Visual arts

Raphael, the “Prince of Painters,” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 01:43:00 GMT

A major exhibition of the Renaissance artist’s work sheds light on the social and aesthetic factors that enabled his artistic development and on the character of his achievement.

A $1 billion evening for the art world

Sat, 23 May 2026 03:33:15 GMT

How is it that one individual can accumulate such an art collection and withhold it from the public?

Whitney Biennial 2026: Taking the pulse and finding it feeble

Wed, 20 May 2026 05:00:48 GMT

Through the biennial, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City maintains it is taking the pulse of the contemporary art scene in the US.

“The Forever Prisoner”: Abu Zubaydah’s testimony from Guantánamo Bay

Sun, 17 May 2026 17:07:12 GMT

Zubaydah’s international lawyer, Helen Duffy, explained how he has been held in arbitrary detention for 24 years without charge, trial, or judicial review and subjected to torture.

61st Venice Biennale: Cultural workers and artists strike and protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza

Tue, 12 May 2026 02:25:04 GMT

The strikers and demonstrators were responding to a call from the organisation Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), supported by a number of other activist groups.

Faculty, students oppose censorship of artist at University of North Texas

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 01:21:05 GMT

Sharp and legitimate criticism of Trump, of ICE, of Israel’s genocide, of the illegal war against Iran ... any and all of this is now termed a “disturbance,” a “disruption."

Wifredo Lam at New York’s Museum of Modern Art: “When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream”

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:20:55 GMT

A current exhibition tracks the development of an anti-imperialist artist who fused modernism with African iconography.

Comrades in Art: How Stalinism ruined the Artists’ International Association

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:34:28 GMT

In its early phase many members genuinely looked to revolutionary change—an orientation that was later crushed by the rise of Stalinism and the Popular Front policies it imposed on the communist parties and their periphery.

Art Gallery of Ontario rejects acquiring Nan Goldin work because of her opposition to Gaza genocide: “Palestine is a great exception that doesn’t include freedom of speech”

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 04:48:09 GMT

A committee at the AGO rejected buying a work by Goldin because several members found her denunciation of the Gaza genocide “offensive” and “antisemitic.”

Australia: Artists expose devastating impact of government funding cuts

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 04:37:39 GMT

Prolonged funding cuts and bureaucratic restructuring measures are systematically undermining Australia’s arts sector, devastating artists, and cultural institutions.

Painter Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) at New York’s Guggenheim Museum: “Life Can’t Be Stopped”

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 04:53:24 GMT

Rauschenberg belonged to a generation of artists that emerged between the twilight of Abstract Expressionism and the dawn of Pop Art.

Don McCullin at 90: A reflection on his life and photography

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 16:46:49 GMT

McCullin’s attraction to socialist ideas was part of a wider ferment, where photography was understood as means of revealing and indicting imperialism, exploitation and poverty rather than mere documentation.

Tennessee university cancels long-running Fletcher Exhibit: A further assault on art and culture by the far right

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 01:41:56 GMT

The university’s cancellation of the exhibit escalates the right-wing suppression of political art, part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration and the ruling elite to impose ideological conformity and silence dissent.

Lee Miller retrospective: “I didn’t waste a minute of all my life”

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 18:21:38 GMT

The retrospective is the most extensive ever staged in the UK. It leans heavily on gender politics, largely omitting the deeper ideological and historical events and issues that shaped Miller’s work and political engagement.

British painter Edward Burra: A neglected chronicler of 20th century society

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 17:26:59 GMT

Burra’s early work emerged in the wake of revolutionary artistic ferment following the Bolshevik Revolution.

Political censorship of art exhibition at California’s Pepperdine University

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:20:21 GMT

Pepperdine is listed by one website among the “top 30 conservative Christian colleges and universities” in the US.

Millet: Life on the Land—A radical depiction of rural transition

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 18:11:12 GMT

The works of Millet and the Barbizon School endure not only as historical documents but as visionary meditations on humanity, nature, and the role of the artist in imagining a more just society.

ひろしま / hiroshima: Beautiful and poignant images of the everyday, but is that enough?

