The car park that changed British art: Bold Tendencies at 20

Bold Tendencies, the pioneering arts organization that transformed a multi-storey car park in Peckham, London, into a vibrant cultural venue, is celebrating its 20th summer season. Founded by gallerist Hannah Barry in 2007, the project has hosted over 3 million visitors, commissioned dozens of new artworks, and built an auditorium and concert hall within the concrete structure. It began as a low-budget experiment in using derelict urban spaces for art, featuring sculptures, performances, and a rooftop bar that predated the experiential art boom.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal Leaves Her Mark

Abstract mixed-media painter Mary Lovelace O’Neal, a Civil Rights activist and influential artist known for her monumental canvases and inventive 'lampblack' works, died at age 84. The article also reports that Manhattan’s Neue Galerie will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and covers the NADA New York art fair, Todd Gray's exhibition, and the Lehman College Art Gallery thesis show.

5 very different art fairs throughout two days in New York City

The article reports on five distinct art fairs—Frieze, NADA, Independent, 1-54, and Esther III—visited during New York Art Fair Week. It highlights key artists and works, including Kelly Tapia-Chuning's deconstructed serapes at NADA, Esaí Alfredo's queer nighttime paintings, Alex Burke's textile dolls at 1-54, and Laetitia KY's photographic self-sculpture. The fairs collectively emphasized themes of environmentalism, globalism, decolonization, and a growing textiles sector, with curation varying widely from commercial to conceptually driven.

Tate Britain previews new garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Tate Britain is previewing its new garden at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, offering a sneak peek of the forthcoming Clore Garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith and scheduled for completion in 2027. The show garden features Barbara Hepworth's 1949 sculpture *Bicentric Form*, the first work Tate acquired by the artist, alongside Mediterranean plants adapted to London's warming climate, a wildlife pond, and recycled materials from the Millbank site. After the show, the garden will be relocated to Tate Britain.

A Journey Through the Work of Lucía Pizzani on the Occasion of Her First Institutional Exhibition in London

UN RECORRIDO POR LA OBRA DE LUCÍA PIZZANI A PROPÓSITO DE SU PRIMERA MUESTRA INSTITUCIONAL EN LONDRES

Venezuelan artist Lucía Pizzani presents her first institutional exhibition in the United Kingdom, titled "Faunal Succession," at Focal Point Gallery in London, running through May 30. The show features new works created in collaboration with artists Cecilia Bonilla, Jaime Gili, and Javier Weyler, as well as community groups and local schools, reimagining the Essex coastline through the concept of deep time. The exhibition links geological transformation with contemporary issues such as climate change, migration, and social change, as explored in an interview with curator Inês Costa.

Hong Kong’s M+ And Centre Pompidou Announce Strategic Partnership

M+, Hong Kong's museum of modern and contemporary art, has announced a multi-year strategic partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The collaboration includes co-organized exhibitions at M+ starting in 2027, a joint exhibition at the renovated Pompidou around 2030, and a four-year postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Huo Family Foundation, established by philanthropist Yan Huo in 2009. The Huo Research Fellow will focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Western and Asian art.

Archie Rand On the Irreducibility of Painting in a Post-Digital Age

Archie Rand, now in his late 70s, recently held his first extensive solo show in years at Jarvis Art in New York, featuring his new body of work titled "Heads." The exhibition reclaims painting's primordial function, emphasizing the connection between brain and hands, imagination and reality. Rand, who emerged from the downtown New York scene in the late 1970s and early '80s, has witnessed the full postwar evolution of American art. His career includes a pivotal synagogue mural commission that led to backlash from the Orthodox community and a break with critic Clement Greenberg, pushing him toward representational forms. He found allies in figures like Philip Guston and John Ashbery, and after his wife's death ten years ago, began reflecting on mortality and childhood influences.

The End-of-Term Grand Interview with Stefano Boeri After 8 Years as President of Triennale di Milano

La grande intervista di fine mandato a Stefano Boeri dopo 8 anni da presidente della Triennale di Milano

Stefano Boeri reflects on his eight-year tenure as president of Triennale Milano in a wide-ranging exit interview. He discusses the institution's transformation into a more international and accessible cultural hub, highlighting key achievements such as the three major International Exhibitions—"Broken Nature" (2019), "Unknown Unknowns" (2022), and "Inequalities" (2025)—and the physical reclamation of spaces like the "Cuore" hall and the garden-level floor, which were opened free to the public. Boeri also touches on financial management, governance challenges, and his hopes for the future leadership.

