Benjamin Sutton

Benjamin Sutton is the Editor, Americas of The Art Newspaper.

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A critical mass of galleries from across Africa are participating in The Armory Show

This year's edition includes galleries with spaces in Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa

Obamas’ White House portraits unveiled

Commissioned while Obama was still in office, the portraits would traditionally have been unveiled during the Trump administration, but no such ceremony was ever organised

Brazil turns 200—and its National Museum rises from the ashes

Plus, the £50m Joshua Reynolds painting and Michael Heizer’s City

Hosted by Ben Luke and Benjamin Sutton. With guest speaker Martin Bailey. Produced by David. Clack, Aimee Dawson and Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

Banksy mural, and the Los Angeles building he painted it on, head to auction

The iconic mural of a girl on a swing, and the storied building on which it was painted, are expected to bring between $16m and $30m

Former trustees of Florida museum claim they were kept unaware of FBI’s interest in allegedly fake Basquiats

Trustees who say they were summarily dismissed over email as retaliation claim that the board chair concealed information about an FBI subpoena months before the Basquiat exhibition opened

Artist Ebony G. Patterson will co-curate next edition of New Orleans’s Prospect triennial

Patterson, whose work was featured in the triennial’s third edition in 2014-15, will co-curate the sixth edition with Miranda Lash

Meta puts analogue art front and centre in sprawling new Manhattan office

The tech giant’s new complex inside the historic Farley Building features site-specific commissions by Baseera Khan, Timur Si-Qin, Liz Collins, Matthew Kirk, and Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard

Donald Trump’s political action committee gives Smithsonian $650,000 to pay for presidential portrait commission

The funds will cover nearly the entire cost of commissioning official portraits of the former president and former first lady Melania Trump for the National Portrait Gallery

Biden appoints archaeologists, museum leaders and Acquavella Galleries director to US committee advising on imports of cultural property

The Cultural Property Advisory Committee guides the US Department of State on import restrictions for artefacts and emergency actions related to cultural property

‘This show was in some way my own wake’: Solange Knowles on her Venice Biennale performance, the focus of a new book

The artist, musician and performer discusses ‘In Past Pupils and Smiles’, a performance she staged in Venice in 2019 that is chronicled in a new book

From the archive | Michael Heizer’s City, a vast art project in the Nevada desert 50 years in the making finally opens to the public

The artist’s sprawling gesamtkunstwerk has been described as the largest contemporary artwork on earth, evoking the scale of Mesoamerican cities and Indigenous burial mounds

Outcry over Mexico City’s plan to replace guerrilla ‘anti-monument’ to victims of gender violence with replica of pre-hispanic statue

After an earlier plan for a new sculpture by artist Pedro Reyes was roundly rejected, the municipal government said it had received activists’ blessing to replace the protest monument that stood in its place

Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture receives $8m in state funding for major renovation

The centre, whose art collection is one of the richest in historic and Modern Black art, will put the state funds toward major improvements to its building

Thermal glass and solar power: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation gives $3m to help US art organisations reduce their emissions

The new grants, to art museums, schools and nonprofits in 19 states, represent the second major round of support under the foundation’s Frankenthaler Climate Initiative

US President Biden names influential museum leaders to Institute of Museum and Library Services advisory board

The directors of the Parrish Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art and Cincinnati Art Museum are among those Biden has named to the National Museum and Library Services Board

Six must-see exhibitions on view in the Hamptons

As the Art Market Hamptons fair returns to Water Mill, these are the must-see shows on the east end of Long Island

Laura Poitras documentary on Nan Goldin’s campaign against the Sacklers to show at New York Film Festival

The film, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”, chronicles Goldin’s life, career and activism around the opioid crisis

Maya Lin to create sculptural fountain for the Obama Presidential Center

The sculpture, “Seeing Through the Universe”, will be installed on the centre’s grounds in an area honouring Barack Obama’s mother

Expo Chicago picks Americas Society and Macba curators to organise fair's special sections in 2023

Museu d'art contemporani de Barcelona curator Claudia Segura and Americas Society director Aimé Iglesias Lukin will oversee the fair’s large-scale art and emerging gallery programmes, respectively

Chicago’s ten-ton Jean Dubuffet sculpture will be relocated after Google buys building where it has long stood

The tech giant is moving into the Thompson Center, forcing its biggest and oldest tenant—a 29ft-tall Dubuffet—to go elsewhere

From Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s doomed Colorado projects to Precious Okoyomon’s utopian garden, Aspen Art Week's must-see exhibitions

The event coincides with the second edition of the Intersect Aspen art fair and the Aspen Art Museum’s annual ArtCrush benefit auction

Museum devoted to Jean Paul Riopelle planned for remote Quebec island

The museum, proposed by the artist’s widow, would cost $3.3m and is to be situated on scenic island in the St. Lawrence river

Audubon Society chapter drops John James Audubon’s name due to the artist’s racist actions and beliefs

The Seattle chapter of the environmental organisation is the first to do away with Audubon’s name entirely amid a nationwide reckoning with his legacy

Some of the must-see exhibitions during Upstate Art Weekend in New York

The third annual iteration of the Hudson Valley arts festival features its biggest roster yet, with nearly 150 events and exhibitions

Facing mounting financial losses, Santa Barbara’s Museum of Contemporary Art will close permanently

The museum’s longstanding struggles to balance its books were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic

Basquiat expert denies she authenticated disputed paintings the FBI seized from Florida museum

Jordana Moore Saggese, a professor at the University of Maryland, wrote in a statement that her evaluation of the discredited works mischaracterised by the Orlando Museum of Art exhibition organisers

Hito Steyerl withdraws from Documenta 15 amid antisemitism scandal

The influential German artist cited the handling of antisemitism charges and staff working conditions among the reasons for her decision

Artists and writers call on Joe Biden to denounce Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses in meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed

The US president will travel to the oil-rich nation he once labelled a “pariah” and meet with its leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Orlando Museum of Art director fired after FBI raids Basquiat exhibition

The museum’s board removed Aaron De Groft amid a widening scandal over issues of authenticity and reports of ‘inappropriate correspondence’

Former Trump lawyer's contemporary art collection makes star turn in 6 January committee hearings

Eric Herschmann, a former senior advisor to Donald Trump who represented him in his first impeachment trial, displays works by Rob Pruitt and others during committee testimony