Eight of the Queen frontman's costumes will be exhibited in the free 'Splendid Things' display at the South Kensington museum

They should sell pay-per-view tickets to this like WWE.

EPICENTER FOR BROOKLYN’S CREATIVE SCENE
 
Along Brooklyn’s Sunset Park waterfront, MADE: Bush Terminal is home to a growing community of artisans, designers, and industrial pioneers shaping the future of New York City’s creative economy. To support these urban makers, New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) revitalized the historic public building after decades of restricted access, creating productive workspaces designed to fuel local innovation alongside economic benchmarks – including a projected 165 permanent jobs and 2.6 billion USD in economic impact over 30 years. Designed by nARCHITECTS, the MADE (Manufacturers, Artisans, Designers, and Entrepreneurs) campus provides 140,000...

Sliman Mansour, a major figure in Palestinian art, died yesterday at age 79. Drawing from the bleeding wound of the Nakba and the fight for liberation, his work is a defiant response to those who wish Palestine was just a distant memory. Mansour painted the pride and dignity of his people. There is no anger in his canvases. No call for revenge. Just a people who deserve to live on their land. I know for a fact that he wished none of these paintings had to be made in the first place.—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief How AIDS Activists Turned Graphic Design Into a Weapon In the mid-1980s, as the AIDS crisis simmered hotter and hotter in the apartments and bathhouses of New York, a band of frightened, fed-up...

ANNE LOCH RETURNS TO THE SPOTLIGHT IN BERN
 
Flowers nearly two meters tall, a flock of sheep stretching more than three and a half meters across, and a raven’s head enlarged beyond human scale introduce the monumental dimensions that define much of Anne Loch’s work. Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern brings together around 80 works by the German artist for Anne Loch. Painting: So what?, curated by Amélie Joller and on view through September 20, 2026. The exhibition marks only her second major solo presentation in Switzerland and opens a window onto an extensive body of work that remained largely outside the institutional spotlight for decades.
 
Loch began her career within Cologne’s increasingly visible art...

Freddie Mercury’s costumes span Queen’s rise and solo career
 
The V&A will trace Freddie Mercury’s evolving stage persona through eight costumes and personal accessories, placing the Queen frontman’s wardrobe across its South Kensington galleries from October 24th, 2026, to January 17th, 2027. Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things is developed with Mary Austin, Mercury’s former fiancée, close friend, and confidante of 20 years, who is lending seven of the looks for the display.
 
The free trail places the clothes within the V&A’s permanent galleries, architecture, and collections. Each of the six stops focuses on a different moment in Mercury’s career, creating connections between his...

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sordo madaleno sinks arte abierto baja into los cabos
 
At Ánima Village in Los Cabos, a long ramp slips away from the plaza and drops four meters into the ground. The descent leads to Arte Abierto Baja, a 180-square-meter open-air gallery designed by Sordo Madaleno for large-scale sculpture and site-specific installations. Above, the mixed-use development continues around terracotta pavilions and planted squares. Below, the architecture reduces itself to tall walls, rough concrete and open sky.
 
The 17-meter ramp is partly covered, keeping the arrival compressed until the gallery opens at its base. Walls rise more than five meters around the space, enough to give large works a real sense of enclosure...

Lasciata alle spalle una torre medievale dell’XI secolo e qualche palazzo cinquecentesco della Serenissima, sperso tra la speculazione edilizia degli anni Sessanta, a pochi passi dalla ottocentesca piazza Erminio Ferretto (intitolata a un partigiano morto nella guerra di liberazione dal nazifascismo) nel centro storico di Mestre, oltrepassato il duomo di S. Lorenzo, attraversato un restaurato cortile con porticato settecentesco, per studiato contrasto sorge il Museo del Novecento M9 (progettato dallo studio di architettura tedesco Sauerbruch Hutton, studio che aveva vinto il concorso internazionale indetto dalla Fondazione di Venezia per la riqualificazione di quell’area urbana), museo  ideato e proposto...

