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.

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.

'L.A. has changed me,' says architect of LACMA's divisive David Geffen Galleries

Peter Zumthor, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, discusses the making of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA) new David Geffen Galleries in an interview. He explains his rejection of overly slick, corporate architecture in favor of a raw, handmade concrete structure, describing the building as a "concrete sculpture." Zumthor details his collaboration with LACMA director Michael Govan, who encouraged him to incorporate "American roughness" into the design, a lesson Zumthor says he has brought back to his European practice.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Ultimate 2026 Guide for Travelers

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is drawing record crowds in spring 2026 with its latest exhibitions, including newly restored ancient artifacts. The article, written by travel editor Elena Müller, positions The Met as a top cultural destination for American travelers, highlighting its location on Manhattan's Upper East Side, its Beaux-Arts architecture, and its proximity to Central Park. It also covers the museum's founding in 1870, its expansion into a neoclassical landmark on Museum Mile, and its role as a cornerstone of New York's cultural landscape.

Participants withdraw from Chicago Architecture Biennial over sponsor’s investment in weapons manufacturer

Nine participants in the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB), which opened on September 19, have withdrawn in protest over exhibition sponsor Crown Family Philanthropies' investment in General Dynamics, a military contractor supplying weapons to the Israeli military. A letter signed by 22 individuals, collectives, and firms—nearly half of whom also withdrew—argues that the sponsorship contradicts the biennial's mission of addressing architecture's role in shaping a collective future. The biennial's sixth edition, titled SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, is led by artistic director Florencia Rodriguez. Participants had raised concerns last month, and organizers clarified that Crown Family funds support education programming, not the exhibition itself, which the letter calls "even more painful" given the destruction of schools in Gaza.

Total Warfare. A Conversation with Luigi Alberto Cippini  by ANY

Architect Luigi Alberto Cippini, founder of Armature Globale, engages in a provocative dialogue with Michael Abel and Nile Greenberg regarding the stagnation of contemporary architecture. Cippini calls for a radical departure from traditional disciplinary boundaries, advocating for a "punk" approach that embraces low-resolution aesthetics, hyper-specialized research, and a rejection of the pedantic communication standards that currently dominate the field.

Madrid: Hypnotic Laugh Track by Manga Ngcobo

Writer Manga Ngcobo reflects on the architectural and cultural landscape of Madrid in early 2025, juxtaposing the city's historic art institutions with its rapid technological and commercial evolution. Drawing on Ben Lerner’s novel 'Leaving the Atocha Station', the piece explores the growing disconnect between the profound emotional experiences promised by masters like Velázquez and Goya and the reality of a city increasingly designed for content creation, retail aesthetics, and digital consumption.

Santa Monica City Gallery Opens At Bergamot Station

The City of Santa Monica has officially opened the Santa Monica City Gallery, its first municipal art space, located within the Bergamot Station Arts Center. The gallery launched with the inaugural exhibition "Case Study: Adapt," which showcases architectural models designed by students and professional firms to address housing needs for families displaced by the 2025 California wildfires. The venue is designed to host a rotating schedule of exhibitions, artist residencies, and selections from the city’s permanent Art Bank collection.

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Courtney McClellan's exhibition "Simulations" at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center in Lower Manhattan features deadpan photographs of empty mock courtrooms at universities across the American South, including a haunting simulation of the Supreme Court's chambers at Liberty University, an evangelical Southern Baptist college in Virginia. The show, which includes images taken over six years, is installed with blue borders and wainscoting that blur the line between architecture and image, placing viewers in the position of judge and jury while highlighting the theatricality of these spaces.

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Chanel has opened Espace Gabrielle Chanel, mainland China's first public library dedicated to contemporary art, at Shanghai's Power Station of Art (PSA). The 18,000-square-foot library, designed by Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto, holds over 50,000 books and audiobooks and includes an upgraded exhibition hall, a terrace overlooking the Huangpu River, and a 300-seat public theater. It will host the Archive of Chinese Contemporary Art. The library is part of Chanel's Next Cultural Producer program, launched at PSA in 2021 under the Chanel Culture Fund, which supports emerging practices in Chinese craft, architecture, and theater.