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 17:51:24 GMT

Hiroshima has been represented in countless visual forms, from iconic black-and-white images of devastation to stark documentary evidence and evocative memorials. In recent years, a movement has emerged with the declared aim of moving beyond direct representation of death and destruction.

Banksy’s Royal Courts of Justice mural destroyed

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 17:33:05 GMT

Graffiti artist Banksy this week produced a powerful image of the repressive actions and legislation of the British state. The speed with which officials moved to cover and then remove his mural has confirmed its accuracy.

Confusion, unclarified issues and a gaping hole in this year’s Berlin Biennale art exhibition

Sat, 23 Aug 2025 01:46:33 GMT

A perusal of the artworks on show in the Biennale, disappoints, in one major respect shocks, and makes clear that enormous questions of orientation remain unresolved.

Australia: NSW Labor government slashes art gallery jobs and programs

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 03:48:06 GMT

Ongoing job destruction at the Art Gallery of NSW and Creative NSW and other government cost-cutting measures are threatening the existence of state-funded art and cultural institutions.

Australian Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye exhibition at Tate Modern

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:15:36 GMT

In the last eight years of her life Kngwarreye produced over 3,000 works on silk, cotton, paper and canvas—some canvases as large as three by eight metres.

Italian artist Costantino Ciervo’s “Comune” project: “I believe in a world without borders, but I’m not a utopian. Borders can’t be eliminated merely by wishful thinking”

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 02:24:31 GMT

Ciervo's most recent work includes the multimedia projects “mare nostrum” and “Sew in the Sea,” dedicated to migrants who died trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean.

John Singer Sargent at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art: Sargent and Paris

Sat, 21 Jun 2025 01:12:44 GMT

The exhibition examines a crucial decade in the career of this portraitist of the bourgeoisie, who combined artistic daring with a quasi-aristocratic and conventional outlook.

New York’s Whitney Museum suspends longstanding program in the face of protest over censoring of pro-Palestinian event

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 03:15:02 GMT

Alleged “harassment” is a major issue for the Whitney, association with the Israeli murder machine, however, is not.

Photo London 2025: The enduring significance of Lee Miller’s war photography

Sun, 25 May 2025 17:08:52 GMT

Miller's images from the front lines are a singular and haunting record of the war–ranging from the London Blitz to the liberation of Paris, and later the Nazi concentration camps.

Anti-fascist mural by US painter Philip Guston restored in Mexico after 90 years

Sun, 04 May 2025 22:28:26 GMT

The newly restored 1,000-square-foot mural, unveiled in January 2025, now looks much as it did when it was completed in 1934.

But Live Here? No Thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism at the Lenbachhaus in Munich explores the political roots of the Surrealist movement

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 02:27:08 GMT

The FIARI declared: “Art has as little a fatherland as the workers. To advocate today a return to ‘French’ art is ... to consciously promote historical regression.”

Rhode Island School of Design shuts down pro-Palestinian art exhibition

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 01:56:06 GMT

The exhibition came under vicious attack by the far-right StopAntisemitism on X.

Sri Lanka: A photo essay on Colombo’s porters—a centuries-old practice of inhuman exploitation

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 03:01:28 GMT

This photo essay provides a glimpse of the working life of nattami, labourers exclusively involved in transporting goods between Colombo harbour, the warehouses and Pettah, the capital’s oldest and largest market.

The 80s: Photographing Britain—Through the prism of identity politics

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

The curators’ narrative and lack of a class perspective provides no axis for understanding the decade, which was characterised, above all, by the abandonment and betrayal of radicalised sections of the working class and youth by all the old “labour movement” organisations.

“To maintain my voice as an artist … I must decline this award”: Arab-American artist Fareed Armaly declines prestigious German art prize over censorship of pro-Palestinian voices

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 04:59:41 GMT

Armaly is an inter-disciplinary artist whose work includes the production of video, soundworks, architectural interventions, design, sculpture and large-scale installations.

Orphism, the early 20th century art movement, in focus at New York’s Guggenheim Museum

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 02:12:20 GMT

The exhibition spotlights a contradictory modern art movement that, though it celebrated technological advances, was rooted in subjectivism and irrationality.

