What to Know About the Search for Amelia Earhart’s Plane 19 October 2026 at 06:47

What to Know About the Search for Amelia Earhart’s Plane

19 October 2026 at 06:47

A satellite image sent researchers to a remote Pacific atoll, but their findings brought no resolution to the decades-old search. Here’s what to know.

Amelia Earhart perched atop the nose of the Lockheed Electra plane in 1936.

Amelia Earhart researchers leave remote atoll empty-handed after ‘plane debris’ found to be a clump of trees 19 October 2026 at 00:43

Amelia Earhart researchers leave remote atoll empty-handed after ‘plane debris’ found to be a clump of trees

The Guardian

By: Oliver Holmes in Bangkok

19 October 2026 at 00:43

Expedition was drawn to Nikumaroro after spotting what was described as a metallic glint in waters off uninhabited island

A US expedition that voyaged to a remote Pacific island in the hope of solving the mystery of what happened to pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart has said an object they suspected to be her plane was a clump of washed-up trees.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that smoking gun,” said Steve Schultz of Purdue University, standing on the sand in front of a blue lagoon on the atoll of Nikumaroro, about halfway between Australia and Hawaii.

‘Shakespeare was a Black woman’: the playwright’s under-recognized connection to Black culture 18 October 2026 at 05:00

‘Shakespeare was a Black woman’: the playwright’s under-recognized connection to Black culture

The Guardian

By: Kaitlyn McNab

18 October 2026 at 05:00

A new Washington DC exhibition examines how Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and more used the Bard’s work to help tell their own stories

“William Shakespeare was a black woman.” In 1985, Maya Angelou spoke these words as part of a keynote speech at a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

There, she spoke of the role poetry played in her transition from muteness as a child and how she fantasized herself triumphantly delivering Portia’s speech from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in front of her entire community at church. Though she never got the chance to perform that rendition, Angelou acknowledged her desire to deliver that rendition as part of a lifelong kinship with Shakespeare, a connection she continued to seek out throughout her life whenever she needed heartening or solace. In her eyes, Shakespeare wrote his emotionally desolate Sonnet 29 “for” her; how else could he have so aptly described the harsh realities of the Black feminine condition?

The last lace mill – in pictures 18 October 2026 at 02:00

The last lace mill – in pictures

The Guardian

By: Murdo MacLeod

18 October 2026 at 02:00

MYB Textiles Ltd is the last mill in the world weaving patterned Nottingham lace on traditional looms. Once there were 20 lace mills in the Irvine Valley towns of Newmilns and Darvel alone. The lace industry became the largest employer in the area for a time and flourished until the late 1970s when competition emerged from other European countries and Asia. Now the majority of their trade comes from the film, theatre, TV and entertainment industry

The moment I knew: For Valentine’s Day he gave me a heart covered in fake blood. I was appalled – and thrilled 17 October 2026 at 15:00

The moment I knew: For Valentine’s Day he gave me a heart covered in fake blood. I was appalled – and thrilled

The Guardian

By: Will Huxley · as told to Doosie Morris

17 October 2026 at 15:00

Will Huxley thought Garrett looked like a Heathcliff type. They bonded over their shared love of Kate Bush. Then one day Garrett handed over an ornate gift box

Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2006 I’d just graduated film school at the Victorian College of the Arts and was working at the ABC in Melbourne. It was a pretty tumultuous time of my life. I had just broken up with my best friend and high school sweetheart – whom I adored – and was in the process of coming out.

I was drinking too much and in breaks from the chaos I’d find myself drawn to the local video store. That’s where I first saw Garrett behind the counter. I had an instant crush on him and spent a lot of time perusing the art house section, so he would see how creative and cultured I was.

An unusual peek into the workshop of 17th-C painters & illustrators 17 October 2026 at 11:34

An unusual peek into the workshop of 17th-C painters & illustrators

MetaFilter

By: chavenet

17 October 2026 at 11:34

There's ahead of its time, then there's Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l'eau — or, in its original Dutch title, Klaer Lightende Spiegel der Verfkonst, a 900-page book of paint colors made before any such things were common tools of the artist's, scientist's, and industrial designer's trade.

‘It feels like the light is pushing the darkness apart’: Gellért Gombai’s best phone picture 17 October 2026 at 06:00

‘It feels like the light is pushing the darkness apart’: Gellért Gombai’s best phone picture

The Guardian

By: Grace Holliday

17 October 2026 at 06:00

The photographer was holidaying with his family when two shadows became a plaything for his young son

Gellért Gombai, his wife and two children spend much of the year at their home in Budapest, Hungary, but most of their summers in Alsóörs. “It’s a small holiday village on Lake Balaton, the largest in central Europe, so it’s often referred to as the Hungarian sea,” Gombai, a freelance photographer, says. “We go to the playground and beach most days, swim, and eat beach food, but even when I’m enjoying my holiday, I’m looking out for interesting moments to capture.”

On this particular day, the family had eaten hotdogs for lunch, before Gombai had taken the kids, Lóci and Janka, to the playground. “Lóci, who was five at the time, was jumping between two shadows – one from a changing room, and the other from a building’s roof,” he says. “I asked him to stay still for a few minutes while I got the shot, and he lay like this on the ground. He’s a big-hearted little clown; I’m so glad he’s my son.” When he showed the children, “Janka immediately asked me to take the same shot of her, which often happens. Lóci said it looked like he was among mountains, or as though a monster was about to eat him.”

The Influencer Project to Melanie C: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead 17 October 2026 at 01:00

The Influencer Project to Melanie C: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

The Guardian

By: Guardian Staff

17 October 2026 at 01:00

A social media star comes a cropper in timely horror, and the Spice Girls ledge takes her disco- and indie-tinged bops out on a short tour

The Influencer Project
Out now
When your career involves constantly posting footage of everything you do to social media, it makes things a cakewalk for stalkers. And lo, the influencer-in-peril horror subgenre was born. British social media star Chiara King plays herself in this chilling iteration, set in Copenhagen.

