Sculptor Tony Cragg to be awarded the 2026 European Culture Prize. https://ift.tt/19zStIo

Sir Tony Cragg will receive the prestigious European Culture Prize 2026, the European Cultural Forum announced. eThe award will be presented on September 4th at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Born in Liverpool in 1949, Cragg has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany, since the late 1970s. In 2008, he founded the Waldfrieden Sculpture Park there, which has since grown into one of Europe’s leading sculpture parks and helped establish the city as a destination for contemporary sculpture. “Tony Cragg is one of the most significant sculptors of our time,” said Reiner Schränkler, chairman of the board of the European Cultural Forum. “His works uniquely combine science, nature, materials research and artistic vision. He has had a lasting impact on international sculpture and has inspired generations of artists.”

The European Culture Prize, known as TAURUS, was created in 2012 by Dresden artist and European Cultural Forum board member Sven Schubert. The prize rotates annually across categories including music, fine arts, performing arts, environmental protection, and politics. Previous winners have included Gerhard Richter in 2018 and Vivienne Westwood and Neo Rauch in 2019, as well as cellist Sol Gabetta in 2022 and tenor Rolando Villazón in 2024.

Felix Krämer, director general and artistic director of the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, will present Cragg with the award in Amsterdam. Krämer worked with the artist on the 2024 exhibition “Tony Cragg: Please Touch!,” which invited visitors to physically interact with the sculptures on view.

This year’s gala, themed “Great Voices–Great Names,” will also honor fashion designer Iris van Herpen, actress Famke Janssen, and violinist Nicola Benedetti, among others, with a concert program built around the honorees’ own performances.

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An Art Lover’s Guide to Lisbon https://ift.tt/q7ovuD9

In barely a decade, Lisbon has become one of Europe’s most-watched art scenes. The 2011–2014 financial crisis and international bailout left deep bruises across Portuguese society, forcing the city’s cultural milieu to invent new ways of getting by.

What followed still caught everyone off guard: An influx of foreign capital—and of the foreigners who bought it—transformed the Portuguese capital, revitalizing its cultural landscape and turning what has long been one of Europe’s most-overlooked art scenes into a fixture of collectors’ itineraries.

The change came with costs. “The abundance of cheap spaces that used to exist was great for building a community. Now the problem is you don’t even find that kind of place on the outskirts anymore,” Horácio Frutuoso, artist and Lisbon resident, told Artsy.

Today, the city is home to some of Europe’s most-watched galleries, a renewed set of institutions under new leadership, and an independent scene finding its footing amid rapid change.

The key neighborhoods for art lovers in Lisbon

Estrela

Most of the city’s incumbent galleries sit west of Baixa, the historic center, concentrated in or around Campo de Ourique, a comfortably bourgeois district that’s become an anchor of the commercial scene. Galeria São Mamede, founded in 1965, is among the city’s oldest commercial galleries and remains a fixture of the Portuguese scene.

Long-established gallerists Cristina Guerra (founded 2001) and Miguel Nabinho (opened 2003) also hold most of the Portuguese scene’s safest bets. Pedro Cera, another Campo de Ourique mainstay credited with real growth in recent years, marked its 25th anniversary by opening a Madrid space and increasingly works with internationally recognised artists. Newer arrivals broker a conversation between local and international markets: Consonni Radziszewski—the new name for Galeria Madragoa, following its 2026 merger with the Warsaw gallery Dawid Radziszewski—now represents artists across spaces in Lisbon, Warsaw, and Milan.

Jahn und Jahn, near Jardim da Estrela, opened its first outpost outside Munich here in 2022 and has helped validate Lisbon's scene for foreign collectors, curators, and artists. Just over the border in Rato, Belard has quickly built a reputation for rigorous, no-frills contemporary shows since opening in 2022.

Alvalade

The tranquil north-central neighborhood was recently jolted by the announced closure of Galeria Vera Cortês, set for 19 December after 23 years in business. But the area still holds solid stalwarts: Quadrado Azul, Balcony, and the Coruchéus complex — a Lisbon City Council-run cluster of 50 artist studios dating to 1971.

