7 Contemporary Artists to Follow If You Like Cecily Brown https://ift.tt/OG8yLWX

The 5 Senses, 2025
Cecily Brown
Oliver Clatworthy

The Last Shipwreck, 2018
Cecily Brown
The BlackWood Gallery

Cecily Brown’s ecstatic painting practice has become a touchstone in contemporary art. Through bravura brushwork, fevered flesh tones, and a nuanced command of light and shadow, she sets bodies and sensuous scenes in motion, images surfacing and slipping between figuration and abstraction.

Born in London in 1969, Brown trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in the ’90s, a time when painting was out of fashion in the U.K. From there, she moved to New York in the early 1990s, where a culture of ambitious painting reinforced her commitment to working at scale and painting as a physical process.

Major institutional presentations have included her acclaimed 2022 exhibition “Death and the Maid” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this show, she revisited still life through a contemporary memento mori lens, reinforcing her standing as one of the most influential painters working today.

Color Etching with Brick Wall, 2003
Cecily Brown
Two Palms

Her forthcoming exhibition “Cecily Brown: Picture Making,” opening March 27th at the Serpentine Galleries in London, brings together new paintings alongside works dating back to 2001. Chief curator of Serpentine, Lizzie Thomas Brown, noted that Brown’s work “oscillates between recognizable imagery and abstract marks.” “Her paintings seem to vibrate in a perpetual present tense, continually coming into being,” she added.

Across her practice, she studies other artists closely—from Old Masters like Titian, Rubens, and Goya to modernists such as Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell. She takes inspiration from art history, from the theatrical intensity of the Baroque to the physical charge of post-war abstraction, particularly in the way she uses paint across the surface of her works. As Brown took influence from others, so other contemporary artists have looked to her work as a source of inspiration. Here are seven artists working today whose approaches to painting show the influence of Brown’s impressive practice.

Heather Bause Rubinstein

B. 1975, Englewood, New Jersey. Lives and works in New York and the Catskills.

Forever after days, 2025
Heather Bause Rubinstein
Ruttkowski;68

Following a life-altering neurological diagnosis in 2023, Heather Bause Rubinstein turned to oil painting with urgency, as a means of making the most vital work she could imagine. She had first worked with the medium as an undergraduate in 1993, but soon after shifted away from traditional oils, working instead with house latex and other hardware-store materials. Her New York debut solo exhibition, “Out of the Woods,” which took place in October 2025 at Ruttkowski;68, marked a significant moment in that return. The show introduced audiences to a body of work shaped by close observation of gardens, forests, and shifting light.

In Forever After Days (2025), a large oil painting, for example, blush pinks and milky whites open the canvas up, while deep reds pool and descend. Forms hover at the edge of recognition—petals, foliage, perhaps bodily contours. Soft areas of paint contrast with dragged, layered passages that leave ridges and drips, registering the pressure of the hand and inviting the eye to wander.

“Like Cecily, I’m straddling the line between abstraction and figuration,” Rubinstein said in an interview. “I think we share an impatience with the representation/abstraction binary. She also highlighted the influence of Brown’s desire to leave “breadcrumbs of visual information” that are scattered across the picture plane.

Julia Jo

B. 1991, Seoul. Lives and works in New York.

With Newfound Strength (Hand-Embellished, Limited Edition Print), 2024
Julia Jo
ART FOR CHANGE

Brown has long been a meaningful touchstone for Brooklyn-based painter Julia Jo, who has a deep respect for Brown’s ability to portray movement and atmosphere. As Jo shared in an interview, “Though we herd our paintings into very different pastures, I am always entranced to see the singular ways Brown can leave trails within her paintings, how her works simultaneously hover above and remain grounded in our world.”

Jo’s oil paintings unfold through looping, layered, swirling strokes and bold color, where figures slip in and out of visibility. Faces and gestures appear like flashes of memory, then dissolve, creating a continual push and pull between abstraction and figuration. “I want the physicality of paint to be on center stage,” Jo added.

