loan of some 80 artifacts, including an ancient wooden model of an Egyptian riverboat and devotional Sumerian statues from 2200 BCE, as well as a Roman mosaic from London and a marble bust of Roman emperor Augustus, the...

Political consultant Mary Anne Carter, who served as the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) during the first Trump administration, will lead the agency again following Senate approval this week. Carter's appointment comes almost a year after Maria Rosario Jackson, a former Biden-appointed chair of the agency, stepped down from the post one day after Trump was inaugurated for a second term. Jackson was the first African American and the first Mexican-American person to lead the federal arts agency. In the 11 months since Jackson stepped down, the NEA rescinded arts grants en masse, notifying awardees that their projects were cancelled as the agency refocused on promoting “skilled trade...

A controversial monument to "victims of communism" in downtown Ottawa will no longer include the names of specific people after the Canadian government reportedly discovered potential Nazi affiliations among the commemorated individuals. The memorial, "Canada, a Land of Refuge," originally proposed under conservative former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was inaugurated last December by the government of Canada and Tribute to Liberty, an organization formed to build a monument honoring those "affected by communism." Over 500 specific names were reportedly expected to be engraved on the memorial within a year of its unveiling, though Jewish groups and historians raised concerns for years that over half of the...

In a move that prompted immediate questions about its legality, the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., voted on Thursday to add President Donald Trump’s name to an institution he has roiled since taking office in January. The move, following a year-long fascination with a center that has not been a top-of-mind priority for other presidents in the way that it has been for Trump, was met with disapproval from members of Kennedy’s family and legal experts who say it goes against a stipulation put in place after Congress renamed the center in the wake of JFK’s assassination in 1963. As reported by CNN, spokeswoman Roma Daravi said, “The Kennedy...

Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life at the Morgan Library & Museum sets out to trace the impact of the Psalms on “men and women in medieval Europe” from the 6th to 16th centuries. But while the exhibition offers a beautiful and instructive display of manuscript artistry, it risks presenting a sanitized vision of the book's history, one that glosses over the fundamental power dynamics and conflicts inherent in medieval religious life. By framing these "gloriously illuminated" Psalters as impacting Medieval men and women in general, the exhibition risks creating the illusion of widespread engagement and access. In reality, these breathtakingly expensive manuscripts were tools of the...

The Last Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) has released renderings of its new museum building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré. Kéré’s design for the 60,000-square-foot building is inspired by the nearby Mojave Desert, the surrounding Red Rock Mountains, baobab trees, and Las Vegas’s Guardian Angel Cathedral, a Catholic church with an A-frame design built by architect Paul Revere Williams in 1963. The museum’s mosaic-like façade will be constructed from local reddish-brown stone. A roof canopy will create a large shaded plaza by the entrance, and there will also be a sculpture garden. “Las Vegas is a place of architectural marvels and of a timeless, awe-inspiring desert...

Array

learning through clay, weight, and material negotiation
 
Athens-born artist and self-taught designer Harry Rigalo works at the edge between design and sculpture, where objects hover between furniture, relic, and offering. His practice approaches materials as active systems rather than tools. ‘I stopped seeing materials as isolated objects and started understanding them as parts of a system that activates space and the body,’ he tells designboom.  
 
This approach is currently reflected in Forms Without Briefs, Rigalo’s exhibition at The Great Design Disaster in Milan, on view until December 30th. In recent months, clay has become central to his practice. Raw, unstable, and time-bound, it collapses...

When considering Miguel Arzabe’s bold, woven works, it’s unsurprising that he begins by painting two abstract pieces. Vibrant fields of acrylic spread across his canvases before they’re sliced into long strips and reconfigured. Resulting are dynamic compositions that meld art historical traditions with Arzabe’s Bolivian heritage, drawing on longstanding Andean imagery and weaving practices. Next month at Johansson Projects, the Oakland-based artist presents a collection of new wall works and suspended sculptures in Sin Contar Cincuenta. Arzabe refers to his practice as offering a “productive confrontation” of distinct cultures, approaches, and periods, and these new compositions continue his...

