In Artforum’s October 2025 issue: Edna Bonhomme on the art of Ibrahim Mahama; Ron Athey, Karen Finley, Andres Serrano, and Helen Molesworth on the culture wars of the late 1980s and ’90s; Simon Njami on “Okwui Enwezor: Selected Writings”; and more.

London-based art fair operator Frieze has announced the launch of Frieze Abu Dhabi, staged through a partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, which organizes Abu Dhabi Art, the region’s best-known homegrown art fair.

“Jacobs reduces cinema to its essential ingredients, creating ‘film-performances’ that are at once seductive and radically disorienting,” wrote Kristin M. Jones in a 1997 issue of Artforum.

Filmmaker Ken Jacobs, a towering figure in the world of experimental cinema, died of kidney failure on October 5 in New York. He was ninety-two.

Artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley, interdisciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim, multidisciplinary artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and basket artist Jeremy Frey have been named among the 2025 class of MacArthur Fellows.

Artnews has announced the nominees of its second annual Artnews Awards. Winners will be announced and lauded on November 11 at an event to take place in New York.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, closed its doors to the public on October 5, six days after the federal government ceased operations following the failure of Republicans and Democrats to agree on a spending bill.

In an interview with Artforum earlier this year, Ng offered insight into how she approaches her work. “Live and let curate,” she said. “For me, curating is simply taking care of art in the fullest sense, including connecting people with its stories.”

The Frick Collection in New York has announced Aimee Ng as its next chief curator, effective this November. Ng, who is currently the museum’s John Updike Curator, has been a member of its curatorial department since 2015.

“My practice aims to build solidarity with viewers,” Cohen explains. “‘anyyywayyy whatever’ embeds points of access within the piece for audiences who may not have a background in the art world but who—I hope—might see themselves in it.”

In a new interview for Artforum, Shuli Branson speaks with performance artist and political activist Barnett Cohen about their latest work, “anyyywayyy whatever,” and the politics of opacity.

Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj has won the 2027 iteration of the Nasher Prize, considered to be the world’s most prestigious sculpture honor.

The University of California, Irvine, has acquired the Orange County Museum of Art and merged it with the UC Irvine Langson Institute and Museum of California Art to form the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art.

The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts has named multidisciplinary artist Nilbar Güreş, known for her humorous, poetic, yet critical works commenting on social topics, as Turkey’s representative to the Sixty-First Venice Biennale.

On Artforum’s October 2025 cover: Ibrahim Mahama, Beasts of no nation (detail), 2013–22, wood panel wrapped in wax-print cloth and jute thread, 74 × 48".

Plus: Joanna Warsza on the art of the Ukrainian collective Open Group, Harmon Siegel defines a new artistic mode he calls “ecoformalism,” Anne Reeve provides a close reading of Lucy Raven’s 2025 video “Murderer’s Bar,” and Meredith Monk shares her Top Ten.

The Musée National Picasso-Paris has unveiled plans for a €50 million renovation that will see it merge its own interior garden with the nearby Square Léonor-Fini to create a 25,000-foot open-air sculpture garden that will be free to the public.

Canadian sculptor Brian Jungen, known for transforming contemporary mass-produced objects into traditional artifacts, has been named the winner of this year’s C$100,000 ($71,700) Audain Prize for the Visual Arts.

Lisa Phillips, who has served as director of New York’s New Museum since 1999, is retiring after twenty-six years in the role.

In the September episode of Under the Influence, Catherine Opie reflects on pivotal moments in her career, from discovering photography via a social studies book in elementary school to having her works on display at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo.