Arts

Arts

A monumental horse sculpture by Antonio Canova, one of the most well-known Italian Neoclassical sculptors, has undergone an extensive restoration project and is back on view, after spending half a century in storage at the Museo Civico di Bassano. According to Finestre sull'Arte, an Italian news site, the museum in Bassano del Grappa acquired the sculpture in 1849, courtesy of Canova's brother, who arranged for many of his plaster casts, sketches, and other documents to be sent to the Veneto museum.

From pieces of everyday white paper, a series of delightful stop-motion animations illuminates how a simple material can be transformed into a sophisticated design. Created by Japenese designer Tomohiro Okazaki, who runs a studio called SWIMMING, "Paper Study" is a series of short intervals in which pieces of cut, folded, and sculpted paper appears to move on its own. Flat sheets transform into voluminous structures before collapsing back into a single plane, and arches, circles, and myriad other shapes move in sync.

They combine 3D elements with 2D painted planes which are almost billboard-like presentations intermixed in the work in a novel way. How do you approach such a thing? One of the great things about making art is discovering something that sprang from seemingly nowhere. In retrospect it looks logical but in the moment it's an epiphany and suddenly it's exciting to explore it.

The exhibition Yakne Seminoli ("Seminole World") at the HistoryMiami Museum gathers works by over 25 Seminole artists across traditional and contemporary mediums - not just beadwork, patchwork, and basketry, but also painting, photography, and even AI. Organized in collaboration with the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum on the Big Cypress Reservation in the Everglades, the show aims to convey to visitors that "Seminole history is Florida history."

"If I connect to it, I know the viewer is also connecting to something as well. I haven't analysed it too deeply, but I think I'm connecting to everyone's inner self-to their childhood. I know I'm just having fun, but I'm dealing with the American icon. They have to be more than Mickey Mouse with a lobotomy."

Now, a Madrid court has ruled that Fernando Ramírez de Haro, 10th Marquess of Villanueva del Duero and husband of Esperanza Aguirre, Spain's former minister of education and culture and a leader in the conservative Popular Party, must pay his brother, author and playwright Íñigo Ramirez de Haro, Marquis de Cazaza in Africa, 853,732 euros ($992,420) from the proceeds of the sale of the Portrait of Valentín Belvís de Moncada, according to .

"The material basis of my sculpture is metallic opportunities. Bringing pressure to the right points, I draw the aesthetic out of the industrial process," Richard Hunt, one of the most prolific public sculptors in the United States, wrote in a notebook decades ago. This idea of pressure was central to Hunt's theory about sculpture. Now that will be on full display in the late artist's first institutional survey since his death at 88 in 2023, "Richard Hunt: Pressure," at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami.

Hall presented the work at that year's Tefaf Maastricht fair with an asking price of $650,000. It did not sell, but remained on display at Nicholas Hall Gallery while they continued to seek a buyer-at which point Matthiesen was contacted by Doyle. Over the next several years, Doyle and Matthiesen communicated electronically regarding Doyle's purported art dealings; the con artist claimed to manage the "art side" of a family trust with assets worth billions of dollars, investigators stated.

At a time when many Russian private museums are struggling for survival and some have been forced to close, a billionaire couple from St. Petersburg have nonetheless founded a new one, scheduled to open in Moscow on 2 December. Called Zilart, the museum was conceived to show the collection of its founders, Andrey and Yelizaveta Molchanov. The owner of the St. Petersburg property developer LSR, Andrey Molchanov, 54, was a member of the Federation Council, Russia's upper chamber of parliament, from 2008 to 2013.

THE BEAUTY OF OPENING a time capsule is what we learn not about the past, but about our disarming proximity to it. Few exhibitions are so ripe for unearthing and reflection in this vein as "Post Human." Organized by Jeffrey Deitch in 1992-and enjoying a tour of international venues beginning with FAE Musée d'Art Contemporain, Pully/Lausanne, and concluding at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem-

I found myself shedding tears in front of his 1784 history painting The Oath of the Horatii -an allegory of the virtues of fidelity and sacrificing oneself to a greater cause, produced by a future Jacobin on the eve of the French Revolution as an endorsement of Republicanism. Looking back, I wonder if I was not only lamenting the withering of civic ideals (and of post-Reagan civics education) in America, but also mourning David's conviction that visual art matters in the making of the world.

