Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential List Includes Artist Cao Fei and Photojournalist Lynsey Addario

Time magazine has named artist Cao Fei and photojournalist Lynsey Addario to its 2026 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cao Fei is recognized for her multidisciplinary work exploring digital technology and modernity, while Addario is honored for her decades of courageous reporting from global conflict zones, including her Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the war in Ukraine. The list also acknowledges prominent art patrons Susan and Michael Dell.

Two Renoir exhibitions at Musée d’Orsay explore the joy of human connection

Two Renoir exhibitions at Musée d’Orsay explore the joy of human connection

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is opening two concurrent exhibitions dedicated to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, titled 'Renoir and Love: A Joyful Modernity (1865-85)' and 'Renoir Drawings'. The shows focus on the first two decades of his career, featuring major works like 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' and rarely seen pieces from private collections, such as 'Confidence'. The exhibitions will later travel to the National Gallery in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

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Artnet News asked leading curators and museum directors to share their favorite artworks of all time. Connie Butler of MoMA PS1 chose David Hammons's "Bliz-aard Ball Sale" (1983), praising its connection from Duchamp to AI. Julieta Gonzalez of the Wexner Center selected Hans Holbein the Younger's "The Ambassadors" (1533), highlighting its anamorphic skull as a metaphor for viewing modernity from the margins. Madeleine Grynsztejn of MCA Chicago picked Francisco Goya's "A Pilgrimage to San Isidro" (1819–23) from his Black Paintings cycle, calling it a metaphor for fanaticism.

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The article recounts the author's experience attending Baku Art Weekend in Azerbaijan, a festival centered at the Zaha Hadid-designed Heydar Aliyev Centre. The event featured a major exhibition of Fernando Botero's work, "The Triumph of Form," alongside kinetic installations by Daniel Wurtzel and sculptures by Jorge Marín. The festival is shaped by Leyla Aliyeva, vice president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and daughter of Azerbaijan's president, who aims to position Baku as a global cultural capital.

With her monumental frescoes and trompe-l'œil, Lucy McKenzie offers a "critical archaeology" of modernity

Avec ses fresques monumentales et ses trompe-l’œil, Lucy McKenzie offre une “archéologie critique” de la modernité

Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie has opened a major solo exhibition titled "Plastic Newspaper" at the Crac Occitanie in Sète, France. This is her first large-scale personal exhibition in the country. The show features monumental frescoes, trompe-l'œil, and immersive installations, including a full-scale fake sports shop facade created with her fashion label Atelier E.B. It represents the third stage of a cycle exploring the origins of mass media, examining 19th-century entertainment devices like panoramas and dioramas.

Van Gogh Museum Explores the Artist's Obsession with Yellow

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The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has launched a major exhibition centered on Vincent van Gogh’s profound obsession with the color yellow. The show explores how the artist utilized the hue—from the 'pale sulfur' of his Arles landscapes to his iconic sunflowers and the famous Yellow House—as a symbol of life-giving sunshine and modernity. Beyond Van Gogh’s own masterpieces, the exhibition features works by 19th- and 20th-century masters like Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint, as well as a contemporary light installation by Olafur Eliasson.

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TEFAF New York returns to the Park Avenue Armory from May 9–13, 2025, featuring 91 exhibitors from around the world. The fair presents a broad range of modern and contemporary art, jewelry, antiquities, and design, with highlights including an untitled canvas by Shirley Jaffe at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, a ceramic bird sculpture by Guidette Carbonell at Lebreton Gallery, a Roman marble head of a bearded god at Charles Ede, and design pieces such as Zaha Hadid's Liquid Glacial coffee table at David Gill Gallery and Josef Frank's 'Flora' chest of drawers at Modernity Stockholm. The event also includes curated displays in the venue's historic period rooms, a feature unique to this fair.

Telfair Museums presents Impressionism and Modernity: French and American Painting opening May 15

Telfair Museums will present "Impressionism and Modernity: French and American Painting" at the Jepson Center for the Arts from May 15 through August 16, 2026. Organized for the museum's 140th anniversary, the exhibition brings together Telfair's collection of American Impressionist works with key French Impressionist paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., featuring artists such as Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, and Vincent van Gogh. The show explores Impressionism's origins in France, its transatlantic influence, and its impact on American art and identity, with works addressing themes of modern life, leisure, the city, and nostalgia for nature.

