Eliana Willis

If you are not already familiar with the work of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson—a prolific, influential, and largely self-taught artist from Ohio who died in 2015 at the age of 75—you may be in for a revelation this year.
An eye-opening show, “Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies,” is on view now at the Fort Gansevoort gallery in New York’s Meatpacking District. The gallery, run by dealer Adam Shopkorn, represents Robinson in the U.S., and is working to draw attention to her, along with the Columbus Museum of Art, to which the artist bequeathed all of her work and personal effects, including her home-studio in that Ohio city. The CMA will also be sending a touring exhibition, “Aminah Robinson: Journeys Home, a Visual Memoir,” to three U.S. museums this year, with more stops to follow. Both shows present deep dives into various aspects of her multi-faceted seven-decade career.
“Character Studies” includes drawings, paintings, sculpture, puppetry, music boxes, handmade books, textile-based pieces, and poetry, in which Robinson reflects on themes of family and ancestry, often through the lens of ordinary, found objects and everyday tasks. The art blends her personal experiences—including characters from her childhood home in Poindexter Village in Columbus, one of the country’s first federally funded public housing developments—with broader narratives of the African American experience throughout history, including her great-aunt Cornelia Johnson’s tales of slavery.
Installation view of “Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies”  at Fort Gansevoort, New York. © Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust. Courtesy of the Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust, Columbus Museum of Art, and Fort Gansevoort, New York.
Shopkorn said that he first came across her work—two monumental quilted pieces that she worked on for long stretches—on the website of the Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, several years ago. “The work never really ended,” he said. “She worked on them for decades at a time and they were still never really complete and could always be added to. I was enamored with what I saw… I just kind of got the Aminah bug.”
He was referring to RagGonNon (completed in 2004), which is comprised of two tapestries, Journey I and Journey II, that tell the story of the artist’s ancestors and their forced relocation from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the U.S. “Once freedom came to enslaved people, Aminah’s journey takes you to her birthplace—Columbus, Ohio,” according to the museum website. The RagGonNon shows images of Robinson’s childhood and the games she played, following her all the way into her adulthood. The title refers to the artist’s philosophy, to “rag on and on and on,” no matter what, and also alludes to her view that complex artworks continue to evolve by way of viewers’ contemplation.
The figurative sculptures at Fort Gansevoort feature heads fashioned from “hogmawg,” a term (picked up from her father) that she used to describe the clay-like material she wielded in her sculptures, made primarily from a mix of mud, sticks, pig grease, lime, and glue. The figures are decorated with human hair, button eyes, and outfits that consist of repurposed clothing and other handcrafted decorations. One tabletop sculpture, Brownyskin Man (1997), was based on a local street vendor who was a fixture in the artist’s childhood. The Columbus Museum loaned it to the show.
Brownyskin Man sports a checkered-print cap and matching coat, sewn to fit his small frame. Multicolored cloth sacks hangs from his figure, representing the vessels in which the vendor carried his pork rinds for sale, also known as brown skins.
Installation view of “Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies” at Fort Gansevoort in New York. © Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust. Courtesy of the Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust, Columbus Museum of Art, and Fort Gansevoort, New York.
Though Robinson may not be a household name, she never labored in obscurity. A traveling retrospective of her work made stops at the Brooklyn Museum, the CMA, and other institutions between 2002 and 2007, and she won a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2004.
“It’s a wonderful history that has sort of evolved over the years,” Deirdre Hamler, the director of the Aminah Robinson Legacy Project at the CMA, said of the artist’s career. “It started with her being enamored with the museum as a child. She was a visionary early on, and always aspired to be at the museum. As a young Black girl from the 1940s who lived in the neighborhood, she was able to go into the museum to see art and also took classes.”
By the time Robinson was in her teens, one of her art pieces was featured in Seventeen magazine, Hamler said. She also exhibited her works at the Ohio State Fair.
Hamler said that the last few years have involved “a long process of determining how to manage this trove,” and that the museum’s working relationship with Fort Gansevoort has helped.
Shopkorn painted his gallery’s walls a brilliant deep shade of red, Robinson’s favorite color, for the exhibition and said that museums have been expressing interest in acquiring works from the show.
Prices have been set somewhat conservatively. Shopkorn said that drawings from the 1960s and ’70s start at $4,500 and run up to $11,000, while some paintings on paper (some of which are eight feet tall), run up to $35,000. The most important sculptures in the show run up to about $50,000. (There are no records of her work selling at auction in the Artnet Price Database.)
Proceeds from the exhibition will support the Legacy Project, as well as a residency program for African American artists and writers that she developed at her former home and studio in Columbus, conservation of her work and workplace, and related museum exhibitions and educational programming.
Installation view of “Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies,” at Fort Gansevoort, New York. © Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust. Courtesy of the Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust, Columbus Museum of Art, and Fort Gansevoort, New York.
