News

The Sacklers own Purdue Pharma, the company behind OxyContin, which is under fire amid the opioid epidemic

The Tate group of British art galleries has announced that it will no longer accept any gifts offered by members of the Sackler family, who own the US maker of OxyContin. The prescription painkiller is under fire amid the opioids public health crisis in America.

The decision came two days after it was agreed the National Portrait Gallery would no longer accept a £1m gift from the Sacklers. Several major arts institutions on either side of the Atlantic have long benefited from Sackler donations; the London gallery was the first to decline money from the family.

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The museum announced commissions from Wangechi Mutu and Kent Monkman and the world premiere of a video installation by Ragnar Kjartansson on Thursday.

The hero’s journey to this milestone is filled with many memorable moments, from his debut, to Robin’s and Batgirl’s and more.

Junya Ishigami’s involvement in London gallery project attacked after email listing conditions for an intern is published

The Serpentine Gallery in London has come under fire after it was claimed that its chosen architect for this year’s pavilion, Junya Ishigami + Associates, uses unpaid interns who are expected to work 12-hour shifts for months.

The acclaimed 44-year-old Japanese architect was picked by the Serpentine to design its 19th annual pavilion project, which offers international architects the chance to build their first structure in the UK. But according to the Architects’ Journal, the firm’s Tokyo Office makes use of interns in a manner that would be deemed highly controversial in the UK.

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Immense and indomitable, the country’s dramatic topography and climate have produced unique and spectacular takes on Modernist architecture.

A new publisher, AWA, will have a connected superhero universe as well as stand-alone comics.

Siah Armajani’s career survey at the Met Breuer and public sculpture in Brooklyn Bridge Park offer a portrait of the Iranian artist in exile in America.

For its annual orchid display, the New York Botanical Garden has drawn inspiration from Southeast Asia. Rich beauty abounds.

“I congratulate them on their courage,” said the photographer Nan Goldin, after the National Portrait Gallery said it would not accept a gift from the family, which has links to the opioid crisis.

The American painter, one of Chicago’s Hairy Who, creates satirical and captivating polymorphous figures

Gladys Nilsson was a member of the Hairy Who, six graduates who made Chicago’s art scene hot and edgy in the late 1960s. Meshing art history with comic books, advertising, music, circus and street life, their bold, graphic paintings and drawings conjure trippy, sexy, satirical scenes in step with an era that saw the rise of the women’s movement and the underground press.

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The curator, who has died aged 55, was the only person to curate both the Venice Biennale and Documenta, helped redefine what African art could be and provided a platform for the likes of Steve McQueen

Okwui Enwezor, who has died aged 55, was a peerless, charismatic Nigerian curator who helped place non-western art histories on an equal footing with the long-established narrative of European and North American art. Part of a generation of auteur curators who rose to prominence in the 1990s, he, more than any other, was one with a mission.

“The way I see it, it is like night and day. The 80s and before was the colonial, Jim Crow, and apartheid days put together,” Enwezor said in 2005. “It was completely acceptable to the curators of the period that contemporary art did not happen in places like Africa, Asia, South America or the Middle East … globalisation transformed the myopia that previously ruled.”

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Nicola Kavanagh says crude criticism of Messenger may be fuelled by fear of the unknown

An actor who was the inspiration behind a giant bronze sculpture of a female figure has described her sense of awe at the scale of the piece, and suggested crude criticism of it may be fuelled by fear of the unknown.

Nicola Kavanagh said she found the 7-metre-high, 9.5-tonne statue, Messenger, which was delivered in suitably dramatic fashion to the Theatre Royal Plymouth this week, striking and beautiful.

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Van Gogh’s British connection, master of pop decadence Gary Hume and Swiss mystic Emma Kunz – all in our weekly dispatch

Van Gogh and Britain
The turbulent painter of the modern inner life spent a short but critical time in Britain and remained a lifelong reader of English literature. How did Britain shape him – and how has he shaped modern British art?
• Tate Britain, London, 27 March to 11 August.