HUBARCH COOLS DOWN BAZILIO OPTICS BOUTIQUE
 
For Bazilio Optics Boutique, Hubarch works with a restrained palette of pale blue and white, then interrupts it with a single flash of red. Set on the ground floor of a residential building, the 100-square-meter store occupies a raw, open shell framed by two oversized windows and a glazed entrance. The existing openness gave the studio a useful starting point: plenty of morning light, few spatial obstacles, and room to give the optics brand an architectural identity of its own.
 
Rather than filling the interior with competing gestures, the design keeps almost everything deliberately quiet. Pale blues wash across walls and textured plaster, while the exposed...

Sliman Mansour died in Jerusalem on August 24, 2026, age 79. (photo Wiki Palestine via Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0)Sliman Mansour, a renowned Palestinian painter who chronicled over six decades of his country’s fight for liberation, has died in Jerusalem at age 79. Mansour’s family announced the news in an Instagram story post on Monday, August 24, following an earlier announcement that the artist was in “critical condition.” The cause of death has not yet been made public.“To the world, he leaves behind a life filled with beauty, memory, and a legacy that will continue to live through all those he touched," the artist's family wrote in an Instagram story post. "But to us, we lost a father,...

French newspaper Le Monde has published allegations of sexual and professional misconduct against Marseille museum president Pierre-Olivier Costa, sourced from a confidential report compiled by France’s General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs (IGAC). Costa, who is the president of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM) in Marseille, was suspended from his post in June […]

Even though September and the fall publication flurry are inching closer, mentally, I’m still in June — colorful, lush, sun-soaked June. My camera roll from this summer takes me right back to those euphoric weeks of New York City victory (Knicks in five!) and languorous time outdoors. Eight decades earlier, Helen Levitt captured the kernel of that same city spirit: children playing, subway shenanigans, and playful sidewalk chalk drawings.Hers is one of several bodies of work at the heart of new and recent photo books, evergreen companions of sorts. Check out our list of favorites this month, including titles on Nuyorican photographer Sophie Rivera and Walter Chandoha’s absolutely precious trove of some...

Rita Flores, in a new video interview, claims she was pressured by FSB agents who threatened to kill her family

Joy Machine is thrilled to present The Peace of Wild Things, a duo exhibition by Chicago-based American artist Emmy Star Brown and San Jose-based Korean artist Danym Kwon. This is Brown’s second exhibition at Joy Machine and Kwon’s third. Drawing its title from Wendell Berry’s often-quoted poem, The Peace of Wild Things is a return to wonder through disparate yet complementary practices. For both Brown and Kwon, color and layering become a means of self-discovery and a way to tap into the emotions, dreams, and memories that might not surface otherwise. Their practices diverge in notable ways—Brown works abstractly, while Kwon turns to surreal representations of care and domestic life—but when...

Unknown photographer’s portrait Maria Martins (undated) (all images courtesy Abbeville Press)In Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic last artwork, a nude woman lies sprawled out in a field. According to Francis M. Naumann, the figure in Étant donnés (1946–66) is based on Maria Martins, the Brazilian sculptor who was Duchamp’s model and first true love. In Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired (2026), the historian draws a clear line from the artists’ little-known liaison to Duchamp’s mysterious magnum opus, arguing that Martins spurred his final two decades of artistic creation.The book takes its name from Martins’s arresting 1946 bronze...

Estonian artists are banding together and donating 124 artworks for a charity auction to raise emergency funds following a bank scam that defrauded the Estonian Artists’ Association (EKL) of nearly €700,000 (about $816,400), reports local media outlet ERR News. Artworks from the association’s own collection, which include pieces by established Estonian artists, will also be added to the auction taking place from October 8—10 at ARS Art City, preceded by an exhibition opening on September 18. On May 15, the EKL learned that scammers, acting through their chief accountant, defrauded their Swedbank and SEB bank accounts of nearly $800,000 in government subsidies via an elaborate scheme disguised as...