Masterplan review – Stanley Tucci is wasted in Amazon’s smooth-brained heist caper 16 October 2026 at 15:24

Masterplan review – Stanley Tucci is wasted in Amazon’s smooth-brained heist caper

The Guardian

By: Owen Myers

16 October 2026 at 15:24

A ‘family’ of criminals attempt to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in pulpy and forgettable thriller

In the last half-decade Stanley Tucci has been a source of near-inexhaustible on- screen delight, whether making friends with nonnas in his delightful cooking shows or smartly judged supporting turns in Conclave and The Devil Wears Prada 2. He is an actor well placed for a star vehicle of his own, and this one, Masterplan, sounds good on paper: an art heist fronted by the actor at his most debonair, flanked by a grandson of a French New Wave legend (Victor Belmondo, related to Breathless star Jean-Paul) and a buzzy breakout of The White Lotus (Simona Tabasco, winning in season two of Mike White’s comedy).

There’s a good bit of pulpy fun to have here, with double, triple and quadruple crossing, silly spy gadgetry which has been updated to include retina scan cloning and something called “VR intrusion”. As British criminal mastermind Roger, Tucci is game to send up aristo archetypes, even if his character often veers into parody. “I’m English,” his character says at one point. “‘Not bad’ is what I say when I orgasm.”

Sweet nothings, urinal cakes and headless dogs: 10 artworks worth seeing at Frieze 16 October 2026 at 07:02

Sweet nothings, urinal cakes and headless dogs: 10 artworks worth seeing at Frieze

The Guardian

By: Eddy Frankel

16 October 2026 at 07:02

There’s plenty that stands out at Regent’s Park this year, from antidepressant pens and an ibuprofen-dolling robotic arm to Miriam Cahn’s 26 years’ worth of self-portraiture and a 150m-year-old dinosaur skull – still with embedded tooth

Frieze review – you’ll see more avant garde wonders in the Bake Off tent

The raised platform in the middle of British artist Ella Fleck’s installation vibrates under your feet to the sound of a male voice. He’s whispering sweet nothings, intoning sexual fantasies. It’s all based on third-party agencies that manage OnlyFans accounts, interacting with users, creating fictional relationships that horny guys spend thousands on. It’s a greasy, gross, uncomfortable exploration of sex work on an industrial scale.

Museum releases historical photos of island where Amelia Earhart may have crashed 16 October 2026 at 06:09

Museum releases historical photos of island where Amelia Earhart may have crashed

The Guardian

By: Oliver Holmes

16 October 2026 at 06:09

Images from New Zealand aerial survey of Nikumaroro in 1938 offer new clues over aviator’s disappearance

A New Zealand museum has released nearly 50 photos from a 1938 aerial survey of the island where Amelia Earhart is believed to have crash-landed, offering amateur sleuths new evidence to scour for traces of the pioneering aviator and her plane.

The black-and-white images were published by the Air Force Museum of New Zealand after renewed interest in one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century, spurred by a US expedition to the Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro in search of new clues.

Sod’s law: what can two turf swaps 40 years apart tell us about Britain’s biodiversity crisis? 16 October 2026 at 06:01

Sod’s law: what can two turf swaps 40 years apart tell us about Britain’s biodiversity crisis?

The Guardian

By: Patrick Barkham

16 October 2026 at 06:01

In 1983, David Nash dug up a section of Kensington Gardens and swapped it with Welsh grassland. Four decades later, Mike Perry’s reverse swap revealed a striking reversal in the fortunes of urban and rural nature

In 1983, an open-topped truck unloaded an unusual cargo in Kensington Gardens: 83 hunks of turf cut from Cae’n y Coed, a wooded hillside in the Ffestiniog valley. The ring of turf measuring eight metres in diameter that was removed from the park beside the Serpentine Gallery in west London to make space for the Welsh sods was then trucked from London to north Wales.

So began Sod Swap, a piece of sculptural defiance by David Nash, which has had an unexpected and epic afterlife. More than 40 years later, photographic artist Mike Perry restaged the work as Reverse Sod Swap, exchanging exactly the same amount of turf between Springfield Park in Hackney, east London, and pastureland in Pembrokeshire, with strikingly different results. With twin works acquiring new relevance in a time of extinction and climate crises, the sod swapping is now the subject of a new book.

From a VR gay sauna to the gothic pile that inspired Cluedo – Fierce festival storms back 15 October 2026 at 11:54

From a VR gay sauna to the gothic pile that inspired Cluedo – Fierce festival storms back

The Guardian

By: Lyndsey Winship

15 October 2026 at 11:54

Venues across Birmingham
As Britain’s longest-running live art festival returns, get ready for late-night artist dinners, a show in a swimming pool and Faye Driscoll’s incredible rotating disintegration

The phrase “two things can be true” is a frequent refrain in popular psychology and it’s also a frequent response, I find, to witnessing the farther reaches of live art. Hmm, is this performance confusingly self-indulgent or utterly profound? Sometimes it can be both. In fact, it’s not just two things that can be true, it’s as many things as there are people in the audience, since this is all about the live subjective experience, in the moment; presence and connection.

Launched in 1998, Fierce is Britain’s longest-running live art festival. For one week it takes over Birmingham’s conventional theatres alongside unconventional spaces, especially in ex-industrial Digbeth, which is fast becoming a creative hub. Also on the bill this year: late-night artist dinners, a show in a swimming pool, and a six-hour performance jam at a grand gothic hall that was apparently the inspiration for Cluedo.

Frieze review – you’ll see more avant garde wonders in the Bake Off tent 15 October 2026 at 10:24

Frieze review – you’ll see more avant garde wonders in the Bake Off tent

The Guardian

By: Jonathan Jones

15 October 2026 at 10:24

Regents Park, London
This year’s art fair is a jumble sale of mediocre paintings for the super-rich, while its Masters sibling hawks dinosaur skulls and sleazy 19th-century nudes. Welcome to the art market as its most grotesque

Naked people climb out of the earth and run around waving their arms and screaming, while someone with a bird’s head and wings plays the bagpipes. It’s my favourite artwork at this year’s Frieze but don’t go looking for this wildly imaginative outrage among the heaps of contemporary art at Frieze London. It’s a painting by a 16th-century follower of Hieronymus Bosch and is on view at Frieze Masters, the posher tent on the other side of Regent’s Park.

