Sunday, July 26, 2026

British Museum presents major exhibition of early Netherlandish drawings

'Elck' or 'Everyman' study for a print, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1558 © The Trustees of the British Museum.
LONDON.— A new exhibition from the British Museum explores the transformative time when Netherlandish drawings emerged from the workshop to become an art form in their own right. Early Netherlandish drawings brings together 110 works by renowned artists such as Rogier van der Weyden, Lucas van Leyden, Pieter Bruegel the elder and Hendrick Goltzius. Lesser-known masters, anonymous sheets and workshop copies have been included to offer a rich and comprehensive account of drawing across the region. The British Museum's collection of pre-1600s Netherlandish drawings, totalling more than 1,200, is one of the most important in the world. Unlike Italy, where the taste for collecting drawings in the 1500s ensured that a higher number from previous centuries were preserved, early Netherlandish works on paper are much rarer. The unparalleled breadth and quality of the Museum's holdings in this field provide an opportunity to piece together this sometimes-fragmented narrative. In the 1400s and 1500s, the Low Countries (present day Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) were a powerhouse of artistic innovation. Following a chronological narrative the show explores early workshop drawings through to highly finished compositions as independent works of art. Displays examine the function of drawings in the workshop, and their role in the design and production of paintings, tapestries, painted glass, sculpture and prints. Thematic displays highlight new subjects that were introduced into Netherlandish drawings during this period, including landscapes, proverbs and a local iteration of the antique style, spurred by contact with Italy. Description of image The selected works document the study of nature and the sensitive rendering of objects from life – both defining features of northern European ...
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Kunst der Westküste explores the early impulses of northern modernism

ALKERSUM/FÖHR.— This exhibition is devoted to a fascinating chapter in the history of European art: the early impulses of modern art in the north. From the Netherlands to Norway, new perspectives on light, colour and nature emerged along the coast – far from urban centres but always in a vibrant dialogue with them. Here “modernism” means more than just artistic styles , it is an attitude: the courage to call into question what can be seen , to shift perspectives and to set a new way of thought in motion. Sustained by individuals or worked out in artists’ colonies – the spark of modernism was gradually ignited along the edge of the continent. Based on the museum's own collection and enriched by important international loans, the exhibition highlights places where modernism encountered the sea – and tells the stories behind the pictures. It shows paintings representing the work of renowned artists like Max Beckmann,
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Adrián Villar Rojas challenges human exceptionalism in major Aspen Art Museum exhibition

ASPEN, CO.— Running from July 2 to April 11, 2027, across two floors of the Museum, Adrián Villar Rojas: First Gods, Lost Animals evokes both the geological and mythological formation of a cave. In Villar Rojas’s approach, the cave functions as a space of double accumulation: geologically shaped through eons of material deposition and mineral consolidation, and culturally layered with human projections, rituals, and symbolic activity. The exhibition is grounded in the premise that humans, as finite intelligences, confront a universe whose complexity far exceeds their cognitive scale. In this condition, symbolic tools arise—gods, art, mathematics—as adaptive technologies that render the world navigable. These systems extend human cognition across time: mythology operates as an early interpretive
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Baltimore Museum of Art announces major acquisitions with 118 artworks entering the collection

BALTIMORE, MD.— The Baltimore Museum of Art announced today that it has acquired approximately 118 works over the past six months, deepening its holdings of both historical and contemporary objects from across the globe as well as by talented artists throughout the Baltimore region. This includes a gift of 64 works from Constance R. Caplan, a former BMA board chair who has been actively engaged with the museum since 1955, and whose collection was the subject of an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. The gift includes important works by Janine Antoni, Hilla and Bernd Becher, John Chiara, Fernanda Gomes, Robert Morris, Stephen Parrino, Nobuo Sekine, Richard Tuttle, Lee Ufan, Jack Whitten, Lisa Yuskavage, and others. Among the other acquisitions, which include works entering the collection through purchase and gift or promised gift, are paintings by Katharine Gilbert Riggs Elmore, Inoue Hakuyō, Titus Kaphar, K.S. Kulkarni, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Rabin Mondal, and Wosene Worke Kosr
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New OKCMOA installation explores Pop, Minimalist, and postwar art movements

