ArtReview's editors have curated a list of 11 must-see exhibitions worldwide for May 2026, excluding Venice. Highlights include Audie Murray's solo show at april april in Pittsburgh, featuring works made with her own hair and breast milk; Delcy Morelos's monumental earthwork 'origo' at the Barbican Sculpture Court in London; and Bold Tendencies' 20th anniversary season in Peckham, titled 'Euphoria', with new commissions across multiple disciplines.
A new exhibition at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) titled 'Rebels + Icons: The Photography of Janette Beckman' showcases over 500 images by British photographer Janette Beckman, spanning four decades. The show features her early, pre-fame portraits of music and cultural icons including Public Enemy, Joe Strummer, Keith Haring, Salt-N-Pepa, and John Lydon, captured at the dawn of punk and hip-hop movements. Beckman, who began her career photographing unknown punk bands for Melody Maker, also documented the first hip-hop show in London in 1982, capturing figures like Fab 5 Freddy and Afrika Bambaataa before they became legends. The retrospective includes her fashion work and street photography, highlighting her ability to gain trust quickly with subjects.
Artsy Editorial highlights five standout exhibitions at small and rising galleries for May 2026. Among them is British-born, Amsterdam-based painter K. T. Kobel's first major Swiss show, "Hand, Body, Object, Sin," at Kutlesa in Goldau, Switzerland, running through May 29. Kobel, who has exhibited from Los Angeles to Milan since 2022, presents cinematic, storyboard-like paintings that embrace fragmentation and loose ends.
The US pavilion at the Venice Biennale has selected Alma Allen, a Utah-born, Mexico-based sculptor, as its representative artist—a controversial and surprising choice given his relative obscurity compared to past pavilion artists. The selection process was unusually fraught: the first artist chosen was dropped before official announcement, and the announcement was delayed by the US government shutdown. The pavilion's curator, Jeffrey Uslip, discusses the exhibition titled "Call Me the Breeze," which will feature Allen's sculptures in stone, bronze, and wood that appear to defy their own weight, emphasizing artistic autonomy despite the State Department's framing of the choice as showcasing "American excellence."
The second edition of Vima, Cyprus' emerging international art fair, took place in Limassol from May 15-17, 2026, drawing 5,200 visitors and featuring 26 invited galleries from over 20 countries. Artworks sold ranged from €550 to €90,000, reflecting increased sales from the inaugural 2025 edition. Highlights included a special exhibition curated by Kostas Stasinopoulos titled "The Crashing Waves," performances by Scottish choreographer Magnus Westwell, and notable presentations by galleries such as Cut Art Gallery (Riga) and Eins Gallery (Limassol). The fair also hosted 25 events including talks, live music, and off-site shows across Limassol and Nicosia.
Sophie Calle's latest exhibition, 'Something Missing?' at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, explores themes of absence, loss, and disappearance through works spanning 1979 to 2023. The show features series such as 'Because' (2018-2023), where embroidered felt sheets hide photographs; a response to Picasso's works swaddled during Covid lockdowns; 'The Blind' (1986), in which people born without sight describe beauty; and 'Voir la mer' (2011), capturing Istanbul residents seeing the sea for the first time. Calle's characteristic wit and emotional depth turn voids into vantage points, inviting viewers to confront what is missing.
An unrealized work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, recently discovered in Christo's atelier, will be presented for the first time at Gagosian in London. Titled *Air Package on a Ceiling*, the installation features a 52-foot-long, 33-foot-wide inflated form wrapped in rope, softly illuminated from within to resemble half a cloud protruding from the ceiling. The piece is realized from the original 1968 model and preparatory drawings and collages.
Jarvis Cocker and his wife Kim Sion will curate a new exhibition titled "Hodge Podge" at the Hepworth Wakefield, opening in May 2027. The show brings together a personal selection of works by artists including Jeremy Deller, Peter Doig, Barbara Hepworth, and others, alongside unknown outsider and visionary artists never before exhibited in UK public museums. The exhibition aims to challenge conventional ideas of art and includes an immersive Dreamachine, a flickering light device co-invented by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1959.
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.
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.
The article covers the exhibition "Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses" at the Brooklyn Museum, the Dutch couturier's first major American show. It features 140 haute couture creations alongside works from the museum's collection, fossils from the American Museum of Natural History, and specimens from the Yale Peabody Museum and Staten Island Museum. The exhibition is organized into eleven themed chapters, from water to cosmos, and includes new works like the aerial sculpture "Weightlessness of the Unknown" (2024) and the living algae piece "Living Algae look" (2025). Van Herpen pushed for close proximity between viewers and garments, emphasizing an immersive experience.