Nearby is Quadrum gallery tucked into a recess within one of the neighborhood’s residential blocks and Appleton, an independent exhibition space. “We were quite isolated in the Alvalade neighborhood when we opened, and now we’re surrounded. All of this happened in the last 15 years. All these galleries and independent spaces have given the neighborhood strength and made it much more interesting,” Vera Appleton, founder of Appleton, told Artsy.

Marvila

Further east along the Tagus, Marvila is frequently described as a neighborhood with potential: fewer spaces than Estrela or Alvalade, but well suited to contemporary art thanks to its warehouses and rooms with real scale.

dialogue has been singled out as the emerging gallery to watch, praised for establishing itself firmly and running a strong international programme since its first shows around 2023. Francisco Fino, settled since 2017 in a former olive-oil-and-wine warehouse after six itinerant years, has built a roster that has earned steady praise for its work with contemporary artists.

The museums and institutions to know in Lisbon

Musical chairs at the top of Lisbon’s major museums mean curatorial change has arrived at most of the capital’s key institutions. These reshuffles coincide with major renovations and new arrivals.

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum: One of the city’s most beloved institutions reopened in 2026 after 18 months of restoration, timed to coincide with the Gulbenkian Foundation's 70th anniversary. The museum holds the private art collection of oil magnate Calouste Gulbenkian, packed with Egyptian, Greek, and Armenian antiquities and many works from European medieval and Renaissance masters. An unmissable staple is the René Lalique jewelry collection: around 150 Art Nouveau pieces commissioned by Gulbenkian himself and made specifically for him.

Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM): Custodian of the largest and most complete collection of modern and contemporary Portuguese art—some 11,700 works by more than 1,300 artists—CAM, part of the Gulbenkian museum complex, inaugurated its Kengo Kuma–designed expansion in 2024, joined by a new 7,515-square-meter garden that gave the city a fresh green counterpart to the Foundation’s original grounds. A recent leadership reshuffle sees Portuguese curator Sergio Mah replacing outgoing director Benjamin Weil; the local expectation is that newer voices will follow.

Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre (MAC/CCB): The leading museum for contemporary art and architecture in Portugal. Unburdened by the once-imposing specter of the collector Joe Berardo—whose sprawling collection is now in the hands of the Portuguese state—MAC/CCB is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Under artistic director Nuria Enguita, the museum is freer to engage in a more ambitious conversation with Portugal’s recent past and the urgent themes of today.

Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins (MACAM): A private museum attached to a hotel, opened in March 2025 in the restored eighteenth-century Palácio Condes da Ribeira Grande between Alcântara and Belém. Around 200 works from collector Armando Martins’s holdings are on view across some 20,000 square feet. The building’s tiled contemporary extension nods to Portugal’s ceramic tradition. Its programme has helped demystify private collections, and it prides itself on having opened them to public view. Works by the likes of Paula Rego, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, and Marina Abramović are among the highlights. Nearby in Alcântara, Ainori Contemporary Art is worth a detour for its emerging-artist programme.

Museu do Chiado (MNAC): The country’s first contemporary art museum. Curator Filipa Oliveira, appointed in early 2025, has spoken publicly of wanting Lisbon to fall back in love with the museum. Oliveira has centered her curatorial approach on fostering intergenerational dialogue between Portuguese canon, drawing on the Museum’s extensive collection and contemporary Portuguese art. Works by prominent Portuguese names such as de Souza-Cardoso, Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, and José de Almada Negreiros are on view.

One independent space worth seeking out:

messieurs-dames, in the newly hip neighborhood of Penha de França. Founded in 2023, the project space has been singled out for stimulating exhibitions “made by artists for artists,” while keeping a discreet digital profile. Shows here often find dialogues between historical and contemporary art practices, with previous shows featuring artists such as Ana Jotta, Bruno Cidra, and António Palolo.

“One part that interests me is this historical and archival side. Projects that were abandoned, that were never shown or never had the conditions to be shown,” founder Eva Mendes told Artsy. A few minutes away in Arroios, Kolibri (formerly Casa Oxente) has built a name for itself with emerging, material-driven work.

