The Museum Ludwig in Cologne has launched a major retrospective of Yayoi Kusama's work to mark its 50th anniversary. The exhibition features over 300 pieces, including sculptures, paintings, and installations, and spans her entire career from a childhood drawing to a newly commissioned Infinity Room. It also debuts several works in a museum setting and spreads beyond the gallery walls to the museum's roof.
On March 16, 2026, e-flux Screening Room presented “Viscosities,” a program of moving-image works by artist Lucy Beech, followed by a conversation between Beech, Lukas Brasiskis, and the audience. The discussion, edited for publication, explores Beech's concepts of accumulation and viscosity, drawing from Trisha Brown's 1971 performance *Accumulation* to describe how her work builds complex sequences through additive materials. Beech discusses her film *Flush*, which examines freemartin cows studied by eugenics-linked scientists, and its connection to endocrinology and IVF. She also addresses her reuse of materials, collaboration with James Richards on *A Map of the Pit*, and her film *Out of Body*, which uses imaging technologies to trace hidden industrial and biological flows, including urine-derived hormones from the Dutch program Moeders voor Moeders.
This week's Critic's Table column highlights three New York gallery and museum shows. Painter Sam McKinniss praises Helene Schjerfbeck's first major U.S. institutional survey, "Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, calling the Finnish modernist more fascinating than Edvard Munch. Critic Johanna Fateman argues that Joan Semmel's career-spanning exhibition "In the Flesh" at the Jewish Museum proves her recent icon status is well-deserved and long overdue. Artist Ajay Kurian reviews Marguerite Humeau's mythic ecosystems at White Cube.
The 16th Gwangju Biennale has revealed its theme, 'You must change your life,' a line from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem 'Archaic Torso of Apollo.' Artistic director Ho Tzu Nyen and curators Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee, and Brian Kuan Wood will lead an edition focused on art's transformative power during a time of multiple crises. The exhibition, running from September 5 to November 15, will feature the smallest number of artists in the biennale's history, emphasizing intensity over accumulation and tracking the evolution of individual artistic practices.
Boston Art Review (BAR) has published a curated list of ten museum exhibitions across New England that are currently worth seeing. The article highlights a diverse range of shows, from contemporary art to historical surveys, taking place at various institutions throughout the region.
A new exhibition, "Bernini i Barberini," at Rome's Palazzo Barberini explores the profound artistic partnership between Pope Urban VIII and the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. This relationship, beginning in 1623, led to decades of Baroque masterpieces that transformed Rome's architecture and urban design, showcasing the papacy's use of art as a tool of power and propaganda.
This article highlights the best museum shows to see alongside Art Basel in Basel 2025, covering exhibitions at Fondation Beyeler, Schaulager, Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthaus Baselland, and Kunstmuseum Basel. Featured artists include Vija Celmins, Jordan Wolfson, Steve McQueen, Ser Serpas, Dala Nasser, and Medardo Rosso, with works ranging from VR installations and immersive light-and-sound pieces to textile art and historical retrospectives.
The CART Department has organized an exhibition titled 'Ai Weiwei LEGO Story' at Free Parking in New York, running from April 24 to May 3, 2026. The show presents a focused selection of the artist's brick-based works, including pieces from his Zodiac and After series and his BMW art car, highlighting accumulation and repetition as core methods.
Julie Mehretu's latest exhibition, "Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology)," is on view at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York from April 14 to June 6, 2026. The show presents paintings that push beyond traditional representation, creating immersive perceptual environments through dense layers of abstraction, cartographic traces, and architectural fragments. The works, including the TRANSpaintings series created with Nairy Baghramian, extend Mehretu's practice into spatial expansion, where painting behaves like infrastructure without becoming literal architecture.
Lamberto Pignotti, the 100-year-old Florentine artist and poet and a leading figure in visual poetry, is celebrated with two concurrent exhibitions: "Pignotti 100. Pop-esie visive" at the Mart in Rovereto (in collaboration with the Collegio Cairoli of Pavia) and the dual solo show "Identikit di Pignotti e Hogre" curated by Marco Giovenale at Galleria Bianco Contemporaneo in Rome. The latter exhibition, born from a dialogue between Pignotti and the anonymous artist Hogre, centers on a collection of envelopes Pignotti has saved for over fifty years—each addressed to him with varying titles (architect, artist, poet, professor) or altered names (Alberto, Lorenzo, Mario, Giuseppe)—revealing his fragmented identity. Pignotti co-founded the Gruppo '70 in Florence in 1963 with Eugenio Miccini, a movement that brought together multidisciplinary artists including Lucia Marcucci, Ketty La Rocca, and musicians Giuseppe Chiari and Sylvano Bussotti.
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is hosting "Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation," an exhibition running through June 21. It features over 60 works by Marie Watt, an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation's Turtle Clan, including prints, monumental blanket stacks, hanging textiles, and small-scale sculptures. The show is drawn from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer, a top 200 collector recognized by ARTNews, whose foundation has supported more than 180 exhibitions and loaned works to over 130 museums at no cost.
Kader Attia presents his multimedia installation "Whisper of Traces" at the 2026 Venice Biennale, curated by Koyo Kouoh under the theme "In Minor Keys." The work explores the intersections of magic, spirituality, traditional healing, and digitalization, drawing on Attia's long-standing interest in how colonialism, neoliberalism, and technology have transformed shamanic and healing practices. Attia describes the project as an accumulation of psychic traces from human history, which his mother called "ghosts."
