Lost ‘cloud’ of artist who wrapped the Reichstag to be created in UK gallery

Six years after Christo's death, Gagosian London will realize a monumental installation he designed in 1968 titled "Air Package on a Ceiling," originally conceived for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia but never built due to technical constraints. The plans and a detailed scale model were discovered by studio manager Lorenza Giovanelli in 2018, hidden inside a hollow plinth in Christo's studio. The work, a vast internally illuminated suspended form resembling a cloud, will fill a 16-meter-long, 10-meter-wide space at Gagosian London, descending just above head height, in collaboration with the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation.

Rare early photographs reveal lost sites featured in Van Gogh’s paintings

Two rare photographic albums taken by art critic Gustave Coquiot in 1922 have been acquired by the newly established Van Gogh Academy in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and are now on display. The images capture many of the sites in Arles that Vincent van Gogh painted in the late 1880s, including the Yellow House, the Langlois Bridge, and the Rhône riverbank. Several of these locations were later destroyed during World War II or by modernization, making Coquiot's photographs valuable historical records of Van Gogh's original subjects.

Guggenheim to Screen Artistic Portrait of Soccer Legend Zinédine Zidane

The Guggenheim Museum in New York will screen Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's 2006 film "Zidane, a 21st century portrait" from June 11 to July 19, 2026, timed with the FIFA World Cup. The two-channel video piece follows French soccer legend Zinédine Zidane during a 90-minute match between Real Madrid and Villarreal, captured by 17 cameras to create an intimate, voyeuristic portrait of the player. This marks the film's first showing at the Guggenheim since the museum acquired one of 17 unique editions.

5 Trends Shaping the 2026 Venice Biennale

The 2026 Venice Biennale has opened to the public, featuring the main exhibition 'In Minor Keys' conceived by the late Cameroonian Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh, who died unexpectedly in May 2025. Kouoh, the first African woman appointed to lead the Biennale, had her curatorial team—including Rasha Salti, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo—carry forward her vision of art as a 'shared and sustaining force.' The opening was weighted with politics and emotion.

Ancient Treasures From Lost Egyptian City Head to San Francisco

Dozens of ancient Egyptian artifacts from the newly discovered lost city of Aten—built under King Amenhotep III in the 1300s B.C.E.—will debut in the United States this summer at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The exhibition, titled “Treasures of the Pharaohs,” features 130 objects spanning over 2,000 years of Egyptian history, including 20 relics from the Aten site itself. The show premiered in Rome in November 2024 and is organized with loans from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Luxor Museum, with a catalog by famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

A Londra si allestisce un’installazione di Christo e Jeanne-Claude che non si era mai vista prima

An unprecedented installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, titled "Air Package on a Ceiling," is being exhibited for the first time at Gagosian's Grosvenor Hill space in London, opening May 21, 2026. The work was originally conceived in 1968 for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia but never realized due to technical constraints. It was rediscovered in 2018 when Lorenza Giovanelli, Christo's former studio manager, found a detailed scale model hidden inside a pedestal. The exhibition also includes early works such as "Wrapped Automobile—Volvo, Model PV-544" (1981), not seen in thirty years, alongside preparatory drawings and collages.

DACA Artist Uses Thread to Weave Immigration Stories

Arleene Correa Valencia, a DACA recipient and Bay Area artist, presents her debut solo exhibition "CÓDICE •• SOBREVIVIENDO A LA PERSECUCIÓN" at Fridman Gallery in Manhattan, on view through May 2. The show features large-scale acrylic and textile works on amate bark paper, including a 16-foot-long piece depicting border-crossing narratives. Valencia collaborates with her father, mother-in-law, and papermaker Jose Daniel Santos de la Puerta, and incorporates childhood letters that poignantly reflect family separation and undocumented life.

Memories Bathed in Color

In Farbe getauchte Erinnerungen

The Fondation Luma in Arles, France, has opened three exhibitions exploring memory and archives, headlined by Gerhard Richter's "Overpainted Photographs." The show features 120 works from Richter's private archive, some exhibited for the first time, created since the mid-1980s by dragging photographs through leftover paint in his studio. Richter, now 94, personally selected and hung the works chronologically starting from the fall of the Berlin Wall, reflecting his lost homeland and the passage of time. The exhibition also includes early sketches and oil paintings by the late architect Zaha Hadid, previously shown at London's Serpentine Gallery in 2016.

