Artists v fascists, Khmer Rouge horrors, fab flowers and an eye-popping nude – the week in art

This week's art roundup from The Guardian features a major exhibition at Towner Eastbourne titled 'Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism,' which examines how artists, poets, and intellectuals used their work to resist the rise of extremism in 1930s Europe, drawing on the history of the Artists International Association (AIA). Other highlights include 'Hidden: Photography and Displacement Under the Khmer Rouge' at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, a show of early Netherlandish drawings at the British Museum, Katharina Grosse's colorful installations at White Cube, and a flower-themed survey at Kettle's Yard. The image of the week is Sylvia Sleigh's 1963 portrait 'The Bridge (Johanna Lawrenson),' part of a new exhibition of the Welsh artist's work. The article also covers news items such as Lydia Ourahmane's Venice Biennale installation, a Holbein portrait mystery, a restored stained-glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and Anish Kapoor's call to exclude the US from the Venice Biennale due to 'politics of hate.'

Queer eyes in focus, sculpture hits pay dirt and Whistler’s world – the week in art

This week's art roundup from The Guardian highlights a major exhibition of James McNeill Whistler at Tate Britain, showcasing the American artist's impact on Victorian Britain with avant-garde influences from Paris and Japan. Other notable exhibitions include "Gender Stories" at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, featuring works by David Hockney and Grayson Perry; Delcy Morelos's earthy sculptures at the Barbican Centre; and Henry Moore's sculptures at Kew Gardens. The article also covers news of a Nazi-looted portrait found in the home of a Dutch SS leader's family, protests at the Venice Biennale over Israel's inclusion, and the unveiling of Zineb Sedira's film installation at Tate Britain.

5 free must-see exhibitions to pick in Parisian galleries in May

5 expos gratuites coups de cœur à cueillir dans les galeries parisiennes en mai

Beaux Arts Magazine highlights five free exhibitions to visit in Parisian galleries in May 2026. At Galerie Mayoral, a show explores Alexander Calder's ties to Paris, featuring gouaches and totems. Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire presents Michel Jocaille's first solo exhibition, "Lily of the Valley," which uses lily-of-the-valley motifs to evoke labor history and camp aesthetics. Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard hosts a poignant dialogue between Diane Esmond, a painter whose works were burned by the Nazis, and her granddaughter Adrianna Wallis, whose photographs reference looted objects. Galerie Templon exhibits Alioune Diagne's paintings inspired by Wolof traditions, and another gallery shows prints by Swedish artist Mamma Andersson.

Orsay inaugure une salle destinée aux œuvres « MNR »

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has opened a new dedicated gallery, Room 10b, to display works from its MNR (Musées nationaux Récupération) collection—artworks looted or acquired under dubious circumstances during the Nazi era. The room features detailed labels and educational texts, with some works shown verso to reveal provenance labels. The initiative is funded by the American Friends of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie with €1 million over four years, and includes a fake Monet, a Degas subject to a restitution claim, a Rodin sculpture, and a debated Cézanne. The museum's provenance research team, led by Inès Rotermund-Reynard, collaborates with the French Ministry of Culture's M2RS mission.

« À qui appartiennent ces œuvres ? » : le destin des biens culturels spoliés par les nazis au cœur d’un nouvel espace au musée d’Orsay

On May 5, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris inaugurated a new dedicated space in the Pavillon Amont for artworks looted during World War II that remain unclaimed by their owners or heirs. The room, titled "À qui appartiennent ces œuvres ?" ("Who owns these works?"), features thirteen pieces including sculptures by Auguste Rodin and paintings by Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Eugène Boudin. These represent a fraction of the museum's 225 MNR (Musées nationaux récupération) holdings, part of a national legacy of approximately 2,000 looted works still held in French museums.

Gala Porras-Kim: Future spaces replicate earlier spaces

Gala Porras-Kim presents her first exhibition at kurimanzutto in Mexico City, titled "Future spaces replicate earlier spaces," running from April 11 to June 13, 2026. The show brings together works that examine how museums and conservation institutions reclassify objects removed from their original contexts, using reconstruction and resituating to explore their spatial, material, and temporal conditions. Central to the exhibition is the installation "The motion of an alluvial record" (2024), which recreates the humid marshland atmosphere of the Yucatán Peninsula inside the gallery, contrasting with the controlled climates of museums. Other works include drawings replicating wall decorations from the Techinantitla complex in Teotihuacan, which were fragmented and sold on the black market, and graphite drawings of objects by artist Brígido Lara, whose "original interpretations" of Totonac ritual clay objects were mistakenly catalogued as Pre-Hispanic artifacts in major museums.

