Art World
The Art World in 2025: Our Favorite Stories of the Year
The team looks back on our year in art.
As 2025 comes to a close, the Artnet News staff looks back at the stories that stuck with us. Together, they reflect the full sweep of the art world, and why we love covering it.
Will the Art World Go Post-Woke in 2025?
by Ben Davis, January 2025
Early in the year, Ben Davis tracked a decade of cultural and institutional shifts to show how symbolic, moralized identity politics came to dominate the art world, and how the backlash against them produced strange new “post-woke” alliances. Caught between a narrowing cultural consensus and real demands for inclusion, museums now face an uncertain path forward, with neither liberal virtue-signaling nor anti-woke irony offering much hope for meaningful art.
— Naomi Rea
L.A. Artists Mourn What Was Lost in the Deadly Fires: ‘It Was a Little Paradise’
by Sarah Cascone, January 2025
I took off the first week of the year and came back to the news that the devastating Los Angeles wildfires had wiped out the homes of many artists in Altadena and the Palisades. I spent three days speaking with those who had lost everything in the blaze — their tales of panicked evacuations, of spirited but ultimately ill-fated efforts to fight the fires, and of returned to the wreckage, their lives having gone up in smoke overnight.
The sense of grief and loss was raw and palpable, and many of those who I interviewed — sometimes long after New York business hours, due to the time difference — were in tears. It remains, among the close to 200 articles I wrote this year, the one I am most proud of and that I feel is the most impactful.
— Sarah Cascone
This Hockney Flopped 40 Years Ago. Now Its Consignors Will Reap a 7,000 Percent Return
by Katya Kazakina, November 2025
It’s not every day you get an art-market tale with all the trimmings: a spectacular flop turned juicy $40 million comeback, high-society scandal, and a dealer whose life reads like a crime thriller. In this art-world noir, Art Detective Katya Kazakina traces the wild journey of David Hockney’s double portrait of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, from its chilly warehouse purgatory in 1985 to the rostrum at Christie’s in 2025. It’s all waiting for you here.
— Naomi Rea
Richard Prince’s Wily 7-Hour ‘Deposition’ Video Is an Instant Classic
by Andrew Russeth, August 2025
Just exactly how does one turn a sworn deposition into a seven-hour conceptual artwork? Ask Richard Prince. Andrew Russeth captures the normally-elusive artist cornered in a courtroom beartrap. Under oath, with millions at stake, Prince is evasive, philosophical, teasing, and oddly charming, dropping iconic lines (“Lawrence?”) while raising big questions about the purpose of art. An instant classic, as Russeth dubs it.
— N.R.
Friedrich Kunath on the Futility of Painting: ‘When You Deal With Beauty, You Can Only Lose’
by Kate Brown, November 2025
Kate Brown proves once again that she’s something of a melancholic artist whisperer (remember her rare, vulnerable Thomas Houseago profile?). This time, our attention is turned to Friedrich Kunath on the eve of his buzzy New York debut at Pace, capturing everything from his poetic friendship with tennis pro Reilly Opelka to his belief that “when you deal with beauty, you can only lose.” Notably, she dares venture where few artist profiles go, and gets the skinny on his prices.
— N.R.
Forget Blue-Chip Art. It’s a ‘Red-Chip’ Art World Now
by Annie Armstrong, March 2025
Annie Armstrong sketches out this new category of art powered by hype cycles and crypto gains rather than old school institutional approval. While poking fun at some of the questionable choices of “red chip” collectors, she closes on a serious warning about the generational shift we are living through, and how the traditional art world may need the red chippers more than they need it. As a bonus, you can hear her talk about it on the podcast.
— N.R.
The Great Enslurrification of Culture
by Ben Davis, August 2025
Ben Davis’s cultural criticism manages to define a vibe or a condition that I am feeling or noticing, but which I am not sure how to describe. In a recent essay this summer, he summarized our slow but sure slip into a post-literate media landscape, dubbing it the great enslurrification. Journalists, whose art is the written word, making video reels, reclusive painters working as influencers, the need for everything to be everywhere all at once, in a multimedia form. Davis describes this and his unease about the shift, “the sense of so much stuff straining to translate itself into a form that isn’t comfortable or appropriate for what it’s trying to do.” It is a keen defense of effortful writing and is a model of that, too.
— Kate Brown
These Artists Are the Biggest at U.S. Museums Right Now
by Ben Davis, Four Times a Year
Many of my favorite stories from 2025 have already been blurbed by colleagues, so I will add that I always enjoy reading Ben Davis’s quarterly breakdown of the artists who are most visible at museums in the United States. Quite often, the names surprise me, and I’m reminded that this is a very big country and that there are many different art worlds. Here’s Ben’s most recent edition, from September.
