Inspiración

A compassionate new book explores how canine companions across Western art history break down the emotional boundaries between species. The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History (2026) offers an expansive, accessible survey of canine presence in Western art from the Palaeolithic period onward. Brilliant, full-color reproductions of 250 artworks fill the book's pages as evidence of what Laqueur terms an "aesthetics of sociability." A dog, he contends, is an "animal that, because it sees with us, is uniquely gifted at breaching the bounds of species in art and perhaps also in life." Laqueur applies his thesis to concerns of both form and content. Dogs across Vittore Carpaccio's oeuvre tend to establish structural axes of vision, as with the adorable, scruffy puppy in “St. Augustine in His Study” (1501–1505). In Edwin Landseer's tender painting “The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner” (1837) and Antonio da Correggio's depiction of a kidnapping in Greek mythology in “Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle” (1531–32), a dog serves as the sole witness to a human’s suffering. Pierre-Auguste Renoir records a sociological milestone in “Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children” (1878), with a reluctant but pati

“Following three brilliant editions, we are pleased to return for Tokyo Gendai this September,” Tokyo Gendai cofounder Magnus Renfrew said in a statement. “The positive response we have received over the past few years is an indicator of the very important role that Japan plays in the global cultural scene and art market. Tokyo Gendai was established to galvanize cross-cultural exchange, and to welcome international audiences to experience the breadth and the exceptional quality of contemporary art in Japan; we look forward to continuing in this mission with our dynamic fourth edition.”

Sotheby’s will stage a series of sales, starting in October, of over 900 works spanning antiquity to 20th century and including fine art and design, from an unnamed collector, with the total estimated at more than $60 million. Four New York sales, between October 21 and October 23, will bring some 600 works from the haul to auction. The rest will appear at various sales at Sotheby’s New York and Paris, spanning some 25 of the house’s categories, from contemporary art to books and manuscripts, from jewelry and prints and photographs to design, stretching into 2027. Leading the sale is a treasure of ancient art, a marble torso of a Roman emperor from the Julio-Claudian period (first half of the 1st century CE), estimated at $8 million–$12 million. Also on offer is an Augustan marble portrait head of a girl (27 BCE–14 CE) for $2.5 million–$2.5 million. “From Degas’ extraordinary command of color and form to Picasso’s mastery of sculptural medium and narrative—from early in a career that was never less than singular—each work finds an artist at a moment of genuine consequence,” Scott Niichel, the house’s vice chairman for Impressionist and modern art, said in a statement.  “Rugs and [.

“The response to our second edition has been incredibly encouraging,” fair director Michael Slenske said in a statement, noting that exhibitors come from five continents and that the fair has deepened its partnerships with some 30 Houston cultural institutions, reflecting  “the growing momentum around the fair and Houston’s emergence as a major center for contemporary art.”

While the Storm King Art Center tends to get the attention from day-trippers (and Charli XCX), Art Omi in Ghent is a sculpture center equally worth a visit. The 120-acre site has outdoor sculptures and installations from major heavy-hitters and rising stars, including Pippa Garner, Alicja Kwade, Kiyan Williams, Nancy Dwyer, Robert Grosvenor, Mary Ann Unger, and more. This year features new works from Tschabalala Self—fresh off a monumental commission for the New Museum’s new facade—and Nayland Blake, who will be presenting his first outdoor commission, “Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre (2026), which is set to be accompanied by performances, activations, and workshops this weekend and throughout its run. Blake, who has long challenged the relationship between artist, institution, and audience, will continue that interrogation in “Haunt,” which Omi describes as “Part classroom, part lounge, part farm stand, part abandoned amusement park ride.” Back for its second edition, Stay Frosty returns to ArtPort Kingston, again blurring the lines between a site-specific exhibition, an art fair, and a trunk show. Its a weird and wild event, playful and boundary-pushing in the way

