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Anyway, onto the news.

Our first story of the day takes us back to Vienna, where we were only a couple of weekends ago and, apparently, narrowly missed a dramatic museum theft.

673-DIAMOND NECKLACE STOLEN FROM VIENNA MUSEUM, guardian

Over the weekend the Guardian reported that two men walked into Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts during normal opening hours, bought tickets, smashed a display case and fled with a 200-carat Van Cleef & Arpels necklace containing 673 diamonds. The necklace once belonged to Queen Nazli of Egypt and was worn at the 1939 wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to Iran’s future Shah. It last appeared at auction at Sotheby’s New York in December 2015, where it sold for

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To commemorate the season, we’ve compiled a selection of paintings, books, exhibitions and words to live by to see you through the last days of August and into the months ahead.

Before we get into today’s post, this is your reminder that there are only five more days to get an annual artplace subscription for less.

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Exhibitions

Consider this your cultural itinerary for the crossover period between summer and September. Some of these exhibitions are entering their final few days and worth squeezing in before they disappear, while others are major autumn openings we already have firmly marked in our calendars.

1. Reggie Burrows Hodges: Mela at MICAS, Malta, May 9 - August 30, 2026

2. Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait at the National Gallery, London, June 4 - September 6, 2026

3. Ewa Juszkiewicz at Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, May 26 – September 6, 2026

4. The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, September 10, 2026 - July 11, 2027

5. Yayoi Kusama at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, September 11, 2026 - January 17, 2027

Artworks

Unsurprisingly, artists have been capturing the turn of the season for centuries. Here are five works that perfectly capture that end of summer feeling:

Books

Perhaps the best thing about the final weeks of summer is the illusion that there is still time to read everything you said you would back in June. Here are a few recent releases, an oldie but goodie, and some forthcoming titles we’ll be pre-ordering now.

1. Seven Days In The Art World by Sarah Thornton

2. The Beverly Hills Housewife: Hockney’s Californian Muse and the World Beyond the Pool by James Cahill - Released today (August 27th)

3. Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery

   by Valentina Castellani - Available for pre-order September 8th.

4. Life in Progress by Hans Ulrich Obrist - Available in hardback, or pre-order paperback for October 1st release

5. The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland by Michelle Young - - Available in hardback, or pre-order paperback for October 22nd release

If you’re looking for more, check out our art book recommendations or our previous post:

Words to live by

September has always felt a little like a reset moment, a second January. So, in the spirit of entering the new season, we’ve borrowed some words from people who seemed to know a thing or two about creativity.

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Just as we were thinking about this, we saw a post on Fair Warning’s Instagram of a clothing tag embossed with the auction platform’s logo, along with the caption: “Fair Warning Couture, Fall/Winter 2026, New York. Coming up next on the app and IRL 🪡.” Are they about to cross into the realm of fashion in a big way? It wouldn’t be the first time. At the end of last year they released a limited edition t-shirt emblazoned with a pink and yellow neon-hued mashup based on Andy Warhol’s $16 million Bridget Bardot (1974), which they sold in Nov 2025, and the most expensive work of art to ever sell at auction, Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi. Or maybe they’ll be auctioning off couture pieces? Back in 2021, they sold a Paco Rabanne Armour Dress for just over $112,000. —Hey , you wanna tell us more?

Anyway, back to Vienna.

There are many art-related things to do in the city, from the Belvedere Palace, home to the world’s largest collection of Gustav Klimt paintings, including The Kiss, to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Leopold Museum, MAK and Secession. With only a few days here, we barely scratched the surface, but luckily for us, on one sunny afternoon, we found ourselves stepping through the doors of the Albertina.

After making our way through the Richard Price exhibition and the 250th anniversary show, we finished with Monet to Picasso. These galleries hold the museum’s permanent collection, largely made up by the Herbert Batliner collection, and it was here that we stumbled across a small work by Gustav Klimt that we had never seen before.

We thought it was cool because of its slightly smaller size (it’s just over 30 inches in height). We snapped a pic for Substack notes and moved on. It was only later, when prompted by a comment from , that we started to look into its fascinating and disputed provenance a little further.

If you’re reading this, that means you’ve been enjoying artplace for free. This is your reminder that all the good stuff is behind the paywall, and until the end of August, annual subs are discounted. In today’s post we delve into the controversial provenance behind Gustav Klimt’s Mermaids. Plus, all the art world news you need to know for the week ahead, from amateur art dealing competitions to new museum openings.

