A curated index of stories published by Artforum.
Filipina artist Imelda Cajipe Endaya was named to the Order of National Artists of the Philippines for Visual Arts on September 1, becoming the first woman to receive the honor in its fifty-four-year history. The order was established in 1972 to recognize those who have significantly contributed to the country’s arts. Born in 1949, Endaya [ ]
The Thai Ministry of Culture has named jiradej-pornpilai meemalai: BAAN NOORG as the artistic director of the Fifth Thailand Biennale, ArtReview reports. Emily Chin-Jie Lee, Gesyada Siregar, and Tyuki Imamura will serve as curators of the event, to take place December 2027 to April 2028 in Rayong, on the east coast of the Gulf of [ ]
A former senior employee at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Australia is said to have drained $8 million from the institution’s coffers over a six-year span, The Guardian reports. The staffer, who has not been publicly named, is said to have spent the money on mobile phones, which he purchased through a museum [ ]
Fall festivities from Gladstone to Tenko Presents and Jenny's
On September 23, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that 36 trafficked or looted antiquities—collectively valued at over $5 million—would be returned to the people of Syria. The repatriation ceremony coincided with the visit of Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The list of [ ]
Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) announced the thirty-eight recipients of the last round of its A4 Arts Fund, which distributes $500,000 to arts and cultural organizations that support Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Grants are awarded in the amount of $10,000 or $15,000 to organizations with annual budgets under $500,000. A4 received applications [ ]
Artists, students, and cultural workers gathered outside of Colombia’s Ministry of Culture in Bogotá on September 21 to protest a proposed 30% cut to the cultural budget in 2027 and a suspension of national arts awards. “The effects of decisions that disrupt the country’s cultural sector are now being felt by thousands of arts workers,” [ ]
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has named Jonathan Abbott as its new director and CEO. Abbott arrives to the institution from public media company GBH, the country’s largest producer of multiplatform content for PBS and partner to NPR and PRX (Public Radio Exchange), where he spent fifteen years as director. He succeeds interim [ ]
Aperture, the nonprofit photography publisher founded in 1952, opened its new home last week. The organization has taken the first two floors of a building on the Upper West Side at Columbus Avenue and West 78th Street, across from the American Museum of National History. The decision to move uptown from its previous location in [ ]
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has purchased a newly discovered painting by seventeenth-century Spanish master Diego Velázquez—the first work by the artist to enter its collection, and the first to enter the collection of any West Coast museum. Titled Portrait of Count-Duke of Olivares, the ca. 1626 work is a bust-length portrayal [ ]
“ Where did George Lucas get this chip on his shoulder?”
Blue-chip auction house Christie’s on September 23 revealed the launch of a new division focused on sales of pop culture memorabilia, Artnews reports. The announcement comes on the heels of a sale of sports, music, and historical memorabilia from the collection of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay that brought in a whopping $105.3 million—the largest [ ]
Last week, the Joan Mitchell Foundation published the report “Creating Future Memory: Building the Field of Artist Legacy Stewardship.” The report is available on the foundation’s website as a free PDF download. The report’s authors, Solana Chehtman and Sharon Mizota, surveyed more than 150 artists, family members, archivists, curators, and legacy professionals to create the [ ]
The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland, has revealed a trio of buildings designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the Pritzker Prize–winning designer of the new David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The three structures, along with the addition of roughly 108,000 square feet of green space, including gardens, expand the [ ]
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a nonprofit organization called the International Center for 9/11 Justice rented space from New York’s El Museo del Barrio for a four-day conference called “Turning the Tide: 9/11 25 Years Later.” The museum says it regrets renting space to the event’s organizers. According to the New [ ]
Canadian multidisciplinary artist Steven Shearer, known for his portraits blending youth subculture, contemporary iconography, and art-historical references, has been named the winner of this year s C$100,000 ($71,000) Audain Prize for the Visual Arts. Established in 2004 with the aim of elevating Canadian art at home and abroad, the prize is considered one of Canada s most [ ]
