Van Gogh Returns, and the City’s Art Wars

A Van Gogh with a complicated history is about to get a very public moment in the spotlight. Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach, painted in Arles in October 1888, is one of 63 works being donated by the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation to three museums. The painting was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and unveiled there earlier this year, but it’s headed to New York next: first the Brooklyn Museum for Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection, running October 2 through April 18, 2027, then to the Museum of Modern Art later in 2027 with the rest of the Pearlman works. Van Gogh even sketched it in a letter to Theo, describing the colors and his exhaustion after finishing it.

In London, the National Gallery is facing criticism over a public-engagement experiment called NG Citizens. The museum convened a panel of randomly selected UK citizens—meant to be demographically representative, and including people who may not have an art background or have never visited—to advise on the Gallery’s future. The project has met five times since being created a year ago and is intended to bring public input into administration through 2029. But critics, including Conservative MP Charlie Dewhirst, have called the £two hundred fifty thousand initiative a misuse of funds and an undermining of curatorial authority. Michael Daley of ArtWatch called it “barking mad,” and columnist Melanie McDonagh called it an “awful idea.” The debate lands as the Gallery grapples with attendance not rebounding post-pandemic and an £8.2 million deficit.

In New York, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has put its longtime headquarters at 381 Lafayette Street on the market. The five-story, roughly ninety two thousand-square-foot NoHo townhouse has been in Rauschenberg’s hands—and then the foundation’s—since 1965, and the listing is being handled by Newmark. The foundation says it’s “exploring a range of options” because redevelopment on the adjacent lot at 375 Lafayette could have “a significant impact on the integrity, functionality, and day-to-day operations” of its building, especially if plans for a 19-story residential tower by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill move forward. Newmark notes the property could be leased as-is or converted to luxury rentals or boutique condos, and it includes more than twenty five thousand square feet of air rights.

In Italy, a brazen overnight heist has left a businessman’s collection gutted—and raised questions about motive. On July 28, a group of 10 people ransacked the headquarters of Italian fuel distribution company Lilli Petroli in L’Aquila, in Abruzzo, spending as long as eight hours inside before stealing about 30 artworks belonging to owner Mauro Lilli. The stolen works reportedly include bas-reliefs attributed to Pablo Picasso, a bronze ballerina sculpture by Giacomo Manzù, paintings by Bruno d’Arcevia, and pieces by sculptor Mario Moretto; none were insured. Police said the thieves used a company truck to smash through the security gate, and Lilli said they damaged furniture and floors. Art Recovery International founder Christopher Marinello suggested it looked like “some sort of revenge.”

In Aspen, Colorado, the Aspen Art Museum’s AIR festival has returned for its second edition, turning the mountain town into a sprawling stage for art, performance, and talks. Opening night centered on Matthew Barney’s ZONE DEFENSE: Old Snowmass Parallax, a new sculptural installation in a ranch setting. The festival’s theme this year was “Figures in a Landscape,” and one early highlight took place atop Aspen Mountain, where the musical duo Los Thuthanaka performed at more than eleven thousand feet. Music also shaped a “film-performance” of Lucy Raven’s Murderers Bar, shown on a large screen in an alpine meadow with a live score by Deantoni Parks, including ensemble musicians from the Aspen Music Festival and School. The program also included talks and performances by artists including Morgan Bassichis and Lyle Ashton Harris.

In Washington, preservation policy is back in the spotlight as Democrats and preservation groups push for new protections tied to publicly commissioned art. The PRESERVE Act is framed as a response to escalating attacks on historic sites and the artworks within them under President Donald Trump and his appointees. The flashpoint is a July 24 vote by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation—described as heavily Trump-appointed—advancing a proposal that could diminish legal protections. By a 16–5 vote, the council approved revisions to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, the rule requiring federal agencies to consider harm to historically significant sites before moving ahead with construction projects. The stakes are high because those review processes can shape what happens to public cultural assets when federal priorities shift.

In New York City, a new public artwork on Governors Island is using oysters to surface a much older story of place. Alan Michelson’s installation “The Oyster,” opening this past weekend and running through late fall, draws attention to Indigenous shell middens—piles of oyster shells that once marked pre-European settlement across the region. The piece ties into overlooked geography and memory, including lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street, named for a Lenape shell midden believed to have been near a canoe landing along the original 17th-century East River shoreline. As Mark Kurlansky notes in The Big Oyster, middens were common markers around the mouth of the Hudson, sometimes four feet deep. Dutch colonists documented these piles, many of which persisted into the 19th century before being dismantled and used as fill for roads and modernization.

A never-before-published interview offers Simone Forti in her own words, connecting her legacy to another major figure: Yoko Ono. In 1961, Ono dedicated one of her screaming pieces to Forti, and that year Forti debuted Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in Ono’s Manhattan loft. In an interview with scholar and curator Julia Bryan-Wilson, Forti reflects on her history with Ono, aging, and her decades-long career with characteristic charm and humility. Bryan-Wilson also situates both artists as transcultural migrants shaped by fascism and war, and as boundary-crossing innovators working across sound, drawing, poetry, participation, movement, new media, and sculpture—often treating touch and everyday objects as charged collaborators. In the same news roundup, police arrested 16 protesters in a US Senate building, and seven Smithsonian museums closed temporarily due to a faulty cooling system.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art is preparing a major loan of Islamic art from the Louvre. Opening September 26 in Washington, DC, From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art will present 26 works spanning 12 centuries. The selection includes carved rosewood doors, jade cups, and an oil painting depicting the Persian ruler Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, among other objects traveling to the United States for the first time. The artworks represent a wide historical and geographic range, including pieces associated with the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, the Mughal Empire in South Asia, and the Umayyad dynasty in Spain. Many objects were originally functional, and most once belonged to elite households. Associate curator Simon Rettig, a co-curator of the show, said the presentation aims to go beyond “a monolithic overview of Islamic art.”

And finally, the New Museum is getting ready to put its own street under the microscope. The Bowery: Devil’s Mile opens September 24 and traces 400 years of the Bowery through archival materials, artifacts, and artworks. The show will include objects like a hand-pump fire engine from 1830 and surviving dime museum attractions, alongside Jacob Riis’s documentary photography and works by artists including Keith Haring, Lynda Benglis, and June Leaf. The Bowery’s story begins as a Lenape footpath across Mannahatta, later called Bowerij Road, connecting New Amsterdam to northern farmlands. In the 1640s, 11 Black men enslaved by the Dutch were emancipated and given land along the Bowery, forming Manhattan’s first free Black settlement. The exhibition opens alongside an Arthur Jafa survey in the museum’s newly expanded building.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for your next dose of art-world reality.

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