Artforum

On the cover of Artforum’s October issue, one of Diego Marcon’s animatronic talpids recites an unending mathematical calculation while its pups sleep outside the frame. www.artforum.com/issue/2026/o...

In the early twentieth century, the French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon painted a series of decorative panels for the Fontfroide Abbey. When the panels were removed earlier this year for the first time, the abbey’s staff found a set of test drawings on the wall behind them.

Gustav Klimt’s 1915–16 "Litzlbergkeller" is set to hit the auction block in New York next month with an estimate of $60 million to $80 million. If it hammers in the expected range, the work will be one of the most expensive by the Austrian painter ever sold at auction.

British art historian Charles Greig has gifted 50 works from his collection to Tate Britain. The works were given without any tax incentives and include oil paintings, watercolors, and miniatures by artists who resided in South Asia during the 18th and 19th centuries.

A study by South Korean researchers argues Vincent Van Gogh may have been inspired by his observation of an actual sky in “The Starry Night”. The astronomers narrowed the date of the celestial event to around July 1889, which would mean he composed the work a month later than is widely believed.

On October 8, over 100 protesters queued up outside the now-shuttered DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) in Chicago. The demonstration aimed to send a message to the university’s leadership, calling for the reopening of the museum, which ceased operations in June. www.artforum.com/news/hundred...

The Róng Museum of Art (RMoA) in Shenzhen, China, announced the appointment of Freya Chou, Li Jia, and Susanna Zhu to its curatorial team. Set to open in the latter half of 2027, the museum named Pi Li as founding director in March. www.artforum.com/news/rong-mu...

The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) on October 23 announced that it was the recipient of a $20 million gift earmarked for the development of a new education center. The donation, from longtime PMA supporters Julian Brodsky and Lois G. Brodsky, is one of the largest in the museum’s history.

A Monet painting sold for $56 million at Sotheby’s in Paris on Thursday. "Iris" is a painting of flowers in Monet’s Giverny water garden. It was purchased by Jen Hua, deputy of Sotheby’s Asia, on behalf of an Asian client. The world record for a painting by Monet is $110.7 million.

Paris- and Luxembourg-based duo David Brognon and Stéphanie Rollin, who create work together under the moniker Brognon Rollin, have won the 2026 Prix Marcel Duchamp, beating out a short list that included Joël Andrianomearisoa, Laura Henno, and Josèfa Ntjam. www.artforum.com/news/brognon...

Chanel is now the lead sponsor of Hong Kong’s M+ museum. It will be the lead partner for the next three years and will support not only the museum’s film programming but also its exhibitions, artist programs, and other projects. www.artforum.com/news/chanel-...

The Studio Museum in Harlem named its three artists selected for its 2026–2027 Artist-in-Residence program. Turiya Adkins, Timothy Yanick Hunter, and Clifford Prince King will be the second cohort to be in residency in the museum’s new purpose-built home on 125th Street.

A marble sculpture fragment depicting the cuirass-clad torso of a Roman emperor hammered for $34.3 million at Sotheby’s on October 21, nearly three times its $12 million estimate and the highest amount ever fetched by a Roman antiquity at auction. www.artforum.com/news/34-3-mi...

Expansion plans for Miami Beach’s Bass Museum of Art have been released by Los Angeles–based architectural firm Johnston Marklee, which was selected in April to lead the project. www.artforum.com/news/miami-b...

Quebec City’s Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec on October 21 unveiled its new Espace Riopelle–Michael Audain Pavilion to the public. Dedicated to Jean Paul Riopelle, one of the most significant Canadian artists of the twentieth century, the structure will display some 130 works by the artist.

Seton Smith, the sister of artist Kiki Smith, has given more than 250 prints made by Kiki to the New York Public Library (NYPL) and has pledged to make a gift of any future prints from her sister to the library. The collection is the most comprehensive collection of Kiki Smith’s prints in America.

