Inspiración

Canarias es hoy uno de los grandes referentes mundiales para la observación del Universo. Sus excepcionales condiciones naturales —cielos oscuros, estabilidad atmosférica y localización geográfica— explican en parte este privilegio, pero la historia de los observatorios canarios es, sobre todo, una historia de visión científica, cooperación internacional y descubrimientos fundamentales.

Her career archives decades of Black culture, imparting equal esteem to churchwomen adorned in their Sunday best and high-fashion runways or glitzy premieres. “Every aspect of her electrifying practice is a celebration of Black self-fashioning,” write Sarah Lewis, Leigh Raiford, and Deborah Willis, the editors of a new book honoring Simpson’s career since the 1970s. Released on October 14, Coreen Simpson: A Monograph is the second edition in Aperture’s Vision & Justice series. It features rich essays that ruminate on her place in shaping and solidifying Black stylistic history. Bridget R. Cooks traverses her artistic biography in “Fashioning the Self,” while Valerie Cassel Oliver writes beautifully about Simpson’s surrealism in the essay “Pictorial Fabulations.” Simpson was also a prolific jewelry designer, best known for creating the Black Cameo, an afrocentric interpretation of the classic jewelry trope. The project was eventually licensed by Avon and could be seen on celebrities and everyday women alike. Its popularity helped propel her photographic career and finance equipment. In an interview with the artist included in the monograph, Willis compared the came

Last March, when the Trump administration issued an executive order to “restore truth and sanity to American history,” the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) quickly became a target. Then, in August, the administration announced a comprehensive audit of all the Smithsonian’s exhibitions, didactics, and collections. Based on the executive order’s condemnation of any discussion of racism, sexism, and oppression as revisionist history, the audit promised to “celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.” The announcement sent shockwaves through the museum world, seeming to signal the dismantling of free speech, especially within government-funded arts institutions. “State Fairs: Growing American Craft” is the first exhibition to open at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery since the audit announcement. The exhibition brings together over 250 works from across the United States, spanning the 19th century to the present, to argue for regional state and tribal fairs as essential sites for the development of American craft. Situated directly across the street from the White House, “State Fairs” beckons D.C. tou

Using post as a prefix for a chapter in art history can strike the ear as suggesting a period that, if not exactly a letdown from the one immediately preceding it, was too eclectic to earn its own specific title. Such was the case with Post-Impressionism, the panoply of styles that built upon the accomplishments of Impressionism. Encompassing the years between 1880 and 1900, Post-Impressionism introduced a diverse range of formal and thematic innovations that drove 19th-century art to new levels of reflexivity. Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cezanne, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maurice Denis, James Ensor, Paul Gaugin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustave Moreau, Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Vincent van Gogh, and Édouard Vuillard are just some of the names from the era whose work would reverberate throughout the century to come, setting the stage for Abstraction, Expressionism, and Surrealism. Post-Impressionism continued its predecessor’s focus on color, shape, and composition and was also influenced by the same craze for Japanese art and design (known as Japonisme in France) that informed Impressionism, with artists such as Van Gogh and Lautrec furthering the assimilation

In 1900, the events of the 20th century still lay ahead, its horrors and epochal upheavals unknown. But in one European metropolis, signs of that future could be gleaned from the social, political, and artistic unrest that roiled it. The city was the crossroads for individuals who would instigate various convulsions to come: Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, whose concept of the unconscious utterly altered our understanding of the human condition; Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, two composers who radically transformed classical music; and a young Adolf Hitler, who would emerge from a life of failed artistic ambitions and vagrancy on Vienna’s streets to author the Holocaust. And then there were the painters who fared far better than Hitler—chief among them Gustav Klimt, whose six-by-six-foot composition The Kiss (1907–1908) is one of the most recognizable works in art history. Along with his countrymen Egon Schiele and Oscar Kokoschka, Klimt plumbed the depths of a neurasthenic culture seething with repressed sexual tensions. Klimt’s work was characterized by the same penchant for fantastical imagery and abandonment to feeling that informed Symbolism, though it was more

Conservators currently at work restoring paintings in Blenheim Palace said they found the names of 11 people written in the ceiling decades ago, with the oldest dated to 1843. The conservation work ongoing now is part of a $16 million restoration of the palace’s roof which began in 2024. It is set to finish next year. As part of the plan, conservators are working to restore several paintings in the Great Hall’s ceiling, including one by Sir James Thornhill from 1716 and and a few by Louis Laguerre.

