British painter Iain Alexander—whom Trump "likes to call his favorite British artist"—designed a mock-up of a $250 bill featuring the president's face, the Washington Post reports. Trump's notes: add a logo, make it more colorful. US law has barred living figures from currency since 1866.

The Getty Center has revealed its renovation plan. Doppelmayr will replace the futuristic 1997 tram with faster, higher-capacity cars, while Gehry Partners, WHY Architecture, and OLIN add a new welcome hall, garden cafe, gift shop, and green space. It closes March 15, 2027, and reopens spring 2028.

Tess Jaray, British painter and printmaker whose hard-edge geometric abstractions translated the experience of architecture to canvas, has died at 88. The first female professor at London’s Slade, she taught there over three decades and shaped generations of artists. www.artforum.com/news/tess-ja...

Tiwani Contemporary, the London- and Lagos-based gallery known for championing artists of the African diaspora—including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Simone Leigh, and Kapwani Kiwanga—is closing after 15 years, citing a “shifting landscape” in London. www.artforum.com/news/tiwani-...

François-Henri Pinault—Kering chairman and president of Groupe Artémis, Christie's parent company—has been appointed Chairman of Christie's London. CAA CEO Bryan Lourd joins the board as Non-Executive Director. Pinault succeeds Guillaume Cerutti, who led Christie's as CEO from 2017 to 2025.

Art Basel Paris has named the 206 galleries from 41 countries set for its 2026 edition at the Grand Palais, Oct. 23–25. It's the first under new director Karim Crippa, succeeding Clément Délepine. Nearly 30 first-timers include Hong Kong's Empty Gallery and the newly formed Pace Di Donna Schrader.

Kalshi, the controversial online prediction market, has launched a category letting users bet on individual art auction sales and total auction profits, ARTnews reports. Among current offerings: "Will Basquiat break his auction record this season?" Christie's says its policies preclude employee use.

The Trump administration has re-erected a statue of Caesar Rodney—a Revolutionary War officer who enslaved more than 200 people—in DC's Freedom Plaza, anchoring a 13-statue array for the nation's 250th. It was removed from Wilmington in 2020 amid BLM protests. www.artforum.com/news/trump-r...

Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian are launching a long-term residency for artists and writers on the Balearic island of Menorca, in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth. The Residency at Casa Gràcia will annually host three visual artists and two writers. Applications are now open.

Cheryl Finley, Walton Endowed professor at Spelman College and director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective, has won the High Museum of Art's 2026 Driskell Prize, which comes with an unrestricted $50,000 award. www.artforum.com/news/cheryl-...

A bill to build the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum failed in the House 216–204 after GOP amendments limited it to "biological women," barred depicting "any biological male as a female," and gave Trump unilateral power to choose an alternative site off the National Mall.

One of the heaviest Russian bombardments of Kyiv since 2022 killed four and damaged the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the National Chernobyl Museum—where ~40% of artifacts were damaged beyond recovery—plus the Hinaus gallery, Kyiv Small Opera, and the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature.

The Bergen Assembly has just announced the “convenors” of its 2028 edition: frequent collaborators Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos. Since 2018, they have worked together on their festival and research project “The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish.” www.artforum.com/news/lucia-p...

A federal jury in Manhattan on May 22 found Daniel Sikkema guilty of hiring a hit man to kill his estranged husband, esteemed New York gallerist Brent Sikkema. The divorcing couple had been involved in a bitter custody fight over their teenage son. www.artforum.com/news/husband...

German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has been named the winner of the 2026 Roswitha Haftmann Prize. Established in 2001, the award is Europe’s largest arts prize and is typically given in recognition of an artist’s body of work over a lifetime. www.artforum.com/news/wolfgan...

A new residency for Indigenous artists working with neon is launching as the result of a collaboration between the Walker Youngbird Foundation, a Native-led nonprofit, and Lite Brite Neon Studio, a neon fabrication workshop based in Kingston, New York. www.artforum.com/news/sarah-r...