“Having this opportunity to steward her legacy is really special,” the CMA’s director, Brooke Minto, said in a phone interview. “Her legacy is really special. It also allowed us to delve deeply into the history of Columbus and the region, and the way in which the city has evolved.” Minto noted that many artists in the area counted Robinson as a teacher and a mentor.
“In some ways the museum had its marching orders,” Minto said. “Robinson was really clear about the work continuing to be available in the market for the purpose of supporting younger artists. It was the museum’s charge to figure out how to make that happen.”
“Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies” is on view at Fort Gansevoort in New York, through January 25. “Aminah Robinson: Journeys Home, a Visual Memoir” will be on view at the Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio from February 1 to July 13, before traveling to the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey from October 16 to March 1, 2026, and the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama from March 26, 2026 to January 9, 2027. Two remaining venues will be announced later in the year; the full tour will run through 2028. More

When we think of Versailles, we think of Marie Antoinette, opulence, and the last hurrah of the aristocratic high life before the French Revolution put an end to such folly in 1789. We may also think of philosophers like Voltaire and the age of the enlightenment, but less well-known is the palace’s crucial role in supporting the sciences.
As a new exhibition, “Versailles: Science and Splendour” at the Science Museum in London until April 21, 2025, shows, the French court was motivated to sponsor scientific research as a means of consolidating power and expanding colonial rule. In 1666, Louis XIV established the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, which, unlike peer institutions in Italy or Britain, paid members a salary and covered their lodgings and equipment, meaning their endeavors were all done in the king’s service.
Subsequent kings Louis XV and Louis XVI were so keen on science that they even carried out experiments themselves. At court, they were routinely presented with the latest inventions or discoveries, sometimes even watching live demonstrations, and to receive this opportunity was the greatest mark of distinction for an ambitious scientist in France. Unsurprisingly, the Crown tended to favor advantageous developments, such as chemistry for artillery, astronomy for navigation, cartography for the mapping of French territories, and medicine for public heath.
Henri Testelin, Etablissement de l’Académie des sciences et fondation de l’Observatoire (1666). Image: © château de Versailles, Dist. RMN © JM Manaï.
As such, Versailles became a hub of knowledge-sharing that attracted many different kinds of scientists, then known as “savants” or “natural philosophers.” Even Benjamin Franklin shared his theories about electricity and the lightning conductor with French scientists during a diplomatic visit to the palace in 1778.
But how to get the message out about this impressive bustle of learned activity, and promote France’s role in the advancement of scientific research? The answer, of course, was to commission paintings that would document these developments and emphasize the Crown’s role in them.
One example was Henri Testelin’s Establissement de l’Académie des sciences et fondation de l’Observatoire, 1666 (1673-1681), represented in the exhibition by a reproduction. It is an imagined scene in which Louis XIV, in all his finery, meets with members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, among them are Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. The men are surrounded by the accessories of serious study, including books, papers, celestial and terrestrial globes, a pendulum clock, an armillary sphere, and animal skeletons.
Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, from the private collection of Marquis de Breteuil. Photo: © Château de Breteuil.
From Testelin’s painting, you’d be forgiven for believing only men practiced science at Versailles, but there were a few remarkable women scientists who also made important contributions. The most notable of these was Emilie du Châtelet, a mathematician who, in writing the standard French translation of Isaac Newton’s basic law of physics from 1687, added her own commentary, including important contributions to our understanding of kinetic energy.
Du Châtelet’s intellectual collaborator and romantic partner Voltaire once described her as “a great man whose only fault was being a woman.” A painting of her by an unknown artist reveals something of her attempts to balance her ambitions with societal expectations of her gender. Though she is dolled up in a ladylike manner with elaborate dress and a gentle, pensive expression, she holds in her right hand a mathematical instrument for measuring distances known as a divider. A hefty copy of Newton’s Principa Mathematica (1687) lies open on her desk and an armillary sphere, used to map celestial constellations, can be seen in the background.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Pineapple in a pot (1733). Photo: © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN © Christophe Fouin.
As France expanded its imperial reach, budding French naturalists and botanists received new specimens to study from across the world. One fruit that never failed to impress European colonialists was the pineapple, which they “discovered” in South American and the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century and brought back home. These spiky, oval fruits soon became highly fashionable objects coveted by royals who wanted to grow them in their own gardens. In order to pull this off in less than optimal weather conditions, horticulturists in the Netherlands invented the greenhouse and were soon being imitated by their neighbors.
The first homegrown pineapples reached maturity in France in 1733, and were presented to the king on Christmas Day. The momentous feat was recorded by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a French painter renowned for his still lifes. By the 1750s, hundreds of pineapples were being cultivated and their distinctive form continued to intrigue artists of all kind, becoming a popular subject for paintings or a common design for textiles and decorative arts.
