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Then again, most artists were not Rita Asfour. The late painter, sculptor, and gallerist blew up the walls separating highbrow and lowbrow, then danced on the rubble.

Born Markrit Thomassian in 1933, Asfour was the child of refugees who had settled in Egypt after the Armenian Genocide. When she was only eight years, Hitler bombed Egypt; to negate the unpleasant images in her mind, Asfour used crayons to paint flowers. This formative traumatic experience inspired her to spend her life creating beautiful art. Asfour received her early art education at the Leonardo da Vinci Italian International School in Cairo, then worked as a commercial illustrator in Beirut for five years. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1965, she found work as a sketch artist for tourists at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Those inverted professional experiences—rendering photorealistic portrayals of glamorous women in everyday settings, then capturing everyday people in a glamorous setting—informed the keen observational eye Asfour would bring to her later impressionist-style work.

Asfour settled in Malibu, where she lived for 30 years. That period was her most prolific, painting seascapes and experimenting with various artistic mediums. Here, she developed her style and became embedded in the Los Angeles art community, opening her own gallery, Galerie Camille, in Beverly Hills in 1970. She attracted a number of celebrity clients who commissioned her to paint portraits of then-President Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, singer Ella Fitzgerald, and Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler.

It was in Malibu, too, that Asfour pursued one of the major throughlines of her career: painting ballet students in motion. She was inspired to focus on dancers after seeing Pepperdine University students perform, observing the corps backstage on multiple occasions. Asfour also shadowed toddler-age dancers at Ballet Studio By The Sea, a private dance studio. She was intrigued by the age groups’ divergent approaches to dance: The Pepperdine dancers approached their craft with rigor and acute self-imposed expectations, while the toddlers were genial and unself-conscious. “It was a joy to watch the little marvels give it all they had in a show that sometimes lasted only a few minutes,” Asfour recalled in the exhibition brochure of a 2016 retrospective at the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s College of Fine Arts.

Asfour married aerospace engineer Jeffrey Asfour in Las Vegas in 1965, and had one child, her daughter Amber, in 1973. That first trip to Las Vegas proved hugely formative: Asfour returned to the city on multiple occasions, taking in shows on the strip. Just as she had the ballet dancers in Malibu, Asfour was struck by Vegas showgirls—their physicality, the intricacy and vibrancy of their costumes. This, too, would prove to be a lasting obsession. When she moved to Las Vegas in 2012, Asfour planned to retire from painting. But Jubilee!, a long-running revue at Bally’s Casino—as well as her friendship with a former showgirl who had fallen on hard times after her performing career ended—inspired Asfour to dedicate the final decade of her career to painting showgirls.

Until her death in 2021, Asfour brought the same keen eye and fanciful imagination to her showgirl paintings as she did her ballet series. Though society labeled the former tradition entertainment and the latter art, Asfour recognized that showgirls cultivated a comparable degree of craft, skill, and commitment as ballerinas, all while navigating brazenly voyeuristic and sexist settings. “Their stride and poise defined the word ‘dignity,’” she later wrote. As did Asfour.

This fall, Asfour’s work will be on view—and for sale— at the Reno Tahoe International Art Show (Sept. 14-17).

View more of the collection at RitaAsfour.com.

The biennial Bennett Prize is granted exclusively to women painters, addressing a stark institutional disparity in the field. Per the terms set by the Prize’s co-founders, husband-and-wife art collectors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt, any woman artist who paints in a figurative realist style and is pursuing a career as an artist is eligible to apply.

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Of a record number of entrants, ten finalists were selected for the third biennial Bennett Prize: Ruth Dealy, Shiqing Deng, Ronna S. Harris, Haley Hasler, Sara Lee Hughes, Monica Ikegwu, Laura Karetzky, Linda Infante Lyons, Mayumi Nakao, and Kyla Zoe Rafert. “Rising Voices 3,” which runs May 18 – Sept. 10 at the Muskegon Museum of Art in Muskegon, Mich., will exhibit 30 works by these finalists. Concurrently on view will be “The Lessons I Leave You,” the solo show of 2021 Bennett Prize winner Ayana Ross of McDonough, Ga. The work, according to Ross, “will depict the divine in everyday moments.” Following the Muskegon Museum of Art, “Rising Voices 3” will have subsequent tour stops at: the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Ga.; the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, N.Y.; Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia; the Customs House Museum in greater Nashville, Tenn.; and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

This third cycle is the strongest yet. “It’s been exciting to see the artists in this show working at the boundaries of what representation can be: paintings that hover on the edge of abstraction, that engage with the modern world, and that tell stories from inside communities that have often been excluded from the history of Western painting,” says artist and 2023 Bennett Prize juror Zoey Frank.

Also announced, for the first time ever, was The Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt Prize for Achievement in Figurative Realism, which includes $10,000, and was awarded to Ruth Dealy, of Providence, Rhode Island.

