Inspiración

As the United States marks its 250th, institutions must resist the pull to simply commemorate and instead communicate the relevance of history. Believe it or not, the future of our nation may rest on how museums in the United States perform in 2026.  We must deliver content about the 250th anniversary of our nation and its democracy that is thoughtful and comprehensive. We must make access to museums within reach of all Americans. And finally, museums must issue a challenge to the communities we serve: It’s time to know your nation’s history, if for no other reason than that it is our only path to building a more perfect union. It’s tempting to be dispirited as a museum professional these days. Headlines about a highly partisan political environment, a cynical public, and a tidal wave of industrial and cultural change driven by AI might lead one to think that museums have been relegated to the sidelines of our nation’s future.    Yet museums are among the most trusted institutions in our nation, scoring well above the government, the media, and non-governmental organizations on perceived credibility, trustworthiness, and not having a political agenda. At The New York Historical, as

POWER TO THE PEOPLE. British museums are increasingly handing the compass to the public, inviting ordinary citizens to help chart future policy, priorities, and even funding decisions through citizens’ assemblies, The Art Newspaper wrote. The National Gallery’s newly launched NG Citizens panel is emblematic of this shift, following similar experiments at Birmingham Museums Trust, the Imperial War Museum and the Migration Museum. For the gallery, this is not a token consultation but, as it puts it, a culture-shaping collaboration designed to keep the institution relevant, inclusive and publicly accountable. Supporters argue that museums, among the most trusted of public bodies, are ideal laboratories for democratic decision-making. Randomly selected citizens, properly informed, can grapple with complex questions of value, access and resources, challenging assumptions about who gets to decide. Critics fear a dilution of expertise, but advocates counter that assemblies shape guiding principles, not exhibition lists. The real test, they say, however, is whether institutions are genuinely willing to share power, and act on what the public tells them.Donald Trump rang in 2026 with a glit

President Donald Trump rang in the New Year with an amateur art auction at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, where a freshly painted portrait of Jesus Christ sold for $2.75 million. He even shared his New Year’s resolution: “Peace on Earth.” The painting was created on stage by Vanessa Horabuena, a self-described Christian “worship artist” whom the president described as “one of the greatest artists anywhere in the world”. “To me, she’s one of the greatest. In fact, she did something last night that was incredible. She can paint, slowly, a beautiful portrait for the White House, or she can paint the most incredible painting in literally 10 minutes,” he said on video of the event broadcast on the right-wing media outlet Newsmax. He carried this narration through the creation of Horabuena’s painting as a band played a slow rendition of “Hallelujah.” “Draw something really special. I don’t know what it is, but draw something really special,” he said to the artist, opening the bidding at $100,000 and explaining that half the proceeds would go to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital and half to the local sheriff’s department. “These people are loaded with cash, just so you know,” he added. Th

By Andy Battaglia Executive Editor, ARTnews & Art in America Archaeologists working in the western Nile Delta of Egypt discovered remnants of an “extensive industrial complex” from as far back as the 5th century B.C.E. as well as a Roman cemetery that suggests the area was fertile ground for civilization and exchange in the Mediterranean. As reported by Archaeology News, the findings—by an Egyptian-Italian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Padua at the sites of Kom el-Ahmar and Kom Wasit in Beheira Governorate—”bring to the foreground the significance of the western Delta as a center of production, trade, and settlement, linked to the Mediterranean world and the hinterland of ancient Alexandria.” The industrial complex consisted of six rooms, two used for the production of easily tradable salted fish (as evidenced by the finding of 9,700 fish bones) and the others used to make metal and stone tools as well as ceramic amulets. In addition, imported amphorae used to store wine and fragments of Greek pottery suggest “strong cultural and commercial connections between Egypt and the Greek world,” according to Archaeology News. In the Roman Period–era cem

Piet Mondrian left a lasting mark on modern art with works such as this one, which is divided into squarish segments of unbroken color separated by thick black lines. The Dutch painter aspired to reach a form of “pure plastic art,” one that allowed its viewers to reach states of transcendence. The work is owned by the Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland; a very similar second version of the painting sold at Sotheby’s in 2022 for $51 million and is imaged above. José Clemente Orozco had already cultivated a reputation as one of the most important muralists in Mexico by the time he painted Prometheus, his first fresco produced for a venue in the United States. Housed in a dining hall at Pomona College in Claremont, California, the painting depicts Prometheus, the ancient Greek god who ran contrary to Zeus’s wishes by providing humanity with fire. Orozco painted this nude without genitalia for fearing of offending some viewers. Until a few years ago, when a traveling retrospective did much to reshape the public perception of her art, Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a lesser-known modernist. Now, the Swiss artist is beloved for the ways she translated her experiments with abstraction across multipl

The audit uncovered serious irregularities. It found charges on the museum’s corporate credit card that were “without a readily apparent business purpose.” It found two instances in which payments were made to an employee’s PayPal account. A former employee was instructing visitors to pay him for parking personally, and keeping the cash. And the museum had a practice of pre-signing a number of blank checks for emergency purposes, and stored unsigned blank checks in an unsecured office.  Only a small amount of money, a total of $10,115, was unaccounted for between April 2021 and January 2025. The museum’s annual budget is $6.3 million.  The Lewis is a quasi-governmental stage agency, the only Baltimore museum to be classified as such, says the Sun, which notes that taxpayers provide up to half the museum’s annual budget, while most other Maryland cultural groups receive less than ten percent of their budget from taxpayer funds. In return, the institution undergoes a detailed annual budget analysis and state audits every four years. In the 2025-26 fiscal year, the Lewis received $2.7 million in taxpayer support, up from $2 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year, notes the Sun. The museum