The FBI repatriated some 48 illegally trafficked cultural artifacts to the Egyptian government at a ceremony last Friday in Los Angeles. Among the artifacts were carved figures, amulets, and tomb equipment; they date variously to the Pharaonic, Roman, and Coptic periods, thus spanning from 3,100 BCE to the 9th century CE. “These handed-over artifacts represent an integral part of the history and cultural heritage of Egypt and its people, and we are very glad and honored to bring those home,” Egyptian ambassador Hossam Eldeen Aly said in a press release. “Egypt looks forward to more constructive and solid bilateral cooperation in the cultural field and beyond.” The tip came from the owner, who contacted...

A horse named Champagne is the star of a new public mural in Michigan commissioned by the Detroit Institute of the Arts (DIA). Wrapping around two exterior walls of the mane-tenance barn in the animal's home in Waterford Township, “Champagne's Chateau” was commemorated on Saturday, August 22, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and meet-and-greet with Champagne herself.One of eight murals that will be debuted across the Detroit metro area this year as part of the DIA's Partners in Public Art Program (PIPA), the work is installed in Waterford's Hess-Hathaway Park, a 165-acre community park comprised of trails and an "animal exhibit farm" housing horses, chickens, goats, sheep, peacocks, and...

The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) today issued a so-called spotlight report revealing concerning trends in museum crimes across the continent. The report, whose contents are summarized at intelligence and regulatory tracking platform Insight EU Monitoring, comes on the heels of last October’s high-profile broad-daylight jewel theft at the Louvre in Paris as well as a spate […]

The FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office returned forty-eight Egyptian cultural artifacts to their country of origin in a repatriation ceremony last Friday, the organization announced in a press release. The ongoing investigation into the objects, which is being conducted alongside analysis from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has determined that the suspected trafficker of […]

A stolen Pablo Picasso etching has been returned to a Milwaukee art dealer eight years after its theft, the Associated Press reported. The artwork is one of 30 known Torero prints by Pablo Picasso dated to 1949, and belonged to Bill DeLind of DeLind Fine Art Appraisals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the time of its theft in 2018, it was valued between $35,000 and $50,000. Today, it likely meets the high estimate, according to the report.  Swiped from the DeLind Fine Art Appraisals under mysterious circumstance, the artwork resurfaced thanks to Milwaukee landlord Tim Dertz. He found the print hanging in the apartment of an evicted tenant, with “tons of dust across the top of it”, he told local television...

The Smithsonian’s board of regents is set to meet on August 31 to discuss the possibility of designating a building that it already owns as the new home of the National Museum of the American Latino in Washington, DC, per reports. Choosing to house the forthcoming museum in the Arts and Industries Building would enable the Smithsonian to […]

BİLECİK, TURKEY—Hürriyet Daily News reports that 25 turtle figurines carved from limestone have been discovered in a cave in northwestern Turkey. Some of the figurines, which measure less than one foot long and eight inches wide, had been coated with clay. The figurines have been dated to between 14,500 and 11,200 years ago by a team of researchers led by archaeologist Deniz Sarı of Edebali University. They suggest that the figurines were placed in the cave for ritual purposes. “There is an architectural arrangement forming circular rings,” Sarı said. “Around these, we found turtle figurines, mostly half-shaped or quickly fashioned from limestone, inserted into the ground,” she explained....

The Kvareli Foundation for Contemporary Art, a private institution founded by Georgian businessman and collector Jemal Inaishvili, will open to the public on October 31. Located in Kvareli, in the Kakheti region of eastern Georgia, the foundation is devoted to the preservation and exhibition of Georgian contemporary art, as well as to its study and […]

Lead seal of Irene Komnene SOFIA, BULGARIA—A Byzantine-era seal belonging to the empress Irene Komnene has been unearthed in Perperikon, the site of an ancient city in southern Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains, according to a Greek Reporter article. Archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov said that Irene Komnene was married to John III Doukas Vatatzes, the emperor of Nicaea, which is located in northwestern Anatolia. In the early thirteenth century, John III Doukas Vatatzes wanted to recover control of Constantinople, while the Bulgarian tsar, Ivan Asen II, had become more powerful. The seal could reflect communication between Nicaea and Bulgaria, Ovcharov explained. Eventually, in 1235, Nicaea and Bulgaria formed an...

