TATE MODERN TO STAGE TRACEY EMIN’S LARGEST EVER EXHIBITION IN 2026
Tracy Emin’s survey exhibition titled A Second Life will be opening on February 26th, 2026, and will feature over 90 works spanning more than 40 years of Emin’s practice. The show will follow key points in Emin’s career and includes painting, sculpture, video, textile, neon, and installation works. Across her practice, Emin has redefined the role of autobiography within contemporary art through her honest depictions of her own reality and experiences. Topics of sexual assault and abortion will be addressed in the show through works such as The Last of Gold (2002), which will be shown in public for the first time. In 2024, Emin was awarded a damehood for her contribution to British culture. Two landmark pieces will be centre stage in A Second Life: Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996) and My Bed (1998), the Turner Prize-nominated installation that explored Emin’s own experience with depression. Regarding her recent works, Emin has placed a focus on themes of survival and the body, following her diagnosis and surgery for bladder cancer in 2020. The exhibition will also highlight Emin’s connection to Margate through works such as Mad Tracey From Margate: Everybody’s Been There (1997) and It’s Not the Way I Want to Die (2005). Emin lives in Margate where she runs the Tracey Emin Artist Residency, a studio-based art school programme. Emin has shared, “I feel this show... will be a benchmark for me. A moment in my life when I look back and go forward. A true celebration of living.”
Tracey Emin, My Bed 1998
CHRISTIE’S HELPED DRIVE THE ART WORLD’S NFT CRAZE. NOW, THE AUCTION HOUSE IS SHUTTING DOWN ITS DIGITAL ART DIVISIONS
Christie’s have announced that they will be shutting its digital art division, but that they will continue to sell digital art “within the larger 20th-and 21st-century art category.” This move is particularly significant as Christie’s led the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) craze in the art world four years ago. In 2021, Christie’s helped sell the NFT associated with Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, a digital work by Beeple; fetching $69.3 million, the piece still holds the record for the most expensive NFT ever sold. Following this, Christie’s launched its own NFT auction platform, but the craze was short lived with a reported 96% decline in NFT sales between 2021 and 2022. Digital art advisor Fanny Lakoubay noted that, “Auction houses only focus on secondary sales of already well-known artists and brands. It’s still too early for that model to really work/scale with digital art.” Christie’s is not veering away from digital ventures completely, having just debuted a crypto real estate division that allows buyers to make purchases with digital currencies.
THE MET LANDS A HISTORIC TROVE OF SURREALIST ARTWORKS
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a donation of 188 avant-garde Dada and Surrealist works from the collection of John Pritzker. The gift also includes funding to support a new research initiative centred around the two art movements and research programs will be announced on a year-to-year basis. Pritzker is a private equity investor and Met trustee who began his collecting journey following the acquisition of a Man Ray in 1997. Also known as the Bluff Collection, thirty-five works will anchor the Met’s Man Ray: When Objects Dream, an exhibition opening on September 14 at the museum. When Objects Dream is the first exhibition to use rayographs to explore Man Ray’s broader oeuvre, and his use of this camera-less way to craft photographs. Highlights of the collection that will be presented at the exhibition include the print Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), which was acquired by Pritzker in 2022 at Christie’s in New York for $12.4 million. Pritzker shared in a statement, “I’ve long been interested in the period between the world wars and the exciting community of artists involved in Dada and Surrealism. As I’ve built the collection, Man Ray has been a central figure, especially as a person who moved between groups and connected ideas.” Other works from Pritzker’s collection that have been donated include Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bond (1924), Ernst’s The Punching Bag (1920), and Giorgio de Chirico’s Dream of Tobias (1917).
Installation view of “Man Ray: When Objects Dream” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, 2025
LONDON’S HAYWARD GALLERY DIRECTOR RALPH RUGOFF TO STEP DOWN AFTER 20 YEARS IN ROLE
Ralph Rugoff will be stepping down as director of the Hayward Gallery in London after twenty years at the museum. Rugoff will still continue to work as an independent curator and writer following his departure in the spring of 2026. During his time at the Hayward Gallery, Rugoff has curated 23 major exhibitions alongside commissioning works at the Southbank Centre by prominent artists like Tracey Emin, Yinka Shonibare, and Phyllida Barlow. In addition, Rugoff oversaw Hayward Gallery Touring, which produces exhibitions hosted across the UK. His directorship has also led to a number of Hayward Gallery shows touring around the world to cities including Beijing, Berlin, Sydney, Sharjah, New York and Stockholm. In 2019, Rugoff held the role of artistic director at the 58th Venice Biennale and was awarded an OBE for service in the arts that same year. Rugoff reflects on his time at the museum, sharing, “Over the past two decades it’s been deeply rewarding to exhibit, commission and publish some of the world’s most compelling artists; to have the support of truly inspiring art patrons, philanthropists and collectors; and to partner with great museums and art organisations around the world. I believe the Hayward’s programme has made a positive contribution to what has been an era of remarkable change in the contemporary art landscape. I very much look forward to watching its next chapter unfold.”
Ralph Rugoff
SOTHEBY’S AND INDEPENDENT ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP
Sotheby’s and Independent, the New York art fair operator, have announced they will be collaborating for the upcoming Independent 20th Century art fair. The event will be held at the Sotheby’s headquarters at the Breuer Building in Manhattan, a brutalist structure that used to house the Whitney Museum of American Art; Sotheby’s will be moving into the building this November. Madeline Lissner, Sotheby’s global head of fine art, has said that this collaboration will allow for Sotheby’s to be seen as “more than an auction house,” and the Breuer as a cultural hub, rather than a solely selling site. As for the Independent, they will have access to a larger space, the fair having been previously held at Casa Cipriani inside the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. This collaboration is the first deal to be struck between an auction house and a large art fair operator, highlighting the potential shifts in the way contemporary art is bought and sold.
The Breuer Building, New York
EMILY FLOYD JOINS AMES YAVUZ
Ames Yavuz has announced its representation of Australian artist Emily Floyd, whose practice is based on the field of expanded sculpture. The foundation of Floyd’s work lies in transformation and playful translation, reimagining concepts from modernism, utopian thinking, speculative-fiction, alternative pedagogies, and the history of Australian social movements into interactive sculptural objects and public projects. Floyd draws inspiration from educationalists like Friedrich Froebel and Rudolph Steiner in order to examine how kinetic encounters with contemporary art can “deepen our understanding of the ‘constructed reality’ around us.” Floyd has been exhibited across the world at institutional shows, including at a current exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany. This October, as part of the Singapore Biennale, Floyd will be presenting a new sculptural installation, which will be situated along the historic Rail Corridor. Ames Yavuz will also be featuring a new sculptural work by Floyd at Sydney Contemporary this week. Floyd has described her practice, “I always approach the making of an artwork from a position of learning, being curious about new ideas and embedding them into objects.”
Portrait of Emily Floyd, photographed by Arsineh Houspian
Jordan Tan holds an MA in History of Art from the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art. With a passion for fine art and the art market, Jordan plays a key role at Art Works by researching and interpreting trends across the primary and secondary markets, delivering valuable insights and business intelligence for the fine art department.
