Beverly Buchanan’s Anti-Monuments

Beverly Buchanan's outdoor sculptures, such as 'Marsh Ruins' (1981) and 'Unity Stones' (1983), are quietly eroding in landscapes across Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina. These anti-monuments, made from tabby concrete and stone, blend into their surroundings while subtly referencing the region's layered histories, including Indigenous shell middens, plantation ruins, and the 1803 slave revolt on St. Simons Island. Buchanan, who died in 2015, is now receiving renewed attention: her work will be featured at the Venice Biennale this spring, and a touring retrospective is currently at Frac Lorraine in Metz, following a posthumous show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2016–17.

Pittsburgh’s new $31m Arts Landing combines public art with civic engagement

Pittsburgh's new $31 million public space, Arts Landing, opened on 17 April, just before the NFL Draft and the 59th Carnegie International. Developed by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the project features public artworks by vanessa german, Darian Johnson, Lenka Clayton, Phillip Andrew Lewis, Sharmistha Ray, Mikael Owunna, Marques Redd, John Peña, Shikeith, and the late Thaddeus Mosley. Highlights include Shikeith's neon sculpture *Hold*, part of his *Project Blue Space*, and Mosley's *Touching the Earth* series, originally commissioned by New York's Public Art Fund. The space also includes a playground, bandshell, and artist-designed pickleball courts.

Edward Weston Unveiled: The American Photographer on Display in Turin

Edward Weston senza veli. Il fotografo americano in mostra a Torino

CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin is hosting a major retrospective of the American photographer Edward Weston. The exhibition explores Weston’s mastery of 'straight photography,' showcasing his iconic nudes, still lifes of organic forms like peppers and shells, and sweeping Californian landscapes. Through absolute precision and tonal control, the show highlights how Weston transformed physical matter into timeless, sculptural images that defined a new visual language of the 20th century.

Hispanic Baroque Art in Majesty

L’art baroque hispanique en majesté

The Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris is hosting an exhibition of masterpieces from the Hispanic Society of America, marking the first time this specific selection has been shown to the French public. The show features approximately forty works, including iconic paintings by El Greco and Diego Velázquez, alongside recently acquired studies and colonial-era pieces that have rarely traveled due to previous legal restrictions and the New York institution's ongoing renovations.

Queer Horizon: “Spectrosynthesis Seoul” at Art Sonje Center

The fourth edition of "Spectrosynthesis," Sunpride Foundation's exhibition series dedicated to LGBTQ+ art in Asia, opens at Art Sonje Center in Seoul. Curated by Sunjung Kim and Youngwoo Lee, the show unfolds in two parts: "The Two-Sided Seashell" and "Tender: Invisibly Visible, Unlocatably Everywhere," featuring works by artists including Sin Wai Kin and Young-Jun Tak. The exhibition engages with queer theory, particularly José Esteban Muñoz's concept of queerness as a horizon of potentiality, and responds to South Korea's recent political turbulence, including the 2024 martial law declaration and presidential impeachment.

The Sky Lives in Us Still, Resistance and Imagination Take Flight.

Vanessa German has unveiled a major new installation at the Speed Art Museum titled '…do you remember when you were the sky?', marking the inaugural project of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program. The exhibition features German’s signature assemblage sculptures, which utilize diverse materials like cowrie shells, quilts, and skateboards to create hybrid figures representing young girls in states of transformation. The body of work is the result of months of community engagement and research into local histories, specifically focusing on the narratives of the Colored Girls Dormitory in Louisville.

Towering homage to Bamiyan Buddhas rises over Manhattan’s High Line

A new public sculpture by Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen has been installed on the High Line Plinth at Hudson Yards in Manhattan. Titled "The Light That Shines Through the Universe" (2026), the 27-foot-tall sandstone monument pays homage to the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the 6th-century colossi destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The work features carved sandstone forms with two monumental steel hands cast from melted-down artillery shells sourced from Afghanistan, making gestures of fearlessness and compassion. It will remain on view through autumn 2027 and is accompanied by monthly lectures and meditation sessions.

Exhibition | Shota Nakamura, 'Apple' at Karma, Los Angeles

Shota Nakamura's exhibition 'Apple' at Karma in Los Angeles presents a series of new paintings that explore familiar subjects—fruit, shells, sailboats, landscapes—through a dreamlike, tonally nuanced lens. The Berlin-based Japanese artist focuses on the tonality of light, using closely-valued hues to investigate relationships between color, luminosity, and illusion. Works such as 'Landscape with Apples' (2026), 'A Black Dog', and 'Violin Player' demonstrate his method of combining personal photographs, memory, and art historical references into compositions that balance representation with formal abstraction, often referencing modern Japanese painters like Zenzaburo Kojima and Morikazu Kumagai as well as Mark Rothko.

