raymond saunders carnegie museum retrospective review

Raymond Saunders's first retrospective, a small but potent exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, surveys 35 of his bewitching paintings. The works, described as elusive and Rauschenbergian, feature messy scrawls, collected trinkets, and media clippings, with pieces like *Passages: East, West 1* (1987) layering chess boards, paint strokes, and appropriated still lifes. Saunders, who joined Andrew Kreps and David Zwirner last year, has never before received a retrospective, despite his influential 1967 essay "Black Is a Color" and steady institutional acquisitions.

ruth asawa retrospective sfmoma review

Ruth Asawa's first retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1973 featured a communal "dough-in" where children made art from baker's clay, a practice that drew skepticism from some onlookers. Now in 2025, SFMOMA presents a larger retrospective of Asawa's work, showcasing her wire sculptures, drawings, and playful, community-oriented art. The exhibition, organized by SFMOMA's Janet Bishop and MoMA's Cara Manes, will travel to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Fondation Beyeler.

Notes from New York: The World in a Convex Mirror

The article reviews the sixth edition of MoMA PS1's quinquennial survey 'Greater New York 2026,' which coincides with the institution's 50th anniversary. It highlights works by artists such as Covey Gong, Win McCarthy, Mekko Harjo, and Sophie Friedman-Pappas, noting how the exhibition's themeless structure and use of reflective surfaces create a hall of distorted reflections. The show includes 53 emerging and midcareer artists, mostly millennials, and is accompanied by a block party and gala rather than a dedicated commemorative exhibition like FORTY (2016).

What ‘Costume Art’ Gets Wrong About the Body

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute spring exhibition, featuring nearly 400 objects, pairs garments and ensembles with Western figurative artworks from the museum's permanent collection in dyadic, associative displays. The show eschews traditional art-historical timelines and context in favor of visual and thematic parallels—comparing, for example, Rudi Gernreich's Pubikini with an Egyptian statuette, or Ying Gao's sound-responsive dress with a David Hockney drawing. The exhibition is sponsored by Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

Hulda Guzmán review – lizards and ghosts gather for an art freakout in the rainforest

Hulda Guzmán's first institutional exhibition in Europe, "Please Awake – Asked Nature Kindly," is on view at Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK. The show features the Dominican artist's ultra-colorful, psychedelic jungle paintings that blend art historical references—from Japanese ukiyo-e prints to pointillism and symbolism—with personal mythology, demons, spirits, and lush tropical landscapes. The works are drawn from her life in the Dominican rainforest, where she lives and works in a studio built by her architect father.

Raphael Met Museum Retrospective Review

raphael met museum retrospective review

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," the first major retrospective of the Renaissance master ever staged in the United States. Curated by Carmen C. Bambach, the exhibition features 237 works, including rare loans of drawings and monumental tapestries that have not left Madrid since the 16th century. While some of his most famous paintings remain in Europe, the show provides an exhaustive look at the artist's development from a teenage prodigy to a papal favorite.

What does a woman swimming in urine tell us about the state of the world? Lots! – Venice Biennale review

The 2026 Venice Biennale, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh under the theme "In Minor Keys," has been plagued by months of turmoil including countries withdrawing, artists being fired, exhibitions cancelled, funding pulled, and protests during the preview. A five-person curatorial team took over after Kouoh's death, resulting in what the critic describes as a disjointed, committee-driven exhibition that prioritizes quiet contemplation and healing over direct political engagement. The central shows in the Giardini and Arsenale feature a vast, poorly explained array of art from the global south, with installations of ceramics, textiles, slide projectors, and serene natural scenes that the critic finds anachronistic and dull.

