Inspiration

The two-part exhibition features the work of 28 MFA candidates across several disciplines in Fine Art and Design. Now on view in Richmond, Virginia. Pratt Fine Arts is delighted to invite visitors to a two-part show curated by Alessandra Gómez at Dock 72 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

His work had everything to do with what it means to be an artist and member of a community. He was a model for us. Thaddeus Mosley’s carved wood sculptures first came to New York in 2004 when the poet Nathaniel (“Nate”) Mackey curated the debut exhibition of his work at CUE. I went because I love Nate’s work both as poet and editor and am interested in anything he does. I had never heard of Mosley before and was not sure what I would see. His exhibition reminded me of something I had long known: There are many artists of color that the art world blithely ignores.  A year later, still thinking about Mosley’s sculptures, I decided to invite myself to his studio in Pittsburgh, even though I was not writing for any art magazine and I did not have the money to go there and back on a train, much less stay in a hotel. I did not think much past wanting to talk to Mosley. For years, driven only by his passion and curiosity, and with the support of a small group of close friends and family, the self-taught artist carved wooden sculptures out of logs he [...]

Last March, we presented 15 iconic works of feminist art stretching from the first wave of feminism to the intersectional movement of today. But that roster could only scratch the surface of a potent artistic point of view. Here we add another 15 artworks that powerfully advance the feminist argument. The nearly three-ton sculpture was Lewis’s most ambitious work, and with it, she portrayed Cleopatra as a master of her own fate—something the artist aimed to become herself. Throughout her life, Lewis obscured facts related to her childhood and carefully crafted her biography in the way she wanted it to be known. But her work stood for itself and by the end of the 19th century, Lewis was the only Black woman who had participated in, and been recognized by, the American artistic mainstream. American painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) depicted the “New Woman”—the label associated with 19th-century feminism—from the woman’s perspective. Unlike other Impressionists of the time, who often focused on street scenes and landscapes, Cassatt painted images of women in social and private situations, with a particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. In T

The field of outsider art continues to expand its parameters, encompassing not only the output of self-taught artists, visionary artists, folk artists, vernacular artists, and artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities, but that of virtually any maker working outside the mainstream, whether by choice or by circumstance. At the same time, however, outsider art is going mainstream itself: in recent years it has been a focus of, or significant presence in, institutional exhibitions and biennials such as the upcoming Minnie Evans show at the Whitney and the 2024 Venice Biennale. Perhaps most tellingly, it is attracting attention from the art market as well, with Christie’s even holding an annual auction dedicated to work by outsiders. In line with these developments, and somewhat paradoxically, the Outsider Art Fair has become both more clearly a stakeholder in a growing market category and, at the same time, more wide-ranging than ever in its definition of “outsider.” This year’s installations run the gamut from a resurrection of Susan Cianciolo’s Run Store (2000), which features clothing and home goods created by the indie fashion designer and 40 of her friends, st

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesPAINTING OVER THE CRACKS: Amid ongoing fallout over sexual abuse allegations against Cesar Chavez, a prominent mural honoring the labor and farmworker leader was painted over yesterday in San Francisco, reports ABC 7 News. The artwork had adorned the Mission District’s Latin Rock Music House, a venue that has hosted legendary Latino performers over the years. “I did this to let everyone know. Let’s get the ball rolling. Let’s start right here and get this done,” said building owner Richard Segovia. Artist Carlos “Kookie” Gonzalez, who joined Segovia in painting over the mural, added: “In light of the allegations and confirmation of them, none of this is okay.”NO STAGE FOR SPIN. Venice’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, made it clear on Thursday that Russia’s pavilion at the biennale will be shut down if it crosses the line into propaganda. But he stressed that the city should still be a space for dialogue and cultural exchange. Tensions have been high since Russia announced its return to Venice for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The p