The National Endowment for the Arts has a new chair: Mary Anne Carter, the same political operative who served in the post during Trump’s first term. The Senate voted this morning to confirm her along party lines, by a 53–43 margin. In keeping with his tendency to appoint agency heads who either lack subject-matter expertise or are openly hostile to the missions they are meant to support, Trump has reappointed a controversial pick with no other professional experience in the arts and a record as a reliable supporter of Republican politicians. Carter also worked in the 1990s for the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that authored Project 2025, the extremist policy blueprint that has shaped...

If you need any further proof that the world has gone topsy-turvy, look no further than the theft of an icon of the baby Jesus from a nativity scene in Grand Place in the Brussels city center in late November. The nativity scene is the work of German-born artist and designer Victoria-Maria Geyer, who constructed the figures in the scene of Christ’s birth not out of wood, as is traditionally done, but out of recycled textiles with faces consisting only of black and brown patchwork with no identifiable features. Geyer wrote in her original proposal for the installation that her aim with the design of the city-commissioned installation, entitled “Fabrics of the Nativity,” was to create a scene in which...

The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) at Columbia College Chicago will host an exhibition next year titled “If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground” and guest curated by leading photography scholar and Harvard professor Sarah Lewis. Opening September 3, “If Emmett Till Lived” will feature works from MoCP’s permanent collection as a way to “visualize the life Emmett Till might have lived had he not been murdered in an act of racial violence in 1955,” according to a release. The exhibition will feature an intergenerational selection of 70 photographers from various backgrounds. Among those included are 20th-century giants like Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Stieglitz,...

Lincolnshire-based artist Anthony Theakston continues his explorations of common birds like barn owls and herons, sculpting their likeness in sleek bronze and ceramic. Smooth wings and bodies contrast the fluffy feathers typical of fowl, as they hunch over or curl up as if taking a nap. Elegant and seemingly primed for flight, the avians perch between abstract and realistic representations. Theakston has several exhibitions and fairs planned for 2026, including Naarden Art Fair and Brussels Affordable Art Fair with DeKunst Salon and the Washington Winter Show and Art Palm Beach with Gladwell and Patterson. He’s also represented by Gallery Bartoux, and you can find more of his work on Instagram. Do stories...

Array

A photographic collaboration between photographer Samuel Pasquie and artist Olivier Charland. It began as an observation of a particular pattern or “quiet repetition” amongst their respective archives. Despite the photographs being taken independently, they nonetheless shared a kind of visual logic. In exploring how individual acts of image-making could converge so often, they look beyond their close, fifteen-year friendship and shared home base, to reflect on “emergence” and the ways in which large-scale patterns can arise from small interactions. As their friend, Samuel Bonneau, writes in the intro text for the book:
“If a resemblance appears, what does it mean? The human mind, primed to detect...

Matthew Polenzani charms the pants off of Philadelphia.

Array

Phantom: a Self-Playing Chessboard Built as an Heirloom Object
 
A synthesis of traditional woodcraft and silent robotics, Phantom reimagines the chessboard as a self‑playing heirloom. Phantom is the world’s first robotic chessboard crafted from solid wood. A masterful blend of engineering, design, and woodwork has re‑engineered one of the oldest strategic objects: the chessboard. Phantom Chess features a hidden, silent drive system that allows pieces to move autonomously, while its exterior remains pure walnut and maple, eliminating the visible motors and toy‑like aesthetic that have defined automated chess until now. Drawing on precision sensor grids and ultra‑quiet linear actuators, Phantom turns...

geometry and materials define MANMADE Seoul flagship
 
Stocker Lee Architetti completes the MANMADE flagship store for Wooyoungmi in Seoul’s Itaewon district. The 970-square-meter building occupies a compact, curved plot along a slightly inclined road, a condition that becomes the primary design driver of the project. The architects allow the perimeter of the site to define the volume, resulting in an architecture that bends, adjusts, and aligns itself with the movement of the street.
 