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK.— The Oklahoma City Museum of Art announces From Pop to Minimalist Art, a single-gallery installation on the Museum’s third floor. Highlights include two loans from Art Bridges Foundation: Andy Warhol’s Coca-Cola [3] from 1962 and Keith Haring’s Self Portrait from 1985. Warhol and Haring’s works are examples of the Pop Art tradition of using text, mechanical reproduction, and commercial symbols to transform images from advertising, popular culture, and everyday life. Coca-Cola [3] marked the beginning of Warhol's signature Pop Art style and is among his earliest depictions of the Coca-Cola bottle, an image that would become a recurring subject throughout his career. Haring’s Self Portrait showcases the artist’s familiar graphic linework while presenting a rare self-portrait. Other movements featured in the installation include Op Art, the Washington Color School, Hard-Edge painting, and Minimalism, along with works by contemporary artists
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Midlands Arts Centre presents kinetic auction exhibition by Michael Pinsky

BIRMINGHAM.— Midlands Arts Centre presents The Final Bid: a unique exhibition by internationally renowned artist Michael Pinsky which challenges our desire to buy new things. Transforming the gallery into a powerful immersive installation, Pinsky uses one universal everyday object — the chair — to explore the environmental impact of manufactured goods and encourage audiences to rethink the value of reuse, ownership and the circular economy. At the heart of the exhibition is a live online auction featuring chairs generously donated by members of the public. Suspended dramatically from the ceiling, the 72 selected chairs respond in real time to the value of incoming bids, rising and shifting to create a dynamic kinetic sculpture that visualises demand, desire and consumption. Audiences can submit bids for their favourite chairs by visiting the gallery in person or viewing MAC’s auction platform online. The chairs rise in response to the value of each bid, literally setting the auction
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Reading Public Museum acquires rare painting by Adam Mortimer Lightner

READING, PA.— The Foundation for the Reading Public Museum announced the acquisition of Cupid Riding a Dolphin (1838), a rare painting by Pennsylvania artist Adam Mortimer Lightner (1815–1840). The acquisition strengthens the Museum's holdings of early American art while bringing renewed attention to the remarkable achievements of a gifted regional painter whose promising career was cut tragically short. Born into a prominent Lancaster County family, Lightner received his earliest artistic training with John Beck of Lititz before continuing his studies in Philadelphia through the Artists' Fund Society, established in 1835. Among the influential Pennsylvania artists who encouraged his early development were Jacob Eichholtz (1776–1842), Bass Otis (1784–1861), and Joshua Shaw (1776–1861). Demonstrating an early aptitude for portraiture, Lightner soon sought advanced training in Europe. Beginning his European
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Early Maya calendrical writing identified in Pre-Hispanic mural at Calakmul

CALAKMUL.— A newly reconstructed mural from the ancient Maya city of Calakmul has revealed what researchers believe is an early example of calendrical writing, adding the site to a select group of major Maya centers associated with the development of writing and monumental culture during the Late Preclassic period. The mural, discovered inside Structure II at the archaeological site, depicts the mythical hero Juun Ajaw hunting a creature in the water. Alongside the scene, researchers identified a sign corresponding to a day marker from the Maya 260-day ritual calendar. The finding is particularly significant because most of the surviving inscriptions at Calakmul date from the Classic period, between AD 250 and 900. Until now, archaeologists had found no clear evidence of written communication at the city from the much earlier Preclassic era. According to Daniel Salazar Lama, a specialist in Maya iconography and art history, the discovery places Calakmul within the broader cultural transformation
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New exhibition explores cross-cultural dialogues in Australian art

