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Ocula The art world in focus.

Ocula is a compelling destination and resource for collectors, curators, advisors and followers of contemporary art everywhere, offering a fresh perspective from Ocula Magazine on the artists and ideas shaping art now, along with the international reach and expertise of Ocula Private Sales and Advisory.

Powerhouse Parramatta, Western Sydney’s long-discussed AUD$915 million (£478 million) museum development, has revealed i...
20/08/2026

Powerhouse Parramatta, Western Sydney’s long-discussed AUD$915 million (£478 million) museum development, has revealed its opening date and programme: the space will launch on 7 November with five inaugural exhibitions spanning contemporary art, retail culture, aerospace, science and technology.⁠
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Situated on the Parramatta River, the 30,000-square-metre museum is the first state cultural institution in Western Sydney and forms the centrepiece of the Powerhouse museum group’s wider AUD$1.3 billion (£678 million) infrastructure renewal. It is also Australia’s largest public investment in cultural development since the Sydney Opera House, which opened in 1973. ⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/powerhouse-parramatta-opening-date-and-programme/

Artist Fritz Scholder had a complicated relationship with his Native American heritage, yet his ‘Indian’ series of artwo...
20/08/2026

Artist Fritz Scholder had a complicated relationship with his Native American heritage, yet his ‘Indian’ series of artworks ended up defining his career.⁠
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Marking an exhibition of Scholder’s work at MMK this summer, the show’s curator Julia Eichler talks us through five of the most interesting works: https://ocula.com/magazine/spotlight/fritz-scholder-mmk-native-american-pop-art/

Plans for the restoration of The Artillery Sheds, two former military buildings in the south-western United States that ...
20/08/2026

Plans for the restoration of The Artillery Sheds, two former military buildings in the south-western United States that house Donald Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminium (1982–1986), are set to get underway this autumn.

Judd—the minimalist pioneer perhaps best known for his vertical Stacks—bought the sheds in Marfa, Texas, during the 1970s to create an exhibition space for his 100 works, all of which retain their original, unpolished metal. The site belongs to the Chinati Foundation, which Judd set up in 1986, and now attracts more than 20,000 visitors per year.

In his 1987 statement of intent for the foundation, which he created in part, to allow for the permanent installation of large-scale works, the artist wrote: “The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built.”

Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/donald-judds-artillery-sheds-restoration/

The team behind Taiwan’s presentation at the 2026 Gwangju Biennale has accused the exhibition of “political censorship” ...
19/08/2026

The team behind Taiwan’s presentation at the 2026 Gwangju Biennale has accused the exhibition of “political censorship” and of posing a “threat to freedom of expression”, amid claims that the name of their project—Taiwan Pavilion—was changed without their consent.⁠
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In an Instagram post shared last week to more than 30,000 followers, the South Korean biennial revealed a poster announcing the nations and institutions that will take part in its 16th edition, which opens early next month. The poster listed Taiwan’s presence under “NTMoFA”—the English acronym for the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which is organising the presentation—but made no mention of the name that artists, curators and politicians claim had been previously agreed.⁠
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Chen Hsiang-Wen, curator of the Taiwanese presentation, told Ocula that she, and participating artists, “suspect there may have been external pressure behind the scenes”.⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/taiwan-artists-accuse-gwangju-biennale-censorship/

Family trauma is the material from which two recent films spin their narratives: Chloé Zhao’s 'Hamnet', and Joachim Trie...
19/08/2026

Family trauma is the material from which two recent films spin their narratives: Chloé Zhao’s 'Hamnet', and Joachim Trier’s 'Sentimental Value', which won the Grand Prix at Cannes—both released in 2025. Directed by two of the best independent filmmakers working in cinema today, both films are about fathers who are artists consumed by their work, to the detriment of their relationships with their families.⁠
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For Ocula, Catherine Liu explores how ‘trauma culture’ shapes the differing approaches of 'Hamnet' and 'Sentimental Value' to creative families and father figures: https://ocula.com/magazine/opinion/cinema-obsession-with-art-catherine-liu/