At the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp a major exhibition on Antony Gormley, with more than one hundred works

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) is hosting a major exhibition titled "Geestgrond" dedicated to British sculptor Antony Gormley, running from May 23 to September 20, 2026. Curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the show features over 100 works made from diverse materials including clay, stone, wood, glass, bread, iron, lead, and steel. The exhibition places Gormley's sculptures in dialogue with the museum's historical collection, spanning from a 14th-century Flemish Crucifixion to works by James Ensor, Auguste Rodin, and Julio González. It also extends beyond the museum walls into the streets of Antwerp and along the Scheldt River, with works from the Domain and Weave Works series appearing in urban spaces.

We visited the 2026 Venice Art Biennale: the exhibitions and pavilions you shouldn’t miss

The 2026 Venice Art Biennale has opened across the Giardini, Arsenale, and venues throughout the city, with geopolitics, climate collapse, and national identities dominating the exhibitions. Notable pavilions include Austria's "Seaworld Venice" by Florentina Holzinger, the Czech and Slovak Pavilion's "Il Silenzio della Talpa" by Jakub Jansa and Selmeci Kocka Jusko, India's "Geographies of Distance: remembering home" featuring multiple artists, and the Taiwan Pavilion's "Screen Melancholy" by Li Yi-Fan. The Russian Pavilion has become a focal point of controversy, with guards and empty beer bottles outside, and the Pussy Riot collective staging a protest nearby.

What you want from your body? Antony Gormley, iron and crawling

British sculptor Antony Gormley discusses his solo exhibition "What Holds Us" at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, on view from 9 May to 13 September 2026. The show transforms the gallery's former cinema-theatre into an interactive environment where visitors are invited to crawl through massive cardboard bodies, exploring interior spaces and shifting from passive spectatorship to bodily engagement. Gormley explains that the title connects "hold" and "whole," suggesting that being held—by the ground, the womb, or the body—is essential for growth and wholeness.

Monopol verlost 5 × 2 Tickets für Marina Abramović im Gropius Bau

Monopol magazine is giving away 5 × 2 tickets to Marina Abramović's exhibition "Balkan Erotic Epic" at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. The show, which opened in 2025, explores erotic energy through Balkan myths, rituals, and folklore, combining new video works with historical pieces from the 1970s onward, including installations, sculptures, and live performances.

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.

Gagosian reconstitue une œuvre oubliée de Christo

Gagosian Gallery in London has reconstructed Christo's unrealized 1968 work "Air Package on a Ceiling" for the first time. The installation, measuring 16 by 10 meters, was originally conceived for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia but never built due to technical constraints. The maquette and drawings were rediscovered in 2018 by studio manager Lorenza Giovanelli, hidden under a base in Christo's New York studio, and the full-scale work was realized in collaboration with the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation.

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.

Fiona Pardington’s portraits of the lost birds of Aotearoa New Zealand – in pictures

Fiona Pardington has created a new series of human-scale photographic portraits of native New Zealand birds, many of which are extinct or endangered, using taxidermy specimens from regional museums. The series, titled "Taharaki Skyside," will be exhibited at the Aotearoa New Zealand pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Pardington, who has Māori and Scottish ancestry, incorporates the birds' eyes with superimposed historical landscapes to evoke their lost habitats and spiritual significance as intermediaries between human and divine worlds in Māori culture.

What to see at Canada’s largest photo festival

The Contact Photography Festival, Canada's largest photography event, opens Friday in Toronto with over 160 exhibitions across eclectic venues including artist-run centers, commercial galleries, cafes, and a laundromat. Highlights include a towering portrait by Haitian-born artist Thandiwe Muriu on Spadina Ave., and a multi-site exhibition by Turner Prize-nominee Sin Wai Kin, featuring billboards and a two-channel video titled 'The Time of Our Lives.' The festival lost its long-time lead sponsor Scotiabank in 2024, resulting in a reduced budget and less public programming, but organizers remain committed to championing lens-based art.