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota and Mami Kataoka, the director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, have been appointed to l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the government of France. Shiota was awarded the rank of Officier, while Kataoka was given that of Chevalier. The pair were honored at [ ]
Two German artists were arrested at the Louvre in Paris on September 19 after mounting two canvases to a wall of the Salle des États, where Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is displayed. Police reported that the pair used sticky tape to affix the works, each of which measured roughly twelve by nine inches. One [ ]
The Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba) has announced that Mexican architect Frida Escobedo will lead the project to expand the museum. The subterranean expansion will be constructed beneath Plaza Perú, the public park that neighbors the museum, and will roughly double the museum’s current exhibition space. New features include temporary galleries, an [ ]
The U.K. government has placed a ban on the export of an early-sixteenth-century bronze, valued at $6.2 million, in an effort to give British museums and galleries time to acquire the work and keep it on public display. Seated Nymph was sculpted by the Italian artist Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, also known as Antico, in [ ]
Jeffreen M.H. Ash will depart from her role as executive director of the Chicago cultural nonprofit Threewalls on September 30. She has spent eleven years at the contemporary art organization, whose mission is to support Black artists through collaboration and community and within Black feminist and diasporic traditions. “It has been a privilege to create [ ]
The Art Institute of Chicago has announced that it will return Jean Metzinger’s painting Woman with a Fan (1913) to the family of Jewish art collector Emanuel Lewenstein. The museum acquired the painting from New York s Sidney Janis Gallery in 1959, but provenance research by the Mondex Corporation—an organization founded in 1993 that works to [ ]
The Art Institute of Chicago has announced that it will return Jean Metzinger’s painting Woman with a Fan (1913) to the family of Jewish art collector Emanuel Lewenstein. The museum acquired the painting from New York s Sidney Janis Gallery in 1959, but provenance research by the Mondex Corporation—an organization founded in 1993 that works to [ ]
On the death and resurrection of Dave Green's 2026 film Coyote vs. Acme
The Bienale de Yucatán, the first large-scale international contemporary art biennial in Mexico, is set to open in Mérida, the capital of the Yucatán state, this November. Artistic director Abraham Cruzvillegas has made language and all forms of communication the focus of this first edition. Titled “Vocal,” it will bring together seventy-six artists and other [ ]
Artist, photographer, and filmmaker Tyler Mitchell has been named the recipient of the 2026 Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art. Established in 2016, the prize is awarded biennially by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Though it was inaugurated as an unrestricted $200,000 cash award, the honor this [ ]
Yves Goldstein will leave Brussels’s new Kanal-Centre Pompidou two days after its opening on November 28. He has spent a decade leading Kanal through the planning and renovation of its home in a massive Art Deco building, which formerly housed a Citroën garage, and navigating a partnership with the Centre Pompidou. Goldstein announced in May [ ]
Maria Arusoo has been announced as the director of the Tallinn Art Hall, one of Estonia’s oldest and best-known contemporary art institutions, with a contract for the next five years. An influential figure on the Baltic art scene, she arrives to the hall from the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art, Tallinn, where she has served [ ]
In the early ’90s, Catherine Liu contributed regular dispatches from the downtown New York gallery scene for Artforum
On Diego Marcon’s sick children, dangling puppets, and suspended bodies
An Artforum editor visits a slew of galleries--Olney Gleason, Garth Greenan, David Zwirner, and more--during the first week of fall exhibition openings in New York
Six of the fall's new crop of gallery openings at Lomex, Maxwell Graham, Theta, David Peter Francis, Ellie Rines Gallery, and Ulrik
A fast-moving cloudburst swept through Florence on September 17, dropping nearly two inches of rain in the span of an hour and sending water cascading into the Uffizi Gallery and the historic Palazzo Pitti, sparking concern regarding the masterpieces within. At the Uffizi, rain seeped through a skylight of a gallery housing a clutch of [ ]
Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (MNTB) will expand into a second venue to house more than 360 works of contemporary art, which have been donated or are on loan from the TBA21 Collection. In 2002, the philanthropist Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza founded the TBA21 Foundation for her personal collection of contemporary art, which is described as being “at [ ]
The Moderna Museet has named closely watched curator Cédric Fauq as its new curator of contemporary international art. Fauq arrives to the Stockholm institution from CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, in France, where he is currently chief curator and head of programs and collections. “It is a pleasure to welcome Cédric Fauq to Moderna [ ]
