On July 28, a group of 10 people ransacked the headquarters of the Italian fuel distribution company, Lilli Petroli, in L’Aquila, located in Italy’s Abruzzo region, spending as long as eight hours on the premises before making off with over £4 million ($4.63 million) of art, first reported local outlet Il Centro. About 30 artworks belonging to Lilli Petroli owner Mauro Lilli were stolen in the unusual heist, including bas-reliefs attributed to Pablo Picasso, a bronze ballerina sculpture by Giacomo Manzù, paintings by Bruno d’Arcevia of the Italian Manner movement, and pieces by sculptor Mario Moretto. None were ensured, and the collection had been displayed throughout the company’s lobby and offices....

The Uffizi in Florence has announced a €50 million ($58 million) restoration plan that it expects to carry out over the course of two years. The renovations will encompass the Uffizi Gallery, Palazzo Pitti, and the Boboli Gardens. Work has already begun on various projects, which are being staggered to avoid closing the museum completely. […]

Three star directors have severed ties with White Cube’s New York gallery, Artnet News reports. The trio—Courtney Willis Blair, Sukanya Rajaratnam, and Jessie Washburne-Harris—offered varying reasons for their departures. The news comes as powerhouses like David Zwirner and Pace, alongside a cohort of small and midsize galleries, shutter locations and cut staff and artists to […]

Elizabeth Mulholland is set to take on the role of senior director at David Zwirner Gallery’s Los Angeles outpost, according to ARTnews. The move follows Mulholland’s two-decade tenure at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, where she served as a director and subsequently became a partner.  Speaking to ARTnews, Andrew Kreps conveyed his gratitude to […]

The subway trek to the Upper East Side is slightly easier than Odysseus's journey across the Mediterranean, provided the 6 train is running. For those who prevail, their reward will be plentiful: A 2,300-year-old papyrus fragment containing parts of Homer's Odyssey is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The institution announced this week that the object would emerge from its long retirement on August 5. The fragment is now on public view at the museum in Gallery 162.In a video accompanying The Met's announcement, Séan Hemingway, curator in charge of Greek and Roman art, described the papyrus as “the earliest preserved fragment of Homer's Odyssey that we have today.”

As President Donald Trump and his appointees escalate their legislative attacks against historic sites and the artworks housed within them, Democrats and preservationist groups are pushing for protective countermeasures.On July 24, the heavily Trump-appointed Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) advanced a proposal that could diminish legal protections of historic sites. The 16–5 vote approved revisions to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, a measure that mandates federal agencies to consider possible damages to historically significant sites before undertaking construction projects.

Thieves stole €4 million ($4.6 million) worth of art from Italian fuel distribution company Lilli Petroli in an overnight raid at the firm’s headquarters in Abruzzo. The Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reports that the thieves made off with roughly 30 artworks, all belonging to the company’s owner Mauro Lilli.  The art was on display in […]

Walking down Pearl Street in Manhattan's Chinatown, you probably don’t realize that the name marks the original 17th-century East River shoreline of New York City. In fact, the street was named for a Lenape shell midden that was located on its southern section, which is also believed to have been adjacent to a Lenape canoe landing. It was one of many prominent middens that marked the region, and as Mark Kurlansky explains in his bestselling book The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell (2006), middens are “the most common marker of a pre-European settlement anywhere in the area of the mouth of the Hudson.” These piles of oyster shells, he notes, were sometimes as much as four feet deep, sometimes...

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to build a $400 million ballroom at the White House without congressional approval. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with historic preservationists who sued to halt construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the site where the White House’s East Wing stood before its demolition last fall.   In response to the ruling, President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that he “will be immediately appealing to the United States Supreme Court” and described the decision as “horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful.” Friday’s ruling marks the second legal setback this week...

Known for her lush assemblages of flameworked glass, Amber Cowan reimagines a ubiquitous yet fragile medium. Flowers, filigree, and colorful baubles cluster into dense compositions that invoke fairytale narratives and whimsical nature scenes. Cowan typically works with industrial scraps, antiques, and other offcasts, which allows her to draw on products and colorways that are no longer in production. Currently leaning into cloche and coupe sculptures alongside her wall-based works, the Philadelphia-based artist is preparing for several upcoming exhibitions, including at San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and Design in September and Design Miami in December. Her work is on view now in The Passion of Collecting...