Where the art world in Lisbon eats, drinks, and shops

The places where Lisbon’s art world actually gathers are less concentrated than in most European cities, spread between Bairro Alto, Campolide, and the outer neighborhoods. Click the Google Maps entries to save them to your itinerary.

For drinks

For drinks

The bar at Galeria Zé dos Bois (ZDB), a nonprofit art center founded in 1994 and a doyen of Bairro Alto, retains its capacity to draw a distinct crowd to a neighborhood under heavy pressure from overcrowding. Cosmos, running since 2020 in a building owned by the 96-year-old sports club Campolide Atlético Clube, is a magnet for everything creative in the city —and one of the few consensus picks among the local milieu. Initially a temporary project during the pandemic years, Casa Capitão will open a permanent space in September; an interdisciplinary venue in the neighborhood of Beato that is also an unmissable hangout.

For dinner

Near Belém’s museum cluster, and a stone’s throw from contemporary art museum MAAT, restaurant Canalha —with its open kitchen, fresh produce on display, and Iberian culinary influences—has become a local institution since opening in 2023. The tiny neo-tasca (tavern) O Velho Eurico, in Alfama, took on the singular project of reviving the tradition of the classic tasca in a modern setting (the Alfama area is also home to Perve Galeria, one of the city’s oldest spaces devoted to Global South contemporary art). Reservations are recommended; expect long waiting-lists but delicious, unassuming takes on Portuguese dishes. And Galeto, open since 1966, remains a comfort spot for Lisbon dwellers—1960s counter, traditional service, and night-owl-friendly hours.

For lunch

A few meters from Museu do Chiado/MNAC, in the heart of the Chiado neighborhood, Viennese café Kaffeehaus has been a stalwart of consistency in Lisbon’s center since 2008, keeping the same Austrian classicsf—Sachertorte, Schnitzel​, sausages—on its menu. Midway between Belém and Marvila, on the riverfront, right by Santa Apolónia train station, lies Casanova, another Lisbon classic with an unbeatable view, extensive outside seating, and an unbeatable thin-crust truffle pizza.

For browsing

Tucked beneath the 25 de Abril Bridge, the art center LX Factory keeps its status intact as a Lisbon favorite 18 years after its opening, still bustling with galleries, cafés, restaurants, and shops. Among Lisbon bookshops, local favorites are Livraria da Travessa, a branch of the namesake bookshop in Rio de Janeiro, and Good Company, an independent bookshop with lots worth reading in the English language. Also much worth visiting is STET​, a bookshop and cultural association ​in the Arroios neighborhood, specializing in photography books, artist’s books, and author editions, both Portuguese and international​, with the odd piece from local designers also for sale.

Where to stay

An inevitable recommendation: MACAM Hotel, a 5-star, 64-room property in Lisbon. It’s the hospitality wing of this museum-and-hotel hybrid, allowing guests to enjoy the Armando Martins contemporary art collection up close.

Top tips for art lovers visiting Lisbon

• When to go: Summer is busier than it used to be, but the who’s who of Lisbon’s art world still tends to reserve July and August for holidays. Book a flight for April through June, when the scene is at full tilt.
• How to navigate: Lisbon’s known for being a hilly city, but it’s very walkable in the flat areas by the river (Baixa, Belém, Marvila)​. Chiado, despite feeling central, actually sits on a hill above Baixa, not by the Tagus, and is better reached by metro or tram. The compact layout of Portugal’s capital makes reaching other areas, such as Alvalade, easier by metro or bus. Venturing into the steep Estrela neighborhood is best done with the help of trams 28E and 25E​. Uber is cheap, plentiful, and often the easiest way to get around the city.
• What locals know: Galleries typically open Tuesday through Saturday. Openings, by convention, are usually held in the evening on weekdays, though scheduling—and the ambience of the openings themselves—tends to be fairly informal. Many start as early as late afternoon, often between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., or sometimes on Saturday afternoons.