Musée d’Orsay opens gallery dedicated to still-unclaimed works stolen by Nazis in WWII

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has opened a permanent gallery dedicated to artworks believed to have been looted by the Nazis from Jewish owners during World War II, but whose rightful owners have not been identified. The exhibition, titled "Who owns these works?", features a rotating selection of 225 such pieces held by the museum, with twelve paintings and one sculpture currently on display. Works by Renoir, Degas, Rodin, and Alfred Stevens are included, alongside provenance research detailing their murky histories—such as a Degas ballroom scene acquired by a Jewish collector later murdered at Auschwitz.

At Yale: the commercial empire within the British empire

The Yale Center for British Art presents 'Painters, Ports, and Profits,' an exhibition of 115 items spanning a century of art and history, focusing on the East India Company's commercial empire. The show includes paintings, prints, drawings, books, and artifacts such as a 37-foot watercolor scroll of Lucknow (1826) and works by Indian artist Gangaram Chintaman Navgire Tambat, who emerges as the artistic star with 20 pieces. It also features prints of the company's opium factory and 'The Opium Fleet Descending The Ganges' by Walter Stanhope Sherwill, highlighting the company's role in the Opium Wars with China.

A Long-Overdue Reckoning With Nazi-Looted Art on exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has opened a new permanent gallery titled "À qui appartiennent ces œuvres ?" ("To whom do these works belong?") dedicated to MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupération) artworks—pieces recovered after World War II that have not yet been returned to their rightful owners. The single-room exhibition displays thirteen works from the 225 "artistic orphans" held by the museum, including paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Alfred Stevens. Curators have suspended several works between glass panels to expose the backs of the canvases, revealing inventory stamps and gallery labels that trace their journey from Jewish homes into the Nazi art machine.

Spring brings two new exhibits to Banff's Whyte Museum

Two new exhibitions have opened at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff: "Thick as Thieves," a touring show from the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, and "When our eyes touch," drawn from the museum's own collection. "Thick as Thieves" explores themes of power, secrecy, and trust through works spanning from Auguste Rodin sculptures to contemporary pieces by August Klintberg and Amanda Strong, curated by Crystal Mowry. "When our eyes touch" focuses on portraiture by museum founders Peter Whyte and Catharine Robb Whyte, featuring paintings from their time at art school in Boston and later portraits of Stoney Nakoda community members, curated by Dagny Dubois and Christina Cuthbertson. Both exhibitions run until November 8.

La restitution du lit de Louis XVI

The Château de Versailles has inaugurated the restored private bedroom of King Louis XVI, featuring a fully recreated bed that was burned during the French Revolution. The project, which took forty years of research and craftsmanship, involved reconstructing the bed from sparse 18th-century archives, including a sculptor's memorandum by Babel and a fabric sample preserved by the silk manufacturer Tassinari & Chatel. The restoration also includes a commode from the Château de Compiègne, as the original is at Chantilly, and follows principles of harmony in gilding and textile motifs.

Sara Shamma brings Syria’s cultural renewal to Venice Biennale

Sara Shamma, the first female artist to lead Syria's national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, presents her immersive installation *The Tower Tomb of Palmyra* at Iuav University of Venice's Cotonificio campus. The full-scale, nine-sided chamber features paintings, light, sound, and scent inspired by Palmyra's ancient funerary towers, which Shamma first encountered as a student at the National Museum of Damascus. The project, originally planned for Cambridge before the pandemic, gained new significance after the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, as Shamma returned to Damascus and was approached by Syria's Ministry of Culture to represent the country's cultural renewal on the world stage.

The Syrian Pavilion returns to Venice after the fall of the regime. The interview

A Venezia torna il Padiglione della Siria dopo il crollo del regime. L’intervista

The Syrian Pavilion returns to the Venice Biennale after the fall of the regime, marking the country's first participation since 2024. The pavilion, curated by artist Sara Shamma, is housed in the former refrigerated warehouses of Santa Marta at the Iuav University of Venice and runs until November 22. It features an installation inspired by the ancient funerary towers of Palmyra, combining painting, architecture, light, sound, and scent to explore cultural heritage and the restitution of looted antiquities.

The Foreign Ministry presented art prints of stolen paintings from the Kherson Art Museum

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has opened an exhibition titled "Return of Kherson’s Memory. Stolen Art Preserved in Museum Artprints," featuring 30 high-quality reproductions of masterpieces stolen by Russian forces from the Kherson Regional Art Museum named after Oleksii Shovkunenko in autumn 2022. The stolen works include pieces by artists Mykola Pymonenko, Ivan Aivazovsky, and Viktor Zaretsky, among over 10,000 items illegally removed from the museum just before Kherson’s de-occupation. The exhibition was organized by the museum team and the art platform Vivid Fusion.