Pierre-Denis Martin, View of the Marly machine and of the Louveciennes castle (1722-23). Photo: © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN, © Jean-Marc Manaï.
In order to convert Versailles from a mere hunting lodge for the king’s leisure and sports into France’s principal seat of power in the late 17th century, Louis XIV wanted his gardens to be filled with magnificent fountains and waterworks. This was a big ask, given the lack of adequate water source nearby, but engineers managed it by building the largest mechanical device of their time, known as the Marly Machine. This hydraulic system could miraculously raise water in the opposite direction of gravity, over 500 feet up from the Seine to a reservoir, where it would eventually be transported to Versailles.
Though the Marly Machine no longer exists, it survives via various modes of documentation, most notably a painting by the artist Pierre-Denis Martin, who produced many sweeping landscape paintings recording battlefields or architectural arrangements. The  composition gives a sense of the machine’s scale and impressive presence within the natural topography, and we can just make out various paddle wheels and a rod system leading up the hill behind.
As with so many other sophisticated technological achievements at Versailles, the Marly Machine’s invention was ultimately co-opted for political purposes, becoming a proud expression of the king’s extravagant wealth and power.
“Versailles: Science and Splendour” is on view at the Science Museum in London until April 21, 2025. More

The artist Kenneth Webb, a free man granted early parole after 16 years in prison, smiles as he talks about an experience that he thought he might never have—the chance to see a major solo show of his work for the public.
Webb, 34, was convicted of first-degree murder and another charge for the shooting death of an 18-year-old after a fight while leaving a party in January 2008, court documents show. Webb, then 17, was handed a sentence of 50 years to life in prison.
“Kenneth’s parole date was long in the future, like 2031,” said Meetra Johansen, founder of the Huma Gallery, where Webb’s show “Hymns from the Cave” will go on view this month. “When we heard he was coming out, it was electrifying. I had the gallery; he had the work.”
Kenneth Webb, City on Fire, Girl at Water (not dated). Photo courtesy of Megumi Nakazawa/Huma Gallery
Webb said the trajectory of who he became in prison was fated by an opportunity few prisoners get—oversight by progressive corrections officers who granted him access to materials, whereas their peers might see a 12-inch paintbrush as a possible weapon.
In fact, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation beamed with pride when Webb took home top honors at the Antelope Valley Fair Art Exhibition in 2019, issuing a press release and photographs of his work. The chaplain of the California State Prison in Los Angeles County, where Webb was then housed, accepted the award on his behalf.
Among the opportunities that corrections officers granted to artists like Webb was the chance to put on a show at Frieze Los Angeles in 2020. Webb thought that show, titled “Out of Bounds,” was beautiful. But he took issue with how heavily it was tied to prison life. Though he became a painter while imprisoned, he said his art is about so much more.
Kenneth Webb, Floriography (2024). Photo courtesy of Meetra Johansen/Huma Gallery
“I noticed that people started to call us ‘prison artists’ and every time I would hear that my ears would ring. Prison artist. Well, okay, I’m an artist in prison, but I wouldn’t say that I am a ‘prison artist,’ whatever that is,” he said.
“I knew that, at some point, I would leave,” he added. “I spent half my life incarcerated. So, it makes sense my work has those themes. But if you ask me about the work, I’ll tell you the themes are about identity or power structures—about, you know, just everyday struggles.”
Johansen believes Webb’s artwork has wide appeal among collectors. She said she first learned of his work during the 2020 pandemic when she applied to teach art history at a prison. Because of the lockdown, she wasn’t allowed inside, so she started looking at what was happening inside the prisons.
Kenneth Webb, Black Tendencies (2020). Photo courtesy of Huma Gallery
“There was a lot of mistreatment and I wanted to do a show about it,” she said. “I wrote letters to people inside prison and reached out to art teachers. That’s how I got in touch with Kenneth.”
Webb’s former cellmate, Tobias Tubbs, had been released already and was able to bring his artwork to her for that 2021 show. Johansen said she was blown away by the quality of the work. Tubbs, who is also an artist, co-founded a nonprofit art education program with Johansen called Huma House that would lead to the creation of the gallery.
“I’m seeing Kenneth’s work, and the label that is always put on that type of work alluding to ‘prison art’ as an outsider thing, and I was like, ‘This should be hanging in the MoMA,’” she said.
Kenneth Webb, Strange Soil (2021). Photo courtesy of Megumi Nakazawa/Huma Gallery
In the years since, Johansen featured Webb’s artwork in group shows put on by Huma House, the nonprofit. But the solo show, one of the first for Johansen since Huma Gallery opened in February, will boast a mix of works created inside and outside of the prison.
Webb initially thought of including only paintings that were made after he gained his freedom, but said it “became apparent that I shouldn’t neglect the work that I did prior to being free, and that that work is integral and that it’s important.”