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It’s the start of a new week, and we’re somehow already well into August. Only six weeks or so until the art world calendar kicks off again and the cycle begins once more.

This summer we made it to some of the most anticipated graduate degree shows in London, including the Slade, RA Schools and Goldsmiths. If you missed our last three posts, you can catch up on our top picks from this year’s graduating class. We can’t wait to see what they go on to achieve.

It feels like we haven’t properly caught up with you all on what’s been happening across the art world recently, so consider this our attempt to get both ourselves and our paid subscribers back up to speed.

First up, we’re guessing by now that everyone has seen the new FRAME x Sotheby’s collaboration.

In June last year, the Los Angeles clothing brand, co-founded by Jens Grede (who also happens to be an investor in Substack), launched its first collaboration with the legendary auction house.

Now they’re back for a second drop.

The collection consists of Frame’s signature premium basics, embroidered with Sotheby’s branding. (It’s luxury merch, essentially). But now that we think about it, we’ve never actually seen anyone wearing it out in the wild. Have you? Do you own a piece? We’d love to know.

This second campaign has also come with a much bigger marketing push, bringing several of Sotheby’s senior specialists and executives in front of the camera to model the collection.

If you can see this, that means you’re reading artplace for free. By joining our paid tier you can gain access to the full archive and read all future posts. Today, we’re talking more about the Frame x Sotheby’s collab, another art world/brand crossover that’s caught our eye, the great wealth transfer and art world parties, plus everything else you need to know this week.

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Today we’re bringing you the final instalment of our 2026 degree show round-ups. Last week the Goldsmiths MFA show came to a close and while this year’s cohort produced work across many mediums, we are suckers for a painting, and the talents of these five emerging artists really stood out to us.

From the school that gave us Bridget Riley, Lucian Freud, and much of the YBA generation, here are our top picks from this year’s graduating class:

1. Fanie Buys

@fanie_nani

Fanie Buys is a South African-born artist based in London, working predominantly in painting but also with ceramics and a variety of other media. His practice draws on his experience of growing up queer in a conservative Afrikaans town and explores the tension between self-expression, acceptance and the expectations of wider society. This tension comes through in the contrast between sharply realised details, loosely sketched areas and more abstract passages of colour in his compositions. This painterly application of familiar imagery gives each work an emotional charge that leaves his paintings feeling like distant memories slipping in and out of focus.

2. Sabaat Kareem

@sabaatkareem

Detailed, illustrative, narrative-driven and almost jewelled are how we would describe Sabaat Kareem’s works. They draw on fantastical folklore, mythology, fairy tales and religious allegory and use these inherited stories as a way of approaching more complex human experiences. We loved the detail in the below work of a tiny winged figure wearing a tall crown and sitting cross-legged atop a planet, doodling. Kareem’s works have the familiarity of book illustration with seducingly mysterious undertones.

3. Troy Yihao Liang

@thatflowerdude

Troy Yihao Liang is a London-based artist whose monochrome paintings draw on online imagery and the strange social behaviours that emerge through digital life. His work explores how ideas around love, sexuality, racism and masculinity are performed across online communities, often focusing on the absurdity of these interactions and what they reveal about human nature. Translating virtual experiences into uncanny and psychologically charged compositions, their muted palettes and surreal figures bring to mind the work of Tetsuya Ishida, particularly in the way everyday life becomes slightly unsettling and unreal.

4. Alaina Cherry

@lanie_cherry

Alaina Cherry is an American painter based in London. Using her own body and experiences as a starting point, Cherry explores Black femininity, sexuality and the tension between being seen and being objectified. Her fleshy application of muted nudes mixed with vivid contour gives her figures a radiating physical presence while also embracing vulnerability and the messiness of discovering and asserting one’s identity.

5. Kim Sang-hyuk

@whamwha

Based in London, Korean artist Kim Sang-hyuk takes images connected to historical events and isolates them from their original context. Through this process, he considers how small actions, images and gestures can move beyond their original intentions, gathering new meanings over time. In doing so, he is able to transform imagery through his own personal lens and, in turn, render compositions that are gloriously strange, with an almost otherworldly manner. Painting convincingly with luminous neon hues is notoriously difficult, but he handles this with impressive control, resulting in striking works that glow from within.

We hope you’re well and managing to stay cool in this glorious but slightly ridiculous weather.