Creating an art prize, along with a traveling exhibition featuring women artists, is not an endeavor for the faint of heart. It requires an ability to accept rejection. Though the Prize is backed by a multimillion-dollar endowment at the Pittsburgh Foundation, Bennett recalls that “pretty much nobody was interested in getting behind an art prize for women figurative painters” at the time they first started conceptualizing The Bennett Prize in 2016.

“When we started introducing the concept to museum directors, curators, and other leaders of the art world, the response was yawning indifference. Women hadn’t caught fire yet and figurative realism was still considered square while abstraction, installation art, and video were hip,” he says. “Everyone assumes that figurative realism is the equivalent of photographic realism with figures, but nothing could be further from the truth. We take the view that if it is a figure and a viewer can discern that it’s a figure, that’s sufficiently real to be considered.”

And figurative realism—increasingly deployed by artists to grapple with harrowing events of recent years, from police brutality to the pandemic—has since come roaring back. Schmidt and Bennett, who are among the country’s top collectors of figurative realist art, have found their instincts fully ratified. They have already notched remarkable achievements in the four years since the initiative launched. The 20 artist alums from cycles 1 and 2 have exhibited in 24 solo and 67 group shows, and collectively, they have been the subject of over 50 features in industry publications. Over half have gained gallery representation. The market, too, has validated these artist’s achievements, selling over 100 paintings between them at sales prices which have increased by nearly half.

“We’ve been lucky enough to watch a whole new group of women artists become known and appreciated by a larger art-world audience,” said Bennett.

The Bennett Prize’s “Rising Voices” exhibition will be on view at the Muskegon Museum of Art, May 18–Sept. 10, and will travel the country. Details about The Bennett Prize can be found at thebennettprize.org, and you can learn more about the exhibition at muskegonartmuseum.org.

Interested in becoming a host venue? Visit muskegonartmuseum.org/bennett-prize-prospectus.

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With a vast array of over 100 museums, grand palaces, and fabled cultural institutions, Vienna—the cultural capital of Europe, long famed for its historic beauty—has been at the forefront of progressive out-of-the-box thinking.

In an effort to inspire the next generation of travelers to visit Austria’s beguiling cultural capital, the Vienna Tourist Board has launched a cheeky new marketing campaign called UnArtificial Art and is asking viewers to dig a bit deeper and rediscover some of the city’s most iconic masterpieces. Using artificial intelligence (AI), some of the country’s most celebrated pieces of art have been re-created to include the internet’s beloved domestic pet—cats—in an effort to remind viewers to have a little fun, while also taking a moment to see and appreciate the “art behind the art.”

“The campaign aims to show that AI art is only possible because an algorithm references real works made by real humans, and these originals can often only be seen in Vienna,” Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board, told ARTnews.

In the short film that accompanies the UnArtificial Art campaign, art historian Markus Hübl takes viewers on an existential journey through some of Vienna’s most iconic masterpieces—including Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Pieter Bruegel’s The Tower of Babel—all of which have been enhanced using AI technology to encourage viewers to look deeper into the work of some of Austria’s most celebrated painters.

“The Viennese Modernism movement that revolutionized the art world over a century ago continues to live on and affect today’s art through the algorithms that guide AI creations,” Kettner added.

It’s unclear how Klimt—who was famously known for surrounding himself with anywhere from eight to ten pet cats at any given time—would feel about the enhancements to one of his most illustrious and frequently reproduced paintings. But the campaign, which encourages travelers to “see the art behind AI art,” will surely open itself up to interpretation by all who bear witness.

“With so much artificial intelligence invading out lives—particularly with programs like DALL-E or Midjourney, that allow anyone to create ‘works of art’ —Vienna wants to remind visitors who made that all possible in the first place,” Kettner said.

It was thanks to the help of AI technology that Vienna was able to reconstruct some of Klimt’s famous paintings that were burned by Nazis almost 75 years ago, using black-and-white photos to re-create the images from scratch.

Today, the Belvedere Museum continues to not only serve as one of Vienna’s most popular attractions, but has also partnered with Google Arts & Culture to bring some of the world’s most important classical paintings back to life in full color through the use of artificial intelligence. This year, visitors can also celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Belvedere, which houses the world’s largest Klimt collection, including one of his most famous paintings, The Kiss.

Learn more at unartificial.vienna.info.

VOLTA New York launched in March 2008 as a satellite fair of the long-running Armory Show. This year, VOLTA will once again be in alignment with Frieze art fair, presenting galleries from over 18 countries. VOLTA’s focus on cutting-edge contemporary art encompasses several themes—among them, science and nature—from galleries with a wide-ranging international perspective.

Barcelona-based Out of Africa (OOA) Gallery champions work by contemporary African artists. Their presentation will highlight work by Oluwole Omofemi, Matthew Eguavoen, Médéric Turay, and Moses Zibor. These artists, part of a young, dynamic generation of global African diasporans, showcase African pride, tradition, and culture in their practice.

