Ocula

The Art Basel Paris team, headed by new director Karim Crippa, has announced the details of this year’s fair, which will bring together 211 galleries representing 41 countries and regions in the French capital between 23 and 25 October.⁠
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French actress Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu—chic boss Sylvie in 'Emily in Paris'—has taken up the role of art director of the 'Oh La La!' section of the fair, which will return for 2026 under the theme “Myths and Legends”. The initiative invites galleries to present new works on Friday and Saturday, this year exploring the many forms myths and legends can take, with concepts including transformation and metamorphosis, beliefs and rituals, and imaginary landscapes. Participating artists include Ossip Zadkine and Nina Childress.⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/art-basel-paris-reveals-2026-programme/

Poor management, low pay and burnout are driving art museum workers across the United States way from the sector, according to the findings of a new report.⁠
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The Former Art Museum Workers Study was undertaken by Museums Moving Forward (MMF)—an independent organisation that describes itself as being “devoted to envisioning and creating a more just museum sector by 2030”—between May and July this year. The organisation received 681 responses from workers in every department area and position level in US art museums.⁠
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A significant majority—85 percent—of respondents said that poor management was one of the reasons they left the field, with two-thirds of that number saying it was a major factor in their departure. ⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/poor-management-art-workers-american-museums-/

A portrait of painter Amy Sherald, captured by photographer Tyler Mitchell, graces the cover of Time magazine’s freshly published, first-ever list of the 100 most influential people in art. She is one of 50 artists to make the list, alongside a host of curators, directors, gallerists, collectors and other commercial and institutional figures.⁠
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Sherald’s cover feature follows an intense period for the 53-year-old. Her touring exhibition, 'Amy Sherald: American Sublime', broke all-time attendance records at the Baltimore Museum of Art in April, after she pulled the same show from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery last year, citing censorship concerns.⁠
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In her cover interview, she told Time: “American Sublime has its own narrative. Deviating from that narrative would be deviating from the core person of who I am and why the work exists in the world, and I just wasn’t willing to do that.”⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/amy-sherald-david-zwirner-time-art-100/

Filipino artists campaigning against a proposed 1,600-hectare AI and advanced manufacturing hub have warned that the US-backed project could have a “devastating effect on land, environment, labour and [the] livelihoods of the Filipino people”.⁠
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Artists Unite Against Pax Silica (AUPAX), a new coalition of visual artists, designers, writers and photographers, has begun organising exhibitions, workshops and protests against the international initiative, which is intended to secure supply chains for computer chips, semiconductors and critical minerals. ⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/filipino-artists-protests-ai-hub-pax-silica/

Seoul’s Cheongdam-dong district is known for its boutiques and, increasingly, for its galleries. Up a sloping street and into the stark white building of Shinsegae Gallery Cheongdam 신세계갤러리, was an unexpected sanctuary amid the business of Seoul art week. Here, an exhibition by the American artist Henri Alexander Levy, titled ‘Final Achievement Is Ruin’, spans abstract paintings, wall-based collages and assemblages, a long metal-mesh enclosure, and vitrines of collected ephemera. It opens with an armless, elongated figure hanging by a chain inside a metal frame—suspended and vulnerable.

Levy is the founder of the cult fashion label Enfants Riches Déprimés and terms himself an “outsider artist”. The artist, born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1991, traces his practice to childhood: while staying with his grandmother in Mexico City, he would paint with oils and make assemblages. In his adolescence, he moved through elite Swiss boarding schools and repeated periods in addiction treatment, and he has described those years as full of conflicts with his parents, teachers and treatment staff. That history would later bear on his art, where paternal, institutional and religious authority become difficult to separate.

Learn more: https://ocula.com/magazine/partnerships/seoul-art-week-2026-henri-alexander-levy/

Marie Ulven Ringheim, better known to bedroom pop lovers as girl in red, will team up with Oslo’s Munchmuseet early next year for an exhibition pairing a selection of Edvard Munch paintings with a new, custom-composed soundscape by the 27-year-old indie icon. ⁠
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In an Instagram reel published by the museum, girl in red—renowned for her moving explorations of q***r love—is shown holding up a print of Munch’s 'Two Reclining Nudes' (1917–1919). The painting shows two women reposing on a bed, their elbows resting on red, plush-looking bedding. ⁠
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With a mischievous grin, the singer explains her selection process for the exhibition she is co-curating to the camera: “I was like: Yo, show me the picture with the two ladies in bed.”⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/munchmuseet-expressionism-munch-girl-in-red/

Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (MNTB) will open a new space to house a significantly expanded 21st-century collection, following a donation of more than 180 contemporary works valued at approximately €16 million.⁠
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The museum’s new acquisitions—including works by Ernesto Neto, Sarah Morris and Olafur Eliasson—will take up residence in a previously disused publicly owned building, set to be refurbished by the Spanish state at a reported cost of €70 million. The space is slated to open in 2031.⁠
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Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Spain’s minster of culture, Ernest Urtasun, described the museum expansion as among Spain’s “largest cultural projects” in coming years, and “one of the most relevant cultural operations to be witnessed in Europe”.⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/museo-nacional-thyssen-bornemisza-expansion/