Franco Vaccari, an Italian conceptual artist whose experiments with photography expanded the medium’s possibilities, has died at 89. His death was announced by his gallery, the Bologna-based P420, which did not specify a cause. Vaccari died just four months before his work was due to be surveyed in a retrospective held at Museion in Bolzano, Italy. Opening in March, the exhibition was being staged to mark what would’ve been Vaccari’s 90th birthday and is due to explore how the artist brought his work beyond art spaces, into the eye of the general public. He often relied on viewer participation for the completion of his pieces, which he typically called “esposizioni in tempo reale,” or “exhibitions in real time.” The most famous of them, a work called Esposizione in tempo reale n. 4. Lascia sulle pareti una traccia fotografica del tuo passaggio, figured in the 1972 Venice Biennale and was mostly composed of a photobooth known as a Photomatic. Vaccari sat for the first picture, then asked his viewers to follow suit and forfeit their picture, which then was exhibited for others to see. He staged his first “exhibition in real time” in 1969 with Esposizione in tempo reale n. 1: [...]

A performance artist from Luxembourg managed to turn a few scrawled lines of washable spray chalk into a night in jail during Art Basel Miami Beach—an outcome he claims was both unexpected and meaningful. Thomas Iser was arrested last week after spray-painting the words “Sorry to disturb, art in progress,” in exaggerated graffiti-style lettering, on a window of the Miami Beach Convention Center during the United States’ largest art fair. He then invited his three-year-old daughter to add her own marks with a chalk pen. Police charged Iser with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. On Instagram, Iser framed the episode as “a performance about tenderness, freedom, and the invisible borders we carry.” He described the chalk writing as “a small act of love, courage, and playfulness,” emphasized that “nothing was damaged,” and presented the intervention as a gift to his daughter. “In a world where access to art often depends on privilege,” he wrote, “I wanted to give her her own place—even at the price of my own freedom.” “I saw this man, body painted head to toe in black with gold streaks across his body and a little black speedo—he was surrounded by cops who were calmly looking at him,” [

Earlier this week, a retired General Services Administration official accused the Trump administration of attempting to demolish four historic federal buildings in Washington, D.C., including the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Bloomberg Law reported. The former official, Mydelle Wright, made the allegation in a supplemental declaration filed in a case brought by preservation groups seeking to stop President Trump from painting a stone federal building. Wright said the White House is soliciting bids for the demolition of the buildings without the involvement of the GSA, which she added has “sole authority over this process” when it comes to maintaining government buildings. “For the first time of which I am aware, a President is personally involved in facilitating end-runs around the agency’s obligations to the buildings that are our national heritage, and who in the agency is going to tell him ‘no?’” she wrote. (A lawyer for the Justice Department refuted the allegation, calling it “hearsay and speculation.”) “It is possible to remove frescoes from the spaces in which they were painted, but it’s extraordinarily expensive,” she said. “And in the case of the Ben Shahn murals, but

TONO, the time-based art festival, has announced the lineup for its 2026 edition, returning March 6–22 with a slate of new and existing video installations, performance commissions, music events, and screenings across Mexico City and Puebla. Programming will span major institutions including Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Casa del Lago UNAM, Museo Jumex, and Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, with additional exhibitions at Museo Amparo in Puebla.  This year’s live program includes work by Tino Sehgal, Space Afrika, Franziska Aigner, and Kelman Duran. TONO will also organize a dedicated exhibition by Ho Tzu Nyen and debut a special project by Mexican artist Avantgardo. In conjunction with his retrospective at Museo de Arte Moderno, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer will collaborate with the festival on a new live program, while Melanie Smith will participate in an event timed to her exhibition at Museo Jumex.  Further international partnerships continue to expand TONO’s reach. The festival will bring dance pieces to Mexico via collaborations with 99 Canal (touring Alexa West’s Jawbreaker) and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, which will present choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni. TONO is al

The objects returned were first sent to Rome for a world exhibition organized by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and remained there until Pope Francis called for their repatriation a few years ago and the recently anointed Pope Leo XIV followed through on the act. Of the return of the objects, whose futures are now being deliberated closer to home, Obed said, “I think this is also something as a part of reconciliation. The norms that you have for your institutions are not necessarily the norms that we have in our society about how we respect our living history, our items of cultural significance. The ways in which we connect are often very literally physically—to touch and to feel.”