The geometry of the building follows the curvature of the road and sets the tone for the project. The architecture does not compete with its surroundings or the garments it houses but instead constructs a measured spatial...

There's plenty of full-on Christmas music to love in Anne Sophie von Otter's "Home for Christmas."

tanween partners with dubai design week & isola design group
 
For the first time in its eight editions, Tanween (Ithra) introduced creative partners as part of its program, marking a significant step in the platform’s evolution. In this edition, Isola Design Group and Dubai Design Week joined as creative partners, expanding the event’s reach across the Gulf region and beyond. Through exhibitions, dialogue, and shared expertise, both platforms amplified Tanween’s international outlook while reinforcing its community-driven foundation. In conversation with designboom, Isola Design Group’s Creative Director Elif Resitoglu and Dubai Design Week Director Natasha Carella reflect on how this collaboration...

TOP 10 ART EXHIBITIONS THAT DEFINED 2025
 
2025 has been a busy and exciting year for art, with exhibitions ranging from immersive installations to large-scale retrospectives. At designboom, we experienced many of these shows, some in person and others virtually, and took note of the ones that stayed with us. As the year comes to a close, we look back at the top exhibitions that made the strongest impression and are likely to be remembered for years to come. In Melbourne, Yayoi Kusama unveiled a dazzling new infinity room at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). At Tate Modern, Do Ho Suh presented intricate fabric architectures and during Milan Design Week 2025, A.A. Murakami filled Museo della Permanente...

Array

London Art Fair is back for 2026, bringing together a curated selection of leading Modern and Contemporary galleries from the UK and around the world. It’s an event that marks the beginning of the international art calendar, setting the tone for conversations and curation throughout the year. Now in its 38th year, the fair remains an unrivalled destination for collectors and art enthusiasts to discover new work and connect with one another. Visitors can expect the very best mixture of 20th century masters and emerging figures, each one reaffirming London Art Fair’s role as a cornerstone of the UK art market – a place to discover notable pieces, deepen existing connections and kick off the season with...

Array

All’interno della Galleria SECCI, a Milano, NOVO si configura come una piattaforma di ricerca dedicata a pratiche artistiche che lavorano sulle fratture storiche, politiche e simboliche del presente. Il progetto, nato a Firenze e attualmente curato da Marco Scotini, si distingue per una programmazione costruita per affinità concettuali e tensioni condivise, piuttosto che per criteri formali o geografici. In questa intervista, Sara Cirillo, che segue direttamente NOVO, ripercorre la genesi del progetto, approfondisce il lavoro sviluppato con artisti come Doruntina Kastrati e Omar Mismar e anticipa le prossime tappe del programma, che includono José Carlos Martinat, Seba Calfuqueo e Prabhakar Pachute,...

Staffers at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on December 15 and 16 voted to unionize under the auspices of AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36, with 96 percent casting their electronic ballots in favor of doing so. The election was facilitated by the American Arbitration Association and approved by the National Labor […]

Italian Conceptual artist and theorist Franco Vaccari, whose participatory photographic works presaged the logics of social media and helped photography gain recognition as an art form, died on December 12. He was eighty-nine. His death was announced by the Bologna gallery P420, which represents him. Veronica Santi, writing in a 2020 issue of Artforum, characterized […]

"I have a hunch that any successful painting creates work for the viewer,” says the painter Ben Spiers. “I think that's part of the reason why it can be hard to begin the process of looking at paintings seriously..." read the full article on Benjamin Spiers by clicking above!
The post Benjamin Spiers Paints Disconcerting Surrealism For the Modern Age first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

At the start of a new short film, a young boy is gifted a present of a stuffed wolf at a family dinner—an animal he’s afraid of. We’re soon transported to a forest, where we witness a wily tale of compassion and friendship. The film has gone viral since it was released in early December, but this animated gem wasn’t created by Disney or Pixar—it’s a grocery store ad. And it’s shed some unexpectedly bright light on both the joys of the holiday season and the inimitable warmth of human-made film. French supermarket chain Intermarché launched its advertisement titled “Le mal aimé,” or “Unloved,” during a season in which Coca-Cola’s annual ad was made with generative AI and news of...

Haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet? Don’t worry, neither have we. This season, give the gift of daily inspiration with a Colossal Membership. We love writing about exciting artists and sharing important stories, and by joining our creative community, your loved one can experience that same joy of discovering the world’s vast creativity—a meaningful gift to enjoy all year long. From now through the end of the year, annual memberships start at only $55/year (that’s $20 off!) and they include: A members-only newsletter with sneak-peeks into upcoming events, giveaways, and access to Studio Confidential, an exclusive interview series spotlighting artists and behind-the-scenes looks at their...

A patchy production and musical performance can't dull the edge of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Komische Oper Berlin

Washington National Opera’s holiday presentation of The Little Prince, based on the classic French novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, showcased the company’s Cafritz Young Artists

The process of sublimation is the direct transformation of ice into gas without becoming liquid. Artist Kate Hrynko captures this process in both domestic freezers and natural settings. Faded Ice is a series of ephemeral artworks made by placing paint onto ice, and then documenting what remains after sublimation. The work was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Emerging Art Prize 2025 These experiments explore how melting alters environmental conditions, referencing albedo loss – a decrease in surface reflectivity that leads to more solar radiation being absorbed rather than reflected, intensifying global warming. Hrynko’s vivid images merge photography and painting, creating abstract compositions that...

A little more than ten years ago, a particularly—shall we say—interesting painting restoration went viral, spawning memes and earning the piece the cringeworthy nickname “Monkey Christ.” The work, known as “Ecce Homo,” is a century-old portrayal of Jesus in a church in Borja, Spain, that a local octogenarian attempted to restore. The attention “Ecco Homo” brought, which could be viewed as positive or not depending on your perspective, actually bolstered the town’s struggling economy and raised tens of thousands of euros for charity as people pilgrimaged to see the infamously bungled attempt. But it’s far from the only aging artwork to meet disastrous results when someone tried their hand at...

I bought this album because I found the photo on the cover to be Camp.

When Amber Creswell Bell began interviewing people for a new project, she asked them one key question: what makes a “good” image? Two answers appeared time and time again. The first, that it stays with you beyond the initial viewing. The second, it must prompt you to see and understand the world differently. There is no doubt that the works featured in this publication do just that. As the author describes, this is not an “elitist anthology of ‘best in show’ artists,” but rather an exploration of “the very humanness of art.” Exposure features 40 contemporary photographers from Australia and New Zealand, each sharing an insight into their practice, ranging from the whimsical to the wild,...

Mapping decolonial futures through material memory, political imagination, and the art of world-making Installation view of Gondwana la fabrique du futur , by Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo © Natt Fejfar / […]

 
AUTO PHOTO Awards 2025’s Peoples’ Choice Award winner Max Edleston takes us behind the scenes and shares the story behind his award-winning image, Dancing in the Rain, and the rest of the images made during the shoot. 
“I’m incredibly grateful and blown away that the public chose my work for the People’s Choice Award. Seeing the absolutely stunning photography in the top 100 has been inspiring. I want to thank all my fellow photographers on that list; your high-quality of work pushes us all to work harder and smarter to create truly exceptional images. I’m also truly honoured that the judging panel highly commended my image in the motorsport category. As someone still finding their feet in the...

«Perché sono grandi architetti? Perché hanno proiettato una piccola città di provincia nel futuro». Con queste parole l’assessore alla cultura del Comune di Reggio Emilia, Marco Mietto, presenta una mostra davvero coraggiosa. “La costruzione della città moderna. Gli archivi degli architetti del Novecento a Reggio Emilia” è il frutto di una monumentale e certosina ricerca d’archivio che ha toccato studi tecnici, famiglie e soprattutto i fondi d’archivio speciali della Biblioteca Panizzi della città. La mostra, curata da Giordano Gasparini e Andrea Zamboni, è accompagnata da un catalogo davvero stupefacente, pubblicato da thedotcompany edizioni, che nelle sue quattrocento pagine riesce a...