I’m sorry to say I was bored rigid in Frieze London. Many people attend, I imagine, hoping to be informed and excited by the newest, coolest art, but you’ll see more genuinely avant garde wonders in the Bake Off tent. There are endless paintings, none of which are much good, interspersed with photographs which tend to be a little better. The first thing here that held me at all was a two-metre-tall, inkjet print by Wolfgang Tillmans called Paul, nude, golf ball in which the naked Paul has his elbows on the floor and his close-cropped head bowed between them in apparent despair, while the white ball beside him eerily mirrors the pale flesh of his bony back. But it’s not new – it dates from 1994.

Vermeer by Andrew Graham-Dixon audiobook review – a sharp and authoritative guide 15 October 2026 at 10:00

Vermeer by Andrew Graham-Dixon audiobook review – a sharp and authoritative guide

The Guardian

By: Fiona Sturges

15 October 2026 at 10:00

The author offers intriguing insights into the way this Dutch artist worked, including fresh perspectives on The Girl With the Pearl Earring

In the decades after the death of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1675, few knew his name or work. He was so unknown that his paintings were sold with the forged signatures of more popular artists attached. All that changed in the mid-19th century, when his art was reassessed by French critics. Today Vermeer is one of the most admired painters in the world, although, says art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, he has “proved stubbornly resistant to interpretation”.

Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, Graham-Dixon’s biography which was six years in the writing, endeavours to answer some unresolved questions, among them: what was Vermeer’s life like? Why did he paint the way he did? What was the intent behind his paintings, of which only 36 exist? Unlike the Dutch genre painters of his time, the Delft-born Vermeer painted solemn yet luminous works featuring women in domestic settings and engaged in activities such as reading, writing, playing music or pouring milk. His ability to render light, and its softening effect on rooms and people, was unparalleled.

Pope.L review – savage satire from Y-fronts-wearing trickster famed for gruelling ‘crawl’ across New York 15 October 2026 at 07:00

Pope.L review – savage satire from Y-fronts-wearing trickster famed for gruelling ‘crawl’ across New York

The Guardian

By: Ben Eastham

15 October 2026 at 07:00

Modern Art, London
The late American took on liberal presumptions and the commercialism of Black culture, even dressing in white bunny ears and underpants

Seven squares are pinned to the wall, each one painted in the high style of American minimalism: pure, austere variations on a theme. At the centre of each is printed the phrase “negro idea” followed by an apparently random number (51, 37, 666). What is Pope.L, the late, great trickster of contemporary American art, getting at?

Perhaps it is a critique of how minimalism, with its ethos of art-for-art’s sake, excluded politics from art? Or a comment on how racial categories are as constructed (and as subject to fashion) as the theories underpinning contemporary art? Or is it a riff on how the edifice of western modernism is built on stolen ideas? Then again, maybe the deployment of an outmoded racial category is simply designed to discomfort the liberal pieties of those people likely to visit this art gallery just off Piccadilly.

A tour around Amy Winehouse’s private junk: five free art exhibitions to see 15 October 2026 at 06:28

A tour around Amy Winehouse’s private junk: five free art exhibitions to see

The Guardian

By: Eddy Frankel

15 October 2026 at 06:28

The Back to Black singer’s books, shoes and jigsaw puzzles have gone on display. Elsewhere, a leaky Barbican and some gloriously gloopy sculptures can be viewed in London galleries this week

Her royal heilness: Berlin show revisits the artist who turned the Queen into a Nazi 15 October 2026 at 02:00

Her royal heilness: Berlin show revisits the artist who turned the Queen into a Nazi

The Guardian

By: Hanno Hauenstein

15 October 2026 at 02:00

The late Christoph Schlingensief was one of German art’s great provocateurs. Can his B-Movie horror aesthetics still shock us into thinking anew about media power, colonialism, and the far right?

Christoph Schlingensief certainly knew how to provoke. “Fury at German play that shows Queen as a Nazi,” read the Sunday Express’s headline after Kaprow City first premiered at Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre in 2006. Drawing on the happenings of US performance artist Allan Kaprow, the play turned its attention to Diana, Princess of Wales’s death. In one scene, the then queen performs a Hitler salute. Another re-enacts the paparazzi chase that led to Diana’s fatal crash. Diana appears in bed beside two men with Down’s syndrome; and Camilla is pelted with animal blood. Schlingensief insisted the work was not meant as provocation but as an investigation into how Diana turned into a modern icon. But his art thrived on outrage, exposing the absurdity of societies that glorify their idols while consuming their lives as entertainment.

Kaprow City is at the heart of a new Berlin show – It’s Not My Problem Anymore, Deal With Your Own Shit – that revisits the artist’s legacy. In the Gropius Bau’s grand neo-Renaissance atrium, visitors encounter remnants of the carousel-like rotating stage he called the “animatograph”. Looking at this installation today feels like a glimpse into Schlingensief’s mind: a messy collage of childhood memories, violent fantasies and royal glamour.

Champions League: Mourinho’s Real Madrid stage wild comeback on Roma return 14 October 2026 at 17:43

Champions League: Mourinho’s Real Madrid stage wild comeback on Roma return

The Guardian

By: Agencies

14 October 2026 at 17:43

Mourinho’s side score three late goals from 3-1 deficit
Dortmund latest team beaten in Norway by Bodø/Glimt

José Mourinho enjoyed a Roma reunion to remember as Real Madrid completed an astonishing comeback by scoring three late goals to claim a 4-3 away win in the Champions League on Wednesday.

Marten de Roon gave the hosts a deserved opener before Kylian Mbappé struck back on his 100th Champions League appearance to level the scores at the break. Two Donyell Malen strikes in the space of six minutes early in the second half seemed to take the game away from the 15-time European champions as Roma ran rampant.

