News

The Metropolitan Museum of Art told its staff that it was laying off 79 employees and announced 181 furloughs and 93 voluntary retirements.

On Monday, the German government announced a surprise six-fold addition to the Federal Art Collection’s acquisition budget as part of a new cultural initiative to help artists, galleries, and dealers

To create the new body of work on view here, Giulio Paolini looked to Giandomenico Tiepolo’s 1791 fresco Il mondo nuovo (The New World), a painting of a crowd, viewed from behind, gathered around a

For this two-artist exhibition, Osnova—a young gallery that recently decamped from the decaying, privately owned Winzavod Center for Art for new digs on the opposite side of Moscow—joined forces with

The 50th anniversary of the polarising New Haven Nine trial has led to a group exhibition exploring racial injustice

In 1970, a polarising trial in New Haven captured the attention of the nation, including the Yale president, Kingman Brewster, who said at the time: “I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass in this country that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States.”

The New Haven Nine, as they were known, were Black Panthers accused of murdering another member, Alex Rackley, a suspected FBI informant. The group – which included co-founder Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins – was on trial for over a year, which exacerbated racial tensions in the US leading to protests.

Continue reading...

Thomas J Price’s Reaching Out artwork is latest of relatively few public sculptures of black women in UK

At 9ft tall and weighing 420 kilograms, she is impossible to miss but she is also strikingly ordinary – an antidote, the artist hopes, to chest-puffing and hero worship.

Sculptor Thomas J Price on Wednesday unveiled a public statue of a black everywoman. Like most of the rest of the world, she is on her phone. The artwork is called Reaching Out but the question remains, is it the viewer doing the reaching or the woman?

Continue reading...

The onetime ’80s mass-market cheapie has gotten an artisanal upgrade — just in time for quarantine home manicures.

A major European show of work made during coronavirus confinement deals with boredom, doubt and isolation.

The auction house says that figure reflects a “resilient” market amid the coronavirus. But it represents a 25 percent decrease in auction sales, analysts say.

IN AN EARLY SCENE in The Burnt Orange Heresy, Elizabeth Debicki and Claes Bang are sharing a postcoital cigarette, their chemistry as smoldering as its cherry tip. He is James Figueras, an ambitious

Art objects are a bore. People want multisensory “experiences,” the more immersive the better. With JR, James Turrell, teamLab and more, a new business venture funded by Marc Glimcher and Laurene Powell Jobs hopes to deliver.

Yankee Stadium was the site of a salt marsh. Concourse Plaza was a valley. Our critic walks with Eric W. Sanderson, a conservation ecologist.

In a new series, we delve into Guardian photographer Tristram Kenton’s amazing archive of stage photos. This week: Hamlet, as played by actors including Damian Lewis, Paapa Essiedu and Michelle Terry

Continue reading...

Leighton House Museum set today’s quiz, which enables you to explore the art collections of British museums closed due to Covid-19 – while answering some fiendish questions along the way

This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK sets the questions.

Today our questions are from Leighton House Museum, the former home of the Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton. The only purpose-built studio house in the UK that is open to the public, it contains a significant collection of paintings and sculpture by Leighton and his contemporaries.

Continue reading...

A new exhibition marks 50 years since the festival known as ‘Europe’s Woodstock’ took off. Curator and sculptor Guy Portelli talks us through photos from its star-studded 1970 event

• Joni Mitchell, Isle of Wight 1970: the day the music nearly died

Continue reading...

Faced with financial uncertainty and still closed to the public, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) has eliminated 113 full- and part-time positions after fifty-six staff members were laid off and

Works by Paul Gauguin feature in exhibition, which forms part of Royal Academy’s reopening

Sixty works from one of the finest collections of impressionist paintings in northern Europe are finally going on display more than four months after lockdown prevented the exhibition featuring them from opening.

Nearly half of the paintings are being seen in the UK for the first time and include knockout works by superstar artists including Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and a man who today is one of the most problematic artists, Paul Gauguin.