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“In the present circumstances we do not think it right to seek or accept further donations from the Sacklers,” the group said in a statement.

The American Museum of Natural History corrects a Native American story in full view of visitors, inviting them to “reconsider this scene.”

Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon.

A major retrospective in Venice assembles more than 80 of the artist’s canvases, plus a huge mosaic of Italian marble.

The artist dances with wolves, and hunters, in his new film “Redoubt,” shot in his native Idaho. It’s the most emancipated work of his career.

A British museum has returned locks of an emperor’s hair to Ethiopia. But dealing with culturally sensitive objects is not always so simple.

One of New York’s most renowned art dealers and gallerists is heading to prison for filing false tax returns and closing her gallery simultaneously

During New York’s Armory week, the city’s foremost art fair, most of the art openings were a celebration – but there was one that was bittersweet. The Mary Boone Gallery poured free wine for one of the final times before closing next month. Its famed gallerist will soon be sent to federal prison for two and a half years after filing false tax returns.

It’s a jarring narrative twist for the New York art dealer, but she’s looking on the bright side. “Hopefully I’ll be able to come out a better person and rejoin the art world,” she told the New York Times, as her gallery is slated to close on 27 April. At her last opening reception, Boone told Bloomberg that she was looking forward to a fresh start – “if I don’t die in prison”.

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As the museum’s Andy Warhol retrospective ends its run, Holland Cotter revisits the exhibition through a work that showed the artist shifting gears.

Museum of Modern Art, New York
The uses, abuses and future of technology since 2000 are explored in an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois holograms, cyborg exercise equipment and lab art

To think computers were not supposed to make it to the new millennium. MoMA’s New Order: Art and Technology in the 21st Century never mentions the Y2K bug, although perhaps it should have. The 21st century has never been without the strange panic with which it began.

Presenting art made between 2000 and 2017, New Order starts in the immediate aftermath of Y2K, which turned out to be no big deal. While the old order was manufactured and full of junctures, the new order desires seamlessness. Generations have integrated industrial and postindustrial technologies into their lives. The old order was built; the new order is born.

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Jonathan Gardner’s wry, lush and pleasurable paintings; Jae and Wadsworth Jarrell’s master works; two shows refiguring the future of new media; and Fin Simonetti on the myths of masculinity.

Vibrant youth culture and a flourishing music scene leap out of the west African photographer’s Peuple de la Nuit, featuring the musicians, dancers and lovers who graced his hometown’s hottest venues

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What happens when a forklift goes through your Picasso? By Andrew Dickson

Early one morning last summer, I stood inside a museum in Antwerp and watched as a painting was hung on the wall. When I walked in, the gallery was empty. To one side, there was a crate about a metre square. Royal blue, it was unmarked apart from a code number and a yellow stencilled sign reading “Lato da Aprire / Open this Side”. Although its home is nominally Florence, the painting inside was a seasoned traveller: it had arrived the night before from Sicily, by road and under armed guard. The box looked entirely unremarkable. That was the point, I was told.

Abruptly, there was a commotion: the curator of the exhibition, a visiting curator, a translator, an expert in Renaissance art, plus a clutch of hangers-on, burst through the doors. Two art handlers wearing gloves and sober expressions strode over to a table; on it, pliers, tape measures, and an electric screwdriver had been placed with a precision that would not have been out of place in an operating theatre.

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The painting, “View of a Dutch Square,” had been bought by St. Victor’s Cathedral in Xanten without knowing that it had been looted, in 1963.

The Milan Triennial showcases projects by designers, architects and artists that highlight humanity’s troubled relationship to nature.

A large-scale investigation has found that 85% of artists exhibited in major American museums are white while 87% are male

A large-scale study has found that US museums are still failing to considerably diversify the artists they exhibit.

