Arts

Arts

Six months before his momentous first trip to the United States, Joan Miró sent a letter to his New York City gallerist, Pierre Matisse. Writing from repressive Francoist Spain in the austere aftermath of the Second World War, the Catalan artist was searching for new frontiers. "In the future world, America, with its energy and vitality, must play a leading role," he told Matisse." I have to be in New York to be in direct, personal contact with your country; my work will benefit from that shock."

"As I stood and looked at it on a drizzly gray day," John Yau writes of looking at a radiant painting by Edward Zutrau, "I forgot that it was raining." That's what art can do - stop you in your tracks, make you forget absolutely everything save for that essential encounter between you and the work.

When you write poems with kids, you see how immediately they get this,

On January 22, artist Gabrielle Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo filed a founding affidavit in the High Court of South Africa in Pretoria, stating their intention to challenge South African Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie's unilateral decision to terminate the video and performance series, Elegy, at its national pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. McKenzie had attempted to characterize Goliath's piece, which would have centered Palestinians enduring genocide in Gaza, as "highly divisive" and not aligned with South Africa's interests - even though the country famously brought a legal case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague over allegations of genocide in Gaza.

Ever feel like a LOSER? Beaten down by capitalism, the housing crisis, and little hope of getting ahead? "brilliant, well-observed character comedy" - Stage Whispers (Australia) Meet one Aussie bloke who can relate... He's crass, chain-smokes, blows his paycheck on KFC and Marvel tatts and stumbles into knife fights. This is Big Mike - a wiry, heart-on-his-sleeve barista with big plans, good intentions and a magnetism for tragedy.

One of the aspects that most fascinated me was realizing how nature already provides ready and extremely evocative forms. A branch, a trunk, or a tangle of shrubs can spontaneously suggest figures, presences, animals, or movements.

When a 22-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) was asked how he typically began a piece, his answer was simple: "I suppose I would start with a head." That instinct-almost a reflex-sits at the core of a remarkable group of early works on paper that remained largely unseen during his lifetime. The Basquiat: Headstrong exhibition, which opens this month at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, is set to become the first comprehensive showing devoted to the artist's depictions of the human head.

Join us @hotelbironwinebar for National Inspire Your Art With Art Day (1/30 @ 5pm)! We will provide art supplies for you as you sip your wine. Our feature artist will be @cajobcase ! Her show will be up until the end of Feb. Want to join but still doing dry January, we got you covered! Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.

THE TITLE OF THE KW SHOW is "RATIO." The term comes from economics, this idea of balance. But I'm applying it to the conflict here in the DRC, which is based around our strategic rare minerals. I'm talking about customs, electronics, space, minerals. In my country, we only ever talk about making phones, about buying a new phone. I advise young people who are looking at the front of their phone-at the screen-to keep the back of their phone in mind;

Join us on Thursday, January 29, 6-9 PM for the opening reception of Tabi Tabi Po: Come Out with the Spirits! You Are Welcome Here, featuring the work of renowned artist Cece Carpio. Through Indigenous oral traditions and narratives, both autobiographical and imagined, this landmark exhibition highlights the power and necessity of storytelling. As a cultural, political, and relational practice shared across cultures, storytelling brings attention to the sacred and often overlooked spaces essential to understanding how all things come to be.

The 88-year-old artist's A Year in Normandie is a 90m long piece that he produced on his iPad during the pandemic. Made up of 220 panels depicting the changing seasons in and around his French garden, it's inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry - which fittingly will be on display in the UK for the first time in nearly a millennium later this year - and Chinese scrolls. This will be the first time that A Year in Normandie has been on show in London.

For some eminently wealthy individuals, amassing a first-class art collection is an ideal way to spend their money. And while some high-profile art collectors end up donating their collections to museums or other cultural institutions, others take a different approach, reselling their art after a certain amount of time. Which brings us to this week, when billionaire David I. Koch's collection of Western art hit the auction block at Christie's, setting a number of records in the process.

The mixture of old world and new inside a pub that also features a dark, polished wood bar, feels just right for Corrib Theatre's variety show An Scéal (The Story), which combines traditional storytelling and music with modern movement to celebrate the Celtic feast day Imbolc and the return of the sun as well as the Irish National holiday St. Bridgid's Day, both of which are on February 1.

The Courtauld has announced plans for two new contemporary art galleries and a reading room at London's Somerset House, supported by a £10m gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The donation brings the Foundation's total support for the institution to £20m. The Blavatnik Contemporary Galleries are expected to open in 2029 as part of a wider campus redevelopment, costing £82m. This redevelopment will also involve the construction of a new Blavatnik Reading Room inside the Courtauld's remodelled library.

Finnegan's Wake: An Immersive Ghost Story, presented by 13th Floor Theater, plunges audience members into the beautiful, dysfunctional Finnegan-Plurabelle family. Scenic designer Treigh Buchet, lighting designer Meghan Schultz, and ephemera designer Michelle Josette Crashette transfigure the San Francisco Mint into an Irish family home on the banks of a mystical river. Audience members are free to explore the spaces before the show begins with libation in hand. When the dinner bell rings, the show commences.

