Art Renewal Center^®

American Classical Realism Published on 12 March, 2026

American Classical Realism features approximately 40 paintings produced by four generations of artists. The term ‘American Classical Realism’ is associated with R.H. Ives Gammell (1893–1981), one of the last American artists whose training is traced back to the French academic tradition of the late 18th and 19th centuries. 

After 1949, Maryhill Museum of Art hosted solo and group shows of work by Gammell and those within his circle. The museum collection is now home to more than 50 American Classical Realist works. The 2026 exhibition will include four generations of artists, including Richard F. Lack , Robert Douglas Hunter, Samuel Rose, and Stephen Gjertson. The museum is also borrowing several works by related artists for the display.

The exhibition runs from March 15 – November 15, 2026 at Maryhill Museum of Art, 35 Maryhill Museum Dr., Goldendale WA 98620.

Click here to learn more.

Visit the ARC Calendar for more events and exhibitions.

New ARC Approved Atelier Published on 6 March, 2026

ARC is pleased to welcome La Milan Academy of Art as a new ARC Approved Atelier!

The Milan Academy of Art is a contemporary atelier inspired by classical tradition, located right in the heart of Milan. Founded in 2019, the Academy promotes the teaching of figurative drawing and painting through a highly academic and skill-based approach.

The Milan Academy Experience Students who apply to the Milan Academy of Art seek an education rooted in realism, valuing the accurate and detailed representation of nature and the human figure. To accomplish this, their methodology is built around a personalized, tailor-made path that adapts to the needs and level of each individual—including absolute beginners. They aim to bring out each artist's unique potential by equipping them with solid technical skills, with the ultimate goal of training painters who are deeply conscious both technically and expressively.

To learn more about La Milan Academy of Art, please click here. 

New ARC Approved Atelier Published on 5 March, 2026

ARC is pleased to welcome El Taller del Aire as a new ARC Approved Atelier!

El Taller del Aire was founded with the purpose of offering rigorous artistic training focused on the study of classical principles and their application to contemporary practice. Since its creation, it has become a meeting place for artists, students, and thinkers, combining technical instruction with humanistic education. Today, it offers classes in academic drawing and painting alongside theoretical courses in aesthetics, art history, and creativity.

“For us, art is a language that connects reason and emotion, technique and expression. A fully formed artist must not only master the craft but also understand its meaning, its historical context, and its transcendent potential.”

To learn more, click here.  

Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture Published on 4 March, 2026

This exhibition explores the relationship between works by period-defining English artist Thomas Gainsborough and fashion, a concept and industry that touched nearly every aspect of British society in the eighteenth century. The artist’s painted images were subject to the same forces of fashion as the people they depict. In Gainsborough’s world, the trappings, trade, and power of fashion were everywhere—from magazines to tailor shops, from the opera to promenades—and his portraits were at the heart of it all.

The museum’s first special exhibition dedicated to the artist—and the first devoted to Gainsborough’s portraiture ever held in New York—this show brings together over two dozen of Gainsborough’s most spectacular portraits from across North America and the United Kingdom, representing each stage of his four-decade career.

The exhibition takes place at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021 from February 12 – May 25, 2026.

To learn more, click here. 

Visit the ARC Calendar for more.

Figuratieven XS Published on 25 February, 2026

In 2026, the Figuratives will present a small exhibition. The 23 members of the permanent group, including ARC Living Master Joke Frima, will display their work this time in an 'XS exhibition' in the intimate Klinkenberg Galleries. At the end of 2027, they will return with the large-scale 'Figuratives XL' in the Mesdag and Weissenbruch rooms.

The exhibition runs from February 28 – March 22, 2026 at Pulchri Studio, Lange Voorhout 15, The Hague, 2514 EA, Netherlands.

To learn more, click here.  

For more events and exhibitions, please visit the ARC Calendar.   

Caravaggio's "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" in Focus Published on 20 February, 2026

Celebrating the extraordinary loan from the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the painting Boy with a Basket of Fruit is an important early work by Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio.

