New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who decisively beat back independent candidate Andrew Cuomo in the election to lead the city earlier this month, has named an arts and culture transition committee. The 28-member group includes curators, art dealers, journalists, and arts and nonprofit administrators. It ranges from Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, which sits on an endowment of $7.7 billion, to Hannah Traore, who launched a 3,000-square-foot gallery on the Lower East Side not four years ago.  Familiar names on the committee include Kimberly Drew, curatorial director at global megagallery Pace; Ruba Katrib, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs at MoMA PS1; Legacy...

Last week, Christie’s staged its annual November spectacle, a double-header 20th-century sale that brought in roughly $690 million once buyer’s fees were added. The numbers were reported with breathless enthusiasm. Headlines announced a 42% increase over last year’s equivalent sales. The press framed the evening as a triumph and a sign that the art market was healthy again. Watching the coverage felt like watching a magic trick you have already seen too many times. A staggering figure appears on the screen, and the audience nods along. The illusion works because everyone agrees not to ask what the number actually means. It works because the number is the performance. Auction houses rely on this sleight...

Coco Chanel famously said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” If the 74th Annual Miss Universe pageant offered any fashion advice, it’s this: Don’t leave the house without your giant wolf head.  Miss Mexico took the crown on November 21, but the high point of this year’s event was its costume competition. Miss Estonia did indeed wear a gigantic headdress in the likeness of a wolf — a reference to Libahunt, a 1912 play about a nonconformist girl — and hers wasn’t even the most outrageous outfit.  Miss Estonia Brigitta Schaback (photo by Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images) The competition took maximalism to new heights with its “everything but the...

WASHINGTON, DC — On Saturday, November 22, protestors expanded and crunched their bodies, arms rising and falling with flicked wrists, as they marched in front of the Kennedy Center with stoic expressions. Passersby would be excused for mistaking it for an official performance, but the show outside the nation’s art center was actually a “dance protest” organized in response to President Trump’s rising authoritarianism. While DC was buzzing with action across the city at the Remove the Regime march and fold-in event at the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center offered a powerful backdrop for resistance. The day before, the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works launched an investigation...

The administrative whirlwind at the Philadelphia Art Museum (PhAM) continues. After former Director and CEO Alexandra “Sasha” Suda filed a complaint accusing the museum of unlawful termination, PhAM is countering with its own legal filing, alleging that Suda misappropriated thousands of dollars in museum funds. On November 20, the museum filed a petition with the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas to shift the conflict out of the courts and into the hands of a confidential arbitrator. The move was in response to Suda’s lawsuit against the museum on November 10, six days after she was terminated. Last week, PhAM announced that former Metropolitan Museum of Art leader Daniel Weiss would be its next...

SAN FRANCISCO — An inflatable giant with a cartoonish skull-and-crossbones head perches on the roof of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, like a car-lot tube man, advertising the exhibition KAWS: Family inside. The big balloon is various shades of gray, reminiscent of another large sculpture just a few blocks away on the Embarcadero Plaza, a 40-foot-tall naked woman fabricated from steel mesh. Originally produced for Burning Man, “R-Evolution” is one of 100 sculptures in the Big Art Loop, a city-wide public art initiative privately funded by a tech billionaire. Beyond their shared vapid aesthetics, both KAWS and the Big Art Loop signal the rapid move toward the privatization of culture, and its...

A five-inch-tall red chalk drawing of a foot, said to be by Michelangelo (1475–1564), will be offered for sale at Christie’s auction house in New York in February. Christie’s estimates the work to sell between $1.5 million and $2 million. The piece came to light when Giada Damen, a specialist in Old Master drawings at Christie’s, noticed it among a batch of online inquiries from members of the public. The client had noted that the artist was Michelangelo on the form; however, as Damon told the New York Times, she gets a lot of inquiries about works purported to be by Renaissance masters. Added to this, Renaissance drawings can be difficult to authenticate, as they are rarely signed and often faked....

