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ARTnews Awards 2026 Established Artist of the Year: Vaginal Davis

Recognizing an artist with more than a decade’s worth of exhibition history whose latest exhibition comes at a pivotal moment in their career. Vaginal Davis for “Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product” at MoMA PS1, New York (October 9, 2025–March 2, 2026, US debut, following versions at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and Gropius Bau, Berlin) Often described as an icon of Los Angeles’s queer and punk scenes, Vaginal Davis has made art that often wasn’t meant for display in museums or galleries. At the core of her practice, spanning performances, zines, videos, installations, and more, is her artistic persona, which imbues her art with ribald, tongue-in-cheek humor, even as she discusses serious topics like race and identity, gender and queerness. Often, her art is designed to shock viewers and make them squirm. In doing so, Davis asks why her pieces would make anyone uncomfortable. “I have never cared for entertaining anyone. My performances may have elements t...
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ARTnews Awards 2026: About the Jury

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The third annual ARTnews Awards, an editorial project honoring excellence in art achievements at US arts institutions, has just revealed the winners for its 2026 edition. To help select this year’s winners,  ARTnews  invited five esteemed US-based curators, along with two ARTnews editors, to review exhibitions that opened between August 2025 and July 2026. Traveling exhibitions were only eligible for their first US stop. Each juror nominated 1–3 exhibitions per category. Over the course of two meetings, the jury chose a group of nominees and a winner in each of six categories. Read more about each juror below. Giampaolo Bianconi Dittmer Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago Photo Susanne Ghez Giampaolo Bianconi is currently the Dittmer Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute o...
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Sotheby’s Hedreen Auction Proceeds Will Repay Loan, Not Fund University Museum: Report

A $300 million art donation to Seattle University has been revealed to be more complex than originally reported. On Monday, Sotheby’s will begin selling approximately 50 works from the collection amassed by Seattle real estate developer and philanthropist Richard “Dick” Hedreen, previously billed as the “largest art gift ever” to a US university. Hedreen said in September that the sale did not mean the promised gift was falling through. Rather, he suggested, the proceeds would help furnish Seattle University’s new art museum, where the collection was eventually expected to hang. Records newly reported on by The Seattle Times , however, tell a different story: The works are being sold not to fund the museum, but to pay off a debt secured against the collection — a debt Hedreen says stands between him and fulfilling his pledge to the university. What was originally framed as a donation, in reality, was a pledge: Hedreen, whose firm R.C. Hedreen Co. o...
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Manhattan Landlord Sues Kehinde Wiley, Claiming He Owes $36,000 in Unpaid Rent

Artist Kehinde Wiley returned to the New York art scene last week with his first show in the city since he was accused of sexual assault in 2024. Now the famed artist and Obama portraitist faces a legal dispute of a different kind: real estate. In a complaint filed in New York County Supreme Court, 115 West 11th Street LLC accuses Wiley of failing to pay rent on his apartment in its building since October 1. According to court documents filed November 6, the rent is $18,000 a month, and the landlord is seeking $36,000 in total. Per the documents, Wiley has lived in the building since September 2023 and signed a lease renewal in July 2025, which was later extended through the end of September. The landlord contends that Wiley did not vacate the apartment when the lease ended and has continued to live there without paying the agreed $18,000 a month. Wiley has not yet responded to the complaint. A summons, also filed November 6, requires the artist...
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The ADAA Fair Is Back, and Sometimes Smaller Really Is Better

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Art fairs should do two things: let visitors see art, ideally stuff they haven’t seen before, and help dealers sell that art to people who want to buy it. Simple enough. And yet, somewhere along the way, fairs became so enormous that seeing everything on offer began to feel like an endurance sport. That’s one reason the newly rechristened Art Dealers Association of America Fair, which opened Thursday night at the Park Avenue Armory, was such a pleasure. With just 63 exhibitors, it’s small enough to navigate without a map, manageable enough to spend time actually looking at the art, and varied enough to reward a little wandering. These may sound like modest achievements, but anyone who’s spent six hours trudging through a convention center will appreciate them. The setting helps. The Park Avenue Armory still has plenty of its old New York charm, something that’s increasingly hard to come by in an art fair. Organizers have also ...
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Newark Museum Is Latest Art Institution to Transfer Ownership of David Drake Vessel

The latest institution to transfer its ownership of a David Drake vessel in its collection is New Jersey’s Newark Museum of Art, which said on Thursday that the artist’s descendants were given possession of an 1852 jug. Other museums have undertaken a similar measure, from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts . But the Newark Museum said in its release that, unlike past ownership transfers, this one was initiated by the institution, which reached out to Drake’s descendants, rather than the other way around. Drake is now widely recognized for the stoneware jugs he produced during the 19th century in Edgefield, South Carolina. He was born into enslavement and achieved freedom sometime after the Civil War. The jugs, which memorably figured in a 2022 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, sometimes bore written messages whose meaning has often been debated. One vessel by him topped ARTnews ’s list of the best artworks...
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‘Secret’ Location of a Vandalized and Rescued Banksy Revealed

A Banksy mural with a checkered past has been located by sleuths at the British Broadcasting Service (BBC). The semi-anonymous artist painted the piece in 2018 on Scott Street Bridge in Hull, a port city in East Yorkshire, England. The BBC has discovered that it is being kept in storage in Norfolk, more than 120 miles away, and that its future is unknown. The mural shows a young boy, apparently dressed for battle in a helmet and raising wooden sword with a pencil attacked to its tip. He cries out “draw the raised bridge!” as he seems to sit on a graffiti writer’s tag. The joke being that the work adorned a bridge set to be razed: It’s been closed to traffic since 1994 due to its poor condition, frozen in a raised position. Banksy also plays with the notion of the pen being mightier than the sword, attaching an actual writing implement to a mock weapon. While Banksy does not typically explain his works, some saw a commentary on Brexit; the referendum...
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