The Defining Art Events Of 2024

Several Injured in PST ART Fireworks Show in LA

For the latest edition of PST ART (né Pacific Standard Time), the Getty Foundation wanted to launch its sprawling, $20 million exhibition initiative at some 70 museums and art spaces in Southern California with a bang. The Foundation commissioned artist Cai Guo-Qiang to create a fireworks display, titled WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART. There’s some logic to this thinking: this year’s PST ART carries the title “Art & Science Collide” and Cai, who famously produced a fireworks show for the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, has pushed this pyrotechnic science into the realm of high art.

On September 15, some 4,000 people packed into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to witness Cai’s latest. During the 30-minute display, residents around Exposition Park and the surrounding neighborhoods, including students at the University of Southern California, reported being terrified by the blasts from the show and the columns of smoke they saw, unaware it was part of a performance. Inside the coliseum, the spent fireworks and their by-products rained down on attendees, injuring many. (The exact number and the extent of their injuries is unclear, though some did require first aid.) What was supposed to be a celebratory launch ended with the Getty apologizing for the performance, issuing a statement that read, “we are aware and very much regret that some neighbors and attendees were disturbed by the sound and smoke that marked this kick-off event.” —Maximilíano Duron

Controversy Over an Artwork about a Sex Worker Roils Mexico City

In the second of two scandals this year involving an artwork in a Mexico City museum, the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) came under fire in October for exhibiting an Ana Gallardo piece made in homage to an elderly sex worker (the other involved a Nina Beier performance at Museo Tamayo featuring live dogs). The Gallardo piece was derided as misogynistic because it used words like whore and because Casa Xochiquetzal, a Mexico City shelter for elderly sex workers that Gallardo had visited, accused the artist of lying about the origins of the work. While the museum initially defended Gallardo’s piece on the basis of artistic freedom, MUAC ultimately backtracked after its facade was graffitied with messages calling on the institution to respect sex workers. MUAC temporarily closed the exhibition, then pulled the artwork. The exceedingly messy situation showed, if nothing else, that the feedback loop of social media and the arts still has the power to electrify. —Harrison Jacobs

Australian Billionaire Not Happy with Her Close-Up

Who says art doesn’t hurt? This past May, billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, the wealthiest person in Australia, sparked controversy when she asked the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) to remove an unflattering portrait of her from public view.

The painting was by Vincent Namatjira, a well-known and beloved Aboriginal artist, and the first Indigenous artist to win the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture, in 2020. The work in question depicts Rinehart with exaggerated folds on her chin and neck, her mouth drawn down in a frown, a dissatisfied look offset by rosy pink cheeks. It is one of roughly two dozen portraits featured in Namatjira’s retrospective, which traveled from the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide.

A major donor to the NGA, Rinehart gifted a different portrait of herself that she found more flattering. The museum ultimately declined to take the Namatjira portrait down, and Rinehart’s reaction was perceived by some as an example of a billionaire’s failure to understand the purpose of such art. —Francesca Aton

Banksy Turns Prolific and Takes London by Storm

Banksy turned unexpectedly prolific this year, when, over nine consecutive nights, the elusive street artist unveiled a series of wildlife-themed murals across London. Each day, a new stencil appeared, all depicting animals such as elephants, monkeys, goats, and fish. The works were strategically placed on rooftops, infrastructure, and other locations—one mural humorously showed an animal interacting with a car. Banksy claimed responsibility for the pieces through Instagram posts, but offered no explanation for their meaning. Without direct insight from him, his intended meaning remains a mystery. Viewers were left to appreciate and interpret these widely discussed works on their own, and that was probably what Banksy wanted all along. —Daniel Cassady