Picture gallery in transformation: recent gifts

MASP — Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand will present the exhibition "Picture gallery in transformation: recent gifts" starting May 15, as part of its Latin American histories series. The show features two sets of silkscreen prints recently added to the museum’s collection: 51 prints (2002–2007) by the Argentine collective Taller Popular de Serigrafía, which combined art and activism during the 2001 economic crisis, and the series "Ink and blood: 1968–2009" by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas, comprising 41 facsimiles of protest ephemera from Latin American social movements. The exhibition is curated by MASP artistic director Adriano Pedrosa, curator Regina Teixeira de Barros, and curatorial assistant Matheus de Andrade.

Exhibition | Kelly Akashi, 'Heirloom' at Lisson Gallery, 508 West 24th Street, New York, United States

Kelly Akashi presents her first exhibition with Lisson Gallery in New York, titled 'Heirloom,' featuring a new body of work that explores loss, grief, and absence through sculpture. The exhibition includes bronze, Corten steel, flame-worked glass, and carved stone pieces, many inspired by her garden and personal artifacts like an inherited stone ring and her grandmother's lace tablecloth. It coincides with her participation in the 2026 Whitney Biennial and a commission for John F. Kennedy International Airport's New Terminal One.

Prize commemorates Henrike Naumann – MMK takes over estate

Preis erinnert an Henrike Naumann – MMK übernimmt Nachlass

A new prize named after the late artist Henrike Naumann has been established by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) and the Zeit Stiftung Bucerius, coinciding with her posthumous presentation at the German Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. The €15,000 Henrike-Naumann-Preis für Bildende Kunst, plus €5,000 in production funds, will be awarded regularly starting this year to early- to mid-career artists whose work engages with social transformation, political fault lines, or transnational contexts. Meanwhile, the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt (MMK) has acquired Naumann's estate, which will be catalogued and made publicly accessible to ensure her work receives long-term scholarly and curatorial attention.

The Cosmos in a Drop: Interview with Wallace Chan

Wallace Chan, the Chinese artist known for his work across microscopic gemstone carving and monumental titanium sculpture, is presenting two concurrent exhibitions in Venice during the 61st Venice Biennale: “Vessels of Other Worlds” at the Pietà Chapel and “Mythos” at Scala Contarini del Bovolo. In an interview with ArtAsiaPacific, Chan discusses his artistic journey from traditional Chinese Buddhist carving to Western iconography, the spiritual resonance of the Pietà Chapel (where Vivaldi composed), and how his works explore themes of transformation, birth, growth, and rebirth through the lens of Buddhist philosophy and Catholic ritual.

Between Tropes and Treats at NADA New York

The 12th annual New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) fair opened at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Manhattan, featuring a wide array of contemporary works. Critic Rhea Nayyar notes that while many booths felt interchangeable due to prevalent trends like zany sculptures, shiny materials, and kitschy vibrancy, several standout pieces offered genuine engagement. Highlights include Elena Roznovan's maternal ephemera embedded in concrete with bondage tape, Kelly Tapia-Chuning's deconstructed serapes addressing colonial violence, and Niniko Morbedadze's folkloric illustrations.

BLANCA DE LA TORRE Y EL “MUSEO ANFIBIO”: “A MÍ ME INTERESA EL PÚBLICO, NO NECESARIAMENTE LAS MASAS”

Blanca de la Torre, director of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), discusses her concept of the "Museo Anfibio" (Amphibious Museum) in an interview for Artishock Revista's series on Ibero-American museum leaders. She proposes reimagining the museum as a relational institution that mediates between physical and symbolic territories, communities, and ecosystems, structured around two axes: Territories-Earth and Aquatic Environments. The interview is part of a series leading up to International Museum Day, with previous entries including Nicolás Gómez Echeverri of the Banco de la República de Colombia.

Grand Rapids Art Museum presents: ‘Decadent Spirit: French Art at the Turn of the Century’

The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) has announced its summer exhibition 'Decadent Spirit: French Art at the Turn of the Century,' on view from May 29 to September 6. Featuring over 130 works spanning 1880 to 1910, the show highlights artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Jules Chéret, Hector Guimard, and Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, alongside early film pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Alice Guy-Blaché. The exhibition includes works on paper, painting, sculpture, metalwork, interior and urban design, and early film, exploring the cafés, streets, theaters, and domestic scenes of fin-de-siècle Paris. It closes with an 1899 French motorcar, symbolizing the era's new mobility.

In Pol Taburet’s New Show, Being Paranoid Is the Point

French artist Pol Taburet has opened a solo exhibition titled *Paranoia as Method* at Villa Medici in Rome, on view through July 15. The show features sculptures, large-format paintings, and charcoal drawings created during his spring residency at the institution, transforming the villa’s gardens, loggias, and salons into tense psychic landscapes. Taburet’s figures drift between human and animal, evoking transformation, mortality, and spiritual tension, drawing on his Caribbean roots, voodoo traditions, contemporary culture, and classical painting.