Both of the curators at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, were terminated on December 4, according to an internal message shared with ARTnews. Kate Kraczon, director of exhibitions and chief curator, and Thea Quiray Tagle, associate curator, will both work until early 2026. The Bell exhibits contemporary art and is part of the Brown Arts Institute. The school is facing a substantial financial crunch that has led to layoffs and other austerity measures.Related ArticlesTiffany & Co. Plans Art-Filled New York Flagship, Collector Ron Perelman Pledges $25 M. to Brown, and More: Morning Links for April 21, 2023Birmingham Museum of Art Appoints Horace D. Ballard Curator of Education Kraczon was hired in 2019 after 11 years as associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. While there, she championed emerging artists, notably curating “Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson: Easternsports” (2014) and “Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: The Incidental Insurgents” (2015). The 2018 show “Ree Morton: The Plant That Heals May Also Poison” was awarded a commendation by the inaugural Sotheby’s Prize for an “exhibition that

The Erie Art Museum has responded to a lawsuit filed on Nov. 7, 2025, by the daughter of a local artist, requesting the return of a watercolor painted by her late father. The artist, George C. Demiel, submitted the painting to be included in an annual juried show in 1966 at the museum, which was then known as the Art Center of Erie. The Art Center did not accept the painting, and Demiel—who died the following year at age 53—never reclaimed the artwork. The Erie Times-News, which has been covering the lawsuit, reported that the museum’s December 12 response refers to the watercolor, titled House Boats, as “abandoned personal property.” The response continues to explain that “After Mr. Deimel did not return to retrieve the work and/or notify the Art Center of his intention to reclaim the same, the Art Center then took possession of what was then abandoned personal property, and placed the work in storage until it was formally accessioned to the now Art Museum’s permanent collection in 1983.” (The institution changed names that year.) Demiel’s 82-year-old daughter Georgia Heynes learned that the museum still possessed House Boats in 2019, when she saw it hanging in an exhibition [...]

Just weeks after opening in mid-December, India’s top biennial, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, was forced to close briefly following protests by Christian groups in response to a painting depicting the Last Supper. The painting by Tom Vattakuzhy was not included in the main biennial exhibition, “For the Time Being,” but rather in a recurring side exhibition also organized by the Kochi Biennale Foundation called “EDAM,” which highlights the practices of artists and collectives based in Kerala, the south Indian state where Kochi is located. “EDAM” is staged at multiple sites across Kochi; Vattakuzhy’s painting was shown at the Garden Convention Centre, a short walk from the biennial’s main venue. Kerala is home to India’s largest Christian population—some 6 million people, or about 18 percent of the state’s total population—owing to its long history as a trading port with the Middle East and as a major landing point for Portuguese, British, and Dutch missionaries and traders. It is also said that Thomas, one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus, proselytized in Kerala after arriving in 52 CE. In a social media post, Biju Josey Karumanchery, secretary of the Kerala Latin Catholic Associ

One of the two Qur’ans used in the ceremony came from Mr. Mamdani’s grandfather. The other was lent by the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. According to the New York Times, the latter book was selected by Rahim and Rama Duwaji, Mamdani’s wife, with the help of Hiba Abid, curator of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at the NYPL. The book was part of the personal collection of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874–1938), the Afro–Puerto Rican scholar, writer, and bibliophile who over his lifetime amassed over 4000 books, manuscripts, and other items pertaining to Black art, culture, and religion before selling them to the NYPL. It will go on public display for the first time on January 6 at NYPL’s main branch as part of a celebration of the Schomburg’s 100th anniversary.  

Kathleen Goncharov, a curator whose work included organizing shows for Just Above Midtown gallery, died at her home in Boca Raton, Florida, of natural causes on December 31. She was 73 years old.  Goncharov served as senior curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida from 2012 until she retired in 2025. She had previously worked as a curator at institutions throughout the US, curated exhibitions from Rio de Janeiro to Bologna and Rome, and served as the commissioner of the US Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2003, which that year took the form of an exhibition of Fred Wilson, “Speak of Me as I Am,” about the historical and contemporary role of Black people in Venice for the American pavilion. “It was a great pleasure working with Kathleen Goncharov during my 11-year tenure at the Boca Raton Museum of Art,” said Irvin Lippman, who was the executive director from 2014 until 2025. “She had a fabulous curatorial eye that underscored my favorite comment ever made about our art installations — that our museum had soul, and this was due to Kathy’s talents as a curator. She possessed a natural flair for bringing exhibitions to life, in her [...]

While 2026 has barely even begun, the year already looks to be a busy one. The world’s biggest art festival, the Venice Biennale, is returning, headlining a year that will also see many more biennials staged from New York to Sydney. Long-awaited museums are finally set to arrive, and new fairs are launching. And that’s to say nothing of monumentally scaled retrospectives for some of art history’s biggest stars. What should you look forward to most this year? To help you plan, we’ve selected 20 art happenings to look forward to in 2026. Never before in the history of the Venice Biennale has a curator died during the production of their show, making the 2026 edition a first. That exhibition was conceived by Koyo Kouoh, a star curator of the African art scene who died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2025, having battled cancer in private. Kouoh did leave behind a framework for her show, which will be titled “In Minor Keys” and is now being seen through by a set of curators she had already appointed before her passing. Complementing her main exhibition will be the usual set of national pavilions bringing together artist emissaries from across the globe. Among [...]