“I’m discovering things about my creative process. Before, I just had more time to make art. There were natural boundaries where people couldn’t call me on the phone,” he said. Prison is what it is imagined it to be, chaotic and loud, so he would throw on headphones and blast Kendrick Lamar, positioning himself against a wall to draw.
Kenneth Webb, Unnecessary Censorship #1 (2021). Photo courtesy of Megumi Nakazawa/Huma Gallery
His work from prison seemed more “intentional” with its composition, he said. He is learning to be as intentional with less time. “I don’t have six hours to do thumbnails and color studies,” he said.
Though Webb has been sketching since childhood, his interest in painting took off when he transferred to a prison in Lancaster, California, that had an art studio. The tenet of the studio was that prisoners could pay for their own supplies, provided that they gave back by donating to organizations like Wounded Warriors or by teaching art to other inmates.
“I flourished quickly in that program, which was different than the rest of the prison,” Webb said. “The prison could be on lockdown and, rest assured, the artists could do what they do because they respected that we’d send funds to Blue Star Mothers or Saint Jude’s Hospital, and it gave us a different proximity to the authority figures within the prison.”
Kenneth Webb, no title, no date. Photo courtesy of Huma Gallery
Webb said two artists in prison, a man named Chuck Wyatt and another he knew only as Rocky, had specific styles with their art that he said were passed on to every other artist in the prison who learned from them.
“The composition of their paintings was very intentional in their style. They taught people in that style,” Webb said. “Even though I have my own style and ideas, I can definitely see the legacy of those lessons being passed on to me.”
Kenneth Webb, Memorial (no date). Photo courtesy of Megumi Nakazawa/Huma Gallery
But Webb also learned a lot of his craft from books he read. “Believe it or not, we had a library of the oldest books that you can imagine,” Webb said. “These art books reeked of just, like, old. So, I studied the Renaissance artists, the masters.”
Eventually, somebody donated contemporary art books and Webb learned of artists like Jack Witten and Kehinde Wiley. But the prison also had a lot of comic books. He said his own art falls somewhere in between the old masters and comic book illustrations.
Kenneth Webb. Photo: Khalil Bowens/Huma Gallery.
Webb plans to formally continue his art education after wrapping up an associate’s degree program through Chaffey College, in Rancho Cucamonga, California, which he started while behind bars. He paroled before he could finish and reenrolled as a free man hoping to transfer at some point for a bachelor’s degree in art. As for how he now puts food on the table, Webb works as an emotional and social educator for children at Big Dogg Gang Intervention and Violence Protection.
“I sat in captivity thinking about what it could look like to have a real art show, who would be there,” he said. “To be here going through the process of creating that in real life feels surreal. I’m so humbled.”
“Hymns from the Cave” is on view at Huma Gallery, 3303 West Jefferson Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, January 11–February 22, 2025. More

Ever wished you could travel back to the mean streets of Victorian London, the one described by the era’s most beloved writer, Charles Dickens? One place to start would be the townhouse at 48 Doughty Street near Bloomsbury that he once called home. Though he lived there only between 1837 and 1839, this was a particularly productive period, during which he wrote three books, including Oliver Twist. 
The house is the only surviving property in which Dickens lived, and it narrowly escaped demolition thanks to the efforts of the Dickens Fellowship, an association that bought the property and turned it into a museum dedicated to the writer. It opened its doors in 1925 and, over the past 100 years, has invited visitors to step back into the year 1837 with many original features like fireplaces and fittings, period furnishings, and some of the author’s own belongings, as well as abundant information about his interests and way of life.
This year, the museum celebrates its centenary with the exhibition “Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum,” which will bring together highlights of the collection, including some of the most rarely seen treasures.
The long-lost portrait of Charles Dickens by Margaret Gillies from 1843. Photo courtesy the Charles Dickens Museum.
Prized among these is a chalk and pastel sketch of Dickens from the time when he was living in Doughty Street, and a miniature painting by artist Margaret Gillies that was made just a few years later, when he was writing A Christmas Carol. Most photographs record Dickens in his rugged middle age; these works capture a much more fresh-faced author, in his late 20s and early 30s.
Though the Gillies work was known to historians thanks to a surviving letter from Dickens to the artist, which will be displayed alongside the portrait, it had been considered lost for over 174 years. In 2017, it miraculously resurfaced in a cardboard box of trinkets headed to auction in South Africa. The museum raised the £180,000 ($225,000) necessary to acquire the miniature in 2019.
The portrait wasn’t the only art that the author admired. Also on show will be works by illustrators with whom he collaborated for various publications. The standout examples are pieces by renowned caricaturist George Cruikshank and John Leech’s early drafts of drawings that would appear in the first edition of A Christmas Carol.
Sketch for Fagin in the Condemned Cell from Oliver Twist by George Cruikshank. Photo courtesy the Charles Dickens Museum.
