London’s Gallery Scene Is Full of Contradictions. Its Art Is, Too.

London's gallery scene during the June 2026 London Gallery Weekend presented a stark contrast: while Cork Street saw abandoned storefronts from departed galleries like Tiwani and Stephen Friedman, and Pace Gallery downsized, new arrivals Sundaram Tagore and Lehmann Maupin celebrated openings alongside expanding midsize galleries Edel Assanti and Emalin. A total of 126 galleries participated from June 5–7. Notable exhibitions included Thomas Houseago's spiritual installation at Lévy Gorvy Dayan featuring antiquities and modern works, Oliver Beer's sound-vibration paintings at Thaddaeus Ropac, Anne Imhof's Berlin-coded sculptures at Sprüth Magers, and a performance art 'spiritual marriage' at Gallery Rosenfeld. The article highlights a renewed interest in spirituality and nostalgia across shows, with South Asian art becoming increasingly central to London's cultural identity.

‘The people made me a star’: 100 years of Marilyn Monroe – in pictures

A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, titled 'Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait', explores the life, career, and legacy of Marilyn Monroe through portraits created by many of the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The show runs until 6 September and features iconic images from her early modeling days as Norma Jeane to her final interviews and photographs in 1962, including works by Milton H. Greene, Eve Arnold, Cecil Beaton, Pauline Boty, and Andy Warhol.

Crystal Bridges Museum Tacks on a Big Expansion, Just 15 Years After Opening, and Packs it With American Art

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, has opened a major expansion just 15 years after its original 200,000-square-foot facility debuted. Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, the addition adds 114,000 square feet of new galleries, education spaces, and artist studios, including a 14,000-square-foot exhibition space. The new wing features skylights with a mechanism to create balanced natural light and hosts the inaugural exhibition “Keith Haring in 3D,” co-curated by Glenn Adamson, which explores the artist’s sculpture practice. The expansion was driven by founder Alice Walton’s desire to execute the original fifty-year plan while Safdie could still lead the project.

‘Hold to This Earth’ Surveys the Abundance of American Indigenous Contemporary Art

A new exhibition titled 'Hold to This Earth' at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, U.K., will open on June 13 and run through April 18, 2027. It features nearly 70 works by 38 artists representing 35 Tribal Nations, making it the largest presentation of American Indigenous contemporary art in the U.K. to date. The works are drawn from the Tia Collection and include pieces by Jeffrey Gibson, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Raven Halfmoon, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Dyani White Hawk, Nicholas Galanin, and others, spanning media from beads and clay to digital photography and mixed media.

Ahead of Basel, London Gallery Weekend Put a Defiant, Energized City Scene on Display

London Gallery Weekend (LGW) returned for its 2026 edition, bringing together over 120 galleries, including nine first-timers and several with new or expanded spaces. The free city-wide program featured tours, talks, performances, and parties, coinciding with the major June auction season headlined by the Lewis Collection at Sotheby's and the Zabludowicz Collection at Christie's. The weekend unfolded amid gallery closures like Tiwani Contemporary and Stephen Friedman Gallery, and Pace's announcement of staff and artist roster reductions, but also saw expansions such as Sadie Coles' new space and Singapore's Sundaram Tagore opening in Pall Mall. Notable shows included Anne Imhof at Sprüth Magers, Oliver Beer and Mandy El-Sayegh at Thaddaeus Ropac, and Terry Winters at Modern Art.

11 art exhibits to check out this summer

This article highlights 11 art exhibitions opening across Greater Boston this summer, encouraging viewers to challenge their beliefs and reflect on collective memory. Featured shows include "Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest" at the Clark Art Institute, the artist's first U.S. solo exhibition; "Where's Boston? 50 Years Later" at the Boston Athenaeum, revisiting Constantine Manos's 1974 photographic portrait of the city; "James Dye: The Void, the Wheel, and the Monster" at Fitchburg Art Museum; and "Stories on the Planet: Asagi Maeda" at Fuller Craft Museum, among others.

FAD NEWS: Ugo Rondinone creates city-wide celebration of light

Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone is launching MORE LIGHT, a city-wide project in London this summer, spanning three chapters across Mayfair and the Royal Academy of Arts. The project includes a monumental rainbow poem suspended in the Royal Academy's courtyard, fifty-four flags along Bond Street featuring sunrise and sunset images, and a gallery presentation of new watercolour paintings at Sadie Coles HQ. Developed in collaboration with the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, the installations explore light as a shared human experience through universal motifs like sunrise, sunset, sky, and horizon.