At SEIZAN Gallery (New York/Tokyo), Japanese artist Motohide Takami revisits cultural legacy and collective trauma. The Great Earthquake of 2011 occurred during the artist’s time as a graduate student at Tohoku University of Art in Yamagata. The disaster and its aftermath became a signature trope in his oil paintings. A recurring image of flames by the riverside refers to the Japanese expression “fire on the other side of the river,” meaning something is someone else’s business. This motif underscores human disinterest in tragic events that do not directly impact you, ever pertinent in today’s world.

Venezuelan artist Starsky Brines, presented by the Frankfurt-based Galerie Heike Strelow, explores identity through personal biographical iconography. His anthropomorphic characters are influenced by his

domestic life with his mother, who crafted colorful puppets for Caribbean carnivals. He pairs this visual language with an art historical knowledge of Latin American figurative art, German Neo-Expressionism, the Italian Transavantgarde, and the CoBrA group to create paintings that oscillate between abstract and figurative.

Korean artist Vlad Ogay is inspired by his time spent studying theater in Russia. His “readymade” practice involves collaging together objects and artifacts from everyday life. His works will be presented at VOLTA by the Latvian gallery CUT ART.  A multi-disciplinary artist, Ogay has received prestigious awards in Venice and Cannes for his film projects and is preparing for his first solo show, to be curated by Gianluca Marziani (a consulting curator of the 2011 Venice Biennale and Banksy’s biographer).

Meanwhile, LAMINAProject present a series of collage-based works by New York artist Jody Rasch that explore radio astronomy, a sub-genre of astronomy specializing in celestial objects at radio frequencies.

Artist Natalie Collette Wood has a different take on the organic in her elusive assemblages and layered paintings of fantastical forms. The artist’s work will be presented by Vellum Projects. Among works by five artists exploring topics of mythology, popular culture, environmental activism, and conservation, Wood’s pieces are a particular highlight.

The origin of the name of VOLTA denotes a turn of thought or an inflection point. The fair distinguishes itself in the marketplace with its commitment to creating an environment of discovery for art collectors, with this intention precisely guiding its curation. VOLTA serves as the platform for ambitious international galleries to enter the global art markets of New York and Basel. In turn, the fair offers both burgeoning and established collectors a place to discover the art of now, to grow their collection, and ultimately to connect with and support new talent.

Beyond stand-out group presentations, 14 galleries will feature solo exhibitions at the fair. Among these highlights are: the South Korean Gallery Bhak presenting work by artist Yissho, (AV17) Gallery presenting sculptures by Lithuanian artist Mindaugas Junčys, Catalysta Gallery presenting artworks by Dominican artist Manuel Mera, and Stone Step Gallery presenting Irish artist Paul Hughes.

United by the healing power of creativity, VOLTA New York will collaborate with non-profit partner Fashion Fights Cancer to host an art auction and fashion fundraising event on Thursday, May 18, from 6 to 9 PM, co-hosted by New York Fashion Week’s Fern Mallis and Gary Wassner, CEO of Hilldun Corporation.

The full exhibitor list is available at this link. VOLTA New York is on view May 17-21 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea.

VOLTA New York is followed by VOLTA Basel (June 12-18) at Klybeck 610, Basel, Switzerland.

Follow @voltaartfairs for updates.

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“Reclaiming Home” expands the conceptual framework of Native American art made in Florida today and provides a fuller understanding of art made by the Seminole diaspora. “This exhibition is an imperative step toward establishing a meaningful relationship with the Native American artistic community,” said Ola Wlusek, the Ringling’s Keith D. and Linda L. Monda Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “We are honored to be able to present the work of these incredible Native artists at the Ringling.” The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Florida are represented by visual artists who work, or have worked, in textiles, film, woodworking, beadwork, digital drawing, and painting. Their works offer an intimate look into the artists’ lived experiences, exploring issues of ancestry and identity, their relationship with the environment, and interfaith and traditional ways of knowing in Florida’s Native communities. Drawing from photo-based and digital collage techniques, performance, video, installation, and mixed media, artists from the Seminole diaspora offer diverse perspectives on the themes of memory, history, health, and representation as expressions of Native visual sovereignty.

Artists in the exhibition include the late Noah Billie (Seminole), Wilson Bowers (Seminole), Houston R. Cypress (Miccosukee), Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek]), Alyssa Osceola (Seminole), Jessica Osceola (Seminole/Irish), C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Muscogee [Creek]), Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox/Seminole/Muscogee [Creek]), Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Taskigi/Diné [Navajo]/Seminole), Brian Zepeda (Seminole), Corinne Zepeda (Seminole /Mexican), and Pedro Zepeda (Seminole/Mexican). 

