Museum Upheavals, Protest Flashpoints, and Guerrilla Hangings

Los Angeles gets a major architectural and cultural swing in The Art Newspaper’s Big Review of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which lands at three-and-a-half stars. The life-size Naboo N-1 Starfighter in the lobby might suggest a Star Wars shrine, and there is one terrific gallery of original artefacts—like Darth Vader’s samurai-inspired armour and General Grievous’s wheel bike. But the review says more than 90% of what’s on view comes from George Lucas’s art collection: illustration, comics and manga, plus storyboards and film paintings, all under the museum’s “narrative art” banner. There are highlights, including Judy Baca sketches for The Great Wall of Los Angeles and children’s book illustrations by Maurice Sendak, E.H. Shepard, and Arnold Lobel.

Staying in North America, museums are rethinking a long-standing sacred cow: strict climate control. The Art Newspaper traces how 1970s research shaped decades of museum standards—often codified as plus or minus 2°C and plus or minus 5% relative humidity in loan agreements worldwide, even far from London where the research began. Now, rising energy bills and pressure to cut environmental impact are pushing change, especially since HVAC can account for 60%–70% of a museum’s energy use. The Bizot group’s Bizot Green Protocol, first issued in 2015 and updated in 2023, encourages more adaptive, bespoke approaches based on objects, buildings, environments, and research. In March, five Los Angeles institutions—the Getty, Hammer Museum, Hauser & Wirth, MOCA, and LACMA—committed to adopting it collectively.

New York’s Museum of Modern Art is taking body language seriously—politically, not politely. The Art Newspaper previews Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives, which begins with Marianne Wex’s Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures. Between 1972 and 1977, Wex photographed postures on the streets of Hamburg and organized images by types of body language, drawing in other sources like advertisements and film and TV stills. Acquired by MoMA in 2018, Wex’s work anchors a dialogue with contemporary artists using photography to examine space, bodies, and intersectional feminist perspectives. Acting chief curator of photography Roxana Marcoci says the show extends Wex’s inquiry to race, colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, sexuality, and self-representation.

Across the Atlantic, The Art Newspaper interviews Lawrence Abu Hamdan as he prepares Repercussions, a four-day cross-arts takeover at the Barbican Centre in London spanning visual art, film, music, and performance. Hamdan—born in Amman and based in London—founded Earshot in 2023, a non-profit using audio forensic analysis techniques in human rights research, producing outputs ranging from reports to video games. The Barbican programme includes a screening of Rififi (1955), known for a 30-minute silent burglary sequence, and a two-day audio analysis workshop. It also features Zifzafa, including a video game about sonic disruption and resistance in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Hamdan describes political struggles worldwide creating “this debris of sounds.”

Back to New York for a major collecting story: the Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired 38 works by the Chinese ink painter Chang Dai-chien, and ARTnews shares a look at ten of the paintings. The trove spans studies from Chang’s time at Dunhuang—an ancient Buddhist temple complex on the edge of the Gobi Desert—in the 1940s, as well as works from the 1960s and beyond, when landscapes and still-life “unraveled into radiant abstractions.” Met director Max Hollein said Chang combined deep knowledge of classical Chinese culture with a transnational perspective. The acquisition is part gift and part purchase from Chang’s daughter, Sing Sheng Chang, with support from multiple patrons. Chang died in 1983 in Taipei, age 83, after self-exiling in 1949.

Heading to Germany, Naomi Beckwith told Die Zeit she’s “not afraid” of pro-Palestine protest at Documenta 16, and she said, “People have a right to protest and express their opinions.” With less than a year until the exhibition opens in Kassel, Beckwith said some artists have declined to participate over “Germany's position on the Gaza war” and concerns about artistic freedom. Asked about her personal stance on Gaza, she declined to answer directly, saying the more important question is “how we can overcome this divisive mindset,” and “how can we start talking to one another again?” The story also notes that Documenta’s organization adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism early last year, after the highly controversial Documenta 15 in 2022 curated by ruangrupa.

Staying in Paris, two German men were arrested at the Louvre on Saturday, September 19, after affixing two paintings to a wall in the room that houses Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Police told Agence France-Presse the men used sticky tape to mount the 30 cm by 40 cm works. One painting depicted one suspect in armor, and the other showed the two men with a woman. The duo reportedly told police they did it “for fun.” Once the museum files a formal complaint, the men will be summoned to court and face charges for minor damage to the wall. The Mona Lisa reportedly sustained no damage. The arrests come as plans continue to move the painting to its own gallery; it currently hangs in the Salle des États near works like Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana (1562–63).

Across the Channel for market news: ARTnews reports that the Dallas Invitational is expanding to London during Frieze Week. Dallas dealer James Cope launched the Dallas Invitational four years ago to bring together a small group of galleries in a convivial setting, apart from the big convention-center fairs. It’s invite-only—no application process—with Cope focused on building a connected group. The inaugural London Invitational will have 12 exhibitors: ten from the US, including François Ghebaly, Lomex, Mariano, and Bel Ami, plus two from London. One is Vardaxoglou, founded in 2020, which mounted the first solo show for Turner Prize nominee Tanoa Sasraku. The event will take place at the Chancery Rosewood, the former US Embassy on Grosvenor Square renovated by David Chipperfield.

Venezuelan photographer Nelson Garrido died on August 20, 2026, days before his 74th birthday, according to news confirmed by his daughter, Gala Garrido. Born in Caracas on August 24, 1952, he spent his youth in France, Italy, and Chile, raised by his father, a painter and Army General in the diplomatic corps. At 14 in Paris he worked for Carlos Cruz-Diez; at 16 in Chile he befriended and photographed poet Nicanor Parra, producing his first published photographs. Back in Venezuela, he moved to a shantytown in Caracas and staged theater with worker communities for César Rengifo, and created set designs for plays by José Ignacio Cabrujas and films by Román Chalbaud. His work interrogated power, religion, violence, eroticism, and an “aesthetics of the ugly.”

Ending in Chicago, a Craft Archive Fellows piece—organized in collaboration with the Center for Craft—looks at Mexican-American altars as craftwork and as a way of remaking home in migration. The focus is on altar-raising to La Virgen de Guadalupe, and how these everyday devotional altars—on porches, in gardens, storefronts, windows, and along streets in Mexican neighborhoods—form an overlooked American craft tradition rooted in migrant and homesteading experiences. The author emphasizes hands and inherited knowledge: craft as something embedded in work, necessity, and repeated gestures carried forward through generations. Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art has presented an annual Día de Muertos exhibition for four decades, but these street and home altars receive far less institutional attention. The author draws on nearly 15 years of photographs and recent walks through South Chicago and Pilsen.

That’s today’s download—links are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use.

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