A selection of recent paintings by Sri Lankan-American artist Shyama Golden. Born in Texas, Golden's work utilizes world-building and narrative to reveal the constructed nature of identity. The series, "Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth," exhibited at PM/AM gallery in London earlier this year. The paintings follow the idea of past lives and deaths as Golden charts her own over the past 200 years.

The show brings together a selection of works, most of them large-scale, in which Cugusi unfolds his distinctive visual universe: reinvented landscapes, reconfigured classical symbolism, and scenes that expand the boundary between the real and the imagined. In Imminence, each work functions as a visual poem that invites viewers to abandon strict logic and step into a territory where emotion and intuition build worlds that evoke possible -and potentially imminent- futures.

While not every Open Cul­ture read­er dreams of mov­ing to Japan and becom­ing a wood­block print­mak­er, it's a safe bet that at least a few of you enter­tain just such a fan­ta­sy from time to time. David Bull, a British-Born Cana­di­an who got his first expo­sure to the art of ukiyo‑e in his late twen­ties, actu­al­ly did it. Though he's been liv­ing in Japan and steadi­ly pur­su­ing his art there since 1986, only in recent years has he become known around the world.

Center Repertory Company's West Coast premiere of an new adaptation of A Christmas Carol offers something for everyone. Charles Dickens' classic story has a man and a community grappling with timeless themes such as choosing empathy over profit, offering acceptance without judgement, recognizing the wisdom of children, while also reflecting near the end of life on one's past, present and future.

Eric Claypoole has painted more than 100 barns, a craft he began as a child alongside his father, the late barn star legend Johnny Claypoole. Each brushstroke, he says, requires a careful "dab and wiggle" to reach every crevice. In a not-so-distant past, barn stars and hex signs were iconic symbols of rural life in central Pennsylvania. Today, only a fraction remain, but a local cultural center is working to preserve and celebrate these vibrant pieces of American folk art.

More than any other major London theatre, Hampstead has been at the sharp end of recent funding struggles: its last artistic director Roxana Silbert quit in 2022 as a result of the venue losing all of its Arts Council funding. Still, the remaining team have limped on valiantly, in part helped by the patronage of the the late, great Tom Stoppard: annual revivals of his more obscure plays the last three Christmases have guaranteed bums on seats, and the rest of the programme has been no slouch.

Where other arts slow down in December, London theatre accelerates frenziedly, and it's a curiosity of the season that while there are gazillions of pantos and explicitly Christmas-themed family productions, it's also the busiest time of year for 'regular' shows. If you're after or something to take the kids to , then do check out our respective lists. But there's an abundance of serious dramas, world class comedies and cool indie plays debuting this month - here's our guide to the best non-tinselly openings in town this month.

In Light of Innocence, a stained glass solo exhibition by Raúl de Nieves, currently on view at Pioneer Works, is also in many ways a collaboration - across tarot, Mexican folklore, and Catholicism, as de Nieves draws from these visual traditions to create a grand cathedral in the central gallery. By installing art with strongly spiritual and religious connotations, he's transformed the space from a creative one to a contemplative one.

In early November, we stayed at the 200-year-old Stone Ridge Farm Inn in Bucks County, Pennsylvania for a family wedding weekend. It was rustic, charming, and quiet-even with a six month old baby.

The holiday season is here, and Oregon's literary scene is flourishing with author readings, holiday fairs, and cookie decorating events for the whole family. Enjoy December's front-heavy schedule with events from Powell's Books, Mother Foucault's Bookshop, Up Up Books, and others, then take some time to unwind and enjoy the peaceful beauty of the holidays as December winds down and the year comes to an end.

Her mother had a habit, in Siesbye's childhood, of giving away her daughter's toys to other children; as an adult, Siesbye started to treat herself to gifts. On that trip, she came home one afternoon to find that the leopard was gone: her mother had gifted it to the young daughter of family friends. Later, visiting these friends, Siesbye told the little girl that she would like the toy back when the child was done playing with it.

