Art

Preserving the past is no easy task. Take a work as celebrated as Michelangelo’s iconic Sistine Chapel (1512) fresco held at the Vatican. Centuries since its completion, teams of conservators have had to devise meticulous ways to remove grime that has accumulated across the mural, without compromising the artwork beneath. Sometimes this is achieved through special gels that remove the soot, without damaging the paint itself. Other times, researchers will use technology to discern what types of paints and materials Michelangelo once used to reapply his technique again. When done right, artworks can be seen anew for generations to come, just like originally intended. When done wrong, such as in the case of an 18th century church in the Spanish city of Soria, disaster ensues. Originally built...

American artist Clotilde Jiménez is the latest figure to join the Olympic craze that has hit the art world. His latest exhibition, The Long Run, explores notions of movement, identity, community and competition in the artist's signature collage aesthetic. On view at Mariane Ibrahim's Paris location, Jiménez, who was born in Honolulu and currently based in Mexico City, dismantles the constructs of sport — probing into the collective markers that manifest through each individual athlete — from gender and personal experiences to the communities and nations they represent. By juxtaposing various figures and materials, Jiménez' collages expand on the togetherness at the heart of sports. He also simultaneously raises the contradiction that many minority athletes face, who are marginalized back h...

Over 750 artists have condemned London's Royal Academy of Arts for removing two student artworks addressing the Gaza conflict from its "Young Artists Summer Show." The open letter, signed by notable figures like musician Brian Eno, visual artists Adam Broomberg and Nan Goldin, and filmmaker Mike Leigh, includes endorsements from over 100 Jewish-identifying creatives and was published by Artists for Palestine UK.The controversy began after the Royal Academy removed the works following a July 15 complaint by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which claimed the pieces perpetuated "antisemitic tropes,” as per a report by Artforum. The disputed artworks included a charcoal drawing by a 16-year-old named Andy, depicting women in hijabs before a swastika, and a photograph by 18-year-old Kausa...

The Guggenheim Museum's latest exhibition, By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection, is on display until January 12, 2025. The show moves beyond traditional studio art, showcasing artists who experiment outside the usual boundaries. Inspired by the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift, the exhibit spans from the 1960s to today.Historically, studios were sacred spaces for creation. But from the 20th century onward, artists broke free, finding inspiration in the streets, nature, and everyday life -- as the museum noted in its press release. This exhibit captures that shift with works combining various media—video in sculpture, tapestry as painting, and sound art in found objects.The exhibition features post-war artists like Pier Paolo Calzolari and Jannis Kounellis, part of the...

Charlie James Gallery is set to unveil a new group exhibition that acts as a love letter to each artist's idealized home. Curated by Los Angeles-based artist Ever Velasquez, Provócame invites creatives of various backgrounds from the U.S., Puerto Rico, Albania and Mexico to probe into the notion of what constitutes a home, from the physical to the imagined, the archival to the ancestral. Patrick Martinez, the LA-based artist whose mixed media works comment on the slow erasure of his home city's latin and chicano communities, presents a slice of a wall painted in seafoam green with verdant and floral embellishments. "It’s about the in-between," Martinez previously told Hypeart. "I want my work to look like it’s either being discovered or erased," adding that he finds inspiration in the work...

The Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai has announced Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy, the first museum exhibition in China by the internationally acclaimed artist Marina Abramović. Running from October 10, 2024, to February 28, 2025, the exhibition is inspired by Abramović's iconic 1988 performance of walking the Great Wall of China with German artist Ulay, marking them as the first international artists to traverse the Wall.Curated by MAM Shanghai’s Artistic Director Shai Baitel, in collaboration with Abramović, the exhibition will feature over 1,000 images from her Great Wall walk and a series of new artworks. Spanning three floors, the exhibition invites audience participation with artworks and objects, particularly those infused with crystals, believed to offer transformative energ...

Pharrell Williams has a vision: bringing arts competitions back to the Olympics, a tradition lost for nearly 80 years. According to a report by the Associated Press, Williams is picturing a world where the biggest sports stage also celebrates the finest in sculpture, architecture, and visual arts. Pharrell argued for the arts to be reintroduced in the Olympics by 2028 during his star-studded Louis Vuitton event in Paris last week. Speaking passionately before the event, he said, “The Olympics once had arts competitions. Sculpture, architecture, visual arts. Let’s remind everyone of that legacy and seize this moment to bring awareness.” The arts were first part of the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, where medals were awarded for architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. This conti...

Throughout history, red has been a marker of many things: it's the color of blood and the hue our ancient ancestors chose to typically scribble against cave walls. Millennia later, the Romans are noted to have favored red as the color to decorate military attire and in modern times, red is one of the most popular primary hues for sports teams, as is for many country flags. On view at the North Carolina Museum of Art is a new exhibition that explores the history of the color red.Seeing Red is mapped out across generations, linking disparate periods, such as the Ancient Incas and the Renaissance, bridging the gap in how civilization as a whole has collectively viewed various shades of the rosy hue. The institution has described it as "arguably the most important color to human beings," becau...

A massive pigeon has perched onto the High Line in Downtown Manhattan. Well, a sculptural pigeon that is. The 16-foot-tall artwork is the brainchild of Columbian artist and filmmaker Iván Argote, whose dubbed the pudgy feathered bird Dinosaur. Pigeons aren't the most glorified bird in the animal kingdom, not like its distant cousins in the eagle and hawk. However, Argote's totemic iteration will be hard to take your eyes off of as it makes its presence felt at one of New York City's most frequented intersections. He just hopes it doesn't cause any accidents as busy New Yorkers rush past Tenth Avenue at 30th Street. As the unofficial mascot of New York, Argote sought to recontextualize the image of the pigeon, reflecting in an interview that he saw the bird as "something that people would r...

The Museum of London has unveiled a new logo as part of its rebranding effort, but it hasn’t been met with universal approval. The institution, soon to be renamed London Museum, will relocate to Smithfield Market in 2026 after significant delays and budget overruns.The new logo features a white clay pigeon with a glittery golden excrement, a design intended to symbolize the city’s mix of "grit and glitter," according to museum director Sharon Ament as per Artnet. Senior curator Francis Marshall emphasized that pigeons have been a part of London’s landscape for over a millennium, thus becoming a symbol of the city.However, the logo has not won over all Londoners. Maxwell Blowfield, who writes for the museum industry newsletter maxwell museums, criticized the choice. “In 15 years of living h...

Objects speak, according to Danish visual artist Nina Beier. Regardless of its social or intended status, to Beier, a fake designer bag is both real in the physical sense and a representation of another, similar to a readymade sculpture. Trained initially in photography, it's through this lens that Beier observes the various objects, whether extravagant or mundane, that inundate the world. On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, Beier presents Parts, a new solo exhibition exploring the stories embedded in (literally) every thing — be it a ceramic work of art, a Land Rover or a plastic container. Showcasing new and existing works, Beier explores the hidden biographies of everyday items, such as in China (2015): a series of purposefully broken fine china ceramic vessel...