As part of the Ringling’s ongoing commitment to add work by artists with a connection to Florida, the museum unveils a recently acquired three-part ceramic work by Jessica Osceola. Portrait One, Portrait Two, and Portrait Three (all 2017) are the first works by a Seminole artist to be added to the Ringling’s collection of modern and contemporary art, thanks to the generous support of the Daniel J. Denton Florida Art Acquisition Fund. This exhibition will include several important loans from the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum of Seminole culture and history, located on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation. “We are grateful for the generous loans of artwork by the artists and lending institutions and, in particular, the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum for their support of this important exhibition,” said Steven High, the Ringling’s executive director. “We look forward to partnering on projects in the future.” Additional lending institutions include the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis. “Reclaiming Home” is accompanied by an exhibition catalog with scholarly texts by Durante Blais-Billie and Dr. Stacy E. Pratt, published by Scala Arts Publishers.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Endowment, the Mandell and Madeleine Berman Foundation Endowment, and the Bob and Diane Roskamp Endowment, and sponsored in part by the State of Florida’s Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture; the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wlusek’s research and travel related to this exhibition and publication project was generously supported by the Curatorial Research Fellowship awarded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

For more information visit ringling.org for more information.

By the time Art Toronto comes around in late October, art fair hoppers will have have traveled throughout Europe and will be planning their Miami itineraries. One might ask why a Canadian stop is needed in an already jam-packed art fair schedule?

For one, Art Toronto is home to over 100 galleries, ranging from the best in Canada to some of the hottest names in the international market. Galleries like Patel Brown (Toronto), Cooper Cole (Toronto), Daniel Faria (Toronto), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), Catriona Jeffries (Vancouver), Galerie Hugues Charbonneau (Montreal), Royale Projects (Los Angeles), Fazakas Gallery (Vancouver), Pangée (Montreal), and Galerie Pici (Seoul), along with many others, are participating in Art Toronto this year, and will test collectors’ appetite for up-and-coming talent. During Art Toronto’s 24-year history, collectors have purchased work by Tau Lewis, Sara Cwynar, Manuel Mathieu, Shannon Bool, June Clark, Wanda Koop, Dominique Fung, and many others—all at pre-market prices.

What makes this opportunity to connect with emerging talent unique is the involvement of Art Toronto director Mia Nielsen. In her four short, yet challenging, years overseeing the fair, Nielsen is re-imagining Toronto’s place within the art world and growing her vision of creating the most anticipated fair in North America—big shoes to fill, especially when New York is your neighbor. But watch out! As the popularity of Canadian music, art, and film grows, the creative energy in Canada is thriving and driving international talent to the North. Call it the “Drake-effect,” combined with a low Canadian dollar: Toronto is becoming a cultural destination.

This year, legendary curator Kitty Scott has joined the Art Toronto team and will curate the fair’s 2,000-square-foot “Focus” exhibition, which will present new, ambitious artworks by artists shown at the fair alongside important historical work. Staying true to the art-fair model, all works featured in “Focus” will be for sale. Scott’s decades-long career with Canada’s leading art institutions makes her one of the most respected curators in Canada. A champion of Canadian artists, Scott curated the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017, featuring an installation by Geoffrey Farmer, and co-curated the Liverpool Biennial in 2018.

In keeping with the goal of acting as a springboard for young talent, Art Toronto is launching Discover, a new section dedicated to exhibitions of work by emerging artists. Presented by principal partner RBC, Discover aims to create opportunities for galleries to showcase the dynamic practices of up-and-coming artists and to introduce them to new audiences.

Art Toronto runs October 26–29 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre located in the heart of downtown.

Learn more at the arttoronto.ca.

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SINGULART turns this model on its head. At this premium online art and furniture shop, the discovery comes first. The search, in comparison, takes no time at all.

SINGULART enables clients to buy artwork and furniture by more than 12,000 artists from 110 different countries. To navigate this massive collection, SINGULART allows potential buyers to customize their search by myriad specifications. First, users identify the medium they’re seeking, whether painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, works on paper, or “miscellaneous.” From there, they can filter by country of origin, price, size, orientation, genre, and even dominant color scheme.

With SINGULART’s broad offerings and powerful search function, customers are all but guaranteed to find a work perfectly suited for their space. The company even handles framing and shipping.

“Our aim is to digitally democratize art,” a SINGULART spokesperson told ARTnews.

SINGULART was launched in 2017 by Véra Kempf, Brice Lecompte, and Denis Fayolle. Though she initially pursued a career in politics at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, Kempf nursed an abiding interest in art: At an early age, she was hugely inspired by the work of photojournalist Robert Capa; and Kempf herself studied central European art. She parlayed her erstwhile dreams of starting an NGO into entrepreneurship, participating in Startup Weekend in 2015. Fayolle, a serial entrepreneur, served as one of the jurors. He and Kempf stayed in touch, then connected with Lecompte, an insatiable traveler who first caught the art bug during a stint in India. Upon returning to France, he met Kempf and also came onboard.