The Taichung Green Museumbrary—new contemporary art museum and public library complex in Taichung, Taiwan, that may count as the first institution ever to have a portmanteau for a name—opens tomorrow. The long-awaited institution houses both the Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library, both of which will be connected by a roof garden known as the Culture Forest. “This integrated design reflects the museum and library’s vision of learning as a shared, living practice,” Yi-Hsin Lai, the inaugural director of the Taichung Art Museum, told the Art Newspaper. The complex, set within the city’s 165-acre Central Park, is on the site of a former military base and airport. The Museumbrary was designed by the Japanese architecture firm SANAA and Taiwan’s Ricky Liu & Associates Architects + Planners. It is made of up eight glass-and-metal cube-shaped structures clad in a white mesh façade. (One of SANAA’s earliest museum commissions was the New Museum in New York, which opened its Bowery building in 2007 and is also known for its distinctive aluminum mesh facade.) Site-specific artworks by Haegue Yang and Michael Lin were commissioned by the museum and will be on view through Dece

“Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center,” an exhibition at David Zwirner gallery in New York, was only on view at the gallery for four days, but during that short time, it raised $950,000 for the Ali Forney Center, a nonprofit that runs a 24-hour drop-in center for queer youth and offers assistance with housing, education, job training, and medical care. Its curator, art adviser Stephen Truax, initially had the goal of raising $350,000, slightly more than was raised at last year’s benefit exhibition. He more than doubled that amount. Artist Doron Langberg organized the 2023 exhibition with Sotheby’s and is a close friend of Truax; they contributed work to each of the three benefit exhibitions as well. Langberg said in a statement, “Coming together with other artists to support our queer community gives me a sense of agency and hope in a time of precarity and helplessness. I’m deeply grateful to the Ali Forney Center for continuing to do their life-saving work despite many obstacles, and would like to thank everyone involved in the creation of this wonderful project.”

The Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner released the findings of its investigations into Chapman on Wednesday night, as first reported by CBC. The report accused Chapman of “serious code of conduct breaches” that jeopardized the “confidence in the integrity of the public sector, and specifically the museum.” Chapman was appointed CEO under former Canadian prime minister Stephen J. Harper was reappointed by the Trudeau government in 2016 and 2021. Her four-year contract expired in October, however the museum’s board of trustees had granted her a 90-day transitional term that would have concluded in January, according to the CBC.  The commissioner’s investigation, launched in 2023, centered around workplace misconduct that was reportedly so severe that some staff told investigators they had contemplated self-harm. Chapman was accused of violating the federal government’s core values by using her position to “strike fear into employees” leaving them too intimidated to report concerns. According to the report, Chapman referred to the senior leadership team—commonly abbreviated as SLT—as “sluts” in front of the public, other staff, and even a visiting foreign delegation.

The HeadlinesCALLING TIME. The director of Tate in London, Maria Balshaw, will step down in spring 2026 after nearly a decade in the role, the institution said in a press release. Balshaw, who joined in 2017 after leading Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth, succeeded Nicholas Serota following his 29-year tenure. She called her time at Tate a privilege and said the institution is well positioned for new leadership. During her directorship, Balshaw oversaw major exhibitions including “Van Gogh and Britain,” “Yoko Ono,” and “Sargent and Fashion.” Her final project will be a large-scale Tracey Emin survey at Tate Modern next year. Tate highlighted Balshaw’s efforts to diversify the collection and expand its global scope, noting that membership grew to 150,000 under her leadership. Chair Roland Rudd praised her commitment to widening public access to art and supporting a broader range of artists. Balshaw’s departure comes amid financial strain. Tate has recently cut about 40 jobs to reduce costs and is operating with a deficit budget for 2024–25. Staff have staged walkouts over pay, citing poor working conditions. Visitor numbers also remain below pre-pandemic levels, with signifi

MUSEOS DE TENERIFE NATURALEZA Y ARQUEOLOGÍA LA CIENCIA Y EL COSMOS HISTORIA Y ANTROPOLOGÍA CENTRO DE DOCUMENTACIÓN DE CANARIAS Y AMÉRICA CUEVA DEL VIENTO Información práctica Museo de Historia y Antropología de Tenerife, Casa Lercaro Día 17 de diciembre de 2025 18:00 h. Entrada gratuita hasta completar aforo El cambio climático es quizá uno de los mayores problemas al que nos enfrentamos hoy en día como sociedad. El mundo está cambiando a un ritmo vertiginoso, y para enfrentarnos a esta nueva problemática es probable que necesitemos nuevos enfoques, o tal vez no tan nuevos. Este libro propone una aproximación a la sabiduría ancestral en cuestiones medioambientales, concretamente dentro del municipio de La Laguna. A través de los diferentes apartados que constituyen este volumen, nos iremos adentrando cada vez más en el conocimiento ancestral/ tradicional relacionado con el entorno natural de áreas de cumbre, medianías y costa de dicho municipio. La información para la investigación ha sido obtenida a partir de una búsqueda de documentación bibliográfica clave sobre el tema, y mediante el trabajo de campo, desde una perspectiva antropológica. Cada parte de la investigación se centra