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Curator

A Nearly Forgotten Photographer Resurfaces in Brooklyn

An unprecedented survey of Malian photographer Seydou Keïta's toucing portraits are on show at the Brooklyn Museum. Plus, Gerhard Richter’s masterpieces, Art Deco’s 100th, and more.

October 22, 2025 By VASILISA IOUKHNOVETS
A 1959 portrait by Seydou Keïta. Photo: Copyright SKPEAC/Seydou Keïta, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi Collection of African Art and Danziger Gallery, NY

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New York, “Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens” (Until March 8)
In 1948, Seydou Keïta opened one of the first photo studios in Bamako, Mali’s capital city, soon attracting customers from across the country. They came to Keïta because he made beautiful portraits, posing his subjects against lush patterned textiles, while showing them as themselves, in their favorite costumes or with props. His photographs were discovered in the early ’90s by the art market and appreciated in part because they reflect life in postcolonial West Africa but also, as this retrospective shows, because they feel wonderfully intimate despite being entirely posed. brooklynmuseum.org

Siblings Martha, Ida, Asta and Olga in Their Home, 2023. Photo: Copyright Michella Bredahl

Amsterdam, “Michella Bredahl: Rooms We Made Safe” (Until Feb. 8, 2026)
Danish photographer Michella Bredahl has become a rising star for her portraits of women in repose at home. She says her intimate portraits make her think of seeing her mother in bed when she was young and being reminded of the reclining women in museums painted by men. This survey, her first mainstream museum show, probes the intricacies of mother-daughter relationships, intimacy, and femininity saturating her photographs. huismarseille.nl

Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons in the Frick Collection’s Cabinet Gallery. Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr

New York, “Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons” (Until March 9)
Flora Yukhnovich was barely in her 30s when her paintings—inspired by French Rococo’s fancy aesthetics—began suddenly selling for millions, more than the Old Masters she studied, stunning the press and even herself. In all the attention, the British painter deflects from herself, calling her background “boring,” and preferring that her work speaks for itself. This mural, drawing from a 1755 series by French painter François Boucher, makes Yukhnovich one of the few living artists to be exhibited within the Frick mansion. frick.org

Paris, “1925-2025. One Hundred Years of Art Deco” (Opens Oct. 22)
In 1925, a massive fair was held in Paris to showcase the modern style of design arising in Europe and throughout the world. For the first time, that new style of opulence and geometry was named Art Deco. A century later, this rigorous survey of over 1,000 works remembers the glorious height of Art Deco, and the optimism, novelty, and richness of the decade that it reflected. madparis.fr

Gerhard Richter’s 1962 Tisch. Photo: Jennifer Bornstein, copyright Gerhard Richter

Paris, “Gerhard Richter” (Until Feb. 3)
Gerhard Richter’s first painting was Tisch, a 1962 painting of a modern white table from the Italian design magazine Domus blotted out in the center. The painting introduces the German painter’s trademark blur, abstraction, and skepticism towards representation that have made him one of the most important living artists today. This unprecedented retrospective, coming when Richter is 93 years old, features 275 works stretching from his early photo paintings to the drawings he’s made after he declared he would stop painting in 2017. fondationlouisvuitton.fr

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