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. Good morning! Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” soccer ball has sold for £2.5 million ($3.4 million) at auction. After scammers stole nearly €700,000 ($816,600) from Estonia’s Artists’ Association, artists donated 124 works to an emergency auction. Canada’s Indigenous Art Center says 111 works from its federal collection of more than 5,000 Indigenous artworks are unaccounted for.  The Headlines GOAL DIGGER. Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” soccer ball has sold for £2.5 million ($3.4 million) at auction, 40 years after the Argentina captain used it to score one of...

The Kherson Regional Art Museum in Ukraine is the latest casualty in Russia’s ongoing war with the country. A Russian strike last Thursday set off a fire at the institution, Reuters reports. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said that there were no casualties, but the museum’s building and artwork took a big hit as firefighters tried to put out the fire. According to a report by United24, the Ukrainian government–run platform, the fire destroyed the museum’s historic plasterwork, parquet flooring, furniture, and books, as well as the building’s electrical and heating infrastructure. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine and Kherson Regional Art Museum did not immediately reply to a request...

Ground-penetrating radar image of the Neolithic enclosure in Chleby, Czech Republic CHLEBY, CZECH REPUBLIC—A monumental structure built some 6,500 years ago has been identified as one of the oldest ritual centers in central Europe, according to a La Brújula Verde report. Located in the central Czech Republic, the circular enclosure measures more than 750 feet in diameter and features a ditch more than eight feet deep. Twelve openings in the perimeter were carefully set in a pattern linked to the cycles of the sun and the moon, explained Petr Krištuf of the University of West Bohemia. Within the enclosure, Krištuf and his colleagues identified two main observation points for tracking the rising and setting...

Mackenzie, who was made a peer in July, previously led various performing arts festivals and theatres in the UK and abroad, and was most recently director of arts at the British Council

Drawn to the juxtapositions of urban spaces and desolate regions alike, photographer Luca Battaglia illuminates the distinctive characteristics of places. “I do not claim—nor do I ever say—that I am an architectural photographer,” he says in a statement. “When asked, I say that I am a photographer of places, of voids.” From the expanses of the American Southwest to images of New York City that revel in quietude rather than its signature boisterousness, built environments are a well of inspiration. In his ongoing series Ticket non remboursable (“non-refundable ticket”), Battaglia creates bold portraits of carousels in city squares and parks across Europe. The advent of these iconic amusement...

The Light in Durham—formerly the Durham Light Infantry Museum and Art Gallery—has reopened following £17m redevelopment

Meticulously cut wooden panels, semi-precious beads, and layered thread and cordage transform into intricate geometric reliefs by Nosheen Iqbal. The Dallas-based artist draws on her background in product design and illustration to create chromatic works that tap into craft, nature, and ancestry. Taking inspiration from her Pakistani heritage and the immanently ornate forms of Islamic architecture and ornament, Iqbal combines wood, which she might associate with building, with textile-related media like fiber and beads. The resulting compositions are elegant meditations on the power of pattern to connect us to culture, family, and familiarity. “Sarghoshiaan” (2025), wood, cotton fiber, and semi-precious...

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Ibrahim Rayintakath’s Website
Ibrahim Rayintakath on Instagram

Without proper written agreements, consigners sometimes find themselves in a protracted and costly process

Pitch be damned.