William Gropper: Artist of the People, at Washington DC’s Phillips Collection

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:16:58 GMT

Gropper at his best mercilessly skewered the charlatanry and fakery of American political life, while capturing the plight of the poor and the destitute.

1,500 artists call on Tate Britain to sever ties with organizations complicit in Gaza genocide

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 03:20:30 GMT

Kaur took the opportunity of receiving the prestigious Turner Prize in a ceremony held at the Tate on December 3 to denounce the Israeli crimes.

Figurative painter Frank Auerbach dies aged 93: “Our voices carry ...”

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 22:08:10 GMT

In Auerbach, we have one of the few artists whose paintings glow with a light that believes in the possibilities of life and humanity.

In Berlin, US artist Nan Goldin condemns both Israel and Germany for their role in the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 02:57:51 GMT

Goldin’s courageous speech has sent shock waves through the political and cultural establishment in Germany and beyond.

A banana taped to a wall sells for $6 million: Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian and the state of contemporary art

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 02:05:03 GMT

The artist’s $6 million work highlights the tremendous hype and speculation that have come to characterize the art market — and to degrade art itself.

Amid crackdown on Gaza protests at US art schools, School of the Art Institute of Chicago students stage walkout over genocide

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:38:11 GMT

The language used by the various administrations is worthy of a police or intelligence agency. The tone of disapproval is striking.

Award-winning Iranian-German photographer asked to apologise for saying “Free Palestine”

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 05:01:26 GMT

The campaign to suppress opposition to Israel's war of extermination embraces all of Germany’s political parties.

Artist sues Vail, Colorado for canceling residency over work drawing parallels between Gaza and genocide of Native Americans

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 04:43:28 GMT

Once SeeWalker’s views on Gaza became more widely known, a process was set into motion, leading to the rapid capitulation of town officials and the victimization of the artist.

Hundreds of artists and cultural workers call on Brooklyn Museum to end silence on Gaza genocide

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 01:18:02 GMT

Artists and cultural workers issued an open letter asking the Brooklyn Museum “to address its silence on the most brutal and deadly military aggression of the 21st century.”

Bowing to government pressure, German arts centre cancels Guernica Gaza exhibition

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 03:05:11 GMT

On September 6, an exhibition of the series of collages by Palestinian-Gazan artist Mohammed Al Hawajri should have opened at the Bahnhof Langendreer arts centre.

Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s: Revolutionary art outshines Ukrainian nationalist narrative

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 22:28:48 GMT

Those featured attended the same art schools as other Soviet artists, rebelled against the old conventions together, co-founded artistic movements, shared studios, debated the future of art and became friends and lovers. Many embraced the Bolshevik Party and its Ukrainization policy based on the principle of self-determination including the right to secession.

Nearly 800 artists protest Royal Academy’s anti-Palestinian censorship

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 22:05:37 GMT

The RA, giving in to pro-Israeli organizations, removed two works inspired by anger over the mass murder in Gaza.

Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibits work of left-wing German artist: Käthe Kollwitz

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 02:22:56 GMT

MoMA's recent exhibition was the first museum retrospective in New York dedicated to her entire body of work.

Tish Murtha, photographic chronicler of unemployed youth in England’s north east

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 17:52:04 GMT

Tish Murtha wrote of the unemployed youth she photographed: “The sense of aimlessness and pent-up frustrations are reaching critical levels where they will be transformed into an explosive anger, directed against the establishment that has been so careless of their hopes and needs.”

Israel’s destruction and theft of cultural property in Gaza

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 01:47:08 GMT

Part of Israel’s genocidal strategy against the Palestinian population is the destruction and theft of its cultural heritage and goods.

Jewish artists protest Gaza genocide at San Francisco museum

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 02:41:00 GMT

Some 200 people gathered outside San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum on June 6 to protest the genocide being carried out by the Israeli government and military in Gaza.

In another blow to arts education in the US, Philadelphia’s University of the Arts closes down

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 02:11:34 GMT

On May 31, UArts abruptly announced it would cease operations in a week’s time, shocking and angering students and faculty.