Inspiración

 Tim Van Laere Gallery AntwerpMarch 12 to May 16, 2026Tim Van Laere Gallery Antwerp presents a solo exhibition of the renowned Belgian artist James Ensor (1860–1949), curated by Ensor specialist Herwig Todts and Tim Van Laere. The exhibition James Ensor, a Portrait of the Old Master as a Young Man focuses specifically on Ensor’s late, surprisingly vital oeuvre. Rather than depicting an artist repeating earlier successes, it presents of his later work reveals an artist who stayed youthful in spirit and continued to experiment tirelessly with “les manières les plus opposées.” In his palette. Even his portraits became, above all, experiments in color, where painterly freedom takes precedence over likeness. This exhibition thus

de New York (€5,000,000–7,000,000), the sale will present a tightly curated selection of several dozen major works, ranging from Claude

sales, scheduled to take place from 12-26 March and 17-31 March, respectively. An exhibition of the sales will be held at Christie's London until 31 measuring an astonishing 12 metres in length. Printed on a single sheet of paper, it is one of the largest works ever created by the artist, and trees and hedgerows in contrast with the architecture of the medieval barns and contemporary elements such as a swing set, treehouse and parked

Imagine I asked you to name the famous Italian Renaissance artist who angered his patron by repeatedly missing deadlines because he was busy studying perspective. You’d probably answer Leonardo da Vinci. Other artists could be dilatory, but no other artist is as famous for putting his research before his painting. It’s practically Leonardo’s signature.  Yet, in this case, you’d be mistaken. The artist in question is somebody unexpected—somebody set to receive a major retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this spring, his first in the United States. His reputation holds him as the most enterprising, diligent, and proficient painter of the period: the short-lived Raphael of Urbino (1483–1520). Since Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550/68), Raphael has been considered the model of reliable efficiency, embodying the adage, “If you need something done quickly, find a busy person.” Despite dying young, in his late 30s, Raphael produced numerous drawings, paintings, and buildings. Study is not something legend tends to associate with him. Easily absorbing style after style, Raphael deployed them at will like a chameleon. His facility was so great that it was annoying: Mi

NO MORE FREE LUNCH? Today, the UK’s culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, introduced a proposal to consider charging foreign tourists an entry fee to national museums in a bid to address lackluster funding for the arts, the Financial Times reports. In addition to revenue from museum ticket sales, lawmakers will also consider a hotel levy, both of which were recommended in a review of Arts Council England by former Labour MP Baroness Margaret Hodge. Nandy told the FT that the government is exploring “the potential opportunities that charging international visitors at museums could bring.” National museums have been free to all since 2001, as part of a policy credited with boosting tourism, and opinions remain divided on the question. For now, at least, UK visitors can rest assured: any changes to the existing system are contingent on a new, universal ID scheme needed to differentiate foreign visitors from British citizens. Until then, enjoy your free ticket.Related ArticlesInside the UK Companies House Filings for Stephen Friedman and More: Morning Links for March 9, 2026European Alliance Pledges Financial Support for Artistic Freedom, Iranian Artists Both Terrified and Joyful as War Conti

“We will actively complement the Art Basel fair with top-tier cultural performances and Hong Kong’s mega events, so that attending collectors and art appreciators can experience our city’s unique cultural atmosphere and its charms,” she said, according to Radio Television Hong Kong. Law emphasized that Art Basel’s engagement with the city will extend far beyond the March fair, pointing to public art education and art market research as new areas for collaboration. “We will have more opportunities. It doesn’t have to be only during the fair in March,” she said. “During other periods we can also collaborate with Art Basel to bring more art activities not only to collectors and artists, but also to our art-loving friends in Hong Kong, and most importantly, to students and children.”

At the ripe old age of 88, David Hockney has sounded a warning to the art world: “There’s much too much abstract painting being done now.” He was recently speaking to the Times from his Kensington studio while recovering from an infection, and he was discussing his latest exhibition, “A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting” at the Serpentine, which he was unable to attend in person. The show runs through August 23 and stretches nearly 300 feet, presenting a sweeping frieze of iPad drawings depicting the gardens of his Normandy home across all four seasons. Hockney’s work emphasizes observation and representation, a deliberate counterpoint to the abstraction dominating contemporary art. “Photography can’t replace painting at all, but painting has to be of something,” he said. In addition to the landscape sequence, the exhibition includes portraits and still lifes set on reverse-perspective checkered tablecloths. These works reference abstract painters such as Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter yet remain grounded in figurative representation. Hockney has experimented with a new stippling technique, layering paint even when wet, influenced by his iPad work. “These ma

Marica Vilcek, an art historian who, with her husband Jan, cofounded the grant-making Vilcek Foundation, died on Monday in New York. She was 89, according to the foundation, which said she died peacefully at her home. The Vilcek Foundation is an unusual one, since it funds endeavors in both art history and biomedical science, the respective fields of Marica and Jan. Just like the foundation’s creators, both of whom moved from Czechoslovakia to the US, many of the grantees were immigrants—a purposeful choice on the part of the organization, whose mission statement mentions that its activities are meant to raise “awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States.” Countless artists and art historians have benefited from these prizes, whose unrestricted cash purses vary in size. Carmen C. Bambach, the Chilean-born curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s soon-to-open Raphael retrospective, received a $100,000 prize in 2019, and Guadalupe Maravilla, a Salvadorian-born artist who will appear in this year’s Venice Biennale, received a $100,000 one in 2025. Vilcek said the decision to form the foundation in 2000 came easily. “Jan and I came to realize that our greatest pleasure

