An UES carriage home from a celebrity architect opens up for a public art show

Art dealer and collector Adam Lindemann is presenting a free public exhibition titled "Urhobo + Abstraction" in his East 77th Street carriage house on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The show features five life-size 19th- and early-20th-century sculptures carved by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria, paired with works by contemporary artists of African descent including El Anatsui, Alma Thomas, and Jack Whitten. The carriage house is the first Manhattan building designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, whose renovation was completed in the late 2000s. The exhibition runs through June 13, open Mondays through Thursdays, and the sculptures are not for sale.

Metropolitan Museum receives 6,500 works from photography collector Artur Walther

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a promised gift of more than 6,500 works from German American photography collector Artur Walther and his Walther Family Foundation. The trove spans post-war and contemporary photography from Africa, Japan, Germany, and China, alongside vernacular photos from Europe and the Americas. A special showcase of African photographers' works will debut in the Met's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing when it reopens after renovation later this month. The collection, which has operated exhibition spaces in Neu-Ulm, Germany, and New York's Chelsea district since 2010, includes major names such as Malick Sibidé, Zanele Muholi, Ai Weiwei, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Thomas Struth.

Chile to get a new contemporary art museum

A new contemporary art museum, the New Museum of Santiago (NuMu), is set to break ground in Chile's capital in August 2025. Led by businessman and philanthropist Claudio Engel and his four children through the Engel Foundation, the museum will be built around the family's collection of over 1,000 works by more than 200 artists, including Alfredo Jaar, Paz Errázuriz, and Pilar Quinteros. Designed by architect Cristián Fernández, the 2,000 sq. m facility will feature exhibition spaces, a sound-art room, an auditorium, a library, a restaurant, and a museum shop. It will be the first large-scale contemporary art museum in Chile housed in a new structure, located in Vitacura's Bicentennial Park.

Comment | The greatest failure of PST Art: its successes are not travelling

The article critiques PST Art (formerly Pacific Standard Time), a $20 million Getty-funded initiative in Southern California, as its current edition wraps up. It highlights the closure of key exhibitions like "For Dear Life: Art, Medicine and Disability" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego before major art events like Frieze Los Angeles, and notes that only 7 of the 72 exhibitions are traveling to other institutions. The piece questions the initiative's purpose and effectiveness in reaching broader audiences.

Rose Art Museum Holds First Benefit Gala in Over 20 Years

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University held its first benefit gala in over twenty years in New York City on May 12, 2025. The event honored Lizbeth Krupp, longtime Chair of the museum's Board of Advisors, and acclaimed artist Hugh Hayden, whose major survey "Hugh Hayden: Home Work" is currently on view at the museum. Co-chaired by Sara Friedlander and Abigail Ross Goodman, the gala raised over $900,000 toward a new $2 million Exhibition Endowment Fund, seeded by a lead gift from Krupp, to support future contemporary art exhibitions.

Artist Alison Saar wins High Museum’s 20th annual Driskell Prize

Alison Saar, a Los Angeles-based artist known for sculptures exploring Black American experience through historic and symbolic imagery, has won the 20th edition of the David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The annual prize, which alternates between honoring an artist and a curator, comes with $50,000 and was announced during a reception at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York on 9 May. Saar succeeds 2024 winner Naomi Beckwith, and past honorees include Ebony G. Patterson, Amy Sherald, Mark Bradford, and Rashid Johnson.

Vincent Valdez and KB Brookins picked for ACLU Texas's artist-in-residence programme

The ACLU of Texas has selected Austin-based writer and artist KB Brookins and San Antonio-born painter Vincent Valdez as its artists-in-residence for 2026. Chosen from nearly 200 applicants, each will receive $30,000 to create works addressing criminal law reform, immigrants' rights, and equality for LGBTQIA+ individuals. Valdez will focus on portraits of local community leaders for his New Americans series and produce 'Know Your Rights' poster packets, while Brookins will tackle the pretrial carceral system through community organizing and workshops.

