Nona Faustine, a photographer who used her work to highlight the perseverance of Black women, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the artist last year, confirmed her passing on social media. A cause of death was not specified.

ARTnews has reached out to Higher Pictures, Faustine’s New York gallery.

In ways both provocative and beautiful, Faustine’s photography explored conditions afflicting Black women across time. She frequently photographed herself in ways that considered how her body acted as a record of histories of exploitation and empowerment.

“The true lives of Black women in the United States, if not in the world, are not seen,” she told the photographer Carla J. Williams last year in BOMB magazine. “I wanted to show our lives and who we are. We are very special. Not just because of our suffering but because of our beauty and strength. The reinvention and the creativity that oozes out. The bravery.”

Her most famous series, “White Shoes,” involved visiting sites in New York that had ties to histories of enslavement. In some images from the series, she pictured herself in the nude, wearing just a pair of white pumps, in places such as the intersection at 74 Wall Street, where enslaved people were once auctioned.

Nona Faustine, a photographer who used her work to highlight the perseverance of Black women, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the artist last year, confirmed her passing on social media. A cause of death was not specified.

ARTnews has reached out to Higher Pictures, Faustine’s New York gallery.

In ways both provocative and beautiful, Faustine’s photography explored conditions afflicting Black women across time. She frequently photographed herself in ways that considered how her body acted as a record of histories of exploitation and empowerment.

“The true lives of Black women in the United States, if not in the world, are not seen,” she told the photographer Carla J. Williams last year in BOMB magazine. “I wanted to show our lives and who we are. We are very special. Not just because of our suffering but because of our beauty and strength. The reinvention and the creativity that oozes out. The bravery.”

Her most famous series, “White Shoes,” involved visiting sites in New York that had ties to histories of enslavement. In some images from the series, she pictured herself in the nude, wearing just a pair of white pumps, in places such as the intersection at 74 Wall Street, where enslaved people were once auctioned.

The British Museum held the record for the most visited attraction in the UK for 2024 for the second year in a row.

According to statistics recently released by Alva, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, the museum in London saw 6,479,952 visitors in 2024, an 11 percent increase compared to the previous year. The Natural History Museum in South Kensington was the second most popular attraction at 6.3 million visitors, also with an 11 percent increase compared to 2023.

Tate Modern was the 4th most visited with 4.6 million visitors. The Southbank Center, which includes the Hayward Gallery for contemporary art among its venues, had more than 3.7 million visitors, an increase of 17 percent compared to 2023.

Alva’s announcement also noted a 36 percent increase in visitors going to the National Portrait Gallery last year with more than 1.5 million visitors after it reopened in summer 2023. This helped the museum move up nine spots in one year to 18th place. The Young V&A, which also reopened in June 2023, welcomed more than 596,000 visitors, a 47 percent increase.

Stonehenge also experienced a 3 percent increase in visitors, with more than 1.36 million in 2024.

The British Museum held the record for the most visited attraction in the UK for 2024 for the second year in a row.

According to statistics recently released by Alva, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, the museum in London saw 6,479,952 visitors in 2024, an 11 percent increase compared to the previous year. The Natural History Museum in South Kensington was the second most popular attraction at 6.3 million visitors, also with an 11 percent increase compared to 2023.

Tate Modern was the 4th most visited with 4.6 million visitors. The Southbank Center, which includes the Hayward Gallery for contemporary art among its venues, had more than 3.7 million visitors, an increase of 17 percent compared to 2023.

Alva’s announcement also noted a 36 percent increase in visitors going to the National Portrait Gallery last year with more than 1.5 million visitors after it reopened in summer 2023. This helped the museum move up nine spots in one year to 18th place. The Young V&A, which also reopened in June 2023, welcomed more than 596,000 visitors, a 47 percent increase.

Stonehenge also experienced a 3 percent increase in visitors, with more than 1.36 million in 2024.