MoMA to Present the First Survey of Piet Mondrian’s New York Paintings

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has announced "Mondrian Boogie Woogie," the first survey exhibition focused on Piet Mondrian's New York paintings. Opening March 21 through July 31, 2027, the show will bring together 30 works made or completed between his 1940 move to New York and his death in 1944. It highlights the influence of the city's boogie-woogie music scene on his late style, including iconic pieces like Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942–43) from MoMA's collection and Victory Boogie Woogie (1942–44) on loan from the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The exhibition also traces the history of boogie-woogie from its roots in the American South to its migration north.

Wallace Chan exhibitions pair intricate sculptures with Venetian heritage

Wallace Chan, a Hong Kong-based jeweler and sculptor, has mounted a dual exhibition across two historic Venetian sites timed to the Venice Biennale. At Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, he presents "Mythos," a site-specific installation of suspended titanium sculptures that reimagine figures from Tintoretto's paintings, including the Three Graces and Mercury, as abstract, dissolving faces. Inside the palazzo, three sculptures hang beneath Tintoretto's "Paradise," accompanied by a soundscape from Chan's Shanghai workshop. The exhibition is curated by James Putnam, who has long specialized in placing contemporary art in dialogue with historical collections.

‘Central to human identity’: exhibition at the Met connects bodies with musical instruments

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has opened a new exhibition titled 'Musical Bodies,' which explores 4,000 years of musical history by examining the relationship between human bodies and musical instruments. Curated by Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, the show features over 600 instruments from the Met's collection, including African drums, ancient Egyptian clappers, Prince's symbol guitar, Renaissance violins, a Tibetan kangling, and MiMu Midi gloves. The exhibition traces common threads across six continents and highlights how instruments serve as extensions of human identity and creativity.

Thomas Rom, Art Adviser and Performance Space Chair, On His Top Exhibitions in Venice This Year

Art adviser and Performance Space New York board chair Thomas Rom shares his personal reflections on the 2026 Venice Biennale vernissage week, highlighting the main exhibition "In Minor Keys" curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, as well as collateral shows and national pavilions. Rom describes the main exhibition as deeply compelling and essential for understanding a global cultural landscape outside traditional frameworks, and he offers observations on works by artists including Maja Malou Lyse, Abbas Akhavan, Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, Tori Wrånes, and Miet Warlop.

Difaf gallery’s trio exhibition “Fabric of Time” is not to be missed

The article highlights a series of art exhibitions opening in Cairo, Egypt, in June and July 2025. Key shows include Difaf gallery's trio exhibition "Fabric of Time" featuring Fatma Abu-Doma, Sara Alfazayry, and Ahmed Lesi; a retrospective "Echoes of Time" by Magdy Abdel-Aziz at Dai; and the Egyptian debut of the immersive digital experience "Beyond Van Gogh" at District 5 by Marakez. Other notable exhibitions include "Her Realm" by Ahmed Dafrawy at Art Linx Karma, "Lightings" by Ruairí O'Brien at Arcade, "Generations of Art" at Duroub, and photography exhibitions at the French Institute in Egypt by Randa Shaath and by Noria Tesson and Samar Bayoumi.

Protests, picket lines and Indigenous pride: examining US democracy – in pictures

FotoFocus, a non-profit organization, has opened its inaugural exhibition titled "Big Tent" at the new FotoFocus Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. The show, on view until 22 August 2026, features the work of more than 50 photographers, including Dawoud Bey, Robert Frank, and RaMell Ross. Partly inspired by Amanda Gorman's poem "In This Place (An American Lyric)," the exhibition examines the present state of US democracy through documentary and artistic photography, with images ranging from civil rights protests to contemporary border issues.

A First Look at the Art in the New Obama Presidential Center

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, a $850 million campus designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, is set to open later this month in Jackson Park. The center features over 28 commissioned works by contemporary artists including Idris Khan, Theaster Gates, Lorna Simpson, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Maya Lin, alongside a basketball court, a Chicago Public Library branch, gardens, and civic spaces. Curators Virginia Shore, Crystal Moten, and Louise Bernard assembled the collection to intertwine art with the Obama legacy and the broader public art landscape of Chicago's South Side.

