Major U.S. museums experienced a significant decline in attendance during 2025. The downturn was primarily driven by a series of severe natural disasters, including hurricanes and wildfires, which disrupted travel and forced temporary closures, alongside periods of domestic political instability that deterred both local and international visitors.
Barnard College's visual arts senior thesis exhibition showcases a diverse range of works from graduating students, spanning avant-garde conceptual pieces to explorations of soft domesticity. The show features paintings, sculptures, installations, and mixed-media works that reflect the students' individual artistic journeys and technical experimentation.
More than 300 museums and art institutions across South Korea will participate in the 2026 Museum and Gallery Week, a nationwide cultural festival organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, running from May 1 to May 31. The event adopts the theme "Museums Uniting a Divided World" from the International Council of Museums, and features three main programs: "Museum × Meet" highlighting 50 signature objects, "Museum × Enjoy" with exhibitions and performances at 18 institutions, and "Museum × Wander" offering guided tours connecting galleries with historic sites.
Seoul-based gallery Artcube 2R2 is launching a solo exhibition titled "Dignity: Accumulated Time" featuring the work of artist Oh Ji-yoon. The show focuses on her "Dignity" series, which utilizes a labor-intensive process of layering charcoal, gold, hanji paper, and pearls to explore themes of human existence and reflection. The exhibition is designed to coincide with the artist's consecutive invitations to the Venice Biennale, bringing the same body of work shown on the international stage to a domestic audience.
The Kansong Art Museum in Seoul has launched a special exhibition titled "Cultural Defense of the Nation: The Spirit of Our People Preserved Through Faith," showcasing 46 significant artifacts reclaimed by collector Chun Hyung-pil during the Japanese colonial period. The centerpiece of the show is a rare 18th-century white porcelain bottle decorated with underglaze blue, iron-red, and copper-red, which Chun famously acquired at the Gyeongseong Art Club auction in 1936. He outbid a prominent Japanese dealer with a record-breaking bid of 14,580 won—a sum equivalent to the price of 15 houses at the time—to prevent the treasure from leaving Korea.
Sacramento State fine arts student Desiree Thomas has debuted her solo exhibition, "War, Religion and Love," at the university’s R.W. and Joyce Witt Gallery. The show features oil paintings that utilize romanticized imagery to explore unsettling themes, including internal psychological struggles and the domestic lives of Nazi soldiers. Notable works like "The Fine Line Between Ambition and Insanity" and "Home" challenge viewers to confront the duality of beauty and darkness through complex religious and historical symbolism.
The article profiles an unnamed Australian artist who, in the 1950s, pursued a career in art while raising a family, challenging the era's restrictive social expectations for women. Her story, shared by her granddaughter Lily, highlights the personal and societal barriers faced by women artists of that generation.
An art exhibition titled 'The Family Album' opened at the Mustafa Ali Gallery in Damascus, Syria. The show features works by contemporary Syrian artists who use family photographs, documents, and personal archives to examine themes of lineage, memory, and belonging.
The New York Times highlights the emergence of a new physical art space designed to emulate the intimate, conversational atmosphere of traditional 19th-century European salons. Moving away from the sterile 'white cube' aesthetic of modern galleries, this venue prioritizes domestic-scale viewing and intellectual exchange among artists, collectors, and critics.
The Galleries Art Fair, also known as the Hwarang Art Fair, will return to Seoul's COEX exhibition center from April 8-12, 2026. This year’s edition marks a significant milestone with a record-breaking 169 participating member galleries, making it the largest iteration in the event's history. The fair will feature a diverse range of contemporary Korean art, including a special section for emerging talent titled "Zoom In Edition 7" and a commemorative exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Galleries Association of Korea.
Kendall Hamelryck, the current artist-in-residence at Milligan University, has debuted her solo exhibition titled “Building a Life” at the Milligan Art Gallery. The showcase features mixed-media installations and sculptures, including the centerpiece “Be Content,” which explores themes of domesticity, faith, and the simplicity of childhood. The works reflect Hamelryck’s personal transition into marriage and family life, utilizing everyday objects like tea sets and stuffed animals to convey spiritual contentment.
The Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River is hosting "Black Infinity House," an immersive exhibition curated by August Oaks that showcases the work of over 30 Black Oregon-based artists. The installation is designed as a domestic space featuring a studio, living room, and porch, displaying a diverse range of media including fabric art, wood-burned illustrations, painted portraits, and handmade jewelry.
Three master’s students from Stellenbosch University—Rebekah Pringle, Thabo Ngwenya, and Emily Fitzgerald—launched an exhibition titled "Matter of Self: Private fragments, public forms" on 7 August at the Gallery University Stellenbosch (GUS). The show is part of a master’s review series that highlights their academic year progress. Pringle’s work explores her domestic experience and caretaker relationship with her grandmother using repurposed furniture; Ngwenya’s pieces address alienation as a Ndebele man in Zimbabwe through pop culture references and self-portraits as "boundary objects"; Fitzgerald’s art challenges patriarchy and heteronormativity using archival photographs, clay, and photolithographic processes.
Artists Emiko Mizukami, Julie Sabey, Lena Sin, and Nicole Lau present 'Today or Tomorrow,' a home studio exhibition at Atelier 8.18, the living room of curator Kyla Bourgh. The show explores food's connection to culture, memory, and community through each artist's personal lens—from Sin's joyful table settings inspired by travels to Mizukami's fantasy narratives around Japanese preservation traditions, Sabey's childhood birthday party memories, and Lau's transformation of prepackaged foods into colorful artworks.