Since the 1970s physicians have known that some people with the progressive movement disorder Parkinson’s Disease felt more creative following the onset of the disease. A few years ago, this curious fact spurred a research team in the Netherlands to carry out a long-term study—one that now includes a partnership with Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum—of the relationship between creativity and better health outcomes for Parkinson’s patients. Between March 2021 and March 2022, Blanca Spee, a neuroscientist at Radboudumc medical center in Nijmegen; Bas Bloem, the director of the Centre of Expertise for Parkinson and Movement Disorders at Radboudumc; epidemiologist Sirwan Darweesh; and artist Marjoke Plijnaer...

Art museums and other nonprofits have whole departments devoted to fundraising that employ seasoned experts and deploy time-tested strategies to fill their coffers, and museum directors often spend a great deal of their time cultivating the kinds of major donors whose names grace institutions’ walls. So these organizations could be forgiven for being surprised when it emerged this fall that crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, better known for helping individuals and families raise money for medical expenses and other personal causes, booted up some 1.6 million pages benefiting US nonprofits, including dozens of major art museums, without informing the institutions themselves or giving them the opportunity to opt...

Painter, jazz musician, and assemblage artist Llyn Foulkes, known for his uncategorizable work and his resistance to the commodification of art, died on November 25. He was ninety-one. His death was announced by Kent Fine Art, which represents him. During a career spanning seven decades, Foulkes created a vast and diverse body of work bound […]

Technology is always changing, quickly becoming dated or even obsolete as new updates are released. Remember LaserDiscs? What about 8-tracks? For Japanese musical trio Open Reel Ensemble, analog contraptions meet digital combinations to make unique and experimental sounds. Using reel-to-reel recorders from the 1970s and 1980s as musical instruments, the stage and studio setup is just as interesting as the recordings. To achieve mesmerizing and ethereal tunes like “Tape Bowing Ensemble,” the group attaches bows to the analog tape wound around a reel, and they’ve been known to strum the tape like a guitar, tap suspended lengths with drumsticks, or spin reels like DJ turntables. Open Reel Ensemble uses...

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, an ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world. Maggie Harrison is the head of winemaking at Antica Terra in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where she has garnered a reputation as one of the most celebrated practitioners of the craft. With a group of artists—Julie Mehretu, Paul Pfeiffer, and Jessica Rankin—she recently unveiled a limited-edition box set of wines blended as part of a collaborative process that also included the creation of individual artworks packaged along with the bottles, in a self-described “Museum in a Box.” Proceeds from the 150 sets will go to Denniston Hill, the artist...

Blow uses air-driven expansion and light to materialize emotion
 
Blow is an interactive lighting series that converts rising internal pressure into expanding forms and increasing luminosity. Through an air-pumping mechanism, users activate the inflation of a membrane contained within a rigid aluminum frame, making the tension between structure and material visibly and spatially present.
 
Designed by Jung Kiryeon, the series arises from an examination of anxiety generated within unfamiliar systems and reinforced by negative feedback. Instead of framing these conditions as something to avoid or suppress, the project studies their progression and translates them into a visual and spatial language. The work...

In a petition in response to Sasha Suda’s lawsuit claiming unfair treatment, abuse and more, the museum claims "misappropriated funds”

The decision is framed as a “strategic evolution for the gallery as it consolidates its operations in London”

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The state department’s announcement, delayed by the US government shutdown, says Allen’s presentation will further Donald Trump’s “focus on showcasing American excellence”

The US State Department on November 24 announced that Mexico-based American sculptor Alma Allen will represent the United States at the Sixty-First Venice Biennale, to take place May 9–November 22, 2026. The pavilion is to be curated by Jeffrey Uslip, onetime chief curator at the St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Art. Allen, whose polished, rounded […]

At 75, Cindy Zimmerman is developing a workshop on making artist books for Banned Books Week at San Diego Central Library. They're also working on Mobile Monument, rolling activist art for protests, parades, and exhibitions, amplifying words purged during the first weeks of the Trump administration. They're more clear now that they decide what to do based on the guidance of their inner voice. What's actually hard about being an artist at this point in their life?  Too little space. Someone...

