Berlin-based Singaporean artist Ming Wong premiered a new film, *Dance of the Sun on the Water | Saltatio Solis in Aqua*, at London's National Gallery. The work, created during a residency, reimagines Saint Sebastian as a queer, shape-shifting figure, with Asian performers of multiple genders enacting the martyrdom amidst the museum's collection of historical paintings of the saint.
This Masterpiece by Rembrandt’s Star Pupil Has a New Owner
Willem Drost's 1654 painting *Man With a Plumed Red Beret* has been acquired by the Leiden Collection, a private museum focused on Dutch Golden Age art. The sale was conducted privately through Agnews Gallery at the TEFAF Maastricht fair for an undisclosed sum, with the collection's founder calling it a "capstone acquisition."
Billionaire Reed Hastings, the former CEO of Netflix, has transformed Utah’s Powder Mountain ski resort into a unique 'skiable outdoor art museum.' Collaborating with landscape architect Reed Hilderbrand, the resort now features major installations by artists such as Nancy Holt, James Turrell, and EJ Hill. This development positions the resort as a contemporary companion to the region's historic land art landmarks, including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Holt’s Sun Tunnels.
The Brooklyn Museum has named photographer and multimedia artist Keisha Scarville the winner of its sixth annual UOVO Prize. She will receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant, a public exhibition titled "Where Salt Meets Black Water" at the museum's Iris Cantor Plaza opening May 8, and a commission for a large-scale work on the façade of UOVO's Bushwick storage facility.
Everlyn Nicodemus presents 'Without History' at Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, marking her first solo exhibition with the gallery and a rare return to the African continent since the 1980s. The show, organized in partnership with Richard Saltoun Gallery, features major bodies of work including the 'Woman in the World' cycle and the 'Wedding' series. These works, created while Nicodemus lived across Europe, explore themes of trauma, gender, and spiritual survival through a practice that blends painting with deep archival research and social anthropology.
Artist and cultural practitioner Dean Biŋkin Tyson presents "CREATE EXCHANGE: Painted Up," a dual-venue exhibition at Redland Art Gallery that showcases his multidisciplinary approach to Quandamooka and Gurang traditions. Moving beyond stereotypical "dot art," Tyson utilizes canvas, animal skins, and carved artifacts to translate his background as a dancer and songman into visual form. The exhibition features large-scale murals, traditional tools like boomerangs, and "shadow boxes"—a unique craft form developed in Aboriginal missions during the 1970s.
Un important bassin en majolique d'Urbino pour le Clark
The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown has acquired a significant 16th-century Urbino maiolica basin from the gallery Camille Leprince following its display at TEFAF. Attributed to the workshop of Orazio or Flaminio Fontana, the trilobed basin features intricate historiated scenes from the life of Joseph and elaborate grotesque decorations. The piece was a highlight of the fair and is accompanied by extensive research regarding its complex provenance.
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson presented 'A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake,' a large-scale multimedia installation in Salt Lake City’s Memory Grove Park. The work featured a three-story luminous sphere projecting visuals of wind currents and geothermal light, accompanied by a soundscape of migratory birds, brine flies, and frogs. Commissioned by the Salt Lake City Arts Council and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the ten-day public event served as a creative wake for the rapidly receding lake.
The Art Museum at the University of Toronto has opened a new exhibition titled "Land. Sea. Sugar. Salt.: Terrestrial and Aquatic Contemplations of the Caribbean." The show features works by contemporary artists from the Caribbean and its diaspora, exploring the region's complex geography, layered histories, and cultural intersections through themes of land, water, and the legacies of colonial industries like sugar production.
The Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro is hosting "Salt, Stone & Stars," a multidisciplinary event celebrating the Vermont pastoral tradition through literature and visual art. The program highlights the connection between two books centered on shepherding, Helen Whybrow’s "The Salt Stones" and Jody Gladding’s translation of "The Serpent of Stars," alongside the opening of the exhibition "Seasons & Cycles."
Artist and Holocaust survivor Yehudis Barmatz-Harris has installed a series of paintings within the barracks of Auschwitz-Birkenau, marking a profound personal and artistic return to the site of her family's trauma. The works, which utilize materials like salt and organic textures, are placed directly on the wooden bunks where prisoners once slept, creating a visceral dialogue between contemporary Jewish life and the void left by the Shoah.