The 61st Venice Biennale, titled 'In Minor Keys,' opened with a central exhibition curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, who died in 2025. The show features 110 artists and collectives, realized by a team of five curators known as 'la squadra di Koyo.' The exhibition spans the Giardini and Arsenale venues, with works including Otobong Nkanga's living facade installation, Theo Eshetu's dying olive tree, and Nick Cave's vibrant sculptures. Poems and quotes by Refaat al-Areer, Etel Adnan, Toni Morrison, and Ben Okri punctuate the spaces, encouraging visitors to pause and reflect.
Kunstmuseum Basel has opened a major exhibition of Helen Frankenthaler's work, running from April 18 to August 23, 2026, featuring over 50 large-format pieces spanning six decades. The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation loaned 37 works for the show. The article also notes recent auction results, including Christie's offering of 'The Last Minute in April' (1974) for an estimated $2–3 million, and Sotheby's sales of 'St. John' (1971) for $2.1085 million and 'Perseus' (1983) for $2.804 million. Previous European exhibitions of Frankenthaler's work are listed, including shows at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Museum Folkwang, Palazzo Strozzi, and Museum Reinhard Ernst.
An exhibition of Edward Hopper's work at the Seoul Museum of Art has broken attendance records, drawing 330,000 visitors—the highest for any exhibition that year. The show marks the first solo exhibition of the American painter in South Korea, where Hopper was virtually unknown until the 1990s. The article traces Hopper's growing recognition in the country, from his first appearance in Korean media in 2002 to the 2011 co-hosted exhibition 'This Is American Art' at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which introduced his work 'Railroad Sunset' (1929) to local audiences.
The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, presents "Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest," the first solo museum exhibition in the United States dedicated to the Italian artist Giorgio Griffa (born 1936). On view from June 13 to October 12 at the Lunder Center at Stone Hill, the exhibition features works spanning nearly six decades, including highlights such as "Sessanta frammenti" (1980), "Rosa" (1968), and "Narciso" (1986). Griffa is known for his use of diluted acrylics on unstretched, unprimed canvases, and his practice emphasizes the intelligence of materials and an ecological ethic. The exhibition is curated by Robert Wiesenberger, John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum and former curator of contemporary projects at the Clark.
A new exhibition at New York's L'Espace Gallery, titled "Shape of Dreams," presents a rare collection of Leonora Carrington's surrealist bronze sculptures, intricate jewelry, and an interactive tarot booth. Carrington, best known as a painter and novelist, created these sculptures late in life, often with the help of her sons, as her eyesight and arthritis made painting difficult. The show highlights works like "The Palmist" (2011) and other hybrid, mythological figures that extend her imaginative universe into three dimensions.
Artist Marina Kappos opens her solo exhibition 'Piercing the Veil' at SHRINE gallery in New York City, running from May 15 to June 27. The show features her signature acrylic-on-wood-panel paintings that use thin layers of pigment to create gauzy, prismatic effects. Inspired by the sculptural figures of grieving women she encountered at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Kappos explores themes of loss, memory, presence and absence, and the threshold between life and death. Works like 'Veil Study (Eclipse)' (2026) and 'Quantum Study (Green Entanglement)' (2025) depict hazy landscapes and keyhole-shaped portals that invite viewers to contemplate the unknown and the spiritual.
From February 7 to June 7, 2026, MARTa Herford presents a dual exhibition dedicated to Lois Weinberger (1947–2020) and Katinka Bock (born 1976). The show explores poetic phenomena beyond human control, where materials react, spaces shift, and natural forces leave their traces both inside the museum and beyond.
A new pop-up gallery, Ghiringhelli Art Gallery, opens in Milan on May 8, 2026, with its inaugural exhibition "Refracted Worlds. Contemporary Japan Through Multiple Lenses" at Via Tortona 20. Founded by Nicola Ghiringhelli Forlani, the gallery specializes in contemporary Japanese art and will feature works by seven Japanese artists—Kohei Nawa, Yukie Ishikawa, Kenjiro Okazaki, Mr., Ayako Rokkaku, Yuji Ueda, and Noritaka Tatehana—alongside the Chim↑Pom collective from Smappa!Group. The temporary format allows the gallery to maintain a flexible presence in Milan while the founder travels frequently to Japan to follow artists and market dynamics.