L’artista ed ex pugile Omar Hassan che è in mostra a Roma coi suoi gesti forti
Artist and former boxer Omar Hassan has debuted his first solo exhibition in Rome, titled "Tempo al Tempo," at Galleria Latina. The showcase features large-scale works from his "Breaking Through" series, where Hassan uses boxing gloves to strike canvases, alongside a massive map of Rome constructed from nearly 9,000 hand-painted spray can caps. The exhibition emphasizes the physical trace of time and action, blending street art aesthetics with the energy of action painting.
The Summer Guide 2025 highlights a diverse array of gallery openings in Santa Fe, New Mexico, focusing on both established and emerging art spaces. Notable exhibitions include Gerald Peters Contemporary's "Material Girl: Pop Culture and the Female Gaze" (June 13), featuring six female artists examining gender and commodification through Pop Art; Daniel Cooney Fine Art's "George Dureau, Photographs" (May 31), showcasing intimate portraits of New Orleans' counterculture; and Station 5 Micro-Gallery's two shows—"ACCUMULATION" (June 7) by Michael Sumner and Melody Sumner Carnahan, and "THE NARROW LINE TO THE INTERIOR" (August 2) inspired by poet Bashō. Other highlights include ELECTR∆ Gallery's queer mysticism group show "The Third Way" (July 11), new works by Tim Jag (June 12), and Pie Projects' "MOMENTUM" (June 14) featuring Florence Miller Pierce's rediscovered resin reliefs.
Alla Biennale Arte 2026 la Spagna trasforma il suo Padiglione in museo dell’accumulo con l’artista Oriol Vilanova
Spain has announced its participation in the 61st Venice Biennale Arte 2026, selecting Catalan artist Oriol Vilanova to represent the country in its newly renovated national pavilion. The project, titled "Los restos," transforms the pavilion into a pseudo-museum of accumulation, featuring Vilanova's vast personal archive of postcards collected over twenty years from flea markets and secondhand circuits. The installation presents these ephemeral fragments as an infinite, non-narrative mural, exploring themes of accumulation and loss. Curated by Carles Guerra, the project also includes a performative intervention titled "Il fantasma della libertà" (2026), which will unfold across the Giardini and Arsenale during the Biennale.
Art House Productions is set to debut "EXPANDED METAMORPHOSIS: CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO PROCESS," a group exhibition curated by Andrea McKenna at the Art House Gallery in Jersey City. Running from April 4 to April 26, 2026, the show features ten artists—including Jan Huling, Valerie Huhn, and Dan Payton—who utilize industrial, organic, and repurposed materials to explore themes of transformation and experimentation.
The Spanish Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale presents "Los restos," a project by Catalan artist Oriol Vilanova, curated by Carles Guerra. The installation transforms the pavilion into an anti-museum or pseudo-museum, featuring Vilanova's collection of postcards sourced from flea markets over more than twenty years. The work critiques traditional archival systems through accumulation, repetition, and fragmentation, and includes a publication and a performative action titled "El fantasma de la libertad" (2026), inspired by Luis Buñuel, which will take place across the Giardini and Arsenale.
ESPANA ORIOL VILANOVA Y LA ABOLICION DEL MUSEO Y EL ARCHIVO
The Spanish Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale presents "Los restos," a project by Catalan artist Oriol Vilanova, curated by Carles Guerra. The installation transforms the pavilion into an anti-museum or pseudo-museum, featuring over twenty years of postcards collected from flea markets, arranged in a wall-based accumulation that challenges linear narrative and archival hierarchy. The project also includes a publication and a performative action titled "El fantasma de la libertad" (2026), inspired by Luis Buñuel, which will take place across the Giardini and Arsenale through unannounced encounters.
Jeddah-based artist Ahaad Alamoudi presents 'Sunkissed' at the Sharjah Art Foundation, a solo exhibition curated by Amal Al Ali that explores the rapidly shifting cultural landscape of the Gulf. Through a series of newly commissioned and recent works, including looping videos and mechanical installations, Alamoudi utilizes repetition and pop-culture symbols like falcons and fly traps to examine how collective identity is negotiated amidst accelerated urban development and technological change.
Un Grito Gallery in San Antonio, Texas, will present "Accumulation of Becoming," a solo exhibition of new works by multidisciplinary artist Angela Weddle. The show opens April 30–May 1, 2026, with a closing reception on May 21, 2026. The exhibition features layered self-portraiture combining drawing and photography, exploring themes of selfhood, grief, and transformation through dense mark-making and the accumulation of imagery.
From May 3 to June 28, 2026, Art Studio La Marina gallery in Pietrasanta hosts "Anteprima," a solo exhibition by Italian artist Beppe Madaudo (born Palermo, 1950), curated by Diego Ferrante. The show presents works where animals, human figures, and hybrid forms emerge from layered matter, exploring themes of memory, tension, and transformation. Key pieces include a depiction of the fish St. Peter, whose profile is outlined in red while its interior is built from threads, combustions, and fragments, and two horse paintings on contrasting ash gray and burnt red backgrounds that alter the visual weight of the same silhouette.