— Andrew Russeth
Art World Infamy
by Eileen Kinsella and Sonia Manalili, October 2025
I loved the thrilling podcast miniseries that Eileen Kinsella and Sonia Manalili created on the activities of convicted Inigo Philbrick, which cruised nimbly through high-stakes auctions in New York, the backrooms of galleries in London and Miami, and the tranquil shores of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. My only complaint is that it had to end.
— A.R.
Bordercore: Why Frames Became the New Frontier in Contemporary Art
by Katie White, April 2025
CARO, Is It the Same For You?. Courtesy of the artist.
The term “bordercore” has been more useful than I would have estimated since Katie White published her piece on the phenomenon this spring. She ties the term to a recent trend she had noticed of artists taking great pains to create frames that are as much a piece of the art as what they hold — but Katie also went historical, taking a look at how frames came to look the way they do. “If for previous generations, the frame was a liability that could detract from the cerebral, intellectual, and aesthetic experience of the canvas,” she writes, “artists today are creating frames that attempt to pull us back into bodily reality, a haptic experience of art.”
-Annie Armstrong
Why Is Small Art So Big Right Now?
by Kate Brown, January 2025
Much like the “lipstick index,” which suggests that sales of small luxuries like lipstick rise during economic downturns, Kate Brown’s fun investigation into small artworks reveals a correlation between the number of petite paintings on offer and broader art market contraction. Sure, the market may be in a slightly better place at the end of this year than it was at the beginning, but I’m still seeing a lot of small art around, which tells me everything I need to know.
— Margaret Carrigan
What Exactly Are Midwest Grottoes? The Folk Art Tradition Gets a Closer Look
by Katie White, August 2025
I would read Katie White’s grocery list. It is one of the joys of my career that I get paid to read her thoughtful, funny, smart-as-hell insights and musings on art and artists. If you haven’t read one of her deep-dives into famous works of art history, please, I urge you to do so. This particular story was prompted by a show at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, titled “A Beautiful Experience: The Midwest Grotto Tradition” (on view through May 10, 2026).
It delves into the history of Midwest grottoes, multimedia assemblages that sprang up in the early 21st century and functioned, in Katie’s words, as “pilgrimage site, folk art, immigrant invention, patriotic expression, roadside attraction, and celebration of local geology.” The outdoor sculptures are funky and beautiful, and a marvel of folk art. We published this story back in August, and I loved it then. But a few weeks ago I was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pausing on an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar city after my morning run, and looked up to see a grotto! It was built into a concrete wall on the side of the road, festooned with bits of cracked mirror and shells, featuring abstracted Native American figurines and bits of green and red tile surrounding a hubcap. It was glorious, and I texted Katie immediately.
— Caroline Goldstein
How to Make the Art Industry More Equitable for Women
by Sarah Cascone, March 2025
Buckle up for some hard truths in this in-depth report, which is the result of Artnet’s inaugural Hardwiring Change survey, produced in partnership with the Association of Women in the Arts. The findings, based on responses from more than 2,000 industry professionals globally, show that despite progress, women in the art world still face significant barriers, with pay inequity, work-life balance, and lack of mentorship emerging as top concerns in Sarah Cascone’s incisive write-up. The work continues: Our second Hardwiring Change survey launches in early 2026 — stay tuned.
— Margaret Carrigan
Inside the Brave New World of Quantum Art: ‘Consciousness Is Too Limited’
by Min Chen, September 2025
Earlier this year, I couldn’t have told you what quantum art is. I’d still struggle to now, but Min Chen’s richly reported feature on the artists working in this vein was an immeasurably valuable education for me. She effortlessly explains how dense concepts like string theory and entanglement merge with creative practices, and it made me hungry to know and see more. “In a world of binaries and prescriptions, quantum art insists on an irreducible strangeness,” Chen writes. “It’s a radical claim for wonder.” Consider me radicalized.
— Margaret C.
Storied L.A. Dealer Jeff Poe on Where the Art Industry Went Wrong — And His Secret New Venture
by Annie Armstrong, August 2025
After Brian Boucher’s deep dive into the sudden summer closure of Blum gallery, I was delighted to read Annie Armstrong’s fascinating talk with the gallery’s onetime co-founder, Jeff Poe, who was one of the pioneers of the L.A. art scene, and had departed from what was formerly Blum and Poe two years earlier.
I loved hearing about Poe’s earlier immersion in the music scene — including addressing the rumor that he was a member of Jane’s Addiction, to his thoughtful, hands-on approach to the art business, and thoughts on how and why it got too unwieldy.
Sticking with me is his wistful recollection of a ritual practice on his way home to Malibu after dinners and events: “I’d pull into the parking lot, open [up the gallery], turn on the lights, and walk through shows. Alone at midnight. Total silence. Just me and the artwork. Feeling like a badass but humbled too. Couldn’t believe I’d done it. Have a nightcap in the loggia. I miss that the most.”