HEALESVILLE.— TarraWarra Museum of Art opened its group exhibition, Inside the Mirage, shaped by the imaginative and philosophical worlds of artists Ian Fairweather (1891–1974) and John Young (b. 1956), curated by TarraWarra Museum of Art Curator James Lynch. Drawing these two practices into dialogue, the exhibition, on view at the Museum from 25 July until 1 November 2026, highlights new perspectives and connections between Australian art history and the present. Alongside Young and Fairweather, the exhibition features nine contemporary artists from across Australia whose works foreground shared and inherited stories as their basis, revealing the intertwined histories and complex cultural narratives that shape our contemporary identities and worldviews. A nostalgia for the past can be hallucinatory, a warping of time and space. Inside the Mirage explores the ways artists navigate the complex contradictions of cross-cultural existence and the weight
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International Puppet Fringe Festival unveils landmark exhibition offerings

NEW YORK, NY.— This August, the newly renovated Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center will become one of the country's most dynamic destinations for contemporary puppetry and visual theater as it hosts an expansive exhibition program presented as part of the 4th International Puppet Fringe Festival (IPFF). Spanning multiple galleries, public spaces, and installations throughout the historic Lower East Side cultural center, the exhibitions invite visitors to experience puppetry as sculpture, installation, photography, cultural artifact, and contemporary art. The exhibitions open August 12. Anchored by Theodora Skipitares: Performing Objects–Four Decades of Abundant Ingenuity, a landmark retrospective celebrating one of America's most influential visual theater artists, the Festival’s exhibition offerings will also feature a rare photographic archive by legendary puppetry advocate
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Latvian National Museum of Art presents contemporary drawings from Centre Pompidou

RIGA.— From 25 July to 1 November 2026, the left wing galleries of the 2nd floor of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga hosts the exhibition Contemporary Drawings: Florence and Daniel Guerlain’s Donation and Gifts to Centre Pompidou. This exhibition is an internationally significant and artistically highly valuable collaboration project between the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) and Centre Pompidou. It presents works from the collection donated by collectors and art patrons Florence and Daniel Guerlain to the French institution over the past twenty years. The Guerlain collection is thematically diverse and distinctly contemporary in nature. From the donation of nearly 1200 works, a multifaceted selection for the exhibition in Riga has been curated, featuring 98 drawings by 43 artists of different nationalities
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Ashley Saville presents group exhibition examining beauty, desire, and abjection

LONDON.— Ashley Saville presents La Belle et la Bête, the first group exhibition at 193 Fleet Street. The exhibition takes its title from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s fairytale of the same name, a text that has bewitched artists, musicians, and filmmakers since its anonymous publication in 1740. A young woman is trapped in an enchanted castle with a beastly creature. At first she loathes him, but eventually her heart softens. Her declaration of true love breaks the Beast’s curse: he transforms into a handsome prince, and they live happily ever after. Though rooted in a moralising literary tradition, La Belle et la Bête resists simple binaries of good and evil. Desire and abjection, duty and transgression, ideals and outsiders are not fundamental oppositions; rather, they are intricately imbricated aspects of life and love. Such ambivalence makes for a particularly interesting fairytale, offering rich ground for interpretation. This exhibition uses the fairytale as a lens t
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Guggenheim unveils major exhibition tracing the legacy of Pop art

NEW YORK, NY.— The Guggenheim New York unveiled Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now, a focused exhibition exploring the museum’s holdings of Pop art and the movement’s enduring influence on artists working around the world today. Drawing on the institution’s history, Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now illuminates a lesser-known chapter in the museum’s past while foregrounding the significant contributions of both historical and contemporary practices. Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now features an eclectic selection of major works from the collection by 29 artists, including John Chamberlain, Chryssa, Jim Dine, Richard Hamilton, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Marta Minujín, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Lucas Samaras,
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Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Artist Catalina Africa explores inner landscapes in new series of paintings at Silverlens

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Rare Mexico City 1968 Olympic 'Type 6' torch sells for $91,451 at auction

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Contemporary Now returns to Chennai for expanded third edition

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Incisive class satire executiveproduced by Jia Zhangke opens Aug. 28 at Film Forum

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Flashback: On a day like today, American photographer William Eggleston was born
William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries. Eggleston's mature work is characterized by its ordinary subject-matter. In this image: William Eggleston. Untitled (Leg with Red Shoe, Paris), 2007. Pigment print, 22 x 28 in. Edition of 7. © Eggleston Artistic Trust. Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York.

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