Jarvis Cocker Is Bringing His Eclectic Eye to the Hepworth Wakefield

Musician Jarvis Cocker and his wife, creative consultant Kim Sion, will curate an exhibition titled “The Hodge Podge” at the Hepworth Wakefield in the U.K., opening in May 2027. The show will feature artworks selected by the couple that challenge conventional definitions of art, spanning diverse media and time periods, with artists including Peter Doig, Barbara Hepworth, Jeremy Deller, and Emma Kunz. The exhibition will be bookended by an immersive Dreamachine, a 1959 light-art device by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville. Cocker and Sion have outlined their curatorial philosophy in a Hodge Podge Manifesto, celebrating beauty in chaos and disorder.

Au boulot ! 10 œuvres qui célèbrent le travail

Beaux Arts Magazine presents a feature on ten artworks that celebrate labor, from ancient Egyptian frescoes to modern depictions of workers. The article highlights pieces such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder's "The Harvesters" (1565), Diego Velázquez's "The Spinners" (c. 1657), and Johannes Vermeer's "The Milkmaid" (c. 1660), examining how artists have elevated peasant, artisan, and domestic work from background detail to central subject. The feature coincides with the Musée d'Orsay's nationwide initiative "100 œuvres qui racontent le travail" (100 Works That Tell the Story of Work), which explores the history and representation of labor in art.

Return of Aparicio painting to Prado exemplifies trajectory of human taste

The Prado Museum in Madrid has launched a new exhibition series called "A Work, a Story," beginning with José Aparicio's 1818 painting "El año del hambre de Madrid" (The Year of the Famine in Madrid). Once the museum's most popular attraction, the propagandistic work celebrating Spanish resistance to Napoleon fell from favor and was removed from display for over 150 years, residing in government buildings and other museums before returning to the Prado.

Sebastiaan Bremer: Super Modern Things

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents "Super Modern Things," an exhibition of new works by Sebastiaan Bremer. The artworks blend photography and painting, starting from historical source images such as 17th-century Dutch botanical catalogues and Golden Age still life paintings. Bremer photographs these reproductions and adds ink and acrylic marks—dots, lines, stains, and washes—creating rhythms that evoke language, music, emotion, and constellations. The exhibition continues his long-standing exploration of flowers and the layered histories of still life, addressing themes of beauty, mortality, value, ecology, and global exchange. An accompanying monograph of his flower series is scheduled for Fall 2026.

Museum Moves 24 – 30 April 2026

This article is a weekly roundup of museum news from 24–30 April 2026, covering openings, closures, and exhibitions across the UK. Highlights include the permanent closure of Blackpool's Tramtown museum due to structural unsafety, the reopening of Sibsey Trader Windmill after a five-year restoration, and several new exhibitions: 'Vennels: Perth’s Little Streets' at Perth Museum, 'The 90s: Art and Fashion' at Tate Britain, 'Regeneration' at Hull's Streetlife Museum, 'Inspiration' at Stockport Station, 'Our Story with David Attenborough' at Outernet London, and 'Lynn Chadwick at Houghton Hall' in Norfolk.

Forgotten 'environment' of 11 women artists brought back to life at Leeum

The Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul has opened "Inside other spaces: Environments by women artists 1956-1976," an exhibition restoring immersive artworks by 11 women artists from Asia, Europe, and South America, including Jung Kang-ja, Judy Chicago, Tsuruko Yamazaki, and Aleksandra Kasuba. The show revives pieces that were often dismantled after their original displays, such as Jung Kang-ja's "Incorporeal Exhibition," which was destroyed in 1970 after being deemed political propaganda under South Korea's authoritarian regime. Curators Andrea Lissoni and Marina Pugliese, who first organized the project at Haus Der Kunst in Munich, worked with researchers to reconstruct the works using archival materials, correspondence, and blueprints.

Inside the new David Geffen Galleries at LA County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The structure features a floating floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, and minimalist concrete interiors that create a calm, light-filled space. The inaugural exhibition presents 26 interconnected galleries with no set path, displaying artworks from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to contemporary installations like Do Ho Suh's "Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace" (2026), aiming to eliminate hierarchies of time, place, or genre.

50 years of art-inspired floral installations at the MFA

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its annual 'Art in Bloom' event, where floral designers and volunteers from 50 garden clubs and community organizations create arrangements inspired by artworks in the museum's collection. This year, participants were assigned to 50 objects, including John Singer Sargent's 1895 painting 'Helen Sears,' which was featured in the inaugural 1976 event. The tradition was conceived by Chuck Thomas to boost early spring attendance, and has grown from 18 arrangements drawing 4,300 visitors to becoming the museum's largest public event, attracting 29,000 visitors in 2025.

