Raye wins 2026 Mercury prize for This Music May Contain Hope

“Top of the show!” says Will Tuckett. On the grand piano, musical director Andy Massey strikes up an arpeggio that could melt the most frozen of hearts: “We’re walking in the air …” It is The Snowman, of course. Raymond Briggs’ 1978 picture book was animated for the screen in 1982 with a score by Howard Blake and became a hit stage show in 1993, an annual outing for Birmingham Rep ever since. Now it’s getting a reboot, directed by Tuckett, former Royal Ballet dancer turned choreographer and director of everything from the National Ballet of Japan’s Nutcracker to a stage adaptation of In the Night Garden. We’re in a studio in Birmingham. As the overture plays, a large wooden box in the centre of the room opens like the cover of a book, to become a house. There’s a kitchen, a couple at the table with a pot of tea and an endearing puppet cat winding round their legs. Upstairs, a boy wakes up, looking forward to Christmas. Taking flight … The Snowman at Birmingham Rep. Photograph: Johan PerssonThe Snowman is a perennially popular show but “it needed a bit of a refresh,” says Tuckett.

Interactive playground by WON JI LIM EXPLORES rituals of controlCreated by Chicago-based South Korean artist Won Ji Lim, Shifting Center (2026–ongoing) is a participatory sculptural installation that translates personal rituals of control, such as counting, checking, and aligning objects, into a physical, interactive environment. Measuring approximately 9 × 9 × 6 feet, the modular structure is constructed from metal pipes and connectors, forming a framework reminiscent of a playground jungle gym. The installation integrates suspended objects, woven membranes, transparent pockets, balancing mechanisms, and a series of rule-based activities that visitors can physically enter and navigate. Shifting Center is a participatory sculptural environment in which movable structures, suspended materials, and personal rules form an evolving system of order and adjustment | all images ©Won Ji LimThe artwork is a self-contained system, open to physical additionsThe project by artist Won Ji Lim pairs structural framework with unstable or organic materials.

If you planned to visit Art Basel Paris but just learned that it’s closing for the weekend ahead of Saturday’s planned protests, there’s some good news: for now, at least, several satellite fairs plan to welcome visitors for part or all of the weekend—while keeping an eye on the surrounding social and political context as it evolves in real time. As of Thursday night, Asia NOW and Paris Internationale told ARTnews they are staying open as planned, through October 24, while exhibitors at OFFSCREEN said they received official confirmation that the fair will remain open through Sunday, October 25. (OFFSCREEN organizers did not respond to a request for confirmation by the time of writing.) Outsider Paris also said it plans to stay open through Sunday, while responding to circumstances as they evolve.

Plus, this year's Prix Duchamp winners, a trove of Kiki Smith prints heads to NYPL, and more. Turiya Adkins (photo Clyde Nichols); Timothy Yanick Hunter (photo Spring Morris), and Clifford Prince King (photo Clifford Prince King; images courtesy Studio Museum)Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world. Studio Museum in Harlem Names Three Artists-in-ResidenceMultidisciplinary artist Turiya Adkins, artist and curator Timothy Yanick Hunter, and photographer and filmmaker Clifford Prince King have been selected as the Studio Museum’s yearlong artists-in-residence for 2026–27. Starting this November and through October 2027, the three will have individual studio spaces in the institution's new building on West 125th Street. The residency also includes professional development training and material support, and culminates with a group exhibition in one of the museum's galleries.

An alleged member of the four-person team that broke into the Louvre last October, stealing crown jewels worth roughly $100 million, has been denied release, Le Figaro reports. The suspect, Rachid H., 40, has been detained since November 2025, and will remain in pre-trial detention, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday. On the morning of Sunday, October 19, 2025, the gang used a truck-mounted motorized ladder to break into the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery through a second-floor window. Once inside, they smashed two display cases and grabbed eight pieces of jewelry. (A crown once owned by Empress Eugénie was dropped in their haste.) As alarms sounded, they fled and escaped on two motorized scooters. The entire heist unfolded in roughly seven minutes.

"The Prime of Your Life" examines what recognition and market success mean for 18 women artists over 75. Rose Wylie, "Opera Singer and Teapot" (2024), oil on canvas“What is an ‘old-age style’? Is it the same as a ‘late style’?” asks Linda Nochlin at the start of her 2008 essay, “Old-Age Style: Late Louise Bourgeois.” As our understanding of an artwork evolves with the artist’s age, the essay examines Bourgeois’s enduring aesthetics and interests throughout her seven-decade career, focusing particularly on the soft and hard qualities of her work. Nochlin, the esteemed feminist art historian, meditates on the relationship between a work made early in an artist’s career and one made at the end of their life, asking how the latter changes our understanding or interpretation of the former.