Many more treats lie in store for Dickens enthusiasts. These include some of his very earliest pieces of writing, including an album of poems he produced at the tender age of 18. Of his personal correspondence, a standout is a draft letter to the family servant that contains the first paragraphs of the infamous “Violated Letter” from 1858, which frankly recounted the breakdown of his marriage.
The exhibition will also include original manuscripts and rare editions of many of Dickens’s most widely beloved works and other notable copies. One example is a David Copperfield that traveled to Antartica as part of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910–12 Terra Nova expedition. The worn tome still bears fingerprints and stains from the seal blubber that provided fuel for fires when extreme weather left the crew stranded in an ice cave. As well as by the warmth of the flames, the men’s spirits were raised by reading one chapter of Dickens’s book every night for 60 days.
The blubber-stained copy of David Copperfield taken to Antarctica by Capt. Scott’s 1910 expedition on the Terra Nova. Photo courtesy the Charles Dickens Museum.
Meanwhile, Victorian history buffs will be delighted to find items that reveal something of Dickens’s personal style and interests, including his hairbrush, walking stick, only surviving suit, binoculars, quill and ink stand, and marriage license. Archival photographs will provide additional insight.
“Gathered together over the past century and displayed in Dickens’s only surviving house in London, a beacon at the centre of the urban landscape quintessentially associated with the writer, the museum in Doughty Street will be filled with objects that define Dickens’s life and the museum’s history,” the museum’s director, Cindy Sughrue, told the BBC.
“Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum” is on view at the Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London, February 5 through June 29.  More

When it comes to critically-acclaimed museum shows, a high premium is usually placed on the uniqueness and rarity of the objects on display. Back in the day, however, copies of an ancient masterpiece would often have to do. This was how the marvels of Greek art made their way to workshops across the Roman empire, in due course influencing the Renaissance masters and Western culture at large. Not only would ideas spread far via reproduction, but otherwise site-specific art could be appreciated in new contexts.
Carrying this spirit into the 21st century, the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) will present the most comprehensive Michelangelo exhibition since 1875, featuring a groundbreaking blend of 19th-century plaster casts and state-of-the-art 3D-printed replicas. Opening March 29, the show will reassemble scattered masterpieces and showcase works that rarely, if ever, leave their original locations, offering visitors a unique opportunity to experience the Renaissance master’s art.
Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Medici Madonna. Original made ca. 1526–1532, cast in 1897. Photo: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark.
Using technology from Factum Arte in Madrid, the museum will enhance its collection of 19th-century plaster casts of Michelangelo masterpieces, such as the head of David and the Medici Madonna, with newly created 3D-printed replicas. These replicas provide access to works that are otherwise unattainable due to immobility or location. For instance, Michelangelo’s depictions of Saints Peter, Augustine, Paul, and Gregory are fixed elements of the Piccolomini Altarpiece in Siena, Italy installed so high that they cannot be easily viewed up close. Other works, like Cupid, are in high demand and geographically restricted, currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from France until 2029.
The show’s curator, Matthias Wivel, said he is not concerned that the use of replicas might be off-putting to audiences. “We will achieve a beautiful exhibition with them that will be compelling to the public,” he said. “The appreciation and study of art has always relied heavily on reproductions. Without them both would be much more limited. Used responsibly, there is huge potential and value in using reproductions.”
He conceded that the show is an experiment, and he will measure its success on its ability to “stimulate debate and prompt refinement or rejection, and innovation.”
Perhaps the strongest argument for the use of reproductions is greater freedom to build art historical narratives unbounded by practical limitations. For example, the show in Denmark will bring together several pieces originally produced for the tomb of Julius II that have since scattered across different locations. These include the Boboli Prisoners at the Accademia and Genius of Victory at the Palazzo Vecchio, both in Florence, and Rachel and Leah at San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome.
Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Day. Original ca. 1524-26, cast 1897. The Royal Cast Collection, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark Photo: SMK
Factum Arte have also been able to reconstruct Infant John the Baptist from Ubedà, which was smashed during the Spanish Civil War. Though the statue has been restored, it still bears the scars of its destruction; the new 3D model was made by referencing archival photographs of the work from before the restoration. Wivel hopes it will “convey some of the wonder of the original.”
The exhibition will also reveal how much reproduction technologies have evolved over the centuries. According to Wivel, Factum Arte’s facsimiles made using digital techniques are accurate down to the micron level, resulting in pieces of “much higher fidelity than the plasters, in that they reproduce the color, surface, and detailing such as veining, of the marble.”
He also noted that digital facsimiles like those made by Factum Arte provide highly detailed records of artworks that may be valuable to researchers and restorers for centuries to come. Wivel noted that traveling as part of exhibition loans can cause significant physical strain on fragile objects as well. In other contexts, high-tech replicas have also played an important role in facilitating repatriation agreements, allowing museums to keep a copy of an object that they decide to return.