The Glen Most people have experienced a “thin place” even if they don’t necessarily realize it or give it a name. When I learned about them a few years ago, I was able to recall some of these places from my own past, even though I didn’t know the terminology at the time. I’m currently listening to The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, and the knights are forever leaving the comforts of Camelot to seek adventure. On their journeys, they often come across places in the woods where the atmosphere changes, time takes on a different quality, and the boundary between the ordinary and the otherworldly becomes uncertain. When I saw the work of photographer, film, and television director Lev L. Spiro, I...

Tra tutte le edizioni di Documenta, quella che si tenne nel 1972, dal titolo Interrogare la realtà – Mondi dell’immagine oggi, apriva una significativa riflessione sui linguaggi dell’arte contemporanea, il mondo reale e le sue rappresentazioni. Il titolo che il curatore Harald Szeemann scelse per la manifestazione risulta quanto mai contemporaneo, permettendo di consideralo come una valida prospettiva per scoprire lo studio dell’artista Luca Valerio (Fondi, Latina, 1966). È evidente come Interrogare la realtà – Mondi dell’immagine oggi presupponga una ricerca artistica che presenta elementi riconducibili all’arte concettuale, quindi caratterizzata da un rigoroso controllo formale e...

Bayreuth’s AI-powered “Ring 100010110” marred a first-rate cast and orchestra with nightmarish visuals and horrid dramaturgy.

One of my great moments at the Met.

Through vivid sculptural paintings, Los Angeles-based artist Estefania Ajcip peers in on the fractures families face when split apart. Ajcip spent much of her childhood in Guatemala, while her father worked in L.A. and missed pivotal moments of her youth. In a new body of work titled Folded Memories, the artist contends with this adolescent experience, extrapolating her recollections into poignant compositions filled with a longing for connection. From birch plywood, papier mache, small LED lights, and acrylic, Ajcip constructs a surreal world in which childhood grief and dreams converge. She often works from family photos, pulling scenes and objects from her home and pushing them into a fantastical realm....

Hyper Reality è il titolo-tema dell’undicesima edizione del Festival curato a Forlì da Vertov Project. Prologo alla Fondazione Dino Zoli con la mostra collettiva Interference, che riunisce dodici artiste internazionali nel segno dell’interferenza come forza generativa. Forlì torna a essere una Babele di stimoli e visioni, grazie a Ibrida Festival Internazionale delle Arti Intermediali: l’undicesima edizione, dal titolo-tema Hyper Reality, è in programma dal 17 al 20 settembre. Prologo essenziale e complementare sarà la mostra collettiva intermediale Interference, che dall’1 settembre all’11 ottobre metterà in dialogo le ricerche radicali di dodici artiste internazionali.
Elena Bellantoni,...

La fotografia ha da lungo stabilito la propria autorità su ciò che Roland Barthes ha denominato il ça a été: la traccia di un momento reale fisicamente impressa sull’immagine. Una fotografia indica. Jiayue Wang è un’artista cinese che lavora attraverso fotografia, installazione e immagine in movimento, interrogandosi su ciò che una fotografia inizia a perdere nel momento in cui viene scattata. La sua prima mostra personale in museo, After the Image, di recente tenutasi al Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, ha spinto questa domanda fino alle estreme conseguenze, esplorando ciò che un’immagine diventa una volta che non può più assolvere la sua supposta funzione di testimoniare il reale.
Jiayue Wang,...

ÇANAKKALE, TURKEY—Hürriyet Daily News reports that excavations at the 1,700-year-old Western Bath at the sanctuary of Apollo Smintheus, which is located near the coast of northwestern Turkey, have uncovered areas with cold water pools, or frigidaria, and a changing room, or apodyterium. “We have not opened the pools yet, but right next to them is the first section of the bathhouse, the entrance area,” said Davut Kaplan of Ondokuz Mayıs University. “This is where people entering the bathhouse first undressed, prepared themselves, applied oil, and chatted,” he explained. Kaplan and his team have reached the floor surface of the bathhouse and are working to determine its boundaries. “We have...

