East Africa meets Western Europe as Michael Armitage takes on Venice's Palazzo Grassi

The artist Michael Armitage opens a monographic exhibition titled 'The Promise of Change' at Venice's Palazzo Grassi, featuring 46 large paintings and nearly 100 sketches that survey his past decade of work. At 42, Armitage is the youngest artist to receive a solo show at the palazzo, which is owned by François Pinault and has previously hosted Albert Oehlen, Luc Tuymans, and Marlene Dumas. The exhibition highlights Armitage's fusion of East African and Western European artistic influences, drawing on his upbringing in Kenya and his training at London's Byam Shaw School of Art, the Slade, and the Royal Academy.

Digital Art Pioneer Nancy Burson Collapses the Border Between Mysticism and Quantum Physics

Nancy Burson, a pioneering digital artist, presents her latest solo exhibition "Light Matter" at Heft Gallery in New York, featuring "Quantum Entanglement" paintings that appear as white dots on black canvases but reveal jittering forms and depth when viewed through a phone camera. The 78-year-old artist, known for her 1980s composite portraits blending faces of businessmen and movie stars, continues her exploration of perception and technology, claiming a special gift to perceive the universe's emergent energy grid. The exhibition runs through May 2.

Overlooked Artist Louisa Chase Returns to the Spotlight

Artnet News reports on a solo exhibition at Berry Campbell, New York, dedicated to overlooked American painter Louisa Chase (1951–2016). Titled "Louisa Chase: The Eighties," the show is the largest and most comprehensive survey of her work in 25 years and the first since the gallery began representing her estate. It features a curated selection of works on paper from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, highlighting Chase's unique synthesis of abstraction and representation that positioned her between Neo-Expressionism and the New Image movement. Chase, who studied under Philip Guston at Yale, had major early success including solo shows at Robert Miller Gallery, appearances at the Whitney Biennial (1981, 1983), and inclusion in the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1984), with works held by MoMA, the Met, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center.

Zurbarán in London, the Carnegie International, Walter Sickert’s Ennui—podcast

This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast covers three major art events opening this weekend. The largest career survey of 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán since the 1980s opens at the National Gallery in London, co-curated by Francesca Whitlum-Cooper. The 59th Carnegie International, titled "If the word we," opens at the Carnegie Museum of Art and other venues in Pittsburgh, directed by Eric Crosby. The Work of the Week is Walter Sickert's "Ennui" (c.1914), featured in the exhibition "Walter Sickert: Working Notes" at Charleston in Lewes, curated by Robert Travers of Piano Nobile in partnership with Charleston.

The curator awakens: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art reveals inaugural exhibition lineup

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, will open in Los Angeles on 22 September with 18 inaugural exhibitions featuring over 1,200 objects. Curated by Lucas himself, the shows span media like photography, architecture, and cinema, as well as genres such as manga, anime, comics, and children's stories. Six solo exhibitions will highlight American artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Frazetta, and Norman Rockwell. The museum's collection now exceeds 40,000 works, including the Separate Cinema Archive and Lucas Archives of film memorabilia.

Whitney Biennial 2026: Care, Catastrophe, and Private Gestures

The Whitney Biennial 2026, the 82nd edition of the longest-running survey of American art, opened with a stripped-down, self-referential title and no subtitle, reflecting a moment of national self-questioning. The exhibition features 56 artists, duos, and collectives, with highlights including Agosto Machado's shrine sculptures dedicated to friends lost to AIDS, Emilie Louise Gossiaux's tender works about her guide dog London, and Michelle Lopez's apocalyptic video projection *Pandemonium*. Machado, a longtime downtown New York artist and caregiver, died shortly after the biennial opened, and his ashes are to be mixed with those of Marsha P. Johnson and spread in the Hudson River.

At MAXXI L'Aquila, exhibition dedicated to Ai Weiwei recounts catastrophes and memory

From April 29 to September 6, 2026, MAXXI L'Aquila presents "AI WEIWEI: Aftershock," an exhibition curated by Tim Marlow featuring approximately seventy works by Chinese artist, architect, and activist Ai Weiwei. The show spans his entire career, focusing on themes of earthquakes, wars, political repression, and memory. The centerpiece is the installation "Straight" (2009–2012), made from 150 tons of steel rods recovered from schools that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, displayed across three rooms. The exhibition is held at Palazzo Ardinghelli, a Baroque building that houses MAXXI L'Aquila and was itself restored after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, creating a dialogue between the works and the building's history of recovery.