Two new lawsuits, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, by Jewish heirs or their representatives seek the return of artwork taken by the Nazis during World War II and now held by prominent museums. The suits are prompted by two new laws, one passed by California lawmakers in 2024 and the other signed [ ]
Pace Prints today announced that it has purchased publisher Brand X Editions. In acquiring the Long Island, New York–based workshop, with which it has long collaborated, Pace has become one of the largest printmakers in the United States. The two workshops will maintain their operations, while Pace Prints will expand into Los Angeles as well. [ ]
Peter Max, whose trippy Day-Glo paintings came to symbolize the Flower Power era of the 1960s, died on September 18 in a hospital in New York at the age of eighty-eight. He had previously suffered from Alzheimer’s-related dementia. His death was confirmed by his son, Adam Max, and by Park West Gallery. An astoundingly prolific [ ]
The Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent (CCA Tashkent), Uzbekistan’s first permanent institution devoted to contemporary art, opened to the public on September 6. London-born curator, writer, and educator Sara Raza was named artistic director and chief curator last year. Designboom reports that Raza’s inaugural exhibition is titled “Hikmah,” the Arabic word for “wisdom.” The show [ ]
The Diriyah Biennale Foundation has named the four curators who will lead the third edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale, slated to open on November 1, 2027. The team will be helmed by Nada Raza, director of the Alserkal Arts Foundation; William Robinson, former head of Christie’s Islamic Art department; Alain Fouad George, I. M. [ ]
Ticket sales for the National Gallery’s forthcoming Renoir exhibition have topped twenty-two thousand, setting a record for the London institution. Bookings opened to members on August 4, and to the general public on August 25. The museum’s previous best-selling show was 2024’s “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” which booked 15,654 tickets in the same amount [ ]
“Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions” at the Morgan Library Museum
Unionized employees of the Brooklyn Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York, voted overwhelmingly to strike if they do not receive fair contract offers. Local 2110 UAW, which represents organized staff at all three institutions, announced the vote results on September 15. Unionized workers at [ ]
On September 15, the Metropolitan Museum of Art broke ground on the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, a long-awaited addition that will house the museum’s collection of modern and contemporary art. The new wing is scheduled to open to the public in 2030. The five-story, 126,000-square-foot extension will include 69,500 square feet [ ]
The prized Russian icon Trinity, painted by Andrei Rublev in the fifteenth-century, has possibly been damaged after the climate-control system in which the work is housed broke down. The icon is currently kept in the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra monastery near Moscow, a Unesco World Heritage site. The work was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church [ ]
The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art has named Bhutanese mixed-media artist Pem Lham the winner of the 2026 Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize. The honor is presented annually to a contemporary artist from the Himalayan region. It is attended by a $30,000 cash award, making it the largest prize of its kind in the world. [ ]
The National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) at the Smithsonian has appointed Ching-Ling Wang as the inaugural Nancy Chang Lee Curator of Chinese Art. The art historian and curator begins his new role in November. “I hope to not only uphold one of the finest collections of Chinese art in the world, but to expand [ ]
Photography is no longer permitted in front of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, according to Maxwell Museums, the blog run by arts writer Maxwell Blowfield. Blowfield reported that he visited the museum twice to see the eleventh-century masterwork: the first time as an invited member of the press, and the second time as [ ]
Following a major building expansion, the New Museum has added ten new members to its board of trustees, expanding its existing slate and bringing its total membership to nearly fifty. The new members are Donald Capoccia, Christina Hribar, Adriane Iann, Ambassador Randi Levine, Jennifer Levitt, Liza Mauer, Debbie Rechler, Juliana Siqueira de Sá, Sara Story, [ ]
President Donald Trump has demanded that the Smithsonian remove what he described as a “strange modernist sculpture” from outside the National Museum of American History and install a thirty-foot-high “Colossus statue” of George Washington in its stead. “He is easily America’s Greatest Hero. Without him, our Country and our Freedoms wouldn’t exist,” wrote Trump in [ ]