This Week’s Top Inspiration and Art Stories

Your weekly 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 pure inspiration, we’ve got it all covered.

WEEK 23 / 2025

TOP 3 ART NEWS THIS WEEK

1. Jungle Secrets: 3,000-Year-Old Mayan Cities Unveiled

Indiana Jones would’ve lost his hat for this one.

Deep in the Guatemalan jungle, researchers uncovered a Mayan mega-hub: three ancient cities built like one big brain. ca 3000 years old.

Here are the cities:

• Los Abuelos – A 6-square-mile site named after two stone statues of an ancestral couple. One of the oldest ceremonial spots in the region (800–500 BCE).

• Petnal – Home to a 108-foot-tall pyramid with murals at the top. Real estate goals.

• Cambrayal – A palace with a built-in canal system. Yes, ancient plumbing.

All three sites are connected and hint at a tight-knit, spiritual, and politically active Mayan “urban triangle.” This is big, especially for the Preclassic period.

And how’d they find all this? Laser beams. It’s called LiDAR, and it scans through thick forest to find ruins like this.

So: the Maya were building advanced cities long before we thought. And they were doing it with art, architecture, and ancestor worship at the core. Link.

Instagram post by @banksy

2. Banksy Went Soft (And the Internet’s Spiraling)

The world’s favorite mystery artist just broke his 6-month silence with a brand-new mural in Marseille, France.

📍The spot: A plain wall in a quiet street.
🖌️The image: A black stencil of a lighthouse.
🗣️The message: “I WANT TO BE WHAT YOU SAW IN ME.” 

The lighthouse light lines up with a real street post that looks kinda human — classic Banksy trick, blending real-world objects with paint.

But here’s the twist: Banksy usually pokes fun at power, politics, and pop culture. This time, it feels personal. Like a sad love note written at 3am after watching a movie that hit too hard.

Cue the hot takes:

• Some fans are loving the vulnerability.

• Others are like, “Bro, did a Tumblr quote just hit that wall?” 🙄

• And a few are saying Banksy’s starting to sound like every guy who writes poems on a café napkin and calls it deep.

Even so, within hours, fans found the mural IRL, and it’s already selfie central. The mayor of Marseille even shouted it out with a 🔥 emoji.

Love it or cringe at it. However, Banksy knows how to turn a wall into a global headline.

3. Venice Biennale 2026 to Carry Out Late Curator’s Vision of Healing 🕯️

On May 10, Koyo Kouoh (the first African-born woman to curate the Venice Biennale) passed away at age 57 after a battle with cancer. 

But the 2026 Biennale is still happening exactly how she envisioned it. No backup curator.

🙏 The theme: “In Minor Keys.”

Inspired by jazz and melancholy musical tones, Kouoh wanted to create an exhibition that breathes and reminds us we’re human. The show will focus on the sensory, the emotional, and the everyday beauty that often goes unseen in a world addicted to speed and noise.

And Kouoh said it best herself, in a poem she wrote in 2022, read aloud by her team at the press conference:

🧘‍♀️ 💫

The artist list is still under wraps, but several countries have already confirmed their stars:

• 🇫🇷 Yto Barrada for France

• 🇬🇧 Lubaina Himid for the UK

• 🇨🇦 Abbas Akhavan for Canada

• 🇩🇰 Maja Malou Lyse for Denmark

🎤 Artist Talk: Katherine Bradford

This week, I’m in love with this artist talk. So humble, so down-to-earth. For anyone feeling it’s too late to start creating, Bradford’s story serves as a powerful testament to the idea that it’s never too late to begin doing what you love and exactly as you like it.

Here are a few quotes that I’ve written down for you:

✨ “I’ve always associated painting with poetry. Not with politics.”

✨ “I was becoming the artist that I wanted to be by listening to people, by going and looking at art, by getting to know other artists. I didn’t go to art school, but I went to a good college and I think I had a good education, and I learned how to learn.”

✨ “There’s a lot of irritating and stressful and exhausting things about being a member of the art world. Take them all and ignore them and concentrate on what’s wonderful about it.”

✨ “The whole thing of getting ahead and who makes… and the astronomical prices for things and very rich artists … I think [they] are just confusing what we’re actually about.”

But seriously, give it a listen — she comes across as so warm and lovely. 🎧

CREATIVITY INSIGHT FROM CARVER 📖

This week I’ve been re-reading Conversations with Raymond Carver (1990). He’s often called the master of the contemporary short story — like Chekhov in his time, or Hemingway. I’ve been obsessed with stories for years, but hearing Carver talk about the craft itself is just as inspiring as his fiction.

Fair use. Original publication: Unknown Immediate source.

For Carver, talent isn’t about flashes of brilliance, but about seeing: “it’s the gift of seeing what everyone else has seen, but seeing it more clearly, from all sides.” Paying very close attention to what’s already there. 👁️

(Another literary master Sherwood Anderson put it this way: “A man has to begin over and over… to try to think and feel only in the very limited field, the house on the street, the man at the corner drugstore.” You zoom in, you stay small. And yet, that’s where the universal lives.)

Carver cared deeply about what matters in a story. Never cleverness or showing off:

• “I turn away from a whine or from the overly self-involved. I don’t waste time on smart alecks either. There has to be something at stake. Something important working itself out from sentence to sentence…”

Then, the idea of the unspoken. Isn’t it the same in painting or photography or music? You try to say something without saying it. You leave just enough space for the viewer to feel it:

• “.. Things that are left out, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.”

And, finally:

• “If we’re lucky, writer and reader alike, we’ll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly.” 

That image. And again, it applies far beyond writing: wouldn’t we want the same in painting? That after exploring your artwork for a few moments, the viewer pauses, lets it settle in. Feels something new. Thinks something different.

I just love deep thoughts about art and creativity. 💙How about you? What’s on your summer reading list?