new zealand 51

The Vienna Actionism Museum (WAM) has been controversial since it opened in March 2024, which is perhaps not an entirely surprising outcome given the postwar movement’s penchant for violent, graphic performance art.   A new scandal is brewing as the museum prepares for its fall exhibition, dedicated to the work of Otto Muehl, one of the co-founders of Viennese Actionism. The show “Otto Muehl: Art on the Precipice” will feature 150 paintings, objects, film, and prints, some from the museum’s own extensive collection, others loaned by private collectors. It’s set to open on September 10 and will be on view through January 10, 2027. The controversy goes beyond the fact that many may find Muehl’s artwork involving graphic nudity, violence, and the use of blood and excrement as materials distasteful. He also founded a notorious commune in Friedrichshof, outside of Vienna, that was active in the 1970s and ‘80s. In 1991, Muehl was convicted of sexual offens...

The two teams met in fine, breezy conditions at Rugby League Park on Saturday in round two of the 2026 Central Region Shield competition. In a close match, it was 5-5 at halftime, with Wellington scoring early and Manawatu replying soon after. Both sides missed chances to move further ahead in the first half, both...

A Keith Haring drawing deemed authentic by a Superior Court judge but lacking sufficient provenance records to sell at Christie’s and Sotheby’s was the subject of a trial in Connecticut. The gallery that sold it ended up proving victorious. As reported by Greenwich Time , Nevada businessman Vernon Hartung bought the drawing of flying saucers from Martin Lawrence Galleries for $165,000 in 2018. But when he inquired about selling it at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two auction houses said the artwork’s documented history “did not meet their requirements for selling a Haring drawing as an authentic work,” according to trial records. Martin Lawrence Galleries then attempted to sell the work for Hartung, but he deemed potential prices ranging from $20,000 to $30,000 too low and sued the gallery for breach of contract and other claims related to the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act. In a written decision in May, Judge Robert L. Genuario descri...

To receive  Morning Links  in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our  Breakfast with ARTnews  newsletter . Good Morning! Ahead of its public opening, the British Museum privately hosted billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel for a VIP viewing of the Bayeux Tapestry. London’s Science Museum is ending its 25-year relationship with oil giant BP.  The Met’s decision to honor fashion designer John Galliano with its 2027 Costume Institute exhibition has triggered fierce backlash. The Headlines  DARK ARTS . The  British Museum privately hosted billionaire tech entrepreneur  Peter Thiel  for a VIP viewing of the  Bayeux Tapestry  before its public opening,  the Guardian reported. The visit, arranged by the museum’s development director, has raised concerns among staff about preferential treatment and the use of the fragile tapestry’s limited “light hours.” Thiel is not a museum donor, but...

Ashlee Matapo with her parents and siblings, whose love and support have been central to her journey. Photo: Facebook Antonia Utanga-Taefu | Digital Producer From being the only girl on the field to making her mark on the NRLW stage, Ashlee Matapo has never been afraid to back herself. At 19, Ashlee Matapo has already achieved plenty in a short rugby league career. She joined the New Zealand Warriors as a development player in 2025, without expecting to play NRLW that season. But an opportunity came her way and she made her debut against the Sydney Roosters in Round 1. She went on to make eight appearances in her rookie season, finishing with 138 tackles and just one miss, a 99.2 per cent tackle efficiency. Matapo made eight appearances for the Warriors in her rookie NRLW season. “Getting the opportunity to debut was pretty special,...

Action from Kilbirnie Park on Saturday in the National U85kg competition semi-final between Poneke and Pakuranga. Photo: Tane Nathan/Kinetic Images. Monday morning edition – updates expected: Another busy week and weekend of rugby coming up, with rugby on every day between today and Saturday across several age groups. This includes the annual Hurricanes regional U14...

The broadcaster whose voice travelled from Fiji to the BBC, Radio Victory and Tagata Pasifika . Celebrating the life and legacy of Eugene Fraser. Photo: Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 34-F0465. Graphic: TP+ Ngaire Fuata | Producer Some voices stay with you long after the microphone is switched off. Eugene Fraser had one of those voices – warm, reassuring and elegant. For many in New Zealand, he was a familiar face and voice on Tagata Pasifika during its early years. For listeners in Britain, he was the calm, measured voice of the BBC, even reading the iconic Shipping Forecast, one of the most recognisable broadcasts in British radio history. For those who knew him personally, though, Eugene’s greatest gift wasn’t simply his voice. It was his warmth, his wit and his charm. I first met Eugene more than three decades ...