Michael Armitage in Venice, monumental and disturbing. What the exhibition at Palazzo Grassi looks like

Michael Armitage is the subject of a major solo retrospective at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, marking his largest exhibition in Europe to date. Organized by the Pinault Collection, the show features monumental paintings that blend African identity, local Kenyan chronicles, and mythological narratives. Armitage’s work is noted for its physical scale and its ability to transform the chaos of human affairs into a syncretic epic, utilizing traditional materials like Lubugo bark cloth to ground his contemporary subjects.

art los angeles fall openings review

The article is a review of fall art openings in Los Angeles, written by Juliana Halpert for her Critics’ Table debut. Halpert surveys a range of exhibitions, including Calvin Marcus's show at Karma, Stanya Kahn's solo presentation, the Hammer Museum's "Made in L.A." biennial and its scrappier counterpart "Made in HelLA," Josh Smith's grim reaper paintings at David Zwirner, and Adam Alessi's show at Hoffman Donahue. She also recounts attending the Poetic Research Bureau's 25th anniversary party and fundraiser at 2220 Arts + Archives, where musician Jack Skelley performed. The review weaves a thematic thread of mortality and the macabre, noting how many shows this season engage with death, from fake blood and skulls to sinister landscapes.

Alma Allen’s US Pavilion Is One of the Emptiest Shows at the Venice Biennale

Alma Allen represents the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a subdued, apolitical exhibition inside the US Pavilion. The show features roughly 25 sculptures—mostly in bronze, wood, and stone—many titled "Not Yet Titled," and deliberately avoids overt political messaging. This marks a stark departure from the previous two US pavilions, curated by Simone Leigh (2022) and Jeffrey Gibson (2024), which directly confronted colonialism and empire. The Trump administration’s call for proposals explicitly asked for work that "reflects and promotes American values," and Allen’s presentation has been criticized as safe, unremarkable, and lacking the incisive edge of contemporary American art.

hito steyerl medium hot images heat verso

Artist Hito Steyerl has published a new book, *Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat*, through Verso, continuing her long-running exploration of how images, technology, and politics intersect. The article traces her intellectual evolution from earlier works like *The Wretched of the Screen* (2013) and *Duty Free Art* (2017), highlighting key essays and video works such as *How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File* (2013), which satirizes surveillance culture. It notes that Steyerl topped ArtReview’s 2017 Power List as the most influential person in the art world, and that her latest book addresses war and violent conflict in the context of Web3, with a more decisive tone.

The National Gallery of Art’s Dear America Needs a Postscript

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has opened "Dear America," an exhibition organized around the themes of "Land," "Community," and "Freedom" that attempts to survey the entire history of the United States through its collection. The show features works by artists including Mitch Epstein, Victoria Sambunaris, Sedrick E. Huckaby, and Nancy Andrews, with sections on the American landscape, industrialization, and diverse communities. However, the review notes that the exhibition feels overly literal, with American flags prominently featured and a sense of ticking off boxes rather than offering a challenging or intellectually rigorous presentation.

Exhibition Review & Studio Visit Feature: Don Porcaro and his “Lost Stories” at Westwood Gallery

Don Porcaro (American, b. 1950) presented his second solo exhibition at Westwood Gallery in New York, titled "Lost Stories," featuring two series of stone sculptures: towering polylithic pillars from the Lost Stories series and mysterious artifact-like objects from the Art or Fact series. Curated by gallery co-founder James Cavello, the show highlights Porcaro's lifelong practice of sourcing stones from diverse geographies and reconfiguring them into stacked, architecturally inspired forms that evoke prehistoric megaliths, ancient columns, and funerary urns.

Is This What “Made in America” Looks Like?

Christopher Payne's exhibition "Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne" at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum showcases 72 large-format photographs documenting active American factories and manufacturing processes. The trained architect turned photographer spent a decade visiting dozens of production sites across the United States, from the New York Times printing plant in Queens to the Bollman Hat Company in Pennsylvania, capturing workers' craftsmanship and the intricate steps involved in making everything from Peeps candies to jet engines. The exhibition is organized into three sections—traditional handcraft, large-scale production, and cutting-edge technologies—and coincides with the Smithsonian's celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary.

Yu Ji’s Democratic Play

Yu Ji's solo exhibition at PPOW, New York, titled "Origin of the Tiger," presents sculptures and collages created after a residency she organized in Phnom Penh that offered art education to children. The show features works like reed mats with snail shells, a Sony Trinitron looping video, collaged drawings incorporating Cambodian children's art, and composite sculptures such as chairs with concrete knee casts and a figure inspired by a misattributed sixth-century Krishna statue. The exhibition draws on a Khmer folktale about transformation and includes audio of children reciting the story, though the children appear more as muses than collaborators.

j hobermans book everything is now 1960s nyc downtown yoko ono andy warhol

J. Hoberman's new book, *Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop*, offers a sweeping cultural history of the downtown New York scene in the 1960s. The book centers on figures like Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Jack Smith, weaving together experimental films, happenings, music, and the chaotic energy of the era. Hoberman, a longtime critic and curator, draws on his personal connections to the scene, including his mentorship under Mekas, and will present a selection of shorts from the book at Anthology Film Archives in June.