A couple of weeks ago, we visited the Royal Academy for the RA Schools Show, which has since closed. One of the UK’s most prestigious postgraduate art programmes, the RA Schools has an alumni list that speaks for itself.

Here are our top picks from its latest cohort of graduating artists:

1. Mohammed Adel

@mohammedadel.art

First up, we stumbled into a gallery space full of Adel’s beautiful monochrome paintings. His delicate framings of interior and architectural scenes use light in a way that makes the subjects feel both nostalgic and haunting.

2. Djofray Makumbu

@djofraymakumbu

Next was one of the most immersive presentations in the show. Makumbu layered sound, painting, wallpaper and vitrines containing miniature domestic dioramas, each one a tiny world in itself. Drawing on his Congolese heritage and East London upbringing, these carefully constructed interiors invite you to peer into, and become part of, the lives unfolding within them.

3. Robert O’Leary

@rob__oleary

For those unfamiliar with the RA Schools show, each student presents work in their own gallery space, alongside a smaller one-room group exhibition. It was here that we first encountered O’Leary’s work. His painting Combing the Hair (‘La Coiffure’), after Edgar Degas (2025), is an almost exact copy of the original in the National Gallery’s collection and immediately demonstrated his technical skill as a painter. This stood in sharp contrast to the work shown in his solo space, where he presented a series of sculptural works made from hand-cast glass, bronze, nickel and other materials.

4. Lolly Adams

@lollyadams

Finally, we stepped into the gloriously strange universe of Lolly Adams. It was impossible to ignore the striking presence of Miss HerNia, Adams’s subterranean sewer-princess alter ego, a carnivalesque figure who revels in disgust and pleasure. Alongside her, surreal ceramic sculptures sat on bedside tables, while a sensor-triggered machine repeatedly slapped a likeness of Adams’s face cast in lard.

It’s a maze in there! But after working our way around four floors of student’s work, today we’re highlighting five artists whose work stood out.

Selected artists and works below:

1. Michael Raphael

@michaelraphael__

First up, Michael Raphael’s presentation of three works, which sat together like a triptych, felt particularly considered and showed a confident sense of artistic identity. Le concert (left), Fèis Tir a’ Mhurain (centre) and Pour (right) bring together imagery from pop culture, archives, cartoons, and typography as well as folklore from Raphael’s South Uist heritage. The resulting juxtaposition of high/low references creates what Raphael calls a “painterly mixtape”.

2. Yoona Kwon

@yoona.indeyo

Yoona Kwon’s paintings were ethereal and warm, with a softness that shifted as you moved around it. Using layers of organza over linen, Kwon treats painting as a way of questioning what it really means to see, creating compositions that change with the light and the viewer’s position.

3. Lakshya Bhargava

@rookie_artist_17

Lakshya Bhargava’s paintings stopped us in our tracks. His figurative scenes have a brilliant sentimental feeling to them, elevating intimate, everyday moments with the glow of a long afternoon. A man shaving, skin scattered with tiny hairs, is a universally understood image and felt so visceral that it made us itchy just looking at it.

4. Manuel Alejandro Hernandez Rivera

@el_otro_manuel_hernandez

Manuel Alejandro Hernandez Rivera’s sweeping curtain and ornate valance drapery were striking for their grand, theatrical presence. The work had the drama of something old-world but the surface pulled it firmly into the present, with imprints and phrases including “Smile, you’re on camera.” The textile felt like a relic holding multiple histories.

5. Elysia Byrd

@elysiabyrd

We loved the range of Elysia Byrd’s practice, particularly this canvas that seamlessly moved between painting and sculpture, with ceramics embedded in the centre and oozing from the edges.

You can check out our previous Class of… degree show coverage here.

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Before we get started, welcome if you’re new here, and if you’ve been with us for a while, thanks for sticking around. artplace is a weekly newsletter making sense of the art world without the jargon, and if it’s been helping you feel a little more plugged in each week, now is a very good time to upgrade.

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The 56th edition of Art Basel, Basel, closes its doors today after yet another whirlwind fair.

For those that don’t know, Art Basel is a global art fair franchise with outposts in Miami Beach, Hong Kong, Paris and Qatar, but before the global expansion the fair started in Basel and it’s still the OG location that everyone talks about like it has slightly better manners than the others.

This year, in a bid to combat claims that the art fair model had become outdated and stale, Basel tried to bring back a little suspense with an initiative they called Basel Exclusive that asked galleries to hold back at least one work from all the usual pre-fair PDFs and reveal it on the ground only once the fair opened.

