Union calls for museum to become accredited London living wage employer and let staff carry water during shifts
Workers at one of the world’s leading art and design museums are balloting for “heatwave” strike action.
The ballot at V&A is taking place because of concerns about soaring temperatures and access to drinking water, along with pay and conditions.
Continue reading...Gallery director says collection of 140 paintings will offer a more balanced view of Manchester painter’s work
A new exhibition of work by LS Lowry will “bust a few myths” about the Mancunian artist, who the show’s co-curator says is still wrongly derided for being “naive and uncultured”.
LS Lowry: the Theatre of Life features 140 paintings by the artist, who captured working-class life in the industrial north-west of England during the early and mid 20th century.
Continue reading...Visitors can get free peek at works by one of UK’s most significant 20th-century artists and one of his successors
Swifts screech overhead, hares lope along the grassy paths and butterflies flutter in the woodland fringe. There is an orchard; there are chickens, beehives. It seems simply a lovely, if conventional, slice of English countryside – until you happen upon striking sculptures fashioned out of chunks of reclaimed steel or machinery parts salvaged from factories, shipyards and farms.
The pieces are the stars of a show called Heavy Metal, which brings together work by one of the UK’s most significant 20th-century artists, Anthony Caro, and one of his successors, James Capper.
Continue reading...Show at Martin Gropius Bau gallery in Berlin is biggest ever celebration of an East German female artist in a state museum
Gabriele Stötzer remembers the days when she had to decide: “Am I buying a sausage, or film for my Super 8 camera?”
Stötzer was one of the most radical artists in communist East Germany, and her desire to create was born in defiance of and in spite of the material conditions and oppressive restrictions of the GDR regime.
Continue reading...Spain’s leading festival of photography showcases the work of more than 300 visual artists in nearly 100 exhibitions across the country
PhotoEspaña, Spain’s leading festival of photography, held its official opening in Madrid this month and by September nearly 100 exhibitions will have showcased the work of more than 300 visual artists in the capital and across the country. Loosely corralled under the theme of reimagining, the exhibitions feature work by major figures in Spanish and international photography and less well-known emerging artists.
From the series Invisible Line. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena
Continue reading...State government project among range of works celebrated for community-centred design that goes beyond utility
The reimagined St Kilda pier has added more accolades to its burgeoning trophy cabinet, taking out some of the top gongs at the 2026 Australian Institute of Architects’ Victorian awards.
The $53m Victorian government project redesigned by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, alongside Site Office Landscape Architecture and AW Maritime, took home the Victorian architecture medal on Friday, the award given to the most outstanding project of the year.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Continue reading...Helen Cammock says her comments blaming wartime leader for Bengal famine were intended to create ‘dialogue’
A Turner prize-winning artist accused of telling a “barefaced lie” about Winston Churchill in a video piece installed at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has defended her work, saying it was intended to create a “dialogue” about figures in the gallery’s collection.
Helen Cammock’s 40-minute moving image piece called Persistence has been at the centre of a row about the role Churchill played in the Bengal famine of 1943.
Continue reading...Rampant Bull needed a makeover after wear and tear from tourists, but refurbishment ‘castrated’ it, critics say
The restoration of a floor mosaic in Milan called the Rampant Bull has been mocked after the works appear to have erased a crucial anatomical detail – its testicles.
The 19th-century mosaic in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade needed a makeover because a small crater had formed in the tiny pink tiles featuring the bull’s testicles, due to the constant stream of tourists performing a heel-spinning gesture.
Continue reading...London exhibition explores how care and protest improved rights and dignity of those living with disease
From photos of a mass “die-in” by Aids activists in Trafalgar Square, London, in the 1990s to plushie breasts, lips and vulvas hand-stitched by HIV-positive women, a new exhibition explores how care and protest have improved the rights and dignity of those living with the disease.
The show, Tenderness and Rage, at the Wellcome Collection, London, reflects how different groups affected by HIV, including gay men, women of colour, and refugees in the UK and around the world have found power, solidarity, comfort and joy in Aids activism and support services.
Continue reading...Paperwork supplied by Andrew Crowley, 46, found to be made using printing methods 25 years too modern
A fraudster who tried to sell fake ancient statues to Sotheby’s was foiled when his bogus accompanying paperwork was found to be written with printing methods that were 25 years too modern, a court has heard.
Andrew Crowley, 46, asked the auctioneers to value three Cycladic figures and one Anatolian stargazer statuette that he had inherited from his grandfather, Southwark crown court in London was told on Friday.
Continue reading...Exhibition explores how artists mainly known for their paintings helped revive a skill that had fallen out of fashion
They may be best known for their vibrant oil paintings but an exhibition opening in the English West Country is focusing instead on the subtle printmaking skills of artists such as Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
More than 50 prints created mainly by impressionists, post-impressionists and cubists are going on display at the Holburne Museum in Bath.
