Kehinde Wiley Offers to Buy Back Embassy Painting Trump Officials Denigrated

Kehinde Wiley has offered to buy back his painting that was removed from the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic after Trump officials attacked the work, the New York Times reports. Officials had called the artwork "woke" and "aesthetically terrifying," while US Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Leah Campos claimed it portrayed "a picnic in a park with flowers and some lesbians."

The painting, Young Artists After Siamesas 1960, was commissioned by the State Department in 2013. It depicts Dominican artists against a floral-patterned backdrop inspired by the work of Dominican painters Celeste Woss y Gil and Gilberto Hernández Ortega.

Wiley made his request official in a letter to the Trump administration. "If the administration is not particularly interested in the work, bring it home. Let me have it," he told the Times. The ordeal has left him with a "deep sadness," he said. "I just happen to be the guy who painted Obama," he continued. "That is the elephant in the living room."

UK Museums Stay Free

Visitors to Britain can keep walking into national museums without paying. UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced on Monday that national museums will remain free to enter, according to The Art Newspaper. For months, a debate has simmered over charging foreign tourists admission to help cover museums' operational costs. Nandy closed that door. "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," she said.

Turner at £50 Million

A rare J.M.W. Turner painting, Rome, from Mount Aventine (1836), will go under the hammer at Sotheby's London on December 9 during the house's Old Master Evening Sale, carrying an estimate of £50 million ($66.2 million). Ahead of the sale, the canvas is on view at the 18th-century Baroque palace Palazzo Rondinini in Rome through October 1.

The Digest

ARTnews has revealed the nominees for the 2026 ARTnews Awards, honoring excellence in art at US institutions and galleries.

Nicole Eisenman spoke to the Financial Times about 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."

Art Basel Miami Beach will look different this year, with a major overhaul of the fair's floor plan that eliminates its Meridians section, ARTnews reports.

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

The Kicker: Ruscha Meets Cruise

Ed Ruscha has designed the poster for Digger, the Tom Cruise film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Los Angeles Times reports. Iñárritu has long admired Ruscha's pop art, while Ruscha judged the film "an epic product from an epic producer." The poster shows a towering gray-blue ice shelf emerging from mist, ringed by phrases such as "A Man. A Plan. A Meltdown." The text "Tom Cruise is Digger" runs perpendicular across the image, with the word "Digger" appearing to dig into the bottom edge. The film, described as a "satirical black comedy" about an ecological disaster, opens Friday. "The movie blew my hair back," Ruscha said at an unveiling on Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).