The fifth edition of the Reiffers Initiatives Prize has opened in Paris with the exhibition "Trafiquer l'inconnu" ("Trading in the Unknown"), running until June 6, 2026, at the Reiffers Art Initiatives center. The group show features eight emerging artists based in France: Khaled Jarada, Louis Le Kim, Stanislava Kovalcikova, Arthur Marie, Eva Helene Pade, Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, Minh Lan Tran, and Manon Wertenbroek. Curated by Bernard Blistène, former director of the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou, the exhibition presents works spanning painting, archival imagery, and explorations of the body. Stanislava Kovalcikova was named the winner of this edition, and Khaled Jarada received a new Special Mention from the jury.
Scottish artist Andrew McIntosh presents a new series of crimson-hued landscape paintings in his solo exhibition "I Hope This Transmission Finds You Soon" at School Gallery in Folkestone, U.K. The works, including pieces titled "Whitney," "K2," "Gasherbrum," and "Matterhorn" (all 2026), transform familiar mountain forms into eerie, otherworldly scenes with glowing orbs and uncanny light, drawing inspiration from Cormac McCarthy's novel "Blood Meridian." The exhibition runs through May 30.
The Belfast Photo Festival returns for 2026 as the largest annual photography festival in the UK and Ireland, running from 4–30 June at venues across the city. This year's theme, 'Horizons: Visions of Futures Unknown,' challenges photographers and audiences to explore technological, environmental, geopolitical, and AI-driven boundaries in the medium. Featured works include Laura Pannack's 'The Journey Home,' Florence Goupil's documentation of a Peruvian protection agent, Toby Smith's participatory installation confronting the collapse of mechanical photography, and Lean Lui's allegorical 'The White Barracks' examining power and patriarchy.
Hamptons-based abstract painter Mark Seidenfeld presents *Uncharted Waters*, a solo exhibition of paintings inaugurating the newly renovated Corwith Homestead Tractor Barn at the Bridgehampton Museum. The show runs from June 4 through June 21, 2026, and features works that transition from representational to fully abstract, exploring themes of depth, gesture, and the unknown through layered, revised compositions.
Mark Seidenfeld, a Hamptons-based abstract painter, will present a solo exhibition titled "Uncharted Waters" at the newly renovated Corwith Homestead Tractor Barn, part of The Bridgehampton Museum in New York. The show runs from June 4 to June 21, 2026, and features paintings that transition from representational work into fully realized abstraction, exploring themes of depth, gesture, and discovery through layered and revised compositions.
Il centro culturale BASE di Milano compie 10 anni: tutto il programma per i grandi festeggiamenti
BASE, the cultural center in Milan's former Ansaldo industrial complex, celebrates its 10th anniversary on May 23, 2025, with a 16-hour event called FIESTAS. The program runs from noon to 5 a.m. and includes performances, workshops, concerts, installations, and shared practices by artists such as MOMBAO, Stalker Teatro, Klaus, Francesca Grilli, Nazario Graziano, Michele Rizzo, and many others. The event also launches BASE's first summer season, keeping the center open throughout the summer months.
A gallery has corrected the title of a portrait by British artist Tom McGuinness after the artist's daughter identified the subject as an unknown man, not her grandfather as originally thought. The drawing, initially labeled "Cathy's Dad," has been renamed "Portrait of an Unknown Man" and is included in the exhibition "Tom McGuinness: Out of the Darkness," which runs through the rest of the year and features oil paintings, sketches, lithographs, and family portraits.
The Auckland Project has launched a public appeal to identify a mystery miner depicted in a charcoal portrait by the late pitman-turned-painter Tom McGuinness. The drawing, currently on display at the Mining Art Gallery in Bishop Auckland as part of the exhibition "Tom McGuiness: Out of the Darkness," was originally labeled "Cathy's Dad" but was corrected by the artist's daughter, Corinne Aspel, who confirmed it does not show her grandfather. The work has been retitled "Portrait of an Unknown Man," and curators are seeking help from the public to name the sitter.
A mystery portrait has prompted a public appeal in County Durham as a major new exhibition celebrating miner-artist Tom McGuinness opens at Bishop Auckland’s Mining Art Gallery. Visitors are being asked to help identify an unknown man depicted in a 1963 charcoal drawing, *Portrait of an Unknown Man*, now on display as part of *Tom McGuinness: Out of the Darkness*, which marks the centenary of the artist’s birth and runs throughout 2026. McGuinness, born in Witton Park, worked in the mines for nearly four decades, and his art captures the physical and emotional realities of mining life. The portrait was initially thought to depict the artist’s father-in-law, but his daughter Corinne Aspel has challenged that assumption, noting clear differences in facial features.