Her recent sold-out solo exhibition, “Beckon,” at Charles Moffett—her third with the gallery—follows growing institutional recognition, including recent acquisitions by the High Museum of Art and ICA Miami.

Eleanor Johnson

B. 1994, United Kingdom. Lives and works in Oxfordshire, U.K.

Red Sky at Night, 2025
Eleanor Johnson
Harper's

Emerging artist Eleanor Johnson’s large-scale paintings use a layered, kinetic process, as vivid corporeal forms shift and recombine across the surface. Drawing on Baroque painting, particularly the tumbling compositions of Peter Paul Rubens, she brings a sense of movement while reconsidering the body through a contemporary perspective on gender and perception.

Central to her practice is pentimento: earlier lines remain visible as she builds the painting up, a style that Brown also uses. “I like how the gaps in the painting make the viewer’s eye jump around—creating a kind of glitch in the image,” she said in an interview. In works such as Bear Hug (2025), rubbed-out areas and exposed underlayers create a sense of ongoing change, reflecting Johnson’s interest in hypnagogic hallucinations where forms drift in and out of focus.

Konstantina Krikzoni

B. 1987, Chalkidiki, Greece. Lives and works in London.

Armatura, 2025
Konstantina Krikzoni
L'Appartement

Like Brown, who reimagines historical compositions by centering female protagonists, painter Konstantina Krikzoni unsettles inherited narratives. In her works, Krikzoni draws on her upbringing by the Aegean Sea in Greece as well as new interpretations of classical mythology and iconography.

In Armatura (2025), a key work in her solo exhibition of the same name at Geneva-based gallery L’Appartement, fluid brushwork gathers intertwined figures across a luminous, shifting ground. Reclining and clustered in quiet proximity, their bodies emerge through washes of turquoise, rose, ocher, and moss, punctuated by coral and deep red. Thin veils of paint allow earlier marks to remain visible. As is frequent in her practice, female figures anchor the composition, evoking care and introspection.

As Krikzoni put it, “It feels a bit like choreographing a dance…the bodies come together as if they’re building something physical.”

Eva Helene Pade

B. 1997, Denmark. Lives and works in Paris.

Bortførelsens leg (H), 2024
Eva Helene Pade
Galleri Nicolai Wallner

Eva Helene Pade pays close attention to the female figure. The rising Danish painter grounds her nude figures in scenes animated by a luminous palette. Subtle tonal modulation and deep shadows draw intimate clusters of characters into focus against a softly diffused atmosphere.

Her process recalls Brown’s practice of working without a predetermined image, so that forms emerge through revision and accumulation. As Brown has noted, “I often lay down a wash in one colour and don’t have a clear image in mind of where I am going. I start pushing paint around until forms suggest themselves.” Pade noted this influence in an interview with Artsy: “Brown has a distinctive way of distorting the figurative into abstraction, working precisely in the gaps where an image is both forming and dissolving.”

Pade is represented by Thaddaeus Ropac—the youngest artist on the gallery’s roster. Her 2025 solo exhibition “Søgelys” presented an exploration of light, atmosphere, and presence.

Laurena Finéus

B. 1998, Ottawa, Canada. Lives and works in New York.

Memory as Fortress, Roots as Pathway, 2025
Laurena Finéus
Fridman Gallery

Cavalier de Tempête : Act I, 2025
Laurena Finéus
Luce Gallery

Brooklyn-based artist Laurena Finéus began exploring the threshold between abstraction and figuration during her MFA years at Columbia University. At that time, she began introducing collage into her artwork, bringing a greater sense of fragmentation and more destabilized compositions.

Finéus’s paintings reference her Haitian heritage through layered landscapes. In Memory as Fortress, Roots as Pathway (2025), a kaleidoscopic field emerges with ambiguous figures that evoke vegetal forms. Interlocking branches bind bodies to the painting’s background—which, according to the artist, evoke spirits of Haitian Vodou.

