Former US President Barack Obama with artist Kehinde Wiley at the presentation of Obama's official presidential portrait by Wiley.Photo Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Kehinde Wiley Wants to Buy Back Denigrated US Embassy Painting, UK National Museums Stay Free, and More: Morning Links for September 29, 2026

by · ARTnews

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

Good Morning!

  • Kehinde Wiley has offered to buy back his painting that was denigrated by the current administration and removed from the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic.
  • UK national museums will remain free to enter, announced a government official.
  • ARTnews has revealed the nominees for the 2026 ARTnews Awards.

The Headlines

BUY BACK. Kehinde Wiley has offered to buy back his painting that was removed from the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic, reports the New York Times. Trump officials had called the artwork “woke” and “aesthetically terrifying,” while the US ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Leah Campos, claimed it portrayed “a picnic in a park with flowers and some lesbians.” The painting titled Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 was commissioned by the State Department in 2013. It depicts Dominican artists, with a floral-patterned backdrop, inspired by the works of Dominican artists Celeste Woss y Gil and Gilberto Hernández Ortega. “If the administration is not particularly interested in the work, bring it home. Let me have it,” Wiley told the Times, rephrasing an official request he made in a letter to the Trump administration. The whole experience left a “deep sadness,” he added. “I just happen to be the guy who painted Obama,” he continued. “That is the elephant in the living room.”

British Pop Artist Antony Donaldson Has Died, Rare David Hockney Dog Painting Heads to Christie’s, and More: Morning Links for September 28, 2026British Pop artist Antony Donaldson died, top art collector and businessman Richard Manoogian died, and more art news.Devorah Lauter, 28 Sep 2026Descendants of Nazi-Persecuted Jewish Collector Demand Cancellation of Sotheby’s Pissarro Painting Sale, Artist Imelda Cajipe Endaya is First Woman to Receive Top Philippine Honor, and More: Morning Links for September 25, 2026Descendants of Nazi-persecuted Jewish collector demand cancellation of Sotheby’s Pissarro painting sale and more art news.Devorah Lauter, 25 Sep 2026

FREE FOR ALL. If you’re planning to visit the UK any time soon, rest assured, national museums will remain free to enter. That’s what Lisa Nandy, UK Secretary of State for Digital Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), announced on Monday, according to The Art Newspaper. For months, a debate has been brewing around the idea of charging foreign tourists entry to national museums, in a bid to help pay for museum operational costs. But on Monday, Nandy made her views clear: “Our museums are the places that light up the world. They remind us of our shared history and enable us to step outside the confines of our lives…. That’s why they must be free, forever, for everyone to access.”

The Digest

ARTnews has revealed the nominees for the 2026 ARTnews Awards, which honor excellence in art at US institutions and galleries. [ARTnews]

Artist Nicole Eisenman discusses her 8.3-meter-tall sculpture, Stack, on view at London’s Royal Academy until February 5, what happened after she spoke about Gaza, and why she thinks “the artist’s job is the to be the trickster.” [The Financial Times]

Art Basel Miami Beach will look a little different this year, with a major overhaul to the fair’s floor plan, including the elimination of its Meridians section. [ARTnews]

Painter Anna Weyant has listed her fourth-floor, Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan for $3.49 million. [Curbed]

A rare J.M.W. Turner painting, titled Rome, from Mount Aventine (1836), will hit the auction block, with an estimate of £50 million ($66.2 million), at Sotheby’s London on December 9, during the house’s Old Master Evening Sale. Ahead of the sale, it will be exhibited at the 18th-century Baroque palace Palazzo Rondinini in Rome through October 1. [ARTnews]

The Kicker

ART + FILM MISSION MADE POSSIBLE. Artist Ed Ruscha has designed the poster for the film Digger, starring Tom Cruise, reports the Los Angeles Times. The film’s director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, it turns out, has long been a big admirer of Ruscha’s pop art, while the latter thought the film was “an epic product from an epic producer.” The poster depicts a towering ice shelf emerging from the mist in gray-blue tones, surrounded by different phrases like “A Man. A Plan. A Meltdown.” The text, “Tom Cruise is Digger,” appears superimposed on the central image, written perpendicularly, so that the word “Digger” concludes by appearing to dig into the bottom of the poster. The film opens Friday and is described as a “satirical black comedy” that follows the story of an ecological disaster. “The movie blew my hair back,” Ruscha commented at an unveiling on Sunday in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).