Inspiración

Una cita para descubrir la vida y obra de esta destacada arpista del siglo XIX, a través de una mirada cercana que conecta historia, música y patrimonio cultural. La conferencia propone un recorrido accesible y enriquecedor por el contexto artístico de su época, poniendo en valor el papel desarrollado por Esmeralda Cervantes. En este encuentro se abordará su legado artístico, su pensamiento y su influencia en la cultura de su tiempo. Una ocasión única para redescubrir a una mujer adelantada a su época, puente entre la música, la cultura y la reflexión.

More, the celebrated humanist and Lord Chancellor (effectively Secretary of State) of England, is stern-visaged, eagle-beaked, with a steely gaze focused on the distance. He is dressed in resplendent red and black velvet, the Tudor rose chain around his neck. This portrait, as Elizabeth Goldring puts it in her excellent new book Holbein: Renaissance Master, intended to depict him as the Tudor “statesman par excellence” — an exercise in what literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt has termed “Renaissance self-fashioning,” or the process of cultivating a persona related to the new humanism of the time. Published by Yale University Press and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the book offers those who can’t easily get to the Frick, or the other myriad collections that exhibit the painter, a way to understand his genius not just through glorious reproductions, but Goldring’s exacting scholarly detail about his biography and work.  In that gap of five years between Holbein’s painting of those portraits and the few feet between them at the Frick Collection, there is a veritable dissertation about 16th-century England. In More’s depiction, we see an advocate for the new learni

Spring is ushering in a veritable spread of museum shows across New York—from major exhibitions on such art-world luminaries as Marcel Duchamp and Raphael to spotlights on photography, fashion, and architecture, all unfolding alongside the sprawling surveys of the Whitney Biennial and Greater New York. Here’s our round-up of what’s unmissable. Although Isamu Noguchi’s practice bore the influences of an itinerant life—from the bark paper and bamboo constructions he encountered in Gifu, Japan, to the treatment of marble he learned in Carrara, Italy—the great sculptor was, ultimately, a New Yorker. Beginning in 1922, the city was Noguchi’s on-and-off home for nearly 70 years and, as an exhibition at the Long Island City museum he established shows, he had a great many ideas for it. Play Mountain was one such idea: a sloped playground the size of a city block that he dreamed of erecting in the middle of Central Park. He pitched it to the Public Works of Art Project in 1934, but was laughed out of the room by none other than Robert Moses. Later installations planned for the United Nations, Riverside Park, and Bronx Zoo would also be scrapped, stories which are told through the models, a

Spring is here, and new art books and baby bunnies alike are entering the world en masse. Fiction fans can expect a new novel by Ben Lerner, a “medieval weird” tale story starring Monica Lewinsky, and an unhinged art-world satire imagining Sackler revenge. In nonfiction, look for a memoir from Hans Ulrich Obrist, new books on Dorothea Tanning and Alberto Giacometti, and much more. Only Ben Lerner can turn anxious, overthinking, self-deprecating inner monologues into moving and tender tales this effectively, this consistently. Transcription starts as a detailed day of navigating the world without a phone. Our narrator has dropped his phone into the sink (and NOT the toilet!), but he’s supposed to be interviewing his mentor for a magazine. Visiting that mentor’s intimidating, impressive art-filled house, he finds he’s too embarrassed to confess his clumsy mistake. So he arrives without a recording device and gets caught in an elaborate workaround, acting childish. His humiliating flop is outed at a Museo Reina Sofia dinner, and as the story unfolds, parent-child and mentor-mentee relationships of all kinds blur. It’s a portrait of a world where adulthood—where having “figured it out”

NEON’s final project began last year when the first of three exhibitions by Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz opened at the Acropolis Museum in May, while the second exhibition opened last October. The last of these will involve a new commission by Rakowitz that will be installed at the Old Acropolis Museum when it reopens in the second half of 2026 after a 19-year closure for renovation. The work will be the first piece of contemporary art installed at the ancient site. “The final chapter,” a press release reads, “will explore stories of diaspora and how objects from diverse historical, geographical, and archaeological contexts come together to form layered narratives.” The venues for these projects were equally wide-ranging, from museums such as EMST and the Museum of Cycladic Art to ancient sites like the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Ancient Agora; as well as the Kerameikos Neighborhood, a parking space in central Athens, and other public spaces. One of these works is now on permanent view: Gormley’s RULE II (2019), which he donated to the island of Delos in 2025. “Using the city as its space NEON has pioneered an innovative model of practice and exhibition across divers