On April 10, Sotheby’s Paris will hold a sale dedicated to Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, a Brazilian businesswoman and journalist and the founder of Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro. Bittencourt, who died in 2003, was a prodigious collector of mid-century Modernist masterpieces, including works by Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Max Ernst, as well as leading Brazilian artists of the era including Almir Da Silva Mavignier and Franz Krajcberg.

For those unfamiliar with Bittencourt, that may soon change. Later this year, according to Sotheby’s, a biography by author Ricardo Cota will be released. Titled A Mulher que Enfrentou o Brasil (The Woman Who Faced Brazil), the book will tell how Bittencourt both shaped Brazil’s modern art scene and courageously defied the Brazilian military dictatorship of the ’60s and ’70s.

In the 1940s, while Brazil’s cultural establishment remained skeptical of modernism, Bittencourt founded the MAM with little funding and against stiff resistance. Through sheer force of will, she was able to secure support from artists and patrons across the globe, most prominently Nelson Rockfeller, then president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Her passion for art was deeply personal but also political. Through her friendship with the artist Maria Martins, she was introduced to figures like Peggy Guggenheim, Marcel Duchamp, and Giacometti. For Bittencourt, modern art was more than an aesthetic pursuit—it was a declaration of intellectual freedom, a challenge to convention, and, ultimately, a reflection of her own unyielding spirit.

Bittencourt’s influence extended beyond the art world. Having inherited one of Brazil’s leading newspapers from her late husband, she transformed it into a staunch voice of opposition during the military dictatorship. The regime responded with force: she was imprisoned in 1969, released only after an international outcry, and eventually exiled to Paris.

On April 10, Sotheby’s Paris will hold a sale dedicated to Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, a Brazilian businesswoman and journalist and the founder of Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro. Bittencourt, who died in 2003, was a prodigious collector of mid-century Modernist masterpieces, including works by Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Max Ernst, as well as leading Brazilian artists of the era including Almir Da Silva Mavignier and Franz Krajcberg.

For those unfamiliar with Bittencourt, that may soon change. Later this year, according to Sotheby’s, a biography by author Ricardo Cota will be released. Titled A Mulher que Enfrentou o Brasil (The Woman Who Faced Brazil), the book will tell how Bittencourt both shaped Brazil’s modern art scene and courageously defied the Brazilian military dictatorship of the ’60s and ’70s.

In the 1940s, while Brazil’s cultural establishment remained skeptical of modernism, Bittencourt founded the MAM with little funding and against stiff resistance. Through sheer force of will, she was able to secure support from artists and patrons across the globe, most prominently Nelson Rockfeller, then president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Her passion for art was deeply personal but also political. Through her friendship with the artist Maria Martins, she was introduced to figures like Peggy Guggenheim, Marcel Duchamp, and Giacometti. For Bittencourt, modern art was more than an aesthetic pursuit—it was a declaration of intellectual freedom, a challenge to convention, and, ultimately, a reflection of her own unyielding spirit.

Bittencourt’s influence extended beyond the art world. Having inherited one of Brazil’s leading newspapers from her late husband, she transformed it into a staunch voice of opposition during the military dictatorship. The regime responded with force: she was imprisoned in 1969, released only after an international outcry, and eventually exiled to Paris.

A new report on spending at art museums says most such institutions spend a median of $82 per visitor, expansions don’t always lead to deeper public engagement, and free admission can lower costs per visitor due to greater attendance.

Those insights come from the latest report recently published by Remuseum, an organization and initiative from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Remuseum was established and funded by entrepreneur and Top 200 collector David Booth in 2023, with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

Stephen Reily, Remuseum’s founding director and former director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, told ARTnews that one of the biggest challenges to compiling the report was a lack of available data. “It’s a time where museums need more support than ever to be able to fulfill their missions as vital cultural institutions, and in that context, the you know, the lack of publicly available data doesn’t really help,” Reily told ARTnews.