'It’s like the natural world. Nothing lasts forever': Tadashi Kawamata on creating his temporary sculptures

Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata created a temporary wooden vortex sculpture titled "Tornado" inside the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, made from 5,000 individual pieces of wood and installed on the grand staircase for just two weeks in February. The work was commissioned by Ruinart as part of its "Conversations with Nature" series, which presents a piece in Paris before permanently installing it at the champagne house's headquarters in Reims. Kawamata, who has lived in Paris for 18 years, is known for using found materials and creating site-specific, temporary interventions on or inside architecture, emphasizing spontaneity and impermanence.

ArtReview April & May 2026 Issue Out Now

ArtReview's April & May 2026 issue explores boundaries and limitations in art, with a focus on the 61st Venice Biennale opening amid global conflicts. The cover features Japanese-American performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash with his husband and twin babies, whose collaborative installation at the Japanese Pavilion incorporates the unpredictability of childcare. The issue includes coverage of controversial national pavilions (Russian, Israeli, American), profiles of artists representing Mongolia and Singapore, and features on Beverly Buchanan, Arthur Jafa, Richard Prince, and Zehra Doğan's report from Rojava. It also reviews the 82nd Whitney Biennial, the 25th Biennale of Sydney, and the 15th Shanghai Biennale.

Artist Mel Kendrick Is Mining New Possibilities From Wood and Color

American artist Mel Kendrick, who began his career in the early 1970s integrating Minimalism and architecture, presents his ninth solo exhibition at David Nolan Gallery in New York. Titled “Mel Kendrick: Tilt,” the show runs through June 6, 2026, and features new and recent wood sculptures alongside older works, including pieces like *Walnut Shelf* (2026), *Gemstone* (2026), and *Yellow Drum* (2025). Kendrick works without pre-planning, allowing the material to guide his process, and treats color as a material with its own weight, inspired by Gothic and medieval architecture.

José Dávila Makes Space the Subject in His New York Show

José Dávila's solo exhibition "The Simple Act of Positioning" opens at Sean Kelly gallery in New York, featuring sculptures that explore the relational placement of objects in space. The show includes totemic pillars of steel, concrete, volcanic rock, and automotive paint, framed by large black structures, inviting viewers to move through the gallery to fully experience the visual conversations between works. Dávila, originally from Guadalajara and trained in architecture, draws on Modernist precedents from artists like Marcel Duchamp and architects like Luis Barragán.

Exhibition | Nengi Omuku, 'We Were Like Those Who Dreamed' at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London presents 'We Were Like Those Who Dreamed,' the second solo exhibition by Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku. The show features new paintings that explore the politics of green spaces in urban centers, particularly Lagos, where rapid urbanization has created a 'concrete jungle.' Omuku transposes figures from contemporary and archival images of Lagos into lush, Impressionistic landscapes painted with pointillist brushstrokes and a Fauvist palette, using the garden as a radical symbol of equality and resistance. She paints on sanyan, a hand-spun Yoruba cloth, working with local artisans in Ilorin to revive the tradition. Works like 'Dream Logic' and 'One Particular Man' address socio-economic tensions, while 'A quiet nation' captures the dichotomy between urban Brutalist architecture and natural foliage.

14 artists having major museum moments in 2026

The article previews 14 artists who will have major museum exhibitions in 2026, highlighting key shows such as a long-awaited US retrospective of Marcel Duchamp, a Calder exhibition in Paris, and a Rothko show in Florence. It also details concurrent auction highlights at Christie's New York, including works from the S.I. Newhouse collection by Brancusi, Lichtenstein, Matisse, and Pollock. Specific exhibitions covered include "Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Whitney Museum, and multiple European shows for Constantin Brancusi's 150th anniversary.

Gagosian Relocates to Ground Floor at Historic 980 Madison Avenue

Gagosian gallery has relocated to a new street-level space at 980 Madison Avenue in New York, opening on April 25, 2026. Designed by architect Jonathan Caplan of Caplan Colaku Architects, the 12,000-square-foot ground-floor gallery replaces the previous upstairs headquarters, offering direct public access from the street and featuring a restaurant, Kappo Masa, on the lower level. The inaugural exhibitions focus on Marcel Duchamp, including works from his 1960s readymades produced with Arturo Schwarz, and a selection of early Robert Rauschenberg pieces from the Cy Twombly Foundation.

3 Matisse Exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art Highlight Different Sides of the Artist

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) is presenting three simultaneous exhibitions focused on Henri Matisse, drawing from its world-leading collection of the artist's works. The shows include "Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again," pairing Matisse with contemporary artist Louis Fratino; "Matisse and Martinique: Portraits and Poetry," exploring a little-known book illustration series inspired by the artist's 1930 visit to Martinique; and "Matisse in Vence: The Stations of the Cross," featuring 85 rarely or never-before-seen works on paper from Matisse's only architectural project—a chapel in Vence, France. The exhibitions run through 2026, with the Vence show curated by scholar Yve-Alain Bois.