As Finéus noted in an interview, “I’m drawn to works that ask us to surrender our assumptions about chaos. Much like in Cecily Brown’s paintings, what initially appears chaotic often contains multiple truths, if we are willing to look closely.” Finéus will present her highly anticipated debut New York solo exhibition, “Cautionary Tales: A Symphony of Anger/Kolè,” with Fridman Gallery in May.

a’driane nieves

B. 1982, San Antonio. Lives and works in the Greater Philadelphia Area.

much like a perennial stretches its way through the darkness of slowly warming earth to break through surfaces hardened by winter, i have finally emerged from yet another subterranean wilderness, fuller and more tender from the bruising and abrasions of my own evolution. having chosen liberation over longing, i now stand bolder in the still of my own sun, a star reborn, 2025
a’driane nieves
Albion Jeune

For a’driane nieves, painting is a way to process memories and experiences. “Painting for me is largely a very physical process, where my full body is engaged,” she noted in an interview. She begins with repetitive, dance-like movements and mark-making. Her neurodivergence informs this process: She sees these movements as a way to invite fluidity in her body.

Reflecting on Brown’s influence, nieves recalls that it was early encounters with Brown’s work that led her to experiment with heavier paint and stiff brushes, considering how painting might register the body from within. This shift sharpened her attention to visceral elements—blood, marrow, flesh, and bone—a focus that has grown as she began exploring soft sculpture. Just like Brown, nieves uses abstraction to move beyond outward appearance, working emotions out physically in her practice.

Browse more artworks from our Artists to Follow If You Like Cecily Brown collection.

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Meryl Streep donates a seven-figure sum to the National Women’s History Museum. https://ift.tt/Ivlj9SX

Actor Meryl Streep has made an unspecified seven-figure donation to the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM). Her investment in the digital-first museum, based in Washington, D.C., supports the preservation of women’s stories.

Streep’s monumental gift to the NWHM will support the museum’s digital initiatives, including a series of digital storytelling experiences surrounding women's accomplishments that can be accessed across classrooms, the home, and various digital platforms. The contribution will also support the museum’s efforts to make certain that women’s contributions to the cultural, social, economic, and political worlds will be recognized, taught, and remembered for generations to come.

“History is shaped not only by those who make it, but by those who ensure it is remembered,” said the Academy Award–winning actor in a press statement. “The National Women’s History Museum has long been a catalyst for bringing forward the stories that deepen our understanding of who we are. I am proud to continue supporting this essential work so that future generations inherit a history that is both truthful and complete.”

In celebration of her gift, the museum will establish the annual Meryl Streep Educator Award in support of an outstanding educator in the field. The inaugural honoree will be celebrated at the museum’s Women Making History Awards gala this November.

“As one of the most influential storytellers of our time, Meryl Streep has spent her career illuminating the depth, complexity, and power of women’s lives,” the museum’s board chair, Susan D. Whiting, said in a press statement. “Her extraordinary generosity, paired with her unwavering commitment to truth, equity, and education, reflects the very mission of this museum.”

Established in 1996, the NWHM was the first institution of its kind in the United States. The non-profit, nonpartisan organization has organized online exhibitions and in-person events, while also playing a key role in advancing the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

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Art Dubai postpones 2026 edition to May. https://ift.tt/VRB8kFq

Art Dubai will postpone and restructure its 2026 edition following escalating conflicts across the Gulf, as confirmed through a statement on Instagram.

The fair was scheduled to host its 20th anniversary edition from April 17th to 19th at Madinat Juneirah as part of Dubai Art Week. However, as violence in the region worsens, the fair announced it will run from May 14th to 17th instead. It will proceed with what organizers describe as an “adapted format,” following consultations with artists, institutional partners, and galleries.

Organizers emphasized the importance of maintaining the fair as a platform for the regional cultural ecosystem. The revised edition will be more “focused and flexible,” bringing participants together through presentations, collaborations, and public programming rather than following a standard fair model.

The changes follow heightened instability in the region after February 28th, when the United States and Israel carried out airstrikes on Iran. Tehran responded with missile attacks targeting locations across the Arabian Gulf, with several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, intercepting incoming projectiles.