A Pablo Picasso etching stolen from Milwuakee’s DeLind Art Appraisals in 2018 was handed over to the city’s plice department on Thursday, according to a press release. The etching and aquatint printed in ink on paper, titled Torero, is the ninth in an edition of 30. When it was stolen in 2018, Bill DeLind told news organizations that it was worth between $35,000 and $50,000. “It was like, ‘Oh my God,” DeLind told local news station 12 News on Thursday. “I never thought I’d see this again. And there it was.” In 2018, DeLind described the work as having “walked off the wall,” telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he did not see anyone in the business on the day the work disappeared, and...

“Why have there been no great women artists?” Maybe because too many of their masterpieces were dismissively shoved into storage for not having been painted by a more famous man. That, at least, seems to be what befell a still life by the 17th-century Flemish painter Clara Peeters. Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza, ca. 1620, was at one point thought to be by Ambrosius Brueghel (son of Jan, grandson of Pieter). But, according to the Guardian, that attribution was rescinded in the early 20th century, leaving the still life in “anonymous” limbo ever since. Cynthia Osiecki, a curator at the National Museum of Norway in Oslo, came across Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a...

After a study to map its sprawling network of rooms commenced in 2022, a nuclear bunker in northern Italy will transform into a Cold War museum scheduled to open in part next year. As reported in The Art Newspaper, the bunker—built between 1960 and 1966 in the town of Affi near Verona—was “engineered to withstand nuclear, chemical and biological attacks and was equipped with filtration systems, protected shower areas, kitchens, water tanks and dormitories. It was designed to sustain 300 personnel for 30 days in the event of a nuclear emergency.” The site, measuring close to 140,000 square feet, includes some 100 rooms connected by a network of tunnels more than a half-mile long. “As well as the war...

anonym studio composes Pridi41 house in Bangkok
 
Designed by anonym studio, Pridi41 House occupies an 800-sqm corner plot on Pridiphanomyong Road in Bangkok, Thailand, within a dense residential neighborhood. Surrounded by low-rise housing and a 20-meter-high apartment building overlooking the site, the house is organized to address privacy, natural ventilation, daylight, and thermal comfort through its spatial arrangement and environmental strategy.
 
The program is distributed vertically around a central circulation core containing the elevator and staircase. Service functions, including shoe storage, general storage, a Thai kitchen, system rooms, staff accommodation, and parking for six to eight...

A 1796 map of New York by Bernard Ratzer (image courtesy The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division)A hand-pump fire engine from 1830 and surviving dime museum attractions will be displayed alongside Jacob Riis's documentary photography and art by Keith Haring, Lynda Benglis, June Leaf, and others in the New Museum's forthcoming exhibition about the Bowery. The Bowery: Devil’s Mile will comprise archival materials, artifacts, and artworks representing four centuries of innovation and inspiration along the museum's home street. The show will open on September 24 alongside a previously announced Arthur Jafa survey in the Manhattan institution's newly expanded building.Originally a...

Over the weekend, a Russian drone strike destroyed a historic 18th century church in the Kherson region of Ukraine. The Holy Presentation Church, which was built in 1725 within a fort near Zaporizhzhia and transported to its current location at Beryslav in 1784, is said to be the last surviving example of wooden Cossack architecture […]

The statue gives unique insight into the understudied ancient Lydian civilisation, Turkey’s culture ministry says

Twenty-six Islamic artworks from the Louvre Museum will touch down at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC, next month. Opening September 26, From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art will display carved rosewood doors, jade cups, an oil painting of Persian ruler Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, and other culturally significant objects traveling to the United States for the first time. The artworks span 12 centuries of Islamic history and include treasures from the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, the Mughal Empire in South Asia, and the Umayyad dynasty in Spain. Many of the pieces were originally functional, and most graced the households of the elite. Simon Rettig, associate curator of...

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clemson students ask what a parked car can do
 
Passenger cars spend most of their time sitting somewhere. Clemson University’s Deep Orange 17 starts with that simple observation and asks what all those stationary hours could contribute to an electric vehicle. Developed by graduate Automotive Engineering students in collaboration with BMW of North America, the fully functional prototype, named Luminetta, covers its exterior with 1,781 photovoltaic cells. They collect energy while the car moves and keep working once it comes to a stop, turning time in the sun into part of the vehicle’s charging cycle.
 
