The British Museum has opened a major exhibition titled 'Samurai,' which challenges the widespread, simplified portrayal of samurai as solely honor-bound, hyper-violent warriors. The show, curated by Rosina Buckland, presents them as a complex social class who were also bureaucrats, administrators, and cultural figures, emphasizing their roles during periods of peace and governance.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is launching a major exhibition to mark the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, seeking to re-examine her complex legacy. Moving beyond the simplified tropes of the tragic starlet, the show investigates whether Monroe was a passive victim of the Hollywood studio system or a savvy, self-aware architect of her own public persona.
National Gallery Singapore has opened a major exhibition titled 'Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art.' The show, which carries an unprecedented R18 rating and prohibits photography, presents a comprehensive exploration of eroticism, pleasure, and the body through a wide range of artworks from the region's collection and loans. It is curated by Dr. Patrick Flores, Dr. Adele Tan, and Dr. Kathleen Ditzig, who frame desire as a culturally specific yet universal force shaped by history and power.
The Art Museum at the University of Toronto has opened a new exhibition titled "Land. Sea. Sugar. Salt.: Terrestrial and Aquatic Contemplations of the Caribbean." The show features works by contemporary artists from the Caribbean and its diaspora, exploring the region's complex geography, layered histories, and cultural intersections through themes of land, water, and the legacies of colonial industries like sugar production.
The Times Art Museum has launched a major retrospective of Henri Matisse’s printmaking, featuring 100 works that span his career from early line drawings to his iconic late-period cut-outs. Titled "Bathe in Color — A Journey of Lines, Body and Dreams," the exhibition includes significant collaborations with Paris-based workshops Mourlot Studios and Atelier Auval, highlighted by the vibrant composition La Gerbe.
This article introduces the work of Finnish modernist painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946), whose career spanned eight decades and evolved from naturalism to near abstraction. Born in Helsinki, she studied in Paris under French naturalist painters and initially gained recognition for history paintings celebrating Finnish heritage. Later, retreating to Hyvinkää to care for her mother, she abandoned naturalism, paring down her figure paintings and still lifes to simplified, materially intense compositions. The exhibition features key works such as 'View of St Ives' (1887) and 'Clothes Drying' (1883), highlighting her shift toward ethereal, boundary-testing imagery that early Finnish critics dismissed.
ShanghART Singapore presents 'Simplified', a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Tang Maohong opening on 16 May 2026. The show features paintings developed over the past two years since his relocation to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and marks his return to Singapore after a 2019 solo exhibition and twenty years since his participation in the first Singapore Biennale. Tang's new works explore a technique of mixing colors directly on the painting surface rather than using a palette, collapsing the image and the palette into a single pictorial space.
Bellarmine Hall Galleries at Fairfield University Art Museum will host an exhibition from September 18 to December 12, 2026, exploring 'Egyptomania'—the 19th-century European fascination with ancient Egyptian art and culture. The show features paintings, prints, photographs, and decorative art from the early 19th century to the present, including works like Charles-Théodore Frère's *Along the Nile* (ca. 1870). Curated by Megan Paqua, the exhibition examines how Egyptian symbols and motifs were adopted, exoticized, and commercialized, often erasing the ancient Egyptian people themselves. It aims to contrast simplified or stereotypical narratives with current archaeological understanding.