In the U.A.E., authorities advised residents and visitors to remain at home beginning March 1st, as a precautionary measure. A number of cultural institutions subsequently closed, including the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, the Sharjah Art Museum, and NYU Abu Dhabi, while the Sharjah Art Foundation suspended tours and public programming. Commercial galleries across Dubai have also temporarily shut their doors. Closures include spaces at Alserkal Avenue such as Leila Heller, Firetti Contemporary, Taymour Grahne Projects, and Perrotin.

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Salvador Dalí painting behind Schiaparelli’s “Tears Dress” to make London debut. https://ift.tt/W1NuMBt

Salvador Dalí’s Necrophiliac Spring (1936) will be on view in the United Kingdom for the first time as part of “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A Museum). The upcoming show, dedicated to Elsa Schiaparelli and her fashion house, opens on March 28th and extends through November 8th.

Necrophiliac Spring features a figure with a flower-studded head who stands in a torn dress next to a fisherman. It draws on the landscape of Rosas in Port Lligat, Spain. Schiaparelli—an Italian couturier known for uniting fashion and Surrealist art through collaborations with figures like Dalí—owned the painting for years. It inspired one of her most famous designs, the “Tear Dress,” which debuted in 1938 with red trompe l’oeil slashes across the fabric.

“The painting connects Dalí’s and Schiaparelli’s biographies,” Rosalind McKever, curator of paintings and drawing at the V&A Museum, told Artsy. “Dalí painted it soon after returning to Spain from Paris, and the setting is based on the beach at Rosas, near Dalí’s home village of Port Lligat, itself present as a street of fishing barracas with a seated fisherman. The flower-headed figure recalls Schiaparelli’s claim in her autobiography, Shocking Life, that as a child she planted flower seeds in her nose and mouth to grow more beautiful.”

Necrophiliac Spring has been exhibited sparingly since its 1936 debut in New York. It was last shown in the 2011 “Surrealism in Paris” exhibition at Basel’s Fondation Beyeler.

“Dalí and Schiaparelli were friends from the mid-1930s,” McKever said, noting that the pair collaborated several times. The two designed the “Shoe Hat,” the “Skeleton Dress,” and the “Lobster Dress,” all of which will be on view in the exhibition. “He considered her couture salon on Place Vendôme to be the beating heart of surrealist Paris and provided some of its more eccentric decor,” she said.

“Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” brings together more than 200 objects spanning fashion, fine art, photography, and design. Alongside garments and accessories, it includes works by figures associated with Surrealism and modernist art, reflecting Schiaparelli’s collaborations with artists including Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, and Man Ray. The show will also trace the evolution of the Schiaparelli fashion house.

“This exhibition celebrates her enduring influence through iconic collaborations with 20th-century masters and a pioneering fusion of creativity and commerce,” Delphine Bellini, CEO of Schiaparelli, said in a statement. “The Victoria and Albert Museum offers the perfect setting to showcase her legacy alongside [artistic director] Daniel Roseberry’s creations, which carry her surrealist spirit forward, blurring lines with bold, sculptural designs that both honour and reinvent her vision for a new century.”

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7 Must-See Shows During Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 https://ift.tt/gUrlqae

Fading of God - Deer Calls in the Secluded Valley , 2026
Qiu Anxiong
Pearl Lam Galleries

During Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, which runs March 27 to 29 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, the city’s galleries will enter their busiest week of the year. Across the island, global powerhouses and long-standing Asian galleries will stage exhibitions for an international crowd.

Many of these spaces are within walking distance of each other in Hong Kong’s Central neighborhood. The vertical tower H Queen’s houses Hauser & Wirth. White Cube and MASSIMODECARLO are nearby, as are long-standing spaces such as Pearl Lam and 10 Chancery Lane, fixtures of the city’s contemporary art scene since the early 2000s. Alisan Fine Arts, founded in the 1980s and one of Hong Kong’s longest-standing contemporary galleries, is also here, with Double Q Gallery just a short distance away in Wong Chuk Hang.