The exhibition juxtaposes this remarkable work with some precedents for its naturalism, including earlier paintings from Milan and by Caravaggio’s slightly older contemporary Annibale Carracci. The installation will also include a selection of works that document the powerful impact Caravaggio had on Roman art. It concludes with Gianlorenzo Bernini’s portrait drawing of Scipione Borghese, the early owner of the Boy with a Basket of Fruit painting and the collector largely responsible for the Galleria Borghese.

Running from January 16 through April 19, 2026, the exhibition is being held at the Morgan Library, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

For more about this exhibition, please click here.  

Visit the ARC Calendar for more upcoming events.

The Empire of Sleep Published on 19 February, 2026

This exhibition will explore the symbolic and allegorical implications of sleep, its importance in secular and sacred imagery, and the ways in which sleep-related scientific, philosophical, and psychoanalytical research have influenced art.

Artworks dating from 1800 – 1920 will be shown together with significant works from Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern and contemporary eras in order to highlight certain key enduring themes: the sleep of the innocent, dreams in Bible stories, the ambivalence of the notion of sleep, the Eros of the sleeping figure, and dreams and nightmares.

The exhibition runs from October 9, 2025 to March 1, 2026 at The Musee Marmottan Monet, 2, Rue Louis-Boilly, Paris, France.

To learn more about this exhibition, please click here.

For more events and exhibitions, please visit the ARC Calendar.

The Americans in Paris - 10 Year Anniversary Published on 11 February, 2026

The Americans in Paris fine art project started 10 years ago in 2016 by curator, writer, lecturer, artist Vanessa Françoise Rothe and has since become an international success, now celebrating it's 10 year anniversary.  

The innovative project continues to make art history by directly inspiring artists with new subjects discovered on travel to France, educating collectors and students on art history, and encouraging patrons of the arts to discover contemporary artists work by curating and presenting exciting international fine art exhibitions in New York, Paris and Los Angeles.

 Follow the Americans in Paris @vanessarothe on social for the most recent updates, or check in at VanessaRotheFineArt.com for exhibition opportunities and updates. 

Redwoods, Coastline, Canvas, and Cuisine Published on 10 February, 2026

This plein air workshop by ARC Living Master Mary Pettis is open to all artists, but especially designed for those who have a basic knowledge of oil painting and are now ready to move towards more personally expressive and masterful landscapes. 

Embrace the adventure and joy of plein air painting as we immerse ourselves in the beauty of the dramatic Mendocino Coast and awe-inspiring redwoods! Now, envision doing all this while indulging in unparalleled luxury accommodations and savoring nourishing, gourmet cuisine at The Inn at Newport Ranch, Fort Bragg, CA.

Each day Mary provides students with hands-on guidance through live demonstrations, personalized one-on-one instruction, and thoughtful critiques. Embracing both classical principles and proven plein air techniques from the greatest contemporary schools of thought, she is devoted to helping painters open their hearts and minds to their artistic purpose.

Artists arrive on Sunday, September 13th and depart on Friday, September 18th - with 4 full workshop days (M-TH) in between. This exclusive experience is limited to 10 artists, so reserve your spot today!

Visit The Inn's website to get more information about the ranch: www.theinnatnewportranch.com

Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850 Published on 6 February, 2026

This exhibition tells the story of artists from India, Britain, and China who worked in the era of one of the most powerful corporations in history. The British East India Company began in 1600 as a private trading enterprise but grew into a military and political force during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It waged war to rule India and sell opium in China. To support its commercial and imperial goals, the Company encouraged its agents to commission art. Works of art depicted commodities, functioned as gifts to ease trade deals and build alliances, and visually recorded the places and societies where the Company traded and governed. 

The artists featured here trained in Indian courts, in art and military institutes in Britain, and in Chinese workshops. In their artistic exchanges, they combined regional methods with new materials and techniques. This exhibition, of more than one hundred objects, is mostly drawn from the YCBA’s rich collection of works from Asia, including rich opaque watercolors, large-scale oil portraits, evocative architectural drafts and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll. It takes visitors on a journey through port cities and into the worlds of artists, showing how artists shaped, and were shaped by, the Company’s ruthless ventures while creating artworks of great beauty and innovation.

The exhibition runs from January 8 – June 21, 2026 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT.

To view more about this exhibition, click here.

For more events and exhibitions, visit the ARC Calendar.