The article examines the philosophical and literary significance of laughter in François Rabelais's work, particularly *Gargantua and Pantagruel*, contrasting his celebratory view with the predominantly negative assessments of laughter in Western philosophy from Plato to Hobbes. It highlights how Rabelais channels a durable tradition of folk humor as a form of affirmative relief from oppression and official solemnity.
Non abbiamo bisogno di nuovi musei (abbiamo bisogno di nuove forme museali!)
The Museum of Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Art (MAIIA) has announced the opening of a second location in Palermo, signaling a growing international interest in Italy's contemporary art scene. While the expansion is welcomed, critics warn that such developments often prioritize real estate investment over genuine cultural production, potentially leading to neighborhood gentrification rather than authentic community enrichment.
The article discusses the growing recognition of art's role in healthcare settings, citing research that visual art enhances 'eudaimonic well-being'—a sense of meaning, growth, and purpose—which aids patient healing. Studies, including a 2025 review in The Journal of Positive Psychology, show that incorporating art in hospitals reduces stress and anxiety for patients and staff, improves communication, and even reduces patient aggression in high-stress areas like emergency rooms.
Siamo stati al concerto di Torino dove i Marlene Kuntz festeggiavano i 30 anni del loro indimenticabile disco “Il vile”
Italian alternative rock band Marlene Kuntz recently performed two sold-out shows at the Hiroshima Mon Amour venue in Turin to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their seminal album, *Il vile*. The concert featured a near-complete performance of the 1996 record, which is widely regarded as a cornerstone of Italian noise rock. The anniversary celebration also includes a nationwide tour and a special vinyl reissue featuring new artwork by renowned illustrator Alessandro Baronciani.
Sopra il Lago Maggiore c’è la libreria più in altitudine d’Italia che combatte lo spopolamento delle montagne
The Libreria Alpe Colle, located in the Lepontine Alps overlooking Lake Maggiore, has become Italy's highest-altitude bookstore. Established in 2014, this unique cultural hub is accessible only by a hike through beech forests and historical WWI fortifications. It houses thousands of rare, out-of-print, and antique volumes, attracting a diverse mix of serious collectors and casual hikers who visit for both literature and local artisanal products.
Un artista e un pasticciere trasformano la Pasqua in un progetto d’autore
Artist Giovanni Gaggia and pastry chef Mattia Casabianca have collaborated to create two limited-edition Easter confections, BLU (an egg) and NUVOLA (a dove-shaped cake), that blend contemporary art, high pastry, and material research. The project moves beyond gastronomy to tell a story, with Gaggia developing the visual concept and identity, inspired by a verse from Swiss poet Franco Beltrametti.
BITÁCORA: PANAMÁ. CULTURA Y POLÍTICA EN EL MARCO DE UN ENCUENTRO REGIONAL IMPULSADO POR CAF
Artishock Revista covered the CAF Festival 'Voces por nuestra región: Cultura que mueve el mundo,' held in Panama in January 2026. The event, organized by CAF – Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe, aimed to reposition Latin American and Caribbean culture as a strategic axis for sustainable development. It featured panels, sectoral forums, and co-creation spaces designed to activate alliances and strengthen regional networks for artists and cultural projects.
A documentary screening in Whippany, New Jersey, featured artwork created by Ukrainian children affected by the ongoing war. The event, organized by local community groups, aimed to share these personal expressions of trauma and resilience with an American audience, fostering cross-cultural understanding and highlighting the human impact of the conflict. The artwork served as a poignant centerpiece, transforming the children's experiences of displacement and fear into a visual dialogue accessible to the Whippany community.
Tara Anne Dalbow explores the emerging trend of 'one-work exhibitions,' where galleries and museums dedicate an entire show to a single masterpiece. This format encourages 'slow looking,' a meditative practice that prioritizes deep engagement and spatial experience over the rapid-fire consumption of images typical of the digital age.
The Fayetteville Observer explores the historical racial bias embedded in photographic technology through the lens of "Shirley Cards." These reference tools, used by film developers for decades to calibrate color balance, were based exclusively on the skin tones of white female models, resulting in poor image quality and distorted representations for Black and dark-skinned subjects.
The article explores the evolving economic landscape of the professional tattooing industry, shifting from a counter-culture fringe to a sophisticated global business sector. It details how artists and studio owners are adopting traditional corporate structures, including brand licensing, specialized retail products, and digital marketing strategies to capitalize on the increasing mainstream acceptance of body art.