Why yellow was Van Gogh's favourite colour

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has launched a new exhibition titled "Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour," running until May 17. The show explores Vincent van Gogh’s profound obsession with the color yellow, featuring eight of his works alongside pieces by contemporaries like Paul Gauguin and Aubrey Beardsley. It highlights Van Gogh's technical use of chrome yellow pigments to capture the "high yellow note" of the Provencal sun and the symbolic association of the color with modernity and life-giving energy.

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A new retrospective at Kunsthaus Zurich, soon traveling to Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, spotlights Suzanne Duchamp (1889–1963), a French artist often overshadowed by her brothers Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon. The exhibition, titled “Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective,” showcases her highly individual painterly practice rooted in Cubism and Dada, featuring works like *Radiation of Two Solitary Separates Apart* (1916–20) and *Marcel’s Unhappy Readymade* (1920), which reappropriates her brother’s readymade concept. The show includes a new catalog commission by painter Amy Sillman, who created digital drawings inspired by Duchamp’s formal dynamics.

La galerie contemporaine de la cathédrale d’Angers plaît

The article reports that the contemporary art gallery at the Cathedral of Angers has been well received. It highlights the cathedral's new exhibition space dedicated to contemporary works, marking a notable integration of modern art within a historic religious site.

On Arte, a Documentary Deciphers the Persistent Misunderstanding Around the Painter of Happiness, Auguste Renoir

Sur Arte, un documentaire décrypte le malentendu tenace autour du peintre du bonheur, Auguste Renoir

A new documentary titled "Renoir in Love" airing on Arte examines the persistent critical misunderstanding surrounding Auguste Renoir. The film, released in tandem with a major double exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, argues that Renoir's joyful depictions of couples and modern leisure have been unfairly dismissed as saccharine, relegating him to the margins of modern art history. It presents a nuanced portrait of an artist whose work was fundamentally driven by a philosophy of love and human connection.

Queer Horizon: “Spectrosynthesis Seoul” at Art Sonje Center

The fourth edition of "Spectrosynthesis," Sunpride Foundation's exhibition series dedicated to LGBTQ+ art in Asia, opens at Art Sonje Center in Seoul. Curated by Sunjung Kim and Youngwoo Lee, the show unfolds in two parts: "The Two-Sided Seashell" and "Tender: Invisibly Visible, Unlocatably Everywhere," featuring works by artists including Sin Wai Kin and Young-Jun Tak. The exhibition engages with queer theory, particularly José Esteban Muñoz's concept of queerness as a horizon of potentiality, and responds to South Korea's recent political turbulence, including the 2024 martial law declaration and presidential impeachment.

Negative Impressions and Positive Traces of ’20th Century Debris’.

Marc Brandenburg's solo exhibition '20th Century Debris' is on view at the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin until September 14, 2026. The show features approximately 150 works, including early drawings from the 1990s, recent pieces, video, photography, and tattoo editions, all exploring spectral cityscapes and the debris of contemporary life through a process of tonal reversal and inversion.

Summer Previews: The Season’s Most Anticipated Shows

Artforum's editors preview twenty-five anticipated institutional exhibitions opening worldwide between May and August. Highlights include "Fade" at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the latest in its career-making "F show" series featuring seventeen emerging artists of African descent; "Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte" at the Jewish Museum in New York, showcasing over 180 women designers from Austria's famed atelier; "Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz" at the Hessel Museum of Art, exploring the intersection of Navajo weaving and microchip history; the 59th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, with 61 artists spread across Pittsburgh venues; and "Mary Ellen Carroll: How to Talk Dirty and Influence People" at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

At the New Museum, Parallel Visions of Humanity’s Future Emerge

The New Museum's latest exhibition explores the evolving definition of humanity through the lens of technological advancement and ancestral wisdom. The show juxtaposes the anxieties of modern machine labor—exemplified by Simon Denny’s Amazon worker cage—with Indigenous epistemologies and animist traditions that offer alternative ways of inhabiting the world. By featuring artists like Jaider Esbell and Santiago Yahuarcani, the exhibition highlights how hybridity and relationality can resist the rigid hierarchies of Western modernity.

Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World

The Art Institute of Chicago presents 'Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World,' a major exhibition running from June 29 to October 5, 2025, featuring over 120 works including paintings, works on paper, photographs, and ephemera. The show explores the personal interests and relationships that shaped the Impressionist artist, highlighting his focus on family, friends, sportsmen, and workers, as well as his unique depictions of nude men. It includes iconic pieces like 'Paris Street; Rainy Day' and 'Floor Scrapers,' alongside lesser-known works such as the Musée d'Orsay's recent acquisition 'Boating Party' and the Louvre Abu Dhabi's 'The Bezique Game,' many from private collections rarely seen by American audiences.

Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939

The Saint Louis Art Museum is presenting "Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939," a major exhibition on view from April 12 to July 27, 2025. Curated by Genevieve Cortinovis, the show brings together automobiles, haute couture, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and decorative arts to explore the intertwined evolution of fashion and car design in early 20th-century France. Highlights include a 1917 painting by Henri Matisse depicting the view from his Renault, juxtapositions of Alfa Romeo and Citroën logos with works by Piet Mondrian and Charles Loupot, and a c. 1927 dress by Suzanne Talbot inspired by Tutankhamun's funerary mask. The exhibition draws heavily from local and midwestern collections, including the Missouri Historical Society.

The new era of fashion’s art exhibitions

LACMA's upcoming David Geffen Galleries, opening in 2026, will feature over 130 costumes and textiles in its inaugural installations—more than any other time since the museum opened in 1965. The museum also plans exhibitions such as 'Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity' (with mannequins by Jason Wu) and 'Fashioning Fashion' (1900–2025). Other major fashion exhibitions include 'Virgil Abloh: The Codes' at Paris's Grand Palais, 'Westwood Kawakubo' at the National Gallery of Victoria, and 'Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art' at London's V&A. The article notes that fashion exhibitions are increasingly popular and profitable for museums, citing the Met's Costume Institute and its record-breaking Met Gala fundraising.

And We Shall Go Through Their Hills Without Much Delay

This article documents three journeys into and out of Yunnan, China, spanning from 1874 to 2023. It begins with British interpreter Augustus Raymond Margary's failed colonial expedition to establish a trade route, which ended in his violent death and contributed to unequal treaties opening Southwest China. It then follows a Naxi student named Xueshan in 1937, whose railway journey introduced modern timekeeping to the region, and finally describes the construction of the Burma Road, a critical WWII supply route. The narrative concludes with the artist Cheng Xinhao retracing these routes on foot from Kunming toward Burma over a year and a half, reflecting on history, bodily experience, and the layers of infrastructure that have reshaped the landscape.

A 30-year media artist transforms: “I wanted to awaken tradition through painting”

A 30-year media artist transforms: “I wanted to awaken tradition through painting”

Renowned South Korean media artist Park Chan-kyong has returned to his roots with a solo exhibition of paintings titled "Zen Master Eyeball" at Kukje Gallery. The show features over 20 satirical works that reinterpret Buddhist myths, shamanic traditions, and folk beliefs through a lens of "Zen Buddhist Grotesque Science Fiction." By utilizing traditional temple wall painting techniques and architectural layouts, Park explores themes of enlightenment, self-punishment, and the futility of contemporary visual consumption.

What Made Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades So Revolutionary?

Marcel Duchamp transformed the trajectory of 20th-century art by introducing the 'Readymade,' a concept where mass-produced, everyday objects are elevated to the status of art through the artist's selection rather than manual craft. Beginning with a bicycle wheel in 1913 and a bottle rack in 1914, Duchamp eventually formalized the term during a 1915 stay in New York, where the city's industrial modernity and lack of rigid class structures inspired him to challenge traditional definitions of creativity.

A historic section of the Eiffel Tower's original staircase is set to go up for auction

Un tronçon historique de l’escalier d’origine de la tour Eiffel s’apprête à s’envoler aux enchères

The auction house Artcurial is set to auction a 2.75-meter-tall section of the original spiral staircase from the Eiffel Tower on May 21. This specific segment, consisting of fourteen riveted steel steps, was part of the structure connecting the second and third floors until it was dismantled in 1983 to make way for modern elevators. Estimated between €120,000 and €150,000, the piece holds significant historical value as it is the inaugural 'Lot No. 1' from the original 1983 dispersal sale.