Prada‘s current ad campaign for its Spring/Summer 2026 collection is an unsettling affair, and no surprise its maker is an artist known for disturbing video art and sculptures: Jordan Wolfson, whose past works have featured a gyrating cyborg, chained-up puppets, and other terrors. Wolfson’s art is famous—and, in some cases, notorious—for its depictions of violence, both of the physical and emotional variety. A VR work that he produced for the 2017 Whitney Biennial, for example, allowed visitors to witness a man being bludgeoned by a version of Wolfson himself wielding a baseball bat. Another VR work made last year for the Fondation Beyeler, a museum just outside Basel, Switzerland, body-swapped its participants, without much warning to viewers in advance that this would happen. Wolfson first made his name as a video artist, and the Prada campaign also includes a short moving-image work that is billed as his first foray into the medium since Riverboat Song, his acclaimed 2017–18 piece. In the new video, Prada’s models numbly into the word “I” a few times, then at last utter the phrase “I am.” These words also constitute the title of the campaign, which is called “I, I, I, I AM… PRAD

For more than 60 years, Tomkins immersed himself in the contemporary art world, meeting with his subjects over many months to report stories for the New Yorker, whose staff he joined in 1960. The body of work that he assembled amounts to an unrivaled history of the art of his era—a time of seismic aesthetic changes and the explosive growth of the art market. As art took one radical new form after another in the decades following World War II, Tomkins was always eager to make sense of it, striving to render even the most esoteric artistic practices in an accessible manner. “What I came to believe, and still believe, is that the kind of profile I had in mind was a collaboration between the writer and the subject,” he wrote in the preface to the 2019 anthology. Calvin Tomkins was born on December 17, 1925, and grew up in the Llewellyn Park area of West Orange, New Jersey, a suburb of New York. His father was businessman who sold a plaster company to Allied Chemical. There were artworks at home—a Charles Burchfield, a Raoul Dufy, a painting of wolves that the family believed was a Gustave Courbet. (Alas, it [...]

As reported by The Art Newspaper, the case was made public when Mexico’s secretary of culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, wrote in a posting on X that the Orlando, Florida–based enterprise Coins Artifacts was selling objects deemed part of Mexico’s cultural heritage by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). In a letter sent to eBay, Curiel de Icaza demanded that the company “immediately suspend the sale and return the items to the Mexican government,” adding that the export of such objects has been illegal since 1827.

Before becoming culture minister, Klempíř was the lead singer of the funk rock band J.A.R. Many artists in the Czech Republic have raised concerns about his ability to allocate funds appropriately. “A culture minister should safeguard the independence and diversity of artistic production, not undermine it,” read a 2025 open letter signed by artists such as Eva Koťátková, who represented the nation at the 2024 Venice Biennale. The museum houses an array of notable artworks, including modernist paintings by František Kupka, Alphonse Mucha, and other noted Czech and Slovak artists of the 20th century. Its collection also includes works by Gustav Klimt, Peter Paul Rubens, Vincent van Gogh, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Rembrandt van Rijn. Olga Kotková, currently the head of the museum’s Old Masters art collection, will now serve as interim director. In a statement, Klempíř praised her as someone “who knows the environment of the National Gallery perfectly and at the same time has a clear professional vision for its further development.”

As for what the Futurific Institute will actually look like, Freeman’s sources were less definitive, though they offered a wide range of comparisons, from the Venice Biennale and the St. Louis World’s Fair to Burning Man and TED Talks. The general idea seems to be to bridge art, culture, tech, and future problem-solving into a single event.

The artwork, which covered the facade of the Latin Rock Music House at 25th and York Streets, was removed Wednesday by the building’s owner, Richard Segovia, along with artist Carlos “Kookie” Gonzalez, according to ABC7 Eyewitness News. The decision came days after a New York Times investigation detailed allegations that Chavez abused women and girls connected to the United Farm Workers movement.  The museum’s move would be the first time it has rescinded the distinction and signals how quickly institutions are responding as the story develops. 