Thanks in part to such galleries, the city’s art ecosystem has grown slowly but with increasing depth, entering a more mature phase since the pandemic. While Hong Kong remains one of the world’s key art market hubs, accounting for roughly 14% of global art exports in 2024 according to the UBS Art Market Report, it increasingly functions not just as a marketplace but as a platform for ambitious exhibitions and projects.

“As we head toward Art Basel Hong Kong, the city is coming alive with exhibitions that show just how dynamic this global hub in Asia truly is,” Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, told Artsy. “Together, these shows offer essential context for the artists, ideas, and conversations that will animate the fair this year.”

Here are seven gallery shows worth seeing right now.

El Anatsui

“MivEvi”

White Cube

Mar. 25–May 9

MivEvi V, 2025
El Anatsui
White Cube

Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui once said, “When you unite things, their power keeps growing.” The artist, renowned for transforming discarded materials into monumental sculpture, makes his Hong Kong debut at White Cube with a new series of shimmering aluminum and copper wire installations made from thousands of flattened liquor-bottle caps collected and assembled in his Accra studio.

The material itself carries historical weight: Liquor bottles circulated along colonial trade routes tied to the transatlantic slave trade. “These are things people expect to throw away,” Anatsui has said, “but they preserve the history of a place.”

The exhibition follows the artist’s widely discussed Tate Modern Turbine Hall commission, Behind the Red Moon (2023–24). Stitched into vast, tapestry-like fields of metal, the new works expand Anatsui’s long-running exploration of what he calls “non-fixed form,” a sculptural language that challenges Western categories of sculpture while drawing on West African traditions of weaving and metalwork.

For the first time, several sculptures are designed to shift shape and be viewed from both sides, allowing them to be experienced fully in the round.

Nicole Eisenman

“Fallen Angels”

Hauser & Wirth

Mar. 24–May 30

Tidal Wave, 2025
Nicole Eisenman
Hauser & Wirth

A Good Place to Start, 2025
Nicole Eisenman
Hauser & Wirth

At Hauser & Wirth, American painter Nicole Eisenman presents a new group of paintings and sculptures that shift the focus of her socially charged practice toward more intimate scenes.

The exhibition includes 11 oil paintings and three sculptures, many set in everyday spaces such as apartments, studios, and beaches. Here, Eisenman turns from her typically crowded scenes toward quieter compositions, with figures caught in moments of reflection and unease. Thick, expressive brushwork and darkening skies recur throughout the new works. “Escapism is a funny paradox,” Eisenman has said. “A catastrophic wave is about to break.”

Eisenman’s new sculptures include assemblages made from furniture taken directly from the artist’s studio, bringing traces of the creative process into the gallery.

Lily Stockman

“A Grass Roof”

MASSIMODECARLO

Mar. 24–May 21

Los Angeles–based painter Lily Stockman makes her Hong Kong debut with a series of luminous abstract paintings inspired by an eighth-century Zen poem by the Buddhist monk Shitou Xiqian.

The poem imagines a small hermitage that “includes the entire world,” an idea Stockman explores through layered compositions, many in deep blues and greens. The artist uses delicate badger-hair brushes traditionally used in Chinese calligraphy. She builds her compositions from wavering lines, nested frames, and softly dissolving shapes.

Stockman, who splits her time between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert, often draws inspiration from natural phenomena such as mineral pools, birdsong, and shifting light. Here, painting becomes a shelter, each canvas like a window left slightly open, letting the breeze in.

Fang Zhaoling

“In Pursuit of Naïveté: Fang Zhaoling’s Journey”

Alisan Fine Arts

Through May 16

Living in Cave Dwellings, 1996
Fang Zhaoling 方召麐
Alisan Fine Arts

Untitled, 1976
Fang Zhaoling 方召麐
Alisan Fine Arts

Modern Chinese ink pioneer Fang Zhaoling (1914–2006) is the subject of a survey at Alisan Fine Arts, the first such exhibition at the gallery since 2012. Born into a scholarly family in Jiangsu, China, and later based in Hong Kong, Fang studied under the legendary painter Zhang Daqian, absorbing classical brush techniques before developing her own expressive style.