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.

Monopol gives away 5 × 2 tickets for Peter Hujar and Liz Deschenes at the Gropius Bau

Monopol verlost 5 × 2 Tickets für Peter Hujar und Liz Deschenes im Gropius Bau

Monopol magazine is giving away 5 × 2 tickets to the exhibition "Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision" at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. The show pairs Hujar's iconic black-and-white photographs of New York's downtown scene—featuring figures like Susan Sontag, Divine, and David Wojnarowicz—with Liz Deschenes' abstract, material-focused works on glass and photosensitive paper. To enter, readers must email their name with the subject line "Hujar" by May 30.

Hito Steyerl “The Island” Osservatorio Fondazione Prada / Milan by Piermario De Angelis

Hito Steyerl's solo exhibition "The Island" at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada in Milan explores the concept of submersion as both a geological condition and a media regime. The show takes its title from a Neolithic artificial island discovered off the coast of Korčula, Croatia, which remained submerged for approximately seven thousand years. Through video interviews, installations, and critical assemblages, Steyerl connects this submerged structure to contemporary issues of digital image circulation, algorithmic power, and the dispossession of agency, drawing on science fiction, quantum physics, biochemistry, and deep time.

'Art is just about making trouble': Inside Auckland Art Gallery's bold new show

Auckland Art Gallery is preparing to open "Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now," a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese art curated by Hutch Wilco. The show features works from the White Rabbit Collection in Sydney, including a massive 7-meter-high stone sculpture by Xu Zhen, paintings by Shang Liang, and photography by Pixy Liao, who recently won a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship. Wilco spent three years organizing the exhibition, which includes playful sculptures, paintings, and multimedia works, with significant logistical challenges in transporting large pieces from China.

National Museum of Asian Art Opens New Exhibition in June About Its Origin Story

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art will open a new exhibition titled "A Museum in the Making" on June 27, 2026, running through August 8, 2027. The show explores the origin story of the Freer Gallery of Art, America's first national art museum, by examining how collector Charles Lang Freer used his Detroit home as a living laboratory for museum design. It highlights collaborations with artists and architects, including James McNeill Whistler, Stanford White, and Mary Chase Perry Stratton, and features a video walkthrough of the Freer House. The exhibition is part of the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations and the Smithsonian's broader "Our Shared Future" initiative.

Francis Alÿs at MAMU: A Global Portrait of Childhood Through Play

The Banco de la República has opened a new exhibition at the Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU) in Bogotá titled "Francis Alÿs, juegxs de niñxs 1999–2025." Featuring 27 video works from the Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist's long-running series documenting children's games worldwide, the show opened on April 23 at El Parqueadero and the second floor of MAMU. Curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina and Virginia Roy, the exhibition includes footage from Afghanistan, India, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Colombia, where a new work filmed in the Amazon with the Arara community is featured.

How Detroit’s Art Scene Is Ushering in a New Chapter for the City

Detroit's art scene is experiencing a resurgence, marked by the reopening of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) after an eight-month renovation. The museum, now renamed the Julia Reyes Taubman Building, unveiled four new exhibitions, including a career survey of local artist Olayami Dabls titled "Olayami Dabls: Detroit Cosmologies," his first solo museum show in over 40 years. The reopening follows a 2020 reckoning over toxic workplace allegations, leading to the appointment of co-directors Jova Lynne and Marie Madison-Patton, who have refocused the institution on accessibility, civic engagement, and local contemporary art.

“Lighting” exhibition by Mohamed Abdalla Otaybi at Swailam gallery is not to be missed

This article is a roundup of art exhibitions and cultural events in Cairo, Egypt, spanning multiple venues and dates. It highlights a photographic project titled "New Cairo, Do You Love Me?" by Judi Yassin and Tia Khalil at the American University in Cairo, which documents the disconnect between the promised luxury of New Cairo and its dehumanizing reality using 35mm black-and-white film. Other featured events include painting exhibitions by Osama Nashed and Alaa Hegazi at Dai, Mahmoud Hamdi's "Journey to the Core" at Difaf, the immersive "Beyond Van Gogh" experience at District 5, the permanent collection at Al-Fustat Centre for Ceramic, and the Empower Her Art Forum at the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Inside the New Madison Avenue Flagship of the Powerhouse Gagosian Gallery

Larry Gagosian has opened a new flagship gallery at 974 Madison Avenue (preferring the address 980 Madison at 76th Street) after Bloomberg Philanthropies took over the building's upper floors, which had housed Gagosian's New York flagship since the late 1980s. The megadealer relocated to the street level, creating a 12,000-square-foot complex with exhibition spaces, offices, meeting rooms, and private viewing areas designed by Jonathan Caplan of Caplan Colaku Architects. The gallery launched with a double-header presentation of works by Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, and features ceilings just over 12 feet high, adaptable walls, and a vestibule display of art books.