Leo Castañeda will exhibit a meditative, playable video game installation within the 2026 Whitney Biennial, running March 8–August 23. Titled “Camoflux Recall Grotto,” and part of the Colombian artist’s broader Camoflux series, the work is also available to play online from any computer. Players are asked to cultivate a garden in a “primordial landscape” that Castañeda hand-painted over the course of a decade. The work is one of many highlights in this year’s 82nd Whitney Biennial, which features 56 artists, duos, and collectives selected by curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer. The Sundance Film Festival: CDMX will return to Mexico City for its third edition, taking place May 28–31, as part of an ongoing partnership between the Sundance Institute and the Mexican cinema chain Cinépolis. The event will bring a curated selection of films from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah to Mexican audiences along with filmmaker conversations and special programming. The Watermill Center, founded by theater director Robert Wilson in 1992, has appointed French American director and dramaturg Charles Chemin as its new artistic director. Chemin, who previously led the center’s

An international architecture competition organized by Dutch social venture Shift has revealed the five shortlisted organizations tasked with designing a new “world wonder” intended to inspire climate action. Heatherwick Studio, MVRDV, Mecanoo, Office for Political Innovation, and Ecosistema Urbano were selected from 80 submissions by teams from around the world, with each now receiving €40,000 to develop their concepts before a final presentation. The competition—launched with a €250,000 prize fund—aims to create a large-scale cultural destination in the Netherlands that uses architecture, immersive experiences, and storytelling to motivate millions of visitors toward more sustainable behaviors. Salvador Dalí’s largest painting is heading to auction in Paris. The large-scale canvas—unusual for Dalí, who more often worked on smaller formats—demonstrates the artist’s signature dreamlike imagery and meticulous technique that helped define the Surrealist movement. Its appearance at auction underscores continued market interest in Dalí’s work, which remains highly sought after decades after his death and continues to command multimillion-dollar results on the secondary market. The expe

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will publish more than 100 high-resolution 3D models of artworks from across its collection, allowing users to rotate, zoom, and examine objects online—or through augmented-reality experiences on smartphones and VR headsets. The research-grade scans—many available for free download under the museum’s Open Access CC0 license—include works such as a 3rd-century marble sarcophagus, a statue of Horus protecting King Nectanebo II (360–343 BCE), and Kano Sansetsu’s Old Plum (1646). Nine monumental objects, including Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889) and Canova’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1804–06), were created in collaboration with NHK using laser scanning and photogrammetry. The Art Institute of Chicago is considering an expansion that could significantly reshape the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, a historic 5,700-square-foot gallery originally built in 1893–94 and reconstructed in the museum after being saved from demolition in the 1970s. The space has long served as both a visitor landmark and an event venue, but its location on the east side of the museum makes it a potential site for expanding gallery space. The project, support

Sotheby’s will auction works from the collection of Robert and Adriana Mnuchin this spring. The sale, estimated to exceed $130 million, will be led by a monumental, museum-worthy Mark Rothko painting valued at $70 million to $100 million. The consignment reflects Mnuchin’s decades-long focus on postwar and contemporary art, with works by artists such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jeff Koons, and David Hammons. The sale follows the recent closure of Mnuchin Gallery after Robert Mnuchin’s death. Icelandic fragrance brand Fischersund staged its first scented concert in Paris—at Dover Street Market during Paris Fashion Week—blending live music, visual art, and perfume into a multi-sensory performance. The 50-minute event was created and performed by the Fischersund Music Collective—featuring Jónsi of Sigur Rós, Kjartan Holm, and Sin Fang, with scents released in synchronization with the soundscape and visuals to guide the audience through an immersive narrative. The Palace of Versailles will host a new exhibition celebrating Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette to mark the movie’s 20th anniversary. Running September 22 through January 24, 2027, the exhibit will present Milen

This February, the Neue Galerie in New York City opened “Egon Schiele: Portrait of Dr. Erwin von Graff,” an exhibition focused on the relationship between the Austrian artist and the Vienna-based physician who became one of his closest acquaintances and patrons. Centered on Schiele’s 1910 portrait of Dr. Erwin von Graff, the presentation brings together approximately 40 works from 1910 to 1918, including (often grotesque) drawings and watercolors of such subjects as pregnant women, naked men, and newborns. Installed in a second-floor antechamber behind the main galleries, just beyond the wall that holds Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, the exhibition is organized around the half-length oil portrait of von Graff, shown alongside two surviving preparatory sketches. Surrounding these works are related studies and paintings that situate the portrait within Schiele’s broader production of the period. Schiele met von Graff in 1910, when the doctor assisted with the birth of a child by Liliana Amon, an acquaintance of the artist. As an expression of gratitude, he painted von Graff’s portrait, which marked the beginning of a close friendship that lasted until Schiele’s death