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President Donald Trump has demolished a portion of the East Wing of the White House to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, despite earlier claims that the addition would not impact the historic structure. The demolition began on October 20, with a backhoe tearing through the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that will nearly double the size of the main building and accommodate 650 people. The $250 million project, which Trump says is privately funded, marks one of the most significant changes to the White House in over a century.

Nel Padiglione Germania alla Biennale di Venezia un gruppo di donne riflette sulle rovine del passato per capire il mondo

The German Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale will present the work of two women artists, Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu, following the death of Naumann at age 41 in February 2026. Curated by Kathleen Reinhardt, director of the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin, the pavilion's project, titled "Ruin," explores the dual meanings of the word in English and German—architectural decay versus economic, social, or moral collapse. The exhibition draws on research into East Germany (DDR) and the post-reunification period, using the pavilion's fascist architecture as a lens to examine historical ruptures and their impact on the present. For the first time in its history, the German Pavilion is represented solely by women, mirroring the Italian Pavilion.

The super architect Kengo Kuma on display at the Bonsai Museum, a magical place on the outskirts of Milan

Il super architetto Kengo Kuma in mostra al Museo del Bonsai, luogo magico alle porte di Milano

The Crespi Bonsai Museum in Parabiago, near Milan, is hosting an exhibition during Fuorisalone featuring the new carpet collection "Faces" by Indian brand Jaipur Rugs, created in collaboration with renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. The museum, founded 35 years ago by Luigi Crespi, houses the world's most important collection of author bonsai outside Japan, including a thousand-year-old Ficus retusa. The 16 carpets in the collection reinterpret the facades of iconic buildings by Kengo Kuma & Associates, translating their rhythm, depth, and sensory memory into wool and regenerated viscose, displayed among the bonsai and in the museum's zen garden.

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Nick Axel and Daniele Balleri have written a reply to this article. The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, organized by MIT professor Carlo Ratti under the theme “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.,” features A.I.-generated summaries alongside traditional wall texts for each exhibit. These two-sentence distillations, labeled “A.I. Summary,” are designed to help visitors quickly grasp core ideas and choose their pace through the dense show. An example is Beatriz Colomina, Roberto Kolter, Patricia Urquiola, Geoffrey West, and Mark Wigley's installation *The Other Side of the Hill*, whose 200-word wall text is condensed into a succinct A.I. summary about microbial intelligence and demographic collapse.

Exhibition | Shota Nakamura, 'Apple' at Karma, Los Angeles

Shota Nakamura's exhibition 'Apple' at Karma in Los Angeles presents a series of new paintings that explore familiar subjects—fruit, shells, sailboats, landscapes—through a dreamlike, tonally nuanced lens. The Berlin-based Japanese artist focuses on the tonality of light, using closely-valued hues to investigate relationships between color, luminosity, and illusion. Works such as 'Landscape with Apples' (2026), 'A Black Dog', and 'Violin Player' demonstrate his method of combining personal photographs, memory, and art historical references into compositions that balance representation with formal abstraction, often referencing modern Japanese painters like Zenzaburo Kojima and Morikazu Kumagai as well as Mark Rothko.

Intuit Solo Show A Dream Come True For Self-Taught Morgan Park Artist Marvin Young

Self-taught artist Marvin Young, 64, who has an intellectual and developmental disability, will have his first solo exhibition, “Impressions of a City,” at the Intuit Art Museum in Chicago from April 9 to August 23, 2026. Curated by Christina Stavros, the show features Young’s vivid drawings of Chicago cityscapes, architecture, and portraits, created from memory using graphite, colored pencils, crayons, and markers. Young, who works at Envision Unlimited and Arts of Life—nonprofits supporting people with disabilities—has long dreamed of selling his art, and this exhibition marks a major milestone in that goal.