The group exhibition "Virgin Islands Contemporary" is set to open at Salt of the Earth Tattoo in St. Thomas, featuring the work of ten local artists. Curated by Lucien Downes, the show highlights a diverse range of visual mediums that move beyond traditional Caribbean iconography like seascapes and historical narratives. The participating artists, including Brenda L. Cotto and Jon Euwema, explore themes of cultural evolution and identity through experimental materials and modern techniques.
Senior contemporary artist Parvathi Nayar's solo exhibition explores the interconnectedness of human histories and natural forces, focusing on themes of salt, memory, and ocean currents. The show features works that examine how human narratives are shaped by and inseparable from environmental elements, as described in a review by Deepa Natarajan Lobo.
Harry Chávez: Donde muerde el mito was the first presentation of Peruvian artist Harry Chávez's work at the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), held as part of the MALI Colecciones. Intervenciones contemporáneas program. The exhibition recently won the Premio Luces 2026 from El Comercio in the best exhibition category, a public-vote award reflecting its impact. The show explores symbolic conflicts between serpent and feline in Andean and Amazonian mythology, featuring works like 'Salto mortal' and 'Nacimiento del dragón' that depict cosmic struggles and hybrid transformations.
Eyecatcher und Entdeckungen
The 42nd edition of Art Brussels has scaled down to 138 exhibitors from 165 in 2025, responding to a sluggish contemporary art market and economic uncertainty. The fair introduces a new section called 'Horizonte,' curated by Devrim Bayar of Kanal Centre Pompidou, featuring six large-scale installations including Pao Hui Kao's delicate paper-and-lacquer refuge and Oswald Oberhuber's €380,000 panoramic painting 'Paradiesgarten.' Galleries are now consolidated into one hall, with fewer blue-chip participants but a continued focus on living artists (95% of the 500 shown). Notable presentations include Xavier Hufkens' solo show of Cassi Namoda, Krinziger's works by Marina Abramović and Monica Bonvicini, and Richard Saltoun's historical mix of Fernand Khnopff, Everlyn Nicodemus, and Suzanne Van Damme.
Sam Jacob's essay in ArtReview uses the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film 'EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert' (2026) as a springboard to explore the cultural and technical implications of digital restoration. The film, a spinoff from Luhrmann's 2022 Elvis biopic, draws on 59 hours of previously unseen footage from Elvis Presley's 1970 and 1972 Las Vegas performances, recovered from Warner's Kansas salt-mine archive. Using Peter Jackson's Park Road Post technology—including Machine Assisted Learning (MAL) for demixing audio and video—the damaged, fragmented material has been digitally scanned, reconstructed, and enhanced to 4k resolution with 12-channel sound, presented in IMAX cinemas.
Three tiny art exhibits are popping up across Utah, offering miniature artworks and community-driven art exchanges. The Community Caring Consortium in Bountiful, created by Heidi Bateman, features bright boxes on the sidewalk where people can leave and take tiny art. The Free Little Art Gallery, founded by Mike Christoff, operates like a Little Free Library for art, originally outside 1833 Craft in Salt Lake City and set to reopen in spring 2026. The Tiny Art Show in Provo displays original miniature artworks and opens Saturdays. Additionally, artist Loren Mendoza (Loren Duzzet) runs a doll-sized portrait booth at various boutiques, sketching likenesses for $10.
Photographer Jon McCormack captured a striking image of the Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island, Australia, framing the Southern Ocean through a naturally eroded granite hollow. The photograph, taken at sunset, emphasizes the graphic simplicity and sculptural quality of the ancient rock formations, which have been shaped by wind and salt over 10,000 years of isolation.
Mirosław Bałka has opened a major solo exhibition at the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, featuring a new large-scale installation titled 'CROSSOVER/S' (2026) alongside a selection of his works from the past two decades. The exhibition, curated by Vicente Todolí, explores themes of memory, absence, and the body through materials like salt, felt, and steel, creating an immersive, meditative environment.
Mirosław Bałka has opened a major solo exhibition at the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, featuring a new, large-scale installation titled 'CROSSOVER/S' (2026). The work, a monumental steel structure filled with salt, continues the Polish artist's decades-long exploration of memory, trauma, and the body, using industrial materials to evoke profound personal and historical narratives.