Maine’s Ann Craven spotlighted at Farnsworth Art Museum

The Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine will host a major exhibition titled *Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020–2024)*, showcasing approximately 30 paintings by the celebrated Maine-based artist Ann Craven. The exhibition, running from May 3, 2025, through January 4, 2026, is organized into four thematic sections—moons, trees, flowers, and birds—highlighting Craven's exploration of seriality, repetition, time, and the natural world. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and a film by Fiumi Studio. The exhibition anchors the 2025 Maine in America Award, a lifetime achievement honor recognizing Craven's contributions to Maine's arts and culture, with companion presentations at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Portland Museum of Art.

The nonconformist: Ben Shahn is honoured in a ‘homecoming’ show at New York's Jewish Museum

A major retrospective titled "Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity" opens this month at New York's Jewish Museum, honoring the American artist's lifelong activism. The exhibition includes 175 artworks and objects from the 1930s to the 1960s, organized into sections covering Shahn's Social Realism, New Deal-era work, responses to McCarthyism and the Atomic Age, and support for the civil rights movement. Co-curated by Laura Katzman and Stephen Brown, the show is adapted from a 2023 retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, which was a surprise hit.

Art Institute’s Frida Kahlo-Themed Exhibit Highlights Artist’s Paris Years

The Art Institute of Chicago has opened "Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship With Mary Reynolds," its first dedicated exhibition to the Mexican artist. The show explores Kahlo’s 1939 stay in Paris, where she lived with American bookbinder Mary Reynolds and artist Marcel Duchamp after being hospitalized with a kidney infection. Featuring 100 objects—including seven self-portraits, letters, photographs, and book bindings—the exhibition draws on the Art Institute’s own Mary Reynolds Collection and loans from public and private collections across the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. Curated by Caitlin Haskell, Tamar Kharatishvili, and Alivé Piliado, the display reveals new details about Kahlo’s recovery and creative re-inspiration in the avant-garde hub of Reynolds and Duchamp’s home.

Artists Across America Are Creating Stunning Floral Arrangements Inspired by Paintings, Sculptures and Artifacts

Museums across the United States are hosting "Art in Bloom" exhibitions, where floral artists create custom arrangements inspired by artworks in museum collections. The Cincinnati Art Museum recently held its show with 65 arrangements alongside pieces ranging from sculptures to oil portraits, including a sugar flower installation by Amsterdam-based artist Natasja Sadi. Other institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—which started the tradition in 1976—and the Minneapolis Institute of Art also participate, with artists like Amy Kubas drawing inspiration from works such as a Japanese block print.

Rashid Johnson Finds His Promised Land at the Guggenheim (Published 2025)

Rashid Johnson has mounted a major exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, titled "Rashid Johnson: The Promised Land." The show spans the artist's career, featuring his signature works in sculpture, painting, and installation that explore themes of Black identity, history, and the African diaspora. It includes iconic pieces such as his "Anxious Men" series and large-scale works incorporating materials like shea butter, books, and plants.

Pope Francis and art, J.M.W. Turner’s 250th birthday, John Singer Sargent’s ‘Madame X’—podcast

This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast 'The Week in Art' covers three major art stories. Host Ben Luke is joined by managing editor Louis Jebb to discuss Pope Francis's deep engagement with art and the Vatican collections following his death on Easter Monday. The podcast also marks the 250th anniversary of J.M.W. Turner's birth, featuring an interview with Tate Britain senior curator Amy Concannon about Turner's enduring appeal. The episode's 'Work of the Week' is John Singer Sargent's 'Madame X' (1883-84), discussed with co-curator Stephanie L. Herdrich ahead of a major Sargent exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and traveling to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Review: Gorgeous, exuberant Kim Chong Hak at the High

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta is hosting "Kim Chong Hak: Painter of Seoraksan," the first American museum exhibition dedicated to the Korean artist, running through November 2. The show features over 60 works spanning Kim's career, from early abstract pieces influenced by Western artists like Rothko and Tàpies to vibrant, large-scale landscapes inspired by his decades-long retreat to Mount Seorak in eastern South Korea. The exhibition includes paintings, folk art, and a catalog with essays that contextualize Kim's life and work.