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Combining hand-carved Japanese cypress with crystal-clear acrylic resin, Ayako Kita sculpts tender, emotive figures. For her current exhibition, The End of the Day Begins at FUMA Contemporary Tokyo, she focuses on the transitional moment of returning home, in which seemingly mundane tasks like switching on a light or opening a curtain are imbued with consequence, frozen in time. Kita’s work emphasizes an often introspective world, where a young woman or girl’s consciousness, emotions, and anxieties manifest in uncanny scenarios. The titles usually offer important clues, too. In “me & me,” for example, an extra pair of legs is literally tethered to the character’s own limbs, as if another half-formed...

Foster + Partners transforms Thessaloniki’s historic FIX brewery
 
Foster + Partners unveils a masterplan to transform the iconic FIX brewery into a vibrant mixed-use waterfront destination in Thessaloniki, Greece. Commissioned by developers Dimand, the project repurposes the historic industrial site along the city’s western seafront, within walking distance of the center, introducing new homes, a hotel, cultural venues, and lively public spaces. The development is a central piece of Thessaloniki’s broader urban regeneration strategy.
all images © Foster + Partners
 
 
A CULTURAL AND ARCHITECTURAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT
  The design celebrates the site’s history while incorporating...

Photography has a unique capacity to make the invisible visible, and to illuminate truths about the world and ourselves that often go unnoticed. It documents reality whilst simultaneously interpreting it, acting as both witness and storyteller. The 2025 Royal Photographic Society Awards, the world’s longest-running photography prize, celebrated this power, recognising photographers whose work challenges boundaries and transforms how we see. From experimental landscapes to socially engaged portraiture, the winners demonstrate the breadth of contemporary photography and its capacity to engage, provoke and inspire. At the forefront is Susan Derges, awarded the RPS Centenary Medal for her outstanding...

Washington National Opera presented a well-sung and humorous Marriage of Figaro, buoyed by clever direction and a strong cast, particularly Rosa Feola’s Countess and Joélle Harvey’s Susanna.

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Sebastian Foster is thrilled to present its 2025 Fall Print Set, marking the 13th anniversary of the collection since publishing the first set in 2012. The new release features 20 works by well-established illustrators, printmakers, and painters from around the world. The prints in this set have all been published as relatively small editions, hand-signed, and numbered by the artists. Encompassing an eclectic array of mediums and themes, the collection showcases work from artists previously featured on Colossal, including Jeremy Miranda’s dreamy oil paintings, Kenny Harris’s delicately rendered moka pots, and Grant Haffner’s trippy landscapes in bold color palettes. Daniel Freaker, “Abode of Promise”...

Carl Orff’s cantata tries its fortunes at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Ximeng Tu on Instagram

Museum in Bayonne, in the southwest of the country, has spruced up its historic building and doubled its display area

The Union of Architects of Serbia has shared an open letter of concern regarding the demolition of Belgrade’s Generalštab Modernist Complex

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Making electronic music with synthesizer for toddlers
 
Software engineer Alastair Roberts builds Alma, a 3D printed synthesizer for toddlers that lets young users produce and play child-friendly electronic music. Complete with an onboard sound module and a built-in speaker, the musical toy can play sounds without connecting to a computer or external equipment. The design includes several control knobs for tempo, volume, scale, pitch, and instrument type, allowing the young users to change how the loop behaves. There’s an OLED screen on the front that gives visual feedback, and it also displays a small animated panda to help the young DJs understand when and what kind of notes are playing.
 
The small box...

tanween returns from 17-22 november, 2025
 
The 8th edition of Tanween, held at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran in 2025, returns with the theme ‘Design the Unspoken.’ Ithra’s annual celebration of design includes workshops, challenges, exhibitions and a grad show, to design markets, panels, and immersive two-day programs with global experts, Tanween gathers designers, artists, researchers, and enthusiasts from around the world. With contributions from entities such as Snøhetta, Concéntrico, calligraffiti pioneer elSeed, award-winning Saudi designer Lujain Abulfaraj, and top international universities, the annual program (17-22 November) reinforces Ithra’s growing...

I never thought an opera production could be this well done.