‘I must continue until I die’: inside the fight to bring Iran’s thriving art scene to the world 14 October 2026 at 10:00

‘I must continue until I die’: inside the fight to bring Iran’s thriving art scene to the world

The Guardian

By: David Smith

14 October 2026 at 10:00

Amid economic sanctions and ongoing conflict, a new initiative is returning Iran’s artists to the international spotlight

When the call came early one morning, Tehran resident Elham Issari knew it must be urgent. The voice on the line was offering something precious. “Miss Elham,” he said excitedly, “I have a single tube of white paint! It’s overpriced and I know it’s overpriced but, if you want it, you have to buy it right now because there’s this other guy in this other city who wants it and you have to tell me within the next five minutes.”

The tube of white paint would have cost Issari 5m tomans (about $36), she recalls. “I was like, I don’t think so, because that’s overpriced, and the next thing you know is it’s 4am and I’m on YouTube watching how to make lead white in your backyard without getting lead poisoning.”

A dominatrix and her tightly bound client: Giada Ripa’s best photograph 14 October 2026 at 09:39

A dominatrix and her tightly bound client: Giada Ripa’s best photograph

The Guardian

By: Interview by Charlotte Jansen

14 October 2026 at 09:39

‘Karen is a Japanese dominatrix and “rope artist” who ties up her clients in a way that echoes how samurai bound their prisoners. Clients are mostly men with high-pressure jobs’

Ten years ago, my dad called to say he had found these amazing images hidden under piles of maps and stuff in an attic in our family home in Piemonte, northern Italy. He had come across a leather-bound album of 53 black and white photographs: portraits of Japanese “native types”, reflecting the 19th-century colonial way of representing people, cultures and views of Japan.

It turned out we had a treasure in our hands: it was an album of photographs by Felice Beato, the first foreign photographer to arrive in Japan in 1863 at the end of the Edo period and on the eve of the Meiji era.

Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back 13 October 2026 at 11:00

Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back

The Guardian

By: Taylor Telford

13 October 2026 at 11:00

Rapid AI adoption left workers cleaning up a flood of errors and low-quality work

Employers around the globe are grappling with the fallout from rushing to adopt fast-changing artificial intelligence tools.

Meta has scaled back plans to axe staff and use more AI agents after the company found employees were spending more and more time cleaning up technical and security errors, Reuters reported. And after thinning its workforce, especially middle managers, in a 2023 efficiency push, the company is expanding its managerial ranks again, LinkedIn posts from workers show.

Larger Than Life review – Wallace, Gromit and the gang say cheeeese for hilarious Aardman origin story 13 October 2026 at 10:00

Larger Than Life review – Wallace, Gromit and the gang say cheeeese for hilarious Aardman origin story

The Guardian

By: Eddy Frankel

13 October 2026 at 10:00

Lightroom, London
From Shaun’s barn to Gromit’s box, these immersive behind-the-scenes renderings of the wide-grinned, cheeky characters are joyful, enormous – and a bit hard to follow

Nothing is safe from the scourge of immersification. They’ve turned Gustav Klimt and Vincent Van Gogh into vast, projection-mapped digital environments; they’ve told the stories of the moon landings and the dinosaurs and David Bowie as floor-to-ceiling electronic spectacles; and now they’ve come for Aardman. For Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, our national treasures. Is nothing sacred?

The latest immersive cinematic experience at Lightroom is a big, eye-popping celebration of Aardman Animations, the company behind the world’s favourite claymation films and TV shows. It moves between documentary storytelling, behind-the-scenes insight and dazzling immersive renderings of all your wide-grinned, cheeky northern favourites.

50 years on from Arts Britain Ignores: how much has changed for black and Asian artists? 13 October 2026 at 09:48

50 years on from Arts Britain Ignores: how much has changed for black and Asian artists?

The Guardian

By: Chris Osuh Community affairs correspondent

13 October 2026 at 09:48

Conference to explore legacy of Naseem Khan’s seminal 1976 report about exclusion of minority ethnic artists

It is 50 years since cultural historian Naseem Khan’s challenge to the British arts establishment was first published, and the question of who and what counts as British continues to be contested.

The Arts Britain Ignores – Khan’s groundbreaking 1976 report, commissioned by organisations including the then Arts Council of Great Britain, presented a vision of a pluralistic national culture, in which the creativity of Britons of diverse ethnic backgrounds – from bhangra music, to black painters and Ukrainian dance – should be recognised, supported and respected.

Our Bodies Have Been Bridges review – riveting portraits and the story of the first woman on Earth 13 October 2026 at 07:12

Our Bodies Have Been Bridges review – riveting portraits and the story of the first woman on Earth

The Guardian

By: Charlotte Jansen

13 October 2026 at 07:12

Autograph, London
The three-person headline show looking at South American feminism is displayed alongside Charan Singh: Your Tongue in My Mouth, an intimate study of Indian trans communities

In the 1990s, the late Chicana artist Laura Aguilar was living with depression. A friend took her on a road trip to New Mexico, where Aguilar made some nude self-portraits in the mystical landscapes. Those photographs evolved into a pivotal series shot in desert environments across the American south-west, Aguilar’s notable 1996 Nature Self-Portrait – considered an early work of intersectional feminist art, before the word had entered academic discourse.

London gallery Autograph first worked on an exhibition of Aguilar’s in 1997, the year after she made Nature Self-Portrait, so this is something of a homecoming, a generation on. Aguilar’s contours, folds, and crevices sometimes disappear into the barren desert landscapes, assimilating the shapes of boulders or trees; at other times, her body is incongruous, soft flesh that can’t be held by the harsh, barren conditions. These images capture the paradox of a body that is both hypervisible and ignored.

Tarek Atoui’s Turbine Hall review – hallelujah, it’s raining musical instruments! 12 October 2026 at 10:55

Tarek Atoui’s Turbine Hall review – hallelujah, it’s raining musical instruments!

The Guardian

By: Jonathan Jones

12 October 2026 at 10:55

Tate Modern, London
The Lebanese artist has turned trumpets, drums, cones and voices into an ingenious, interconnected sonic beast with funny, sad and mystical results. Prepare to feel the earth move!