— Eileen Kinsella
She Made History at MoMA and the Met. At 85, Barbara Chase-Riboud Isn’t Slowing Down
by William Van Meter, May 2025
I have an alternative title for my colleague Bill van Meter’s sprawling profile of the pioneering and endlessly cool Barbara Chase-Riboud. I call it “The Artist Who Should Be the Most Famous Woman in America.” That’s the case Bill seems to make as he traces the artist’s career over more than half a century. We start with her youthful days at the American Academy in Rome and a fateful trip she made to Egypt, on a dare, at age 19, that would set her on a path toward the monumental and towering bronze sculptures for which she is famed.
Then we learn of some other career highlights. In 1955, she became the first Black woman to have her work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. In 1999, she became the first living woman to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This all leads up to the artist, now in her mid-80s, having a spate of exhibitions in Paris. The profile is peppered with Chase-Riboud’s insights and wit. I was late, like many others, to discover her work, and was glad to read a story that brought her so clearly into focus.
— Katie White
The Secrets Behind the Small Museums That Start Big Trends
by Jo Lawson-Tancred, January 2025
Jo Lawson-Tancred sheds a rare light on the growing number of smaller museums that — even in the absence of big budgets and international prestige — play an outsized role in spotlighting under-recognized artists and fostering new curatorial strategies. “Where they lead,” she writes, “the Tates and MoMAs of the world will eventually follow.”
Jo thoughtfully unpacks how venues, from London’s Studio Voltaire to Hong Kong’s Para Site, create space for risk-taking, artist-centered approaches, and bold installations. Their projects, though not without pressures and challenges, arrive with a refreshing innovation that, as one museum director put it, sets “so many positive things in motion.”
— Min Chen
Meet the Radical Designer Who Transformed the 1980s East Village Art Scene — And Left Too Soon
by William Van Meter, March 2025
William Van Meter lands his acute, sensitive eye on Dan Friedman, a designer who spent the 1980s transforming everyday objects and environments into technicolor works of art, before leaving too soon. The upshot is an in-depth survey of Friedman’s biography and practice, his restless mind and his maximalist artworks that envisioned design as a transformative force in daily life. He also duly captures the zing and zip of downtown New York — Warhol and Haring show up, as does Friedman’s closest collaborator Tseng Kwong Chi — that admittedly “intensified” the artist’s palate.
— Min C.
The Next Art-World Destination: Central Asia
by Vivienne Chow, September 2025
The more we delve into Asia, the clearer it becomes: this is an extraordinarily diverse and geopolitically intricate region. Over the past two years of working on The Asia Pivot, our curiosity has only deepened.
I truly like Vivienne Chow’s report on Central Asia. “Central Asia” used to be a relatively unfamiliar term in the contemporary art world, yet this year it surged into global focus. From the well-received and widely attended Bukhara Biennale in Uzbekistan to the growing momentum of private initiatives in Kazakhstan, such as the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture and the Almaty Museum of Arts, this region is fast becoming a site of cultural significance. Once the heart of the Silk Road and part of the Soviet Union, Central Asia has always been a crossroads of ideas and exchange. This article is just the beginning of what will likely be a long-overdue wave of attention.
— Cathy Fan
China’s Billionaire Museums Get a Harsh Reality Check
by Cathy Fan, September 2025
This wasn’t a novel topic, but reporting it deepened my understanding of the symbiotic dynamics shaping China’s private institutions. What surprised me was the article’s ripple effect. It sparked lively discussion on Chinese social media, several letters to the editor, and led to an invitation to speak on the ArtTactic podcast, where I explored shifts from institutional models to more agile and smaller spaces. The upcoming spring, I’ll also be guest lecturing on the topic in a New York university’s arts management course. I’m glad this is a story that continues to evolve, and one we can watch unfold in real time.
— C.F.
The Art Market Has Lost Its Grip on Pricing. Now What?
by Naomi Rea, June 2025
I’m lucky enough to speak often with Naomi about the art world and I always learn a lot. Not only useful facts, but about how to better understand certain dynamics or trends, and how to see the truth behind PR spin. So when she publishes an art market analysis, I read it.
This article, a consideration of the mood in the market heading into Art Basel in June, is a masterclass in weaving together data, anecdotes, and expert comment, as well as a sweeping glance at the historical factors that have led us up to this point. Things in the market may be looking up in recent months, but let’s not look away from the problems identified in this sage analysis of rampant price inflation.
— Jo Lawson-Tancred
Why Is Art History So Full of Miserable Brides?
by Annikka Olsen, April 2025
Historical artworks often resonate anew with millennial and Gen Z audiences, as evidenced by their frequent proliferation across social media as “memes.” Annikka expertly takes one such fascination with paintings of dejected brides and offers a very readable insight into the evolution of marriage for love, which, in the 19th century, was a relatively new concept.