Related: National Portrait Gallery drops £1m grant from Sackler family

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An exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London looks at 2,000 years of negative stereotypes through historical objects and works of art.

Inmensos e indomables, el dramatismo de la topografía y el clima del país han producido vertientes únicas y espectaculares en la arquitectura moderna.

The Swiss artists Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger recreate famous historical photos in their studio, to remind us we shouldn’t always believe what we see.

Curator at British Museum says date of exhibition featuring artwork is ‘pure serendipity’

There are days, as the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch well knew, when it is impossible to express one’s feelings in words, and only an image will do.

For those who may find themselves, for one reason or another, experiencing such a moment, the British Museum would like to help. Opening next month, it will host the largest exhibition of Munch’s prints in the UK in almost half a century, the centrepiece of which is a lithograph of the artist’s iconic work The Scream.

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At 80, perseverance drives America’s grand old master painter. More prolific than ever, he says that facing cancer "hasn't made me work any differently. It's just an extra thing to think about."

Bespoke breasts, cloned frog meat and a gold gimp suit all feature in a remarkable new exhibition exploring the cutting edge of science

John A Douglas has a lot to thank medical science for – not least the new kidney he received in 2014 from an anonymous donor. “Since the operation, I’ve become a gym bunny, and lost 35 kilograms,” says the Australian artist over Skype. “But the main thing is I’d be dead otherwise.”

Still, the procedure left him with complicated feelings to process. “I was absolutely devastated after the surgery. At the beginning, you lose your sense of self. I’ve been surgically altered with the DNA and tissue of another person. So in a sense I’m a post-human whose death has been deferred at the cost of lifelong compliance programmes of medication, diet and fitness. My body will be monitored and observed for the rest of my life. In a sense it’s not my body any more – it’s been successfully invaded.”

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As he powers into his 80s, the photographer recalls shooting everyone from Kate Moss to Andy Warhol, shares his regrets over voting leave – and reveals how Gordon Brown pulled a fast one on him

‘You look knackered,” says David Bailey, greeting me at his studio. It’s up a small mews and sprawls so casually across two floors that it still feels like the 60s inside. “Look at you,” he says. “Your buttons aren’t even done up right.” I look down at my jacket: that bit is true. But I tell him: “I’m not tired!”

“I was watching you walking along the street,” he says. “I thought, ‘That must be the journalist, she looks knackered.’” The combination of acuity (he must be right: he is, after all, the one who makes a living with his eyes) and demonic overfamiliarity (by this point, we are holding hands; I have no idea who started it) is disarming. If this is his shtick, it’s working on me, totally and overwhelmingly. Or maybe he has a tailored shtick for everyone he meets.

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Photographer Soraya Zaman traveled to 21 states to capture the trans experience in America with interviews and images

Photographer Soraya Zaman has spent the past three years traveling across 21 states in America, to photograph and interview transgender individuals in the cities where they currently live. The result is a book, American Boys, published by Daylight, which will be out on 2 April in the US and on 19 April in the UK. The book captures the trans experience, in the words of trans people.

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Among the institutions that will see increases in their grants are El Museo del Barrio, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

A legal clause had essentially given the development ownership of pictures of its 150-foot-high art installation that visitors shared on social media.

Artist Nan Goldin welcomes move, which comes after firm’s alleged role in US opioid crisis

The National Portrait Gallery has become the first major art institution to give up a grant from the controversial Sackler family, in a move that campaigners said was a landmark victory in the battle over the ethics of arts funding.

In a decision hailed as “a powerful acknowledgment” that some sources of income could not be justified, a spokesperson for the gallery said it had “jointly agreed” that it would “not proceed at this time” with a £1m donation from the family, whose US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma LP makes the highly-addictive opioid prescription painkiller OxyContin.

