Art Movements: Big Museum News
MacKenzie Scott's significant gift to the Japanese American National Museum, the little design hippo that could, and a new Rijksmuseum where?
Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world.
A Big Museum Week
It's been quite a year for the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which had several federal grants terminated by the Trump administration in April and dozens of masked Customs and Border Patrol agents swarming its plaza a few months later. But 2025 is ending on a high note for the institution, which has just received a $20 million gift — the largest in its history — from the philanthropic coffers of MacKenzie Scott, easily the only good thing Jeff Bezos has ever been tangentially connected to.
Elsewhere, museums are expanding. The New York Historical announced it will open its new 71,000-square-foot Tang Wing for American Democracy on June 18, 2026, and the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston will inaugurate four new galleries dedicated to modern art on December 13.
Each space in the MFA Boston's Evans Wing will feature collection works, loans, and recent acquisitions, like Remedios Varo's alluring "Tailleur pour dames" (1957) below.
Not to be outdone, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum — which brought you the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition in 2023 and a dark new chapter in the history of ticket resale gouging — just announced a new branch of the institution in the city of Eindhoven. Great news! Now we just have to find out where Eindhoven is ...
Trophy Season
- Nnena Kalu won this year's Turner Prize, making her the first person with a learning disability to receive the award. Read more at Hyperallergic.
- Umar Rashid is the inaugural recipient of Angus Montgomery Arts's AMA Artist Award.
- Napoles Marty was awarded the 2026 Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize.
What Else Happened?
- Kathryn Kanjo was appointed director of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. She's currently the director and CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
- Ethan Lasser was named chief of Curatorial Affairs and Conservation at the MFA Boston.
- Rebecca Manson is now represented by Jessica Silverman gallery in San Francisco. Josh Lilley gallery will continue to represent the artist in London.
- Marlisa Dunn is now represented by Sarah Gormley Gallery.
- The Photography Show revealed its full list of exhibitors for the 2026 edition of the NYC fair, along with a new section dedicated to artists who are “redefining lens-based practice," which sounds like something my optometrist would say.
Wildcard
This whimsical hippopotamus-shaped bar by François-Xavier Lalanne fetched $31.4 million at Sotheby's this week, making it the most expensive design piece ever sold at auction. Commissioned in 1976 by the French heiress Anne Schlumberger, the "Hippopotame Bar" is not just charming but also functional, featuring a head that opens to reveal an hors-d'oeuvre tray and a storage space for your offshore-account paperwork and heirlooms of questionable provenance.