Almost 200 galleries reportedly took part, which means that for the first time in a while there was a genuine sense of old-school dealer drama that encouraged murmurs of “what are they showing?” and many of the pieces were worth waiting for.

One of the standout surprises included Keith Haring’s Untitled (Two Figures and Clock) (1981-83) at Vienna’s Layr Gallery. The Haring last sold at Sotheby’s in 2024, when it was offered from the collection of renowned art dealer and publisher Larry Warsh, for just over $200,000.

The work belongs to Haring’s subway drawings of the early 1980s. Sketched in chalk on the black paper the Metropolitan Transit Authority pasted over unpaid or empty advertising panels on New York subways, the drawings were technically illegal, and Haring was eventually arrested for making them. On one occasion, though, the story goes that

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Next week, Art Basel Basel rolls around once again, which means we’re officially counting down to the unofficial end of the art world calendar until things kick off again in September.

How has this time of year come around so quickly? No idea.

Are we already mentally by a pool with a drink in hand? Absolutely.

Today’s post is our ode to summer and what better way to celebrate the season than through one of art history’s most enduring subjects: the bather.

Across centuries, the figure in water has never been as simple as it first appears. Bathers have carried all kinds of meanings, from desire and shame to leisure, class and gender. So, we’re looking back at 10 bathers, from some of the most famous scenes to works by artists grappling with the subject today.

The countdown is on. Cool off, take a dip.

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We hope you enjoyed the long weekend and if you’re UK based, we hope you managed to keep the sunburn at bay.

Thanks to everyone who downloaded our UK degree show calendar last week. We can’t wait to see what this year’s graduating artists have been working on and we’ll be reporting back, so watch this space!

Today’s post comes to you from a train zooming back to London after a weekend wedding held at the Talbot Hotel. The venue is home to an oak staircase reputedly descended by Mary, Queen of Scots, before her execution. To steal a joke from the best man’s speech—like Mary, we also have sore heads this morning.

Being in the lush English countryside, sun blazing, with people whose interests fall far outside the realms of the art world was refreshing after the high profile events of the last few weeks. Dominated by New York's spring marquee auctions, which collectively brought in roughly $1.8 billion across Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips, the sales clearly signalled that liquidity is back at the very top of the market.

Sotheby's kicked things off with Mark Rothko's Brown and Blacks in Reds selling for $85.7M. Phillips had a strong week at $115.2M, more than double its 2025 equivalent. But Christie's stole the show on Monday night, moving over $630 million in just 40 minutes and setting new auction records for both Jackson Pollock and Brâncuși, before wrapping the evening with another $490M to land at a $1.1B total. A Pollock drip painting was the night's top lot at $181.2M but the real circus was around Brâncuși's golden bust Danaïde, which Christie's promoted via a video of Nicole Kidman and ultimately sold for $107.6M, an artist record.

Artwork of the week: Constantine Brâncuși, Danaïde (c. 1913)

The video of Kidman sparked widespread discussion and confusion in the art world, and if you haven’t already seen it, click here to watch. What at first appears to be interpretive dancing by Kidman in reaction to the Brâncuși’s beauty is in fact inspired by…

Today’s letter includes: Our thoughts on what Nicole Kidman dancing around a Brâncuși says about the future of the art world. Plus, art world news including a murder-for-hire trial, ‘Arc de Trump’ designs approved for D.C., an upcoming Ai Weiwei performance and the South Asian institution taking over Christie’s this summer.

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Degree shows remain one of the best places to discover new artists early on. They are where gallerists, collectors and curators go to spot new talent before everyone else, and with a good eye, you can too.

We’ve put together our annual UK degree show calendar for the Class of 2026, mapping public opening dates across the country, with interactive links to further information on private views and opening times.

Uk Degree Show Calendar 2026 (1)

181KB ∙ PDF file

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Titled Seaworld Venice, the pavilion was taken over by performance artist Florentina Holzinger, whose gallery Thaddaeus Ropac describes her practice as a combination of “extreme physicality with theatrical precision to probe the limits of corporeal agency.” A fitting description for a pavilion that saw performers hanging 50ft in the air above the entrance, topless and upside down, slamming from side to side within a large bell, silently sounding the alarm to the harmful, cyclical nature of human consumption, waste and pollution. These warnings came to fruition within the walls too with an installation that saw more naked performers endlessly circle a small pool on a jet ski, and in another room, visitors were invited to urinate into a toilet, with the liquid then passing through a purification system before entering a tank where a performer floated.