Together, these reproductions, both old and new, will enable the most comprehensive monographic exhibition dedicated to Michelangelo since 1875, when the 400th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in Florence. Running through August 31, the exhibition will also include a selection of Michelangelo’s original drawings, correspondence, models in wax and clay, and several bronzes made after models that are now lost. More

Building on the momentum of recent years, several important Old Master exhibitions in the year ahead will echo contemporary social, political, and spiritual concerns. In addition to the ongoing work of spotlighting understudied artists, institutions around the world are looking to re-energize the category by embracing new technology, reactivating centuries-old heritage sites, and wielding curating as a tool of cultural diplomacy.
Here are 5 exhibitions opening in the U.S. and Europe in 2025 that affirm the perennial relevance of Old Masters.
“From Odesa to Berlin: European Painting of the 16th to 19th Century”Gemäldegalerie BerlinJanuary 24—June 22, 2025
Francesco Granacci, Madonna Enthroned with Child and the Infant Saint John (1519). Courtesy of the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art/Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Property of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odesa. Photo by Christoph Schmidt.
The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin will begin the year by showcasing 60 paintings rescued from the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in the port city of Odesa in the south of Ukraine before the country’s invasion in 2022. The works range from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including paintings by Francesco Granacci, Frans Hals, and Bernardo Strozzi. A preview of the show took place in the spring of 2024, and this year’s edition will deepen the dialogue between the two collections by adding 25 related works from the Gemäldegalerie.
The conservators Anja Lindner-Michael and Thuja Seidel unpacking the works in Berlin, September 2023. Photo by Sabine Lata.
The exhibition joins several other international efforts to safeguard the artistic heritage of Ukraine amid ongoing turmoil. The Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative has been working with the nation’s institutions since 2022, and in 2023 the Louvre Museum staged a show on icons rescued from the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts in Kyiv. The Berlin exhibition will continue in a long lineage of art exhibitions as a type of cultural diplomacy, as the press release underscores that the show is “a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine—one that will hopefully contribute to increasing public awareness regarding the ongoing conflict situation in the country.”
“Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature”  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkFebruary 8–May 11, 2025
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1817). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Elke Walford.
One of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first major shows of the new year will be the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition on Caspar David Friedrich, a leading figure of German Romanticism. In 2024, Germany marked the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth with a series of shows organized in cooperation between the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The Met, the fourth and final stop in this celebration, will feature a unique checklist, installation, and publication.
Friedrich’s continued appeal lies in his sublime portrayals of the natural world as a site of spiritual encounters and emotional deliberations. Alison Hokanson and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, the exhibition’s curators, told Artnet News that the 19th century witnessed “a new articulation of the connection between nature and the inner self,” adding: “Friedrich’s art is so compelling precisely because it visualizes this intimacy, emotion, and open-endedness we have come to expect from nature and from images of it.” The exhibition will not only situate Friedrich against the backdrop of 19th-century society but also explore the communal aspect of his practice and offer a rare opportunity to spotlight the breadth and depth of the Met’s broader collection of German Romantic art.
“Michelangelo”National Museum of Art (Statens Museum for Kunst), CopenhagenMarch 29–August 31, 2025
Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Original ca. 1524-26, cast 1897. The Royal Cast Collection, SMK–National Gallery of Denmark Photo: SMK
This spring, the Copenhagen National Museum of Art (SMK) will open the largest Michelangelo show in Denmark to date. Alongside plaster casts, bronze sculptures, clay models, and drawings, the exhibition will feature ten 3D-printed works after Michelangelo. Fabricated in collaboration with Factum Foundation in Madrid, these new editions will include copies of works such as Cupid (on loan to the Met from France until 2029), four saints from the Piccolomini Altarpiece in the Duomo in Siena, and the Genius of Victory at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
This approach may turn some heads, but even the Plaster Cast Workshop of the GrandPalaisRmn in France has recently turned to 3D printing for fragile works. The curator Matthias Wivel said the exhibition “raises questions of authenticity and curatorial ethics, of course, requiring sometimes difficult judgement of what role the facsimiles play, and clarity of communication around one’s choices.” At the same time, one of the arguments of the show underscores how 3D reproduction ultimately follows the lineage of earlier forms of copying, such as plaster casts. “You can include and juxtapose objects in facsimile that would never be possible in the original, you can get closer to them, and you can (try to) recreate things that are damaged or lost,” Wivel adds. Such an approach will certainly expand the possibilities of exhibition-making in its effort to provide a holistic view of Michelangelo’s achievements.
“Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art”Toledo Museum of ArtApril 13–July 27, 2025
Rachel Ruysch, Flower Still Life (about 1716–20). Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio.
