Newcastle Art Gallery’s stunning new exhibitions open up a multiverse

Newcastle Art Gallery has opened three new exhibitions following its February reopening with the blockbuster show 'Iconic Loved Unexpected'. The new presentations include Tiyan Baker's solo show 'Mouth Mnemonica', 'The Mordant Family Gift' featuring 25 works donated by philanthropists Simon and Catriona Mordant, and Brian Robinson's 'Multiverse'. The exhibitions collectively showcase a diverse range of national and international artistry, with works by artists such as Gemma Smith, Tim Silver, Alasdair Macintyre, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Baker's solo exhibition focuses on preserving the Bidayǔh language through multimedia works including autostereograms and video installations.

Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska: Zanzibar

Lisson Gallery in London presents "Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska: Zanzibar," an immersive installation running from June 4 to August 22, 2026. The exhibition features nine diptychs painted by Himid in 1999, paired with a 38-minute multi-layered sound composition by Stawarska created in 2023. The works explore themes of memory, displacement, and belonging, drawing on Himid's birthplace in Zanzibar and her family's migration to London. The installation includes Taraab music, opera, archival BBC clips, and Himid's own voice, creating a multi-dimensional experience that reflects both artists' sense of loss and connection to their native countries.

Detroit’s MOCAD Reopens with a New Vision and a New Kind of Leadership

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) has reopened after an eight-month renovation, marking its 20th anniversary with a new vision centered on artists and community. Co-directors Jova Lynne and Marie Madison-Patton have titled this new chapter "A Practice of Multiplicity," emphasizing the wholeness of artists' lives beyond their work. The renovation includes infrastructural upgrades like an HVAC system, a new Learning Studio, a transformed café for programming, and a facade that opens to the street. Two inaugural surveys highlight Detroit artists Olayami Dabls and Carole Harris, whose practices explore the city's history, culture, and social transformation.

Zanzibar: Mapping Memory Through Sound and Colour

Lisson Gallery in London presents 'Zanzibar' (1999–2023), a collaborative installation by artists Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska. The exhibition reunites Himid's abstract diptychs from 1999 with Stawarska's eight-channel soundscape composed in 2023, creating an immersive meditation on loss, migration, and belonging. Himid's geometric canvases depart from her signature figurative style, evoking fragments of Zanzibar, the East African archipelago where she was born, and memories of her migration to London after her father's death. Stawarska's sonic composition weaves archival recordings, Taraab music, opera, and spoken text through the gallery space, guiding viewers through overlapping histories and imagined geographies.

Art4you Gallery’s tribute exhibition to women closes at Art Smiley Art Gallery

Art4you Gallery hosted 'Her Story – A Tribute to Women, Edition 2' at Art Smiley Art Gallery in Dubai from May 10–15. The international group exhibition featured 21 artists from 16 countries, presenting works in canvas, installation, and mixed media that explored themes of identity, strength, memory, and womanhood. Curated by Jesno Jackson, the show aimed to create a living archive of women's stories, with participating artists including Cristina Gabriela, Seungeun Cho, Vasilisa Eliseeva, Natasha Boshoff, and others from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Blak Douglas is an Archibald winner. He says the art prize needs to change

Blak Douglas, a four-time Archibald Prize finalist and winner of the 2022 competition, has opened a new exhibition titled *Home Flown* at NSW Parliament House. The show challenges perceptions of Aboriginal art by parodying the dominance of dot painting and the co-opting of Aboriginal iconography, such as the boomerang, in Australian commercial culture. Douglas uses roundels, laser-cut boomerangs, and killer boomerangs to critique the tax system, colonial structures, and the pressure on Indigenous artists to produce work that is 'identifiably Aboriginal'.

Byblos dans le fracas du monde

The article reviews an immersive exhibition at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris titled "Byblos, cité millénaire du Liban," which presents over 470 archaeological artifacts from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos in present-day Lebanon. The show features national treasures rarely or never before exhibited outside Lebanon, including stone anchors, statuettes, engraved stelae, gold and silver vessels, and a Roman mosaic depicting the abduction of Europa. The scenography plunges visitors into underwater and subterranean environments, evoking the city's 9,000-year history as a Mediterranean trade and diplomatic hub, its ties with Egyptian pharaohs through cedar wood, and its role in spreading the Phoenician alphabet.

Three Centuries of French Explorations

Trois siècles d’explorations françaises

The Musée de l’armée in Paris presents the exhibition "Explorations : une affaire d’État ?" covering 300 years of French exploration from the 18th to the 21st century. The show brings together artworks, maps, archives, and scientific objects to trace how state power, the military, and science intersected in expeditions from Bougainville’s 1766-1769 circumnavigation to contemporary space and deep-sea missions. It includes a film by artist Thibault Brunet created with researchers using the game Minecraft Explorers, imagining a new scientific exploration.

Riga marks Azerbaijan`s Independence Day with opening of MAMA “Mother Nature” international art exhibition and official reception

On May 25, the MAMA “Mother Nature” international art exhibition and an official reception for Azerbaijan's Independence Day (May 28) were held at the Zuzeum Art Museum in Riga, Latvia. The event was organized by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Latvia, and featured speeches by Ambassador Elnur Sultanov, Latvia's Minister of Health Hosam Abu Meri, and museum founder Jānis Zuzāns.