ArtReview editors highlight the must-see national pavilions at the 61st Venice Biennale, running from 9 May to 22 November 2026. Notable presentations include Austria's Florentina Holzinger turning her pavilion into a toilet and sewage-treatment plant with naked performers, and Germany's pavilion featuring works by Sung Tieu and the late Henrike Naumann, who died in February 2026, exploring East German memory and conceptual minimalism.
White Columns, New York’s oldest alternative nonprofit art space, has launched a unique fundraising exhibition titled “Art (by) Dealers.” The show features works created by over 90 art dealers and gallery professionals rather than the artists they represent. Organized by Kathy Huang and Will Leung, the exhibition presents uniform 12-by-9-inch works priced at $500 each, sold anonymously to benefit the nonprofit's programming.
Japanese-born painter Akira Ikezoe has become a breakout star in New York this spring, appearing simultaneously in two prestigious exhibitions: the Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1's Greater New York. His absurdist, diagrammatic paintings—featuring naked figures, skeletons, and dairy-centric narratives—have drawn significant attention from curators and critics. Despite lacking a New York gallery, Ikezoe is represented by Proyectos Ultravioleta in Guatemala City and was also included in the 2025 Sharjah Biennial, positioning him for rapid ascent in the art world.
The Guardian presents a photo essay capturing the most eccentric and memorable moments from the 61st Venice Biennale, running until 22 November 2026. Photographer David Levene documents installations including a concrete 'Origami Deer' evacuated from war-torn Pokrovsk, Ukraine, by artist Zhanna Kadyrova; a seagull that became a minor celebrity after nesting outside the Polish pavilion; and the Holy See pavilion's immersive sound installation curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers. Other highlights include the Egyptian pavilion's touch-and-smell 'Silence Pavilion' and a Polish pavilion film featuring deaf and hearing singers.
London's spring art season is anchored by several major institutional surveys, most notably Tracey Emin’s comprehensive exhibition "A Second Life" at Tate Modern. Other significant showcases include Hurvin Anderson’s exploration of Caribbean diaspora at Tate Britain, David Hockney’s new works at Serpentine North, and Cecily Brown’s long-awaited institutional homecoming at Serpentine South. The season also features diverse media, from Chiharu Shiota’s immersive yarn installations at the Hayward Gallery to Isaac Julien’s filmic explorations at the Cosmic House.
PaperCity tapped Elaine de Kooning House founder Chris Byrne to curate a list of the 14 best art museum exhibitions worldwide in 2026. Highlights include a major Marcel Duchamp retrospective at MoMA—the first North American survey in over 50 years—featuring nearly 300 works, and Raphael's first comprehensive U.S. exhibition at The Met, titled 'Raphael: Sublime Poetry,' with 200 drawings, paintings, and tapestries. Other notable shows include 'The Shakers: A World in the Making' at ICA Philadelphia and a Guerrilla Girls exhibition at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
The article reports on the author's third day at the Venice Biennale, focusing on offsite exhibitions. Highlights include Li Yi-Fan's animated video "Screen Melancholy" (2026) at the Taiwan Pavilion, described as chaotic, absurdist, and uncanny, featuring a naked CGI character interacting with ChatGPT. The author also praises Janis Rafa's video installation "Baby I'm Yours, Forever" (2026) at Fondazione In Between Art Film, which transforms scenes from a meat refrigeration plant into haunting surreal imagery. The piece notes the resurgence of video art, aided by LED screens that create immersive environments.
The feminist collective Guerrilla Girls began its activism in May 1985 by wheat-pasting posters in SoHo, New York, that listed prominent male artists and revealed that their galleries showed 10 percent or fewer women artists. The group formed after the 1984 MoMA exhibition 'An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture' included only 13 women out of 169 participants, sparking protests that failed to gain traction. For 40 years, the Guerrilla Girls have used statistics-driven, provocative posters to call out sexism and racism in galleries, museums, and the broader art world. This year, their anniversary is marked by retrospective exhibitions at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Bulgaria in Sofia.
Suzanne Valadon, a self-taught French post-impressionist painter known for her brash, unflinching style and commitment to representation, is the subject of a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris through May 26. The exhibition, simply titled "Suzanne Valadon," features 200 works and is part of a recent swell of attention that includes six major exhibitions in six years, highlighting her self-portraits, nudes, and depictions of the human body with unidealized realism.
Printed Matter's Los Angeles Art Book Fair returned to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena for its 13th edition, featuring over 250 exhibitors—slightly fewer than last year—with about a fifth participating for the first time. A common thread across the fair was the archive: publications that excavate, remix, and repurpose historical media, from a book chronicling a 1960s hoax about animal nudity to a compendium of vintage photographs that subvert male subjectivity, and a collection of found photos from abandoned houses in rural Maine. The fair also highlighted diasporic and personal archives, including a Palestinian-American artist's cassette mixtape tracing music from the Middle East and an artist-run press focusing on translation as cultural resistance.