The pioneering yet historically understudied Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch will finally have her first monographic show in the U.S. this spring. Organized in conjunction with the Toledo Museum of Art (which in 1956 became the first American institution to acquire a Ruysch painting), the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the exhibition explores Ruysch’s groundbreaking innovations in the seemingly staid genre of still life paintings. “When you look at earlier 17th-century flower still lives, every plant, every flower has a space on its own, and they are often arranged in one plane,” explains Robert Schindler, the curator of the exhibition’s Toledo iteration. “Ruysch finds a way to build that into a three-dimensional composition, playing in wonderful ways with light and shadow.”
Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher, Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) (1692). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Among the many revelations in the show is the discovery of the only surviving work on paper attributed to Ruysch: a drawing of a Surinamese Toad that Schindler located at the Royal Society of London. “We are finding that she really is at the forefront of some of these new discoveries that are coming into Europe…There are paintings where she combines species from Asia, South Africa, and the Americas all in one picture,” said Schindler, who consulted with specialists in zoological history and botany for the exhibition. “We pay close attention to making sure that the broader context is clear, that she was only becoming aware of some of these specimens because the Dutch were out exploring, colonizing, and exploiting other territories and people.” The exhibition promises to be a resplendent contribution to Netherlandish Art, natural history art, women artists, and histories of the art market at large.
“Angelico”Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco (Convent), FlorenceSeptember 26, 2025–January 25, 2026
Beato Angelico, Last Judgement (detail), (ca, 1431). Courtesy of Museo di San Marco, Florence and Ministero della Cultura.
Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar and early Italian Renaissance artist, will be the subject of a major two-part exhibition debuting in Florence this autumn. The show will explore his artistic process alongside works by contemporaries such as Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, and Lorenzo Ghiberti. This will be the first show in Italy dedicated to the artist in more than 70 years and will reunite paintings that have been separated for more than two centuries.
One of the biggest draws is that the two venues hosting “Angelico” will be a mere 15-minute walk apart: the Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco. The latter hosts Fra Angelico’s celebrated frescoes that demonstrate the artist’s mastery of space, perspective, and the emerging principles of Renaissance art. By collaborating with the historic site, the dual exhibition aims to offer viewers a more comprehensive look at an artist once described by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari as “an excellent painter and illuminator, and…a perfect monk.” More

“We are like one artist,” Gustavo Pandolfo told NPR earlier this year. Professionally, he and his brother Otavia go by the name Osgemeos, which is Portuguese for “twins.” The duo started out as humble graffiti artists, decorating the street corners of their native São Paulo, Brazil. Now, they’re internationally renowned, filling museums and gallery spaces across the globe.
Their artwork can currently be found at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. as part of an exhibition titled “Osgemeos: Endless Story.” This isn’t the brothers’ first time in the U.S. (the ICA Boston invited them over for a solo show back in 2012), but it is touted as their biggest: a sprawling survey of their colorful, chaotic, and playful oeuvre, which runs until August 3, 2025.
Installation view of Osgemeos, Chuva de verão (Summer Rain) (2008), O abduzido (The Abductee) (2020), The Garden (2020), and The Sunset (2019) in Osgemeos: Endless Story. Courtesy of the artists. © OSGEMEOS. Photo: Rick Coulby.
Curated by Marina Isgro, an art historian specializing in contemporary performance art and new media, “Osgemeos: Endless Story” gives visitors an unprecedented look into Gustavo and Otavia’s working process, taking visitors from displays of their preparatory sketches and comic book pages to immersive multimedia installations that could best be described as the love child of Instagrammable pop-up stores and teamLab shows.
According to the artists, these installations are meant to transport visitors to “Tritrez,” an imaginary world filled with geometric designs, totemic sculptures, and Andy Warhol-esque motifs where “there’s nothing to worry about” and “everything’s in harmony.”
Installation view of “Osgemeos: Endless Story.” Courtesy of the artists. © OSGEMEOS. Photo: Rick Coulby.
Specific artworks on display include The Tritrez Altar (2020), a rainbow-colored, shrine-like structure containing some of Osgemeos’s most recognizable characters; a giant zoetrope that, when activated, animates the duo’s art in the style of early cinema, and the so-called “Moon Room,” an installation representing a bedroom illuminated by moonlight.
The Pandolfo brothers have come a long way. Born in 1974, the seeds of their artist career were sowed when, at the ripe age of 10, they encountered hip-hop culture and enrolled in their first (free) art course. Their first exhibitions took place in various São Paulo subway stations, where they rapped, breakdanced, and made graffiti.
Osgemeos, 1980 (2020) © OSGEMEOS. Photo: Filipe Berndt.
Reflecting on Osgemeos’s humble beginnings, Sebastian Smee of the Washington Post rightly wonders if the twins’ ascension into the world of high art does in some way constitute a rejection or abandoning of their anti-establishment roots, writing that “within the graffiti community, art world success, in the shape of museum surveys and commercial gallery representation, can be fatal to street credibility.”