Maurizio Cattelan’s Banana Sells for $6.24 M. … to a Crypto Billionaire

The art market has remained shaky all year, but that didn’t stop Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic 2019 work Comedian from going, well, bananas. The infamous banana duct-taped to a wall sold at the Sotheby’s New York’s Now and Contemporary evening sale in November for a whopping $6.24 million. The winner was Chinese-born New York–based billionaire entrepreneur Justin Sun, who paid for the banana with the cryptocurrency he created, TRON, in a clever bit of marketing. Among the underbidders were none other than digital art collectors Ryan Zurrer and Cozomo de’ Medici, who said they had wanted to exhibit the fruit through a new “creative cryptonative mechanism.” The NFT market may still be in the tank, but cryptocurrency is officially back, fueled by hopes of a crypto-aligned Trump administration (Bitcoin is currently trading in the ballpark of $100,000 per token). It only makes sense Cattelan’s highly conceptual is-it-art troll would find fans among the maligned sect of crypto enthusiasts. Prepare yourself for a fresh deluge of crypto nonsense in 2025 if prices continue to go to the moon, as the saying goes. —Harrison Jacobs

Storm King Goes Brat

Storm King Art Center, the serene outdoor sculpture park in Upstate New York, hosted a few hundred Brats this past October. Charli XCX, fresh off a chart-topping album that had America declaring the season Brat summer, held a pop-up listening party there for the remix album.

With the event announced to her 6.4 million followers only days prior, Charli gifted tickets to around 1,000 of the 26,000 fans who RSVP’d. The chosen few boarded the Metro-North train out of Grand Central Terminal on the crisp afternoon of October 10. The day had the logistical acuity of a field trip (Storm King members shepherded ticketholders from the train to shuttle buses) and the illegal substances of a music festival.

It was an incongruous sight, one never visited upon the park in its 64-year history: a lime-green and glitter-dusted crowd pressed against an ad-hoc stage erected between two colossal sculptures, cracking the quiet with cheers and chatter, cutting the scent of maple trees with a particularly acrid breeze. And atop the stage was Charli, framed by a tall, two-sided art installation wrapped in green vinyl and stamped with the Brat track names. It was a quick performance—less than an hour—but the storied site would never be the same. —Tessa Solomon

Museums Everywhere Celebrated Impressionism and Surrealism

Impressionism and Surrealism, two of the most famous art movements of the past two centuries, respectively turned 150 and 100 this year, and big institutions feted in high style. The Musée d’Orsay commemorated the occasion with the exhibition “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism,” which recently made its way to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Centre Pompidou mounted a Surrealism blockbuster with a checklist numbering several hundred works. Those were but two of many exhibitions mounted to mark the moment, which will continue well beyond the end of 2024. The Pompidou show, for example, will travel the world through 2026, when it visits the Philadelphia Museum of Art. —Francesca Aton

New York’s Noguchi Museum Fires Three Workers Who Wore Keffiyehs

The Noguchi Museum is known as one of New York’s most tranquil museums, though this summer, that changed when it became the subject of embittered protest following the firing of three employees who had worn keffiyehs, garments symbolic of Palestinian culture. A ban on “clothes or accessories that display political messages, slogans, or symbols” had been put in place at the institution by director Amy Hau, even though well over half the workers said in a petition that they did not support the policy. The anger only grew once news of the firings hit the press.

Suddenly, the museum was denounced by artists, art workers, and Queens residents. Staff at the Noguchi Museum publicly claimed that the decision would alienate the sizable Arab American community in Queens, and some even walked off the job one day in protest. And Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, withdrew her acceptance of the 2024 Isamu Noguchi Award in solidarity with the protesters.

This was not the only New York museum that faced scrutiny over how it had responded to a person wearing a keffiyeh within its walls. Two visitors to the Museum of Modern Art said they had been denied entry for bringing in a keffiyeh, something for which the institution later apologized. But the Noguchi Museum’s response was markedly different—Hau, the director, kept firm on her decision. Once Lahiri pulled out of the event where she was to accept the institution’s award, Hau said that she and museum leadership “understand that this policy may or may not align with everyone’s views.” —Tessa Solomon

Philadelphia’s University of the Arts Closes After 148 Years

Founded in 1876, UArts has long been considered one of the top art schools in the United States, with a list of alumni that includes Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Charles Sheeler, Irving Penn, Alex Da Corte, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, and Deborah Willis. Its storied lineage officially came to an end this past summer, when the school made the surprise announcement that it would shutter permanently, having recently lost accreditation with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. “With a cash position that has steadily weakened, we could not cover significant, unanticipated expenses,” the school said of the decision, which left students scrambling to transfer elsewhere. The closure underlined the financial fragility of art schools in this country, where the education needed to become a professional artist is growing harder to obtain. —Francesca Aton

Sotheby’s, Christie’s Christen Major New Headquarters in Hong Kong

As the art market underwent a global correction, auction houses looked to Asia to expand their business.