Wohin am Checkpoint Charlie?

The article covers the Berlin Gallery Weekend, highlighting a cluster of exhibitions around Checkpoint Charlie. It features light art, political sculpture, textile experiments, and spatial interventions. Among the participants is Galerie Max Goelitz, which presents James Turrell's light installation series "Small Elliptical Glass 'First Cause'" (2024) at its Berlin space in Rudi-Dutschke-Straße, as part of the "Perspectives" section.

Hotel Room Transforms into Media Art Exhibition Space

South Korea's only media art fair, Loop Plus, was held from April 23 to 26 at the Grand Josun Busan Hotel in Haeundae, Busan. The fair transformed 26 hotel rooms on the 13th floor into exhibition spaces, featuring media artworks from 19 international galleries including Tang Contemporary Art, Esther Schipper, Chiwen Gallery, and Baek Art. Highlights included a 38-minute video installation by Russian artist group AES+F titled *‘Inverso Mundus’*, presented by Tang Contemporary Art, which humorously subverts societal absurdities. The event also included artist booths for Kang Lee-yeon and Lucia Levolino, and institutional booths for the Justice Foundation and Gwangju Media Art Platform. A related festival, Loop Lab Busan 2026, runs until June 28 across multiple venues in Busan.

The forgotten Chinese conceptualists: Melbourne show brings together works by New Measurement Group

An exhibition at Buxton Contemporary in Melbourne, titled "Poetry Goes No Further Than Language: a Historical Moment of Art Becoming Art Again," brings together the complete artistic output of the New Measurement Group, a pioneering Chinese conceptual art collective from Beijing, alongside four conceptual experiments by Shanghai-based artist Qian Weikang. Curated by Carol Yinghua Lu and artist Liu Ding, the show aims to reassess early Chinese conceptual art, featuring works by the New Measurement Group (Chen Shaoping, Gu Dexin, Wang Luyan), pieces from the New Wave art movement, and new commissions by Melbourne artist Darcey Bella Arnold. The curators faced challenges locating the group's five publications, including one purchased on eBay from Europe, and used re-enactment and re-fabrication to recreate lost works like Qian's "Ladder Poem" (1990).

FAD News: Brooklyn Museum to Stage Art of Manga, the First Major Americas Survey of Manga as Fine Art

Brooklyn Museum will present 'Art of Manga' on October 3, 2026, the first large-scale exhibition in the Americas dedicated to manga as a fine art form. Organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the show features over 600 original hand-drawn manga artworks (genga) by influential Japanese artists including Araki Hirohiko, Oda Eiichiro, Takahashi Rumiko, and Tagame Gengoroh, spanning foundational figures to eight contemporary masters.

Experience 'Mona Lisa' and Renaissance Art at Hong Kong Heritage Museum Exhibition Starting Tomorrow

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum is launching 'The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying the Renaissance' exhibition from May 1 to July 27. The show offers a multimedia immersive experience centered on Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' and features Renaissance art treasures on loan from French and Italian cultural institutions, including the Musée du Louvre and the Musée national de la Renaissance. The opening ceremony on April 30 was attended by Hong Kong Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law, French Consul General Christile Drulhe, and other dignitaries.

‘Don’t mind if I do’: Northampton exhibit brings art to visitors in a unique and accessible way

Brooklyn-based disabled artist Finnegan Shannon's traveling exhibition "Don't mind if I do" is on view at the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) in Northampton through June 28. The show features a conveyor belt that brings interactive artworks to seated visitors, challenging traditional museum layouts that require standing and walking. Shannon collaborated with curator Lauren Leving and technical director Peter Reese to create the experience, which includes works by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Pelenakeke Brown, Sky Cubacub, Emilie L. Gossiaux, Felicia Griffin, Joselia Rebekah Hughes, and Jeff Kasper. The exhibition has previously toured to moCa Cleveland, California State University Sacramento, and the University of Illinois Chicago.

Larissa Sansour: Rogue Agents of History

Wereldmuseum Amsterdam is presenting "Rogue Agents of History," the first solo exhibition in the Netherlands by Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour. Running from April 24 to September 27, 2026, the show features three films—including the premiere of "A Sunken Tale of Losses Delayed" commissioned by the museum—alongside Sansour's artworks, personal heirlooms, film props, and historical objects. Curated by Nat Muller, the exhibition explores themes of identity, memory, belonging, and loss through a science-fiction lens, drawing on the Palestinian context and blurring boundaries between fact and fiction.