On the floor of the Turbine Hall, there are wide water basins and huge flattish rough-hewn rocks you might see on moorland or in a desert. You can sit or stand or climb on them. But if you look up, you won’t be able to stop looking up – because it’s raining musical instruments. Immense elongated brass trumpets and giant glowing drums seem to float in the air, suspended from the girders of the former power station’s roof.

If Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui had just left it at that, it would be an impressive, intriguing installation, but this is Tate Modern, honey, and Atoui hasn’t been asked to occupy its grandest space with mere physical objects. Instead, his sculptural creations and found stuff resonate and echo with an ever-changing, invisible art of noises. An earth-shaking bass note throbs from a hanging trumpet – or is it from that translucent cone rising out of the ground like an ethereal minaret? Then a drumbeat booms through the space and a woman’s plangent, achingly lovely voice sings notes of infinite nostalgia and melancholy.

Is it a plane or a tree? Amelia Earhart expedition aims to solve mystery of disappearance 12 October 2026 at 09:37

Is it a plane or a tree? Amelia Earhart expedition aims to solve mystery of disappearance

The Guardian

By: Oliver Holmes

12 October 2026 at 09:37

Researchers will head to remote Pacific atoll, but sceptics say satellite images unlikely to be of her aircraft

A team of US researchers is approaching a remote Pacific atoll where they suspect the famed aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed in 1937, in the latest attempt to crack one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century.

The 17-person expedition was inspired by satellite images taken over several years showing a submerged object in the uninhabited island’s sandy lagoon – evidence dismissed by other longtime Earhart sleuths who say it is probably a fallen tree.

Prem Sahib: Chamber review – master of unease twists the city into terror and pleasure 12 October 2026 at 09:00

Prem Sahib: Chamber review – master of unease twists the city into terror and pleasure

The Guardian

By: Eddy Frankel

12 October 2026 at 09:00

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
There’s an atmosphere of sickly discomfort throughout this weird, intense mid-career survey for this brilliant artist

Prem Sahib turns the city inside out, twists it around and rips it apart. His show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, a sort of mid-career survey for the 44-year-old English artist, is full of private spaces and urban nightmares that have been gutted and left on display. It’s minimal, claustrophobic, intense stuff.

A sodium street lamp hangs upside down from the ceiling, casting its sickly pale orange glow across the gallery. You feel like you’ve stumbled into some urban back alley where physics has been flipped, it has all the threat of an underpass, but surreal and inverted. Nearby, three puffer jackets have been squeezed between sheets of glass – are these the blokes who were waiting for you in the underpass? Or are they three strangers who you’ve caught mid-embrace?

Gabrielle Goliath: Elegy review – devastating lament is a furious, single-note call to action 12 October 2026 at 07:13

Gabrielle Goliath: Elegy review – devastating lament is a furious, single-note call to action

The Guardian

By: Eddy Frankel

12 October 2026 at 07:13

Ibraaz, London
Too controversial for the Venice Biennale, this haunting video and audio work commemorates murders and genocides with an angry act of mourning

The sound of mourning spills out into the streets. A single, endless wailing note echoes out of the basement of Ibraaz, a relatively new cultural centre in London’s Fitzrovia. This is Gabrielle Goliath’s heart-wrenching Elegy, each of its three films featuring a woman singing just one note until their lungs falter and another woman steps up to fill in for her. Just as a note is about to die, it is sustained. It’s a haunting, shocking act of mourning for murder, injustice and genocide.

And it almost never made it.

Pine cones, glitter and a hip-hop head for sale: red-hot artists reveal their Frieze stunners 12 October 2026 at 00:00

Pine cones, glitter and a hip-hop head for sale: red-hot artists reveal their Frieze stunners

The Guardian

By: Interviews by Alex Needham

12 October 2026 at 00:00

As the sprawling art jamboree hits London, eight of the most exciting exhibiting artists share what their work means to them – and who they hope will buy it

First held in 2003, the Frieze art fair is a giant art supermarket that descends on Regent’s Park, London, every October. Some detest it for its blatant commercialism, others relish it as the opportunity to see a mind-boggling amount of contemporary art in one enormous tent. Here, eight British-based artists of the moment talk through what they’re showing.

‘Enough of this suffering!’ Joana Vasconcelos on why she is fed up with women’s art defined by pain 11 October 2026 at 19:07

‘Enough of this suffering!’ Joana Vasconcelos on why she is fed up with women’s art defined by pain

The Guardian

By: Dale Berning Sawa

11 October 2026 at 19:07

The Portuguese artist is famous for her monumental ceramic wedding cakes and gigantic chandeliers made of tampons. So why is a new show in Lisbon pairing her with Valentino’s size-zero catwalk dresses?

To interview the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is to jump on to a moving train. She is telling me why she uses needlework to make huge things: 15-metre doilies, say, or a tree 13.5 metres tall rustling with 150,000 hand-sewn leaves. “One day, I said to myself,” she says, “why not bring domestic detail into monumental sculpture? What do we know of works like this? OK, there’s Louise Bourgeois. But it wasn’t enormous. She worked in detail but on small things. There’s the beauty of Niki de Saint Phalle. But it’s always papier mache – a technique that’s very simple, very practical, but not chic.”

It takes a certain something to compare yourself to these two French giantesses of art. It takes something else to castigate Bourgeois and de Saint Phalle for not being big, bold and beautiful enough. But if there’s one female contemporary artist who can do it without coming across as delusional, it’s Vasconcelos. Born in Paris in 1971 into an artistic Portuguese family, Vasconcelos has established herself as one of her country’s leading contemporary artists – and one of the world’s most ambitious.

‘What could be discovered? What is new there?’: blockbuster exhibition celebrates Roy Lichtenstein 11 October 2026 at 05:00

‘What could be discovered? What is new there?’: blockbuster exhibition celebrates Roy Lichtenstein

The Guardian

By: David Smith in Washington

11 October 2026 at 05:00

The often-criticised pop artist is the focus of a monumental new survey including rarely seen pieces and ambitious new restagings at New York’s Whitney Museum

When the American artist Roy Lichtenstein created his monumental Greene Street Mural in 1983, he took inspiration from the Bayeux tapestry for its serial storytelling technique. But whereas the embroidery depicting the Norman conquest continues to delight after nearly 1,000 years, Lichtenstein’s site-specific mural was destroyed after six weeks, in accordance with his wishes.