SINGULART was founded on a principle of gender equity that still defines the platform five years on: Forty-nine percent of its participating artists are women, compared to just 11 percent in brick-and-mortar galleries worldwide. Any artist can apply for a SINGULART account, but they must be approved to exhibit on the platform. SINGULART’s sister site, balthasart, which launched in 2021, is more open, allowing any EU-based artist to upload and exhibit their work. Geared toward new buyers and up-and-coming artists, balthasart caps art prices at €1,000.

Both sites operate similarly for artists: Once a work is purchased, the artist sends it to the buyer through SINGULART’s prespecified shipping vendor—usually DHL, UPS, or an art shipping specialist—along with a certificate of authenticity. After the artwork is received by the buyer, the artist gets paid. Of that sum, SINGULART takes a 30 to 50 percent commission of the total price, depending on the artist’s renown.

Many of the artists currently exhibiting on SINGULART’s platform are, indeed, quite well known. Filtering by “Acclaimed Artists” turns up works by the likes of Tomi Ungerer, Richard Caldicott, Canal Cheong Jagerroos, Sol Kjøk, and Hassan Massoudy.

But if that’s not your thing—much less your budget—numerous other filters allow you to seek out up-and-comers: “Invest In” artists, “Emerging Artists,” artists who are “Only on SINGULART” and those who are “New Online.”

Those filters are also applicable to SINGULART’s mouthwatering furniture offerings, which range from light fixtures to functional pieces to decor. Much like SINGULART’s fine-art search function, furniture options can be further filtered by dimensions, material, and style, including midcentury modern, Art Deco, rustic, Scandinavian, industrial, and more.

Whether you’re a first-time buyer or a veteran collector seeking out new artists in your area, SINGULART is a stress-free sandbox to play in. Buying art has never been so easy—or so fun.

Learn more and buy art at singulart.com.

The city’s instantly recognizable character, an alchemical fusion of ineffable mystique and laid-back spunk, stems from a cultural continuum that links Indigenous peoples and European settlers to the multivalent influence of Santa Fe’s newest transplants. Though it remains modest in size, the city has supplemented its ever-ascending cultural cachet over the past several decades with robust dining and shopping scenes, making it a global destination for all.

Today, Santa Fe’s unique cultural offerings are acclaimed worldwide. Money.co.uk named it one of the world’s top cities for art and culture lovers,  alongside art capitals like Florence and Vienna. Encompassing traditional and contemporary, outdoor and indoor, invigoratingly immersive and breathtakingly intimate, Santa Fe is a place with something for everyone, where opportunities for exploration, reflection, and adventure abound.

The beating heart of the city’s art and culture scene is Santa Fe Plaza, a pueblo-style forum in the middle of downtown, crowned by the 17th-century Palace of the Governors. Step beneath the covered portal on the plaza’s north edge and browse scores of craft objects fashioned by Native artisans who set up shop there year-round. Across the street, the state-operated New Mexico Museum of Art holds one of the nation’s most emblematic collections of Southwestern art.

History aficionados will be particularly rewarded by a trip to Museum Hill, on the city’s southeastern side, where visitors can spend hours exploring Santa Fe’s most venerated art museums. Delve into the collections of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art to unearth the region’s past and discover how the creativity of these cultures shaped Santa Fe’s modern-day identity. This is also a timely moment to visit the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, New Mexico’s oldest nonprofit museum, which in 2022 is celebrating its 85th year. 

Another recognizable institution currently marking a major milestone is IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), a bastion for contemporary art made by Native American, First Nations, and other Indigenous creators, and has in its holdings some 9,000 artworks comprising painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, media arts, and more. Both MoCNA and its parent organization, the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA), cap off a year of anniversary celebrations (50 and 60 years, respectively) with open studio and cultural events that allow visitors to explore Indigenous cultures through art.

In 2005, Santa Fe earned the distinction of being designated a UNESCO City of Craft and Folk Art, making it the first UNESCO Creative City in the U.S., thanks in part to vaunted institutions like the Museum of International Folk Art. But the quantity and variety of cultural and fine arts in Santa Fe also makes for bountiful opportunities to reexamine such labels. For example, form & concept, a gallery space that invites guests to deconstruct the siloing of fine art, craft, and design, is championing that notion through its influential programming and artist residencies.

Despite its deep historical roots, Santa Fe is also a hub of contemporary art theory and practice. Its epicenter is the Railyard District, hailed as one of the nation’s best civic art districts and home to the world-famous SITE Santa Fe. This museum’s contemporary architecture, itself sculptural in nature, encloses similarly cutting-edge work in the forms of innovative exhibitions and acclaimed biennials. Around the corner is Art Vault, the city’s newest exhibition space, which specializes in various art forms, including video, algorithmic, and time-based media. Railyard Park, at the center of the district, is the venue for dozens of events each year, from interactive-art festivals to concerts and other performance art events.