Museum Spotlight: Kim Chong Hak Exhibition

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta is hosting the first American museum exhibition dedicated to Kim Chong Hak, a South Korean master painter born in 1937 and known as "the painter of Seoraksan." Featuring over 70 works, including new acquisitions from the museum's own collection, the show spans the artist's mature career and highlights an aspect of late 20th-century Korean art rarely seen outside South Korea. The exhibition runs through November 2, 2025.

Remembering Pope Francis, for 12 years head of the Catholic church and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's library and art collections

Pope Francis, the 266th pope and the first from the Americas and the Global South, has died. He was the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, head of state of the Vatican, and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's vast art and architectural collections. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, he was the first Jesuit pope and the first to take the name Francis, signaling a commitment to austerity and social justice. His papacy, beginning in 2013 after Benedict XVI's resignation, addressed theological controversies, church culture wars, interfaith relations, Vatican financial reform, the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and cultural restitution from the Vatican's holdings.

Day Trip From Chicago: Milwaukee Art Museum to Exhibit Significant Collection of 16th-17th Century Spanish Art

The Milwaukee Art Museum will debut a major exhibition titled "The Brilliance of the Spanish World: El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán" on May 2, 2025. Billed as the "most significant collection of Hispanic art outside of Spain," the show features masterpieces from 16th- and 17th-century Spanish painters including El Greco, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, spanning Renaissance and Baroque periods. The exhibition runs through July 27 and is included with general admission.

James Taylor-Foster to Lead Hong Kong’s Para Site

Para Site, a prominent Hong Kong art organization, has appointed James Taylor-Foster as its new executive director. The British Swedish curator and writer succeeds Billy Tang, concluding a leadership transition period managed by deputy director Junni Chen. Taylor-Foster will relocate from Stockholm, where he worked at ArkDes and Moderna Museet, to assume the role this summer.

In ‘Life Forms,’ Janny Baek Imagines a Speculative Landscape

In ‘Life Forms,’ Janny Baek Imagines a Speculative Landscape

Sculptor Janny Baek is presenting her solo exhibition *Life Forms* at Chicago's Joy Machine gallery from March 20 to May 9, 2026. The exhibition features her speculative ceramic sculptures, which blend recognizable natural forms like blossoms and creatures with unexpected, abstract elements to create imagined landscapes and primordial organisms. Using techniques like hand-building and the Japanese *nerikomi* method of patterning colored clay, Baek's work captures beings in a state of playful mutation and transformation.

Mari Katayama: tree of life @ Yutaka Kikutake Gallery (Roppongi)

片山真理：tree of life @ Yutaka Kikutake Gallery（六本木）

Mari Katayama presents her latest solo exhibition, "tree of life," at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery in Roppongi, Tokyo. The exhibition, running from March 19 to May 16, 2026, features a new series of photographic works created in 2025 that continue her exploration of the body, prosthesis, and self-representation through meticulously staged compositions.

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.

Full extent of Stephen Friedman Gallery's £7.8m debt revealed in filings

Administrators' filings for Stephen Friedman Gallery reveal a total debt of £7.8 million following its closure in February. Three prominent artists—Alexandre Diop, Deborah Roberts, and Kehinde Wiley—are among the unsecured creditors owed a combined £795,000, expected to recover only eight to nine pence per pound. The largest secured creditor is Coutts & Company, owed £3.1 million, followed by Pentland Group with £1.4 million outstanding. The gallery also owes £505,113 to the Pollen Estate for its Cork Street lease, £550,000 to HMRC, and significant sums to shipping and storage firms, including Crozier (£256,470) and Gander & White (£86,772). Art fairs Frieze and Art Basel Qatar are owed £71,227 and £18,763 respectively.