Asian Heritage Month 2026 at the Vancouver Art Gallery

The Vancouver Art Gallery is hosting a month-long program of talks, tours, and workshops for Asian Heritage Month 2026, celebrating Asian art and ideas. Highlights include weekly Lunchtime Look tours led by Senior Curator Diana Freundl and a Mandarin-language tour by Lynn Chen, a panel discussion titled "Modernity in Translation: Art, Architecture and Poetry in Iran" moderated by curator Pantea Haghighi with architect Hossein Amanat and Dr. Jeff Derksen, and a hands-on collage workshop by artist Vanessa Lam. The program also previews the gallery's upcoming landmark exhibition "Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78," opening December 11, 2026, which will be the largest presentation of Iranian modernism ever mounted in Canada, featuring over 30 artists and approximately 100 works.

9 Spectacular Art and Fashion Exhibitions You Can’t Miss in 2026

The article previews nine major art and fashion exhibitions scheduled for 2026 across Europe and the United States. Highlights include the V&A's first UK survey of Elsa Schiaparelli, tracing her radical approach to couture; ICA Miami's immersive Dolce&Gabbana showcase celebrating Italian craftsmanship; the Met's comprehensive Raphael exhibition featuring over 170 works; the Musée d'Orsay's exploration of Renoir's joyful modernity; and Palais Galliera's look at 18th-century fashion's lasting influence.

Art for Our Age of Chaos

The article reviews two major New York exhibitions opening in 2026: the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, featuring over fifty artists, and "New Humans: Memories of the Future" at the newly expanded New Museum, with over a hundred artists. Both shows are described as enormous and defiant, responding to a distracted public and financial pressures. The reviewer notes that both exhibitions juxtapose large-scale immersive works with tiny, intimate pieces, and finds the Whitney Biennial lacking urgency, while preferring the New Museum's historical narrative about technology and modernity.

Sarasota Art Museum stages an Art Deco extravaganza

The Sarasota Art Museum (SAM) on the Ringling College of Art and Design campus has opened "Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration," an exhibition of 100 large posters from the Crouse family collection. Curated by Rangsook Yoon, the show celebrates the 100th anniversary of Art Deco, tracing its origins from the Belle Epoque through the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, and features works by artists such as Alphonse Mucha, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. The Crouses, who previously lent works to The Guggenheim and the Victoria and Albert Museum, displayed part of their collection at New York's Poster House in 2023-2024.

The West as Witness: Langston Hughes Reimagined

The California African American Museum (CAAM) has launched 'A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West,' an exhibition that reframes the legendary Harlem Renaissance poet through his travels and political work in California and Nevada during the 1930s. By blending archival materials with contemporary artistic responses, the show moves beyond the traditional East Coast narrative to highlight Hughes as a diasporic thinker shaped by movement, labor, and the diverse landscapes of the American West.

8 art shows that should be on your radar for April and May

Architectural Digest India has published a guide to eight art shows opening in Delhi and Mumbai during April and May 2026. The article highlights exhibitions such as "He Who Permeates" at Tao Art Gallery, featuring NFN Kalyan and Jayesh Sachdev; "The Last Rust" at Chemould, showcasing Archana Hande's sculptural works; and "Tracing Tradition, Shaping Modernity" at Akara Modern, which draws from The Lechner Collection to pair Jamini Roy and Meera Mukherjee. The shows are curated to place different artists side by side, exploring shared themes through contrasting visual styles.

Queer sexuality in Islamic art explored in Norway exhibition

A new exhibition titled "Deviant Ornaments" opens at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) of Norway in Oslo, running from 27 November 2025 to 15 March 2026. Curated by Noor Bhangu, a South Asian curator and scholar based in Norway, the show explores queer desires and practices in the visual cultures of the Islamic world, bringing together over 40 works spanning 1,000 years. It connects historical objects—such as a Safavid textile, a 19th-century armband, and 13th-century Iranian wall tiles—with works by 12 contemporary artists, including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Alize Zorlutuna, Shahzia Sikander, Taner Ceylan, Damien Ajavon, Rah Eleh, Kasra Jalilipour, and Sa’dia Rehman. Four works are newly commissioned.