Fraenkel Gallery has partnered with New York's Metrograph theater to present a film series curated by six of its represented artists. The series, titled "Fraenkel Gallery Presents," runs from May 8–17, with each artist selecting a film and several introducing their screenings. The collaboration includes an opening event featuring artist Carrie Mae Weems and director Joel Coen.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has opened a new exhibition that challenges traditional gender norms in art history, featuring a dozen artists who disrupt the conventional nude. The show includes Xandra Ibarra's performance "Nude Laughing," where she paraded naked through the museum's European galleries, and works by Betty Tompkins, whose "Fuck Paintings" and "Women Words Painting" series confront misogyny and the male gaze. The exhibition juxtaposes these contemporary pieces with historical works like Jean-Léon Gérôme's "Moorish Bath" to highlight entrenched racial and gender hierarchies in art.
The article profiles artist Vaginal Davis and her exhibition "Magnificent Product" at MoMA PS1, which opened shortly after the author visited. Davis, born in 1961, is described as a transformative figure who repurposes fragments of popular culture—from classic Hollywood to gay porn—to create immersive, queer alternate realities. The show includes works like *The Wicked Pavillion* (with *Fantasia Library* and *Tween Bedroom*, both 2021) and a collaboration with Jonathan Berger titled *Naked on my Ozgoad: Fausthaus—Anal Deep Throat* (2024–ongoing). Davis's practice is characterized by a playful, femme-centered critique of mainstream culture, centering Black women and inverting traditional gazes.
Chicago’s art week is being defined by the success of alternative, small-scale satellite fairs like Barely Fair and Neighbors, which offer an intimate counterpoint to the massive Expo Chicago. Barely Fair, located in a storefront in McKinley Park, features 32 exhibitors presenting works in 20-inch-square miniature booths. This format encourages rigorous curation and creative risk-taking from a mix of artist-run spaces and established galleries, with price points ranging from $20 to $8,000.
C’è una grande mostra di Paulo Nazareth da vedere a Venezia (ma l’artista stesso non l’ha vista)
A major exhibition of Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth, titled "Algebra," has opened at Punta della Dogana in Venice, but the artist himself is absent. Nazareth has kept a promise not to set foot in Europe until he has crossed African territories on foot, as they existed before the arbitrary divisions imposed by the 1884 Berlin Conference. He did not participate in the installation or opening, instead staging a simultaneous event in Veneza, a working-class district of Ribeirão das Neves, Brazil—a gesture he also made when invited to the 2013 Venice Biennale. The exhibition centers on structural violence and uses attention and care as strategies for healing, with the word "algebra" referring to the act of recomposing what was broken.
Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York presents 'Head Stretch,' a group exhibition featuring Felipe Barsuglia, Allan Gandhi, Luciana Maas, Flora Rebollo, Gokula Stoffel, and Erika Verzutti. The show is rooted in a shared studio building in São Paulo called 'Predinho,' where friendships and creative exchanges among the artists led to the exhibition. The title reflects diverse interpretations: from craning to see another's work to the stretched proportions of figures in paintings, and the expansion of perspective through community. Works by the six artists, including paintings, sculptures, and drawings, are installed in ways that create new associations, with Verzutti inserting her own pieces to open them to fresh readings.
Art critic and writer Jarrett Earnest travels to Warsaw for the opening of "The Woman Question 1550–2025," a major survey of women artists curated by Alison M. Gingeras at the Museum of Modern Art (MSN Warsaw). The exhibition features nearly 200 works spanning from Renaissance to contemporary art, including pieces by Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Lisa Yuskavage, and many Eastern European artists. Earnest reflects on the enduring theme of the female nude and the political context of Poland, where far-right policies have restricted women's rights.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has announced a new exhibition titled 'Costume Art,' opening to the public on May 10 and running through January 10, 2027. The show inaugurates the Met's nearly 12,000-square-foot expansion adjacent to the Great Hall, providing a permanent home for the Costume Institute's annual spring exhibitions. Featuring nearly 400 objects—half garments and half traditional art like sculpture and painting—the exhibition explores how clothing alters and enhances the human body, dividing 'the body' into 13 types such as 'The Classical Body' and 'The Corpulent Body.' The show includes works from designers like Coco Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, Thom Browne, and Alexander McQueen, paired with historical artifacts and contemporary art. The exhibition follows this year's Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, which raised a record $42 million for the Costume Institute.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened a new exhibition titled "Costume Art," curated by Andrew Bolton, which pairs historical and contemporary garments with artworks from the museum's collection spanning 5,000 years. The exhibition is housed in the new 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Galleries and runs from May 10, 2026 to January 10, 2027. It was launched in conjunction with the 2026 Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, with celebrities like Emma Chamberlain, Naomi Watts, and Hunter Schafer wearing looks inspired by masterpieces in the Met's collection.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute opened a new exhibition titled "Costume Art," curated by Andrew Bolton, which pairs historical and contemporary garments with artworks from the Met's collection spanning 5,000 years. The exhibition debuted at the 2026 Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, with celebrities like Rihanna, Emma Chamberlain, and Hunter Schafer wearing looks inspired by masterpieces such as Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" and Klimt's "Mäda Primavesi." The show runs from May 10, 2026, to January 10, 2027, in the new Condé Nast Galleries, a 12,000-square-foot space that centralizes fashion displays within the museum.