The large-format paintings and collage work of Austin-based fine artist Deborah Roberts convey both fragmentation of identity and the fracturing of the individual under societal gaze; each is pieced together with a poetic power and underscored by historic research. Within “Consequences of being,” Roberts’ current exhibition at The FLAG Art Foundation, a new series of these art pieces is joined by two ceramic busts—which mark the artist’s entry into sculpture. Together, all of the works in the exhibition explore the ways Black bodies are seen and understood. On view in the foundation’s ninth-floor gallery through April 25, the exhibition’s works require thorough inspection to uncover all the layers of intentionality and reflection. In fact, Roberts’ messages are further revealed and reinforced through some of her source material—repurposed imagery and text of grocery store signage. For additional insight into her process and practice, Surface spoke with the artist in advance of the opening. Can you speak to the origins of the sculpture—and how it came to be part of this exhibition? When I decided to do the Zuri and Miles sculpture it was out of a desire to bring the child off the wa

The mesmeric works of Brooklyn-based fine artist Cooper Cox transmute thick grooves of oil paint into scenes of spectacular dimension, nearly sculptural in nature. With “The View From Upstairs,” on view now through April 4 at Ochi Gallery in Los Angeles, Cox exhibits his most powerful pieces to date—mountainous landscapes, pastoral reprieve, and fields of flowers paused in movement during each season. Cox produced this body of works while in a residency at Ochi’s Idaho location. The studio space, from the gallery’s second floor, reminded the artist of the view from his childhood bedroom in Sun Valley, Idaho—a setting that Cox says shaped his attention to nature, scale, duration, and even isolation. To gaze upon the paintings is to feel this, and to be lost in stillness derived from Cox’s desire to suspend time and place, “as if,” he tells Surface, every depiction is “holding a breath.” To learn more about the process of establishing his psychological atmospheres, we spoke with Cox in advance of the exhibition, which opened concurrently with Frieze Los Angeles. Ochi asked me to paint a work to be on view in the gallery during the week of Frieze Los Angeles. I flew from Brooklyn to [

With Metamorphosis, Marco Gallotta embraced dichotomy. The Battipaglia, Italy-raised, New York-based artist—perhaps best known for his paper-cutting techniques, painting, and printmaking—bound a series of modular display tiles, enveloped them in a sculptural metallic frame, and composed a digital work to cycle through it all. The nuanced, mesmerizing piece, which now adorns the walls of Wolfgang Puck’s CUT New York, is both tactile and generative, traditional and transformative. Metamorphosis began as a drawing. For anyone familiar with Gallotta’s paper sculptures, the style is easily recognized. “The idea was to combine all of my tools. I work with technology and traditional art materials. I wanted to put them all together. That is also where the name comes from—the way that art always evolves,” he said. “The animation is based on my drawings,” Gallotta added. “I worked with a team of animators, as well as a professor at Columbia who created the algorithm that generates the boundaries for the animation to flow within.” Metamorphosis is a one-of-one—and though it was acquired by CUT, it feels as if it was always meant to be there. Fortunately, the artist intends to continue explori

For Frieze Los Angeles 2026, more than 100 exhibitors installed contemporary artworks throughout the Barker Hangar of the Santa Monica Airport and a luxe, affixed temporary tent. The fair’s seventh edition featured galleries and art institutions from more than 24 countries, including major global players Gagosian, White Cube, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, Almine Rech, and Pace (which was also represented here as Pace Prints, its highly respected printmaking division). It was hard to miss the larger-than-life white camel presented by Sprüth Magers. The cheeky piece was imagined by the late conceptual artist John Baldessari. Sprüth Magers also showcased pieces by blue-chip artists Kara Walker and David Salle. The colorful, geometric, wall-hung works of Beverly Fishman brought levity to the walls of Jessica Silverman’s booth. They were coupled with vibrant Prismacolor on tracing paper contributions by pioneering American artist Judy Chicago. Anchored by an eye-catching, sand-colored Daniel Arsham sculpture and a dangling mouse-like crepe paper creation by Roberto Benavidez, Perrotin’s presentation was playful but underscored by artistic clout. Alongside Arsham, the gallery exhibited