Aria Dean, Sandra Mujinga and Tschabalala Self

Galerie Eva Presenhuber is hosting a group exhibition featuring the works of Aria Dean, Sandra Mujinga, and Tschabalala Self. The show explores the construction and erasure of the human body through diverse mediums, including Aria Dean’s 3D-animated film of an empty slaughterhouse and Sandra Mujinga’s spectral, fabric-based sculptures. By focusing on the architectures of violence and the labor of repair, the artists move away from traditional representation toward conceptual and structural critiques of subjecthood.

Temple Contemporary Takes Viewers Inside the Pyramid Club

Temple Contemporary, the exhibition space at Tyler School of Art and Architecture on Temple University's campus, has opened "Pyramid Club: 1937-2035," its first show under new curator and director Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta. The exhibition explores the history of the Pyramid Club, a social club for Philadelphia's Black elite founded in 1937, highlighting its prestigious art shows organized by Humbert Howard from 1941 to 1957. It features works from the collection of Dr. William Dodd, photographs by John W. Mosley curated by Leslie Willis Lowry and artist Shawn Theodore, and contemporary multimedia installations by Theodore.

Continue the Frieze London buzz: these are the best new gallery openings in the UK to visit now

The article highlights five new or relocated gallery openings across the UK, from London to rural Wiltshire, that are generating buzz alongside the Frieze London art fair. These include Brink in Notting Hill, which pairs architecture with art in a former temperance hall; Huxley-Parlour's new rural outpost in the North Wessex Downs; Monument, an archival objects gallery expanding in Leyton; 3812 Gallery relocating to The Whiteley in Queensway with a focus on Chinese contemporary art; and Cobogó Gallery's first physical London space in Chelsea Harbour, specializing in Brazilian design.

New Canadian art museum seeks to connect disparate disciplines and a university campus

Simon Fraser University (SFU) near Vancouver will open the Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum on September 20, its first purpose-built art museum. The inaugural exhibition, "Edge Effects," features 15 artists including Sameer Farooq, Liz Magor, Cindy Mochizuki, and Debra Sparrow, and reflects the interdisciplinary ethos of the original SFU campus designed by Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey. The 12,000-square-foot building by Hariri Pontarini Architects and Iredale Architecture includes a research laboratory, art studio, courtyard, and salon, and will be admission-free.

The Humboldt Forum is Already Under Fire

"Das Humboldt Forum wird schon beschossen"

The architectural firm J. Mayer H. and partners Jürgen Mayer H. and Hans Schneider have won the eighth 'Kunst-am-Bau' competition for Berlin’s Humboldt Forum. Their winning installation, titled "Südpfeil" (South Arrow), features a 3.6-meter-long abstract arrow embedded high in the building's facade. The work references the 19th-century discovery of 'Pfeilstörche'—migratory storks that returned to Europe with African arrows in their bodies—which provided the first scientific proof of global migration routes.

Andreas Angelidakis on Representing Greece at the 61st Venice Biennale

Artist Andreas Angelidakis will represent Greece at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 with a project titled 'Escape Room'. He plans to split the Greek Pavilion in two, referencing the National Schism in Greek history, and will create an immersive experience that explores the building's dual identities as a national symbol and an exhibition space, set to the soundtrack of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax'.

Beyond the Sagrada Família: These 6 Surprising Places in Barcelona Reveal a Lesser-Known Gaudí

Au-delà de la Sagrada Família, ces 6 lieux étonnants à Barcelone qui révèlent un Gaudí méconnu

Beaux Arts Magazine highlights six lesser-known architectural works by Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona, beyond his famous Sagrada Família. The article features Casa Vicens (1883–1885), his first private commission; Torre Bellesguard (1900–1909), a medieval-inspired tower with panoramic views; Casa Calvet (1897), a residential building with textile-themed details; and the Finca Güell and Palau Güell, experimental projects for his patron Eusebi Güell. These sites showcase Gaudí's organic style, fusion of nature and architecture, and influences from Japanese, Arabic, and Catalan Gothic traditions, with several recently opened to the public.