À Bâle, la foire Art Basel a plus d’un tour dans son sac pour rester la plus attractive

Art Basel's flagship fair in Basel, Switzerland, is opening with 290 galleries from 43 countries, reinforcing its position as the premier global art market event. To maintain its appeal amid competition from its own Paris edition, the fair has introduced new initiatives including 'Basel Exclusive,' which requires select galleries to keep their top works secret until the VIP opening, and has opened its 'Unlimited' sector for monumental works to non-exhibiting galleries. The fair will also highlight artists from the Venice Biennale, such as Alma Allen (US Pavilion) and artists represented by Sfeir-Semler Gallery.

‘Pioneering photography’: early images of Newhaven’s fishers – in pictures

A new book titled 'Hill & Adamson’s Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth' by Sara Stevenson compiles pioneering photographs taken between 1843 and 1847 by Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, with collaborator Jessie Mann. The images document the lives of the fishing community of Newhaven, a village near Edinburgh, capturing fishwives, sailors, and daily life using early calotype techniques. The book argues these works may represent the first social documentary series, highlighting the community's resilience during economic hardship and the photographers' technical innovations.

Steve Martin and Ann Philbin Team Up to Present Unsung Artist’s Oeuvre

Comedian and art collector Steve Martin is collaborating with Ann Philbin, the recently retired director of the Hammer Museum, to organize a museum exhibition dedicated to the late actor and musician Martin Mull's painting practice. Titled "Martin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living," the show will open at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in June 2026 and run through October, featuring over 50 drawings and paintings—many on loan from Mull's estate and collectors including Jennifer Tilly and the Greenspuns. This marks Mull's first museum survey since 2006, highlighting his lifelong but often overlooked career as a visual artist, which began with a BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Art Students League Seeks the Next Generation of Public Artists

The Art Students League of New York is accepting applications through July 12, 2026, for its Works in Public fellowship, a fully funded two-year program that trains artists to create large-scale public sculptures. Formerly known as Model to Monument and launched in 2010 with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, the fellowship selects four artists per cohort, providing tuition, a stipend, and production costs. Participants develop proposals in the first year and fabricate approved works in the second, with sculptures displayed for a year in Manhattan’s Riverside Park and eligible for permanent installation on the Florida Keys Sculpture Trail.

Museum Rietberg’s A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art is Balm for the Scars of European Conquest

A new group exhibition titled *A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art* has opened at Museum Rietberg in Zurich, featuring twenty artists from the diasporas of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Oceania. The show examines how colonial-era photography was used as a tool of mythmaking and objectification, and presents contemporary artworks that reinterpret, critique, and heal the scars left by these historical images. The exhibition is organized into four thematic sections—'Shapeshifters,' 'Confrontation,' 'Care,' and 'In the Photo Fantastic'—each exploring different strategies for recovering silenced narratives and challenging dominant colonial perspectives.

A Walk with Ernest Pignon-Ernest in Naples through 5 Sublime Works

Promenade avec Ernest Pignon-Ernest à Naples en 5 œuvres sublimes

Ernest Pignon-Ernest, a pioneering French street artist born in Nice in 1942, has spent over 50 years creating contextual art by pasting charcoal drawings and screen prints onto urban walls. The article focuses on his long engagement with Naples, Italy, where he first arrived in the 1980s after hearing Neapolitan baroque music on the radio. It highlights five key works from his Neapolitan series, including a 1988 collage combining Caravaggio's 'David and Goliath' with the head of Pier Paolo Pasolini, his 'Pulcinella' figure from the 1990s exploring death and comedy, and 'Épidémie' (1990) depicting plague victims. The works are currently featured in an exhibition at the Bibliothèque-Musée l'Inguimbertine in Carpentras, France.

Wollongong Art Gallery presents trio of exhibitions for winter

Wollongong Art Gallery has launched three new winter exhibitions: 'Ballad of the Burbs' by Nicci Bedson, 'Transience Atlas' by Rob Howe, and 'Popular Versus Culture' by Georgia Banks. The exhibitions opened on June 5, 2026, with a well-attended event, showcasing diverse works that explore suburban life, seasonal change, and pop culture. The gallery's 2026 program also includes ongoing shows such as 'The Architecture of Feeling' and 'Tell Them Their Dreaming'.