BMW challenged the Deep Orange team to develop an electric vehicle capable of generating more energy...

The term “ark” invariably conjures images of the monumental boat onto which pairs of animals were stewarded prior to a cataclysmic, biblical flood. It’s a reference that feels apt amid the climate crisis and our planet’s rising sea levels, although in this case, the melting ice caps and creeping tides are down to us. The large-scale exhibition titled The Ark at Powerhouse Arts asks, will we care for the future of our planet the way we care for the animals we love? The presentation draws directly on the myth if The Deluge from Genesis, “an event of epic scale that becomes a metaphor for the present moment, where environmental and social upheaval converge,” says a statement. “Throughout the...

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Recently rebranded artist membership organisation Artists Now has created a guide on how to make creative practices more eco-friendly

Xiao Hua Yang  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Xiao Hua Yang’s Website
Xiao Hua Yang on Instagram

Zémire et Azor, André-Ernest-Modest Grétry's riff on "Beauty and the Beast", gets a rare outing in the Berkshires.

Malin Byström is a radiant water nymph in the Bayerische Staatsoper's house-of-horrors-set Rusalka. 

How video editing shapes contemporary fashion film
 
Clideo Video Editor examines how video editing shapes the visual language, rhythm, and narrative structure of contemporary fashion films, highlighting the role of post-production in communicating brand identity. Fashion film has become an important medium for communicating collections beyond the runway, extending fashion storytelling through moving image, sound, and post-production. While garments, set design, cinematography, and performance establish the visual foundation, the editing process determines how these elements are assembled into a coherent narrative. Through pacing, sequencing, color grading, and sound design, video editing shapes the...

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The figure has been painted back onto the work at the Maurithuis after being removed at some stage in its history

inside the bead pit
 
Stepping into Cj Hendry’s Pastel begins with a small change in gallery etiquette. Shoes come off, custom socks go on, and visitors climb over the tiled edge of a shallow pool filled with thousands of pastel-colored beads. Some of us sat along the perimeter and sift through them by hand. Others step straight in, pushing through a shifting layer of tiny flowers, smiley faces, characters, objects, and odd little forms. At Salon 94 Design in New York, Hendry has built the installation around physical participation, inviting visitors to collect beads and take part of the experience home.
 
Pastel starts with a bead hunt, but it watches as everyone invents their own game. A poster beside...

Not really sure what was going on here.

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PAC-MAN FINDS ANOTHER REASON TO OPEN ITS MOUTH
 
Some collaborations barely need an introduction. PAC-MAN and Otamatone already share one particularly useful feature: a mouth designed to stay busy. The arcade icon now appears as a miniature Otamatone Melody, turning its familiar yellow face into a pocket-sized music maker preloaded with 11 songs. Small enough to attach to a keychain, the crossover trades maze-running for melody while keeping the playful simplicity that made both characters instantly recognizable.
 
The Melody models simplify the peculiar mechanics of the full-size electronic instrument. A button on the tail selects a song, while pressing the stem advances through the melody and squeezing the...

The masterpiece, alongside 62 other works given by the Pearlman family, is coming on tour from Los Angeles

Nell’estate del 1896, durante l’Esposizione panrussa di Nižnij Novgorod, Maksim Gorkij assiste a una delle prime proiezioni del cinematografo Lumière e prova a raccontare un’esperienza che ancora non possiede un linguaggio. Del cinematografo scrive poco, della novità tecnica ancora meno. Il suo sguardo si sposta subito altrove. A colpirlo è qualcosa che continua a sfuggire anche oggi, quando le immagini in movimento fanno ormai parte della nostra quotidianità.
Janis Rafa, “Baby I’m Yours, Forever”, 2026 in “Canicula”, Fondazione In Between Art Film presso Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venezia, 2026. Courtesy dell’artista e Fondazione In Between Art Film. Foto © Marco Cappelletti e...