Few artists have altered the course of modern sculpture as profoundly as Alexander Calder (1898–1976). From the late 1920s onward, he worked both in the United States and France, creating a new sculptural language grounded in movement and chance. It was in Paris that he introduced his first “mobiles,” setting in motion a practice that would unfold over more than five decades and ensure him global acclaim. Calder’s current exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (through August 16), which celebrates the 100th anniversary of his arrival in the City of Light, underscores the scope of his contributions. Bringing together sculptures, drawings, archival material, and jewelry, it offers a comprehensive overview of a practice that seamlessly combined engineering and abstraction. From delicate suspended mobiles to monumental structures known as “stabiles,” the presentation reveals an artist who merged technical precision with a playful, almost improvisational approach, constantly challenging the boundaries of balance and space. Throughout his career, motion remained Calder’s central concern—not only as a physical phenomenon, but as a way of rethinking the relationship between his

Loïc Gouzer has a new idea for how to sell art. It’s untested, but for him that’s part of the appeal. On April 23, his auction app Fair Warning will roll out a new format called “No Warning.” The premise is simple and a little unnerving if you are used to buying via fine art auctions, but perhaps not if you’ve spent any time on eBay or Poshmark. To start, a work will appear for sale (with a price). You can either hit “purchase now” or submit a single offer. Then you wait. There is no bidding war, no incremental raises, and definitely no call from a specialist nudging you higher. There is also a more personal motive. “Auctions are so stressful,” said Gouzer, who spent about eight years at Christie’s, rising to co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art. “I’m optimizing for my cortisol levels, which my doctor said were too high.” The first test case is a 1999 watercolor by Elizabeth Peyton, Daniel in Berlin, June 1999, priced at $400,000. Gouzer described it as one of the strongest works by the artist to come up for sale in some time. The only other Daniel from the series is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. [...]

The Venice Biennale always brings with it a flurry of controversies, many of them centered on the national pavilions. For that reason, most observers and attendees expect there to be some degree of scandal built into each each edition of the world’s greatest art festival. But no pavilion has received quite as much scrutiny as Russia’s, which has been called out not just by artists and curators but international politicians, too. Even the EU itself has weighed in. Here’s what you need to know about the pavilion and the outcry surrounding it. It is the first time time Russia, one of the countries with a dedicated pavilion in the Giardini, has staged a pavilion at the Biennale since the nation’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That year, the artists pulled the plug on the pavilion in protest of the war in Ukraine. In 2024, Russia did not participate and instead gave over its pavilion to Bolivia, which does not have a permanent exhibition space at the Biennale in its name. When Russia’s 2022 representatives pulled out, the Biennale issued a statement of approval. “La Biennale expresses its complete solidarity for this noble act of courage and stands beside the motivations [...]

The collaboration will open with Weems’s selection, No Country for Old Men (2007). In addition to choosing the film, which a release describes as pointing to the artist’s “sustained engagement with power, violence, and the shaping of American mythologies,” Weems will also be on hand for the May 8 screening to introduce the film. After the screening, director Joel Coen will participate in an audience Q&A. “Fraenkel Gallery Presents,” as the series is titled, dates back to 2024 when the gallery first organized a film festival at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. “It’s been a wonderful way to bring people together in person while supporting independent cinema, and we’ve been so pleased with the response from our artists and audiences,” gallery director Christian Whitworth told ARTnews in an email. “As a series curated entirely by visual artists, Fraenkel Gallery Presents offers an unexpected look into the interests and influences of artists who love cinema.” The gallery was looking for a home for the festival as a way to tie in with the pop-up exhibition, “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” that it is organizing at Ortuzar in Tribeca, which will run from May 9–21. (The six participati

The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership has also invested in spiffing up some of the empty storefronts and underwhelming blocks downtown with public art projects by local artists. There are over 35 projects, ranging from light installations to murals to window displays, currently on view downtown. Check out some of the newer projects that have been installed this year. This is one of Ice’s two installations at 144 Smithfield Street, the former home of the Frank & Seder department store, which opened in 1918 and has sat empty on and off for decades. Aurora V2, an updated version of a previous public art project, is made up of a curtain of polycarbonate diamonds hanging from a frame, which are lit from behind and rustle in a breeze created by programmed fans. Ice told Pittsburgh’s NPR affiliate WESA that he “dreamed up” Light Work (Night Shift), also installed at the former Frank & Cedar Building on Smithfield Street, as a work in which the architecture is “growing and duplicating and kind of taking over the space in a way.” The materials (TV monitors, mirrors, windows, neon elements) were all salvaged, he said, much of it on-site from the abandoned building. Three sculptures by [...]