Italian Renaissance masterpieces debut in Beijing exhibition

An exhibition titled 'Homage to the Virtuosos: From Leonardo da Vinci to Caravaggio - Masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance' has opened at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, featuring 36 Renaissance masterpieces from Italy's Uffizi Galleries. The show includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Caravaggio, with many pieces traveling to China for the first time. The exhibition is jointly curated by the National Art Museum of China and the Uffizi Galleries, and is divided into three thematic sections tracing the evolution of Renaissance painting, from early Florentine masters through Mannerism to Venetian and Caravaggio's revolutionary works.

In Paris, step inside Swedish artist Mamma Andersson's broken reality

Swedish artist Mamma Andersson is preparing for a new exhibition, 'Œuvres sur papier', at David Zwirner Paris, showcasing her works on paper including aquatint, etching, lithograph, and woodcut. The article visits her studio in Stockholm, where she discusses her creative process, recurring motifs like chairs, masks, and deer, and her collaborations with writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. The show also features vitrines with reference materials and books alongside original artworks.

Tel Aviv Museum turns shelters into art spaces during war

During weeks of war in Israel, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art closed its galleries and moved a rare exhibition, "The Day Is Gone: 100 Years of the New Objectivity," into reinforced protected spaces. Director Tania Coen-Uzzielli then created guided tours inside the shelter, complete with live piano music and interpretation, allowing visitors to experience the artworks in a space designed for safety rather than display. The tour, titled "The Event Has Not Ended," plays on the automated safety notification that signals the end of a siren threat, suggesting that the event of war never truly ends.

Iconic 'Rocky' statue outside Philadelphia Museum of Art will now get its own exhibit -- and be moved indoors

The iconic Rocky Balboa statue, long stationed outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), is being moved indoors for a new exhibition titled "Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments." Opening this weekend, the show examines how the fictional boxer and his statue became a symbol of Philadelphia's identity, tracing over two millennia of artists' engagement with boxing and celebrity. The exhibition includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol alongside the bronze statue, which attracts roughly 4 million visitors annually. After the exhibit ends in August, the city's statue will be permanently relocated to the top of the museum steps, replacing a temporary loan from Sylvester Stallone's private collection. A new statue honoring legendary Philadelphia boxer "Smokin'" Joe Frazier is being built at the statue's original location.

Review: “Maya Blue” at the San Antonio Museum of Art

The San Antonio Museum of Art is presenting "Maya Blue: Ancient Color, New Visions," an exhibition curated by Kristopher Driggers that explores the ancient Maya pigment known as Maya blue. The show features eight earthenware artworks and one stucco piece dating from 550 to 1,500 years ago, alongside five modernist and contemporary works that highlight the enduring influence of Indigenous knowledge. Objects on view include figurines, a censer, and jade pieces, many bearing traces of the distinctive blue pigment, which was difficult to produce and held sacred significance in Maya culture.

How ‘Continnum’ reimagines art in domestic spaces

The exhibition 'Continuum,' curated by artist-curator Gauri Minocha at The Art Hub Gallery in Gurugram, presents over 100 artworks by South Asian artists within a refurbished house turned home gallery. Works are displayed across rooms, hallways, stairways, and terraces, moving away from the traditional white cube model to allow viewers to experience art in a domestic setting. The show spans from the 1950s to 2026, featuring modern masters like Ram Kumar, Jamini Roy, and Rubin Mondal, with each room defined by a distinct color palette and mood.

Troublemakers and Prophets: Elizabeth Allen and Other Visionary Artists

Compton Verney in Warwickshire is staging a major exhibition titled "Troublemakers and Prophets: Elizabeth Allen and Other Visionary Artists," running from 28 March to 31 August 2026. The show reintroduces Elizabeth "Queen" Allen (1883–1967), a self-taught British artist who created intricate patchwork artworks inspired by the Apocrypha and biblical visions, using scraps of fabric, buttons, and sequins. Despite achieving success in her lifetime, Allen fell into obscurity; the exhibition pairs her work with thematically related contemporary artists to contextualize her legacy.