The art world is increasingly grappling with the rise of 'fandom' culture, where the intense, collective energy of online communities and pop-culture enthusiasts is reshaping traditional institutional engagement. This shift sees museums and galleries moving away from purely academic or elitist frameworks to embrace the participatory and often commercial power of dedicated fan bases.
The rise of the 'one-work exhibition' is transforming the traditional museum experience by focusing an entire show on a single object. These minimalist presentations prioritize 'slow looking' and spatial immersion, forcing viewers to engage deeply with a lone masterpiece rather than scanning through a crowded gallery of multiple works.
The article 'Photography Is...' from Glasstire is a conceptual piece that presents the title as a prompt, leaving the definition of photography open-ended. The text consists solely of the title and source, functioning as a minimalist statement or an invitation for reader interpretation.
The article explores the concept of 'aging well' through the lens of art and creativity, examining how artists and cultural figures approach their later years. It discusses various perspectives on maintaining vitality, purpose, and artistic practice as one ages.
Navid Baraty's series "The Time Between" combines digital photographs of urban skylines like Manhattan and Chicago with dramatic natural landscapes such as desert dunes and snow-capped mountains. Using a double-exposure technique, the artist blends city lights and skyscraper outlines with geological features to explore contrasts between contemporary urban life and ancient, timeless terrains.
In Spagna l’arte diventa popolare grazie a questo esperto influencer. Lo abbiamo intervistato
Miguel Ángel Cajigal, known as 'El Barroquista,' is a Spanish art historian and popularizer who has brought art history to prime-time television, radio, and social media. In an interview with Artribune, he discusses his books, including 'Otra historia del arte' (2021), his approach to making art accessible without dumbing it down, and his critique of the cult of the individual genius in art historiography. He emphasizes the collective nature of art production and reception, challenging the traditional focus on masterpieces and authorship.
Il poeta della luce. Intervista al lighting designer Davide Groppi
Lighting designer Davide Groppi (born 1963 in Piacenza) is the subject of a rare retrospective exhibition titled "Un'ora di luce" (An Hour of Light), on view until May 26 at the Volumnia gallery in Piacenza, curated by Marco Sammicheli. The show, held in a deconsecrated late-16th-century church, traces Groppi's nearly 40-year career through products, prototypes, and personal artistic research, including his iconic lamp "Nulla" (2010), which won the first of his three Compasso d'Oro awards. In an interview, Groppi discusses the exhibition's themes of lightness, cosmic references, and his philosophy of subtraction in design.
Sam Jacob's essay in ArtReview uses the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film 'EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert' (2026) as a springboard to explore the cultural and technical implications of digital restoration. The film, a spinoff from Luhrmann's 2022 Elvis biopic, draws on 59 hours of previously unseen footage from Elvis Presley's 1970 and 1972 Las Vegas performances, recovered from Warner's Kansas salt-mine archive. Using Peter Jackson's Park Road Post technology—including Machine Assisted Learning (MAL) for demixing audio and video—the damaged, fragmented material has been digitally scanned, reconstructed, and enhanced to 4k resolution with 12-channel sound, presented in IMAX cinemas.
The article discusses the enduring style of Sade Adu, frontwoman of the British group Sade, following the band's announcement of their induction into the 2026 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It highlights how Adu's signature look—scraped-back hair, red lipstick, hoop earrings, and simple black dresses or denim—has become iconic and influential, with her outfits featured in exhibitions like V&A East's 'The Music is Black' and referenced by celebrities such as Drake. The piece traces the origins of her style to her fashion design studies at Saint Martin's School of Art and her early work with designer Fiona Dealey.
The article explores the transformation of cultural travel for artists and art lovers, contrasting the arduous, unknown journeys of historical figures like Eugène Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, and Ella Maillart with today's accessible, curated experiences. It describes how contemporary artists such as Ólafur Elíasson, JR, and Marina Abramović now use travel itself as a medium, creating works that engage with climate change, social issues, and presence. Destinations like the Venice Biennale, AlUla in Saudi Arabia, Naoshima in Japan, and Le Voyage à Nantes are highlighted as hubs where art and travel merge into immersive, sensory experiences.
