When a 5-inch-by-4-inch red chalk drawing of a woman’s foot by Michelangelo sold at auction for US$27.2 million on Feb. 5, 2026, it blew past the $1.5 million to $2 million it was expected to receive. Experts believe it to be a study for the figure of the Libyan Sibyl, a female prophet who appears...
Michelangelo’s fresco of “The Last Judgment,” covering the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, is being restored. The work, which started on Feb. 1, 2026, is expected to continue for three months. The Sistine Chapel is one of the great masterpieces of Renaissance art. As the setting where the College...
Museums and universities around the world hold vast collections of cultural artefacts, artworks, objectified belongings and even ancestral remains. Many were not freely given but taken during colonial times, through force, manipulation, theft or violence. For decades, they have sat in storerooms and display cases, classified into categories like anthropology, natural history or ethnology, separated...
The artist Leandro Erlich has installed the first phase of Reefline, a submerged installation that aims to regenerate coral and marine biodiversity along South Beach A large installation by the Argentine artist Leandro Erlich, consisting of 22 submerged marine-grade concrete cars on the ocean floor that seem to drift towards nowhere as the current flows through...
Ahead of their presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach, we catch up with creative director, Kiya Tadele Yatreda (ያጥሬዳ) is an Ethiopian art collective led by creative director, Kiya Tadele, known for merging traditional craftsmanship with digital practice. Building handmade sets and costumes, Yatreda reinterprets historical figures, cultural knowledge, and myth through a distinctly Ethiopian...
Bashofu textiles have kept Okinawans cool and comfortable for more than 500 years. New study catalogues the science behind the craft. For as long as humans have been around, we have been using our hands and senses to create beautiful and useful objects from the natural environment around us. While the artisans of old may...
Trani, Puglia, where stone is more than material—it is memory. Walls and courtyards, carved centuries ago, stand as silent witnesses to lives once lived. For artist Valerio Galati, these same stones have become both his canvas and his calling, a medium through which he translates a life shaped first by the sea, and now by...
New AI robo-advisor start-ups, shippers save hundreds of workdays, but most dealers remain wary. Is technology transforming the art world, or stuck at the margins? Almost everyone working in the art market uses AI on a daily basis – but since AI-powered tools became widespread in 2023, how much have they really been embraced by...
Forget the studio: today’s artists are working with algorithms, particle colliders, and glass furnaces It was during their art-and-tech residency at CERN, Switzerland, in 2022, that the artist duo Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė first noticed how closely their approach to making art mirrored scientific practice. ‘In our work, there’s always a need to question...
From Paris and Rome to Jakarta, Indonesia, and New York, a curious banner has appeared in protest squares. With hollow cheeks, a broad grin and a straw hat with a red band, the figure is instantly recognizable and has been hoisted by young demonstrators calling for change. In Kathmandu, Nepal, where anger at the government...