SAM’s showcase exhibition, Facing Modernity: Degas to Picasso from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, brings art royalty to regional Victoria

Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) in regional Victoria has opened "Facing Modernity: Degas to Picasso from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki," a landmark exhibition featuring 37 paintings and sculptures by modernist masters including Picasso, Matisse, Dalí, Cézanne, and Hepworth. The show, which runs until 20 September 2026, is the only Australian venue for the exhibition, drawn from Auckland Art Gallery's collection and anchored by the significant Robertson gift. SAM will also host the Archibald Prize in September 2026, marking a major year for the institution.

Houston museum sounds off after vandals deface artist's painting

The article highlights a series of summer art exhibitions opening across Houston, Texas. Key shows include the debut of the permanent contemporary art collection at the Ismaili Center Houston, featuring works by local and international artists and an inaugural exhibition by Iranian-American artist Raheleh Filsoofi. Other notable exhibitions are "Daybreak" at Laura Rathe Fine Art, featuring artists Carly Allen Martin, Sandrine Kern, and Lucrecia Waggoner; "Proximity: Constructed Relations" at Spring Street Studios, curated by Katherine Rhodes Fields; and "Ink & Image" at Archway Gallery, part of the PrintHouston 2026 biennial.

Ismaili Center's new art gallery and 9 more openings to see in Houston

Summer brings a wave of contemporary art exhibitions across Houston, including the debut of the Ismaili Center Houston's permanent art collection and a new dedicated gallery for temporary shows. The inaugural exhibition features Iranian-American interdisciplinary artist Raheleh Filsoofi, with interactive works like a transformed Kermani rug turned into a four-string instrument. Other notable openings include "Daybreak" at Laura Rathe Fine Art, "Proximity: Constructed Relations" at Spring Street Studios, and "Ink & Image" at Archway Gallery, showcasing local and international artists across diverse mediums.

Lee Kang So Opens Another Genealogy of Korean Contemporary Art Beyond Dansaekhwa:《A Field of Becoming》in New York and the Transition of Korean Art

The article reports on the exhibition "Lee Kang So: A Field of Becoming" at the Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY), running from May 13 to June 20, 2026. It surveys the artist's career from the 1970s to the present, featuring painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. Lee Kang So is a key figure in Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s, a movement that the article positions as an alternative genealogy to the more internationally recognized Dansaekhwa movement.

An opera and an art exhibition in New York focus on Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

The Metropolitan Opera in New York City premiered 'El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego)', an opera about Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, composed by Gabriela Lena Frank with a libretto by Nilo Cruz. The production, directed by Deborah Colker with set design by Jon Bausor, debuted in San Diego in 2022 and has since been staged in San Francisco and Chicago. Concurrently, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened a complementary exhibition, 'Frida and Diego: The Last Dream', featuring works from its permanent collection arranged as a stage set for the opera.

TOP Museum Tokyo : Don’t Think. Feel.

The TOP Museum (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum) is presenting an exhibition titled "Don’t Think. Feel." through June 21, which offers a sensory exploration of its photographic collection. Borrowing its title from a quote by Bruce Lee, the show is divided into five chapters and features works spanning three centuries, including pieces by Man Ray, Onchi Kōshirō, Masahisa Fukase, Yōichi Midorikawa, Edward Weston, and Rinko Kawauchi. Co-curated by Tetsuro Ishida and Maiko Kobayashi, the exhibition emphasizes emotional and tactile engagement with images, contrasting with the statistical logic of AI-generated curation.

Blue mushrooms, shy trees and glowing seas: Beaker Street science photography prize – in pictures

The article showcases the 12 finalists of the Beaker Street science photography prize, featuring images of blue bioluminescent seas, shy tree canopies, native wasps, and glowing mushrooms. The photographs will be exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery during the Beaker Street festival from August 6 to 17.

Coming Forth into Presence

Woody De Othello presents 'coming forth by day', an immersive solo exhibition at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) featuring ceramic and wood sculptures, tiled wall works, and a monumental bronze installation. The Miami-born artist transforms everyday objects like mirrors, clocks, and telephones into anthropomorphic forms that carry emotional residue and draw on diasporic African spiritual traditions, including the concept of nkisi. The exhibition's title references the ancient Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day, and the show runs until 28 June 2026.

Jutta Koether at Empty Gallery

Jutta Koether's exhibition at Empty Gallery in Hong Kong presents a series of new paintings and works on paper that continue her exploration of abstraction, gesture, and materiality. The show features densely layered canvases and intimate works on paper, often incorporating text, collage, and painterly marks that oscillate between control and spontaneity. The gallery's raw, industrial space provides a stark backdrop for Koether's visceral, process-driven practice.