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How to Craft the Perfect Home Gallery Wall https://ift.tt/9Ju7ipQ

Gallery Wall #4-Drawing, 2018
Ji Eun Kim
Gallery SoSo

Few tasks are as simultaneously exciting and daunting for a collector as hanging a home gallery wall, especially for the first time.

Gallery walls, also known as salon walls, are a popular way of hanging groups of artworks. Rather than centering a single painting on a wall, gallery walls hang several works in a clustered arrangement ranging from a handful of works to well over a dozen. But where to start?

You’ve done the fun part and found and purchased a few artworks you love. You may have even had them framed. Now, you find yourself staring down a blank wall and wondering where on earth to begin. At the back of your mind, there may be a nagging sense that there is a right way to do this.

First, take a deep breath and know you’re not alone. The fact is, crafting the perfect gallery wall is not a one-size-fits-all affair, which is part of what makes it an art in itself.

“There are no absolute rules when it comes to hanging art,” said Hirofumi Miyauchi, dealer at Andecian Gallery. “Trying to achieve perfection in the absence of rules can feel overwhelming precisely because of that absolute freedom.”

Still, interior designers, dealers, and artists all agree that there are some genuinely useful tips and tricks to crafting the gallery wall of your dreams. The biggest hurdle might be learning how to trust your own eye.

If hanging a gallery wall has been on your agenda, don’t shy away. We’ve consulted the experts and put together a step-by-step guide to demystifying the process, setting you—and your art—up for success.

Few tasks are as simultaneously exciting and daunting for a collector as hanging a home gallery wall, especially for the first time.

Gallery walls, also known as salon walls, are a popular way of hanging groups of artworks. Rather than centering a single painting on a wall, gallery walls hang several works in a clustered arrangement ranging from a handful of works to well over a dozen.

But where to start?

You’ve done the fun part and found and purchased a few artworks you love. You may have even had them framed. Now, you find yourself staring down a blank wall and wondering where on earth to begin. At the back of your mind, there may be a nagging sense that there is a right way to do this.

First, take a deep breath and know you’re not alone. The fact is, crafting the perfect gallery wall is not a one-size-fits-all affair, which is part of what makes it an art in itself.

“There are no absolute rules when it comes to hanging art,” said Hirofumi Miyauchi, dealer at Andecian Gallery. “Trying to achieve perfection in the absence of rules can feel overwhelming precisely because of that absolute freedom.”

Still, interior designers, dealers, and artists all agree that there are some genuinely useful tips and tricks to crafting the gallery wall of your dreams. The biggest hurdle might be learning how to trust your own eye.

If hanging a gallery wall has been on your agenda, don’t shy away. We’ve consulted the experts and put together a step-by-step guide to demystifying the process, setting you—and your art—up for success.

Start with the wall, not the art

Window Watcher 1,2,3 (Triptych), 2020
Robert Pokorny
aous

Choosing the wall you want to display art on before picking the art itself might seem like putting the cart before the horse, but trust the process. The wall is your canvas, and you can work backwards from there.

When selecting a wall, you’ll want to consider the dimensions, how light moves across it through the day, and what furniture sits below it. These constraints can become useful guideposts for selecting the right works.

But this is an art, not a science, so don’t get too bogged down in specifics.

“There isn’t really a strict rule for the ideal wall, except perhaps to favor the walls your eye is naturally drawn to when you enter a room,” said Sandra Benhamou, a Paris-based art collector and furniture and interior designer. Benhamou is not one to shy away from surprising spaces either. She encourages collectors to think about “hanging a work in an unexpected place, giving a forgotten corner or passageway a new purpose.” Her one suggestion, however, is to avoid walls that face direct sun throughout the day, which could bleach paper works and photographs over time.

Some sunlight, however, should be embraced, not eschewed. Gallerists and artists Nicky and Rob Carter, who run the London gallery space RNat5A, say “changing daylight is absolute magic” for art. In their dining room, they note that the shifting sun transforms the mood throughout the day.