On December 15, artists, musicians, cultural workers, and local politicians gathered in New York’s Federal Hall, where the Bill of Rights was introduced, to defend artistic rights in the US. Under the rallying cry “The First Amendment was born here; we will not let it die here,” some fifty participants called for December 15 to […]

“My art has always tried to illustrate the spiritual world leaking into the material world. Two worlds affect and play off each other..." Read the full article on Justin Lovato by clicking above!
The post Justin Lovato & The Atomic Soup of the Natural Universe first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Oluremi C. Onabanjo, The Peter Schub Curator in The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, reflects on archives, authorship, and Pan-African imagination in Ideas of Africa. Oumar Ka, Untitled (Two […]

Kevin Bell  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Kevin Bell’s Website
Kevin Bell on Instagram

In 2019, photojournalist Lorenzo Tugnoli was on assignment in Afghanistan. He’d lived in the country between 2009 and 2015, before returning with The Washington Post during a period of political upheaval. The USA and Taliban signed an “agreement for bringing peace to Afghanistan” in February 2020, after 18 years of conflict and the period that followed saw the complete withdrawal of foreign forces, the collapse of the Afghan Republic and, in August 2021, the Taliban’s full return to power. Tugnoli’s new book, It Can Never Be The Same, documents this pivotal time of transition, turning the lens on the ordinary lives shaped by international events. The publication goes beyond traditional reportage,...

Daniele Spanò è un artista visivo che opera tra regia, scenografia e installazione, elaborando ambienti in cui video, luce e suono costruiscono dispositivi ibridi. Attivo dal 2004, sviluppa progetti multicanale ed espone in Italia e all’estero, dagli Stati Uniti all’Australia. Il progetto Lasciami cadere in mostra a Sala 1 – Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea a Roma esplora l’ambiguità che oggi caratterizza le immagini, in un’epoca in cui il digitale ha saturato lo sguardo. L’artista ha concentrato due anni di ricerca sul tema della caduta in un percorso di dispositivi provvisori: schermi e sculture mostrano la loro vulnerabilità, a volte privi della loro funzione originaria. Le...

A landmark exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art explores nearness, movement, and cultural negotiation through the work of more than forty UAE-based artists. Dialogue. © Farah al-Qasimi Opening at the Seoul Museum of Art, […]

In 2019, four major bridges across London’s River Thames lit up. They were the first instalment of the Illuminated River project, an ambitious endeavour which, by mid-2021, had become the longest public art commission in the world – incorporating five more of the city’s bridges and spanning 3.2 miles. Behind this monumental effort was Leo Villareal (b. 1967), a Mexican-American artist celebrated for fusing light, technology and architecture. Here, he worked with LED technology and custom software to “paint with light,” producing sequenced patterns influenced by the site, history and engineering of each bridge. He drew inspiration from a range of sources, including Impressionist colour palettes and...

Il momento contemporaneo è segnato dal crollo di categorie stabili (reale e virtuale, sé e altro, verità e speculazione) e dalla proliferazione di immagini e narrazioni che plasmano il nostro immaginario collettivo: i media digitali, con la loro capacità di frammentare e sovrapporre, accolgono il nostro riflesso e ci risputano addosso una visione deformata. È in questo stato di incertezza che Dorota Gawęda ed Eglė Kulbokaitė affondano le radici del loro lavoro per Incommunicability is itself a source of pleasures, primo solo show del duo presso The Address (Brescia), visitabile fino al 24 gennaio 2026.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, “Enclosure”, 2025, installation view, “Incommunicability...

Brynne Quinlan  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Brynne Quinlan’s Website
Brynne Quinlan on Instagram

In Leading to the Middle, curator Munira Al Sayegh revisits the sites, mentors, and moments that shaped the UAE’s contemporary art ecosystem. Her section of ‘Rays, Ripples, Residue’ traces how influence circulates through communities and […]

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...