Continue reading...

The director of the Seattle Children’s Museum faced a strike and an internal inquiry after she edited staff postings, citing fund-raising and other concerns.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will begin paying all of its interns after receiving a $5 million donation from art collector and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht. The pledged gift, which will also

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will begin paying all of its interns after receiving a $5 million donation from art collector and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht. The pledged gift, which will also

Exclusive: gallery removes reference to venue as ‘most amusing room in Europe’ as calls grow for artwork’s removal

Tate Britain has removed a reference to its restaurant as “the most amusing room in Europe” after complaints about racist depictions in a 1920s mural.

The Rex Whistler restaurant is covered floor to ceiling in a specially commissioned mural by the eponymous British artist titled The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, which depicts the enslavement of a black child and the distress of his mother. It also shows the boy running behind a horse and cart which he is attached to by a chain around his neck.

Continue reading...

Six critics on the visual album rooted in her “Lion King”-inspired record “The Gift,” a grand statement of African-diaspora pride and creative power.

The Hunterian in Glasgow set today’s quiz, which enables you to explore the art collection of British museums closed due to Covid-19 – while answering some fiendish questions along the way

This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home of the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues, by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK sets the questions.

Today our questions are set by the Hunterian, at the University of Glasgow, one of the UK’s leading university museums. Its art collection comprises more than 900 paintings, 40,000 works on paper and an impressive selection of applied and decorative art and sculpture. Important historically because of its origins in William Hunter’s collection, it contains works by Rembrandt, Chardin, Stubbs, and has developed particular strengths in Whistler, Mackintosh and Scottish art, especially the works of the Glasgow Boys and Scottish colourists.

You can see art from the Hunterian, University of Glasgow on Art UK here. Find out more on the Hunterian, University of Glasgow website here.

Continue reading...

The UN declared access to water and sanitation a human right a decade ago, but 785 million people worldwide still have no water close to home

Ten photographs marking the 10th anniversary of access to water and sanitation being declared a human right by the UN have been commissioned from 10 visual artists by the charity WaterAid to show the impact of clean water on people’s lives.

Globally, 785 million people – one in 10 – still lack access to water close to home and 2 billion people – one in four – don’t have a toilet of their own.

Continue reading...

From trippy psychedelic towers to African American icons, the centuries-old tradition of tarot cards is explored in a new book from Taschen

Continue reading...

From inflatable excrement to a porn James Dean, McCarthy has delved into America’s dark side. But has reality finally overtaken his ketchup-smeared visions of corruption?

Paul McCarthy’s vision of modern America is relentlessly revolting. His art depicts his nation as a crumbling edifice of pop culture, creeping fascism and depraved, uninhibited capitalism. “It’s always been this thing of looking at the underbelly of western culture, and the horror of its results,” he says over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s a questioning of our condition, our way of life. Look at America right now with its racism and its violence, and yet we have Disneyland.” His art, he says, is “trying to expose that – the posing of the purity and the innocence”.

How much more absurd can you get than Trump? It’s a performance, it's theatre

Continue reading...

Dreams of reinventing the workplace gave us cubicles and hotdesking as utopian ideas gave way to cost-cutting

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

When offices in the UK closed in mid-March and companies instructed their staff to work from home – without access to their usual materials and tools, their physical workspace or to many of their colleagues – people already sensed that this was an unprecedented experiment. No one was prepared for this, not even the banks, with their elaborate business-continuity plans focused on terrorist attacks but not on completely avoiding human contact. Against all odds, working from home was more successful than anyone would have predicted, with many people reporting their productivity had increased during the first two months of lockdown.

Months later, most office workers have not returned to their shared workplaces, and those that have come back are finding themselves catapulted into a strange new world of plastic dividers, distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitising. Amid the turbulence of second waves and local lockdowns, the best that employers can do right now is offer a phased and flexible return to the office, closely evaluating risks as they go.