The breadth of Santa Fe’s creative trove can’t be contained by indoor spaces alone. In addition to the murals and public art installations that dot the city, local artists and their creations seem to spill from their studios to mingle with visitors on the street. At least, that’s the case on Canyon Road, where more than a hundred adobe and Territorial-style buildings house galleries, boutiques, and restaurants along a walkable half-mile stretch that also hosts some of Santa Fe’s most user-friendly outdoor festivals. Venture a little farther outside of town and you’ll encounter Shidoni Gallery and Sculpture Garden, whose eclectic array of freestanding pieces makes it the premier site for outdoor art in the area. 

The city’s continuity with the desert landscape is never lost on its visitors. Expansive vistas, unique yet subtle color palettes, and enchanting geological forms make the region’s topography an art form in itself. It’s no surprise, then, that artists across epochs and around the globe have drawn inspiration from this environment. The legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of New Mexico’s most famous residents, has left a deep mark on the area; her work threads through a host of regional venues, from the downtown Georgia O’Keeffe Museum to nearby Abiquiú’s Ghost Ranch, the artist’s longtime estate, whose 21,000 acres yielded subjects for some of her most iconic landscape paintings. By contrast, the Santa Fe Botanical Garden is a de facto plein-air gallery that offers verdant sanctuary for introspection amid the dusky hues of the arid terrain.

For thrill seekers and social media mavens, the Instagram-worthy visuals don’t end with desert sunsets and mountaintop views. Experience Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, an interactive-art funhouse that invites guests to duck, crawl, and climb through its 70 rooms of eye-popping installations. Stick around until after dark for live concerts right in the heart of the mind-bending venue, or continue the adventure right outside in the surrounding Siler Rufina Nexus district, formerly an industrial neighborhood that’s now a hotbed for Santa Fe’s artists, performers, craftspeople, and makers of all kinds. 

This wide range of artistic traditions, media, and disciplines, all weaving together in a cogent way, is the key to Santa Fe’s magic. The spirit of the city’s diverse art scene lives in the spaces between dichotomies of old and new, physical and immaterial, dynamic and fixed. At seemingly every turn, there’s a chance to experience the wealth of possibilities found along these axes—and in them, boundless opportunities for discovery. And that’s just what makes The City Different.

Learn more and plan a Santa Fe visit at www.santafe.org.

Similarly, when Guggenheim donated Mural to the University of Iowa in 1951, it signified a kind of arrival for the public university’s already prestigious art department. Mural and the University of Iowa have since become interchangeable symbols of artistic excellence; yet for the past 14 years, Pollock’s magnum opus has been only tenuously tethered to its Midwestern homestead since a devastating flood struck the university’s art museum in 2008 and displaced its collection. While all the works were recovered, they were left without a permanent home, and many of the university’s linchpin holdings—including Mural—were forced to take up temporary residence in galleries and storage units around the world.

But on July 14, 2022, after years of restoration work and tours throughout the United States and Europe, Mural returned to the University of Iowa, kicking off a celebration a decade and a half in the making.

The University of Iowa’s reputation as a world-class enclave for fine art dates back more than a century. The university began offering formal curricula in fine arts in the late 19th century, but planted its stake as a pioneering institution for arts education in the 1920s with the introduction of the “Iowa Idea,” the then-novel concept that artists and art scholars ought to practice alongside one another within an academic context, allowing each to study and be challenged by the other’s work. The university’s School of Art and Art History was founded in 1938 with the Iowa Idea as its guiding principle, and defined a graduate-level art theory and practice program that became the blueprint for the modern master of fine arts degree.

The decades that followed were marked by key acquisitions for the university’s fine art holdings through strategic purchases and gifts, including major works by Joan Miró and Max Beckmann, as well as the first entries to its now-legendary collection of African art. By the time the art museum at the University of Iowa opened in 1969, the foundation had long since been laid for the modern-day Stanley Museum of Art to hold one of the premier university art collections in the United States.

The Stanley’s grand reopening this year has provided an opportunity for the University of Iowa to reassert its excellence and reexamine its values, starting with the building itself. Designed by architecture firm BNIM Iowa, the striking, brick-clad Stanley Museum of Art building integrates gallery and event space with multipurpose education suites. Students learn just steps away from artistic masterpieces, ensuring that the Iowa Idea is built into the museum’s design.

“The architects also understood that, as a teaching museum, the new Stanley would serve as both a library of global visual culture and a laboratory for experiential learning,” said Lauren Lessing, the museum’s director since 2018. Like a library, the museum is intended as an inclusive space. Gallery texts throughout the Stanley are presented in English and Spanish, and museum admission is always free.

Upon entering the Stanley’s first-floor lobby, visitors are greeted by Surrounding (2022), a luminous mural by Nigerian-born painter Odili Donald Odita, who spent part of his childhood in Iowa, in close proximity to the university. Odita’s work, which is the first in a series of temporary installations by Iowa-affiliated artists entitled “Thresholds,” was composed as a response to Pollock’s Mural.