The works apparently caused enough of a stir for Holzinger’s Instagram account to be temporarily suspended by Meta.

Moving on from Venice, this week the art world is hoping on a plane over the Atlantic to New York, where there’s not one but two major art fairs are opening as well as a slew of high profile auctions.

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We all know the drill by now. The Met Gala is held annually on the first Monday of May to raise money for the museum’s Costume Institute and is staged in conjunction with its annual spring exhibition. This year, the exhibition is titled simply Costume Art, while the dress code for the evening is Fashion Is Art.

Fashion and art have always worked in tandem. They borrow from the same histories, react to the same politics, absorb the same technologies and translate the same fantasies back into the world. Both can be looked at, traded, collected, mythologised and misunderstood. Both tell us something about who we are, or even who we would like to be.

This year’s Costume Art exhibition makes that entanglement explicit, placing garments alongside artworks from the Met’s collection. So, nat…

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If you missed last week’s post, we mapped out the ultimate art library—everything from quick reads to coffee table centrepieces.

In the days since, a moment of design history unfolded when Claude Lalanne knocked her husband, François-Xavier Lalanne, off the top spot to set a new benchmark for the most expensive design object ever sold at auction.

François-Xavier’s name might already be familiar to some. You may know him for his whimsical sheep sculptures or his sculpture-come-bar Hippopotame Bar, which sold for $31.4 million at Sotheby’s, New York, last December, securing its place at the top of the market. Until now.

Claude, though often spoken about in tandem with her husband, has long operated in her own distinct lane. Working primarily in bronze, she transformed the natural world into beautifully detailed objects, such as dragonfly mirrors, surrealist decorative pieces and even handbags.

Her practice came into the spotlight last week when a suite of 15 gilt-bronze mirrors, originally commissioned by Yves Saint Laurent, sold for $33.5 million at Sotheby’s, surpassing her husband’s previous record and setting a new benchmark for design at auction.

The couple’s market is fizzing right now as design continues to blur into blue-chip territory and while these record-breaking sales might feel like a sudden moment of recognition, the reality is that Les Lalanne (the name they were collectively known as) have been at the forefront of this shift for years, building a dreamlike universe where flora, flock 🐑 and the natural world are transformed into works that are uniquely functional and sculptural.

Today, we’re going back to the beginning to look at how the couple met, in what ways their partnership shaped their individual practices, and why, decades on, they’re still dominating the design market.

this is our 100th newsletter—which means we’re discounting annual paid subs for the next 24hrs only

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In fact, in our Getting to Know You survey, 78% of people selected books as a primary support for their creativity, ranking them as an even more essential resource than physical art materials.

In an increasingly digital-first world, books provide a physical and tactile safeguard when the internet and AI fail us. When it comes to art, particularly in the pre-gallery website, pre-installation view era, books were often the only public record of an artwork, and they continue to shape how we look, think, and create.

There are many reasons someone might want such a book. Maybe for inspiration, maybe it’s a way into an industry that can feel opaque, or simply a beautiful piece of home decor. According to our readers, they’re an essential part of the creative process. So here are some of our favourites, ranging from hefty research tools to something you can finish in an afternoon.

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Hi friends,

Last week we celebrated one year of our Q&A series, by invitation only. You can catch up on all the best advice from art world insiders in the interviews here.

Some of us have also been chatting in the artplace subscriber chat, sharing art that we’ve seen, made or have just been enjoying with other subscribers. If you want to get involved, come join us.

Today, we have one question for you.

How often do you ask yourself: Is this art?

Because back in 1917 Marcel Duchamp put that exact question into the minds of the American public and beyond with his controversial sculpture Fountain (1917).

Artwork of the week: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917)

To create this work, Duchamp took a mass-manufactured urinal, flipped it on its side and submitted it as a sculpture to the prestigious Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York in 1917. In the photograph above, taken by Alfred Stieglitz, you can even see the original entry tag hanging from the bottom left.

Despite the exhibition’s policy—that any artist could pay the $6 entry fee to exhibit—Fountain was famously rejected and deemed too indecent to be shown. It was hidden from view during the show, tucked behind a partition or perhaps never even brought inside, depending on which version of events you believe.