Dinosaur paw Device Integrates Hygiene Cues Into Everyday Play
 
Dinoosh is a handwashing tool designed to support hygiene habit-building in young children through tactile and visual interaction. The project by Tejas Vashishtha and Aarya Ghule adopts a character-based form, a dinosaur paw, to create a familiar object that integrates seamlessly into daily routines. Its design aims to shift handwashing from an externally prompted activity to a self-directed practice by embedding cues directly into the product’s geometry and material behavior.
 
The device features a soft, ergonomic body that children can hold comfortably, with a paw-shaped soap imprint that dispenses gel when squeezed. Textures on the...

Earlier this year, Hollywood actress Tilly Norwood made headlines when she began searching for an agent. She’s almost indistinguishable from many others aspiring to make it in the film industry, with one exception: she’s not real. Norwood is entirely AI generated. Eline Van der Velden, the designer behind the performer, spoke at a summit at Zurich Film Festival, expressing hopes that Norwood would “be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.” The character’s emergence sparked outrage amongst A-listers, many of whom see this is as a genuine threat to human creativity and secure employment. It has prompted responses from unions, like UK Acting Union Equity and SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin,...

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In 1947, two years after WWII ended, four war photographers founded Magnum Photos. Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour had each reported on the atrocities and conflicts of the 20th century and were recalibrating to a new world. The agency was a new type of collaboration, departing from conventional practice to allow copyright to be held by the artist, not by the magazine that published the work. Almost 100 photographers have been part of the collective, diversifying to include women and people of colour, and 49 are active members today. Much of society has changed since the agency was established, with digital photography, smartphones, social media and generative AI...

For much of the 20th century, photography was understood as a way to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson described as the “decisive moment.” It is the instant where a scene comes together for a moment of glorious clarity. By the late 1970s, artists began to push against this ideal, asking what happens if the “decisive moment” is made, rather than found. Practitioners like Cindy Sherman, Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall pioneered staged photography, also known as tableau photographs, meticulously constructing scenes to evoke an atmosphere or emotion. At the same time, other artists pushed the medium in different directions, embracing collage, photomontage and, later, digital composition. They revealed how...

In 2019, Cornwall-based artists William Arnold and James Fergusson began paying a lot of attention to wild apple trees growing in unique and sometimes unlikely locations around the Cornish countryside. Remarkably, every apple seed is capable of producing an entirely different variety. And it’s this immense genome that inspired the pair to begin their ongoing project called Some Interesting Apples. Apple cultivars that we often see in supermarkets, like Gala or Honeycrisp, need to be carefully produced in a process called clonal propagation, in which a cutting from a desirable tree is grafted onto a new one, creating, essentially, a copy. Because even if a Honeycrisp seed sprouted and produced a tree, it...

Michelle Blancke uses photography as a painter might use a brush – adjusting composition, light and framing to shift perception. Her images dissolve the boundary between real and imagined, presenting landscapes charged with energy and mystery. Tangled undergrowth takes over tree roots, hanging over branches like something from a fairytale. The Aesthetica Art Prize-shortlisted artist reflects on reality as layered and elusive, encouraging viewers to see the world anew. Her series Secret Garden is an ongoing project, which has been exhibited across Europe, including being awarded third prize at the BBA Photo Prize. The work opens up portals to another world. Blancke spoke to Aesthetica about how she...

Les Camilles both agree on this one. And WHY? You ask??!

Up to a year ago, E.M. Miller's medium was food. Now it's raw canvas. At 50, he's a former actor turned musician turned chef turned artist standing at yet another fucking crossroads and deciding if he continues down this rabbit hole of art or not. How's his work different now than it was before 50?  A weaker person or perhaps a lesser experienced person would say the unknown, but he's used to not asking those kinds of questions. What's actually hard about being an artist at this point? He...