In Shanghai, a spectacular spiral opera house designed by Snøhetta is revealed

À Shanghai, un spectaculaire opéra en spirale conçu par l’agence Snøhetta se dévoile

The Shanghai Grand Opera House, a massive 147,000-square-meter cultural landmark designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, has reached structural completion in the Houtan district. Inspired by the form of a traditional Chinese fan, the building features a dramatic white helical roof that doubles as a public walkway, connecting the urban landscape to the waterfront. The interior, which includes a 2,000-seat main hall and various modular spaces, is currently being finalized ahead of a scheduled opening in the second half of 2026.

L’œuvre « indocile » du photographe Guido Guidi exposée au BAL

The article announces the exhibition of photographer Guido Guidi's work at Le BAL in Paris, curated by Simona Antonacci, Pippo Ciorra, and Antonello Frongia, with scenography by Cyril Delhomme. The show, titled "Col tempo, 1956-2024," runs from February 20 to May 24, 2026, and was previously presented in a larger version at the MAXXI museum in Rome. Guidi, now 85, is described as the last of a generation of Italian photographers—alongside Luigi Ghirri and Ugo Mulas—who radically redefined photographic language through patient, obstinate reflection on the act of seeing.

À Annecy, le cinéma d’animation célébré toute l’année grâce à l’ouverture d’un lieu hybride et ambitieux en juin

A new permanent home for animation cinema, the Cité internationale du cinéma d'animation, will open in Annecy, France, on June 19, 2025, just before the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Housed in a restored 19th-century horse stable (haras) listed as a historic monument, the 54-million-euro project includes a 450 m² permanent museum, a 332-seat cinema, temporary exhibition spaces, educational workshops, artist residencies, and image-education facilities. The city of Annecy contributes 30 million euros, with additional funding from the Haute-Savoie department, the state, and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. Designed by architecture firm dd.a and landscape architect Philippe Deliau, the center aims to be a hybrid, year-round hub for animation, blending heritage, creation, and transmission.

Art Central Enters Its Second Decade with a Discovery‑Led 11th Edition

Art Central 2026, the Hong Kong art fair, is launching its 11th edition with a record 117 galleries and over 500 artists. The event, staged on the Central Harbourfront, emphasizes discovery through large-scale installations, performances, and moving-image works, transforming its architecture into an immersive arena. It solidifies its role as a key regional platform.

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Construction on Barcelona’s Sagrada Família reached a historic milestone with the completion of the central Tower of Jesus Christ. The installation of a 56-foot cross atop the structure officially makes the basilica the tallest church in the world, fulfilling a key component of Antoni Gaudí’s original vision nearly a century after his death.

david adjaye speaks against sexual misconduct allegations 1234763894

David Adjaye has publicly spoken out against the sexual misconduct allegations made against him in 2023, calling a Financial Times article that detailed the claims “deeply unfair” and claiming he was caught in a “#MeToo slam.” In an interview with architecture critic Tim Abrahams for the podcast Superhumanism, reported by Dezeen, Adjaye said the FT story destabilized confidence in him and that there was no interest in hearing his side. He did not explain why he believed the reporting was unfair, despite having declined to comment to multiple outlets at the time. The allegations, which included sexual harassment and assault claims from three women, led several institutions to cut ties with Adjaye, most notably the Studio Museum in Harlem, which had just opened a new building designed by his firm.

Nymphs, mermaids and rosy cherubs: mansion filled with hidden wall paintings makes Victorian Society’s endangered buildings list

A derelict mansion called Parndon Hall, located within the grounds of Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, has been named to the Victorian Society’s annual list of the top ten at-risk buildings in England and Wales. The house, built in 1867, contains a hidden trove of wall paintings by the almost-forgotten Victorian artist Elizabeth Arkwright, who covered walls, ceilings, and doors with nymphs, mermaids, and cherubs—many still concealed under Edwardian whitewash. The building has been used for storage and has sat unoccupied since flood repairs in 2024.