A new study based on aerial surveys suggests the pre-Columbian Aquiry civilisation had a much more developed and dispersed footprint than previously thought

110 years ago, Thomas Lupo’s grandfather opened the American Wood Column Corporation in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. Specializing in architectural woodwork including decorative moulding, columns, balusters, corbels, and more, the historic family-owned company is shutting down after more than a century. A new documentary directed and produced by filmmaker and photographer Joshua Charrow takes viewers on one final walk-through of the factory. A vast collection of about 6,000 handmade wooden molds—many of them reverse carved molds—cover the walls and correspond to numbered samples for reference. “My grandfather bought these molds used, and they were used,” Lupo explains. “So they’ve got...

From happenstance and humor to solemnity and tension, the images topping the 2026 Pure Street Photography Awards run the gamut of daily scenes. The annual contest is organized into two categories: black-and-white and open. Reflections of New York City meet dramatic views of urban spaces and pensive tableaux in rural communities, emphasizing timely and candid moments that center diverse human experiences. This year, eight winners were selected from nearly 1,600 entries submitted by photographers in 50 countries. An exhibition of 158 of the top images is slated to pop up at Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, India, from November 20 to 22. The open call is also now live for the 2027 edition, and you can see more and...

Amid the rugged, wave-churned shoreline of France’s Breton coast, a surprising tidbit of pop culture has kept beachcombers returning for more than 40 years. The short film “Silly Little Plastic Cat” transports us to this slice of Brittany, where local residents grew up collecting parts of a 1984 Garfield-themed plastic telephone on the beach—and still do. Photographer and director Zack Grant, founder the production studio 2020 Land, was intrigued by the story, which made news a few years back after the source of the dispersed merchandise was finally discovered. The part of Brittany where the phones wash up is situated along a busy shipping thoroughfare. At some point during their transit in the...

Dmitri Tcherniakov's production of Der Freischütz in Munich may fire a few blanks, but the musicians are all on target.

Interno giorno. Lo studio di Mario Raciti è immerso dentro una magnifica baraonda, sulla quale cadono pochi raggi filtrati dalle persiane, appena scompigliati da un ventilatore a soffitto. Viene strano pensare che, fino al 20 settembre, l’altro capo di questo studio affiorerà dentro la compostezza del Palazzo Reale di Milano. Per preparare le domande che seguono mi sono abbondantemente rifatto al volume di Mario Raciti Scritti e testimonianze, edito da Taut nel 2023 a cura di Iacopo Pesenti. Si è trattato di un passaggio essenziale per superare l’imbarazzo intrinseco del parlare di pittura, e specialmente di una pittura come quella di Raciti, che fa metodo dell’elusione sistematica di tutti i punti di...

In un momento storico in cui le immagini sembrano precedere il loro stesso tempo di apparizione – generate, moltiplicate e consumate con una velocità crescente – la pittura di Ernst Yohji Jaeger pone una domanda essenziale: cosa permette ancora a un’immagine di acquisire presenza? Calamondin, presentata da Crèvecœur a Parigi, affronta la pittura come campo di trasformazione e verifica. Le opere di Jaeger conservano il conflitto tra apparizione e cancellazione, tra forma riconoscibile e superficie in movimento. Ogni quadro registra il percorso attraverso cui una visione conquista la propria necessità.
Ernst Yohji Jaeger, “Calamondin”, exhibition view, Crèvecœur, Paris, 2026. Courtesy of the...

Rising stars Chelsea Lehnea and Ricardo José Rivera are the protagonists of this week's Grand Tier Grab Bag.

Alina Bobrova  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Alina Bobrova’s Website
Alina Bobrova on Instagram

Jelena e Nataša Prljević sono artiste, operatrici culturali ed educatrici serbe. Nel 2018 a New York, insieme all’artista Joshua Nierodzinski, hanno dato vita a HEKLER, una piattaforma collaborativa transnazionale che esplora le relazioni tra ospitalità e conflitto attraverso programmi come Assembly, Host e Medium. Questa pratica ha ispirato Four Waters, a Ljubanje, in Serbia, una casa indipendente, un punto d’incontro e un rifugio per artisti e comunità, che fonde strategie artistiche, curatoriali, pedagogiche e organizzative, ponendo al centro il potenziale liberatorio del lavoro collaborativo e collettivo.
Jelena Prljević, “Baba Bosiljka Prljević, Ljubanje”, 2020. Ph courtesy of 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.