London will have a new South Asian arts festival. The event will take place in South Kensington’s cultural quarter next summer, featuring artists from India and its diaspora. The festival will be organized by the Great Exhibition Road Festival, Serendipity Arts, and several leading London museums.

A life-size metal statue of Florida governor Ron DeSantis was unveiled in the state capital of Tallahassee last week and immediately began to melt. The project was organized by activists seeking to highlight the Republican leader’s sustained efforts to end or block climate-change protections.

Visitors attending the inaugural VIP preview day of the 2026 edition of Art Basel Paris yesterday were forced to wend their way through concrete anti-ram barriers encircling the landmark Grand Palais. Fair officials confirmed to visitors that they had additionally beefed up security.

The far-right government in Colombia removed more than 30 works from the permanent displays of the Museo Nacional de Colombia, citing “political indoctrination.” The works removed included dozens of objects related to LGBTQ rights and feminism. The decision led to protests outside the museum.

The study of seventy-nine fingerprints visible in the clay used to form some of the terracotta warriors in Xi’an, China, has revealed that the makers of the statues included not just adult men but also women and children. www.artforum.com/news/terraco...

The FOG Design+Art fair has announced 76 exhibitors for its 2027 edition, which runs January 21–24 at the Fort Mason Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The fair, which received 30% more applications than last year, will see a 20% increase in exhibitors, or 13 more participants.

Liverpool’s Bluecoat has named Emer Grant as its new creative director. Grant is the first person named to the position at the museum since its founding in 1927. She joins the contemporary art center—England’s oldest—from Arts Collective Northampton, where she is artistic director and CEO.

The Biennale de Lyon has announced Hélia Paukner as its new artistic director, effective February 1, 2027. Pauker will also take over the directorship of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (macLYON), her appointment maintaining the long-standing partnership between the Biennale and the museum.

Master’s students at the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) staged protests during the school’s graduation exhibition to demand action against overcrowded facilities. Demonstrators gathered at the entrance to the design school show during its opening on Saturday. www.artforum.com/news/design-...

Anselm Kiefer’s “Schwarze Flocken”, which is over 36 ft high and 23 ft wide, considered too large to exhibit for nearly two decades, has finally found a home. Last week, it was shown to the public for the first time in a freestanding concrete pavilion built specifically to house the work in Germany.

A new biography of Edward Hopper reveals that all six of the painter’s early oil compositions are copies of the work of other artists. Shadwick found that the original works appeared in Art Interchange, a periodical for amateur artists that encouraged its readers to copy from its pages.

The Broad museum in Los Angeles will send 164 works to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, in Paris. It will be the most extensive exhibition the institution has ever mounted outside of Los Angeles. The show will run from April 21 through August 30 of next year. www.artforum.com/news/the-bro...

Artists Patrick Graham and Cathy Wilkes have been named the winners of Dublin Gallery Weekend’s inaugural Francis Bacon Awards for Irish Visual Arts. Graham is the recipient of the €25,000 Lifetime Achievement Award, while Wilkes is being honored with the €15,000 Mid-Career Artist Award.

Abu Dhabi government-owned developer Aldar announced plans for a new cultural district in the city dubbed “Noma". The announcement precedes the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi, which will take place from November 19-22 in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

The British Museum in London announced a £30 million ($40 million) gift from a longstanding supporter on October 17. The donation will go towards the implementation of the museum’s Masterplan redevelopment. The donor’s identity has not been revealed. www.artforum.com/news/british...

Following an eighteen-month deadlocked negotiation between MCH Group, the Swiss-based owner of five international Art Basel fairs, and the city of Miami Beach, the fair has announced that it will stay in Florida through 2031. MCH Group had threatened to move the fair to Las Vegas.

French protesters blocked the entrance doors to the Louvre this morning, amid nationwide protests over the state of public schools and the rising cost of living. Saturday saw marches around the country, and law enforcement officials said that they made more than 2,400 arrests.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home in Scottsdale, Arizona, has closed temporarily after a visitor died there on October 16. According to the Scottsdale Fire Department, the man had been on a walking tour when he was struck by roofing material dislodged by high winds and killed instantly.

Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History could join the Smithsonian museum network. The museum was founded in 1976 and is currently a Smithsonian affiliate. As an affiliate, it can borrow from the Smithsonian’s collections and draw on its resources.

Moscow’s GES-2 House of Culture has named Italian curator Francesco Bonami as its new artistic director. The institution opened in 2021 before halting programming in 2022 at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War, and is funded by billionaire Leonid Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation.

The creation of a Centre Pompidou in Foz do Iguaçu, a city in the Brazilian state of Paraná, was initially slated to open in November 2027, then rescheduled for 2028. Now, the project has been pushed back again, until 2029. www.artforum.com/news/centre-...

French billionaire François Pinault told Le Monde that he intends to put 106 works from his personal art collection on permanent display at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, one of three venues where Pinault stages programs of temporary exhibitions. The permanent show is set to open March 2027.

The organizers of Art Week NYC today announced the thirty-two cultural institutions and nonprofit organizations participating in the event’s inaugural edition, to take place November 11–14 across the city. www.artforum.com/news/art-wee...

The $14.7 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ordered by Trump earlier this year failed at 85 points, nearly 4 times the number initially reported. An analysis conducted by Atlantic Coating Inspection found blisters, peeling, and cracks across the 300,000-square-foot basin.

A pen-and-brown-ink drawing by eighteenth-century Italian master Canaletto that remained out of public view for hundreds of years is set to hit the auction block on October 21. The drawing is being sold by auction house Mallams, where it is expected to fetch between £40,000 and £60,000.

The first edition of Rubaiya Qatar, a new quadrennial in Doha, opens next month and will host more than 120 artists from around the world. This inaugural quadrennial is focused on global ecology, water, and maritime heritage and comprises three exhibitions and public installations.

The London auction house Christie’s brought in $289.4 million over two evening sales on Wednesday, October 14—the 20/21st Century Evening Sale and the “Monsoon,” sale of the collection of Peter Simon. The amount achieved on Wednesday is more than double that of last year’s sales.

A landowner in Behbeit El-Hagar, an Egyptian village in the Nile Delta about seventy-six miles north of Cairo, unearthed a head from a monumental statue believed to represent Ramses II. The discovery led archaeologists to find additional pieces belonging to two separate statues of the Egyptian king.

Vietnamese-born artist Danh Võ and Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto have been announced as the recipients of the 13th Isamu Noguchi Award. Inaugurated in 2014 by the Noguchi Museum, the annual prize honors individuals who share Noguchi’s innovative spirit and commitment to creativity.

Artist Peter Nagy, whose Nature Morte gallery was instrumental in bringing contemporary Indian art to the attention of international audiences, died on October 13 in New Delhi following a long illness. He was sixty-seven. www.artforum.com/news/nature-...

New York’s Salon 94, a contemporary art gallery founded by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn in 2003, will open a branch in Paris. The new space, occupying a 323 square feet at 30 Galerie de Montpensier, will open on October 18 with an exhibition of work by Deborah Roberts. www.artforum.com/news/new-yor...

The image-licensing giant Getty Images, which holds more than 477 million assets, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy following a failed $3.7 billion merger with rival Shutterstock, abandoned over a regulatory roadblock. www.artforum.com/news/getty-i...

Le Large, a museum in the new Pointe des Arts complex just outside of Paris, has opened its doors on the Île Seguin, in Boulogne-Billancourt. The island is the former home of a Renault factory, which was active for most of the 20th century and demolished in 2005. www.artforum.com/news/le-larg...

The Karachi Biennale Trust (KBT) has announced the cancellation of its fifth annual Karachi Biennale. The KBT cited regional conflict and logistical challenges as the reasons behind their decision. www.artforum.com/news/2027-ka...