This is your weekly indie art news fix — served fresh, punchy, and with just the right amount of spice. Expect the unexpected, because the art world never sits still. From controversy to breakthroughs, we’ve got it all covered.
Hey, great to see you again! 🙂 Once again, I’ve pulled together the most interesting, potentially beneficial, and inspiring things I came across — and I hope they light a spark for you too. So, let’s dive in!
TOP 3 ART STORIES THIS WEEK
1. Dalai Lama Enthronement Portrait Sells for a Record
One tiny throne, one golden hat, one record-breaking sale.
A rare 1940 portrait of the 14th Dalai Lama as a child (painted by Indian modernist Krishna Kanwal) just rewrote the auction history books. Sold at Bonhams London for a staggering $207,573, it fetched 15x the artist’s previous record.
The painting, Portrait of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at His Enthronement, was once part of British diplomat Sir Basil Gould’s private stash. It captures the future Nobel Peace Prize winner at just four years old, radiating calm from the center of a richly detailed Tibetan throne. Gould was there in Lhasa to witness it, and brought Kanwal along to sketch history.
👀 Kanwal was the only Indian artist allowed to document the ceremony. Now, 85 years later, that brushstroke of access just turned into six figures. Link.
2. The Lost Blue Is Back 🧪
Move over, Yves Klein. The original deep blue just made a comeback, after 3,000 years underground.
Scientists in the U.S. have cracked the code to Egyptian blue, the world’s first synthetic pigment, used by the ancient Egyptians to paint gods, sarcophagi, and scarab wings as far back as 3100 BCE.
Crafted from silicate, copper, calcium, and a dash of ancient genius, this color offered a way to “paint the impossible” when lapis lazuli was too rare and too expensive to grind into powder. After the fall of Rome, the formula vanished from history. Until now.
A research team (led by John S. McCloy of Washington State University and Edward P. Vicenzi of the Smithsonian Institution — yes, the museum Trump has publicly attacked) recreated a stunning range of tones, from glowing cobalt to dusty green-blue, by firing mineral mixes in kilns at over 1000°C. The results were shockingly close to the hues found in Egyptian artifacts housed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
🧿 By the way, this “new-old” blue glows in the near-infrared. That makes it valuable for futuristic applications like anti-counterfeit ink, medical imaging, and superconductors. Yeah, the Pharaohs were ahead of your tech stack. 🙃
Want to see it in person?
The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh is already exhibiting samples of the rediscovered pigment as part of its long-term Egypt show, set to become a permanent installation by 2026.
3. Art School Goes Broke, Comes Back Free
In the US, the ghost of SFAI just got a second life.
Two years after the iconic San Francisco Art Institute closed its doors, the campus is being reborn as CASA — the California Academy of Studio Arts, thanks to a $30 million rescue by Laurene Powell Jobs (who was married to the late Steve Jobs).
🎨 It’s a radical new model:
A yearlong experimental studio program for up to 30 emerging artists each year. No tuition, non-accredited. Just creation, collaboration, and play.
CASA will support a range of media and visual practices, from sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and emerging technologies. They will be providing artists studio space, shared workshops, mentorship from practicing artists, and platforms for public engagement. And yes, Diego Rivera’s legendary 1931 mural will finally be viewable again after being locked away since 2023.
A new era is coming to San Francisco’s most mythic art address.
Watch this space.
Instagram post by @luislaplace
p.s. 💸 Opportunities for Artists: July Edition
If this story got you thinking about education, funding, or simply carving out time to create, here’s your next step.
🎯 Artwork Archive just dropped their July 2025 artist grants & opportunities list, and it’s packed with residencies, fellowships, and funding calls across disciplines.
Whether you’re looking for studio space, mentorship, or actual money to make the thing— that list might be your next door opening.
🔗 See the full roundup and apply boldly. Your work deserves the backing.
🌱💰
🎯 Trend Alert: Nostalgia Is the New Innovation
Millennials, it’s official, you’re trending again. But this time, not ironically. From wide-leg JNCO jeans to photo dumps and the unapologetic return of the Bumpit, Gen Z is remixing them into something sharper, cooler, and maybe… better? The NYT piece “Everything Millennial Is Cool Again” is a time-travel cocktail: part warm-fuzzy nostalgia, part TikTok-powered rebranding. Wired headphones? Back. Mustaches? Hairier than ever. “Sex and the City”? It’s giving ‘life advice for the 30+ girlies’ all over again. But: this isn’t a copy-paste revival. Gen Z is curating the past like digital archaeologists, pulling up the old MySpace-era vibes and turning them into aesthetic statements. It’s vintage, but with algorithmic flair. |  So, they’re turning our cultural leftovers into fresh creative material. And making it look effortless. 🙂 Like all good art, it says more about now than then. So here’s the challenge: Name it, or better yet — make it. |
Artwork of the Week
What happens when you stop controlling the clay… and just listen?
Japanese artist Kunimasa Aoki has an answer, and it just earned him the €50,000 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize.
Instagram post by @loewefoundation
His piece, Realm of Living Things 19 (2024), looks like a relic from nature: somewhere between a termite mound, a coral reef, and a breathing organism. Made from stacked terracotta coils compressed by gravity and heat, it seems both ancient and alive.
💡 Aoki let time and nature shape the sculpture, turning ancestral technique into a quiet act of surrender. “Instead of making a work,” he says, “you’re helping a work to be built.”
Out of 4,600+ entries from 133 countries, his piece was chosen as the winner — a powerful reminder of just how much craft can still surprise us.
🎨 If you’re anywhere near Madrid this summer, don’t miss the chance to witness all the finalists’ works in person. The exhibition is on view at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza through June 29.
🕊️ Farewell, Kimiko Nishimoto
Japanese photographer Kimiko Nishimoto, lovingly known as the “selfie grandma,” passed away this week at 97. She picked up a camera at 72, and gave the world a decade of wildly creative, joy-filled self-portraits that reminded us it’s never too late to make art. Her work was proof that playfulness, curiosity, and reinvention have no age limit.
Instagram post by @kimiko_nishimoto
… and last but not least…
One (Old) Thought 💡✨
This week, I opened a Seth Godin’s book “Small is the New Big” from 2006 (yup, nearly 20 years old!) and hit this:
“Figure out what the always is. Then do something else.
Toothpaste always comes in a squeezable tube.
Business travels always use a travel agent.
Politicians always have their staff screen their calls.
Figure out what the always is, then do exactly the opposite. Do the never.”
Turns out, “do the never” is still the freshest advice in the room. 😉
And, in times like these — when AI churns out everything at scale and mass-produced noise fills our feeds — going back to 1990s/2000s simplicity feels radical again. Small really is the new big: the truest, most human, and most valuable thing we’ve got.
☀️
That’s it for this week. One rare painting, one lost pigment reborn, one art school reimagined, one artwork and one quote.
If something sparked a thought, stirred a feeling, or made you want to go make something weird and beautiful — good. That’s the point.
Until next week!
Stay curious, stay making, and don’t be afraid to do the never.
✌️Helen
Source: FB @introvertsareawesome