Sotheby’s launched its multiuse Maison space in Hong Kong’s business district, in July, following the unveiling of its Shanghai HQ last year. The 24,000-square-foot, two-floor site in Hong Kong’s Landmark Chater building was inaugurated July 27 with two non-selling shows. The Maison is dedicated to exhibitions, retail, programming, and—as Sotheby’s Asia chairman Nicolas Chow put it—“aesthetic experiences for clients and the wider community.”

Then, a couple of months later, Christie’s went bigger, opening a 50,000-square-foot, three-story space of its own in Hong Kong in the new Zara Hadid Architects–designed Henderson tower. The house held its first sale there September 26. Asked about the risks of expanding in Asia amid art market uncertainty, Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti said “a moment where things are more difficult is precisely when you have to make a statement.”

“It’s important for our clients, it’s extremely important for the stakeholders, for the cultural community, for our staff as well to feel that we are here to stay. We’re ambitious,” he added.

As a recent joint report by Art Basel and UBS highlighted, China has led the world in art spending over the last 18 months. It’s therefore no surprise the big houses are looking to consolidate their position nearby. —George Nelson

OpenAI Launches a Text-to-Video Generator, Sora

It’s not a stretch to say that this year has been an inflection point in the development of AI. While ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E were launched in 2022, this year has seen a quantum leap in the sophistication and scale of AI platforms. The biggest jump? The unveiling of text-to-video generators, including OpenAI’s Sora in February. Competing AI companies Runway, Pika, Luma, and Stability AI also demoed or launched their own video generators this year. And while the general public only received access this month, an ever-expanding roster of artists, creatives, and—gulp—corporations have already put the tools to use. The jury is out on the ultimate effect on our visual culture, but already, AI art produced by these generators is seeping out. And that’s without even getting into increasingly sophisticated and bespoke AI art showing up in places like MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and elsewhere. —Harrison Jacobs

Sotheby’s Gets $1 Billion Shot in the Arm from the UAE

Late this past October, Sotheby’s completed a deal with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and investment company, ADQ, for a minority stake in the auction house, alongside the family of billionaire owner Patrick Drahi. The agreement, announced this summer, involved the purchase of newly issued shares valued at $1 billion. While the terms of the deal and Sotheby’s updated valuation remain undisclosed, $800 million of the capital will be used to reduce the company’s $1.65 billion long-term debt. The remaining funds are allocated to support expansion in real estate, market development, and new revenue streams, including a stronger presence in the Middle East.

Sotheby’s, like rival Christie’s, has faced challenges, with auction sales down 25 percent in the first half of 2024 and core earnings falling 88 percent compared to the prior year. In June, S&P Global Ratings downgraded Sotheby’s credit to B-, a speculative grade carrying a higher degree of risk for investors. Despite these setbacks, the house is investing heavily in new ventures, such as opening headquarters in Paris and a flagship Maison in Hong Kong, and is expected to finalize the purchase of the Breuer building in New York by year-end. The agreement grants ADQ three board seats and represents the largest art market investment since Drahi’s $3.7 billion acquisition of Sotheby’s in 2019.

The deal was just another example of the growing power of Gulf money in the art world. Not long after, rumors started flying that Art Basel was deep in negotiations to take over Abu Dhabi Art in exchange for a $20 million investment. That rumored deal has yet to be realized. —Daniel Cassady

Christie’s Is Hacked Ahead of May Sales

Withering reports about the state of the art market are typically the biggest hitch for auction houses in the run-up to the May auctions in New York, but Christie’s this time was forced to weather a different kind of threat: a cyberattack that brought down its website. Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti tried to minimize the situation, describing it as a “technology security incident.” But it became difficult to ignore once the cyber-extortionist group RansomHub claimed responsibility for the sabotage, and said it had gained access to “sensitive personal information” of some 500,000 clients. The sales ultimately took place as planned, the website went live again 10 days later, and the stolen data was never made public. The hack nevertheless highlighted how vulnerable even the upper echelons of the art world remain to cybercrime. —George Nelson

A Milestone for Women Surrealists

It’s not often that women artists get the recognition they deserve. For Surrealist Leonora Carrington, an increasing number of high-profile museum exhibitions, including one at the Centre Pompidou this year, helped boost her visibility and market value to a record-shattering new high.

This past May, the artist’s 1945 work Les Distractions de Dagobert sold for $28.5 million (with fees) at a Sotheby’s New York marquee evening sale. It obliterated Carrington’s previous auction record of $3.25 million set at Sotheby’s two years ago, even surpassing the auction records for fellow Surrealists Max Ernst ($24.4 million in 2022) and Salvador Dalí ($21.7 million in 2011).

The purchase was three decades in the making.

Argentinian developer, businessman, and founder of the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires, Eduardo Costantini, was identified as the buyer. The ARTnews Top 200 collector said he had been the underbidder for Les Distractions de Dagobert when it sold 30 years prior. His long-term enthusiasm for Carrington—as well as Latin American artists like Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo—would also drive Costantini’s winning bid of $11.4 million (with fees) for Carrington’s 1951 sculpture La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman), at Sotheby’s this past November. Sometimes, patience really pays off.—Karen K. Ho

Marlborough Gallery Closes after 78 Years in Business

This was a year highlighted by the closure of small and midsize galleries, though at least one bigger enterprise bowed out in 2024 as well: Marlborough Gallery, a prominent fixture in the contemporary art world, with locations in New York City, London, Madrid, and Barcelona. Founded in London in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer, Marlborough gained renown for showcasing French Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters, and later for expanding its reach to include German Expressionists and British postwar contemporary artists. The gallery then expanded in 1963 to New York, showing prominent Abstract Expressionists and contemporary artists. In recent years, internal disputes further destabilized the gallery, and several artists long on its roster died, including the famed painter Paula Rego. The gallery officially shuttered amid all that in June. The death in August of Pierre Levai, leader of Marlborough’s New York outpost, seemed only to further signal the end of an era. —Daniel Cassady

The Art World Braces for Trump Impact

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art held its 13th annual Art+Film gala, a reliably star-studded event, on November 5, ensuring the festivities would be touched, for the first time, by a sense of existential dread. In the prelude to the party portion of the night—Charli XCX, who figures elsewhere on this list, was set to perform—actor Colman Domingo addressed the 650-person crowd: “Before next week, an extraordinary week,” he said, “look around the room and fill yourself with all the art, the love and the hope and the faith, the grace and the joy that we can to make this world a better place.”

No one said the word election that night, but he was speaking, of course, of the ongoing presidential race, which ultimately begat a return to the far right—not that the room knew what was ahead. Rather, an optimist might have savored the expectant atmosphere, as the museum was just about to complete a major building expansion.

Artist Derek Fordjour, asked what he made of the rhetorical tightrope Domingo and the gala’s organizers walked, had this to say: “Maybe it’s naive, but I do believe art plays a very critical role in making space for all people, all beliefs and all political views.” In a pragmatic turn, he added, “there is no way to court the wealthy for their donations and oppose them politically.”

A similar atmosphere permeated galas hosted by Creative Time and Dia. The sense of morbid anticipation mutated into dread and resignation by the following week. —Tessa Solomon

Israel-Lebanon War Disrupts Beirut’s Art Scene

Even before Israel escalated its military action in Lebanon this October, Lebanon faced economic difficulties and political instability. The art scene there had prospered in spite of it all, though even museums and galleries soon struggled once Israel began striking Beirut and the surrounding region, spurring widespread displacement and killing more than 3,000 people in the past two months alone.