That juxtaposition is a fitting introduction to the Stanley’s inaugural exhibition, “Homecoming,” which opened concurrently with the museum’s dedication on August 26. Supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, “Homecoming” illuminates conversations between artistic traditions across eras and continents through a series of installations that feature more than 600 artworks from the museum’s permanent collection. “This exhibitionoffers fresh views of familiar artworks and recent acquisitions,” Lessing explained. “Our goal is to challenge past interpretations, inspire new questions, and point toward the future growth of the collection.”

Many such familiar artworks are on display in the installation “Generations.” Comprised of six thematic galleries, “Generations” places longtime touchstones of the university’s collection alongside rarely shown and recently acquired works. It also celebrates the university’s venerable history as an American art stronghold with works by notable alumni and faculty, including Grant Wood, Elizabeth Catlett, Oliver Lee Jackson, Hans Breder, Ana Mendieta, and Chunghi Choo.

Another installation, “Expansive Visions,” highlights artists as rulebreakers who have broadened the scope of human expression. Mural is show together with Sam Gilliam’s Red April, as well as works by Hawaiian artists Toshiko Takaezu and Tadashi Sato, Leon Polk Smith, and Philip Guston, underscoring the reciprocity of global cultural influences on abstraction.

“Points of Departure” reconsiders pathways into creation and celebrates undervalued interpretive perspectives. This installation includes Miró’s 1939 A Drop of Dew Falling from the Wing of a Bird Awakens Rosalie Asleep in the Shade of a Cobweb and Beckmann’s 1943 Karneval,as well as works by Lee Krasner, Stuart Davis, and Miriam Schapiro.

The installation “Reencounters” spans two galleries and highlights works of art that stage new encounters, technically and pictorially, by reinventing genres or traditions. Here ceramics from the American Southwest illustrate the cross-generational transfer of knowledge while communing with Ad Reinhardt’s monochrome Abstract Painting. Grant Wood’s Plaid Sweater is flanked by Simone Leigh’s 103 (Face Jug Series) and a poignant 1956 photo by Gordon Parks, illustrating the nuance and complexity of portraiture.

Works in the installation “Human/Nature” consider our relationships to our surroundings and to one another, while those in “Action and Reaction” show the continuing evolution of Contemporary artistic expression.

Homecoming also nods to the university’s reputation as a preeminent site for African art in “Fragments of the Canon: African Art from the Saunders and Stanley Collections.” The installation centers on the contributions of Black Iowan Dr. Meredith Saunders, whose breathtaking personal collection of art purchased during his travels in West Africa now forms a vital segment of the museum’s holdings. While it plays to one of the museum’s strengths, “Fragments” doesn’t shy away from reckoning with the Stanley’s complex legacy by probing questions of narrative agency, value, and authenticity in the field of African art.

Beyond “Fragments” are two additional installations. “Centering on Cloth: The Art of African Textiles” explores the theme of global exchange through textiles that incorporate materials, motifs, and techniques from around the world. And “About Face: African Masks in Iowa” emphasizes historical, material, and artistic relationships in West and Central African masks from the permanent collection, and features new work by contemporary artist Hervé Youmbi.

Just as pieces in the Stanley’s collections have traveled far and wide since the disruptive event that scattered them in 2008, “Homecoming” similarly explores cultural exchange and movement across time and geography. The crux of this is the installation “History Is Always Now,” which expands its focus from African and Asian art objects to include Indigenous art from Oceania in the Americas and positions them alongside contemporary works. Framed in this way, the installation erases divisions perceived through the context of era and cultural origin and invites viewers to view these as relationships of influence—particularly the influence of Black and Indigenous artists.

That this perspective is a core tenet of the reinvigorated Stanley Museum of Art marks an evolutionary turning point for the Iowa Idea—one that expands upon the University of Iowa’s multidisciplinary approach with an additional dimension of intercultural and intertemporal dialogue, offering a wider, kaleidoscopic lens to view the canon even as it unfolds in generations of artists to come.

Visit Stanley Museum of Art to learn more.

With the theme of “Post-human Age,” the call invites creators of any age or nationality to submit works that “explore the relationship between life and nonlife in the future, revisit the positioning of human beings, and respond to the coming era increasingly characterized by pluralism and sophistication.”

Digital artworks submitted by both individuals and teams will be accepted in the forms of media art, including video, animation, and sound art; software, data-driven, and AI art; and interactive art, especially virtual-reality and augmented-reality-based works, among many other forms.

“The most essential qualities that distinguish us from other calls are our core values, great inclusivity, and openness, which are also the values that govern the world of NFTs,” said Sydney Xiong, director and curator of the APENFT Foundation and secretary general of the Art Dream Fund. “We’ve always been committed to nurturing and supporting young artists and creators who are open-minded, daring, imaginative, and able to inject fresh vitality into the art sphere.”