Major Exhibition Creates World Class Art Trail Across North Yorkshire

An exhibition featuring works by 50 leading contemporary artists will be staged across four venues in North Yorkshire, England, from April to September 2025, as part of the 20th anniversary of the Aesthetica Art Prize. The venues include Skipton Town Hall, the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, Scarborough Art Gallery, and Woodend Gallery, with free entry at most sites. The exhibition is a joint venture between Aesthetica and Culture North Yorkshire, the council's culture and archive service, and is divided into four thematic parts: Future(s), Perception, Intervention, and Transformation.

From men on dog leads to public breast-fondling, Valie Export’s art demanded a total feminist revolution

Valie Export, the pioneering Austrian feminist artist known for her provocative and confrontational performances from the 1960s onward, is the subject of a reflective essay by writer and academic Hettie Judah. The article revisits Export's radical works such as *Hyperbulia* (1973), where she crawled naked through electrified wires; *From the Portfolio of Doggedness* (1968), in which she led a man on a dog lead through Vienna; and *Action Pants: Genital Panic* (1969), where she walked through a cinema with exposed genitals. Judah draws on her own interviews with Export, who died in 2023, and discusses the artist's manifesto demanding that women use art to reshape consciousness and achieve liberation.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Unveils Its Fashion Galleries, Highlighting Fashion’s Place in Museums

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled the new Condé M. Nast Galleries, a nearly 12,000-square-foot suite of exhibition spaces designed by Brooklyn-based architecture firm Peterson Rich Office. Located adjacent to the museum's Great Hall, the galleries relocate fashion exhibitions from a previously tucked-away basement space to one of the museum's most visible and architecturally significant locations. The new spaces debuted with "Costume Art," an exhibition organized by The Costume Institute and curated by Andrew Bolton, which places roughly 200 garments and accessories in dialogue with 200 artworks from the museum's collection, exploring themes such as "The Classical Body," "The Aging Body," and "The Disabled Body." The design, by architects Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich, uses a restrained material palette of grey marmorino plaster and oak doors framed by limestone arches to create permanent-feeling yet flexible spaces that harmonize with the museum's historic Beaux-Arts architecture.

Il grande artista Michelangelo Pistoletto apre un hotel d’arte a Biella

Michelangelo Pistoletto has opened Hotel Cittadellarte in Biella, Italy, within his Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto. The 31-room hotel houses the exhibition "L'ospite inatteso" by Giuseppe Stampone, curated by Ilaria Bernardi, with each room containing a unique artwork designed to be lived with rather than quickly viewed. The exhibition includes Stampone's "Fotocopie intelligenti" and large tapestries from the Brioni manufactory, addressing themes of migration, belonging, memory, and coexistence. The building was sustainably renovated with PNRR funds.

Body as Device. Guide and Reflection on the Performances of the Venice Biennale

Corpo come dispositivo. Guida e riflessione sulle performance della Biennale di Venezia

The article analyzes the role of performance art at the 2026 Venice Biennale, arguing that performance is no longer a rediscovered genre but a structurally institutionalized primary form of experience production. It examines how the body reemerges not as an alternative to image-based works but as an internal interruption of the artwork system, preventing closure and reintroducing instability. Key pavilions are discussed: Austria's Florentina Holzinger with "Sancta" draws on 1970s radical performance and feminist body art, creating an immersive environment of continuous movement; Belgium's Miet Warlop with "IT NEVER SSST" engages post-dramatic theater and postmodern dance repetition; Japan's Ei Arakawa-Nash with "Grass Babies, Moon Babies" activates Gutai avant-garde legacies through viewer interaction with soft dolls.

Artist Murari Jha sculpts memory and home in his New Delhi exhibition

Artist Murari Jha presents *The Future of Nostalgia*, a solo exhibition at Nature Morte in New Delhi, running through May 17, 2026. The show features abstract sculptures in stone, bronze, wood, brass, aluminum, and synthetic putty that explore themes of home, migration, memory, and belonging. A live durational performance is scheduled for May 16, with Jha describing the gallery as a stage and his sculptures as performative objects. The works are deliberately untitled to invite viewers to become co-creators of meaning.

The Many Sheddings of Valie Export

Die vielen Häutungen der Valie Export

Valie Export, the Austrian media and performance artist known for using her body as a site of social critique, has died at age 85 in Vienna. Her final works include a black-and-white photo series of her forearm resting on a stone snake sculpture at the University of Vienna, exploring themes of skin, transformation, and mimesis. From the 1970s onward, she created iconic "Body Configurations" in which she placed her body on streets and against buildings along Vienna's Ringstrasse, tracing architectural forms to expose institutional power and patriarchal authority.