Ironically, the work and the controversy around it helped to propel Duchamp to international artistic fame. While this type of artwork doesn’t seem so strange to audiences now, Duchamp’s ideation of displacing something already existing in the world and calling it art, was scandalous for the time, and the concept cemented his legacy as one of the most important disruptors in the history of art.

Over 100 years after the creation of Fountain, the Museum of Modern Art in New York just opened a retrospective of around 300 Duchamp works. Several other events are also swirling the city, including a book launch for Duchamp Takes New York by John Strausbaugh, and it was announced earlier today that Gagosian will mount its own Duchamp show, opening April 25.

It’s often said that Duchamp’s readymade laid the groundwork for conceptual art, but its influence hasn’t stopped there. We see it echo through contemporary artistic practice and just as clearly in the rhythms of everyday culture, from meme-making to Instagram.

To really grasp how far this idea has travelled, it helps to go back a bit.

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We hope you had a lovely Easter weekend. It really feels like spring is in the air.

If you missed it, last week we looked into some of Van Gogh’s springtime paintings, tracking his output through an intense but fruitful period between 1887—1890, as he moved from Paris to Arles to an asylum in Provence and back north to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he spent his final days.

Last week we also celebrated our 2 year anniversary of writing on Substack. Our first newsletter was sent to just 11 people, and now 24,000 of you receive this every week. Thank you for being here and sticking around, it really means the world.

In another milestone, it has been a whole year since we started our Q&A series for paid subscribers. By Invitation Only (or bio for short) has given us the chance to speak directly with artists, curators, writers, and cultural operators shaping the art world from the inside.

Today, we’re looking back at some of those conversations to pull out a few golden threads …

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Hi all, happy Monday!

Last week we wrote about Tate’s upcoming Monet show and the way in which his Giverny paintings have become so engrained in culture that they now turn up everywhere, from designer catwalks to shampoo bottles. If you want to read the full post or anything else from our paid archive, we’ve turned on 7-day free trials.

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Moving from an Impressionist master to a Post-Impressionist one, today we’re celebrating Vincent van Gogh’s birthday.

Born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands, Van Gogh spent his early years trying to find his path. He had jobs as a clergyman, teacher, art dealer and evangelist, none of which worked out. By his late twenties, frustrated and still searching, he made the decision to become an artist. He was 30 when he began painting consistently.

After a brief stint at art school, he moved to Paris in 1886 to live with his brother Theo, and it was there that he encountered the Impressionists, forcing him to rethink t…

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Today we’re bringing you the latest news from Tate, who last week announced their 2027 programming, which includes a blockbuster Monet show, Monet: Painting Time, due to open next February.

In today’s letter:

We delve into the provenance behind the painting leading Tate’s exhibition announcement and why the 2027 blockbuster show is already on our calendars. Plus, art news round-ups covering celebrity donations, fashion collabs, and big events opening this week.

Artwork of the week: Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1914-17)

Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1914-17) is a painting in the collection of Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, and the lead image used by Tate to announce the forthcoming show. It is of course a painting from Monet’s prolific Nymphéas (Water Lilies) series and perhaps a hint that the series will be a main focus of the exhibition.

What you may not know about Monet’s Nymphéas series is that he painted these

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Hi all,

What a pleasure it is to land in your inbox today.

In our last post, we spoke to Fabien Vallérian, the man who marries contemporary art with champagne. If you’re interested in reading about how he scouts for artists to collaborate with, you can find out in his Q&A here.

Speaking of champagne, and in a very convenient segue, do you know who can drink? The Irish.

It’s St Patrick’s Day and we’ve been thinking about how the Emerald Isle sits within the global art ecosystem. Ireland doesn’t always appear in the grand narrative of art history, but it’s doing its utmost to change that trajectory.

In today’s letter: James Turrell’s Irish landmark, how Ireland’s art ecosystem is shifting and why American money, new wealth and state support could reshape its future.

Artwork of the week: James Turrell, Irish Sky Garden, 1990-92

Tucked into the countryside of West Cork, at Liss Ard Estate, just outside Skibbereen, sits Irish Sky Garden, a monumental land artwork by contemporary artist James Turrell.

Turrell is best known for using light as his primary material. Over the past five decades he has built rooms, chambers and vast earthworks that alter the way we perceive the sky. Irish Sky Garden is one of his rare permanent, outdoor works, and what makes it even more remarkable is the unusual story of how it came to be.

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