How to choose artworks that belong together

"The Room of Ideas", The Architect’s Room, Geometric Abstraction, Pop and Contemporary Pop, 2025
Neo Bauhaus
GF | Gallery Fedoroff

When hanging a gallery wall, it can be wise to unlearn the impulse to make things match. Too much sameness can feel forced and stale. Instead, invite the possibility for unexpected discovery between seemingly dissimilar works.

“Don’t be afraid to place pieces together that may seem unrelated, whether in style, value, or historical importance,” said Benhamou. “A modest work can become incredibly noble when it finds its rightful place, and a masterpiece doesn’t need to be surrounded by other masterpieces or occupy the center of the wall to shine.”

Others put it more bluntly. “Never match your art to your soft furnishings,” said Rob and Nicky Carter. “Works go together simply because you chose them,” they add.

Mohamed Benhadj, gallery director and curator at Al-Tiba9 gallery in Barcelona, encourages collectors to find relationships between works that are intellectual rather than visual. “A strong gallery wall is usually connected by the idea that relates each piece to another,” he said. That shouldn’t be confined to mediums, either, he adds: “Don’t be afraid to combine painting, photography, and prints.”

Miyauchi, meanwhile, suggests mixing several arrangements until something clicks visually. “Hanging multiple paintings could be compared to a chord in music,” he said. “An unexpected combination might beautifully come together.” He encourages collectors not to over-intellectualize the process to start. “It is more than enough to look at books or the internet and simply imitate what somehow catches your fancy,” he added.

Thinking about scale, spacing, and arrangement

Gathering, 2026
Allison Gildersleeve
Upsilon Gallery

When placing works together in a group, the frames don’t need to match each other. But they should suit each individual artwork.

“I don’t believe a frame should ever be separated from the artwork it belongs to,” Benhamou said. “It should reflect the work’s format, medium, and period.” The Carters agree. “Frame the artwork, not the room.”

Benhadj, who mixes finishes within his own collection—for example, thin natural wood on a set of drawings, a minimalist black frame on a large print, and an ornate gilt frame on a modern oil painting—recommends anchoring variety with one dominant style so the wall gains character without becoming too visually noisy. “I enjoy seeing different frame styles when there is a clear intention behind the selection,” he added.

How to know when to stop

Aura of an Interior, 2023
Degard
Visionary British Museum

Knowing when a gallery wall is complete is both subjective and essential. Benhamou tells collectors not to rush to conclusions. “The most beautiful arrangements evolve over time, just like the collection itself,” she said. The Carters offer a simpler test: “You stop when it stops making you smile.” A gallery wall, experts agree, is never truly permanent. Pieces can move, rotate, and rest until their moment comes back around.

Miyauchi even encourages collectors to rotate artworks over time. “I recommend changing your paintings on special days, such as the summer and winter solstices, birthdays, or Christmas,” he said. “You change them just like you would open a window to let fresh air into a room. The paintings you take down can rest until the timing is right for them again.”

All the experts believe that one key to crafting the perfect gallery wall is leaving it open to the possibilities of the future.

As Benhadj puts it, “what connects well on a particular wall today might connect even better with works that become part of their collection in the next 5 or 10 years.” A gallery wall that feels slightly too today, she said, can be an invitation to discover what’s next.

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Meet the Italian Shoe Designer Who Collects Art by Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, and More https://ift.tt/I2ohisk

Walk into a church in Naples, Italy, and you might stumble across a Caravaggio or an Artemisia Gentileschi. For Italian shoe designer and collector Ernesto Esposito, that proximity to beauty shaped everything that followed.

“I grew up in Naples, a city where beauty is not confined to museums but is part of everyday life,” Esposito said. “Art came first. Long before becoming a shoe designer, I was already fascinated by beauty, proportions, and the emotional power of objects.”

Esposito began his career in the 1970s with renowned shoemaker Sergio Rossi. His own collections pair classic silhouettes with more daring designs, including towering open-toe heels in leopard-print pony hair and red patent leather.

Over several decades, he has also built an art collection featuring works by Katharina Grosse, Richard Prince, John Baldessari, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and George Condo, alongside those by younger painters such as Leonardo Devito and Adam Handler.