Continue reading...

The oil paintings and digital collages in Caitlin Cherry’s online show “Corps Sonore” call forth a phantasmagorical nightclub harboring cliques of bionic sirens bathed in an opulent, rippling iridescence.

The footballer is recognised for his activism in the magazine among 40 ‘faces of hope’

Marcus Rashford’s inspirational, policy-changing campaign against child poverty has garnered him accolades aplenty. Now it has also propelled the footballer on to the front cover of British Vogue’s September issue.

The Manchester United striker, who forced a government U-turn on the granting of free food vouchers for the poorest families over the summer, headlines a special edition dedicated to activism.

Continue reading...

How can you get your cultural fix when many arts institutions remain closed? Our writers offer suggestions for what to listen to and watch.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world, including a balloon ascent and a deep space experience

Continue reading...

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, dear reader, but I really have not been getting out much. I hunkered down the second week in March, resurfaced briefly for some protests, and then resumed the shadowy,

Kirklees Museums & Galleries set today’s quiz, which lets you view the art collection of British museums closed during the pandemic – all while answering some tricky questions

This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions.

Today, our questions are set by Kirklees Museums & Galleries: Huddersfield Art Gallery. The Kirklees collection consists primarily of British art from the 19th century to the present. The collection includes works by leading British artists including Francis Bacon, LS Lowry, Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach and Stanley Spencer, in addition to a number of works by members of the Camden Town Group. The collection can normally be seen at Huddersfield Art Gallery, which is currently closed for refurbishment.

Continue reading...

The Observer’s critics recommend the best new arts in galleries, on air and online

Continue reading...

David Goldblatt’s photo essay from 1972 is a key document of an era. Now he is the subject of a major show in London

The photographer David Goldblatt, the great chronicler of the apartheid era in South Africa, is to be celebrated by one of the first London art galleries to re‑open this month.

Goldblatt, who died in 2018, has not been the subject of a major London show for more than 30 years. The new exhibition, David Goldblatt: Johannesburg 1948-2018, at Goodman Gallery in Mayfair, will focus on a particularly moving photo essay, Soweto, from 1972. The photographs in the series were taken over six months in a febrile atmosphere that would lead to an uprising in this impoverished area of Johannesburg four years later.

Continue reading...

The photographer John Bulmer created a distinctively English palette in his early colour images reimagining the north

Talking about his life in photography, John Bulmer, now 82, once remarked that the whole process was one of instinctive abstraction: “You are trying to reduce a very cluttered world into shapes and images that are simple enough to give a strong impression.”

Never was that principle more severely tested than in this picture he took in 1976 of the two proprietors of a haberdashery shop in Manchester. In their coats and cardigans and caps they are only just distinguishable from the racks and shelves and piles of wool and buttons and zips from which they make their living.

Continue reading...

In the early 1970s, the acclaimed South African photographer documented the residents of the township. These portraits form part of Goldblatt’s first major solo exhibition in London since 1986, now showing at the Goodman Gallery.

Continue reading...

“Artists and graphic designers like working on music [projects] because they get creative freedom,” says Gemma Curtin, co-curator of Electronic: From Kraftwerk to the Chemical Brothers, on view at the Design Museum, London W8 (until 14 February). The show explores the design and aesthetics that define electronic music. Curtin says: “Graphic designers like Peter Saville used innovative techniques and high production costs to create rich visuals that still look really fresh today.”

Continue reading...

Much-loved citizen was born poor but went on to mastermind restoration of the island’s splendid capital

• Historian and de facto mayor has died aged 77

The old town of Havana has sheltered many famous faces over its 500 years, Alexander von Humboldt and Ernest Hemingway among them, but few more loved than Eusebio Leal Spengler, who died on Friday.

The city historian could be seen most days walking through the cobbled streets, past the fruit hawkers and musicians, passing under balconies strung with drying sheets. He would stop to talk to residents who knew him by sight, despite his understated manner and the grey guayabera shirt of the Cuban bureaucrat he favoured.