“The idea is that more publicly available data has the capacity to expand public trust in museums, align more with what Next Gen philanthropists want to see, but also will help each individual museum figure out how to be the best possible version of itself, how to maximize its own mission, how to maximize the quantity and quality of visits and the number of the people in the public it serves,” Reily said.

Through a large collection of data from 153 American art museums, the key question the Remuseum report aimed to help answer for museum leaders and boards is “How do you best invest dollars to maximize the quantity and quality of people’s visits?”

A new report on spending at art museums says most such institutions spend a median of $82 per visitor, expansions don’t always lead to deeper public engagement, and free admission can lower costs per visitor due to greater attendance.

Those insights come from the latest report recently published by Remuseum, an organization and initiative from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Remuseum was established and funded by entrepreneur and Top 200 collector David Booth in 2023, with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

Stephen Reily, Remuseum’s founding director and former director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, told ARTnews that one of the biggest challenges to compiling the report was a lack of available data. “It’s a time where museums need more support than ever to be able to fulfill their missions as vital cultural institutions, and in that context, the you know, the lack of publicly available data doesn’t really help,” Reily told ARTnews.

“The idea is that more publicly available data has the capacity to expand public trust in museums, align more with what Next Gen philanthropists want to see, but also will help each individual museum figure out how to be the best possible version of itself, how to maximize its own mission, how to maximize the quantity and quality of visits and the number of the people in the public it serves,” Reily said.

Through a large collection of data from 153 American art museums, the key question the Remuseum report aimed to help answer for museum leaders and boards is “How do you best invest dollars to maximize the quantity and quality of people’s visits?”

São Paulo–based gallery Almeida & Dale will officially acquire Millan, a stalwart of Brazil’s contemporary art scene. This move will consolidate a top primary dealership, Millan, and a major secondary one, Almeida & Dale, reflecting a growing trend as the new enterprise aims to remain dynamic and competitive in the global art market.

As part of the deal, Almeida & Dale will take over the management of Millan’s three exhibition spaces in Pinheiros, one of São Paulo’s most sought after neighborhoods, as well as its full artist roster. Additionally, Millan’s associate director João Marcelo de Andrade Lima and general director Hena Lee will become executive partners at Almeida & Dale, alongside that gallery’s founders, Antônio Almeida and Carlos Dale. Millan’s two cofounders, André Millan and Socorro de Andrade Lima, will take on the strategy-focused roles of artistic director and commercial director, respectively.

For Antônio Almeida, the art market needed a change. “By combining Millan’s keen artistic eye and its team of artists with Almeida & Dale’s expertise and portfolio, we will be able to expand the power of Brazilian and Latin American art around the world, and this is positive for the market, for artists, and for collectors,” he told ARTnews.

The merger will go through on March 29, with the opening of the exhibition “Nossa Senhora do Desejo” at one of each gallery’s spaces, placing the work of Pedro Moraleida Bernardes (1977–99), who during his short but prolific career created an expansive oeuvre that criticized aspects of contemporary Brazilian society, in conversation with the work of 20 Brazilian and international artists, including Cinthia Marcelle, Sara Ramo and Guerreiro Do Divino Amor.

Traditionally, there has been a clear distinction in Brazil between galleries operating in the primary market (new and recent work by contemporary artists) and the secondary market (historical work by deceased or established artists). This move now allows them to put an artist like 17th-century Dutch painter Franz Post in an exhibition alongside Alex Červený,  a contemporary Brazilian artist whose work draws from Medieval art, Renaissance altarpieces, and Surrealism, according to Almeida.

São Paulo–based gallery Almeida & Dale will officially acquire Millan, a stalwart of Brazil’s contemporary art scene. This move will consolidate a top primary dealership, Millan, and a major secondary one, Almeida & Dale, reflecting a growing trend as the new enterprise aims to remain dynamic and competitive in the global art market.