For Esposito, collecting is not simply about ownership, taste, or market value. It is a way of living with questions, memories, friendships, and creative risk.

Starting with Warhol

His first acquisition was a limited-edition silkscreen from Warhol’s 1971 “Electric Chair” series.

“I did not choose it because it was fashionable, nor as an investment,” he said. “I bought it because it moved me deeply. It is a work that is at once beautiful, unsettling, and profoundly human.”

That instinct has guided him ever since. “Great art does not provide answers, but instead asks questions that continue to stay with you throughout your life,” he said. “That work defined the direction of my entire collection.”

Growing up amid Naples’s layered history taught Esposito that objects could carry meaning beyond their function. “When I became a designer, I never considered a shoe to be merely a product,” he said. “To me, a shoe is a cultural object, capable of expressing identity, emotion, and creativity.”

He sees a direct connection between art and fashion. “All of my work in fashion has always been guided by the same curiosity and sensitivity that first made me fall in love with art,” he said.

Esposito also resists a simple distinction between craftsman and artist. “Great craftsmen possess artistic sensitivity, while great artists often have extraordinary mastery of technique,” he said. “Excellence is always born from the meeting of imagination and skill.”

Building an art collection of sensibilities

What unifies his collection is not a theme or medium, but a sensibility. “I am drawn to artists who possess an authentic and recognizable language,” he said. “I do not collect a particular style, but rather personalities.”

His approach was shaped in part by the legendary Neapolitan dealer and curator Lucio Amelio. “Meeting Lucio opened an entirely new world to me,” Esposito said. “Through him, I met extraordinary artists and discovered that art does not simply serve to decorate a space, but can change the way we look at and understand reality.”

Collecting, he said, then became “an integral part of the way I live and interpret the world.”

For Esposito, buying art requires conviction. “A true collector is someone who takes responsibility,” he said. “They choose according to their own instinct, not according to market consensus.”

One artist currently holding his attention is De Vito. Esposito admires “the consistency of his research, the quality of his painterly language, and his ability to address contemporary themes without chasing trends.”

Following a young artist’s development, he added, “is one of the most fascinating aspects of collecting.”

Collecting emerging and established artists alongside each other

Little Runner Abduction, 2026
Adam Handler
Trium Art Gallery

He refuses to rank emerging talent against established masters. “The great masters represent the memory and history of art, while emerging artists bring energy, freedom, and unpredictability,” he said.

In a market saturated with spectacle, sincerity still moves him most. “The works that truly stay with us are those still capable of conveying a personal truth,” he said. “Authenticity remains the rarest quality.”

Art’s influence on his footwear is rarely literal. “Sometimes it is a color combination, other times a proportion, or perhaps the courage to make an unexpected decision,” he said. “The influence of art is constant, often unconscious, but always present.”

Designing and collecting may appear to arise from the same impulse, but Esposito experiences them differently. “Designing allows me to create. Collecting allows me to listen,” he said. “When I design, I am the one making decisions. When I collect, I enter into dialogue with someone else’s vision.”

His most recent direct collaboration was a residency with American painter Adam Handler. Handler reminded him of a young Keith Haring, whom Esposito met in New York early in Haring’s career.

“It is not a stylistic comparison,” Esposito said, “but rather the energy, enthusiasm, and total dedication to work that I recognized again in Adam.”

Staged with Trium Art Gallery in Monza, Italy, and Noh-Art, the residency became more than a commission. Esposito credited Naples—its light, history, energy, and openness—with transforming it into “something far deeper than a simple artistic collaboration.”

“The work itself is certainly important, but what truly remains is the experience shared together,” he said. “Artists need places capable of inspiring them, authentic encounters, and human relationships.”

Looking ahead, Esposito imagines future residencies with artists chosen not for their market standing, but for their openness: “an artist capable of being surprised by Naples just as much as Naples could be surprised by them.”

It is from that encounter, he believes, that “the most authentic projects can emerge.”