Continue reading...Export’s performances scandalised Austria in the 1960s, but are now recognised for exposing the objectification of the female body
Valie Export, the Austrian performance artist and film-maker who inverted the male gaze in ways that were provocative, shocking and often outrageously fun, has died aged 85.
The artist’s own foundation announced on Thursday evening that Export died in Vienna earlier the same day, three days before her 86th birthday.
Continue reading...Whitaker Malem worked with pop art sculptor Allen Jones, visual artist Nadia Lee Cohen and a car bodyshop in Kent
At Monday’s Met Gala, it inevitably fell to Kim Kardashian to deliver the evening’s biggest jolt. One of the few celebrities to straightforwardly interpret the “fashion is art” dress code – which focused on how the dressed and undressed human body is the through-line in most works of art – she decided to forgo her usual role as a walking billboard for a major fashion house and instead arrived in an orange fibreglass breastplate created by a small east London art duo and a car bodyshop in Kent.
“Good art should start conversation, and Kim did exactly that,” says 61-year-old Patrick Whitaker, half of the design practice Whitaker Malem, who made the breastplate just weeks before the gala. “She was very clear on wanting a breastplate, very clear on the car body finish. And I think she was nervous really. She understands the competition.”
Continue reading...Exclusive: Scale model found in Christo’s studio leads to London realisation of internally lit Air Package on a Ceiling
Christo once wrapped up the Reichstag, suspended a curtain across a Colorado valley and covered up the Pont Neuf in Paris. Now, six years after the artist’s death, a London gallery is to create a monumental installation he designed in 1968, using a detailed scale model and drawings that had been presumed lost until their chance discovery.
Christo had imagined a vast, internally illuminated suspended form, like a cloud, but technical constraints meant the plan was never brought to fruition.
Continue reading...Decision follows backlash from Italian government and European Commission
The jury of the Venice Biennale has quit just days before the prestigious art exhibition is due to begin, amid a row over the decision to allow Russia to participate.
The resignation of the five-member international jury was announced late on Thursday in a brief statement by the Venice Biennale organisers, and came a day after the Italian culture ministry sent inspectors to Venice in search of information about the decision to allow Russia to have a pavilion at the event.
Continue reading...Prominent contemporary visual artist explored range of techniques across six decades of work
The German artist Georg Baselitz, whose expressive paintings and sculptures stirred controversy before winning him global acclaim and the admiration of politicians in high office, has died aged 88.
The Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, which had a longstanding professional relationship with the artist, confirmed his death on Thursday. It said Baselitz had “defined German visual art for a generation” and had died peacefully.
Continue reading...Campaigners organise open letter to director demanding ‘fair day’s wage’ for all workers at V&A museums
A row over pay has broken out at the V&A before the opening of its newest site , with thousands of people calling for it to become a living wage employer.
On Saturday, V&A East will open its doors in Stratford, east London, showcasing stunning fabrics, photos and black British music. It joins a wider group of V&A museums including its original site in South Kensington, Young V&A in Bethnal Green and V&A Dundee. The V&A describes its latest opening as one of the most significant new museum projects in the UK.
Continue reading...Ari Hodara bought his ticket at the weekend after finding out about the raffle by chance while dining out
A Parisian art enthusiast could not believe his luck when he found out on Tuesday he had won a Pablo Picasso painting worth more than €1m with a €100 raffle ticket.
“How do I check that it’s not a hoax?” said Ari Hodara, 58, after organisers called him following the draw at Christie’s auction house in the French capital.
Continue reading...Late-night gallery tours and new venues signal a city staking its claim as a regional arts capital
On a recent weekday evening, the doors of more than a dozen galleries and museums across Abidjan stayed open till midnight, several hours later than usual, as art enthusiasts went around town on a bus tour. It was the Night of the Galleries, designed for people to drop in after work and enjoy Abidjan art week to the fullest.
The after-hours special showcase was first tested in January 2024 on the sidelines of the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament hosted and won by Côte d’Ivoire. The tradition continued this year during the art week’s third edition, which ran from last Tuesday to Sunday.
Continue reading...Number of tickets to win Tête de Femme will be capped at 120,000 and proceeds will go to Alzheimer’s research
A raffle in France is offering the chance to win a portrait by Pablo Picasso for the price of a €100 (£87) ticket, with proceeds going to Alzheimer’s research.
Picasso painted the gouache-on-paper Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman) in 1941. The raffle organisers’ online sales platform says the number of tickets will be capped at 120,000, meaning the draw could net €12m if they are all sold.
Continue reading...