Soana Aholelei | Reporter / Director “I’ve spent 30 years justifying and trying to explain over and over again what I’m doing with Pacific Couture, right, which is a merging of fashion and art with my own unique aitu afa” – Linda Lepou Acclaimed fa’afafine artist Lindah Lepou unveiled her latest work at the Pātaka Art + Museum in Porirua earlier this month. The multi-disciplinary artist says her latest work Mata‘AITU (voyeur) pays tribute to her past works.  “The inspiration is part of an (AI)TU series that I developed almost two decades ago and this series is a place where I can create with my own Ngafa Aitu,” Lepou says.  “Ngafa, as in whakapapa, and Aitu ancestry spirit threaded through my work because it’s an anchor that allows me to have a more personal approach so this particular work is called Mata...

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation denied the use of a 1981 portrait by the artist of notorious New York lawyer Roy M. Cohn for the cover of a forthcoming biography, titled American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump , because of its negative affiliation with the sitting US president, according to the New York Times . The portrait in question , simply titled Roy Cohn , captures the lawyer’s striking outward stare and scar-split nose head on, surrounded by a black backdrop, a signature of Mapplethorpe’s images during the final decade of his life. At the time it was made, Cohn was the subject of an interview for an issue of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Writer and book editor Steven M.L. Aronson, who authored the piece, convinced Cohn to pose for Mapplethorpe, who was at the peak of his fame at the time. By then, Cohn was a major New York figure who, by day, represented mobsters, moguls, and med...

The Chinese ambassador to South Korea has ordered China’s artists to withdraw from the 16th Gwangju Biennale, which opens September 5, in protest of the Gwangju Biennial Foundation allowing Taiwanese exhibitors to participate under the name “Taiwan,” South Korean media reported today.  In a meeting with Gwangju Mayor Min Hyung-bae at Gwangju City Hall yesterday, Ambassador Dai Bing expressed his “regret and concern” over the decision to restore the name “Taiwan Pavilion” at the request of Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) reported.  Speaking on behalf of the Chinese Embassy, Dai then demanded Chinese curators and  installation staff to halt their preparations and withdraw from the Hajeongung Art Museum in Gwangju, which was set to host their special exhibition. MBC reports that Min told Dai during their meeting that “political considerations should not affect the field of art.” The Gwan...

An arts complex in Tbilisi, Georgia, is being razed despite protests from its architects and some members of the local community. Following approval by Tbilisi’s city government in June, demolition work on the Rike Park Music Theatre and Exhibition Hall—colloquially known as Rike Tubes—began at the end of July and is scheduled to be completed by December. The news was reported by Reuters following a photo-essay documenting the destruction of the complex and that of a second landmark, a Brutalist former flour mill known as Silo, published in Civil Georgia . The Rike Tubes are a connected pair of glass-and-steel structures designed by Fuksas Studio, an Italian architectural firm led by husband-and-wife architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas. Built in the final years of United National Movement (UNM) rule (2004–2012), their ultracontemporary design symbolized the pro-Western approach of the UNM’s leader, Mikhail Saakashvili. The current governing ...

Half of the executive leadership team at Phillips is no longer with the auction house, and several other high-ranking employees have departed the company since the May sales. The two most senior departures are Miety Heiden , chairman of private sales, and Jonathan Crockett , chairman for Asia. Both will officially leave their roles next month. (Crockett’s departure was first reported in Art Asia Pacific and the Baer Faxt newsletter earlier today.)  Until now, the house’s four-person executive leadership team consisted of Heiden; Crockett; Robert Manley, chairman and worldwide head of modern and contemporary art; and Marianne Hoet, head of business development and chairman of Europe. This quartet all reported to chief executive Martin Wilson, who got the top role after Ed Dolman stepped down in 2024 to start his own consultancy firm. (In December 2024, deputy CEO Amanda Lo Iacono also stepped down from her role.)  Wilson, who came to Phill...