The survey brings together more than 20 works spanning the 1960s to the 1990s and includes landscapes, bird-and-flower paintings, and calligraphy. Many feature Fang’s distinctive motif of tiny figures climbing monumental mountains, a poetic image of perseverance within vast landscapes. Though rooted in the literati tradition, her energetic brushwork often approaches abstraction, revealing how she transformed centuries-old techniques into a strikingly modern visual language.

The exhibition coincides with Alisan Fine Arts’ 45th anniversary, alongside a presentation of works by the emerging contemporary artist Xiaoli Zhang at the gallery’s nearby project space, Alisan Atelier.

Qiu Anxiong

“Bearing the Unseen”

Pearl Lam Galleries

Mar. 24–May 30

Peach Blossom Spring Wonderland—Encounter with a Snake , 2025
Qiu Anxiong
Pearl Lam Galleries

For more than two decades, Shanghai-based artist Qiu Anxiong has expanded the language of Chinese ink painting through animation, moving image, and immersive installation. In his new exhibition at Pearl Lam Galleries, he unites these media to imagine a world shaped by ecological crisis and technological acceleration.

Drawing inspiration from ancient texts such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Qiu’s landscapes replace idyllic mountains and rivers with industrial zones, surveillance systems, and hybrid creatures. Animals often appear as silent witnesses to human activity. The artist describes his work as exploring “modernity in flux,” where myth, technology, and environmental change collide.

Often cited as a pioneer of animation in Chinese contemporary art, Qiu continues to push the possibilities of ink painting into the realm of time-based media.

Dinh Q. Lê

“REMEMBRANCE: A Tribute to the Work of Dinh Q. Lê”

10 Chancery Lane Gallery

Mar. 20–May 16

Untitled (Hill of Poisonous Tree series), 2008
Dinh Q. Lê
10 Chancery Lane Gallery

“The hardest part about creating art about war is deciding which parts should be forgotten and which parts should be remembered,” said the late Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê (1965–2024), one of the most influential contemporary artists to emerge from Southeast Asia. The presentation at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery is among the first showcases of his work following his 2024 passing.

Born in southern Vietnam in 1965, Lê fled the country with his family in 1978, spending a year in a Thai refugee camp before growing up in the United States. The experience of displacement shaped a practice deeply concerned with memory and the construction of history.

The artist became internationally known for his “photo-weavings,” a technique inspired by traditional Vietnamese grass-mat weaving: He cut and interlaced photographic strips, often from portraits, into layered, mosaic-like compositions that consider how histories are remembered and represented.

Luca Sára Rózsa

“Last Trip to the Amazon”

Double Q Gallery

Through May 9

I Stutter, You Leave, 2026
Luca Sára Rózsa
Double Q Gallery

Once It Is You Then It Is Me, 2025
Luca Sára Rózsa
Double Q Gallery

A childhood journey to the Amazon rainforest inspired Hungarian painter Luca Sára Rózsa’s new series of figurative paintings.

The works, which draw on photographs taken during a family trip in 2004, depict lush tropical landscapes inhabited by semi-nude human figures. Rózsa’s paintings often draw from mythological and biblical symbolism while exploring humanity’s place within nature. At times, they suggest a return to more instinctive, animal-like states. Revisiting the journey years later, the artist connects personal memory with broader concerns about ecological fragility and the changing relationship between humans and the natural world.

The paintings are spread across both floors of the gallery and accompanied by ceramics and embroideries that extend the narrative into installation.

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New Museum unveils commissions by Tschabalala Self and Klára Hosnedlová during soft opening. https://ift.tt/B9UIWio

This morning, the New Museum hosted a soft opening for its 60,000-square-foot expansion, debuting major commissions by Tschabalala Self and Klára Hosnedlová. The museum expansion was designed by OMA/Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, with executive architect Cooper Robertson. The project has taken 10 years, from architect selection to completion, and has required the museum to close for the past two years. It doubles the gallery space for the New Museum, which opened in 1975 and has operated out of its SANAA-designed flagship building on the Bowery since 2007. The museum officially opens to the public on March 21st.