Marcel Duchamp Is Stripped Bare at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has opened "Marcel Duchamp," the first retrospective of the artist on this continent in over 50 years. Curated by Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo, and Matthew Affron, the exhibition is organized strictly chronologically and features Duchamp's most famous works—including his revolutionary readymades like *Fountain* (1917) and *Bicycle Wheel* (1913)—often shown only in photographic reproduction or as later refabricated copies, replicas, and miniatures from his *Box in a Valise* series. The show highlights how Duchamp's original objects have been lost or dematerialized, forcing viewers to confront the very definition of an artwork.

SeMA opens new retrospective on Yoo Young-kuk, modern master of the 'mountain within'

The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) has opened a major retrospective on Korean abstract artist Yoo Young-kuk titled "A Mountain Within Me" at its Seosomun main branch. The exhibition, marking the 110th anniversary of the artist's birth, is the largest ever mounted on Yoo, featuring 178 works including 115 oil paintings and 15 canvases from the artist's family's private holdings shown publicly for the first time. Curated by Yeo Kyung-hwan, the show defies chronology, beginning in 1964 and moving backward through Yoo's Tokyo years and the lost decade after Korea's liberation, then forward through his geometric abstractions of the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in his late "mind-image abstraction" phase after 1980.

“Drifting Until Caught” at Brooklyn Navy Yard: Three Artists and the Objectivity of Method

Three artists—Veronika Georgieva, Stephen j Shanabrook, and Shura Skaya—have transformed an industrial venue at the Brooklyn Navy Yard into a pop-up exhibition titled “Drifting Until Caught.” The show, accessible only by appointment, features works that range from pressed plastic sculptures and chocolate casts to wax crayon drawings and acrylic paintings, all exploring the boundary between figuration and abstraction. Each artist employs mechanical or chance-based methods, such as Shanabrook’s hydraulic press or Georgieva’s video projections, to create images that embrace distortion and materiality.

Lost bunny paintings by JFK's photographer found in ABQ storage

A trove of paintings by Eddie Johnson, an obscure artist who photographed President John F. Kennedy in 1962 as assistant to Elaine de Kooning, has been discovered in a storage unit in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The archive, saved from disposal by the artist's estate, includes a major series of bunny-themed works created between 1972 and 1995, all based on a worn plush toy. Artist Matthan Cowart organized the exhibition "Hares on the Mountain" at his gallery Desert Mystery Center, pairing Johnson's bunny paintings with works by 11 living artists including David Altmejd and Ed Haddaway.

Recommissioned Rebels

The exhibition "Monuments," co-organized by The Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), features ten former Confederate monuments removed from public spaces across the American South. Highlights include Kara Walker's reconfigured "Unmanned Drone" (formerly Charlottesville's Stonewall Jackson monument), Richmond's toppled Jefferson Davis statue, and a graffitied Matthew Fontaine Maury statue. Co-curator Hamza Walker explains the show began after the 2015 Charleston church shooting and gained urgency following George Floyd's murder in 2020, involving complex negotiations with city governments and stewards to secure the politically charged pieces.

LA LECHUZA DE MINERVA

The Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, founded in 1926 by a small group of artists, has launched a centenary exhibition titled "La lechuza de Minerva" (The Owl of Minerva). Curated by Isabella Lenzi, the project revisits the institution's most disruptive exhibition, "El sueño imperativo" (1991), curated by Mar Villaespesa, which invited twelve artists to intervene in both exhibition spaces and transit areas, challenging traditional display logic. The new exhibition features works by artists including Dagoberto Rodríguez, Elo Vega, Rogelio López Cuenca, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Itziar Okariz, Los Carpinteros, María Salgado, Pedro G. Romero, Regina Silveira, Silbatriz Pons, and Tino Sehgal, who activate hidden and unexpected corners of the building through visual and sound actions. The project also restores Nancy Spero's 1991 intervention "Minerva, Sky Goddess," which had largely disappeared, through archaeological research led by restorer Rocío Casasus.