That commitment extends beyond mere financial resources. The foundation pledges to support winners with mentorships in marketing, communications, copyright protection, and legal affairs, signifying an investment in the professional development of talented digital creators as they advance in a cutting-edge and rapidly evolving domain.

The 2022 contest builds upon the success of the Art Dream Fund’s inaugural call in late 2021. The 2021 grand prize winner, selected from more than 500 submissions, was a piece titled Infinite Falling (2021), by WMD Studios. Entries were judged by a panel of NFT experts, including Xiong and Justin Sun, founder of TRON, an open-source blockchain operating system that hosts APENFT and jointly established the Art Dream Fund.

More than just an opportunity to mobilize its resources for championing forward-thinking artists in the NFT space, the 2022 Art Dream Fund marks a milestone for APENFT as it continues to cement its credibility as a major player in both the global art scene and the crypto community.

APENFT was founded in 2021, with the mission of creating a space for world-class artworks on blockchain by registering both physical and digital works as NFTs. The foundation’s collection, valued at over $150 million, includes physical artworks by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Alberto Giacometti, alongside works by pioneering crypto artists like Beeple, Pak, FEWOCiOUS, and Mitchell F. Chan, making APENET the first foundation in the world whose holdings encompass both physical and digital NFT artworks.

APENFT’s marketplace and foundation are now divided into two units, with the foundation focusing on not-for-profit initiatives. Its aim is to use its robust resources as well as its platform as a premier tech-driven art foundation to build a bridge between the traditional art field and the crypto space, thereby elevating the profile of burgeoning NFT artists and their contributions to the medium.

While NFTs are still in their relative infancy, they have already had a seismic impact on the way art is catalogued, valued, and disseminated. The practice of registering physical artworks as NFTs has become an increasingly attractive mode of authenticating ownership, as the unchangeable nature of blockchain technology makes such data impervious to theft or forgery.

This benefits not just collectors, but also creators, as it provides a means for artists to collect royalties on a sale each time a work changes hands. What’s more, the surge of interest in the NFT space from backers of all stripes has also spurred a tidal wave of aesthetic innovation as creators from diverse backgrounds seek to carve creative niches within the crypto space. This influx of talent has introduced novel approaches to overcoming the limitations and exploring the formal uses of the digital medium.

That innovation isn’t confined to the works themselves. NFT artworks have been exhibited in navigable digital galleries in the metaverse that simulate real-world places (think Alaska’s Matanuska Glacier) or are embedded into open-world video games, like Minecraft. Presenting works in this context also invites new modes of engagement between art and viewer, and blurs the lines between fine art and other creative disciplines, including game design.

This is a key feature of the 2022 Art Dream Fund’s open call. Winners will have the opportunity to have their works displayed in The Sandbox, a metaverse game currently in development by APENFT and TRON, which will further democratize the user experience by enabling individuals to not only view but also interact with these and other works.

Interactivity is a salient aspect as well. APENFT has also partnered with AsyncArt, a platform that provides tools to help creators—even those without a coding background—produce visual/audio-interactive NFT artworks; together they will present the Async Visual-Audio Award, which recognizes experimentation and innovation in interactive art, at the 2022 contest.

Says Async Art founder and CEO Conlan Rios, “Through the Async Visual-Audio Award, we invite artists to join us to turn the existing concept of art on its head and pave the way for a whole new category of programmable media. This is just the start, but we believe these simple building blocks will open up a world of possibilities for the creators out there, and we are really excited to see the genius ways people might use it.”

Even as APENFT and the Art Dream Fund continue to pave the way for technological and artistic innovation, they keep one foot firmly planted in the realm of physical art. During the open call period, APENFT will host forums to invite discourse around the NFT’s place in the fine art landscape; principles of NFT sponsorship and collection; and the influence of the metaverse on art creation.

Buy-in from the traditional art world for the Art Dream Fund is evident. The 2022 judging panel is made up of a broad spectrum of experts, from veteran collectors and curators to crypto moguls, such as Rios; Philip Tinari, director of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art; Jonathan Crockett, chairman of Asia at Phillips; art advisor Josh Baer; and collector Sylvain Levy. The nomination and selection panel includes contemporary artist Cheng Ran; Laura Shao, director of international development for the Hive Center for Contemporary Art; art writer Kenny Schachter; Ciara Sun, cofounder of C² Ventures; Claire Huang, Async art advisor and columnist; and Mimi Nguyen, lecturer at the University of the Arts, London.

“In a crowded marketplace, there is never a shortage of talent,” says Baer, “but often the support needed to ensure the artists of today and tomorrow just isn’t there. That is why I’m excited to be part of this initiative. Along with my esteemed arts colleagues, we have a chance to make a significant impact on the careers of the next crop of young great artists, so they’re empowered to do what they do best—make art—and get a foothold in the global art market.”

For registration details on APENFT’s 2022 Open Call, visit artdreamfund.apenft.io.