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. Happy Friday! Here’s a round-up of who’s moving and shaking in the art trade this week. MIT Museum to Receive Gift of I.M. Pei Archive: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners will transfer the Pritzker Prize–winning architect’s complete project archive to his alma mater, making MIT the world’s largest repository of his work. The collection spans 60 projects and 1,500 rolls of drawings. Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum Opens New Flight and the Arts Center: The dedicated gallery space debuts July 1 with a Rauschenberg exhibition as its inaugural show. The presentation includes 30 works, many never before displayed, exploring the artist’s engagement with aviation and space exploration. Sebastian Smee Joins The Atlantic as Staff Writer for Visual Art: The Pulitzer Prize–winning critic joins from the Washington Post and will write broadly about visual art and its influence on modern life and culture. He had worked for the Post since 2018 but was laid off in February. Mennour Takes on Ruoxi Jin: In collaboration with Cibrián, the Paris-base

NOT SO HOT. Amid a heat wave in Europe and one day after Sotheby’s put together a double-header sale in London with a total ($520.7 million) more in line with a marquee sales week, Christie’s followed up  Thursday with a more lukewarm result. The house staged its own double-header, also led by works from a prestigious collection — in this case, that of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz — followed by a 79-lot sale of postwar and contemporary art. The Zabludowicz works were estimated to total between £12.6 million and £19.3 million ($16.6 million–$25.5 million); the hammer total was £12.3 million ($16.2 million), just below the low estimate; with the house’s fees, the sale totaled £15.4 million ($20.5 million). The following sale was estimated to fetch between £8.6 million and £12.1 million ($11.4 million–$16 million) but fell short, achieving a hammer total of just £8.1 million ($10.7 million), or £10.2 million ($13.5 million) with the house’s fees. Better luck next time.Related ArticlesResignations at the Southbank Centre and Canadian Human Rights Museum, and More: Morning Links for June 24, 2026Artist Helen Cammock Removes Controversial Video Referring to Churchill from London's National

Tired of winning yet? The Guggenheim in New York isn’t. Earlier this week, the museum announced that a “courtside icon” from the New York Knicks’s NBA Finals run is coming its way. In a video that went viral, Towns can be heard talking about the bag after the NBA Finals victory, saying that the bag has to go in “the Whitney or the Guggenheim.” Well, in an Instagram post earlier this week, the Guggenheim announced the handbag will go on view at the museum as of Wednesday.

The Iron Age city of Sardis in western Turkey has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, marking a milestone in one of the longest-running archaeological projects in history. Speaking to ScienceDaily, Benjamin Anderson, associate professor of history of art and visual studies at Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, said that in recent years, investigations have focused on the Sardis acropolis and adjacent Temple of Artemis.  Lydia’s importance to world history is difficult to overstate. Lydians are widely recognized as the inventors of coinage, helping to make their capital, Sardis, synonymous with fabulous wealth in the ancient Mediterranean. The kingdom lost its independence when it was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BCE. Centuries later, Alexander the Great captured Sardis from the Persians, after which the area came under Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and finally Ottoman rule. Annetta Alexandridis, associate director of the excavation and associate professor of history of art and classics at Cornell, said in a statement: “These layers are all there, and make it sometimes difficult to excavate, because they are not clearly stratified.

Four panels of an interconnected painting by Norman Rockwell have gone on public view for the first time at the headquarters for the White House Historical Association, a “non-profit, non-partisan organization” a short walk from its namesake in Washington, D.C. As reported by Artnet News, “After publication, Rockwell gave the paintings to Early, but following the press officer’s untimely death in 1951, they went to his daughter and were later lent to the White House between 1978 and 2022, becoming an ever presence in the West Wing.” Last year, three years after the loan had ceased, the painting changed hands by way of Heritage Auctions for $7.25 million in a “sale [that] followed a bitter ownership dispute and cast the painting as an emblem of both American democracy and litigiousness,” as Artnet described it at the time. In a statement related to the work going on view, Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, called So You Want to See the President! a “portrait of American democracy itself.” He added: “We are honored to share this defining piece of White House history with visitors from across the country and around the world, especially during Ameri