Unionized staffers at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, have demanded that the institution remove top funder Les Wexner’s name from its moniker following the discovery of his close ties to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. www.artforum.com/news/workers...

Manuel Segade, the director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, has been threatened by lawmakers with removal from his post if he fails to complete an inventory of the museum’s collection by December 31st of this year, ARTnews reports. www.artforum.com/news/spanish...

Krakow's mayor has fired Adam Budak as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MOCAK), citing "improper performance of duties related to work organization and team management." The decision has ignited a strong response among the artistic community. www.artforum.com/news/krakows...

The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs has released its finalist shortlist for its planned public monument dedicated to legendary jazz and swing singer Billie Holiday. Thomas J. Price and Tavares Strachan are both among the top contenders. www.artforum.com/news/artists...

On Thursday, the luxury fashion house Chanel and Paris’s Centre Pompidou announced a five-year strategic partnership in support of the contemporary art museum’s significant phase of renovations, which is planned to culminate in 2030 with the reopening of the museum. www.artforum.com/news/chanel-...

The organizers of Art Basel Qatar have tapped Wassan Al-Khudhairi, a specialist in modern and contemporary Arab art and the onetime founding director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, to serve as artistic director of the 2027 edition. www.artforum.com/news/wassan-...

The Sainsbury Centre, a popular art museum in Norwich, England, just announced that it has received a donation of £91.2 million from the politician and philanthropist Lord David Sainsbury. The donation represents one of the largest ever made to a museum in the U.K. www.artforum.com/news/sainsbu...

The May 19 evening sales at Sotheby’s and Phillips pulled in a combined $419.1 million, seeming to signal that the hitherto softening contemporary and modern art market is beginning to firm up again. www.artforum.com/news/robust-...

New York-based arts nonprofit A Blade of Grass has revealed the 3 members of the 2026 In Fellowship cohort. The initiative provides three individuals or groups with $25,000 in support of their respective socially engaged practices, as well as a $25,000 honorarium. www.artforum.com/news/a-blade...

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its annual list of the most endangered historic sites in the US. While some were included due to threats of redevelopment or environmental decay, others face political challenges from the Trump Administration. www.artforum.com/news/new-lis...

On Monday morning, the French government announced that an international team of architects combining the efforts of New York’s Selldorf Architects and Studios Architecture Paris, will be responsible for executing the biggest overhaul of the Louvre in 35 years. www.artforum.com/news/louvre-...

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, has reinstated mention of Donald Trump’s two impeachments in a new wall text accompanying his portrait in the institution’s gallery of American presidents. www.artforum.com/news/trump-i...

Christie's raked in $1.1B across two May 18 sales, headlined by Jackson Pollock's 1948 drip painting Number 7A. The work hammered at $181.2M, crushing his previous record of $61.2M set in 2021. Up to six bidders competed in $1M increments for the win. www.artforum.com/news/christi...

The Dia Art Foundation and the Sam Gilliam Foundation have announced Guatemala-based artist and poet Edgar Calel as the winner of the 2026 Sam Gilliam Award. Calel will receive $75,000 and will be featured in a public program at one of Dia’s locations this fall. www.artforum.com/news/edgar-c...

Radical performance artist, filmmaker, and sculptor VALIE EXPORT, arguably the most significant feminist artist of the postwar era, died in Vienna on May 14, just three days shy of her birthday. She was eighty-five. www.artforum.com/news/valie-e...

Opened less than five years ago, M+, Hong Kong’s museum of modern and contemporary art, has just announced a multi-year partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which houses the largest modern art museum in Europe. www.artforum.com/news/hong-ko...

Sotheby’s New York logged a big win last Thursday with the $85.8 million sale of Mark Rothko’s "Brown and Blacks in Reds," 1957, a sterling example of the painter’s singular style. This is now the second-highest price the artist has ever fetched at auction. www.artforum.com/news/rothko-...