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA—According to an AFP report, 17 gold-plated bronze Buddha statues have been unearthed at the site of the Abhayagiri temple in Anuradhapura, an ancient Sinhalese capital in north-central Sri Lanka. “We have found artifacts [at the temple site] before, but this is the first time we have seen such a large number of statues,” said Thusitha Herath of Sri Lanka’s Central Cultural Fund. The statues are estimated to be between 1,200 and 1,300 years old, he added. Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism are known to have been practiced in this sacred area of the ancient city, which was a pilgrimage site that drew visitors from China and India. To read about a Buddha statue carved into a...

At ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai, a vibrant collection of smiling inflatables sprouts from a vaulted ceiling, creating a suspended pool party of colorful forms. The spirited installation is titled “Under the Sun” and the latest project by duo Craig & Karl. “We wanted to capture the warmth, vibrancy, and joy of summer—distilled into one space and experienced from within the expansive summer garden atrium. A way to bring the season indoors,” the pair write about the project. Included in the installation are hot-weather staples like flowers, beach balls, inner tubes, and of course, a radiant sun. The immersive work is a new installment in Craig & Karl’s Mateys universe, populated by a vivid array of...

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To make a success of the Empress in Frau ohne Schatten, it is not enough to be a fine singer and a great actress.

Il 23 novembre 1962, in una chiesa sconsacrata nel centro di Copenaghen, Alison Knowles eseguì Nivea Cream Piece for Oscar Williams. Una fotografia di quella sera è oggi al Museum of Modern Art di New York. Nella stessa serata Dick Higgins interpretò il Drip Music di George Brecht salendo su una scala – un’invenzione esecutiva che gli interpreti ripetono ancora oggi. Era la prima delle sei sere del Festum Fluxorum, il secondo festival Fluxus della storia dopo quello di Wiesbaden, pianificato da George Maciunas e organizzato sul posto da Arthur Köpcke, dalla sezione danese della società di musica contemporanea e da Knud Pedersen, che dentro quella chiesa teneva la propria biblioteca d’arte.
Vista...

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Lou Benesch’s Website
Lou Benesch on Instagram

 
Exploring the people, places, and cultures that shape cities around the world, The City Series showcases images that respond to place not as a fixed subject, but as an idea shaped by experience, observation, and interpretation.
100 images of the city. Welcome to Cambridge.
Published by Shutter Hub Editions, and with a foreword by Alice Ryan, this beautiful collection of 100 images of Cambridge is a portrait of the city through the eyes of international photographers.
Order THE CITY SERIES: CAMBRIDGE here.
   
The photographers featured in THE CITY SERIES: CAMBRIDGE are: Zaklina Anderson, Robert Barcia, Viktor Barkhatov, Catherine Breslin, Tara Bucklow, Tiina Burton, Alison Carter, steven chandler, Alice...

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Masanori Ushiki’s Website
Masanori Ushiki on Instagram

By Betty Ann Brown "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."—Sol LeWitt Dean De Cocker creates richly conceived, exquisitely crafted, and visually delightful artworks that shuttle between abstraction and conceptual representation. He has long been drawn to machines, from bicycles to motorcycles, cars to airplanes, and formal echoes of these devices appear in his current body of work, exhibited at the Visual Arts Center in the small Central California town of Visalia. Welcome to the...

Skeletons, tombstones, and serpents. These are just a few of the iconic images pre-v ailing throughout the works of Morgan Sorensen—all relating to the themes of struggle, sadness, pain, and death. While anyone might agree that these graphic designs would all make for killer band T’s, there’s quite a bit of depth surrounding the artist’s […]
The post Future Relics: The Art of Morgan Sorensen first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The body is an obsession for Monica Piloni. Whether it’s a hollowed face in the Samieses series or the eerie dolls depicted in “Ilegais”, a majority of Monica Piloni’s sculptures confront the human form. And while consistently returning to the body may seem confining to some, it’s a pursuit marked by liberation for the Brazilian […]
The post The Disconcertingly Honest Self-Portrait Sculptures of Monica Piloni first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.