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There’s a seedy romance to a rundown motel, and photographer Kate Berry has made it her mission to capture regional Australia’s finest

Picture the road trip: a Kingswood wagon or maybe a Fairmont. Olivia Newton John in the tape deck. Mum and Dad smoking in the front. The marginally cranked-open window only serving to corral the smoke into the back seat. When you pull up at a small-town motel, the race to run in and jump from one single bed to another is sweet relief from the past five hours of travel sickness.

Thirty-plus years later, you’re in the grip of a very different kind of sickness – nostalgia. In the 19th century, it was considered to be a malady so serious it might get you committed. But it’s the lifeblood of Kate Berry, the Melbourne-based founder of OK Motels: an Instagram account – and, more recently, a gig series – celebrating and documenting the unique world of regional Australian motels.

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‘We photographed the animals with motion sensors, then the humans. In the final edit, the exchange of looks between mother elephant and man was a wonderful surprise’

Poaching in southern Kenya is largely under control now, thanks to the numbers of rangers in place, but there is a bigger issue these days: the invasion of humankind into the wildlife habitat and the conflict that ensues. There is only so much space for people and animals to coexist. That is what I wanted to depict in This Empty World, my series of shots taken in southern Kenya in 2017.

Each work is a composite of two images: the animals photographed first and the humans second, shot weeks apart. We worked on Maasai community ranchland, near Amboseli National Park. I needed a location that had both wildlife habitat and unprotected land inhabited by people. I also wanted it to be extremely denuded, due to overgrazing: the dust was important from an aesthetic point of view.

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Tefaf Maastricht is Europe’s largest marketplace for old-master paintings and antiques. The problem is that most collectors nowadays want contemporary art.

The acclaimed photographer has died at the age of 98, leaving behind a long and storied career filled with gritty and inclusive imagery of life in New York

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The US artist experimented wildly to produce his haunting images. This collection of unpublished work is set to go under the hammer at Chiswick Auctions in London on March 19th

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The British designer has landed in New York with the Vessel, an extravagant 150ft-tall structure, the most talked about element of Hudson Yards

Walking up the steps in leather shoes, a yellow scarf and a suit under his wool coat, the British designer Thomas Heatherwick is climbing up Vessel in New York City, his latest project at Hudson Yards, for the very first time with the public. Looking up, he says: “I’ve been itching for this moment.”

The 150ft-tall structure is a walkable feat boasting 2,500 steps on 159 interconnecting flights of stairs. With an elevator for those who can’t manage the mile-long walk to the top, this masterpiece offers a view of the Hudson river from the west side of Manhattan.

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The annual caricature prize was created in 1994 as an independent, tongue-in-cheek response to Australia’s most respected portrait prize, the Archibald. Judged by a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maude, the winner of this year’s prize is Simon Schneider’s portrait of actor Geoffrey Rush being swallowed by rising water.

• The Bald Archies will be on display at the Sofitel, Darling Harbour, Sydney, until 28 April, followed by a tour around Australia

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The quirky home features dinosaurs and a sign proclaiming ‘Yabba-dabba-doo’, but neighbors aren’t amused

California architecture has captured the world’s imagination with its classic midcentury bungalows and beach houses. But one architectural landmark in the state has gone a distinctively different route, and it’s not to the town’s liking.

The “Flintstones” home in northern California appears to take its architectural cues from the town of Bedrock. The experimental house was built in the 1970s using a technique that involved spraying concrete to create curved walls. The result is a building where Fred and Wilma would feel at home, and it has become a landmark for drivers passing on I-280.

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Georg Baselitz takes on other artists’ self-portraits; Vivian Browne’s “Little Men” is a blast from the past; Enrico Riley’s ‘New World’ paintings; and Pamela Colman Smith, beyond the tarot cards.

A team of workers spent Friday at the Park Avenue Armory putting together the centerpiece of the set for “The Lehman Trilogy,” an 800-square-foot transparent cube.

These married architects are democratizing the 3-D printing process, using materials destined for the trash heap — like curry powder and coffee grounds — in place of drywall and foam.