At the Galleries for April 9, 2026

The Hamptons art scene is entering the spring season with a diverse array of gallery openings across Montauk, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Bridgehampton. Key highlights include Timothy Tibus’s abstract retrospective at The Lucore Art, a Matisse-centered group show at The Drawing Room featuring rare etchings, and Kristy Gordon’s myth-inspired "Primavera" at Grenning Gallery. Other notable exhibitions include a showcase of artists from the Cold Castle collective at Keyes Art and a curated group show titled "Connections" at Dan Welden Studio/Gallery.

Kapopoulos Fine Arts Presents Contemporary Art Auction in Nicosia

Kapopoulos Fine Arts will hold a Contemporary Art Auction on February 18, 2026, at its Nicosia Gallery. The sale features 82 works, with highlights including pieces by street artist Mr. Brainwash (Thierry Guetta), Greek painter Yiannis Mytaras, and sculptor Richard Orlinski, alongside works by Kostis Georgiou, Spyros Vassiliou, and others. Starting prices range from €300, with bidding available in person, by phone, or via absentee bids.

The Ten Best Shows in the UK and Ireland of 2025

Art critic Emile Rubino has selected seven must-see shows during Art Brussels 2025, highlighting Richard Tuttle's restless assemblages at Galerie Greta Meert and an expansive exhibition of Lutz Bacher at WIELS. The guide also includes other notable presentations across the city, offering a curated itinerary for fair-goers.

THE IMMA SHOWCASES THE DEEP REFLECTION OF CECILIA VICUNA

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) is presenting "Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey," the first solo exhibition in Ireland by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña. The show features a diverse range of works including her signature 'precarios' and 'quipus'—ancient Andean-inspired textile structures—alongside early paintings and sound installations. Central to the exhibition is Vicuña’s personal connection to Ireland, explored through a 2006 pilgrimage to archaeological sites and new collaborations with local artisans using Irish wool.

Humans, Machines, and Possible Futures: The Last 100 Years at New Museum

HUMANS MACHINES AND POSSIBLE FUTURES THE LAST 100 YEARS AT NEW MUSEUM

The New Museum has launched "New Humans: Memories of the Future," a massive exhibition spanning its entire building and featuring over 200 international contributors. The show traces a century of artistic, scientific, and social evolution, pairing 20th-century masters like Constantin Brâncuși and Salvador Dalí with contemporary commissions from artists such as Hito Steyerl and Wangechi Mutu. By exploring themes of automated labor, artificial intelligence, and mechanized warfare, the exhibition frames the relationship between humanity and technology as a series of cyclical leaps and reversals rather than linear progress.

THE BIOMUSEO SCIENCE AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST LEVEL

The Biomuseo, a striking museum of biodiversity designed by architect Frank Gehry, stands on the Amador Causeway at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Its avant-garde, deconstructivist structure, featuring chaotic shapes and vivid colors, is designed to narrate the geological formation of the Isthmus of Panama and its impact on global biodiversity. Inside, it houses large sculptures, mineral exhibitions, and audiovisual projections about Panamanian ecosystems, alongside temporary science exhibitions like the current 'Eyes in Space' show about NASA technology.

DAYS ARE NOT THE SAME ZANELE MUHOLI AT CASA SANTA ANA

The Casa Santa Ana Foundation in Panama is hosting Zanele Muholi's first exhibition in the country, titled 'Amalanga awafani (Days Are Not the Same).' The show features major photographic series including 'Somnyama Ngonyama' and 'Faces and Phases,' and includes a new chapter of portraits of Panama's local LGBTQ+ community, integrated into the global archive. The exhibition is free to the public and runs until April 2026, supported by Panama's Ministry of Culture.

THE MONUMENTALITY OF THREAD OLGA DE AMARAL AT MALBA

The Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba) has opened a major retrospective of Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, titled 'Olga de Amaral: Textile Body,' to celebrate the museum's 25th anniversary. The exhibition, running until May 11, features over fifty works from six decades, including key series like Entrelazados and Brumas, drawn from collections across the Americas.