What We Throw Away Does Not Disappear

Was wir wegwerfen, verschwindet nicht

The Museum Ostwall at the Dortmunder U in Dortmund has opened a new exhibition titled "Müll – die globalen Wege des Abfalls" ("Waste – The Global Paths of Garbage"), curated by Christina Danick and Michael Griff. Featuring around 50 international artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries, including two newly commissioned pieces, the show uses art to explore waste as material, motif, and aesthetic strategy. Key works include Kader Attia's "Los de Arriba y Los de Abajo," which addresses power imbalances through the lens of garbage in Hebron, and historical pieces by César Baldaccini, Arman, and HA Schult. The exhibition also highlights contemporary issues such as e-waste, global waste trafficking, and the environmental impact of industrial nations on the Global South.

Oleg Prokofiev’s Lost Trove of Paintings Comes to Light After Decades in Hiding

A trove of abstract paintings and sculptures by Russian artist Oleg Prokofiev, hidden for decades in Moscow after he fled the Soviet Union, has been rediscovered and is now on public display for the first time. Prokofiev concealed the works in the 1950s and 1960s to avoid state persecution—abstract art was banned in the USSR, and his relationship with British scholar Camilla Gray made marriage impossible until 1969. After Gray's death and his move to England, the artworks remained safely stored in Moscow, where he found them intact after the Soviet collapse. The collection, including paintings, sculptures, sketchbooks, and letters, is now exhibited at the newly founded Prokofiev Studio in Hackney, London, established by his four children and curator Anzhela Popova.

Met Gala 2026 – Everything to know about fashion's biggest night

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2026 Met Gala will take place on May 4, themed "Costume Art" to highlight fashion as a central artistic discipline. Co-chairs include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, with a host committee featuring Anthony Vaccarello, Zoë Kravitz, and other celebrities. The event coincides with the opening of the new Condé M. Nast Galleries and the spring exhibition "Costume Art," which pairs historic garments with artworks spanning 5,000 years. The dress code is "fashion is art," and the red carpet will be livestreamed by Vogue.

[Gallery Walk] The Vanished Rooms of Women Reopened

Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul is presenting "Into Other Spaces: Synesthetic Environments by Women Artists 1956-1976," a major exhibition opening May 5 that reconstructs immersive environmental artworks by 11 women artists from Asia, the Americas, and Europe. The show features full-scale recreations of works that were often dismantled or lost, including Jeong Gangja's "Muchejeon" (1970), which was shut down by authorities after just days. Curators Andrea Lissoni and Marina Pugliese used archival materials, photographs, and direct consultations with artists or their estates to piece together these ephemeral pieces.

Prokofiev Studio: new gallery devoted to the abstract art of Oleg Prokofiev son of the composer & father of composer Gabriel Prokofiev

Composer Gabriel Prokofiev has opened Prokofiev Studio in Hackney, London, a new gallery dedicated to the abstract art of his father, Oleg Prokofiev (1928-1998). Oleg, son of the famed composer Sergei Prokofiev, created abstract works in the 1950s that defied the Soviet Union’s strict socialist realism doctrine. His career was shaped by his relationship with British art historian Camilla Gray, whom he married in 1969 after hiding his art for a decade; she died two years later. Oleg moved to the UK but believed his abstract works lost until a 1994 return to Moscow revealed they had been preserved. The gallery houses Oleg’s archive, including 1950s abstract artworks, letters, sketchbooks, and sculptures, with an inaugural exhibition titled "Bending Time" reconstructing his 1990s studio in Hackney Wick.

Jack White Debuts Visual Art Exhibition at Newport Street Gallery

Musician Jack White has debuted a visual art exhibition at Newport Street Gallery in London. The show presents a collection of his own artworks, marking his first formal foray into the gallery world and expanding his creative practice beyond music.

Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and Kim Sion to curate 2027 Hepworth Wakefield show.

Musician Jarvis Cocker, best known as the frontman of the band Pulp, and his wife Kim Sion, a creative consultant, will curate a group exhibition titled “The Hodge Podge” at The Hepworth Wakefield in the UK in 2027. The show will feature a diverse range of artworks across different eras and media, focusing on artists who challenge conventional definitions of art. This marks Cocker’s first curatorial project at a major institution.

5 Artists to See at Converge 45

New York curator Lumi Tan has organized the 2026 Converge 45 triennial in Portland, Oregon, titled "Here, To You, Now." Running from August 27 across more than 15 venues, the triennial prioritizes performances and time-based artworks over traditional gallery exhibitions, featuring both local and visiting artists. Tan, whose background includes stints at the Kitchen, Luna Luna, and Frieze New York, selected five standout artists: Lex Brown (presenting an operatic video and installation), Trisha Baga (a 3D video installation about AI and parenting), Rose Salane (archival works involving Princess Diana’s shoes), and Linda K. Johnson (a choreographer mapping Portland’s dance network).