London’s National Gallery to Exhibit 40 Works, From Rembrandt to René Magritte

After a short entry about me mysteriously appeared, anonymous users who were seemingly men debated whether I was “credible enough” to justify my own page. Laura June Kirsch at the launch of her book Romantic Lowlife Fantasies: Emerging Adults In The Age of Hope in 2021 (all images courtesy Laura June Kirsch)Back in February, I got a Google Alert that somebody had made a Wikipedia page about me. I immediately texted my mom. She was confused — was it a good thing? Who makes these pages? She’d heard mixed things about Wikipedia. While her suspicion over enthusiasm was initially disappointing, she had a point. I moved into detective mode and asked a techy friend I had recently met through a cyberpunk friend: “Did you make this?”He did not. However, he was able to find the source that did, who appeared to be some man who wrote numerous Wikipedia pages mostly about female artists. The bio he’d written for me was simple: “Laura June Kirsch is an American photographer known for her work documenting music, nightlife and alternative subcultures.

In piano parlance, an étude is a technically tricky piece of music typically practiced to push a musician beyond their limits. Following that logic, the name of Florentina Holzinger’s final Venice Biennale performance, CLOSING ÉTUDE, suggests that after seven months of her propriety-imploding, waste-wonderland SEAWORLD VENICE, there are feats of endurance still ahead. Part performance, part installation, SEAWORLD VENICE opened at the Austrian Pavilion in May with the piercing peal of a colossal bell salvaged from the Venice Lagoon. In line with her body-first philosophy, a nude Holzinger served as its human clapper. The bell, sans artist, continues to mark the passage of time, ringing every hour over the pavilion and its guests, a grotesque altar to the ongoing Venetian apocalypse. Human refuse (freshly sourced) and lagoon waste, the sort that occasionally washes in with the high tide, form the material of her installation. Visitors were encouraged to use port-a-potties on site; the urine was filtered into a dunk tank.

An exceptional exhibition that brings together 17 women artists whose work emerges through spirit communication. Paulina Peavy, "Untitled" (c. 1930s–80s), oil and acrylic on board (photo courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery)

A monumental sculpture by artist Alicja Kwade will be removed early from public display in Paris, where it was installed part of the public program of the Art Basel Paris fair. The piece is situated on the Avenue Winston Churchill, on the doorstep of the Grand Palais, where the fair is taking place; it went on view today and will be removed on Friday, rather than Sunday, her Paris gallery, Mennour, told ARTnews in an email. “Unfortunately, only on view today and tomorrow, as it has to be dismantled, along with other sculptures, because of the announced riots and people who simply want to resort to violence,” Kwade told her nearly 100,000 followers in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “Protest is good, but why everything has to be smashed and destroyed is beyond…” she added. “It certainly doesn’t help the cause.”

Top galleries are placing plenty of works for prices above $1 million at Art Basel Paris 2026. Dealer Emmanuel Di Donna told ARTnews at the Avant-Première preview on Tuesday afternoon (aka the VVIP opening) that the experience is like “drinking from a fire hose.” That was followed by the VIP preview on Wednesday. This all came off without a hitch amid heightened security as protests roiled Paris after demonstrations by high school students against crumbling educational infrastructure and absent teachers in a local suburb literally caught fire, with thousands taking to the streets, with some resulting property damage.

Dozens of galleries from Düsseldorf and Cologne signed a letter condemning the anti-immigrant party's invocation of the postwar artist in promotions for an upcoming event. Joseph Beuys in 1982 (photo by Probst/ullstein bild via Getty Images)