100+ employees at the Seattle Art Museum have announced their intent to unionize in a letter delivered to museum director Scott Stulen. The staffers cited a collective desire to “improve working conditions in alignment with SAM’s mission, vision, and core values.” www.artforum.com/news/seattle...

Activist, educator and artist Mary Lovelace O’Neal, whose monumental, richly hued lampblack paintings expanded abstraction’s possibilities, died on May 10 in Mérida, Mexico. She was eighty-four. www.artforum.com/news/mary-lo...

London-based artist Anouska Samms has publicly accused the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for exhibiting a dress that is “something like a counterfeit” of her work in the ongoing “Costume Art” exhibition. www.artforum.com/news/artists...

The Ronald Lauder–owned Neue Galerie, the private New York museum known for its deep collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German and Austrian art, is set to merge with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2028. www.artforum.com/news/neue-ga...

A new report released by a French parliamentary commission sheds light on glaring security deficiencies within the country’s cultural institutions. The commission was formed after the Louvre heist in 2025, involving the theft of Crown Jewels valued at $100 million. www.artforum.com/news/report-...

A public contradiction about Iran’s participation in the 61st Venice Biennale has emerged. The director of visual arts at Iran's MCIG explained Iran “neither submitted a withdrawal letter nor stated that we would not attend," merely requesting more time. www.artforum.com/news/irans-p...

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, acquired 314 works in 2025. The acquisitions brought the museum’s collection to 13,000 pieces and increased its holdings in areas it had sought to build up. www.artforum.com/news/hirshho...

A new study reveals that engaging with arts and culture can slow biological aging in a manner similar to exercise. The report suggested that those engaging passively with culture and those participating in the arts benefited equally. www.artforum.com/news/study-s...

Japanese artist and poet Gozo Yoshimasu has been announced as the inaugural recipient of the Serpentine x Flag Art Foundation Prize. The £200,000 ($270,000) honor is the largest contemporary art prize in the UK. www.artforum.com/news/gozo-yo...

Air de Paris, the Paris gallery known for its punk ethos and enduring commitment to cutting-edge Conceptual art, will close this week amid bankruptcy proceedings. The gallery presented more than four hundred shows during its thirty-six-year run. www.artforum.com/news/renowne...

After 18 years, the director of DC’s National Museum of Women in the Arts Susan Fisher Sterling is retiring. Sterling has spent close to four decades at the institution overall, having joined in 1988 as an associate curator just one year after the museum’s founding. www.artforum.com/news/susan-f...

“Zero 10,” Art Basel’s relatively new global initiative dedicated to platforming digital art, has a curator for its third edition: Trevor Paglen, an artist, geographer and author best known for his artistic engagement with themes of surveillance technology. www.artforum.com/news/trevor-...

Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, who fostered the famous collaboration between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, died on May 9. He was eighty-six. His death was announced on May 9 by his namesake gallery, which he had operated since 1963. www.artforum.com/news/galleri...

In solidarity with the resignation of the entire 2026 Venice Biennale voting jury, fifty-four individual artists and twenty-two teams affiliated with national pavilions have now withdrawn from consideration for the Visitors’ Lion awards. www.artforum.com/news/venice-...

The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) has named Richard Lewer the winner of the 2026 Archibald Prize. The New Zealand–born artist won the AU$100,000 prize for his synthetic-polymer-paint-on-canvas portrait of Pitjantjatjara elder and ngangkari Iluwanti Ken. www.artforum.com/news/richard...

Yogyakarta-based Indonesian artist Dian Suci wins the 10th Max Mara Art Prize for Women, beating out a series of competitors that included Betty Adii, Dzikra Afifah, Ipeh Nur and Mira Rizki. www.artforum.com/news/2026-ma...

Thousands of marchers flooded the thoroughfares of Venice to protest the presence of Israel at the Venice Biennale, with many national pavilions shuttering in solidarity. www.artforum.com/news/strike-...