Exhibition | Anna Park, 'Hot Honey' at Lehmann Maupin, London, United Kingdom

Anna Park makes her United Kingdom solo debut at Lehmann Maupin London with 'Hot Honey,' an exhibition of large-scale charcoal works running from April 30 to May 30. The show features Park’s signature fractured, cinematic compositions that explore female archetypes like the 'vixen' and the 'bombshell.' For the first time, the artist introduces shaped supports that turn her drawings into sculptural reliefs, alongside restrained passages of color that heighten the psychological intensity of her social critiques.

Shelley’s hair to Schindler’s list: the most fascinating objects in the State Library of NSW – in pictures

The State Library of NSW is celebrating its 200th anniversary with a new exhibition featuring 200 objects from its collection of 6 million items. Lead curator Elise Edmonds and her team selected highlights including a lock of Mary Shelley's hair, the smallest book in the library's collection (measuring 6mm by 6mm), bread wrappers from the 1960s, a colonial sketchbook from 1817, a Dharawal Indigenous language wordlist, Australia's oldest surviving political cartoon from 1808, and a contemporary artwork by Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens. The objects span literature, colonial history, Indigenous culture, sport, and everyday life.

Sands and Rituals from the Antipodes: To Be Discovered in a Former Church in Venice

Sabbie e riti dagli antipodi. Da scoprire in una ex chiesa di Venezia

The Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, home to Ocean Space, is hosting "Tide of Returns," an exhibition by the Repatriates Collective. The installation transforms the historic nave with sand dunes populated by thousands of decorated shells known as Dadikwakwa-kwa, or shell dolls, from the Anindilyakwa people of Australia. The show also features a tripartite installation of video, textiles, and braids by German-Bolivian artist Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, exploring themes of ancestral connection and the universal significance of water.

MFA candidate brings ecological art to the Broad Art Museum

Hailey Becker, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Michigan State University, has debuted a large-scale ecological sound sculpture at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. The installation features over 10,000 hand-cracked walnut shells suspended in a human-sized chime, which are struck by a mechanical arm to mimic the sound of water hitting a coastline. The project is the culmination of Becker’s interdisciplinary research, blending her background in engineering and material science with her current studies in forestry and fine arts.

Two new exhibitions debut today at St. Pete’s MFA

The Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg has launched two major exhibitions: a career-spanning survey of Iranian-born artist Ali Banisadr and a site-specific installation by Ward Shelley and Douglas Paulson. Banisadr’s exhibition, "The Alchemist," features nearly 20 years of work including large-scale paintings that blend abstraction with intricate, emerging figures. Accompanying this is "The Last Library IV: Written in Water," a life-sized library constructed from corrugated cardboard that explores the fragility of the written word and the impact of censorship and AI on language.

Elevating High Fashion. Issey Miyake and Ensamble Studio Together at Fuorisalone 2026

Valorizzare l’alta sartoria. Issey Miyake e Ensamble Studio insieme al Fuorisalone 2026

Satoshi Kondo, a director at the Miyake Design Studio, has partnered with the Madrid-based architecture firm Ensamble Studio to explore the creative potential of the Paper Log, a byproduct of Issey Miyake's signature pleating process. The collaboration will culminate in an exhibition titled 'The Paper Log: Shell and Core' during the 2026 Fuorisalone in Milan, featuring prototype furniture and sculptural forms made from the compressed paper rolls and unfolded pleated paper.

FORGING PATHS: AFRO-BRAZILIAN ANCESTRY AND FEMININE POWER IN THE WORK OF NÁDIA TAQUARY

FORJAR CAMINOS: ANCESTRALIDAD AFROBRASILEÑA Y PODER FEMENINO EN LA OBRA DE NÁDIA TAQUARY

The exhibition "Ònà Irin: caminho de ferro" by artist Nádia Taquary has opened at Sesc Belenzinho in São Paulo, featuring large-scale sculptures and an immersive video installation. Curated by Amanda Bonan, Ayrson Heráclito, and Marcelo Campos, the show centers on a massive installation of iron rails that symbolize the Yoruba deity Ogum, the opener of paths. The works integrate traditional Afro-Brazilian materials such as cowrie shells, beads, and metals to explore spiritual protection and the historical significance of jewelry as a form of resistance and identity for enslaved and freed Black women.

Pewter from the middle ages to art nouveau

Berlin's Kunstgewerbemuseum presents a special exhibition at Schloss Köpenick titled "Pewter from the Middle Ages to Art Nouveau," featuring around 100 works that trace the evolution of pewter from sacred and ceremonial objects to everyday items. The exhibition highlights the material's sophisticated use in furniture-making, including pieces by 17th-century cabinetmaker Johann Daniel Sommer, who combined pewter with tortoiseshell and horn using boulle technique.