The Philadelphia Art Museum (PhAM) has named Daniel H. Weiss, a former director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as its new director and CEO, effective December 1. Weiss, currently a professor at John Hopkins University, replaces Sasha Suda, who was forced out earlier this month following a controversial rebrand […]

Frida Kahlo’s 1940 painting El sueño (La cama) sold for $54.7 million including fees at Sotheby’s Exquisite Corpus sale, held the evening of November 20 in New York. The amount is the highest ever paid at auction for a work by a woman, and the most ever paid for a Latin American artwork. Bidding began […]

In the Karakoram Range on the northeastern border of Pakistan, a group of Indigenous women and girls is defying conventions with a seemingly simple pastime: soccer. The Gilgit-Baltistan Girls Football League is a bastion of independence and autonomy amid a traditionally conservative environment. “In our culture, girls were brought up to be brides,” says Karishma, the co-founder of the league, in a short documentary about the movement. “Everybody doesn’t want to be a princess.” Titled “Girls Move Mountains,” the striking film is by Anna Huix, who visits this remote region and tags along with members of the Wakhi people as they practice and compete. As Huix shows, soccer is much more than a game...

A new recording of La fiamma from Deutsche Oper Berlin sets Respighi's score ablaze.

Taha Al-izzi  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Taha Al-izzi on Instagram

foto credit Susanna Andreini Susanna Andreini works with the invisible realms—concrete with Elemental Beings. At 60, the stunning results of her recent paintings, the absolutely unexpected colors, motifs, and expression touched her in a very deep way and encouraged her to explore this way of artistic expression even deeper. She's exploring her connection to the Elemental Beings, offering them her canvas as their stage. They dance on it, try out different forms, sometimes as lines, sometimes...

Entertainment company Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, known for its oddity-themed attractions, on November 19 was revealed to be the lone bidder for and the buyer of Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan’s 2016 work America, a life-size working toilet made of solid 18-karat gold. The sale took place on the evening of November 18 in […]

GWAR was never an ordinary rock band. And in the recent documentary This Is GWAR, director Scott Barber digs into the past and present of the music and art collective that simultaneously defied categorization while infiltrating late twentieth century pop culture and continues to entertain fans today with heavy metal and elaborate—even gory—stage shows. Read Liz Ohanesian's full article by clicking above.
The post THIS IS GWAR: Inside the infamous Art Collective turned Gored-out Shock band first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Jesse Zuo & Sarah Cotton
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Jesse Zuo on Instagram
Sarah Cotton’s Website
Sarah Cotton on Instagram

“When I learned that there was a technique called honkadori, I thought it was interesting,” says Watanabe. “It seemed like an invasion or challenge to the idea of Western art and original works.” Read the full article by clicking above.
The post Mitsuru Watanabe Interjects A Modern Perspective Onto Classic Paintings first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Francesco Aglieri Rinella  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Francesco Aglieri Rinella’s Website
Francesco Aglieri Rinella on Instagram

CAAM presents a powerful solo exhibition and performance series honouring Black trans life, loss, and celestial memory. Sage Ni’Ja Whitson. Courtesy of the California African American Museum (CAAM). The California African American Museum (CAAM) has […]

Curated by Khalid Albaih, Rahiem Shadad, and Dr Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann, ‘Sudan Retold’ brings together artists, researchers, and designers to reclaim Sudanese histories through art, storytelling, and cultural memory Sudanese women in thobes. © Faiz AbuBakr […]

Tracing the space between analogue and digital, perception and presence The Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI), in collaboration with munyu, opened ‘Between Signals’ on 2 November 2025, a multidisciplinary exhibition that remains on view through […]

Couture Fashion Night 3.0 — The Exquisite Transcends

Penny Cagney photo by R.R. Jones 2024 At 69, Penny Cagney is working with a new device created by a group of scientists at Arizona State University, including Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek and Prof. Nathan Newman. The technology is called the HyLighter, and it uses 13 programmable monochromatic light beams to simulate how color is perceived across different species and visual systems. She's exploring the science of color and vision, creating oil paintings designed specifically for the...

Yuko Shimizu is a New York-based illustrator, whose bold manga lines depict intimate narrative scenes from myth, science fiction, and pop iconography, creating a visual genre all her own. Read the full article by Harrison Cook clicking above!
The post Yuko Shimizu depicts intimate narrative scenes from myth, science fiction, and pop iconography, creating a visual genre all her own. first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.