How Former Fashion Designer Emma Safir Turns Fabric into Beguiling Paintings

Emma Safir, a former fashion designer and printmaker, creates beguiling paintings and tapestries that blend textiles, digital printing, and traditional embroidery techniques. Her works, such as "APRICOT SILK" (2025) and "BABY DARLING" (2025), use smocking, glass beads, and shells to produce organic, jewel-toned surfaces that resist easy reflection or entry, challenging viewers to engage with layered material hierarchies.

This Liminal Moment

The article reviews the exhibition "MONUMENTS" at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and the Brick in Los Angeles, which addresses the legacy of Confederate monuments through contemporary art. It highlights Cauleen Smith's installation "The Warden" (2025), which features a live-feed of the decommissioned Confederate sculpture "Vindicatrix" (also known as "Miss Confederacy") by Edward V. Valentine, originally atop the Jefferson Davis Memorial in Richmond, Virginia. The exhibition is curated by Hamza Walker, Kara Walker, and Bennett Simpson.

Jule Korneffel Finds Meaning at the End of Light

Artist Jule Korneffel's solo exhibition 'In Search of Lost Light' is on view at Spencer Brownstone Gallery through May 2. The show features seven paintings from 2023 to the present, including a site-specific wall work, that explore themes of fading light, memory, and melancholia through a nuanced palette of grays and blues.

bianca censori peformance art bio pop

Australian architect Bianca Censori, known globally for her fashion and marriage to rapper Kanye West, debuted her first performance art piece titled "BIO POP" in Seoul. The 14-minute silent performance, staged over two days, features Censori baking a cake in a kitchen before pushing it to a living room filled with contortionists resembling her. The work is the first of seven planned performances over seven years, with future installments including "CONFESSIONAL (THE WITNESS)" and "BIANCA IS MY DOLL BABY (THE IDOL)."

art david rimanelli alex katz matthew barney

The article reviews Alex Katz's latest exhibition at Gladstone Gallery in New York, featuring 11 large orange-and-white canvases depicting the road to his Maine home, alongside Matthew Barney's three-channel video work "DRAWING RESTRAINT 28" showing Katz at work on a ladder. The show, on view through December 20, 2025, pairs Katz's new paintings with Barney's video, continuing a collaboration first seen at O'Flaherty's gallery. Katz, now 98, reflects on his artistic evolution, citing Matisse's "The Red Studio" as inspiration while asserting his move away from literal representation.

sanya kantarovsky chloe dzubilo rosemarie trockel

Two new art critics join the fold at Cultured, with Johanna Fateman reviewing Sanya Kantarovsky's first New York solo show since 2019, "Scarecrow," at Michael Werner Gallery's two Upper East Side locations. The exhibition features paintings, monotypes, and a glazed stoneware vase centered on Hera, a whippet belonging to artists Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood, alongside works like *Stage (Watteau)* that engage with historical painting. Mary Simpson covers Rosemarie Trockel's acerbic conceptualism, and Jeanette Bisschops reviews a posthumous exhibition of Chloe Dzubilo's intimate and irate drawings, "The Prince George Drawings," at Participant Inc., curated by Alex Fleming and Nia Nottage.

New biography offers well-crafted story of Louise Bourgeois’s rich life

Marie-Laure Bernadac’s new biography, 'Knife-Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois', provides a comprehensive look at the French-American artist’s prolific career and traumatic upbringing. The book explores how Bourgeois transformed childhood wounds—specifically her father’s infidelity and psychological cruelty—into a radical body of work spanning sculpture, installation, and textiles. From her early encouragement by Fernand Léger to her late-career fame with the 'Maman' spider sculptures, the biography traces her evolution from a painter to a boundary-defying sculptor who utilized materials ranging from latex to marble.