With the capital city forced into a holding pattern, many art spaces closed for an extended period. “In Beirut, everything is impossible,” dealer Andrée Sfeir-Semler told ARTnews in October. But she, like many others, remained optimistic. Later that month, as Israel continued to bomb Beirut, Sfeir-Semler opened one of her two Beirut galleries. (The other is now reopened as well.) War could not entirely bring down the gallery’s resilient spirit. —Alex Greenberger

A New Level of Recognition for Native and Indigenous Art

Native and Indigenous art continued to be featured in museum exhibitions and in the market, boosted by the visibility of Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee) representing the US at the Venice Biennale this year. Both of the Biennale’s top prizes also went to Indigenous artists, and the façade of the central exhibition hall was covered with a mural by an indigenous collective from the Brazilian Amazon.

Phillips held its first exhibition sale focused on Native and Indigenous art in January. Then, in May, the auction house set a new artist record for Kent Monkman (Cree) after his 2020 painting The Storm sold for $300,000 ($381,000 with fees).

Solo shows for Native and Indigenous artists this year included Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) and Nicholas Galanin (Lingít/Unangax̂) at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Mary Sully (Yankton Dakota) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Melissa Cody (Navajo) at MoMA PS1. The Cincinnati Art Museum also held a large exhibition of glass works by contemporary Native American and Indigenous Pacific-Rim artists, while the Blanton Museum of Art currently has an exhibition curated by Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke).

There are already signs the momentum will continue into 2025: The Denver Art Museum announced that next year it will hold a large-scale exhibition of works by Monkman, the first museum survey for Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe), and a complete reinstallation of its collection of Indigenous art. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, will also open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., next October before traveling to other venues in Canada and the US. —Karen K. Ho

Glenn Lowry Steps Down as MoMA Director

It was the end of an era when, in September, Glenn Lowry announced plans to step down from his post as director of the Museum of Modern Art in 2025. By that time, he will have run the museum for 30 years. When he became the institution’s sixth director, he was 40; when he leaves next year, he’ll be nearly 70.

Lowry’s tenure at MoMA was transformative. He grew the museum by brokering a deal that saw PS1 come under MoMA’s stewardship, and he helped steer two expansions, one in 2004, the other in 2019. He secured major gifts, including one involving the donation of 102 works of Latin American art by collectors Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and the late Gustavo A. Cisneros, whose gift also established a research center for Latin American art at MoMA. Also under his leadership, museum curators removed the Eurocentric bias that had been a part of the MoMA collection’s DNA since the days of founding director Alfred H. Barr. As this chapter of MoMA history comes to a close, the incoming leader will surely have big shoes to fill. —Maximilíano Duron

The Brooklyn Museum Becomes a Hotbed of Pro-Palestine Activism

Over the course of this year, pro-Gaza demonstrations roiled the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But no New York institution faced as impassioned a demonstration as the Brooklyn Museum, where, in May, a hundreds-strong march that began elsewhere converged with a protest inside the institution’s glass atrium. The protesters called for the museum to condemn the killing of Palestinians in Gaza, and for the disclosure of and divestment from financial ties to Israel—the same demands heard by museum leaders around the world this year.

The Brooklyn Museum protest was marked by a strong police presence, with some attendees even reporting the excessive use of force, something the institution itself even later denounced as “police brutality.” The museum did not press charges against the protesters and said it had reached out to community affairs leadership at the New York Police Department to discuss the tactics used. (Because the museum is located on city property, the NYPD does not need permission to enter the premises.) That would seem to have been the end of the situation, but it was not.

The Brooklyn Museum returned to the headlines in June, when the home of director Anne Pasternak was vandalized overnight. Red paint was splashed across the front door and windows of Pasternak’s home, while unfurled between two columns was a banner that read: ANNE PASTERNAK / BROOKLYN MUSEUM / WHITE SUPREMACIST ZIONIST. Beneath that statement, in a smaller, red font, were the words FUNDS GENOCIDE. The residences of several Brooklyn Museum board members were also vandalized. Mayor Eric Adams immediately called the vandalism anti-Semitic, pointing out that Pasternak is Jewish. In November three people were charged with 25 counts, including making a terroristic threat as a hate crime, graffiti, and conspiracy. This was the surest sign so far that pro-Palestinian protesters who target museums would face consequences. —Tessa Solomon