While the cartoonish style and nostalgia-fueled imagery of Osgemeos’s work can give off the impression that the twins are repackaging street art for a larger, broader audience that still sees graffiti as an eyesore and an act of vandalism, the fun, wild, and carefree energy that pervades their exhibition cannot help but leave a positive impact. “I would not fight to the death with anyone who described Osgemeos’s work as twee and repetitive… and yet, honestly, I love it,” note Smee, adding that, “If success is a deathbed, Osgemeos look surprisingly alive and comfortable in it.”
Osgemeos, Untitled (Zoetrope) (2014). Courtesy of the artists. © OSGEMEOS. Photo: Rick Coulby.
That’s not to say the Osgemeos’s oeuvre is primarily aesthetic and devoid of meaning. Far from it, actually. Like most street art, it’s ripe with social and political commentary. “Using public space was our way of dialoguing,” the brothers once told Bomb Magazine. “To intervene in public space was our way of speaking out.”
“Osgemos: Endless Story” is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum, Independence Ave and 7th St Washington, D.C. through August 3, 2025. More

Ever wanted to experience what the Roman city of Pompeii was like before or during the historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E.? Most museums, including the archaeological sites at modern-day Pompeii, only show what happened after. However, an immersive exhibition at the National Museum of Australia promises to transport visitors back in time to witness the catastrophe firsthand.
The exhibition, simply titled “Pompeii,” is marketed as a unique, multi-sensory, immersive experience that leverages lighting, sound, and elements of virtual reality to craft a 360-degree recreation of the eruption. Running through May 4, 2025, the exhibition also includes more than 90 objects salvaged from the city, which, as a direct and admittedly ironic consequence of being covered in volcanic ash, have been exceptionally well-preserved.
Installation view of “Pompeii” at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Martin Ollman/National Museum of Australia.
“Pompeii” was made in collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the Grand Palais in Paris, which houses many Pompeiian artifacts, as well as Gedeon Experiences, a French media company that specializes in developing immersive exhibitions for museums, galleries, cultural venues, and heritage sites.
“We hope to offer visitors a unique educational experience,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the archaeological park, in a statement, “akin to what one might encounter when visiting the excavations at Pompeii today: the opportunity to step into an exceptionally well-preserved ancient space, to walk its streets, to observe its buildings, to explore public areas and to enter the private homes and the lives of those who inhabited these spaces.”
Installation view of “Pompeii” at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Martin Ollman/National Museum of Australia.
When Vesuvius erupted, it effectively froze the city—a favorite get-away for wealthy Roman citizens—in time. Excavations are still being carried out on site, where new buildings, mosaics, wall paintings, and even unfinished food scraps continue to be unearthed. These relics continue to broaden our understanding life in Pompeii, in addition to ongoing academic and scientific studies.
The exhibition plans to add to those perspectives. It reconstructs the city’s main avenue, which leads directly to a floor-to-ceiling recreation of Mount Vesuvius. Along the way are four reimagined Roman homes, which are displayed with everyday objects discovered at the sites—some on view in Australia for the first time.
Installation view of “Pompeii” at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Martin Ollman/National Museum of Australia.
“The story of Pompeii is dramatic, and this exhibition captures that drama. But it also gives an intimate look at what life was like in the ancient city and how it has continued to captivate our imaginations since its rediscovery,” said Lily Withycombe, the museum’s lead coordinating curator.
One noteworthy artifact featured in the exhibition is a situla, a container made of ceramics or metals that the Romans used to carry and store liquids. They’re similar to regular old buckets, save for the fact that some also served ceremonial purposes. Also included is a statuette of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty, and desire, as well as an ancestor of one of Rome’s founding fathers, the mythological hero Aeneas.
Installation view of “Pompeii” at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Martin Ollman/National Museum of Australia.
Some other noteworthy objects include an oil lamp, which the Romans used to illuminate their homes and streets, as well as a set of dice, which were commonly made out of bone, clay, or metal, and used to play a backgammon-like gambling game called taberna. Like modern dice, the symbols on their faces represented numbers. Unlike modern dice, they were elongated, influencing the way they rolled onto a table or other surface.
Installation view of “Pompeii” at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Martin Ollman/National Museum of Australia.
Digital projections and sound design will also add to the experience, bringing the dramatic eruption to life (so much so that the the museum warns that the recreation might be upsetting to some visitors, stressing its loud noises and bright lights).
“The digital projections and soundscapes combined with ordinary and extraordinary objects give visitors an unparalleled glimpse into the everyday lives of people in ancient Pompeii,” Withycombe added. “Visitors will come away with a deeper, stronger connection with the people of Pompeii and their lives and the city they called home—despite more than 2,000 years of separation in time.”
“Pompeii” is on view at the National Museum of Australia, Lawson Crescent, Acton Peninsula, Canberra, Australia, through May 5, 2024.  More