The Church History Museum in Salt Lake City has opened a new exhibition titled “From Above: Aboriginal Australian Art From the Bird Family.” The show features works by Indigenous Australian artists from the Anmatyerr culture who are also members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The artists, including Gary Bird Mpetyane, Maggie Bird Mpetyane, and Rose Coleena Wallace Nungari, traveled from Australia to attend the opening of the exhibit, which runs through August 1, 2026.
Artist Michael Joo has unveiled a major survey exhibition, "Sweat Models 1991–2026," at Space ZeroOne, a new institutional initiative by the Hanwha Foundation of Culture in Tribeca. The show features career-spanning works including "Concatenations," a massive architectural installation composed of century-old aluminum baking trays and personal ephemera, and salt-block sculptures that reference his background in biology and his family's history in cattle ranching.
West Hartford is launching "Artbeat 2026," an annual townwide exhibition showcasing the creative achievements of students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Hosted at the West Hartford Art League’s Saltbox and Clubhouse galleries, the show features a diverse range of student work and kicks off with a public opening reception on March 18.
Artist Meg Webster has collaborated with the Dia Art Foundation and Japanese fashion house Comme des Garçons to release her first signature perfume. The fragrance, inspired by Webster’s sensory earthworks made of soil and salt, features woodsy and petrichor notes housed in a silver tetrahedral box that mirrors her sculptural vocabulary. To celebrate the launch, a 2017 sculpture by Webster will be installed at the Comme des Garçons boutique in Chelsea, Manhattan.
The 2014 Whitney Biennial has debuted with a controversial three-curator structure, tasking Michelle Grabner, Stuart Comer, and Anthony Elms with organizing separate floors of the museum. This meta-review aggregates the initial critical reception from major publications, noting that the fragmented format has forced critics to evaluate the exhibition as three distinct shows rather than a unified vision.
Brooklyn-based photographer Keisha Scarville has been named the 2026 winner of the Brooklyn Museum’s Uovo Prize. The award includes a $25,000 cash prize, a solo exhibition at the museum, and a public art commission featured on the facade of Uovo’s Bushwick facility. Her upcoming presentation, titled "Where Salt Meets Black Water," will debut in May 2026 and features vinyl reproductions from her "Mama’s Clothes" series, which explores Guyanese heritage and maternal legacy through textiles.
Artist Tomás Saraceno has begun construction on "El Santuario del Agua" (The Water Sanctuary), a monumental art complex in the Salinas Grandes salt flats of northern Argentina. Developed in collaboration with 11 Indigenous communities and the Red Atacama coalition, the project consists of five semicircular salt structures inspired by Andean cosmology. Scheduled to open in October, the site will function as a community-owned space where visitors can engage with the landscape through elevated viewing platforms while supporting a sustainable tourism model.
The activist collective Halt Action Group (HAG) organized a second 'Dear Ivanka' protest in New York City as Ivanka Trump prepared to move to Washington, D.C. Protesters marched from Grand Army Plaza to Trump’s Park Avenue residence, carrying symbolic moving boxes labeled with social and political concerns such as women's rights, affordable healthcare, and freedom of the press. The event featured prominent art world figures and utilized visual metaphors, including a disavowed Richard Prince artwork, to urge Trump to act as a moderate influence on her father’s administration.
The AVA Gallery in Chattanooga is launching three distinct exhibitions for its March First Friday event. The main gallery features 'Jewelry & Adornment,' an annual members-only showcase of handcrafted wearable art, while the Landis Gallery hosts a juried exhibition of works by high school students from the Center for Creative Arts. Additionally, the gallery’s front window features 'Material Intimacies / Sacred Bodies,' a site-specific installation by Kris Bespalec utilizing rust- and salt-dyed fabrics to explore themes of industrial decay and ritual.
The Venice Biennale has released the artist list for its 61st edition, titled "In Minor Keys," featuring 111 participants. This edition is historically unique as its curator, Koyo Kouoh, passed away in May 2025 during the exhibition's development, leaving a team of advisors including Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, and Rasha Salti to realize her vision. The exhibition focuses on understated, poetic sensibilities and living artists, a departure from the larger, historically-focused surveys of recent years.