Indiana University Cancels Palestinian Artist Samia Halaby’s Show

As Israel’s war in Gaza continued in 2024, Palestinian artists faced professional consequences abroad—exhibitions were canceled, talks postponed, and opportunities withdrawn simply because the artists were Palestinian. The most controversial of these incidents involved the abstractionist Samia Halaby, who for some six decades has been pushing the form to new heights. In 2023 the New York–based artist received a retrospective at the Sharjah Art Museum, and she was poised to get a two-venue survey in the US in 2024 at the two universities where she earned master’s degrees in painting: Michigan State University (MSU) and Indiana University (IU). But in January, about a month before Indiana’s portion of the exhibition was to kick off, the university’s Eskenazi Museum of Art said it would not open the show, citing “safety concerns.” In a letter to IU’s president, Halaby spoke of the “racism and sexism of the art world” and maintained her support for Gaza.

Thousands of people signed a petition calling for the exhibition’s reinstatement, but it was not to be. Still, MSU’s Broad Art Museum proceeded with its exhibition in June. That show opened at the same time that Halaby’s work appeared in the Venice Biennale, where she received a special mention from the Golden Lion awards jury, the citation reading: “Her commitment to the politics of abstraction has been married to her unwavering attention to the suffering of the people of Palestine.” The controversy over Halaby’s IU survey highlighted how Palestinian art is acceptable only in certain institutions. Whether it is showable or not, it seems, depends largely on the politics of who is running the show. —Maximilíano Duron

Soft Market Leads to Restructuring Across the Industry

Layoffs rippled through the art world this year as economic pressure and declining sales forced major players to recalibrate.

Sotheby’s, facing an 88 percent drop in core earnings in the first half of 2024, reportedly laid off some 50 staffers in London this past May. Christie’s was reportedly also planning layoffs in June, though it was never revealed if or how many employees were let go. While Phillips had no layoffs, CEO Stephen Brooks stepped down in late December amid strain in the business.

Galleries were especially affected by the shift in the market. In London, White Cube laid off 38 monitors in May and replaced them with security staff. Meanwhile, Hauser & Wirth scaled back public gallery hours at its Bruton, Somerset, gallery, claiming the move allowed them to prioritize educational programming. (Hauser & Wirth has previously invested in museum and publishing-adjacent initiatives, running a series of talks and seminars on art in partnership with schools in the UK.) At Pace, three senior-level staffers departed in August, one of them leaving a position of executive vice president of global sales and operations created only six months prior; the others were senior curatorial directors Sarah Levine and Mark Beasley. David Zwirner Gallery cut 10 staffers on its digital team, calling the change a restructuring. (Zwirner’s last major layoff came in 2020, when it cut 20 percent of its staff due to sales shortfalls.)

While November’s New York marquee auctions had encouraging performances, Sotheby’s had its biggest round of layoffs yet on December 10, with 100 staffers let go from the New York offices. More is expected at the house’s other branches. —Angelica Villa

Activists Who Threw Soup at Van Gogh Painting Sentenced to Prison

There have been many climate protests at museums, but one stands out for its impact and industry reaction. In September, two Just Stop Oil activists who threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) were sentenced to prison. A judge said that the two activists were guilty of nearly “destroying one of the most valuable artworks in the world.” The work itself did not experience any damage, and many said the sentencing was wrong, but the decision was enough to move other institutional leaders to action. Not long afterward, directors of museums and galleries in the UK made a public plea for climate protests to stop, and the National Gallery put a ban on outside liquids. The debacle seemed to spell the end to a wave of climate protests seen in museums over the past few years. Meanwhile, evidence of climate change continues to pile up. According to experts, 2024 is the warmest year on record. —Karen Ho

Star Artist Kehinde Wiley Is Accused of Sexual Assault

Kehinde Wiley’s ascent to the top of the art world happened steadily, over the course of two decades, and culminated in his painting Barack Obama’s official presidential portrait in 2018. His fall was precipitous, occurring in a matter of months.