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Artist Betye Saar dies at 99. https://ift.tt/jlEktsQ

Artist Betye Saar, whose assemblages transformed ephemera and heirlooms into meditations on Black history, racism, memory, and spirituality, died in her sleep on July 26 in Los Angeles, four days before her 100th birthday. Her death was confirmed by Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represented her for close to two decades.

“Betye Saar was one of the greatest artists of our time, and it has been an immense honor to work with her for nearly 20 years,” Julie Roberts, co-founder of Roberts Projects, said in a statement. “Her singular vision transformed the course of contemporary art, and her legacy will continue to inspire generations of artists, scholars, and audiences around the world.”

Born Betye Irene Brown in Los Angeles in 1926, Saar was the eldest of three children of Jefferson Maze Brown and Beatrice Lillian Parson. Her father died when she was about five, and her mother moved the family to Pasadena to live with a maternal aunt, Hattie Parson Keys, whose belongings later inspired a series of assemblages made in her honor. Saar spent summers at her paternal grandparents’ home in the Watts neighborhood in L.A., watching artist Simon Rodia construct his monumental architectural sculpture Watts Towers by hand, inspiring Saar’s passion for using found and repurposed materials.

Saar studied design at UCLA and worked for years as an interior decorator, at one point running a studio called Brown and Tann with fellow designer Curtis Tann. In 1952, she married ceramicist Richard Saar; the couple settled in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood Hills, and had three daughters, Lezley, Alison, and Tracye, before divorcing in the late 1960s. Saar remained in the Laurel Canyon house for the rest of her life.

The Long Memory, 1998
Betye Saar
CLAMP

Her turn toward fine art came almost by chance. Enrolled at Cal State Long Beach to pursue a teaching credential, Saar wandered into the printmaking studio and immediately changed course. “The move into fine art, it was liberating,” she later told the Los Angeles Times. “It gave me freedom to experiment.” Her early prints carried mystical and occult overtones, drawn from books on alchemy and palmistry, and she began framing them in old window frames scavenged from junk shops.

A 1967 exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s boxed assemblages at the Pasadena Art Museum pushed Saar toward three dimensions. In 1969, she completed Black Girl’s Window, built around a salvaged window frame layering autobiographical imagery, astrology, and racial identity. Trips to Chicago’s Field Museum, where she immersed herself in African art, and to Haiti in the early 1970s, where she explored voodoo and folk magic, further shaped her visual language.

Saar’s best-known work, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), transformed a stereotypical “mammy” figurine—armed with a rifle and grenade—into what she described as a warrior against servitude. First shown at the Rainbow Sign, a Black cultural center in Berkeley, California, near the headquarters of the Black Panthers, the piece connected Saar to the Black Arts Movement and led to a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975. Activist Angela Davis later credited it with helping to spur the Black women’s movement. “I wanted to empower her,” Saar said in a 2015 interview. “I wanted to make her a warrior.” The original assemblage now belongs to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

4 Doors in a Window (Bellagio, Italy - 1994), 2004
Betye Saar
Roberts Projects

Over the following decades, Saar continued mining flea markets, yard sales, and family heirlooms, producing works including Records for Hattie (1975), Mojotech (1987), and the altarpiece Wings of Morning (1992), alongside installations like House of Fortune (1988). Scholar Kellie Jones, who curated the 2011 exhibition “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980” at the Hammer Museum, said in a TK that Saar’s reach extended well beyond the U.S.: “She has works with Mexican milagros, she has titles in Spanish, she at certain points has Asian influence and Haitian influence... She was a person in the world.” Her practice inspired a generation of artists, including her daughter, the artist Alison Saar. Saar’s work is held in the collections of more than 80 institutions worldwide, and she had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fondazione Prada in Milan, as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the California African American Museum. “I’ve always done what I did and never felt I was competing with what was going on,” she told the Los Angeles Times of her career.

She continued working into her late 90s, including a commissioned installation at the Huntington Library’s gardens, made at 96 and now on view as “Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight” through November 2027. “Even in death those things can be really beautiful,” she said of the installation in an accompanying documentary. Two other shows remain on view during her centennial year: “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar” at Roberts Projects, in Los Angeles, through August 22, and “Betye Saar’s Black Dolls” at the New York Historical Society, through October 4. Her works are currently included in “Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions” at the Morgan Library & Museum.