Comment | Tate Britain’s Turner and Constable show got me thinking about Marxist art history

The author recounts traveling from Scotland to London to see Tate Britain's exhibition "Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals," despite costly and slow train travel. The article also covers the Old Master sales at Sotheby's, Christie's, and Bonhams, noting mixed results: a Flemish triptych sold for £5.7m, a Hans Eworth portrait set a record at £3.2m, and a Gerrit Dou fetched £3.8m, while a Panini capriccio lost value since 2005.

In a new biography, Vanessa Bell is cast as the Bloomsbury Group's leading light—and as central to 20th-century visual culture

Wendy Hitchmough’s new biography, *Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical*, argues that Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was a central figure in 20th-century visual culture, both as an artist and designer. The book details how Bell navigated sexism through collaboration and anonymity, with works like *Dancing Couple* only attributed to her in 1999. Hitchmough, a former curator of Charleston, presents Bell’s life with a matter-of-fact tone, weaving in the complex personal and professional entanglements of the Bloomsbury Group, including her relationships with Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Molly MacCarthy.

Comment | I used to think it wasn’t cool to like Andy Goldsworthy—now I see how he helps us appreciate the natural world

Mia maxima culpa. For many years I felt it wasn’t cool to like Andy Goldsworthy. The British artist’s interventions in and workings with nature, while highly skilful and often very beautiful, seemed out of kilter with an increasingly hardcore, conceptually underpinned and urban-orientated art world. It also didn’t help that most of his work could only be experienced at one remove. Books and photographs were the only record of the ephemeral pieces he’d created from ice, leaves, sticks and stones; as well as of the more lasting installations—walls, sheepfolds, cairn paths and giant arches—he’d make in situ, usually in remote locations across the world.

Mark Milroy Sees, Remembers, and Imagines at Once

Artist Mark Milroy, an observational painter in his mid-50s who gained a following during the pandemic through Instagram and online shows at Nancy Margolis Gallery, is now holding his debut New York exhibition, "Jumbo," at JJ Murphy gallery through May 16. The show features 18 oil paintings and 12 colored pencil drawings, with subjects ranging from still lifes and portraits to a titular painting referencing the famous P.T. Barnum elephant killed in Milroy's hometown of St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1885. Milroy's work blends personal memory, art historical insight, and a deliberate gaze, drawing influences from Cedric Morris and 15th-century Florentine painting.

"She's Like the Wind"

The article reviews "She's Like the Wind," an annual all-female group exhibition at Deep Space gallery in Jersey City, featuring works by artists Delilah Ray Miske, Leigh Cunningham, and SarahGrace. Miske's painting "Lemon Lime Toe of God" shows only a woman's leg and foot, while Cunningham's oil paintings present figures as blurred forms seen through a translucent curtain, and SarahGrace's textile works depict headless female nudes with suggestive titles like "Provoke" and "Dominate." The show marks a departure from the gallery's typically family-friendly, sex-averse programming.

A Whole Lot of Nothing at the US Pavilion

The US Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale features sculptor Alma Allen's exhibition "Call Me the Breeze," curated by Jeffrey Uslip. The show presents untitled, amorphous sculptures in bronze, wood, and stone, including Colorado Yule marble. The selection process was controversial: after the Trump administration excluded the National Endowment for the Arts, the State Department initially picked artist Robert Lazzarini and curator John Ravenal, but that plan collapsed. The American Arts Conservancy, a new nonprofit led by Jenni Parido (a former pet food store operator with Mar-a-Lago ties), then took over, hiring Uslip, who approached Barbara Chase-Riboud and William Eggleston before settling on Allen. Donors include businessman John Phelan and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.

The Unnameable Artists of the Canton Trade System

Art historian Winnie Wong’s new book, *The Many Names of Anonymity: Portraitists of the Canton Trade*, investigates the lives and legacies of 18th and 19th-century Chinese artists who produced works for Western traders under the Canton system. These artists, often dismissed by history as mere copyists or left anonymous in museum "tombstone" labels, created complex works that blended European techniques with Chinese traditions. Wong challenges the reductive category of "Asian export art," proposing instead the term "Canton trade painting" to better reflect the unique atmosphere of cultural exchange in Guangzhou.