This past March, Joseph Awuah-Darko, a 27-year-old British-born Ghana-based artist, collector, and curator who founded the Noldor Artist Residency in Accra, posted a cryptic message to Instagram that he had been sexually assaulted by “someone who outranks me” in the art world. He declined to name the person and asked for contributions to fund his estimated legal fees of $200,000. Then in May, Awuah-Darko, again posting to Instagram, revealed that he was referring to Wiley, whom three other men accused of assault in the months after. Wiley has denied all the allegations against him and claimed he never met two of his accusers, both of whom subsequently deleted their accusations from social media.

Museums subsequently revoked their planned Wiley shows. The Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Pérez Art Museum Miami both canceled their iterations of a traveling Wiley survey. Meanwhile, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, postponed a Wiley show that was to open in September. Not everyone applauded these decisions: The National Coalition Against Censorship criticized museums for taking these opportunities away from Wiley, who was accused before the claims were journalistically vetted. And though the status of those claims remains uncertain, Wiley still appears to receive support from his dealers, with a solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman in London that closed in November. His Paris gallerist, Daniel Templon, told the Wall Street Journal, “it is honorable to believe victims of violence, but it is also important to believe in the presumption of innocence and in the justice system, not in the court of opinion on social media.” —Maximilíano Duron

Germany’s Culture Scene Erupts

This year began in Germany with multiple endings: an end, as many saw it, to free artistic expression in the country, and an end to exhibitions for artists who pulled their work in protest. A number of those artists were involved in a movement known as Strike Germany, which, in January, called for a widespread denouncement of institutions that enforce “policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine.” Strike Germany began after Berlin tried to enact a new funding clause requiring recipients to stand against anti-Semitism, a form of prejudice that the city said included denying Israel’s right to exist. Even after the funding clause was nixed, the protests continued.

Artists yanked their works from the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Neue Berliner Kunstverein, Portikus, and the Berlinale Film Festival, among many other prominent institutions, in solidarity with Strike Germany. Even some not involved with Strike Germany made their positions known. In November, during the opening of her Neue Nationalgalerie show, Nan Goldin said that Germany’s scrutiny of pro-Palestine positions had confused the meaning of the word anti-Semitism and claimed that the nation was collectively ignoring what she called a genocide. Proof that her words struck a nerve arrived no more than a few minutes later when the museum’s director, Klaus Biesenbach, took the stage to say he disagreed with her. He was shouted down by pro-Palestine protesters.

Candice Breitz, a Jewish artist whose exhibition in Saarland was canceled in 2023, spoke in an interview with Artnet News this year of the “McCarthyism that continues to infect Germany.” Her salient words seemed to indicate that Germany’s art world is at a crossroads: Will this scene, long considered a bastion of experimentalism, continue to foster an air of freedom, or has the clampdown on artists’ views on Israel and Gaza permanently altered it?

The question remains open, and it is likely to be debated well beyond 2025: Germany recently passed a national anti-Semitism resolution. —Alex Greenberger

At the Venice Biennale, the Israel Pavilion Never Opens

The Venice Biennale has never been immune to what happens thousands of miles away, far across the globe. That was proved again this year when, in the opening run-up, artists began to protest Israel’s national participation in the show. Thousands of artists signed a letter that said the “Biennale is platforming a genocidal apartheid state.” This spurred Italy’s culture minister to term the protest “shameful,” and reaffirm that Israel would take part as planned. All seemed ready to go.

Then came opening day in April, when, just hours before press was allowed into the Biennale, artist Ruth Patir and curators Tamar Margalit and Mira Lapidot said they would keep their pavilion closed until there was a ceasefire in Gaza and an agreement for Hamas to release the hostages. A note saying as much was appended to the pavilion’s front door. A video, visible from a window, offered just a small taste of what Patir had planned.

Patir’s words to the New York Times were notable: the war in Gaza, she said, was “so much bigger than me.” And as the pavilion’s closure underlined, the war is also bigger than the Biennale, an art festival that, in seeking to pinpoint global artistic trends, cannot help but find itself ensnared in conflicts everywhere.

At the end of November, the Biennale closed its 60th edition. The Israel Pavilion never opened. (However, in December, the Jewish Museum in New York announced that it had acquired Patir’s never-shown video installation.) —Alex Greenberger