This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose issue 42, which is sold out. See Matthew Grabelsky’s new solo show at Thinkspace gallery here.  Matthew Grabelsky had studied tradition in Florence, lived in the cultural nuclei of Europe, but hadn’t yet found the idea that would set him apart as an artist living in the twenty-first century. […]
The post Human/Nature: Animals Go Underground In the Paintings of Matthew Grabelsky first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

A selection of recent work by artist Emma Steinkraus. Based in Lexington, Virginia, Steinkraus  
   
   
   
   
 
Emma Steinkraus’s Website
Emma Steinkraus on Instagram

Beatriz Morales (Città del Messico, 1981) vive e lavora tra Hidalgo e Berlino. La sua pratica si origina nella pittura, ma ne sottopone progressivamente a verifica i confini, estendendo il gesto cromatico alla fibra, alla scultura e all’installazione. Il passaggio dalla superficie allo spazio non coincide tuttavia con un abbandono del linguaggio pittorico. Il colore continua ad agire come principio strutturante, assumendo consistenza materiale, profondità simbolica e valore culturale. Tecniche tessili, fibre vegetali e pigmenti non sono trattati come semplici risorse formali, ma come depositi di conoscenza. La materia trattiene temporalità, gesti, economie, storie di estrazione e pratiche di trasmissione....

By Victoria Thomas Photographer and ceramic artist Catherine (Cathy) Opie first shocked and rocked the fine art world with her self-portraits during the late 1990s. Today, her decades of work — often termed confessional — now serve as context for the far more enigmatic Holding Blue installation, on view at Regen Projects through July 3. The Los Angeles-based artist identifies as a leather dyke, lesbian cowboy, an elder, and as "Mama Cathy," with a mustachioed male alter-ego named Bo. Opie is...

Luke Rosing  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Luke Rosing’s Website
Luke Rosing on Instagram

Alexis Jamet  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Alexis Jamet’s Website
Alexis Jamet on Instagram

“Danger” is a word often associated with the candy-colored work of Los Angeles artist Kristen Liu-Wong. Her feminine tableaus, often rendered in a bright blend of acrylics, paint pen, and marker, have particularly veered into more menacing territory in recent years. “The world is a dangerous place,” Liu-Wong says, in a June interview. “I don’t […]
The post Dont Tempt Me: the Art of Kristen Liu-Wong first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

On paper, Nathan Reidt’s creatures sometimes reveal themselves through a fog of graphite. He may begin with a “vague, circle-y shape” and shade areas. “Then I just stare at it for a long time and wait for something to pop out and refine that a little and stare at it.” The Philadelphia-based artist explains by […]
The post Personal Growth: the Art of Nathan Reidt first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Betty Ann Brown "Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation — I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances."—Henri Matisse Jill sykes by Eric Minh Swenson Jill Sykes creates beautiful paintings of botanical phenomena. Like Matisse, she translates three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional images, occupying the territory between abstraction and representation to achieve balance and equilibrium. From a very early age,...

By Victoria Thomas There's something about a hanging. Whether legal or not, the visual experience seems mythic, supernatural, theatrical, and ritualistic, versus the efficiency of a swift kill. If local authorities greenlight the killing, it's called a hanging. If they don't, the hanging is extrajudicial, and it's called a lynching. Anyone with even the scantiest grasp of American history will know that our country has a sordid romance with lynching — a romance which persists. And unless...

By Betty Ann Brown Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, February 22–June 28, 2026 Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.—Dolores Huerta The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF, originally the Rebel Chicano Art Front) was an art collective founded in Sacramento in the early 1970s. The visual art members, who focused on printmaking and murals, collaborated with writers, musicians, performers, and teachers. Together, they...

It is credited with ‘democratising photography’ on a global level – and now Shutter Hub is making its most democratic move yet. As of this month, the organisation will pass into the control of the community it was built for, in what founder Karen Harvey MBE describes as ‘a logical next step: to make things more equitable we need multiple perspectives.’ The announcement follows Karen’s decision to remove paid memberships last year, making Shutter Hub ‘fully open-access and available at no cost to all’. It’s a typically altruistic move from the social entrepreneur: also the founder of Toiletries Amnesty, the award-winning NGO. She was made an MBE in 2024 for services to people living in hygiene...