Field Notes
Lisa Phillips to Step Down as New Museum Director Following 2026 Reopening
After overseeing the New Museum’s transformation and expansion, Lisa Phillips will retire in April 2026, following the institution’s public reopening.
Field Notes
Close observation from art cities, institutions, and scenes, capturing how exhibitions, practices, and cultural dynamics unfold in real time.
Field Notes
New Museum’s Expanded Home to Open in March 2026, Marking a New Phase on the Bowery
The New Museum will reopen in March 2026 with an OMA-designed expansion that doubles its footprint and reshapes its Bowery campus.
Field Notes
Art Dubai 2026: When Time Becomes Infrastructure
At its twentieth edition, Art Dubai shifts from expansion to orchestration. Rather than staging novelty, the fair coordinates modernism, emergence, and digital practice as a temporal system—testing whether time itself can function as cultural infrastructure.
Law & Politics
Louvre Faces Mounting Strain After a Year of Converging Pressures
After a turbulent year marked by staffing unrest, infrastructure stress and debate over a major renovation plan, the Louvre is navigating intensifying pressure over how it balances long-term ambition with day-to-day operations.
Field Notes
Finland’s Quiet Correction: Helene Schjerfbeck and the Limits of Modernist Narratives
Helene Schjerfbeck’s first major U.S. exhibition at The Met is less a rediscovery than a recalibration—revealing how restraint, persistence, and silence have long been misread in modern art’s dominant narratives.
Field Notes
ESTE ARTE 2026: Designing Intimacy Without Centrality
The 12th edition of ESTE ARTE formalizes a counter-tempo fair format—solo presentations, first-time works, and distributed context—examining whether intimacy can function as repeatable market infrastructure rather than ethos.
Field Notes
London Art Fair 2026: When Centrality Becomes Maintenance
London Art Fair 2026 positions itself less as a discovery engine than as a stabilizing mechanism—synchronizing legacy confidence, institutional authority, and controlled novelty at the start of a year marked by mid-market contraction and calendar congestion in London’s art ecosystem.
Field Notes
ART SG 2026: When Regional Alignment Becomes Structural
How ART SG 2026 consolidates regional visibility, curatorial governance, and market coordination—marking a shift from platform-building to structural alignment within Southeast Asia’s art ecosystem.
Field Notes
Art Basel Qatar: Becoming as Institutional Form
An examination of how Art Basel Qatar operationalizes “Becoming” as an institutional interface—aligning curatorial ambition, public programming, and development partnerships at anchor-fair scale.
Field Notes
The British Museum’s Three-Year Solution to Restitution Gridlock
The British Museum’s long-term loans to Mumbai signal a new soft-power approach to restitution pressures, reframing ownership disputes through time-bound circulation and curatorial partnership.
Field Notes
Who Decides in 2026 When the Director Is Missing
As museums enter 2026, prolonged director vacancies are reshaping governance, redistributing authority, and redefining how risk and decisions are managed.
Field Notes
How UK Artist Training Programs Are Changing Gallery Entry
New UK artist training programs are reshaping early-career routes into galleries and media.