Continue reading...

Thomas Heatherwick has risen to an important challenge, bringing to Leeds’s university hospital this latest in a series of bespoke, calming environments for people with cancer

Maggie’s Centres are based on some beautiful ideas. They offer to people hit by cancer – to families and carers as well as patients – emotional, social and practical support that complements their medical treatment. They do so in spaces that are in some way comforting and inspiring, the opposite of the generic medicalised environments, all air-conditioned and fluorescent-lit and plastic-surfaced, of modern hospitals. They offer, in an institutional and standardised wilderness, oases of the bespoke and personal.

This concept presents a special challenge to architects. It exposes which of their devices really do help people to feel better, and which are stunts and twirls to promote their brand and impress their peers. A well-placed window, a calming material, the fall of light, a soothing acoustic are all more important to the aims of Maggie’s than the signature moves of a famous designer.

Continue reading...

Ahead of a new Barbican show, the visual artist discusses being a ‘weird, creative type’ and why moving to Alabama made her question everything

Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in Ife, Nigeria, in 1985. She moved to the US aged five, first to Berkeley, California, then to Huntsville, Alabama, where her father worked as a professor and her mother as a nurse. Odutola is renowned for her intricate portraits drawn with ink, pastel and charcoal. Zadie Smith called her “one of the most exciting young artists working today”, and has written an introduction to Odutola’s new Barbican show, A Countervailing Theory.

Your new show imagines an ancient civilisation in central Nigeria where women rule over an underclass of black male humanoids. How did this idea come to you?
It came from two separate incidents: one was reading an article about rock formations in central Nigeria, which indicated that some ancient civilisation had arranged them in such a way; the second was from an episode of the BBC podcast A History of the World in 100 Objects on the Ife head. A German archaeologist discovered the [centuries-old brass statue] in 1910 and couldn’t conceive of Nigerians having the mental aptitude to create such anatomically correct and beautiful objects, so he decided that Greeks from Atlantis had made it. I started asking, who has a right to create their own stories? I wanted to create a work of art that, visually, stood apart from occidental picture-making, that felt very “other”.

Continue reading...

Lianne La Havas, Lily Cole, the Manics and more - the best photography commissioned by the Observer in July 2020.

Continue reading...

The pandemic has inspired a flurry of new and novel items — and given ordinary ones new meanings.

The burial service of civil rights leader John Lewis, Black Lives Matter protests in Portland and the impact of Covid-19: the most striking photographs from around the world

Continue reading...

Prominent intellectual is credited with rejuvenating crumbling centre into tourist hub

Eusebio Leal Spengler, the Cuban historian who oversaw the transformation of Old Havana from a crumbling quarter into an immaculately restored colonial tourist attraction, has died at the age 77. He had been suffering from cancer.

Leal and his restoration efforts became so famous that he became the de-facto mayor of the historic city centre and one of the nation’s most prominent public intellectuals.

Continue reading...

Richter, Polke, Kiefer. . . Why not Buthe? Though he shared their protean quest to reinvent the role of the German artist, Michael Buthe’s star, fast-rising and once dazzling, has faded considerably

The world’s elite athletes would have been in Tokyo right now if not for the coronavirus pandemic. When they went half a century ago, they discovered a capital transformed by design.

The artist and activist tackles weapons of mass destruction and Terry O’Neill’s most celebrated photographs of A-listers are on display – all in your weekly dispatch

Ai Weiwei: History of Bombs
A seductive and terrifying array of fetishised weapons of mass destruction is mapped across the main hall of the Imperial War Museum in this powerful intervention that – like the museum itself – provokes uneasy thoughts about war, history and the modern world.
• Imperial War Museum, London, from 1 August to 24 May.

Continue reading...

Trace quantities of isotopes hint at the true origin of a kind of glass that was highly prized in the Roman Empire.