As part of the deal, Almeida & Dale will take over the management of Millan’s three exhibition spaces in Pinheiros, one of São Paulo’s most sought after neighborhoods, as well as its full artist roster. Additionally, Millan’s associate director João Marcelo de Andrade Lima and general director Hena Lee will become executive partners at Almeida & Dale, alongside that gallery’s founders, Antônio Almeida and Carlos Dale. Millan’s two cofounders, André Millan and Socorro de Andrade Lima, will take on the strategy-focused roles of artistic director and commercial director, respectively.

For Antônio Almeida, the art market needed a change. “By combining Millan’s keen artistic eye and its team of artists with Almeida & Dale’s expertise and portfolio, we will be able to expand the power of Brazilian and Latin American art around the world, and this is positive for the market, for artists, and for collectors,” he told ARTnews.

The merger will go through on March 29, with the opening of the exhibition “Nossa Senhora do Desejo” at one of each gallery’s spaces, placing the work of Pedro Moraleida Bernardes (1977–99), who during his short but prolific career created an expansive oeuvre that criticized aspects of contemporary Brazilian society, in conversation with the work of 20 Brazilian and international artists, including Cinthia Marcelle, Sara Ramo and Guerreiro Do Divino Amor.

Traditionally, there has been a clear distinction in Brazil between galleries operating in the primary market (new and recent work by contemporary artists) and the secondary market (historical work by deceased or established artists). This move now allows them to put an artist like 17th-century Dutch painter Franz Post in an exhibition alongside Alex Červený,  a contemporary Brazilian artist whose work draws from Medieval art, Renaissance altarpieces, and Surrealism, according to Almeida.

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

FREE AND SMALLER MUSEUMS MAKE SENSE. A new study by think tank Remuseum, argues museum admission should be free for smaller institutions, because it drives greater attendance without raising costs, reports NPR. The study doesn’t explain how cash-strapped museums can make up for the lost income, arguing that admissions “don’t generate profit, but instead subsidize the museum experience,” said Stephen Reily, Remuseum founding director. Similarly, the new data suggests that museum expansions intended to serve larger audiences often do not make financial sense, adds The Art Newspaper. “In fact, in some important ways, the data show that it gets much harder to fulfill your mission the bigger you get,” said Reily.

ITALIAN VILLAGE VERSUS THE LOUVRE. Since 2019, leaders in the small Italian town of Avezzano in the Abruzzo region have been calling on the Louvre museum in Paris to return a medieval stone bas-relief that was once part of their local church, San Nicola, which was destroyed in a 1915 earthquake, reports Le Journal des Arts. More recently, they have been supported in their efforts by the Italian government. The 13th century sculpted item is currently on view in the Louvre’s Denon wing, where a label says it was acquired during the German occupation of France, with the intention of displaying it in a Düsseldorf museum. It eventually entered the Louvre in 1983. The Louvre website also labeled the item MNR or “National Museums Recovery,” meaning it is not officially part of France’s national collection, because its rightful owners are not known. In recent years, the Louvre has made an effort to publicize the presence of such MNR-labelled artworks in French museums, which for years, few knew existed. The museum also pledged to be more proactive about their return. Most MNR artwork were looted during the Nazi occupation and returned to France by allied forces after the war. The Louvre has reportedly denied that an official request for restitution was made for the church carving.  

The Digest

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

FREE AND SMALLER MUSEUMS MAKE SENSE. A new study by think tank Remuseum, argues museum admission should be free for smaller institutions, because it drives greater attendance without raising costs, reports NPR. The study doesn’t explain how cash-strapped museums can make up for the lost income, arguing that admissions “don’t generate profit, but instead subsidize the museum experience,” said Stephen Reily, Remuseum founding director. Similarly, the new data suggests that museum expansions intended to serve larger audiences often do not make financial sense, adds The Art Newspaper. “In fact, in some important ways, the data show that it gets much harder to fulfill your mission the bigger you get,” said Reily.