I realize now that my family needs me. Going back into a rehearsal process, an intense tech process, and an intense preview time is just not possible for me and my young kids right now,

First in a Chinatown mall beneath the Manhattan Bridge and then in a nondescript third-floor room nearby, Francis Irv exhibited a heady, multigenerational mix of artists from the United States and Europe, variously established, obscure, and on the rise. Megan Marrin showed alluring paintings of 1960s celebrities (replicas of photo souvenirs shaped like clothes hangars) last fall. Win McCarthy placed bricks, plastic takeout containers, and bedding on the floor in a charged, melancholic 2024 exhibition.

For Gretchen Scherer, centuries-old rooms in grand houses and institutions serve as the foundation for an ongoing series of paintings of luminous interiors. She starts with photos sourced online, from books, and that she snaps herself, in addition to drawing inspiration from artists like Narcissa Niblack Thorne, who commissioned meticulously crafted miniatures of period rooms to house her vast collection of 1:12-scale furniture. Scherer then tries to "open up" the space, as she describes it, toying a bit with perspective.

Bringing together roughly 180 galleries representing 18 countries, the presentations together cover 120 years of art history. Using its distinctive fair model featuring halls dedicated to different art historical periods and dialogues, historically significant works from classical Modernism-comprised of pivotal movements from the late 19th- to mid-20th century like Concrete art, Art Informel, Pop art, and more-meet the dynamic field of contemporary art today.

Manet & Morisot at the Legion of Honor is a somewhat scholarly exhibition on the lives, work, and friendship of two eminent French 19th-century artists. While it sets out to rescue Berthe Morisot from a long-held assumption that she owed her art to the influence - even guidance - of Édouard Manet, the show is far from an academic or revisionist experience. Instead, after seeing their work compared and contrasted across a handful of galleries, the word that comes most immediately to mind is "pleasure."

Walking through Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imaginationat the Museum of Modern Art, I noticed that the exhibition didn't have definite sections or texts, and the wall labels abstained from naming the nationalities of the photographers. It was an invigorating experience to be in a show that eschews geographic boundaries set up by Western nations, as well as rejects a cause-and-effect narrative that centers Western colonialism as a framework for understanding African aesthetic production.

If the internet began as a dream of a decentralized network, why would a history of it stick to the center? Mindy Seu takes this idea to heart in A Sexual History of the Internet. A synthesis of artist book, historical study, and performance piece, the project looks to cyberfeminists, sex workers, and others who have shaped online culture from the margins.

Among the museum directors paying keen attention to the ruling, on 3 December, that all federal grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) would be reinstated, the director of the Seattle Art Museum Scott Stulen heaved a sigh of relief. In 2025, the Pacific Northwest's leading art museum saw all its federal funding cut. That represented the loss of an annual income stream, he says, of between $300,000 and $400,000.

Starting with the inherently gridded layouts of LEGO baseplates, Katherine Duclos creates vibrant, undulating compositions of pastels and gradients. The Vancouver-based artist employs the colorful bricks in a variety of geometric patterns and low-relief textures to achieve dynamic compositions that appear almost kinetic, adding her own effects with paint. The impression of movement, paired with the tactility of the toy pieces, transforms a familiar object we typically associate with childlike play into a elegant assemblages cradled in wood panels.

Considering how this experience could be expressed artistically, he conceived "Domestic Light," which for two years used windowsill sensors in nearly 100 sites globally to record what he describes as "multispectral traces of home."

February's event celebrates the Australian Indigenous art exhibit " The Stars We Do Not See," which features about 200 pieces of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, in the exhibit's North American debut. In keeping with the theme, the Roof Terrace will be open so you can enjoy the star-studded sky. Attendees will also get the chance to try out fiber-making and listen to a didgeridoo.

All Ages Roving Puppets: Kids can dive into an underwater puppet adventure with fish, divers, and playful performances, from 10 am5 pm. Dance Party: Children can dance along to family-friendly hits and world music spun by DJ Suga Ray, from noon-3 pm Art Lab: Sound & Art Quest: Kids can explore sound and materials in a hands-on, creative space. Timed tickets are required.

Happy snow day, DC! Have a snowball fight, indulge in frosty food deals, and then venture out to the theater. There are several new performances opening this week, such as Chez Joey and world premieres from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Plus, Ramy Youssef arrives at Warner Theatre to tell his hilarious clean jokes. Best Things to Do This Week and Weekend January 26-February 1

Structured from pictorial tradition, González remakes established canons from her perspective as a contemporary woman: the sacred passes through the filter of a contemporary aesthetic vision without ceasing to be mystery, transforming into something simultaneously recognizable and radically new. The exhibition invites us to rewrite the narrative from creation itself, a gesture born from respect toward that generative power that was denied and distorted for centuries.