Hosnedlová’s Shelter (2026), a monumental multi-media installation, fills the atrium stairwell, while Art Lovers (2025), a cast aluminum sculpture by Tschabalala Self of an intertwined couple, adorns the museum’s facade where the OMA and SANAA buildings meet. A new installation by Sarah Lucas is forthcoming.

Meanwhile, the opening exhibition, New Humans: Memories of the Future, includes 732 objects by artists from 56 countries, spread across the second, third, and fourth floors. The artworks range from early-20th-century photographs to Wangechi Mutu’s paintings made earlier this year. Artistic director Massimiliano Gioni called the show an “encyclopedic,” “big trans-historical and interdisciplinary” presentation that examines “visions of the future and new conceptions of humanity.” It takes as its starting point a quote by Karel Čapek, the Czech playwright who coined the term “robot” in 1920: “Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.”

“It’s a show that establishes symmetry between the 1920s and today,” Gioni said during the preview. “We examine discoveries and technologies that have shaped and transformed humans… we suggest… a warning for what technology has brought upon us in decades of totalitarian regimes and scary ideas about re-engineering our bodies and our souls. At the same time, we find reason for hope. If we have confronted such radical transformations before, we know we will, again, appreciate and reinvent ourselves to shape the future.”

At the preview, Shigematsu shared that the architects approached the project “not just as a building, but as a continuation of an institutional trajectory, inherently forward-looking, yet deeply aware of its context.” He noted that the museum has grown in both size and scope; the expansion will help the institution operate “more like a cultural laboratory.”

The seven-floor design also features event space, studio space for artists-in-residence, and a home for NEW INC, the museum’s incubator for tech-savvy, cross-disciplinary art and design. The lobby level will feature a restaurant from the Oberon Group, with Julia Sherman as executive chef.

“The aesthetic is playful and fun, beautiful, rough, not precious,” museum director Lisa Phillips said during the preview. “That’s very much in keeping with the New Museum because we are a place of discovery and a site of production. That’s who we are. And we’ll always be a place where history is made.”

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El Greco painting is rediscovered in the Vatican collection. https://ift.tt/GiL6nOe

The Vatican has announced that a work in its collection is newly attributed to the Greek painter and sculptor El Greco. The work, titled The Redeemer (ca. 1590–95), is now on view in an exhibition named “El Greco in the Mirror: Two Paintings in Dialogue” at the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo outside of Rome’s city center. It will be on view through June 30th.

The Redeemer surfaced during a routine conservation at the Vatican, when restorers Alessandra Zarelli and Paolo Violini uncovered it beneath an overpainting by an unknown artist. The small oil on wood had hung in the Pope’s residence in the Apostolic Palace since 1967, when it was donated to Pope Paul VI by a Spanish official.

“Since its arrival in the Vatican, the work had never undergone restoration or scientific studies,” Zarelli shared with Artnet. “Having therefore noted some conservation problems during a routine check-up, it was decided to carry out a complete restoration to verify its general state of preservation and study its execution technique.”

During the routine check-up, the two restorers at the Vatican Museum’s paintings and wooden materials restoration laboratory discovered that an unknown forger had painted their own version of Christ over the top of El Greco’s work. Once the additional layers of paint were removed, high-resolution images revealed two more unfinished compositions on the canvas, reminiscent of the painter’s Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Lawrence (ca. 1580) and Saint Dominic in Adoration of the Crucifix (ca. 1590).

Four small holes that appear along the painting’s upper and lower edges suggest the panel had served in the past as a portable altarpiece, similar to Italian painter Federico Barocci’s Head of Christ (ca. 1590).

“The restoration of the painting led to the unexpected and exciting discovery of an unfinished work, which we can consider a true pictorial palimpsest,” said Fabio Moressi, director of the cabinet of scientific research at the Vatican, in a press statement. “Its incompleteness is not a flaw, but a source of valuable data that reveals the artist’s creative process.”

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