Hundreds of paintings lost to the ravages of war—including multiple works by Peter Paul Rubens, Paolo Veronese, Anthony van Dyck, and Caravaggio—will soon be viewable online courtesy of a digitization initiative by Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. The museum’s formidable collection of Old Master paintings was damaged by two fires around the end of World War II. But as reported by the Art Newspaper, digital renderings made from high-resolution glass negatives from a photo-documentation campaign started in 1925 are bringing the works back to life, in a way. “They have tremendous documentary value—not only for the museum and the collection itself but also for the public,” Katja Kleinert, the Gemäldegalerie’s deputy director and project leader, told TAN. “By digitizing the glass negatives, the significance of the collection can be understood in a completely new way.” To make the new digital renderings, the glass negatives were rephotographed with high-resolution camera equipment in the Gemäldegalerie’s photo archive room, so as to avoid moving the sensitive plates. “Considering their fragility, it is remarkable how well the collection has survived,” said Franziska May, a provenance research as

A bespoke ensemble of 15 mirrors by Claude Lalanne sold at Sotheby’s New York today for $33.5 million, breaking the artist’s secondary-market record and becoming the most valuable design work ever to leave the auction block.   The gilt-bronze mirrors exemplify Claude’s whimsical flair. Each is framed by a delicate vine of electroplated leaves sourced from the artist’s own garden—“a magnum opus of [Claude Lalanne’s] early artistic imagination,” according to Sotheby’s. As the wry title suggests, the mirrors were a 1974 commission installed in the famously aesthetic “Salon de Musique” of the Paris residence of couture designer Yves Saint Laurent. The mirrors were in the possession of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg, a pair of powerhouse collectors of 20th-century art and design—a selection of which is being offered in a series of Sotheby’s sales running through May under the subtitle “Design Masters.” Roughly 125 design objects will be sold in what Sotheby’s has billed as “a once-in-a-generation moment for the design market: the most valuable single-owner design sale” in the auction house’s history, and the first such auction to be held in its newly christened space in the Breuer building.

When the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., launched Across the Nation last spring, it wasn’t clear how long the initiative to lend artworks from its collection to regional American museums would last. At the time, the NGA—with financial support from billionaire art collector and museum trustee Mitchell Rales—committed to lend up to ten artworks to ten partner institutions in in Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Utah, and Washington, covering expenses related to travel, installation, insurance, and marketing. Now, Rales has stepped up with an additional $116 million donation to endow Across the Nation in perpetuity. (Rales and his brother, Steven Rales, founded the science and technology company Danaher Corporation in 1984.) Rales has been collecting contemporary art since the 1980s, much of which makes up the collection at Glenstone, a private museum in Potomac, Maryland, that Rales founded with his then-wife, Emily Wei Rales, in 2006. The gift is timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the founding of America. “I have long admired the National Gallery’s commitment to national service and sharing artistic excellence wit

Farkas founded the Videobrasil Biennial in São Paulo in 1983, serving as its artistic director until 2004. Farkas is currently the founder and artistic director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, which supports the biennial. From 2007 to 2010, she was the director and chief curator of the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia. She has organized solo shows for artists like Isaac Julien, Joseph Beuys, and Sophie Calle, as well as the 2024–25 exhibition “Videobrasil. Needs no Translation” at the GES-2 in Moscow. Dyangani Ose is the former director of MACBA, Barcelona, who resigned in February after the museum ruled that her role as artistic director of the 2027 Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial was a conflict of interest. She previously served as director and chief curator of the Showroom in London, senior curator at Creative Time in New York, and curator of international art at Tate Modern. She is a co-curator of the traveling exhibition “Project a Black Planet – The Art and Culture of Panafrica,” which is currently on view at MACBA. Kuzma is a professor of art at the Yale School of Art and served as its dean from 2016 to 2021. As the director of Office for [...]

The Netherlands Art Property Collection (known as the NK Collection) comprises thousands of priceless objects, including paintings worth millions by Dutch Golden Age masters, repatriated by the Allies from Germany to the Netherlands after World War II. Most of these objects were looted from Jews who were killed, deported, or forced to sell their holdings by the Nazis. While provenance research overseen by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science remains ongoing, the items’ rightful owners have yet to be located. The collection is currently under the custodianship of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, which oversees its storage and makes loans of art to museums and government buildings. Under a proposal issued by the Committee on Heirless Jewish Looted Art, the guardianship of these “orphaned” objects would be given over to a Dutch Jewish foundation, preferably one housed at the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, where the art can be on public view. The proposal includes an annual budget to create exhibitions, as well as a draft of a wall label explaining any exhibited item’s connection to the Holocaust. Not everybody is happy with this solution. According to the

To their presumed relief, it now appears that the architect who will lead the major modernization of the Louvre Museum—including the creation of new galleries and a new lobby—will be named imminently. Last week, the museum’s newly ascendant president, Christophe Leribault, and Culture Minister Catherine Pégard reportedly visited the Préfecture de Paris et d’Île-de-France (the region’s administrative hub), where the architects’ scale models are currently on view for evaluation. What form the winning design will ultimately take remains to be seen. Catherine Pégard has indicated that “certain aspects of the plan would be reworked or adjusted, while others would be reinforced.” Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron has championed a “New Louvre” slated for completion by 2031, though the feasibility of that timeline has been questioned. The 21-person jury is chaired by Marc Guillaume, prefect of Paris, and comprises French civil servants, including the mayor of Paris and the French Director-General for Heritage; architects such as Anne Démians, Bernard Desmoulin, and Lina Ghotmeh; as well as leading museum professionals including Neil MacGregor and Sam Keller in Basel. The five architecture firms s