More than four decades later, however, the monumental Greene Street Mural is to mesmerise art lovers once more. This week a 96ft (29-metre) recreation of the work will span the entire entryway to Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, the first major New York retrospective of the pop artist’s work in 33 years, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Edge Control: the art exhibition using hidden camera images to explore race and beauty 10 October 2026 at 08:00

Edge Control: the art exhibition using hidden camera images to explore race and beauty

The Guardian

By: Morgan Jerkins

10 October 2026 at 08:00

Artist Deana Lawson uses beauty supply store surveillance images to analyze power and personhood in her exhibition at the Gagosian in New York City

In her essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, writer and philosopher bell hooks explains that the relationship between Black people and the act of “looking” has been traumatic since slavery. Black people, many of whom are still subject to the constant surveillance that originated during enslavement, have historically been punished with severe consequences, such as lynching, for looking back at those who subjugate them. Despite these risks, hooks writes, they rebelled by secretly looking at white people, as well as their surroundings, rejecting the white gaze as the singular framework of reality. We can, as bell hooks writes, “interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see”.

I thought of this analysis when I visited Edge Control, artist Deana Lawson’s latest photography exhibition at the Gagosian gallery in New York City. Edge control refers to the gels and pomades that slick the hairs along the edges of a Black woman’s hairline, but in Lawson’s exhibit, the phrase takes on an additional meaning. It’s at once a styling product for Black haircare devotees as well as a tool to examine the beauty industry, consumerism and how surveillance and race intersect.

Edge Control is on view at the Gagosian in New York City until 24 October

‘They looked like two curtain-twitchers, though not very subtle ones’: Peter Crome’s best phone picture 10 October 2026 at 06:00

‘They looked like two curtain-twitchers, though not very subtle ones’: Peter Crome’s best phone picture

The Guardian

By: Grace Holliday

10 October 2026 at 06:00

The photographer was walking home in London when he caught the attention of a pair of canine snoops

Walking home after dropping his little girl at school, Peter Crome sensed he was being watched. A former professional ballet dancer now living in London, he had supplemented his income with photography work for 20 years. “But since having my daughter, my Nikon gear has sat idly by,” he says. “I got so used to lugging my heavy equipment around with me, it’s been quite refreshing to go somewhere just with a phone and still come back with wonderful pictures. My iPhone has also been a blessing for keeping in touch with family back home in Sydney,” Crome adds.

The cause of his disquiet that day was, to his happy surprise, these two dogs. “It was such a comical moment,” he says. “They looked like two curtain-twitchers, though not very subtle ones. I liked how they were perfectly framed with the different layers of window frames, and the brickwork and hedge provided some pleasing textures, but it was the disapproving expression on their faces that made the photo for me.”

From The Social Reckoning to Harriet Kemsley: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead 10 October 2026 at 01:00

From The Social Reckoning to Harriet Kemsley: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

The Guardian

By: Guardian Staff

10 October 2026 at 01:00

Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg in Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to The Social Network, and the Last One Laughing star reckons with divorce in her new standup tour

The Social Reckoning
Out now
The David Fincher-directed The Social Network has only come to seem more canny over time, with the site co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg being held responsible for all manner of social ills. In this sequel from Aaron Sorkin (this time directing and writing) based on the incidents around the 2021 leak of internal Facebook memos, Zuck is embodied not by Jesse Eisenberg but Jeremy Strong.

Remember Me review – narrow view of two photographic centuries is like a history of food in three ham sarnies 10 October 2026 at 00:00

Remember Me review – narrow view of two photographic centuries is like a history of food in three ham sarnies

The Guardian

By: Charlotte Jansen

10 October 2026 at 00:00

Bourse de Commerce, Paris
There are 700 works from François Pinault’s collection on display – more than half of them by Irving Penn – but it’s a blinkered selection and annoyingly didactic

‘Beware … of assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle” scream the words of Aimé Césaire – writ large and bold by Barbara Kruger, in a giant installation, The History of Tears, that fills Bourse de Commerce’s spectacular Rotunda. Kruger’s angry, menacing, viscerally charged work – words as images, and large-scale video clips of people seething with self-hate – is a thrilling setup for Remember Me, an exhibition that promises a take on 200 years of photography through 700 works by more than 70 artists drawn from the collection of the French billionaire François Pinault. That excitement quickly dissipates as the exhibition moves on.

This is the biggest photography show ever held at the Bourse de Commerce. Remember Me has two main problems: first, it tries to say too much with too few artists. For a start, nearly 450 of the 700 or so works are by Irving Penn. It leans heavily on classical, conventional approaches, styles and familiar names, and that creates a very obvious skew in the perception of what photography is, does, and how it is presented.

Candlelit theatre in Havana – in pictures 9 October 2026 at 08:15

Candlelit theatre in Havana – in pictures

The Guardian

By: Norlys Perez/Reuters

9 October 2026 at 08:15

Widespread blackouts have become increasingly common in Cuba since the US imposed energy sanctions in January. Outages frequently surpass 24 hours as the ageing grid fails. The Impulso theatre group has had to adapt as power cuts pose severe challenges for the performing arts

Tate sounds eerie, Frieze returns and Cindy Sherman takes surreal selfies – the week in art 9 October 2026 at 07:00

Tate sounds eerie, Frieze returns and Cindy Sherman takes surreal selfies – the week in art

The Guardian

By: Jonathan Jones

9 October 2026 at 07:00

The Turbine Hall gets haunted by sound art and the colossal air fair opens its doors, while Sherman champions the fantastic and the grotesque – all in your weekly dispatch

Tarek Atoui
Sound art inspired by everyday objects and the eerie harmonies of history provides the latest artistic intervention in Tate Modern’s biggest space. Read more here.
• Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, from 13 October to 11 April

Willem de Kooning review – the artist’s lifelong rebellion against himself is thrilling to watch 8 October 2026 at 10:35

Willem de Kooning review – the artist’s lifelong rebellion against himself is thrilling to watch

The Guardian

By: Ben Eastham

8 October 2026 at 10:35

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Marking a century since the Dutch artist stowed away to New York, this vast retrospective gloriously showcases the abstract expressionist’s fierce boundary-pushing

Willem de Kooning was the last great artist who really knew how to draw. More precisely, if less provocatively, he was the last truly transformative painter to have been schooled in the academic tradition that produces what is still recognised, by most people, as “good drawing”. Accurate in the sense of a photograph but, like a filter on your cameraphone, also subtly tidying up the world to meet the ideals of classical proportion. “Draw what you see and not what you think,” the young De Kooning was told. Raw personal emotion had no place – a far cry from what this master of abstract expressionism was to become.