Saar is survived by her daughters, Lezley Saar, Alison Saar, and Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh, as well as six grandchildren, including the artist Maddy Inez, and a pet tortoise named Rojo. Her artistic legacy is now overseen by the Betye Saar Legacy Group, a coalition of scholars and curators the artist assembled in 2025 with Roberts Projects. A biography by Zoé Whitley, co-curator of “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” is expected in 2027.

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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi announces 2026 opening date. https://ift.tt/DpBNu1i

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open to the public on December 11, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism has announced. First announced in 2006, the museum is one of the most anticipated museum openings in decades.

Designed by the late Frank Gehry, the building is defined by ten sculptural cones rising to heights of up to 88 metres. Nine are surrounded by stainless steel mesh, providing natural ventilation and shade while giving the structure its distinctive skyline. Its 30 galleries, across 11,600 square meters of interior space, are connected by a central atrium, with a further 23,000 square meters of outdoor exhibition areas. The total built-up area totals 80,000 square metres, the largest of the four Guggenheim locations.

The museum will focus on modern and contemporary art from the 1960s to the present, with a particular emphasis on North Africa, and West and South Asia. Rather than presenting art chronologically, the collection will be organised around thematic and geographic groupings. Among the sections are “Abstractions,” “Popular Culture,” “Land,” and “Language and Storytelling.” The collection has been in development since 2009.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi joins the Guggenheim Foundation’s constellation of museums in New York, Venice, and Bilbao, while maintaining, its organisers say, a distinct identity rooted in the cultural and historical position of the United Arab Emirates. It is located on Saadiyat Island, where several high profile museums have opened in recent years, such as Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, and teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi.

“The Guggenheim Foundation is proud and delighted to be a longstanding partner with the Department of Culture and Tourism –Abu Dhabi in shaping a museum of contemporary art of magnificent scope and aspiration,” said Dr. Mariët Westermann, director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in a statement. “The museum’s art collection is uniquely local and global, centered in the region but with works from all continents.”

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National Portrait Gallery acquires Harley Weir’s portrait of Charli XCX. https://ift.tt/lRXQZ3Y

The National Portrait Gallery in London has acquired a portrait of pop star Charli XCX by British photographer Harley Weir. The photograph, which was shot in 2024, will be added to the museum’s collection this week. The untitled work shows the singer leaning against a wall in a white crop top and unbuttoned black jeans and is now on view in the gallery’s History Makers Now space, which spotlights figures who have shaped contemporary culture.

The image became one of the defining pictures of Charli’s Brat era, the 2024 album that turned her into a mainstream phenomenon on the strength of its candor and “debauched swagger,” as the BBC described it. The acquisition was funded by a gift from the Bukhman Foundation.

“Harley Weir has developed a distinctive photographic language that combines intimacy with a powerful sense of presence,” said Brandei Estes, the gallery’s senior curator of photographs. “We are delighted to acquire this striking portrait of Charli XCX, which captures one of the defining cultural figures of her generation.”

The acquisition arrives the same week Charli released her eighth album, Music, Fashion, Film, built around chopped-up guitar samples and distorted melodies that find her reflecting on fame and artistic identity in Brat’s aftermath.

Portraits of pop stars have been grabbing headlines recently. In March, the National Portrait Gallery acquired West End Girl (Lily Allen) (2025), a painting by Spanish artist Nieves González that doubled as the cover art for Allen’s album of the same name. Charli herself was previously the subject of a portrait by painter Issy Wood, commissioned for the November 2025 cover of Vanity Fair.

Beyond music, Charli has been expanding into film, with recent roles in the Polish drama Erupcja, the ensemble film Sacrifice alongside Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans, and the mockumentary The Moment, based on the release of the Brat album. She is set to headline the Reading and Leeds festivals in the U.K. next month before a North American tour in the fall.

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