Museums on the Brink, Heritage Under Fire

The New Museum is showing off its newly expanded home with “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” and Artnet’s first reaction is that the whole project of “contemporary art” may be ending. The pitch might make you expect a show squarely about today’s tech anxiety, but the article says there are only bare traces of that—like Judith Hopf’s blobby concrete selfie-taker, Phone Use 5 (2021–22), and Simon Denny’s all-white sculpture based on an Amazon patent for a cage-like workstation idea the company later abandoned. Instead, the exhibition’s “visions of the future” are broad, spanning everything from architecture to becoming an animal, with lots of surreal-ish painting along the way.

ARTnews critics also weighed in on the New Museum reopening, saying it finally has a building to match its ambitions after an expansion overseen by OMA. The museum closed almost two years ago, and now it’s back with an addition that Alex Greenberger says adds sixty thousand square feet, organized around a spiral staircase, with a Klára Hosnedlová sculpture dangling through its middle. Maximilíano Durón, who’s long disliked the SANAA building’s awkward navigation, praises the new staircase as easy to use, plus an airier lobby and better flow to the coat check. They both point out how much better the art looks: Durón cites a Tau Lewis sculpture from 2024 installed in a new gallery, and a floor up, two helium-filled, jellyfish-like sculptures by Anicka Yi floating overhead.

Art Dubai has postponed its 20th edition as the Iran war rages on, according to Artnet News. The article’s details beyond that headline aren’t laid out here, but the core development is clear: the fair’s milestone edition is being pushed back because the conflict is ongoing. In the art market, postponements have ripple effects—calendars shift, travel plans get reworked, and galleries have to adjust around new timing. A major fair moving its dates is never just a scheduling tweak; it’s an indicator of how quickly geopolitics can reshape the practical realities of presenting and selling art. For Art Dubai, the key point is that its 20th edition won’t proceed as originally planned.

Artnet News also turned to Iran’s cultural heritage, reporting on sites damaged in what it calls the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. The article text provided here doesn’t include the specific locations or examples, but the focus is on cultural heritage damage connected to the conflict. It’s a reminder that alongside human cost, warfare can harm historic places and objects that carry deep communal and historical meaning. When heritage sites are impacted, the loss isn’t only physical; it affects scholarship, collective memory, and the future ability to preserve and interpret the past. The thrust of the piece is that cultural heritage becomes vulnerable in war, and that damage to it is part of the wider toll.

Mexico’s culture ministry is urging eBay to halt sales of pre-Hispanic artefacts, after identifying 195 objects listed by a U.S.-based seller, The Art Newspaper reports. Mexico’s secretary of culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said INAH experts reviewed listings connected to an eBay account called Coins Artifacts, based in Orlando, Florida, and determined the objects are part of Mexico’s cultural heritage. She shared a formal letter urging eBay to “immediately suspend the sale and return the items to the Mexican government,” adding that export has been prohibited since 1827 and that the items’ presence abroad “results from illicit extraction.” INAH said it filed a complaint with Mexico’s Attorney General and alerted its Foreign Affairs ministry, Interpol, and U.S. authorities including Homeland Security Investigations.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired a rediscovered Renaissance painting now identified as Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist (1512/1513) by Rosso Fiorentino, according to ARTnews. The Met said layers of paint were removed during conservation, revealing Saint John the Evangelist in the lower-right portion—leading to the updated identification. The attribution had been questioned before, and the painting had also been dated to 1520 and titled simply Madonna and Child. The work, believed to have been lost for centuries, is already on view in the Met’s European painting wing. Curator Stephan Wolohojian noted that Giorgio Vasari described Rosso presenting a patron with “a painting of the Madonna and Child with a half-length figure of Saint John the Evangelist,” giving this picture a notable place in art-historical discourse.

San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum plans to sell its Daniel Libeskind–designed building in Yerba Buena Gardens, ARTnews reports. The museum says the move is part of “strategic steps” to stabilize finances and avoid draining endowments, aiming for “greater flexibility” and a viable operating model. Founded in 1984, the CJM has been closed since December 2024; during that period it reduced its operating budget from seven dollars million to three dollars million and cut debt by half to under fourteen dollars million, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The closure also paused programming and reduced staff by about 80 percent. Executive director Kerry King said, “our building is beyond our capacity,” and the property will be publicly listed next week without an asking price.

Fort Lauderdale is still fighting the removal of rainbow crosswalks, in what ARTnews describes as the last remaining legal challenge to Florida’s crackdown on painted pavement with “social, political or ideological messages.” The crackdown began in August 2025 under Governor Ron DeSantis, with roughly 100 public artworks across Florida slated for removal under the Safe Streets program in collaboration with the Florida Department of Transportation. The directive followed an FDOT memo and guidance from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who said last July that “roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork.” Fort Lauderdale Interim City Attorney D’Wayne Spence wrote that the city’s petition is now, to his knowledge, the sole challenge before the Division of Administrative Hearings, with a possible final hearing in May.

Lauren Halsey’s long-awaited sculpture park in South Central Los Angeles is finally open, ARTnews reports, after she began conceiving it nearly two decades ago while she was an architecture student at El Camino College. Curated by Christine Y. Kim and organized by Los Angeles Nomadic Division, it’s officially titled sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles. The park is on the former site of Gwen’s Ice Cream, a neighborhood destination that burned down in a 2014 fire. The project draws on ancient Egyptian art—paying homage to figures like the goddess Hathor—while incorporating local references, including columns etched with silhouettes, recognizable brand insignia, and Egyptian symbols like ankhs, plus a central “oculus” structure.

Hyperallergic’s Art Movements roundup leads with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s one-time Rauschenberg Centennial Award, marking the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth: one hundred thousand dollars each to four artists. Senga Nengudi won for visual art, David Thomson for performance, Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun for photography, and Patricia Spears Jones for writing. The column also notes a slate of appointments and departures, including Emerson Bowyer being named chief curator of the Kimbell Art Museum, Julian Cox stepping down as deputy director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario next month, and Madeleine Grynsztejn departing as director of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art at year’s end. It adds that Reuters claims Banksy may be Robin Gunningham, now reportedly “David Jones,” a claim the artist’s lawyer has fiercely denied.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use… Chinga la migra

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