Ting‑Jung Chen’s 2018 sound installation 'You Are the Only One I Care About (whisper)' breaks down a 1970s Taiwanese pro...
19/08/2026

Ting‑Jung Chen’s 2018 sound installation 'You Are the Only One I Care About (whisper)' breaks down a 1970s Taiwanese propaganda tool into multiple sound streams.⁠
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For the latest in our One Work series, Zian Chen considers the parallels between the power of many “voices” and today’s social media landscape: https://ocula.com/magazine/opinion/cold-war-teresa-teng-ting-jung-chen/

A Qing Dynasty s***f bottle, oil paintings by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, and a Diego Giacometti bronze are among the hig...
18/08/2026

A Qing Dynasty s***f bottle, oil paintings by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, and a Diego Giacometti bronze are among the highlights of what is believed to be one of the world’s most significant private collections of cat-related art, collectibles, jewellery and home furnishings, which will be sold at Bonhams in New York City and Massachusetts later this year.⁠
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The Sandy Lerner Collection, put together by the American philanthropist and businesswoman Sandy Lerner, also includes pieces by Édouard Manet, Fernando Botero and Henri Matisse, as well as jewellery from Tiffany & Co and Boucheron. The collection will be dispersed across a series of four sales—two live, two online—comprising almost 1,000 lots.⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/bonhams-to-sell-feline-collection-this-autumn/

The resurgence in cinemagoing among a younger generation is not limited to the latest buzzy release. Many independent ci...
18/08/2026

The resurgence in cinemagoing among a younger generation is not limited to the latest buzzy release. Many independent cinemas are seeing improved attendance, with auteur retrospectives, thematic repertory screenings and new 4K restorations of classic and cult films proving particularly popular. Amid a nervy, data-saturated and risk-averse cinematic landscape, these shifts are striking. ⁠
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Read Sophia Satchell-Baeza's opinion piece in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/opinion/you-were-wrong-about-cinema-opinion-streaming/

Four works of “extraordinary value” by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museu...
17/08/2026

Four works of “extraordinary value” by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in the Sicilian city of Messina on Saturday evening.⁠
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Three panels of the Polyptych of San Gregorio and a double-sided panel showing the Madonne and Child with a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other, were taken from the Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina during a religious celebration that saw around 100,000 people descend on the port city.⁠
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Italy’s culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said he learned of the theft of the works with “bewilderment and regret”, describing the paintings as of “extraordinary value for our cultural heritage”.⁠
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Read this news story in full on Ocula: https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/renaissance-paintings-stolen-from-italian-museum/

Do artists really need galleries? In 1992, Mitchell Johnson was first disappointed by a gallerist. A young painter who h...
17/08/2026

Do artists really need galleries? In 1992, Mitchell Johnson was first disappointed by a gallerist. A young painter who had recently moved to California from New York for work, Johnson had met the dealer Paula Kirkeby and showed her some of his paintings. “Wow, these are great,” he remembers her saying, “let’s have a show in the fall.” The promise never materialised. When Johnson followed up some months later, Kirkeby’s response had changed. “‘We’re definitely not having a show’,” he recounts more than 30 years on. “It was harsh. I remember it very well.” ⁠
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Rather than allow the experience to crush his hopes of success, Johnson decided to take matters into his own hands and reject the rejection. He rented a space of his own and hosted an independent solo show in which he put his own work on display. ⁠
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Today, he acts as his own dealer. Johnson’s approach is far from the set-up that most aspiring artists imagine for their future career. It is often assumed that a gallery is a prerequisite to finding commercial success and a place in the history of art. But a growing number of artists are rejecting that notion and going—to use the kind of commercial lingo that the art market likes to avoid—Direct to Consumer (DTC). ⁠
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In his latest art market column, Phin Jennings asks whether the gallery system is still the optimal way for artists to engage with a potential audience: https://ocula.com/magazine/opinion/do-artists-really-need-galleries/

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