The intense labour required to build a connection between eye, brain and hand so quick as to be instinctive is illustrated by the charcoal still life Dish With Jugs. Made when De Kooning was in his mid-teens, and so minutely rendered that you might mistake it for a sepia photograph, the catalogue estimates that it took 600 hours at the Rotterdam academy to complete. The aim of this exercise was not to produce a single picture so much as to ingrain a way of seeing and reconstructing the world to the point that it becomes inescapable.

The woman with the mattress: the radical, rage-fuelled history of anti-rape art 8 October 2026 at 10:19

The woman with the mattress: the radical, rage-fuelled history of anti-rape art

The Guardian

By: Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

8 October 2026 at 10:19

A performance piece from 2014 has gone viral in response to an allegation of rape at Cornell University. But with such defiant pieces stretching back hundreds of years, will things ever change?

In September 2014, Emma Sulkowicz began to carry a blue mattress weighing 23kg around her university campus. The mattress was similar to the ones New York’s Columbia University used in its dorm rooms, where Sulkowicz said she had been raped by a fellow student two years earlier. Her performance/endurance artwork constituted her visual art senior thesis, drawing attention to the lack of criminal charges brought against her alleged attacker and his continued presence at the university. As she hauled it across campus, others could choose to assist her with her burden. Many did. She recorded responses to the piece in a diary.

“I could have taken my pillow,” she told the writer Jessica Valenti at the time. “But I want people to see how it weighs down a person to be ignored by the school administration and harassed by police.” Sulkowicz would carry the mattress, she said, for as long as her alleged attacker remained at Columbia. And so she ended up carrying it all the way to graduation where, helped by other women, she took it on stage. The university president refused to shake her hand, turning away from her instead.

Lourdes gets a Vegas glow-up at Dublin theatre festival, where canvases are slashed 8 October 2026 at 07:23

Lourdes gets a Vegas glow-up at Dublin theatre festival, where canvases are slashed

The Guardian

By: Helen Meany

8 October 2026 at 07:23

A musical about a drama group’s pilgrimage and reflections on activist art join an intriguing show about lost languages

In a Dublin theatre festival programme tackling heavy themes of racism, conflict and prejudice, Lourdes! The Musical (★★★★☆) promises something effervescent. Xnthony Ltd, the creators of Oliver Cromwell Is Really Very Sorry, have turned their lightly quizzical gaze to the French pilgrimage town – “a holy Blackpool, a divine Las Vegas” and a site of hope or desperation for five unlikely travelling companions.

Back in his home village in “Countryland”, in 2008, following a diagnosis of HIV that punctures his dreams of Los Angeles, singer-songwriter Matthew (Riain Cash) lends his star power to a parish drama group taking a musical about Saint Bernadette to Lourdes. Interweaving this show-within-a-show and the pilgrimage strands, Xnthony’s lyrics and Matthew Floyd Jones’s score blend pop, club beats and soulful ballads. Directed by Sarah Meadows, the supercharged ensemble joining Cash as, variously, a droll priest (Iestyn Arwel), a terminally ill mother and her transgender daughter (Nichola MacEvilly and Danielle James) and an eager tour manager (Molly Lynch) carry the music’s tonal shifts effortlessly.

‘The weirdos were taking over!’ Tate Britain relives the 1990s – in pictures 8 October 2026 at 02:00

‘The weirdos were taking over!’ Tate Britain relives the 1990s – in pictures

The Guardian

By: Guardian Staff

8 October 2026 at 02:00

A new exhibition curated by Edward Enniful looks back on the thrilling decade before smartphones, when art, music and fashion came together with a bang

Crush-worthy photography, camp sci-fi and a centenarian’s florals: five free exhibitions to see 7 October 2026 at 11:16

Crush-worthy photography, camp sci-fi and a centenarian’s florals: five free exhibitions to see

The Guardian

By: Eddy Frankel

7 October 2026 at 11:16

A little exhibition of Daidō Moriyama at his artiest and strangest, like Warhol with added filth, is among the best on show in London’s free-entry commercial galleries this week

If it’s a crime to have a crush on an elderly avant garde Japanese street photographer then lock me up and throw away the key, because I have some seriously strong feelings for Daidō Moriyama. His ultra-confrontational, high contrast, aggressive take on photography just gets me blushing, what can I say.

Robert Ryman review – can your brain handle a show that only has white paintings? 7 October 2026 at 10:47

Robert Ryman review – can your brain handle a show that only has white paintings?

The Guardian

By: Ben Eastham

7 October 2026 at 10:47

Barbican Art Gallery, London
What seem at first indistinguishable canvases offer challenges, revelations and transcendental effects – but only if you can give yourself over to them

Writing about painting is a futile exercise at the best of times. This is especially the case when, as with Robert Ryman, the paintings in question are variations on the theme of white. If that sounds pretentious – or like a tired joke – then it might also be understood as a reaction against the dependence of so much art on language (which is also to say, bullshit). Because these bare-bones paintings – white paint, a flat surface, wall fixtures – are the “real thing” in the most literal way: they are not trying to tell you a story, they do not require you to be familiar with any abstruse theories. There is just you and the materials, how the paint lies, how it scatters the light. So the question is: how much do you like looking at paint?