This week's Required Reading from Hyperallergic features a photo by Saber Nuraldin, a finalist for the World Press Photo of the Year, depicting Palestinians climbing an aid truck in Gaza during famine caused by Israel's blockade. The article also includes Elena Megalos's essay on the American Museum of Natural History as a site of motherhood, and reports on Meenu Batra, a legal interpreter arrested by ICE, and the New York Times blocking the Internet Archive from crawling its site.
Austn Fischer, a Wisconsin-born, London-based photographer, creates black-and-white images that explore fashion as performance and identity. His work features striking contrasts, such as lace ruffs paired with athletic wear, and he has collaborated with clients like The New Statesman and Crack Magazine, photographing subjects including Ai Weiwei and David Byrne. Fischer describes his process as working backwards, arranging scenes intuitively and later reflecting on their personal significance, especially regarding his sexuality and masculinity.
Meriem Bennani, a New York-based artist known for her shape-shifting practice of videos, installations, and immersive environments, gained viral fame during the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. She co-created the animated series '2 Lizards' with fellow artist Orian Barki, which depicted surreal, humorous conversations between anthropomorphic reptiles navigating the first weeks of the pandemic in New York City. The series, posted on Instagram, resonated widely and led to eight episodes. Bennani's broader work, including 'Life on the CAPS' (2018–2022) and 'Mission Teens' (2019), blends digital animation, live-action footage, and cultural critique, often exploring themes of diaspora, post-colonialism, and migration through dystopian, supernatural narratives.
London-based artist Dima Rebus creates large-scale watercolor paintings using water samples collected from strangers around the world. In her series "Floaters," she freezes the crowdsourced water with pigments, then lets it melt across paper to form abstract color fields, later adding figures and aquatic landscapes. Each sample arrives with a letter, building an archive of rain, rivers, seas, oceans, and glaciers that serve as both material and human message.
Un artista ha raccontato l’incredibile storia di un borgo della Calabria che non c’è più. L’intervista
Italian artist Martin Errichiello has created [campanamuta], a six-part audio work broadcast on RAI Radio 3's Zazà program in late 2025 and now available on RaiPlay Sound. The piece tells the story of Eranova, a farming community founded in 1896 near Reggio Calabria that was destroyed by 1980 after the Christian Democratic party planned—but never built—a steel center on its land, now the site of the Port of Gioia Tauro. Errichiello weaves together interviews with former residents and his own original texts, using non-linear narration to explore the village's utopian origins and forced disappearance.
Hyperallergic's newsletter explores the question of whether artworks can possess personhood, drawing on Lisa Siraganian's essay that references the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision and Pierre Huyghe's uncanny human statues. Other featured pieces include Ed Simon's review of Elizabeth Goldring's new book on Hans Holbein the Younger, Michael Glover's introduction to George Stubbs's equine portraits at the National Gallery in London, and news of a historic $116M gift to the National Gallery of Art for an artwork lending program. The newsletter also covers Byron Kim's exhibition at James Cohan Gallery, the new V&A East museum in London, and obituaries for Desmond Morris, James Hayward, and Flo Oy Wong.
Salvare la street art delle bombe: una storia vera dall’Ucraina
A documentary titled "Arte vs Guerra – Banksy e C215 a Borodyanka, Ucraina" will air on Sky Arte on April 26, recounting how street artists Banksy and C215 created murals in Borodyanka, Ukraine, shortly after the Russian invasion began in February 2022. The works include Banksy's "La Ginnasta" and "Davide e Golia," as well as C215's portraits of war victims like Dmytro Kotsiubaylo. The film also follows three Italian restorers—Paola Ciaccia, Alessandro Cini, and Maria Colonna—who risked their safety to preserve these murals from war damage and landmines.
Photographer Luke Oppenheimer traveled to the remote Kyrgyz village of Ottuk in 2021 for a short assignment on wolves preying on livestock, but ended up staying for four years. His project, titled 'Ottuk' and published by Aliens in Residence, documents the lives of shepherds who hunt wolves to protect their herds in the Tien Shan mountains, capturing their ancient way of life, harsh winters, and the legends that shape their community.
Max Mara has announced that its next cruise show, the Resort 2027 collection, will take place at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai on June 16, 2026. The event will also mark the opening of a public exhibition titled 'The Max,' curated by French fashion expert Olivier Saillard, celebrating the brand's 75th anniversary. The show continues Max Mara's tradition of staging cruise collections in museums, following previous shows at Berlin's Neues Museum and Venice's Doge Palace.