December 2019 Art News

In case you missed them, here are our ten most popular stories of 2019.
An elderly Frenchwoman had the surprise of her life when she recently found out that a humble religious icon hanging in her kitchen was worth millions of dollars.
What do cataloguers do? What information about photographs is most relevant to record?
An award-winning photographer with decades of experience, Maggie Steber does not spare herself when examining her career.
The first major exhibition on Louisiana landscape painting in more than 40 years, Inventing Acadia explores the rise of landscape painting in Louisiana during the 19th century, revealing its role in creating—and exporting—a new vision for American landscape art that was vastly different than that to be found in the rest of the United States.
The V&A has acquired a previously unknown porcelain sculpture Head of a Laughing Child (about 1746–49) after its chance discovery at a French flea market eight years ago.
Inclusivity and diversity are the bywords at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as it prepares a slate of exhibitions and events throughout 2020 to commemorate 150 years as a public museum.

LOS ANGELES – Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), one of the foremost graphic artists of the 20th century, is celebrated for her affecting portrayals of poverty, injustice, and loss in a society troubled by turbulent societal change and devastated by two world wars. Presenting rare works on paper spanning all five decades of her career, Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics, casts light on the extraordinary technical virtuosity of these powerful images.

Actor and comedian Steve Martin looks at paintings by two early pioneers of American abstraction and takes us on a journey of seeing—shape and color transform into mountains, sky, and water.

Conservators at Northumbria University in the UK recently found a surprise lurking beneath the surface of a 16th-century painting.