One example is The Unequal Marriage (1862) by Russian artist Vasili Pukirev, in which a young woman must marry an aged suitor. One could happily get lost in the theatre of expressions on the crowd behind, but Annikka notes that one man resembles Pukirev. Could the painting be an autobiographical nod to his own romantic misfortune, which left him longing for a woman he was unable to to provide for? Instead, she was forced into a marriage that would secure her future. The other examples are equally sad but irresistible.
— J.L-T.
How Museums Are Future-Proofing Their Finances
by Margaret Carrigan, September 2025
As our news editor, Maggie keeps a close eye on the headlines everyday. So who better to offer up a comprehensive deep dive into this increasingly fraught period for museums around the world? Her clarifying lens on a very complicated picture gives us a useful rundown of major recent developments in museum fundraising, from the adoption of U.S.-style techniques like endowment funds in Europe to emerging strategies for feting next-gen donors. But what makes the article so good is her analysis of the broader ethical quandaries that institutions must face. “What’s at stake isn’t just about money; it’s about value: who defines it, who benefits from it, and how it’s exchanged,” she writes.
— J.L-T.
Why Corporate Sponsorship Is Getting Riskier for Museums
by Vivienne Chow, September 23
As an art journalist who covers the money side of the business, I have long been hearing about the challenges of fundraising for museums. The opportunity to dig into this further came when we planned for our “Museums in Crisis” series. For this story, I did a lot of research into the history of corporate sponsorships on both sides of the pond. Museums are racing to find new financial backing against the backdrop of dwindling public funding, but they are finding corporate sponsorships are not necessarily the safest bet. The industry or business they are involved in may be viewed favorably today, but they could be considered immoral tomorrow as social mores evolve, as we have seen with tobacco and fossil fuels. So what’s next for museums? It’s a topic that deserves more attention.
— Vivienne Chow
Decoding the Iconic Cover of The Great Gatsby
by Katie White, August 2025
I’ve always enjoyed Artnet News’s art history stories and Katie White’s fascinating piece on Francis Cugat’s Celestial Eyes is one of them. The haunting face that hovers over a glittering city has become inseparable fromThe Great Gatsby, one of my favorite stories of all time, yet its origins remain little known.
In this insightful piece, Katie unpacks the rich narrative behind the novel’s iconic 1925 dust-jacket, revealing how Cugat’s enigmatic image didn’t just adorn the book but actively shaped Fitzgerald’s storytelling. Katie traces how Cugat created the iconic image based on the passages from Fitzgerald’s incomplete manuscript, and how the author subsequently wrote Cugat’s disembodied eyes, luminous tears, and art-deco cityscape into the final draft. Those celestial eyes distill the novel’s core tensions: beauty veiled in sorrow, desire clouded by illusion, and the shimmering promises of the Jazz Age.
– V.C.
The Storm Hits the Art Market — Who’s Getting Swept Away?
by Katya Kazakina, September 2025
Katya’s cover story for our mid-year intelligence report ruffled feathers for piling onto the art market’s “doom and gloom” outlook in 2025, yet the situation she reported only become clearer as the year went on. Looking back, the story feels level-headed, and its closing quote captured the sense of renewal we are feeling at the end of a difficult year. It was Clearing founder Olivier Babin, himself a casualty of this tempest, who said: “Dinosaurs were wiped out. That was the rise of the mammals.”
— Naomi Rea
Why Don’t More People Know Colette, the Shape-Shifting Punk Victorian Queen of 20th-Century Art?
by Katie White, February 2025
Katie White is a champion of overlooked and under appreciated artists from across art history. And while she wrote about an incredible number of artists finally getting their due this year (from forgotten Old Master Michaelina Wautier to pioneering abstractionist Gertrude Greene, and, of course, Scissors Minerva), this spotlight on Colette was one of the most dazzling. A name known widely by art world insiders, Colette Lumiere has gone severely under recognized as a groundbreaking creator whose influence and aesthetic can be traced well outside the art world alone. An artist with a practice is not easily categorized, this deep dive into Colette and her work reveals not only her historical relevance, but continued significance today.
-Annikka Olsen
How Trump Has Brought the Art Market to the Brink of ‘Paralysis’
by Eileen Kinsella, April 2025
Tariffs have been one of the top hot-button issues this year — and whether by design or not one of the most confusing, particularly in the ways they impact the art world. Enter Kinsella’s comprehensive yet easily comprehensible breakdown of the effects of tariffs on the art market. Going through data, policy, and outcomes on a granular level such as deals changing or falling through and what everyone from fair organizers to art shippers are doing to navigate the uncertainty offered an invaluable glimpse into not only the current market climate but what might come.