Renée Levi to transform London’s Hayward Gallery with Audemars Piguet commission this fall.

Swiss painter Renée Levi will create a large-scale two-panel painting for the façade of London’s Hayward Gallery this fall, co-commissioned by the gallery and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The installation, on view from September 23 to November 15, marks the watch brand’s art programme’s first painting commission and Levi’s first major public commission in the U.K.

Aileen Murphy Sleeps on the Ceiling

Aileen Murphy's third exhibition at Deborah Schamoni in Munich, titled "Sleeps on the Ceiling," presents five new paintings dominated by rosé and pink tones. The works revolve around a table-like motif, featuring animals, disembodied limbs, and surreal details such as a white cat with red eyes and a yellow snake. Murphy, who completed her studies in 2018, blends abstract gestures with detailed figuration, creating scenes that are both playful and uncanny. The exhibition's title is borrowed from Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Sleeping on the Ceiling" (1946), reflecting a dissolution of domestic interior, urban monument, and psychological landscape.

The Major Exhibitions at LUMA Arles in France: Zaha Hadid, Gerhard Richter and Patti Smith

Le grandi mostre al LUMA di Arles in Francia: Zaha Hadid, Gerhard Richter e Patti Smith

LUMA Arles in France will launch a new exhibition cycle on May 1, 2026, followed by a second series starting July 4. The program, presented by CEO Mustapha Bouhayati and artistic director Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, includes a major show of Gerhard Richter's "Overpainted Photographs" in the Frank Gehry-designed tower, a Zaha Hadid retrospective titled "I Think There Should Be No End to Experimentation" marking the tenth anniversary of her death, and a centennial celebration of the influential art magazine Cahiers d'Art. The exhibitions aim to bridge visual arts with music, performance, and live events, bringing together voices from diverse geographies and disciplines.

What else is happening

Was sonst noch geht

Ahead of the Gallery Weekend Berlin (May 1–3), the city is buzzing with parallel exhibitions that extend far beyond the official gallery circuit. The fourth edition of the Sellerie Weekend opens over 75 independent Off-Spaces from April 30 to May 3, featuring performances, curated tours, and a kickoff event with artist Sophia Süßmilch at the Spoiler project space. The Paper Positions art fair returns to Tempelhof Airport (April 30–May 3) with 70 international galleries specializing in works on paper, including artists like Annegret Soltau, Una Ursprung, and Stefanie Moshammer. Meanwhile, the art initiative House presents the group show "Gravity Ease Contract" in the Berghain heating plant hall (May 1–24), curated by David Douard, with works by Susan Philipsz, Julia Scher, and others. Finally, collectors Karen and Christian Boros unveil "Berlin Bunker #5" in their bunker-turned-museum, featuring recent acquisitions by Pol Taburet, Sung Tieu, and Jill Mulleady.

Francois Boisrond prend de la hauteur

French artist François Boisrond, a key figure of the 1980s Figuration libre movement, presents his new series "Ouvrages d'art" at Galerie Maïa Muller in Paris. The series reinterprets monumental architecture—including the Millau Viaduct, the Pont de Normandie, Mont Saint-Michel, Notre-Dame, and the Eiffel Tower—using drone-sourced images. Boisrond employs a new liquid acrylic technique that creates a matte, flat finish, producing works that appear hyperrealistic from a distance but dissolve into impressionistic or pixelated abstraction up close. The exhibition, extended through May 16, 2026, features large-format paintings priced between €25,000 and €50,000.

Gala Porras-Kim: Future spaces replicate earlier spaces

Gala Porras-Kim presents her first exhibition at kurimanzutto in Mexico City, titled "Future spaces replicate earlier spaces," running from April 11 to June 13, 2026. The show brings together works that examine how museums and conservation institutions reclassify objects removed from their original contexts, using reconstruction and resituating to explore their spatial, material, and temporal conditions. Central to the exhibition is the installation "The motion of an alluvial record" (2024), which recreates the humid marshland atmosphere of the Yucatán Peninsula inside the gallery, contrasting with the controlled climates of museums. Other works include drawings replicating wall decorations from the Techinantitla complex in Teotihuacan, which were fragmented and sold on the black market, and graphite drawings of objects by artist Brígido Lara, whose "original interpretations" of Totonac ritual clay objects were mistakenly catalogued as Pre-Hispanic artifacts in major museums.