Sir Stephen Fry, Sharon Stone, Prince Harry, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk are among the public figures taking on guest curator roles for “Postcode Ukraine: Diary of a Volunteer,” a fundraising exhibition of photographs by British, Kyiv-based artist Mark Neville. The show is slated to open on September 11 at Westwood Contemporary in Los Angeles and documents everyday life in Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale invasion. Neville’s photographs focus on volunteers, families, and communities living through the war. Each guest curator has selected a photo from the exhibition and written a short reflection on why it resonated with them. The group also includes actress Alyssa Milano, Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov, author Kateryna Babkina, and Wende Museum founder Justin Jampol. Matviichuk, who leads Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, said her selection draws attention to the people behind the statis...

A former employee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has filed a class action complaint against the institution over a 2025 data breach that he claims has compromised sensitive visitor and employee information, including Social Security numbers. The complaint accuses LACMA of acting negligently by waiting nearly a year to inform its staff of the breach and seeks unspecified damages, as well as a court-ordered assurance of stronger security measures.  The lawsuit, reviewed by ARTnews , was filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of the State of California by Adam Piron on behalf of “all persons” whose information was compromised by, what the complaint describes as, LACMA’s failure to protect the personal data with which it had been entrusted. It also asks that LACMA be compelled to maintain adequate security practices and act with swift transparency after any future data breach. “By obtaining, collecting, using and deriving a benefit from the plaint...

Editor’s Note:  This story originally appeared in  On Balance ,  the ARTnews  newsletter about the art market and beyond.  Sign up here   to receive it every Wednesday. Industry Moves Lindsay Jarvis and Max Werner Form New Partnership: The new Jarvis & Werner will open on September 2 with a solo exhibition for Martina Cox at 96 Bowery in New York. Werner is the son of Mary Boone and Michael Werner and has previously worked at both of his parents’ galleries. Jarvis is an adviser who previously directed Arsenal Contemporary and held sales roles at Sadie Coles HQ and Greengrassi in London. The two previously collaborated on the group exhibition “Eruption” at the former Jarvis Art earlier this year. Lorian Gwynn and Max Ruf will have their New York solo debuts at the newly formed gallery later this year. “The art market has undergone a period of adjustment and this shift has created space for a more focused and deliberate kind of gallery,” they said...

To receive  Morning Links  in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our  Breakfast with ARTnews  newsletter . Good Morning! The  Financial Times  has argued that billionaire wealth, not artistic value, is driving modern art’s astronomical prices. Ex-Pussy Riot member Rita Flores said Russia’s FSB tried to recruit her as an informant in 2023. A Kehinde Wiley painting has been removed from the American Embassy in the Dominican Republic for being “too woke.” The Headlines  MONEY OVER ART.  The  Financial Times   has argued that the astronomical prices of top modernist paintings are less about intrinsic artistic value than wealth, scarcity, and the concentration of buying power among billionaires. Works once regarded as marginal or difficult have been transformed into ultra-expensive trophies as wealthy collectors compete for a limited supply of canonical art. The result is a market whe...

The two sides met at Porirua Park on day two of the 2026 Te Upoko Invitational tournament. Steady rain prior to kick-off gave way to dry conditions in the first half as the Fijians scored three tries to one in the first half and led 19-7 at halftime. The Fijians dominated the early stages of...

I’ll say that I did not expect the exhibition “Modernity and Opulence: Wiener Werkstätte Women,” at the Jewish Museum in New York, to open with work by two men. Nor did I anticipate the wall label lauding one Nazi, listed among the founding members described as “progressive thinkers.” But I’d been eagerly awaiting my afternoon with the work of the little-known ladies of fin-de-siècle Vienna, so this puzzling prelude was hardly a deterrent.  Alongside the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, the Wiener Werkstätte—a collective active in Vienna from 1903 to 1932—made wallpapers, cutlery, and more that brought natural motifs indoors at a time when industrialization was severing nature from modern life. At their best, these movements framed beauty as something that should be accessible to everyone, and the built environment as one total work of art. Aesthetic experiences were here not reserved for museums or the elite, but folded in along with daily drudgeri...