ITALIAN VILLAGE VERSUS THE LOUVRE. Since 2019, leaders in the small Italian town of Avezzano in the Abruzzo region have been calling on the Louvre museum in Paris to return a medieval stone bas-relief that was once part of their local church, San Nicola, which was destroyed in a 1915 earthquake, reports Le Journal des Arts. More recently, they have been supported in their efforts by the Italian government. The 13th century sculpted item is currently on view in the Louvre’s Denon wing, where a label says it was acquired during the German occupation of France, with the intention of displaying it in a Düsseldorf museum. It eventually entered the Louvre in 1983. The Louvre website also labeled the item MNR or “National Museums Recovery,” meaning it is not officially part of France’s national collection, because its rightful owners are not known. In recent years, the Louvre has made an effort to publicize the presence of such MNR-labelled artworks in French museums, which for years, few knew existed. The museum also pledged to be more proactive about their return. Most MNR artwork were looted during the Nazi occupation and returned to France by allied forces after the war. The Louvre has reportedly denied that an official request for restitution was made for the church carving.  

The Digest

Like most, I was carried away by the epochal change to pictures that took place circa 2022, once it became possible to generate photorealistic images with the help of artificial intelligence. I read articles about DALL·E and Midjourney, becoming aware of the technology in much the same way a comfortable painter might have learned about photography in the early 1840s, acquiring a kind of knowledge that felt peripheral and required no action.

Not too much time has passed, even if the technology behind synthetic imagery has improved significantly. The scholar and photography critic Fred Ritchin, who began writing about changes in media in the 1980s, has just published an essential primer for mass visual literacy in the age of artificial intelligence: The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI.

The book’s second chapter, titled “Playing with AI,” ends with a historical coda that made me chuckle: “Many of these early synthetic images are like the daguerreotypes produced soon after the invention of photography, accused by Baudelaire and others of being ‘art’s mortal enemy.’ The critics were right, as many 19th-century painters undoubtedly agreed, but also quite wrong.”

The Synthetic Eye is interspersed with synthetic images “created by the author via text prompts,” as noted at the end of the book, made “in collaboration with either OpenAI’s DALL•E or Stability AI’s DreamStudio between 2022-24.” Indeed, of the 88 illustrations, only one, at the beginning of the first chapter—aptly titled “Exiting the Photographic Universe”—was taken with a camera. This is an impressive indulgence. “With both trepidation and enthusiasm,” Ritchin writes, “after several decades spent editing, curating, and writing about photographs, I began to experiment with generative artificial intelligence systems that bypassed the camera, hopeful that the images produced in response to my text prompts might be freer and more innovative, without some of the restrictions I had experienced.”

The restrictions Ritchin describes relate mostly to photography’s troubling inability to illustrate what is outside the frame. Though the technology powering photography has changed significantly—lighter weight cameras, DSLRs, Photoshop, sharper lenses, smartphones with front-facing cameras—its images are still indexical, traces of what is or has been there. Bypassing the camera and its constraints became possible only because the technology of making photographs has produced a surfeit, with an estimated 5 billion photos produced daily, mostly on smartphones. That is, these cameraless, synthetic images are progenies of those camera-born ones.

Like most, I was carried away by the epochal change to pictures that took place circa 2022, once it became possible to generate photorealistic images with the help of artificial intelligence. I read articles about DALL·E and Midjourney, becoming aware of the technology in much the same way a comfortable painter might have learned about photography in the early 1840s, acquiring a kind of knowledge that felt peripheral and required no action.

Not too much time has passed, even if the technology behind synthetic imagery has improved significantly. The scholar and photography critic Fred Ritchin, who began writing about changes in media in the 1980s, has just published an essential primer for mass visual literacy in the age of artificial intelligence: The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI.

The book’s second chapter, titled “Playing with AI,” ends with a historical coda that made me chuckle: “Many of these early synthetic images are like the daguerreotypes produced soon after the invention of photography, accused by Baudelaire and others of being ‘art’s mortal enemy.’ The critics were right, as many 19th-century painters undoubtedly agreed, but also quite wrong.”