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has announced its latest exhibition, "Costume Art," opening May 10. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show brings together garments and objects from across the museum's curatorial departments to explore the relationship between fashion and the human body. The exhibition is organized into thematic sections including the Naked & Nude Body, Classical Body, Abstract Body, Reclaimed Body, Pregnant Body, Corpulent Body, and Disabled Body, featuring works by designers such as Walter Van Beirendonck, LÛCHEN, Georgina Godley, Ann-Sofie Back, Di Petsa, Alessandro Michele for Gucci, and Vivienne Westwood, alongside historical art objects from Greek ceramics to Mesopotamian sculptures.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has opened its spring exhibition 'Costume Art' in a new 12,000-square-foot space called the Condé M Nast Galleries, located off the museum's Great Hall. The show pairs 200 garments and accessories with 200 artworks from the Met's collection, organized into 13 thematic body types such as Naked and Nude, Abstracted Body, Corpulent Body, Disabled Body, and Mortal Body. Lead curator Andrew Bolton aims to challenge traditional hierarchies by placing fashion on equal footing with fine art. The exhibition's launch is overshadowed by controversy over sponsorship by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos for the Met Gala.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced its 2026 exhibition "Costume Art," which will inaugurate the new Condé M. Nast Galleries. Curator Andrew Bolton explains the show will focus on the dressed body's connection to art history, emphasizing materiality and corporeality over visuality. A key preview piece is a Y/Project suit from FW22, designed by Glenn Martens and Jean Paul Gaultier, featuring a trompe-l'oeil nude male figure that will be displayed alongside a 1st–2nd century CE marble statue of Diadoumenos. Other sections include "The Naked Body," "The Aging Body," and "The Anatomical Body."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open its latest fashion exhibition, "Costume Art," in a new gallery space adjacent to the Great Hall, formerly the museum's gift shop. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show features 400 objects from the permanent collection, organized thematically around the dressed body—exploring the naked, classical, anatomical, and mortal body—rather than chronologically. The exhibition aims to connect artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form.
The Getty Research Institute is hosting "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl," its first major exhibition drawn from the extensive archives of the anonymous feminist activist collective. The show features early drafts, posters, and archival materials that trace the group's 40-year history of using humor and data to combat misogyny and racism in the art world. Despite the institutional spotlight, the Getty has chosen to maintain the group's secrecy, even redacting names from public documents and keeping boxes of unmasked photographs sealed until the members' deaths.
Artist Jaqueline Cedar launched the inaugural Split Level Fair, a new art fair opening October 2–4, 2025 at Rimadesio NYC on Madison Avenue. The fair features 15 galleries presenting curated experiences with 1–3 artists each, including performances, video screenings, and affordable artworks. Cedar, a Columbia MFA graduate, started her gallery Good Naked Gallery out of her Brooklyn spare bedroom in 2019, and the fair represents an evolution of her curatorial practice.
Florentina Holzinger, an Austrian dancer and choreographer known for provocative, physically extreme performances, is representing Austria at the Venice Biennale with a new work titled *Seaworld Venice*. The piece features naked performers on a barge in the lagoon, including a woman suspended upside down inside a cast-iron bell hoisted by a crane, a guitarist rocking at a vertiginous height, and a vocalist screaming like Yoko Ono. Holzinger’s previous opera *Sancta* included a climbing wall, nuns on roller skates, and a pregnant pope on a robot arm, and has toured European opera houses for two years.
Photographer Erica Simone has created a series of self-portraits titled "Nue York: Self-Portraits of a Bare Urban Citizen," in which she performs everyday New York City activities—hailing a cab, buying cigarettes, commuting through Midtown—while completely naked. The project, also published as a book, is on view at Castle Fitzjohns Gallery from January 14 to February 14, 2016. Simone aims to challenge the role of fashion in society and explore nudity beyond sexual connotations, though she acknowledges that her appearance as a young, thin, white, conventionally attractive woman may influence public reception.
Two print curators from the Rijksmuseum, Huigen Leeflang and Joyce Zelen, discovered a rare 19th-century condom with an erotic print at an auction house in Haarlem, Netherlands, in November 2023. They acquired the 1830s condom for €1,000 ($1,140) with no other bidders, and it is now the centerpiece of a small exhibition titled "Safe Sex?" at the Rijksmuseum, which explores 19th-century sex work and sexual health through Dutch and French prints. The condom, likely made from sheep's appendix, features an etching of a half-naked nun with clergymen and is believed to be a souvenir from an upmarket French brothel.
Lauren Sánchez Bezos appeared alongside Anna Wintour at a press conference in New York to unveil the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Costume Art exhibit, which opens May 10 ahead of the Met Gala. Sánchez Bezos and her husband Jeff Bezos are primary sponsors of this year's gala and exhibit, a role that has sparked backlash and a boycott campaign from the activist group Everyone Hates Elon. The exhibit explores themes of the dressed body through garments paired with ancient artifacts, featuring categories like "the naked body," "classic body," and "disabled body."