The Musée d’Ixelles at the Crossroads of Different Perspectives

Le Musée d’Ixelles à la croisée de différents regards

The Musée d’Ixelles in Brussels, closed for eight years for expansion and renovation, is nearing completion of its architectural transformation with a reopening scheduled for spring 2027 (March 19). Founded in 1892 in a former slaughterhouse, the museum has grown through successive donations and a continuous acquisition policy, now holding over 15,000 works spanning Belgian art from the 19th century to the contemporary period. Director and curator Claire Leblanc, who has led the institution since 2006, emphasizes a participatory approach that integrates diverse public perspectives, including a project called "Musée comme chez soi" during the closure where locals hosted artworks in their homes.

À Marseille, l’installation textile monumentale d’Adrien Vescovi déploie ses couleurs

Artist Adrien Vescovi has installed a monumental textile work titled "Dormir comme le soleil" at the Vieille Charité in Marseille. The installation features over 600 dyed sheets suspended across 108 arches of the former hospice, using natural pigments from plants, spices, and ochres. The fabrics, dyed in a labor-intensive process involving large wooden spoons and cauldrons, are designed to fade and evolve over the eight-month exhibition, responding to wind, humidity, and Mediterranean light.

Los Angeles Sees Cultural Explosion: AI Art Museums, Immersive Exhibits, and Iconic Festivals Set to Redefine US Tourism

Los Angeles is undergoing a major cultural expansion in 2026, with several high-profile museum openings and immersive art experiences set to debut between June and December. Key developments include Dataland 3.0, the world's first dedicated Museum of AI Arts, created by Refik Anadol Studio at The Grand LA; the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a 100,000-square-foot gallery in Exposition Park designed by MAD Architects; and a new permanent installation by the art collective Meow Wolf. These are joined by recurring events such as LA Pride 2026, Cali Vibes 2026, the German Currents Film Festival, the Hollywood Christmas Parade, and the L.A. County Holiday Celebration, creating a dense cultural calendar.

Evidence of Evolution at QUEUE Gallery, Miami

QUEUE Gallery in Miami is presenting 'Evidence of Evolution,' a two-person exhibition featuring Fharid LaTorre’s hand-carved wood and metal sculptures alongside Jamieson Pearl’s oil-on-linen paintings. LaTorre’s works, such as 'showing slivers & taking off skin for sake of dopamine layer of diophantine equations' (2026), use scavenged metal and burl wood to evoke surgical transformations and bodily stress, while Pearl’s paintings depict glitch-blocked internet microcelebrities and screenshots from LiveLeak pornos, rendered freehand in distorted blocks. The show runs at QUEUE’s new location above Tunnel Projects in Miami.

How do art auctions change if everything online seems like a video game?

Come cambiano le aste d’arte se online tutto sembra un video game?

The article examines how digital infrastructure has transformed art auctions from exclusive in-person rituals into real-time competitive interfaces. Online sales, which peaked during the pandemic, now account for about 16% of the global art market in 2025 (down from 18% in 2024), according to the Art Market Report by Art Basel and UBS. Digital tools enable instant bidding, global streaming, and discreet participation, allowing collectors to compete without physical presence. The piece highlights the gamification of auctions, noting that ArtTactic has launched Art Forecaster, a platform where users predict auction prices in tournament-style competitions, blending market engagement with ludic elements.

Exhibition and meet-the-artist session: Nuit Blanche 2026 at the Polish Institute in Paris

The Polish Institute in Paris is participating in the 25th edition of Nuit Blanche on June 6-7, 2026, with a program featuring photographer and war correspondent Agata Grzybowska, who will give an artist talk titled "Everyone deserves their own story," followed by a guided tour of an exhibition by Anglo-Polish photojournalist Chris Niedenthal. The event runs from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., offering free access to the public as part of the citywide contemporary art festival.

TWAC presents ‘ENTWINED’ Exhibition by Artist-Educators Bob Mosier and Karen Fearon

The Woodlands Arts Council (TWAC) presents 'ENTWINED,' its first exhibition featuring a married couple, artist-educators Bob Mosier and Karen Fearon. The show, on view from May 12 to August 6, 2026, highlights their individual practices—Mosier's intricate thread paintings that evolve into three-dimensional fabric sculptures, and Fearon's expressive drawings, paintings, and assemblages rooted in intuitive mark-making. Both artists incorporate found and reclaimed materials, and their work explores light, form, and the yin-yang of creative process. An opening reception is scheduled for June 18, 2026.