Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world.
78 Organizations Get Warhol Foundation Grants
For its spring 2026 grant cycle, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts awarded $5,166,000 to 78 museums, university art galleries, and other institutions across 26 states and abroad. It’s also the first time the foundation has a “Project Grants for Small-Scale Organizations” category, which helps fund artists’ projects at spaces with annual operating budgets below $200,000. Recipients include the art and mysticism nonprofit Golden Dome in Los Angeles, which will use the funds to design a garden in harmony with the celestial bodies according to ancient alchemy.
PMA’s New Deputy Director of Collections
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) has named Jennifer Thompson as its new deputy director of Collections and Exhibitions, a role that oversees registration, installation, packing, photography, and other critical aspects of exhibiting and collecting art. Thompson launched her career at the PMA in 2001, starting as a research assistant and curatorial fellow before becoming a curator of European art. She’s the latest new hire or promotion at the institution, which was recently (and thankfully) renamed after a controversial, short-lived rebranding.
Acquisitions
A rare and monumental work by Henri Matisse has joined the collection of the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. “Océanie, le ciel” (1946/48), one of the modern artist’s signature papier découpés or “cut-outs,” is a mural-scale screenprint on linen scattered with myriad abstracted silhouettes — coral, underwater plants, and animals — that appear to float harmoniously across the composition.
What Else Happened?
- David Odo was appointed director and CEO of the Honolulu Museum of Art.
- Massimiliano Gioni was named director of the New Museum in Manhattan. Read more at Hyperallergic.
- Jeanette Andrews is now represented by Trotter&Sholer gallery.
- Alexander Tovborg is now represented by Olney Gleason gallery.
- The Center for Book Arts announced the winners of its 2026 Chapbook Competition: Ansel Elkins, Hajer Requiq, and Michael Prior.
- The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History awarded its Great Americans Medal to Melinda French Gates.
Raphael Breaks Records at The Met
Raphael: Sublime Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art saw an average of 6,800 visitors per day, a stunning statistic that makes it the highest-attended show at the institution since 2018. The exhibition, which closed at the end of last month, drew over 562,000 people in total during a run of just three months. In terms of top exhibitions of the decade, it’s only slightly behind The Costume Institute’s Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination and, of course, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer — proving that the legendary rivalry between these two Renaissance masters persists to the present day, to the delight of all us art history nerds.