But in Robert Icke's contemporary adaptation of the 2,400-year-old Greek tragedy, the real surprise is how long it takes to get there. Now at Studio 54, Oedipus arrives as the fall season's prestige import from abroad, bringing with it an imposing cast led by Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. It's sharply acted and conceptually ambitious. But the extended pacing dilutes the speed and compression that define Sophocles' original.

In many instances the importance of these paintings has only recently been recognised, thanks to the enormous amount of research my colleagues have done, working-in some instances for months, even years-with outside scholars to shed new light on their authorship and history. The galleries look stunning, filled with an array of beautiful paintings, each with a fascinating story to tell. They are already working their magic on art lovers from across the globe, and we hope everyone c

Stoppard wrote erudite plays that touched on a broad range of topics from his 1966 absurdist comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead about two minor characters from Hamlet to his 1993 drama Arcadia which included dialogue about Chaos Theory and Garden Landscaping. But when Arcadia opened in New York, Stoppard told me his plays were always about people, not abstract ideas.

John Nixon, the late Australian avant-garde artist, would sometimes save the shells from his boiled eggs and sprinkle them across blank paint, creating his own starry night. Other times he'd set himself rules, such as painting only in orange for five years. It was 1996 and he was becoming a father, so he wanted a streamlined practice plus, what other artist was associated with orange?

In the burn scar left by the 2022 wildfire in Sabinares del Arlanza - La Yecla Natural Park, Spain, Nomad Studio places Socarrado, a circular structure built entirely from charred juniper trunks recovered after the blaze. First conceived for the Uncommissioned Exhibition by Novo Collective, the work becomes a point of collective reflection for the communities of Santo Domingo de Silos, transforming damaged terrain into a site of memory, refuge, and healing.

You'll find most professional dancers in the studio teaching, not onstage performing - because paid performing work has always been scarce, and keeps getting scarcer. And with President Trump's policies gutting arts funding and devaluing cultural work at every turn, the squeeze on dance artists is getting even tighter. So these highly skilled artists do what actually pays: They pour everything they know (and it's a lot; 15-50 years and more of intensive dance and fitness training) into the next generation in studios across America.

These firearms are typically valued not only for their mechanical performance, but for their specific history, including who owned them, the battles they were used in, or their connection to iconic gunsmiths. Antique rifles from the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly those with elaborate engravings, custom stocks, and hand-forged barrels, are among the most highly valued. These guns bring in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars at auction.

"Language is technology that we use to address and name things, a tool we use to communicate," Villar Rojas said at the sculpture's unveiling. "But what happens when language isn't enough to communicate with someone else? When you cannot address this 'other'? I think that's when conflict appears. When you can't really communicate, you start to speculate on the intelligence of that person. So language is the enemy."

Even the estate of an artist as acclaimed as Romare Bearden has trouble tracking down the thousands of works he made over the course of his five-decade career. Known as one of America's foremost collagists, Bearden created a distinctive style that can often be easily recognizable, but tracking down every single work he made, including ones not in that mode, can be a difficult task, especially when it comes to compiling a catalogue raisonné for the artist.

One month after Hurricane Melissa struck the Caribbean, causing an estimated $48bn-$52bn in damage and more than 100 deaths, artists and art organisations both within the region and abroad continue to mobilise in support of ongoing relief efforts. The hurricane made landfall in Jamaica with record-breaking intensity, causing more than $9bn in destruction on the island as buildings flooded and collapsed, including a significant number of colonial-era heritage sites.

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 them, marks the first phase of the Reefline project just off the shores of Miami Beach. This underwater sculpture park, located 21ft below the waves and 600ft from the beach, is designed to resemble a hybrid reef that will support coral regeneration and marine biodiversity.

Vladimir Putin's government had begun cracking down on independent journalists covering the protests, branding them as "foreign agents" a designation that effectively stigmatized them and forced them to include disclaimers with their work. Loktev began filming several of these journalists who courageously kept reporting on the abuses of the regime, including her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk-show host for the independent channel TV Rain.

"Rembrandt's etchings were an enduring passion for the late Sam Josefowitz, whose collection of the Dutch master's graphic works remains unparalleled by any other 20th-century collector," the house said in a statement.