Photographer Giles Duley brings images of historic and current wars into dialogue in Manhattan pop-up show

British photographer Giles Duley has opened a pop-up exhibition titled "Distortion/Memory/Resilience" in a 77th-floor penthouse at Sutton Tower in Manhattan, running from 12 to 24 May. The show features haunting war photography alongside installations—Youth, Childhood, and Memory—that draw parallels between historic and current conflicts. Duley, who lost both legs and an arm after stepping on a landmine in Afghanistan, uses a camera obscura, children's art from war zones, and side-by-side images of injured children from the London Blitz and Beirut to create an immersive experience. The exhibition is presented by the luxury tower's developer and includes benefit dinners hosted by Duley.

Drained, Drowning, and Decay: The Best National Pavilions at the Venice Biennale

The 2026 Venice Biennale is defined by themes of ruin and decay, with standout national pavilions exploring bodily, infrastructural, and archaeological collapse. The Slovenian Pavilion features the Nonument Group repurposing materials from past Biennales into a ruin of a mosque for Bosnian Muslim soldiers from World War I. Syria presents its first national pavilion since the Civil War, with Sara Shamma invoking Palmyra, destroyed by ISIS. Germany's pavilion, titled "Ruin," features works by Henrike Naumann (who died in February) and Sung Tieu, questioning the pavilion's fascist architecture and nationalist residue. The Austrian Pavilion, curated by Florentina Holzinger, offers a visceral performance titled "Sea World." The Biennale is also marked by the abrupt resignation of its five-member jury, who refused to consider nations charged with crimes against humanity, leading to awards being chosen by public vote. Additionally, the main exhibition "In Minor Keys" was affected by the death of its curator, Koyo Kouoh.

Arch Hades Turns a Venetian Palazzo Into an Emotional Landscape

British artist Arch Hades has transformed the Scoletta Battioro e Tiraoro di Venezia, a historic palazzo on Venice's Grand Canal, into an immersive solo exhibition titled “Arch Hades: Return | Ritorno,” timed to the 61st Venice Biennale. The show features site-specific paintings, sculptures, and a soundscape, anchored by the monumental 22-panel painting *Return* (2025), which draws on Greco-Roman sculpture, Symbolism, Surrealism, and Romanticism, and echoes Gustav Klimt's lost “Faculty Paintings.” New works from Hades's “Confessions” series and the mirrored chrome piece *Sphinx* (2026) further explore themes of memory, connection, and existentialism.

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).

Musée d’Orsay opens gallery dedicated to still-unclaimed works stolen by Nazis in WWII

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has opened a permanent gallery dedicated to artworks believed to have been looted by the Nazis from Jewish owners during World War II, but whose rightful owners have not been identified. The exhibition, titled "Who owns these works?", features a rotating selection of 225 such pieces held by the museum, with twelve paintings and one sculpture currently on display. Works by Renoir, Degas, Rodin, and Alfred Stevens are included, alongside provenance research detailing their murky histories—such as a Degas ballroom scene acquired by a Jewish collector later murdered at Auschwitz.

Kim Dacres Revitalizes Sleek Tires, Chains, and Gears in Defiant Sculptures

Kim Dacres transforms discarded auto and bicycle rubber into sculptural portraits that celebrate Black hairstyles and community. Her new exhibition "Lost on a Two Way Street" at Charles Moffett in New York features busts with braided buns and gear-like crowns, alongside flat wall works evoking Victorian cameos. The show also includes reimagined U.S. flags with Black and brown figures, addressing the current political climate and the gap between national symbols and lived reality.

Up Close: Liang Yuanwei

Liang Yuanwei's latest painting cycle, "Pluviophile," culminated in the work "im Kugelhagel Wh·YeGrUm·Br-" (2025), exhibited at Beijing Commune in 2026. The large oil-on-linen piece, tucked at the far end of the gallery, features a burnt reddish-brown field scarred with gouged arcs and scraped-away paint that reveals a gold underlayer, creating an effect of violent impact and luminous aftermath.