Per the proposal submission guidelines, the ideal architectural design would “promote the achievements of American architectural communities and enhance America’s global competitiveness in the creative and built environment sectors.” The commission should also “offer constructive artistic and cultural channels to counter negative perceptions and advance safety and security in the United States and worldwide.” The theme for 2027 Architecture Biennale’s main exhibition is “Do Architecture—For the Possibility of Coexistence Facing a Real Reality,” which explores architectural approaches to coexistence amid global climate change. Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, cofounders of Hangzhou-based Amateur Architecture Studio, will serve as artistic directors. As with the Art Biennale, national pavilions do not necessarily have to sync up with the main exhibition, though many often do. Any country recognized by Italy can submit to participate in the Biennale, with each nation handling the selection process for their respective pavilions. The State Department provided architectural drawings of the US Pavilion, a 1929 Palladian structure designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, for dow

Three years ago, in the summer of 2023, the Irish government formed a committee to advise museums and other cultural institutions on matters related to restitution and repatriation. That endeavor, known as the Advisory Committee on the Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage, presented its final report last month. According to The Art Newspaper, the report aims to address the “practical and legal impediments” that can prevent some institutions from properly responding to claims, whether related to colonial-era artifacts or cultural property looted during the Nazi regime. Therefore, the government should establish a national advisory panel to oversee such claims, along with funding to address impediments like limited provenance research, incomplete cataloguing and digitization of records, and a lack of access to specialists. The report conducted a national survey of cultural heritage and presented some sobering key findings. Ninety percent of Irish institutions lack comprehensive online catalogs; many have large documentation backlogs, and only a small fraction of their collections are digitized. Few are accessible online. The committee recommends funding earmarked to impr

The conservation team has noted numerous spots of deterioration in the paint, likely a consequence of the microclimate created by the glass windows surrounding the Loggias, which, ironically, were installed in the 19th century to shield the artwork from the elements.  Angela Cerreta, deputy head restorer for paintings and wooden materials, told the Art Newspaper that restorers will first attend to unstable paint before cleaning the frescoes with fiber lasers. After that, the team will color-match sections needing retouching using techniques that keep original passages visually distinct from restorations. Work is currently concentrated on four bays, before moving to the rest of the gallery. “These adhesives shrink and peel off the paint,” Cerreta said. “If you don’t remove these adhesives and protective films, they’ll keep stripping the color.”

Nuevas dataciones, investigaciones arqueoastronómicas y reconstrucciones digitales cuestionan las interpretaciones tradicionales sobre la historia temprana de Tenerife.

It is a symptom of museums’ perpetually acquisitive nature that a majority of global museum collections—up to 95 percent, according to some estimates—remains in storage. A number of high-profile institutions are addressing this surplus by providing public views into their storage facilities: While “visible storage” has been around since the 80s, projects like The Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (opened in 2021) and V&A East Storehouse in London (opened last year) promise a more spectacular and interactive experience, one that begins to blur the lines between storage and display. Often housed in costly, starchitect-designed facilities, these new institutional formations are the subject of a new anthology, Keeping Culture: The Architecture of Storage. Published by Valiz, it features contributions from architects, critics, and historians, many of whom are skeptical of the possibility that storage can be displayed and still be considered storage, or if its fundamental nature is as something kept in reserve. Edited by architecture scholars Susan Holden and Ashley Paine, Keeping Culture offers a critical analysis of storage through an array of contemporary case studie

Sotheby’s London will offer a restored early painting by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn that was discovered over a decade ago and reattributed to the artist. The painting has undergone extensive restoration, removing overpainting by other hands and revealing imagery that, experts say, may have articulated a message of religious tolerance in a moment of social tensions arising partly from a refugee crisis. Let The Little Children Come Unto Me (begun in 1627) comes to auction July 1 and is estimated at £8–12 million ($10.6–$15.9 million). The 40-inch-high painting is, per the house, the only known rendition of the subject by the Dutchman. The seller bought it at Cologne auction house Lempertz in 2014, when it was attributed to an unknown 17th-century Netherlandish artist, for just €1.5 million ($1.7 million at today’s exchange rate). It was discovered by Amsterdam dealer Jan Six, a direct descendant of his namesake, the subject of a 1654 portrait by the artist, and it has been authenticated by experts Christopher Brown and Ernst van de Wetering. If it makes its high estimate, it will be his sixth-highest price at auction (without correcting for inflation). The artist’s record stands