For months Russia and Ukraine have been trading deadly drone strikes, and over the last couple of days Russia launched its most extensive drone campaign yet. A March 24 Russian strike in the historic center of the city of Lviv damaged a 17th-century Bernardine monastery that includes a church devoted to St. Andrew, designed by Italian architects in a Mannerist style.  Founded in the late Middle Ages, the historic center of the city was named a World Heritage Site in 1998; per UNESCO, it was “preserved virtually intact … along with many fine Baroque and later buildings.” The organization added it to its List of World Heritage in Danger in 2023. Early on in the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reports emerged of a sustained campaign of cultural destruction throughout Ukraine. As of May 9, 2022, UNESCO had verified damage to 127 landmarks in Ukraine, including 11 museums, 54 religious buildings, and 15 monuments. Ukrainian officials alleged that Russian troops had looted more than 2,000 artworks from three cultural institutions in the battered port city of Mariupol.

The United Kingdom’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has accepted several recommendations from a report last year aimed at increasing access to the arts in the country. One of these would require international visitors to pay an entry fee to visit the UK’s national museums, according to a report in the Financial Times. Per the FT article, the implementation of charging international visitors to enter national museums is “conditional on the government first rolling out a universal ID scheme, which would make it easier to differentiate domestic and international visitors.” The entry fees for international visitors, as well as “incentivising philanthropy [and] cultural tax reliefs,” are meant to fund the other recommendations, which include a new fund aimed at supporting aspiring artists, access to arts education to every child, and funding arts programs across the country, so “people will be able to experience artistic excellence where they live, realise their creative ambitions and build skills for a career in our high-growth creative industries,” according to a release by the UK government announcing its acceptance of the recommendations.   The policy change would af

Sore feet, lean pockets, sustainability woes—what’s a 21st-century art fair really good for, some might wonder? Surpassing the skepticism, this edition of Art Basel Hong Kong offered a compelling glimpse at the talent flourishing across Asia. Sure, Pace Gallery’s Modigliani made the early headlines—but by our reckoning, the fair belonged to Asia’s modern masters and its next generation of stars, some who sorely deserve their spotlight.   Bright spots abounded in the curated sectors, with especially strong showings from Discoveries and Insights, respectively dedicated to emerging artists and thematic presentations. With a simple sheet and smart lighting, Ho Chi Minh’s Vin Gallery staged a shadow-puppet display of ceramic skeletons by Japanese sculptor Ako Goto. Elsewhere, local outfit Lucie Chang Fine Arts made a compelling case for the canonization of the late Chinese painter Zhu Xinjian, whose traditional ink drawings shock with atypically salacious subject matter. gdm, the Hong Kong-based gallery founded by Fred Scholle in 1974, offered one of the best pairings of established and ascendant artists: Kongkee’s seated figure in a lightbox, revealing a second face when viewed from th

A Paul Klee painting famously owned by the philosopher and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin is currently stuck in Israel as a result of the war waged by Israel and the United States in Iran. The work was to make its American debut earlier this month. As noted in a Hyperallergic review and then reported out by the New York Times, Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920) was supposed to appear in “Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds,” an exhibition that opened last week at the Jewish Museum in New York. Instead, the work is represented by an authorized facsimile and a note in the wall text that reads: “Due to current conditions affecting international transport, the shipment of the original artwork has been temporarily delayed.” The Jewish Museum had already produced an authorized facsimile as part of its planning for the exhibition. The reproduction was slated to take the artwork’s place in the show after a month of the original being on view, given its status as an “extremely light-sensitive” oil transfer and watercolor work on paper. But the understudy got the call to star in the premiere, given the state of geopolitics now. About the scenario on the other side of the [...]

By Anne Doran In a restitution ceremony held this week, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned 17 stolen antiquities and rare books collectively valued at more than $1.5 million to Italy and the Vatican. According to a statement by D.A.’s office, the objects were recovered after “multiple investigations into antiquities trafficking networks.” The items include six rare Chinese-language books—largely on scientific subjects—written by Jesuit clerics in the 16th–17th centuries; they are among about 40 such books stolen from the Archives of the Society of Jesus in Vatican City sometime between 1999 and 2002. Such books date from a period when Jesuit missionaries were at the forefront of the Catholic Church’s efforts to gain a foothold in Asia. Starting with Matteo Ricci in 1582, Jesuit emissaries to China embarked on a program of introducing Christianity alongside Western science and technology, translating treatises on astronomy, mathematics, cartography and other scientific topics, as well as gospel texts, from Latin into Chinese. While the originals of these books were destined for China’s Imperial library, copies of them were sent home to the Vatican. They were last docu

Speaking to the Art Newspaper at the end of last year, he was bullish on the future of blockchain art, like NFTs. “There’s no real way to have ownership unless you have some way to register ownership, because otherwise it’s just a JPEG that exists freely on the internet,” he said. “Blockchain creates the possibility for that ownership, and so the art can begin to have value.” 

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