Happily for me, given that it is a non-negotiable part of my job, I really like looking at paint. If you also like looking at paint, then there is much in this exhibition that will take your breath away. Take The Painting of the Mysterious Shadow from the mid-60s, after Ryman had left his job as a guard at MoMA, having given up on a career as a jazz musician, and settled into the project that would occupy the rest of his life. Six thick white stripes run horizontally across the canvas, as close to each other as can be managed by a steady hand without overlapping. The fabric is stretched over a deep wooden frame, meaning that its surface sits about three inches off the wall, and casts a thin shadow upon it. That’s your lot.

The Orange Plague 7 October 2026 at 11:22

The Orange Plague

MetaFilter

By: orange swan

7 October 2026 at 11:22

"At a busy thoroughfare inside the European Parliament, passing politicians are now confronted with a grotesque and gilded vision of American power: an 8.5-foot-tall statue of President Donald Trump, naked but for a thin layer of 23-karat gold leaf. 'Trump likes gold,' said Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, the statue's creator, over the phone after it was unveiled Tuesday. 'In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.'"

"Titled 'The Orange Plague,' the artwork has been installed in Strasbourg, France, the official seat of the European Parliament. The copper sculpture, also dubbed the 'King of Injustice,' imagines the US president on the shoulders of a frail smaller figure. His thighs and sagging belly wrap tightly around the man's head; his hands clutch at a long golf club and the scales of justice." "'I am sitting on the back of a man,' reads the text [a quote from Leo Tolstoy] on the statue's plinth. 'He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except step down from his back.'" "Galschiøt has exhibited 'The Orange Plague', [or in German, 'Die Orange Pest'] in public several times before, including at [the Danish Parliamentary building,] the Munich Security Conference, and last November's COP30 UN climate conference in Brazil. He also plans to display it at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey next month." "He said his decision to depict Trump naked alludes to Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Emperor's New Clothes," in which a vain emperor parades the city in the nude. 'Dictators don't like you laughing at them,' he explained." "The most recent temporary display is expected to remain on show until Thursday. It is accompanied by over 1,000 3D-printed miniatures of the sculpture, which are being made available to passersby as 'protest tokens.'"

The Failure of the Pandemic Novel 7 October 2026 at 04:39

The Failure of the Pandemic Novel

MetaFilter

By: chavenet

7 October 2026 at 04:39

That Will There, Transcription, and Down Time each tease out the confluence of ambivalence, exhaustion, and over-compensative compliance that underscored pandemic life is compelling. Their characters' lack of clarity about Covid and its consequences is, ironically, its own form of clear-sightedness. It speaks to a very contemporary feeling of unease about Covid and the recent past and what this ultimately says about where the culture is heading.

Women behind the lens: ‘I felt suspended between hope and giving up’ 7 October 2026 at 02:00

Women behind the lens: ‘I felt suspended between hope and giving up’

The Guardian

By: Sosina Mengistu

7 October 2026 at 02:00

The Ethiopian photographer Sosina Mengistu’s self-portraits draw on personal experience to reflect young people’s anxiety and frustration

This self-portrait is part of my project So I See Me, which I began in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and continue to this day. The title reflects the central idea: using the camera to look at myself. But it also carries a subtle echo of my name, Sosina.

When the pandemic started, I was in my final year of an engineering degree at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia. I was excited to graduate and begin the next chapter of my life, then everything suddenly came to a halt. Thinking the travel restrictions would only last for a short time, I decided to stay with my uncle in Bahir Dar in the north rather than travel back to my home town, Asosa, more than 450 miles to the west. I ended up stuck there for eight months.

Why this Sidney Nolan painting was a breakthrough moment for Australian modern art – video 7 October 2026 at 00:25

Why this Sidney Nolan painting was a breakthrough moment for Australian modern art – video

The Guardian

By: Filmed and edited by Aston Brown · produced by Stephen Byrne and executive producer is Michael Kalenderian

7 October 2026 at 00:25

Sidney Nolan’s famous Ned Kelly series is on display as part of an exhibition of work from the artist’s formative years, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But senior curator Denise Mimmocchi walks us through the exhibition to highlight a lesser-known earlier work, which Nolan created when he was conscripted in the army, stationed at Victoria’s Wimmera region in 1943. Mimmocchi explains why Kiata was a breakthrough painting for Nolan, and also a breakthrough moment for Australian modern art

Greek prime minister vows to ‘ramp up’ efforts to regain Parthenon marbles 6 October 2026 at 12:50

Greek prime minister vows to ‘ramp up’ efforts to regain Parthenon marbles

The Guardian

By: Helena Smith in Athens

6 October 2026 at 12:50

Kyriakos Mitsotakis says his UK counterpart, Andy Burnham, has been supportive of restitution efforts in the past

The Greek prime minister has vowed to “ramp up” his country’s claims to get back the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum, emphasising that his UK counterpart, Andy Burnham, was hugely supportive of restitution efforts before he moved into Downing Street.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would raise the issue in the strongest of terms when he met Burnham, who was culture secretary in a previous Labour government.

‘My poetry won me asylum’: Cecilia Vicuña on exile life in ‘sad’ Britain after Pinochet’s coup 6 October 2026 at 10:28

‘My poetry won me asylum’: Cecilia Vicuña on exile life in ‘sad’ Britain after Pinochet’s coup

The Guardian

By: Nadia Khomami

6 October 2026 at 10:28

Five decades after convincing judges she’d be killed if she returned to Chile, the artist is back with a politically charged retrospective in the country she grew to love

Cecilia Vicuña was 24 when she first arrived in London. She had come from Santiago on a British Council scholarship to study at the Slade School of Art, and her stay was supposed to be so brief that she didn’t even unpack her suitcase.

Then, in September 1973, General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup overthrew Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Vicuña was one of a handful of Chilean students in London immediately expelled from their universities and expected to leave Britain. At a Home Office hearing, her pro-bono lawyers argued that she would be killed if she returned to Chile, and showed the judges her recently published art and poetry book, Saborami, which documented the aftermath of the coup. The judges granted her asylum.

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