The Synthetic Eye is interspersed with synthetic images “created by the author via text prompts,” as noted at the end of the book, made “in collaboration with either OpenAI’s DALL•E or Stability AI’s DreamStudio between 2022-24.” Indeed, of the 88 illustrations, only one, at the beginning of the first chapter—aptly titled “Exiting the Photographic Universe”—was taken with a camera. This is an impressive indulgence. “With both trepidation and enthusiasm,” Ritchin writes, “after several decades spent editing, curating, and writing about photographs, I began to experiment with generative artificial intelligence systems that bypassed the camera, hopeful that the images produced in response to my text prompts might be freer and more innovative, without some of the restrictions I had experienced.”

The restrictions Ritchin describes relate mostly to photography’s troubling inability to illustrate what is outside the frame. Though the technology powering photography has changed significantly—lighter weight cameras, DSLRs, Photoshop, sharper lenses, smartphones with front-facing cameras—its images are still indexical, traces of what is or has been there. Bypassing the camera and its constraints became possible only because the technology of making photographs has produced a surfeit, with an estimated 5 billion photos produced daily, mostly on smartphones. That is, these cameraless, synthetic images are progenies of those camera-born ones.

In this epic collab between two titans of prestige, entertainment behemoth Roc Nation and luxury bookmaker Assouline offer up the chance to own a historic work of art—a sleek tome that embodies Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter’s enduring blend of artistry and enterprise.  

Related Articles

A thematic journey through rare insights, illuminating essays, and thousands of artifacts spanning JAY-Z’s 25-year career, The Book of HOV: A Tribute beckons dedicated fans and collectors alike. The impressive Ultimate Edition, hand-bound and printed on luxuriously thick pages, comes nestled in an embossed clamshell case, complete with gloves and a signature canvas tote bag.  

It’s no wonder the New York Times refers to Assouline as “the Birkin bag of the book world.”

If you were one of the 600,000 fans who visited Roc Nation’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library in 2023, these pages will transport you back to those hallowed halls that brimmed with the lifeblood of a cultural legend. For those just beginning your journey through this legacy-in-artifacts, prepare to be awed by the masterful work of the curators, documentarians, and craftspeople who brought this project to life.  

Among the book’s nearly 700 images underscoring every milestone, roadblock, and metamorphosis of JAY-Z’s storied career, you’ll find photos of the iconic Baseline Studios, original recording masters, custom stage outfits, art pieces like Daniel Arsham’s HOV Hands, magazine covers, VIP credentials, even the guitar Hov played during his tongue-in-cheek performance at Glastonbury.  

In this epic collab between two titans of prestige, entertainment behemoth Roc Nation and luxury bookmaker Assouline offer up the chance to own a historic work of art—a sleek tome that embodies Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter’s enduring blend of artistry and enterprise.  

Related Articles

A thematic journey through rare insights, illuminating essays, and thousands of artifacts spanning JAY-Z’s 25-year career, The Book of HOV: A Tribute beckons dedicated fans and collectors alike. The impressive Ultimate Edition, hand-bound and printed on luxuriously thick pages, comes nestled in an embossed clamshell case, complete with gloves and a signature canvas tote bag.  

It’s no wonder the New York Times refers to Assouline as “the Birkin bag of the book world.”

If you were one of the 600,000 fans who visited Roc Nation’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library in 2023, these pages will transport you back to those hallowed halls that brimmed with the lifeblood of a cultural legend. For those just beginning your journey through this legacy-in-artifacts, prepare to be awed by the masterful work of the curators, documentarians, and craftspeople who brought this project to life.  

Among the book’s nearly 700 images underscoring every milestone, roadblock, and metamorphosis of JAY-Z’s storied career, you’ll find photos of the iconic Baseline Studios, original recording masters, custom stage outfits, art pieces like Daniel Arsham’s HOV Hands, magazine covers, VIP credentials, even the guitar Hov played during his tongue-in-cheek performance at Glastonbury.